Author's Notes- I'll be in Arizona until tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully I will be able to post Chapter 4 by the time I get home, barring any delays in my flight schedule. It will definitely be posted later in the day than the last couple chapters, hhowever.
❅ Chapter 3 ❅
"WAHOOOOOO!"
"Black*Star!"
Tsubaki's anguished yell that echoed across the mountainside was all in vain, for her boyfriend paid her little heed as he went careering down the slope, kicking up enormous plumes of snow with his board that sprayed violently in the faces of innocent skiiers, several of whom proceeded to fall down. The shadow weapon followed more placidly behind Black*Star on her skis, apologizing to those he had drenched in snow and helping them up if need be.
When she finally caught up with him at the bottom of the slope, she had a stern censure all prepared for him. "Black*Star, you have to be more considerate of the other people who are trying to use the slopes! You nearly buried that little boy back there- the poor thing was just learning how to ski."
Black*Star looked unusually contrite under his partner's lecture. "I'm sorry, Tsubaki. I'll try harder to restrain my godly skillz for the sake of those less amazing than me." He made a sweeping gesture to usher her in the direction of the ski lift. "Now come on, let's do that again!"
The slightly confused weapon allowed her boyfriend to guide her to the lift and gallantly hand her into the chair before sitting down himself.
If it was possible to make someone burst into flames just by glaring at them, then the pink-haired girl currently clinging to the arm of a certain death scythe was just begging to be incinerated. Maka couldn't make out what Kim was saying to her partner, but she could hear the low grumble of Soul's voice and shrill laughter from the witch. Her angry stare intensified as Kim tucked herself a little more securely against Soul.
Maka had been planning on apologizing for being so short with him yesterday, but she hadn't gotten the chance while they were still at the lodge and once they got out on the slopes, Kim had latched onto him. Soul had said days ago that he would teach Maka how to ski, but before they could even get started with the promised lesson, Kim had jumped in and begged Soul to help her, proclaiming that Maka was a much more athletic meister than she was, and therefore would be fine on her own. Which, technically, was true. Maka was struggling, having never skied before in her life, but she was figuring it out just fine on her own. However, she would have done much better with instruction from someone who'd done this before.
She couldn't hold it against Soul, not when he looked so completely and utterly fed up with Kim's antics. The grumpy expression on his face reminded her sharply of an old hound dog being pestered by a puppy and resigning himself to tolerant, patient annoyance.
But when Kim "fell" for the tenth time in the last half hour, which Maka was absolutely positive was a ploy in order to have an excuse to smush herself up against him, she couldn't help but grind her teeth. Maka never understood the kinds of silly games girls played in order to try to get boys to notice them. It wasn't her style, never had been, never would be. Somehow, though, it still managed to be effective time and time again. Her father had fallen victim to it a hundred times just within her line of sight, and he wasn't the only one. Maka really had thought that Soul was smarter than that, though.
Then again, maybe he was. She reevaluated her position slightly when she saw Soul prop Kim back upright and take off down the slope, leaving Kim to follow behind him clumsily- but not nearly as clumsily as she should have been if she was really as graceless and bad at skiing as she claimed to be. No, Soul wasn't fooled, she thought with a smug grin. He wasn't buying Kim's act at all, which meant he wasn't interested, which meant he was free for her to…
Maka sighed. Soul was free for her to do absolutely nothing, as usual. She knew her resolution to remain his friend and only his friend was the right thing to do, but sweet death was it hard some days!
"Hey Maka!" a light, reedy voice called out. Maka turned her head and saw Jackie dismounting gracefully from the lift, her long brown hair loose and gleaming in the winter sunlight as she coasted down to where Maka was hesitating. "What are you still doing up here?"
Admitting that she was hesitant to tackle the slope without further instruction from someone who actually knew what they were doing would be, in the words of her weapon, very uncool. Maka waved her pole around in what she hoped was a breezy and unconcerned manner. "Uh, just taking in the view," she fibbed.
Jackie's mouth quirked up in a knowing smirk. "Don't have a clue what you're doing, do you?"
"Uh… well…"
"Don't worry about it, I'll help you out. I'm Canadian, I've been doing this forever."
Maka was grateful for the cold mountain wind that had been blowing in her face all morning, because her cheeks were already red enough to conceal her embarrassed blush.
Jackie held out a hand. "C'mon, Maka. It's time to graduate from the bunny slope!"
"Now you gotta keep loose- yeah, just like that. That'll give you more flexibility going down, and keeps you more stable on the curves."
Liz watched from a distance as Kilik walked Patti through the basics of snowboarding. She had finished strapping on her skis awhile ago; now she was just keeping up the pretense of fiddling with them as an excuse to observe him helping her sister without seeming suspicious. He really was a pretty good guy, she reflected. Helpful, friendly, easygoing… he was nice. He was Boyfriend Material. Which, of course, made what had happened last night all the more complicated…
It had been a long time since she'd been one of the Demons of Brooklyn, a long time since she'd had to struggle and fight and rely on her wits and weapon blood to survive, but Liz had never really lost her taste for power. She knew now how dangerous the craving for power could be and how easily it could lead you astray, but there was a big difference between reveling in a life of violent crime that would have inevitably led to the corruption of her soul, and enjoying the spell her looks could cast on men. Liz was beautiful and she knew it… and, more importantly, she knew how to use it.
So yes, maybe getting Kilik into the jacuzzi with her had been a power trip more than anything else. Still, she did genuinely enjoy his company.
The jacuzzi was in a small room extending from the end of the house. Three of the walls were glass, as was the domed ceiling, and if the roof hadn't been covered in a thick layer of snow they would have been able to see the stars. It was secluded and peaceful, and made a nice atmosphere for the two of them to laze around in the hot water, chatting about nothing and playing pass-the-innuendo. And if they kept drifting a little closer to each other, if she laid her hand on his shoulder or his chest when he made her laugh… well, what did it matter? Everything felt just a little dreamlike, just a little surreal. It was a bit like being high; she felt at a pleasant distance from herself, fuzzy and clear at the same time. They talked about nonsense, they talked about their childhoods, they followed where the conversation took them.
"Man, I can't believe Soul's family owns a place like this," Kilik had remarked.
Liz nodded, doing her best to pay attention to him even though she was finding the cadence of his voice more interesting than what he was actually saying. "Yeah, who knew he came from money? But I guess Soul's always been kinda secretive."
He snorted. "Secretive's the word alright. Dude's awesome, don't get me wrong. He's my bro, y'know? But he's kind of got a thing for melodrama."
Liz giggled, thinking back on the fuss and production Soul had made back in the day about playing the piano for anyone besides Maka, and she couldn't help but agree with Kilik's assessment. "You got that right."
She studied Kilik's profile, evaluating him as the echo of her laugh faded against the tiles. He had taken off his glasses because they kept fogging up from the hot water, and she couldn't decide if she liked that better. "You look different without your glasses," she remarked.
"Good different or bad different?"
She pursed her lips in a thoughtful little pout. "Good different… I think?"
Kilik shook his head, clicking his tongue lightly. "So indecisive," he teased.
"You like decisive, huh?" she asked, catching onto a thought and riding the crest of impulse right into a passionate kiss that was almost as much of a taunt as it was a pleasure.
A kiss had turned into two, two had turned into many, and they had spent a good long while making out in the water until the bubbler had turned off and interrupted them. After that, they had gone their separate ways, but she had been more than a little pleased by the way Kilik stared at her ass as she climbed out of the jacuzzi.
Breakfast hadn't been as awkward as she'd anticipated, which was a pleasant surprise. There was no uncomfortable eye contact, just an ordinary dose of the kind of casual flirting that they'd become accustomed to these last few months. She'd worn a turtleneck to hide the hickey he'd left on her, and it was like nothing had changed. No one else was any the wiser, although from the way Kid had shot her a few sideways glances out of the corner of his eye, she thought he might suspect something. He'd always been supernaturally good at picking up on what was going on with her and Patti. Whether it was a meister thing or a shinigami thing or just a Kid thing, she didn't know, but she was pretty sure he knew something was up, if not necessarily what exactly it was.
Yet even though nothing had changed… something had. She wasn't sure how to define it, and she didn't have the faintest idea what she was going to do about it.
When she spotted Kilik taking off down the slope with a madly cackling Patti in hot pursuit, taking to the new sport like a fish to water, she decided that figuring out what to do about this boy was a problem for Future Liz to deal with. For now… she was going to learn to ski.
Somehow.
Maybe.
Liz screamed as gravity caught hold of her and she went whizzing down the slope, arms flailing wildly as she tried not to fall down.
"Hey, Kim?"
"What is it, Soul?"
Soul grit his teeth. He had come to know Kim as a temperamental and shallow, but good-hearted and practical girl. She was sensible, if a little rash. The empty, simpering tone she'd been using on him for the last hour or two was not like her at all, and he was getting sick of it. He wasn't interested in her and he was at least 60% certain that she wasn't really interested in him either despite the way she was acting- although to be fair, Kim had been known to be mercurial, so who knew with her?
Whatever. He was running out of patience to deal with this, especially since he had come to the conclusion that Jackie was exactly right, and some kind of possessive meister instinct was behind Maka's attitude yesterday. He didn't need Kim going around making it worse because she wouldn't leave him alone.
"Um, you're a witch."
"Yes?"
"Which means you can fly, right?"
"Well… I mean, not very well, but-" As she hung off his arm for the eight hundredth time that day, her gemstone eyes reflected innocent confusion at his line of questioning. Innocent being a very subjective term, in Soul's opinion.
He gave her a pointed look as he said, "Somebody who can fly shouldn't be falling as much as you've been."
Kim turned absolutely scarlet and let go of his forearm as if she'd been burned through her gloves. "I…"
Soul shook his head. "Look, whatever's going on with you and Ox, could you leave me out of your- your rebound, or whatever this is?"
The pink-haired girl looked down at her feet, shuffling her skis awkwardly. "I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
Yes, actually, she had. Especially all the talk she'd done the first night they'd arrived about how nice the lodge was and how rich his parents must be to be able to afford it. The invasion of his personal space had been weird, but hearing one of the most renowned gold diggers in Shibusen speculating openly about his family fortune was unsettling for a number of reasons. But Kim looked depressed enough as it was, and it wasn't cool to upset your friends.
Soul shook his head. "Nah, don't worry about it. We're cool."
She beamed at him, visibly relieved. "I'm glad." A devious grin crossed her face, and she jerked her head in the direction of the slope beyond them as she asked, "So, would you mind going down one more time with me? For old time's sake?"
He pondered it for a few moments, because this was Kim and you could never be completely sure that she didn't have some trick up her sleeve, especially with that look in her eyes. But he couldn't see the harm in one last run downslope in her company, considering that she was far less likely to deliberately fall just for an excuse to grab onto him. He tilted his head in assent. "Sure, why the hell not?"
"Race you to the bottom?" she said, and there was a wicked gleam in her eyes.
Soul just had time to recognize that there was no possible way this could end well after all before she took off, not even giving him a chance to agree to race. He swore under his breath as he watched her tear down through the thick snow, fast enough that she had to be using magic to support herself. He pushed off futilely after her, fully aware that he was about to get his ass kicked by someone who'd been falling on her ass all afternoon.
At the bottom of the slopes was a public lodge for those ski enthusiasts not fortunate enough to have a cabin of their own in the area. The lobby featured a snack bar serving a variety of soups and snacks and hot beverages, and it was at one of the cozy tables by the window that a certain Ox Ford sat staring moodily out the picture window, his unused skis propped against the back of his chair. His coke-bottle glasses had been replaced by a pair of custom protective goggles, which he was still wearing despite being inside rather than out on the slopes. His eyes tracked the progress of a skier with vividly pink hair and a purple jacket. When she reached the bottom safely and performed an exhilarated victory dance that involved flinging herself into the arms of the white-haired young man who reached the bottom shortly after her, he let out a pained groan and dropped his face forward onto the tabletop.
"Wassamatter?" a cheerful but muffled voice asked as a body flopped heavily into the chair across from him.
Ox looked up blearily to find the younger Thompson sister peering at him with guileless blue eyes with a cookie in her mouth. "What?"
She removed the cookie. "I said, what's. the. matter?" she enunciated slowly, as if he were dim. Ox couldn't help but bristle slightly.
"Nothing more serious than a broken heart," he lamented.
"Ohhhhhh," she crooned sympathetically, patting his shaven head, right between his pillars. "Because you and Kimmie broke up. That's too bad, Ox."
He jerked his head away from her tapping fingers, then rested his chin in his hand to gaze mournfully back out the window. "Ah, I've no one to blame but myself."
Patti frowned. "It doesn't seem like that," she said. "It's not your fault she dumped you!"
Ox sat fully upright again, outraged. "I beg your pardon! Kim did not dump me-!"
She flapped a hand in his face to silence him. "Blah blah blah, whatever," she interrupted. "Whatever you call it, it's gotta suck, huh?"
"I… I suppose, yes."
She flashed him a wild grin that every member of Spartoi had long since learned meant that they should be very, very afraid. Patti with an idea in her head was a dangerous thing, no matter how angelic she looked in her white snowsuit and with her tousled mop of blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight like a halo. "Well you're not gonna fix it by being a Mr. Mopey-mope in here!" she proclaimed. "You need to get out on the powder!"
"Um-"
"If you don't wanna be around Kimmie, you can come with me! Kilik taught me how to snowboard, and I'm getting really good!"
"I, uh-"
"Yeah! I'm gonna finish my hot chocolate and eat my cookie and then we're gonna go ski!" Patti looked excessively taken with this idea, and Ox didn't have the heart- or, more accurately, the balls- to deny her. Saying "no" to Patricia Thompson, after all, was an excessively bad idea; her sister would take care of anything she left behind, which usually wasn't much to begin with.
Resigned to his fate, Ox watched with slight apprehension as the curvy blonde guzzled her entire cup of scalding cocoa in less than a minute, then devoured the rest of her cookie.
"Come on!" she said, leaping to her feet. She grabbed Ox by the wrist and, barely allowing him a moment to grab onto his skis and poles, hauled him forcibly out into the snow. She gave him the bare minimum of time to snap his skis into place on his boots and then she was dragging him towards the waiting area for the lift. "The line's not very long right now," she informed him solemnly, "So we'll get to the top really fast."
"Yes, that is usually how it works," Ox responded sardonically. The next thing he knew, he was being shoved into a lift and the ground was vanishing from beneath his feet.
"Maybe we can find Harvar. I bet he'd like to ski with us." Patti leaned forward to peer down, making the open chair rock dangerously.
Ox went a bit green and grabbed tightly to the side.
After the most nerve-wracking chairlift ride of Ox's life and a few minutes of wandering around the open area at the top of the slopes, they did indeed find his weapon hanging around the bunny slope. Harvar, looking thoroughly uninterested in the whole business, had taken charge of Fire and Thunder with his usual flavor of detached acceptance.
"I was trying to teach them to ski, but-" Harvar cut his eyes at the twins he was supervising. The ten-year-old weapons appeared to have completely lost interest in skiing, if indeed they'd ever had any. They were rolling around on the ground, alternating between making snow angels and attempting to stuff handfuls of snow down each others' coats.
"Looks like you've got your hands full," Ox observed.
Harvar pursed his lips in an unamused expression. "I'm getting bored of this."
Patti fluffed out her wind-tossed hair with one hand as she watched the twins playing. The inspired gleam in her eye as she watched them roughhousing in the snow did not inspire confidence in Ox in the slightest. He tightened his coat nervously, hoping to prevent any snowy assaults on his bare skin, at least. He'd seen her fight Black*Star one on one, and if she could take on an absolute beast like that cretinous ninja, Ox didn't even want to think about what would happen to him if he pissed her off. Hoping to avoid having to be alone with her and potentially suffering the consequences he felt he had been mercifully spared thus far, Ox asked, "Why don't you come ski with us?"
Harvar shrugged. "I would, but I've got to watch these two." He jerked his head at the twins.
Ox felt his chance at salvation slipping slowly away. "No!" he protested, a little desperately. "As your meister, I-I command you to come with us!"
His weapon glanced at the blonde who was still staring at the squabbling children, then back at Ox, and raised a mocking eyebrow. Ox pleaded silently with Harvar, hoping he would give in and spare Ox from being tackled into the snow or pushed off a cliff or whatever other mad thing Patricia Thompson might take it into her head to do to him. With a smirk on his face, Harvar shrugged and agreed, "If I can find somebody else to deal with Fire and Thunder. Where's Kilik anyway?" he asked Patti. "He ditched me with these two when he ran off to teach you to board."
The blonde shrugged. "I don't know. He was with Sissy when I went to get cocoa."
Harvar's face was expressionless, but Ox had been partnered with him for long enough to recognize a tiny spark of suspicion in his grey eyes. He looked over Ox's shoulder and shouted out, "Hey, Tsubaki! Would you mind looking after Fire and Thunder for a minute?"
Tsubaki, who had just dismounted the chairlift alongside her meister, waved. "Sure!" she called back, changing course to join them.
"I'll meet you by the bottom of the lift in a little while," Harvar said, turning back to his partner. "I'm gonna go find Kilik and tell him it's his turn to deal with the kids."
He strapped his skis back on and abandoned the bunny hill with more enthusiasm than Ox could remember seeing him display for anything in years.
"So," Patti said, drawing out the 'o' for an unreasonably long time. "Ready to go?"
"What?" Ox asked, confused.
She flashed him that manic grin of hers once more and launched herself onto the nearest slope. Ox glanced at the rating sign, then did a double take. "Wait, no!" he shouted. "Patti, that's a black diamond-!" He lurched forward to try and stop her, but she was already long gone, cackling loudly as she cut sharp zig-zags across the slope. Ox pushed after her, chanting prayers to Kid or the late Shinigami-sama or any deity that would listen that he would make it to the bottom in one piece.
Tsubaki sat down in the snow to keep an eye on the Pots, removing her skis to make herself more comfortable. Black*Star, to her immeasurable surprise, volunteered to stay with her and keep her company while she weapon-sat. He filled her in on the mission they had been assigned shortly before they left on this vacation, a nest of pre-kishin in Namibia that were too strong for an ordinary weapon and meister, but not quite strong enough to justify calling out their witch allies. It sounded like an interesting mission, and Tsubaki was glad he had taken it on, because they'd been stuck in and around Death City for too long.
Tsubaki began to grow a little uncomfortable sitting in the snow. She liked looking after Fire and Thunder. They were good kids, fun to play with if they wanted to play with others, and easy to look after if they just wanted to play with each other. But sitting here watching as they pelted each other with snowballs was getting chilly. While they had been skiing, the exercise had kept her warm, almost uncomfortably so. As she sat on the ground, however, she began to feel cold as her sweat cooled beneath her coat and the dampness of the snow began to seep through her slick snow-pants.
Black*Star noticed immediately that she was shivering. After all these years, it still surprised Tsubaki how attuned to her he could be. She knew her partner best, and she knew better than anyone that there was so much more to him than the loudmouth he was known as, but that side of him was still so prominent that even she was sometimes caught off guard when he proved to be observant and empathetic.
"You're cold," he stated.
She smiled at him. "Only a little."
The offer to go back down to the lodge and purchase her a cup of cocoa, she had expected; the coat he immediately stripped off and wrapped around her shoulders, she had not.
"You don't have to," she protested, trying to hand his jacket back to him. "You'll get cold yourself!"
Black*Star shook his head, refusing to take the coat back even as she pushed it against his hands. "Even someone as amazing as I am can't leave his body heat behind while he goes to fetch her hot chocolate, so my coat is going to have to keep my lady warm for me!" So saying, he took off down the slope, still kicking up big plumes of snow from his board- though she was relieved to see that he was still holding to his promise to exercise some restraint, at least.
Tsubaki watched him go until he rounded a bend and disappeared from view. Then, a soft little smile on her lips, she wrapped his coat around her after all. Then she turned her attention back to the twins. Making sure they didn't get too close to the tops of any of the steeper slopes took up most of her focus until her boyfriend returned.
A good ten minutes later, Black*Star hopped off the lift, just barely avoiding dumping the entire cup of cocoa over in his eagerness. He grinned at Tsubaki and held it out to her. Gratefully she reached for the hot beverage, but before she could grasp it, he pulled it back and took her hand in hers instead. To her utter consternation, he bowed over her hand and dropped a kiss on her knuckles through her knit gloves. Then, straightening up, he handed her the cocoa. "For you," he said proudly.
She laughed, feeling a blush spread across her face as he flopped down in the snow next to her and tucked her under his arm.
"Black*Star, are you alright?" she asked.
"Uh- of course," he said. "Why wouldn't I be?"
And she would have believed him, except for the fact that he sounded so apprehensive when he said it. Black*Star was many things, but good at pretending about his emotions was not one of them.
"Are you sure?" she asked coaxingly. "You're acting a little strange.
Black*Star let out a peal of raucous, too-loud laughter. "I think you've been out in the cold too long, Tsubaki! I'm not acting strange at all."
She sighed, and leaned against him to take advantage of his body heat. "If you say so," she murmured, sipping at the cocoa.
Liz's hat with the fluffy blue pom-pom fell from her head as Kilik's fingers raked through her hair. She pushed him more harshly against the tree he was pinned against in retaliation, nipping at his lower lip teasingly. He let out a groan and broke from her mouth, dropping his lips to her throat, licking and kissing his way down her jawline and neck until he found that one particular spot that made Liz's entire body light up like a Christmas tree. It was her turn to moan, inwardly cursing the thick winter clothing they were both wearing that was preventing her access to his rather fantastic body.
"What… the hell… are we doing?" he panted in between planting open-mouthed kisses to her skin.
"Damned if I know," she mumbled. She grabbed aggressively onto his dreadlocks, longer now than they had been when they were in school, and pulled his mouth back to hers for another heated kiss.
And she really didn't. She had fallen, he had caught her, their eyes had met for a second, and then they were scrambling off the ski trail into the concealing trees and she was slamming him up against a trunk while he groped her through her jacket. It was just like last night, one thing had just led to another and she was trying hard not to overanalyze it at the moment because damn this boy could do amazing things with his lips.
A stern cough interrupted both her train of thought and that fantastic thing Kilik was doing with his tongue. Liz sprang away from him, fighting to straighten out her coat as best she could.
Harvar was standing a ways off the trail, staring them with something that might have been a wry smirk on his lips- though with Harvar it was often hard to tell.
As Liz combed her fingers through her hair and picked up her hat, out of the corner of her eye she spotted Kilik trying to inconspicuously zip up his fly. If anyone asked, she had absolutely no idea how that had happened.
"Uh, we were just-" she began.
Harvar interrupted her. "You might want to be more discreet. There are children around."
She was not blushing, she was not blushing, she was NOT blushing! Dammit, her piece of shit mother was a hooker and she herself was a sexually liberated modern woman; she shouldn't feel embarrassed to be caught making out with some guy! "Screw you, Harvar," she muttered, provoking an honest-to-god smile on the usually inscrutable weapon's face. A small one, but still.
"Where are Fire and Thunder, man?" Kilik asked.
Harvar shrugged. "I was getting bored of watching them, so I left them up by the bunny slope with Black*Star."
"What?" Kilik exclaimed. "Are you insane?"
He grabbed his snowboard from where it had been discarded on the ground and sprinted off. Just before he emerged from the trees and back on the trail, he glanced back. "Uh, I'll catch up with you later, Liz?"
"Yeah, sure." She waved, signalling to him to get going.
Once Kilik had vanished from sight she asked Harvar, "Did you really leave the Pots with Black*Star?"
He shrugged. "Black*Star… and Tsubaki."
Liz snorted, torn between amusement and peevish frustration. "You're a first-rate cockblocker, you know that, Harvar? You should consider making a career out of it," she snarked at him.
"Yeah, well, this isn't the time or the place, is it?" he said dryly.
"Even if it isn't, it's not really any business of yours."
Picking up her skis from their spot on the ground, she flounced past him to return to the slope.
At the end of the day, they all piled back into Harvar's van and Black*Star's SUV to make their way back downslope. Once they returned to the Evans' ski lodge, everyone changed out of their wet clothing and crowded into the kitchen for dinner, which Tsubaki prepared at her own insistence.
Their ski day was considered by all to be a rousing success, with only one sour note in the form of a twisted ankle for Ox. Late in the afternoon he had fallen wrong when a pair of kids who weren't looking where they were going cut him off. Patti had carried him back down the hill, much to his consternation, and when he told the story later he informed everyone that he had manfully borne up under the pain and walked the rest of the way down himself. He would have gotten away with it, too, because Patti certainly didn't mind the white lie for the sake of his vanity, but Kim had seen what happened and spilled the beans.
The resulting spat at the table made an otherwise pleasant dinner highly uncomfortable for everyone, and in the end only a thorough chastisement from Kid (backed up by the threat of a Maka-chop or two) calmed the two of them down enough to get back to the meal.
"I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news," Kid announced once peace had been restored. "I received another call from Sid earlier, and he has requested that I return to Death City to address a small situation that has arisen."
"Anything we should be worried about?" Soul asked.
"I doubt it," Kid said with a shrug. "I believe Sid is simply a little over-cautious. It's not surprising, since my father never left Death City for reasons we all know. Having a shinigami who's capable of going on vacation must be a significant adjustment for the staff members of Shibusen. But even if that's the case, it's better for me to return to Death City tonight and make sure rather than make any assumptions and regret it later."
"Do you want us to come with you, Kid?" Liz asked, looking thoroughly put out at the prospect.
Kid shook his head. "No, I doubt that will be necessary. I don't anticipate any violence, but even if something should come up, Spirit is still stationed at Shibusen, as always."
With his departure announced, Kid steered the conversation back to more pleasant subjects, skillfully negating the awkwardness of Ox and Kim's very public fight.
It was several hours later, after Kid had taken off on Beelzebub, that Maka found Soul alone in the kitchen, doing the dishes that had been left when everybody else moved upstairs to laze around a merry fire. She observed him for a moment as he worked. He had the sleeves of his sweater rolled up past his elbows and his face was a little flushed from a combination of wind burn and the hot water he was working in. Maka tried and failed to squelch the thought that he looked positively yummy, because what the hell kind of descriptor was yummy, anyway?
She felt a little shy. Facing him one on one after yesterday was kind of embarrassing. She knew she needed to apologize, but it was going to be difficult to figure out how to do that without admitting to the fact that she was absolutely blazingly jealous that another girl was giving him attention.
"Needed a break from all the noise?" she asked.
Soul nodded, still intent on the burned on bits of cheese around the edge of the casserole dish he was scrubbing. "Yeah, it's kinda crowded."
Without another word, Maka took up a dish towel and began drying the stack of clean dishes he'd made on the draining board. They worked quietly for a time, only the clink of silverware and the slosh of the water breaking the silence.
After a few minutes, Maka prodded Soul gently with her elbow.
"Mm?"
"Soul, I'm sorry I was… kind of short with you yesterday."
"S'okay," he grunted.
Maka shook her head, setting aside the glass she had just dried. She patted his elbow to get him to look at her. "No, it's not, Soul. I was mad at… uh, at somebody else, but I took it out on you. That's not okay."
His neutral expression relaxed as his lips ticked upward at the corners. "Not the coolest move you've ever made, no."
She swatted him lightly with a dishtowel. "Are you gonna let me apologize or are you gonna be snarky?"
"Can't I do both?"
"You're lucky everything on this counter is breakable, because you're just begging for a chop," she cautioned him.
"Weren't you apologizing?"
Maka blew a frustrated puff of air out her nose. "You're impossible, you know that?" She sighed. "But yeah, you're right, the stuff I said to you yesterday really wasn't cool."
Soul looked at her speculatively for a moment before he said, in a tone that Maka would almost have described as shy if she didn't know better, "Jackie thought you might be pissed off because Kim suddenly lost her mind and decided to hit on me. Was that why… uh, I mean, is that right?"
Maka could practically feel herself turning red. There wasn't really any way to respond to that without giving away her feelings for him. "I… um…"
"I figured it was something like that," Soul continued.
"Y-you did?" she squeaked.
He looked a tad confused by her mortified tone, but mercifully didn't comment. "Yeah, I mean… I'm not a meister, but I guess there's gotta be some kind of possessive technician-instinct thing towards your weapon, right? Jackie pointed out how you used to get all weird back when those NOT girls were stalking me."
She blinked. He thought it was because he was her weapon. "Yeah," she sighed out. "Yeah, it's a meister thing, I guess." Or not.
Soul ruffled her hair affectionately. "Dork. I thought we already decided that I'm your weapon, end of story."
"End of story… right…" Her throat ached and she bit her lip against words she shouldn't say. "So we're good now, right?"
He gave her a brief, casual one-armed hug. "'Course we're good. Now let's finish these dishes quick, huh? I don't want my hands to go all gross and pruney."
Maka nodded silently and they went back to work finishing up the chore. When she glanced at Soul out of the corner of her eye, she could see that he had a small smile on his face in place of his usual surly look. Clearly he was pleased that their tiff had been resolved and they were no loWger fighting, and she knew that she should be as well, because she hated fighting with Soul. There were only a few feelings worse than being at odds with her best friend and partner. But no matter how hard she told herself to be happy, she couldn't seem to make herself feel it.
She had managed to get through her apology without exposing her feelings for him. He had handed her a perfect excuse to use. So why did she feel like crying?
Author's Notes- As always, I'm grateful for your feedback, whether positive or critical. And if you spot any typos or places where I rearranged sentences after I'd written them and fucked it up, for the love of all that is holy, tell me!