Chapter Four – Lessons in French
Some minutes or so later, which were enough to make her fully realize what she had done, they were just...chilling on the couch next to each other.
Not much had been said between them and they had somehow managed to turn their attention to their homework. Well, at least it looked like that superficially.
She had flashed him her boobs. She had just lifted her shirt and given him an unobstructed view of her goodies. Yep. Just like that.
Okay, maybe doing that hadn't been the smartest thing, particularly in light of the complicated feelings she harboured for Soul. She hoped this flippant move of hers wouldn't make things awkward between them. She doubted it, sort of. She had seen him naked quite often, so having him see her breasts shouldn't have disastrous consequences for them. Although whenever he had discarded his clothes, it had always been with the intention to help her, to have her draw him.
Okay, maybe it would make things a little awkward. Perhaps she should directly address it. Soul was pretty much keeping a poker face by now after his initial shock passed off.
She fidgeted, her teeth gnawing uneasily on her bottom lip. She glanced at him briefly. Looked away. Had he liked what he had seen? Sure, he hadn't had much time to scrutinize her boobs but he had looked at them.
She shook her head, feeling stupid that such a question was at the forefront of her mind.
Damn it.
She didn't know how much time passed she had spent glaring aimlessly at the messy and scattered papers in front of her, her large tome opened on some random page; she couldn't find her pencil, it had probably fallen to the ground or something. She loathed the idea to move to search for it, fully expecting it to have rolled under the couch just to make things more difficult for her. She felt awfully tired, she just wanted to curl up on the couch and take a long, deep sleep and forget about everything.
It was soft humming that pulled her out of this state of semi-consciousness. Curious, she glanced up and needless to say she wasn't being haunted by a musically inclined ghost but it was indeed Soul who was humming. She smiled softly. It sounded nice. Then again, she thought almost everything sounded nice with his voice. Sometimes when he was captured deep in his thoughts, he would hum unconsciously. She wasn't certain but she had heard this tune quite a few times since they had gotten back from their Spring Break visits.
"What's the song called?" she asked, uneasiness and mortification and awkwardness momentarily forgotten.
His features were schooled in a careful expression of neutrality and his body language screamed casual at a first glance. But when she looked at him closer, she noticed his tense jaw, his clenched fists and most strikingly, his spine was stiff, a far call from his usual unhealthy slouch.
"It's called Les Femmes. It's from the musical Don Juan."
"Hah? Really? Never took you for the musical person."
"I'm not really. My mom loves them though and makes me sit through them."
"Oh?"
"Heh, yeah. It's difficult to say no to my mom."
She laughed a little. "L-les Femmes sounds French."
"Well duh, it is a French song with a little bit of Spanish mixed in."
That caught her attention more than anything.
"The only reason I can sit through those musicals is because the music is actually nice. Les Femmes is pretty much an ode to women." His lips twitched into a grin as he ran a hand through his hair, tousling it more than it already was. "The wording of the song is nice, I guess. Les femmes c'est plus beau que la musique. C'est comme un piano magique. Qui s'inventerait des gammes. Sur les notes bleu de larmes. Qui coulent sur les joues des femmes. It means: women are more beautiful than music. They're like a magical piano that would invent scales, on tears of blue notes that trail down the cheeks of women. If it weren't for the music. I don't think I could have survived Don Juan. He is a douche."
Okay, Soul talking French might or might not have some side effects on her body, like horniness.
"A womanizer. Doesn't surprise me." She pursed her lips disapprovingly, trying to ignore the heat that seemed to be invading her body.
"Yeah, cool guys don't cheat and play around."
"Agreed." She nodded. "And that seems to be a very nice song by the way." And then it belatedly dawned on her: "Hey, you told me you didn't know any French!"
He flinched. "Uh..."
She gasped in agitation, regarding his uneasy form questioningly. It was beyond her grasp why he would lie about something like that. He even got the pronunciation right...at least, she thought he got it right. It wasn't like she could judge someone's skills in French with her not even rudimentary grasp on the language. Now that she thought about it, Soul had definitely not been in her Spanish class in high school.
"Eh, well, you see...French is just...not a language that is...uh..."
Her brows furrowed. "What?"
He sighed. "It's not a...badass language like...like Russian or-or German. I'm good at it because my mom taught me. She thought it would be nice or something since her grandpa was French and she wanted to pass it on or something."
"You're an idiot. French is a beautiful language. And why would you be ashamed of being able to speak one language more?"
"I told you."
She snorted. "That's a stupid reason honestly. Besides, no one's stopping you from learning a more 'badass' language like German."
"Nah, too much work to attend another language course. French is already difficult enough."
"You're complaining about really stupid stuff. Everything sounds nicer in French."
"Does it now? And you know this how?"
"Err...it's softer and stuff."
He smirked, leaning forward and invading her personal bubble like nobody's business. "That's it?"
She spluttered inelegantly, lightly thumping against his head to put a bit of a distance between them. "H-how would you say...couch in French?"
He looked stumped for a moment but regained his wits soon after. An eyebrow raised and smirk fully intact again, he smoothly said, "Un canapé."
Her cheeks heated up another twenty degrees. "See? That sounds so much nicer than couch."
"If you say so."
"Say more. How about t-shirt?" She pointedly rubbed her over the cotton of the one she was wearing.
He chuckled lowly. "That's pretty simple. Just tee-shirt."
"Oh. Then how about-"
"Maka, this is silly." He sighed, stretching languidly as he crudely placed his feet onto the table. "Why are you so intent on hearing me speak French?" At her crestfallen face, he quickly added, "But if it makes you that happy, I can keep going. Je crois avoir tombé en amour qu'une seule fois dans ma vie..et je sais que c'est un peu ridicule, mais c'était l'histoire d'un soir. Juste une nuit de plaisir, une baise qu'elle ne s'en souvient même pas car je pense qu'elle était pas mal soûle."
Maka was awestruck. That and Soul's voice speaking French got her all hot and bothered. Seriously, she had no idea what he was saying and frankly at this moment she didn't care. Hell, he could be admitting that he liked to wear pink socks and took bathes in mud and it would still get her hot and bothered. She gulped noisily, her fingers clenching with the fabric of her shirt, her palms moist with sweat.
"What..." she inhaled deeply, her voice thick with some emotion she hoped he couldn't identify. "What does it mean? Is it also from a song?"
"Maybe. It's for you to find out."
"That's not fair!"
"Hey, you only wanted me to speak French, not give you translations. Tu as de très beaux seins by the way."
"Haah? Soul! What are you saying?"
He snickered and once again she found her personal space invaded by him, this time she did nothing to push him away. "I just said: you have very nice breasts."
What?
She made a high-pitched squeak, her arms flailed wildly as her cheeks flared with heat and she was unable to look at him anymore. Her thoughts in those seconds of utter mortification could be summed up as such: aaskdgashfdkjbaskjbfvfs and don't hit him; alternately don't jump him because his sexiness increases when he talks French.
"Why did you do that anyway?"
It took her longer to properly assess his words and even then, her mouth and tongue wouldn't cooperate and the only thing she could squeak in response was a pitiful: "What?"
He growled, a raw sound from the back of his throat that made her skin prickle and shiver. He glanced to the side, his hand running through his unruly hair, before he fixed his gleaming eyes on her again.
"You flashed me your boobs. Why?"
She cleared her throat, trying to gather her wits and regain the ability to speak like a human being. And as the initial shock was slowly but surely dissipating, she felt an odd wave of calmness wafting over her. "I...uh..why not? What-what's the big deal? I've seen you naked before countless times."
"That's it? Because you've seen me naked, you're showing me your boobs as...as an exchange of sorts?" He sounded quite aghast, his tone tinged with panic. "Because if that's it, you should know I don't need-"
"No! Not an exchange. I wasn't really thinking when I did that. And I still fail to see what the big deal is. I just didn't mind it...and felt like it?"
"Whaat? So you're flashing innocent people just because you feel like it?"
She glowered darkly, feeling more and more stupid as he questioned her irrational behaviour. "No, I just don't mind it if you see me like that."
Okay, she just might have said something that could be interpreted along the lines of: I don't mind you seeing me naked, so jump me, please?
Fuck, fuck, fuck! What was she doing? She should try to say something to remedy the situation and try to salvage her friendship with Soul before it was ruined beyond recognition. She feared she was already too late for that and whatever she said wouldn't do any good.
"So you're saying that I should expect to get some boobs at any time? No, wait. Not at any time, but only if you feel like it, right?"
The humour and amusement in his voice made her disarray of feelings only twist and tangle more, her throat feeling incredibly tight and her lungs felt like as if something was pressing down on them. Could she just crawl under the table and hide with him being so merciful and ignoring her until she had sorted this mess she had created out?
She had no such luck because all of the sudden Soul's hand was in her periphery, so close, too close and her body was frozen, her limbs heavy as lead and she did nothing to stop him when his fingers grazed the hem of her shirt.
"Do you...feel like it now?"
Her head snapped up as if an invisible hand had grasped it and angled it that way to its liking. The movement was sudden, clearly surprising Soul as he jumped back a little. His eyes were wide, uncertain and panicky. Her tongue felt too thick and big for her mouth that seemed to be stuffed with cotton..
What? Why? What was going on? Had he really...had he really just expressed the wish to see her shirtless again? She wasn't misreading his words and actions, was she? She bit her lip roughly. Could she dare to hope that Soul might eventually return her feelings? She took a shaky breath, her nails digging into the leather of the couch beneath her.
"Maybe." Her voice was heady and throaty, so unlike her usual light and high-pitched one. It startled her a bit but there was no time to contemplate that because Soul was right in front of her! His knees touching hers, fingers playing with her shorts as his eyes became half-lidded, darker, more intense.
"Maybe? You have to be a bit more precise there." It was as if they were in a competition of Whose voice is the deepest? and she was doomed to lose. The husky timbre made her hands quiver and the blood roar loudly in her ears, her heart threatening to burst out of the confines of her ribs if this kept continuing.
Breathing was difficult to the point of painful, her hands wandered, grasping her shirt and slowly she hauled it over her head, leaving her bare and exposed and vulnerable.
He sucked in a deep breath, amazement and nervousness out in the open. She held his gaze bravely even though the urge to look away was overpowering, but she couldn't bring herself to break their eye contact. Something had to happen or else she was surely going to combust or die of heart failure or something similar if shit didn't happen now!
Their breaths were so loud and she wondered if he could hear her frantic heart, thrumming and pounding and hammering. She called out his name and as if lead by a stranger's hands again, she reached out to him, gripping his wrist. Tentatively she guided his much larger hand to her bared skin, placing it flatly just above her hip, not possessing the courage at the moment to put it elsewhere.
"La hanche," he muttered, stroking her hipbone, his fingers barely grazing her flesh much to her dismay.
Even with her addled brain, which made clear thoughts next to impossible, she still had it in her to question his words.
"It means 'hip' or 'hip bone' in French," he said and not giving her the chance to comment on that, his hand wandered, softly, barely any pressure like the graze of a feather against ticklish skin, it stopped when he reached the curve of her waist. "La taille." She had to bite her lip to restrain herself letting out any embarrassing noises. She had no idea how she was going to make it through without her skin flaring and he wasn't even doing anything. His pace was painfully slow, almost making her sob out how she needed his touch everywhere on her body because these tender and gentle caresses could never quench her desire, never sate her.
She writhed when his hand moved anew, settling on her stomach, his fingers teasingly drawing circles around her navel. "Le ventre et le nombril."
And higher his hand went. Oh how she wished she could make her mouth work, could tell him how he could, if he wanted, just rip their clothes off altogether because there was no need to to be so hesitant and slow when she was so desperate for him that it almost hurt. But she couldn't because his soft touch torturing her, his deep, velvety voice teasing her ear, whispering and breathing in that sensuous language, didn't allow her to interfere with whatever he wished to do.
"Le sein." His hand finally touched her breast, his thumb stroking a pert nipple as she gasped, the sensation overwhelming her.
Oh God, if such simple touches of his turned her into this writhing and mewling mess, what would happen with her when they did more? What noises could he get out of her? Could her skin feel hotter than now, could her heart possibly beat any faster?
"Ta peau est tellement douce."
Her breath hitched, his fingers boldy pinching her nipple. "W-what?"
The sheer, unadulterated desire in his darkened hazy eyes wiped her mind momentarily blank of what she had said, of what she wanted to know. Never had anyone looked at her with such longing, never had she felt so wanted. She felt unbearably warm, she couldn't place all these sensations against her sensitive skin, wondered if it was normal getting so affected by something so soft and simple.
"It means: your skin is so soft."
"Huh?"
She had heard exactly those words once, they had been whispered against sweaty skin once in that same husky voice. Icy cold shivers invaded her body, a stark, unpleasant contrast with the heat that had been threatening to consume her milliseconds before. His eyes widened, her hands flattened against his chest to push him away? Maybe. His eyes reflected the same chilling realization and dread as hers, lips parting in a shocked gasp.
She didn't need to push him away, he withdrew his hands stiffly, moved back, putting a respectable distance between their bodies. It allowed her to catch her breath, to immediately put on her shirt. She was still shaken because...memories she had always tried to push away, not always having been successful with that task, resurfaced with a vengeance with more details, more vivid images than ever before.
"I think...I think I should go now."
She awaited his answer with an all-consuming dread. He wasn't looking at her when he spoke, his body turned away from her completely. "Okay."
Her folder was missing.
This was not such a pressing matter though, at least not now.
There were exactly two things on her mind at the moment, both related to Soul:
1) They had been so close to...to doing it.
A part of her was having a hard time believing the events that had occurred an hour ago, were real and not a dream/nightmare. Alas another part of her could only facepalm at the former part's doubts of everything's realness when her body was still tingling with the faint traces of his touch, her skin having imprinted every stroke and caress.
2) Apparently, if her mind wasn't playing a cruel prank on her and providing her with false memories, they had already done it once.
…giddy laughter, wobbly steps as they latch onto each other...
…heated, clumsy kisses, energetic touches...
…groping, touching, mingling breaths, moans, gasps...
...clothes scattered around, surprisingly tidy bed sheets cooling her skin...
…licks and kisses, putting a stark contrast to the slight chill in the room...
…His body draped over hers, him between her legs, thrusting...
…her whimpers, his concerned voice, gentle petting to ease her pain...
...legs wrapped around his hips, his breath hot against her neck, his hair tickling sensitive skin...
...startlingly red eyes holding hers as he climaxes, gently collapsing on top of her...
...she doesn't get to finish, chest heaving, body sore all over...
She tiredly rubbed her eyes with a groan. Her head was hurting and she felt like she had been drained of all energy. She didn't think cheesy flashbacks as they were often employed in TV shows and movies could exist in real life - maybe this was the reason why she was still having some lingering doubts if it had indeed been Soul to whom she had lost her virginity. Before the occurrence at Soul's place, she had never associated that voice with him. It had always been just a generic albeit husky male voice.
Judging from his own reaction, which had screamed shocked realization, the doubts were surely but slowly dissipating.
Not only did cheesy flashbacks exist but mutual flashbacks also seemed to exist.
She glanced out of window, the sky basked in a dim orange glow as the sun was setting. She bit her lip, letting her thoughts wander, contemplating her options.
Her folder was really missing; she didn't like the idea of it being not in her proximity. It held her drawings. She could use that as an excuse to go back and then confront him, trying to talk about it and picking up the pieces of scattered friendship up to put it back together somehow. Even if it hypothetically did indeed work and they could go back to being friends, ignoring that they had been very close to getting intimate and had been intimate a few years back, did she want that?
Sure, she did cherish her friendship with Soul and she would rather have him as her friend than having him not in her life at all but...but...could she dare to hope to have a romantic relationship with him? Not that she had any experience when it came to them. She never had a boyfriend, always having shyed away from potential dates because her parents divorce had messed her concept of love up quite a bit.
It was a good thing she didn't share any classes with Soul thanks to their vastly different subjects. It would not be particularly difficult to avoid him and to pretend nothing of that had happened. Oh, who was she kidding? This would never work and even though her feelings were a jumbled, intangible mess she didn't want to ignore Soul.
She couldn't keep doing this!
She would not run away from this!
She lifted herself from her bed in one swift motion, too quickly as her vision darkened for a moment. Shaking her head cautiously, she made her way out of the door. She was going to talk to Soul; she was going to tell him everything that was on her mind because he was far too important for her to run away from him because of her insecurities.
She did not take the usual route to his apartment, instead opting for the slightly longer one through the park. She wanted a few more minutes for herself to clear her head. Suddenly, the way seemed a lot shorter than she remembered, cringing when she passed a certain large tree that signalized she had put more than half of the way behind her. She continuously let words she intended to say pass through her head, rethinking, contemplating and considering each and every possibility, not wanting to miss any potential self-made traps if she were to finally confront him.
It was bit windy and she cursed herself for leaving her jacket behind, uselessly tossed onto her couch. She shivered slightly, rubbing her arms to maintain a bit of warmth.
She was pretty nervous and the urge to turn around and retrace her steps back to her apartment was almost overpowering. Only sheer force of will made her continue, her hammering heart the constant reminder of what was going to happen. She dearly hoped she was not going to mess it up. She was well aware that she could be quite clumsy and tactless with words. She was no smooth talker.
There were still some people here and there into the late afternoon, most of them being joggers, and Maka didn't pay them any heed, far too lost in her thoughts. That is until she caught a glimpse of white hair in the distance, the faint rays of the sun tinging it a light orange. Her breath caught in her throat as her steps became gradually smaller and slower, but she didn't stop walking. Along the way he must have caught sight of her too, but unlike her he started to walk faster until they were only a few metres away from each other and just staring at the other dumbly.
Maka couldn't calm her her heart to save her life. Just his mere appearance left her a shaking, blushing mess. She pushed some unruly bangs that the wind had blown over mouth behind her ear.
"Soul," she breathed, throat tight and voice hoarse, "What are you doing here?"
He smiled weakly, glancing down at his shoes, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "On my way to your place."
"Oh. And I was heading to yours." She laughed a little despite herself, feeling oddly lightheaded and warm, the chill of the wind around her forgotten. She liked to think he had the same intention as she had, confessing feelings, wanting to talk things out so they could make the step from close friends to more, having also coincidentally taken the longer route perhaps for the same reasons she had.
She frowned. This could also not be the case but his approachable mood right now made the resolve in her chest tighten. She glanced up resolutely, jaw tense and teeth gritted.
"Soul, I...," she moved closer to him, the tightness in her throat slightly dispersing as he didn't shy away, stood there watching her with expectant eyes. This had been way easier in her head, actually trying to come out with whatever was on her mind was akin to an intense physical struggle. She gulped nervously, partly hoping he would say something and partly wishing he would let her do this and not interfere. "About what happened...and...and..."
Damn it! This was so fucking frustrating she wanted to scream and cry.
"Maka?" Her breath hitched, their eyes met and he looked startled, emotions he expertly guarded were out in the open. His wide eyes had never been this expressive before and she felt like - as stupid and cliché as it sounded - she was drowning in them. He didn't knew what to do with his hands, having them hanging limply at his side, then stuffed into the pockets of his thin jacket and raising one up again to rake it through his hair. "You...uh, you look kinda cold. Here take this."
"Huh?" She almost took a step back when he stepped very close to her and put his jacket around her shoulders. She blinked, confused and at a loss of what to do. She unconsciously clutched it tighter, taking in the smell of used leather and something else that would always be uniquely Soul to her.
He sighed. "Let's walk a bit, okay?"
Her heart clenched and she could feel hysteric words bubble inside her mouth. Not trusting her voice, she just nodded, her shoulders feeling heavy and weak as if a weight had been placed on her.
A/N: Two more to go after this! I am so glad you guys are enjoying this so far. I hope this chapter didn't disappoint either. As always, your reviews make me very happy :D
