Fumbling with his seatbelt, Soul struggled to remove his jacket. "Why couldn't we have just flown there ourselves?"
Maka is reading a catalogue that she pulled from the seat pocket in front of her. "Oy, look at these-" She waves the magazine in front of his face.
"Where the hell would they go..." he sighs distractedly. LED-spangled garden gnomes. They don't have a garden (or live even remotely close to one, for that matter.) His efforts are concentrated upon keeping his eyes open. He isn't sure if he can handle another tense, 12 hours waiting for her timid hands on his skin. Maka isn't sure if she can wait for him to go to sleep. Her eyes dart to a textbook, and she decides with an ironic smile that even if a Maka-chop might earn Soul fifteen minutes of unconsciousness, it isn't worth the 11.75 hours of bitching she'll have to listen to afterward.
Sid-sensei is several rows back, listening to the in-flight radio and knitting a blue afghan. Soul peers around his seat to eyeball the blue man. "Maka..." She looks up from a Snuggie size chart with a quizzical expression. Having her full attention flusters him for a moment. She's the only person in the world who gives a damn what he's thinking, and he can't even look at her. He stares up and to the right as he intones his complaints about mass transit, their chaperone, and the time difference. She watches him and inwardly notes that she couldn't agree more. She hasn't seen him look fully rested in over a month. He can feel her uneasiness and finally looks at her. "…I'll go to sleep." She smiles her sparkling Maka smile, and he hastily looks away again.
They didn't even spend a full day in Hanoi, but he doubts he'll be able to relax until they are sequestered in their apartment. Their apartment. He enjoys that distinction far more than he deserves to. The weapon and his meister were automatically signed up for joint housing, but neither of them could honestly say they resented the system.
Unlike their previous flight, they only have two seats in their row. Soul leans back into his spongy vinyl seat. He's wondering why the wallpaper pattern looks blurry and doubled when he genuinely falls asleep. Maka is reading her textbook when she hears his breathing slow. Shaking her head to dispel thoughts of exploiting his prone figure, she returns her focus to Weapon Physiology: A Lab Based Approach.
He wakes up with an erection.
It's not that he's surprised, exactly. It's something along the lines of panic. He's not sure how long he has had a gigantic ..Is it gigantic? This is no time for modesty. It's freakin' obvious! He's afraid to open his eyes. He sits with harrowing thoughts hovering in his periphery while he struggles to focus on unsexy things. His issue, he observes with regret, is more biological than psychological, and he concedes defeat. No matter how many times he returns to the hideous visual memory of walking in on Stein and Spirit playing with each other, this is the raging, uncomfortable "just woke up" sort of deal that cannot simply be forcibly dismissed like the ones he gets when he sits oddly or sees a sexual movie scene. This is on the same level as his "thinking too carefully about Maka's underthings while folding laundry" type of erection, and it's not going anywhere any time soon. He peers surreptitiously over the edge of his fluffy seat, and is relieved to note that her eyes are closed. He cautiously unbuckles himself and reaches under his seat for a blanket.
Maka is tired. She hasn't slept in two days, and she's fairly certain that if she doesn't boil her clothes when she gets home, the microbes inhabiting them will probably propel her sodden muddy uniform to the washing machine. She looks over at her trusting, vulnerable companion. (Oh, how she wishes she deserved that trust. The sneaky groping she occasionally indulged in brought pangs from her conscience.) She straightened the wrinkled front panels of his jacket. Soul is noticeably cleaner than she is, and thusly received fewer dirty looks in the security line at the airport. Tugging remorsefully at her muddied attire, she notices Soul's pale lips moving in his sleep. Carefully leaning over the angular plastic armrest, she haltingly slides her hand along his right jaw and stops when her fingers touch his ear. She turned his head to face her and kisses his full lips. They are smooth and warm, and when she closes her eyes she can imagine her wishes are mutual. She presses harder and she soon can feel the jagged edges of his teeth as his lips part slightly. He stirs and to her bafflement returns the pressure encouragingly.
Soul simply cannot evaluate the incoming data quickly enough. He thinks that if opens his eyes, either she will fly back to her prim station by the window as if she hadn't been infinitesimally close moments ago, or he will discover that he is still dreaming. Neither option appeals to him, but when she presses into him, the feeling of her soft face half touching his and her silky, tentative lips breaks his control. He pushes up, needing to feel more. She strokes his cheek with her thumb and nibbles his bottom lip. His mind is blank. The pretense of unconsciousness will no longer hold, and he is becoming increasingly aware of the armrest digging into his stomach. He pushes his forehead into hers and kisses her again, but lightly on her cheek. He retreats to his previous seated position and snakes his hand over the armrest to grab her small sweaty hand.
