Nighttime the next day found a certain meister and weapon in hospital beds back at the DWMA.

After the golem fiasco, the new guy (a Death Scythe named Justin Law) had finished up business, although both enemies had gotten away apparently, and he had helped truck Maka and Soul back to Death Academy in the coffin/trailer attached to his motorcycle. Of course that left Crona to try and finagle Soul's motorcycle. It had been a tense, noisy drive, especially with Soul yelling instructions and warnings back at Crona, who somehow managed to get the orange machine back in one piece despite wobbling all over the road and muttering, "I don't know how to deal with this," the entire way back.

At least Ragnarok had had a good time.

After getting back, they had been promptly housed in the infirmary - where Maka soon found herself bed-laden. Apparently Soul had missed some important muscles in her groin and upper thigh region that greatly affected her balance and ability to walk properly, along with a few in her chest that limited her arm mobility. But like hell was he going to touch her in those places, not right after he had discovered his little crush for her, and she certainly hadn't complained the decision.

Soul was there because his hands had gone utterly and completely numb and unresponsive, which limited his options for just about everything.

They had both slept like rocks when first arriving that night, but the next morning they woke up to mayhem and fiasco as their friends made an early appearance. It just sucked that the next day was Saturday, because it meant a constant flow of friends coming to visit, and the large majority of them were more annoying than the numbness.

Black Star in particular seemed intent on being a pest. He had not only been his normal, loud, obnoxious self – which was bad enough when someone was trying to recover in the hospital – but he also took indecent advantage of Maka and Soul's predicament. Since their ability to dodge or fight back had been greatly limited, he amused himself by pissing them both off in various ways.

Patty was likewise a handful. She kept wanting to draw on their faces and do other various things that neither of them appreciated.

Kid though - and his insistence on rearranging everything in the medical ward to be perfectly symmetrical - had been a heavy contester as well.

The only breath of fresh air from the madness was Tsubaki, and she had been very helpful - even moving their beds together so that Maka would be able to try and help Soul with everything he couldn't do.

So by nighttime, they were relieved to be left alone and exhausted.

Maka sighed, staring up at the hospital ceiling for a moment before gathering the parts of her she still had some control over and muscling herself back up into a sitting position propped up against her pillows. Glancing over, she noted Soul's sullen expression and his surly pose as he slumped in the bed pushed up next to hers. He was still a bit sore over Black Star managing to sign both their foreheads.

Rolling her eyes, she reached over for the tray of food that had been sitting next to her untouched for a while. It was still fresh enough to be safe to eat, but some of it had congealed while other things had lost all warmth. Still, it was better than nothing, and that was precisely what Soul had ingested today…nothing. He refused to be spoon fed by any of their friends, and hadn't let her do it in front of them either. She was curious to see if he would let her now that they were the only ones left in the mostly dark infirmary. There was a single lamp casting shadows from the desk area across the room from them, but otherwise it was dim. However there was just enough light to see what she was doing.

"Hey Soul, you wanna eat now?"

His stomach answered for him, a loud growl resounding throughout the room.

"I'm gonna take that as a yes." She chuckled and scooped up some stiff mashed potatoes with a spork, the only utensil given to them.

He grimaced. "Maka…."

"Come on Soul, it's just the two of us. No one has to know."

A little trail of drool appeared at one corner of his lips and he glanced at the plate of food in her lap, then at the spork already laden with spuds, and then back at her face, a plaintive expression in his red eyes. He sucked the drool back in to his mouth with a hissing sound, but it was pointless since the moisture was shortly preplaced.

"Look, how would you feel if I couldn't feed myself and I refused to let you feed me?"

He winced and stared at her hand and the utensil and food. After a long pause, he said something surprising. "Okay. But if I do then you have to tell me about your scars."

It was her turn to wince. She shouldn't have been surprised, he had been hounding her off and on throughout the day, but they had been constantly interrupted by visitors so she'd been able to escape without explaining. Now though, it was just the two of them and there were no more distractions to save her.

Knowing Soul, he could be surprisingly stubborn sometimes, and she figured this might be one of those times. He probably would refuse to eat if she refused…and technically she had promised to tell him…so with a heavy sigh, she agreed. "Okay, but only after you eat."

He finally nodded. Before he could change his mind, she shoved the fork forwards and popped it into his mouth almost before it was fully open. It was perhaps overeager on her part, and his eyes widened on a yelp as he flinched back a little with shock. Then he choked on the potatoes.

"Sorry! Here, I'll be more gentle." She quickly sputtered, horrified and amused at the same time.

He just glared sullenly at her, but still opened his mouth when she very gently presented another forkful of potatoes. She didn't even put it in his mouth this time, she just held it there and let him bob forwards to eat it himself. That seemed to make him a little happier, and he obviously appreciated that she wasn't truly 'feeding' him so much as she was just 'presenting' the food for him to eat.

They continued this activity for a few minutes, Soul grumbling about the state of the food just a little, but it didn't seem to damper his enthusiasm for it at all. It was almost difficult for Maka to keep up with his ravenous appetite, and she was sure she heard and felt a few ominous creaks and pops from the somewhat flimsy plastic utensil as his teeth snagged it more than once.

Once all the food had disappeared into his bottomless cavern of a mouth, Maka placed the tray aside and leaned back against her pillows with a sigh. It was a strain on her working muscles to compensate for the ones out of commission.

"Hey….thanks Maka."

"No problem."

There was a pause, and then Soul spoke up … as she knew he would. "Alright, now it's your turn."

She groaned, but knew she'd have to make good on her promise. "Fine." She paused for a moment to try and figure out how to say it, but eventually decided there wasn't really any good way to explain the situation without upsetting him. So she just went for it. "Do you remember that room of candles Stein put us in to try and get us to…I dunno…talk or something?"

She heard him nod and saw him do so out of the corner of her eye. "Oh yeah. Never gonna forget that."

"Right. Well afterwards…we were out of sync. When we fought Free on that bridge a week or whatever later, I couldn't wield you."

He jumped in, impatient as usual. "Wait, but you did wield me. What do you mean?"

"If you'd let me finish…I was going to say that holding you burned me. That's why I dropped you, it hurt to touch you."

"I…burned you?"

"Well yes. We were out of sync. It's like when Black Star tried to wield you and couldn't pick you up because you were too heavy. For me, you were too hot."

"But…you still…"

"Yeah. I still wielded you. And doing so burned my hands pretty bad. We didn't have a choice. Anyways, it got our souls back in sync by the end of the battle, so it was worth it."

"Lemme see." He reached over and placed his limp noodle of a hand on her arm, and obviously would have grabbed her if he could.

She pulled back. "No. It's bad enough you saw them once. I don't want you to have to see them again."

She was wearing gloves again now.

"Why did you hide them? Why are you still hiding them?" he asked, sounding on the edge of anger.

"I'm…I guess I'm ashamed of them. They show how weak I was, to let myself get out of sync with you because of some stupid…" Feelings, she finished mentally, but didn't say it. Instead she replaced it with, "…exercise. Besides that, I knew you'd feel bad. You'd feel responsible. Which - by the way - isn't true. I do not hold you responsible for my injuries."

"Obviously. You're beating yourself up way too much though. It was both of us who got out of sync. But that'll never happen again."

"Actually it could. Sometimes weapons and meisters go out of sync multiple times over the course of their partnership."

"Whatever. If it happens then we'll deal with it, but we'll do it without you burning yourself next time alright? So no going into battle while we're out of sync."

"Deal." She easily agreed.

They lay in silence after that, both of them super aware of the other next to them. Actually, it was about time for bed now, so Maka slid down from the pillows and lay out fully. It wasn't like they hadn't slept in the same room before. They had done it last night after all, though that was different since they had been so exhausted that they both conked out practically as their heads hit their respective pillows. Before that, they had of course spent the night in hotel rooms while on missions plenty of times, so this shouldn't be different. But somehow it was.

Maka figured that she was so aware of Soul because she now knew about the crush beating at her breastbone. Somehow that magnified her senses to the point she could hear his breathing and the soft little rustles as he shifted under his blankets, could feel a slight bump as his bed shifted under his weight when he rolled onto his side, could sense the warmth of his body heating up the space inside their privacy curtain.

Of course she had no way of knowing that he was facing the same predicament.

Understandably it took them both a while to get anywhere near the vicinity of sleep, but eventually all lights must go out and all things up must come down. The weight of sleep tugged at Maka insistently, and eventually she succumbed, her mind drifting and loosening to be relaxed upon a sea of odd mismatched random thoughts. Something warm began to thrum to life inside her, a vibration alongside her own soul that she didn't recognize as a low-grade resonance until Soul's presence took place in her dream world. She began to catch glimpses of his own near-sleep thoughts, which consisted of flying potatoes and Black Star chasing him around with a marker.

That finally dragged her back to mid-awake status, and she blinked, realizing that the odd-ball thoughts were not her own. Chuckling, she rolled onto her side to face Soul and whispered, "Hey. Stop dreaming about flying potatoes. It's distracting."

He 'mmmphed' and sleepy red eyes that appeared almost black in the dim light opened to peer blearily at her.

"Mwha?"

"Flying potatoes."

Confusion colored his gaze and then realization dawned. "The fuck? I was resonating with you?"

She nodded her head, snickering lightly as he flushed.

"Uh…what exactly did you see?"

Wondering what exactly he was worried about her seeing, she responded with, "Nothing much, just Black Star and some potatoes flying around. It was weird."

Relief was plain to see for a second on his face, up until she asked, "So…why do you ask? Was there something you didn't want me to see?"

He flushed, confirming the thought. "N-no, not really." At her disbelieving look he altered his tune. "Well, there's some personal shit in there I'd rather you didn't stumble across."

She could understand that well enough. After all, the last thing she would want would be for Soul to run into any of the dreams that starred her father being a cheating son of a bitch, or any of the nightmares where she got Soul killed. Not to mention the strangely charged dreams of Soul that had her waking up blushing and confused.

"Yeah, I understand."

He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and wilted back into his mattress, showing how he had tensed up.

After a long moment of silence, Maka had almost drifted off again, but was reawakened when there were repeated shuffling sounds from Soul's bed. She cracked an eye open to see Soul squirming around, rubbing his chest with a wrist and looking very displeased.

After a moment of just observing this odd phenomenon, Maka finally asked, "So, uh, what are you doing?"

He froze and slowly turned to look at her, a flush tinging his cheeks and a slightly sheepish expression smacked across his face. "Uh….I have an itch."

She blinked, processing his answer for a full minute before beginning to snicker just a little. When he scowled at her she was quick to shut the sound off though.

"Sorry. You need a hand?"

He said, "No," at first. Then after a minute of disgruntled glaring, he grimaced and started messing with himself again. "Damn it all! It's like as soon as I figured out I can't scratch it, it just gets so much worse and won't go away."

"Yeah, kind of like when someone says not to think about something, suddenly that's all you can think about."

He grunted in agreement, but focused on rubbing at his chest.

After a moment Maka sighed and just reached over, knocked his hand out of the way, and scratched firmly where he had been rubbing. That got a groan and then a sigh out of him. Maka intently ignored how the sounds made her gut clench up in an interesting way, and focused on scrubbing her short nails into him through his t-shirt for a minute. Once she felt it might be edging into the realm of probably painful, she gave him a little pat.

There was a satisfied sigh and Soul murmured, "Thanks…"

"Yeah. No problem."

After another few minutes, Maka figured out that she should have removed her hand, but somehow it was embarrassing to do now. She had already left her palm flat against his chest for too long, getting caught up in the feel of the beat of his heart under her hand, and now withdrawing the weight of her offending appendage was sure to draw attention. So she ended up stuck, getting more and more awkward and embarrassed and feeling like she should remove her hand, but incapable of doing so for the same reasons.

The skin under her palm slowly warmed, and the steady thumping increased ever so slightly as he realized the same thing. There was a slight hiccup in the rhythm when her fingers unconsciously twitched, and she winced, finally gathering up the courage to yank her hand back. She did so, and clutched the deviant limb to her chest, almost as if it would hop back over there with a mind of its own. There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Maka finally cleared her throat and said, "I think I'm going to go to sleep now. Goodnight Soul."

"Yeah, g'night Maka." He mumbled back, sounding about as awkward as she felt.

Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the infirmary ceiling and willed herself to sleep. With closed eyes, and forced deep breathing, she attempted over and over, but no matter how much she tried, she just couldn't fall asleep. The feel of Soul's heartbeat thumped against her mind, burning her with annoyance and frustration and feelings she wasn't ready to face head on. Her crush had gotten out of hand when her back was turned, and now it was beyond a pain.

It just didn't seem fair. Why did she have to fall for her partner of all people? Anyone else and she could have avoided them, but Soul…there was no way she could - and would never, ever want to anyways. He was almost a part of her, an intrinsic puzzle piece in her life.

But during that drawn out moment, when her hand had rested on his chest, something had sparked to life within her, lighting the crush up like a brush fire that was impossible to extinguish. There had been a single point in time, when his eyes glanced over and met hers, where everything had been breathless and static charged. It had felt as though if she moved they would have both been electrified. The urge to kiss him had struck her like lightning, along with the realization that they were alone, at night, essentially in the same bed.

It had been so sudden and unexpected for her. Sure, she had known she had a crush on him for all of two or three months now, but that hadn't exactly translated to meaning – "I want to kiss you right now" in her mind. She had been so caught up in the fallout of realizing she had developed feelings for him that she hadn't even considered the possibility of these sorts of desires and urges ever presenting themselves and being a problem. It only made sense though, and she was left kicking herself for not having predicted it.

No wonder she had caught herself staring at him absentmindedly lately, caught unawares by the sudden hypnotic possibilities of his mouth, or the pulse beating at his neck, or the way the wind caressed his white hair against his cheek…small moments, brief stoppages in time composed of her breathing and beating heart and Soul. It hadn't clicked then, but now it fell into place with a clang that shook her to her very core. She didn't just have a crush on him, she wanted him too.

Her feelings were no longer some static thing sitting idly in her in a dark closet - no they had morphed into a living breathing thing with wants and needs and thoughts that plagued her mind and kept sleep far from attainability. Anything even remotely to do with romantic intimacy had always unsettled her somewhat. Seeing other people do it, on tv or in real life, didn't bother her at all, although it sometimes mildly irritated her. But even the slightest thought of doing anything herself had always made her grimace and cringe. She had never wanted to do anything physically intimate with anyone before…ever…and it was distinctly unnerving.

Who would have imagined that all it would take to awaken such thoughts and feelings was just feeling his blood pulsing through his heart under her palm. It was such a common thing - a heartbeat - it was merely a constant bodily function, much like breathing and digestion. Cells were constantly multiplying, hair was constantly growing, and the heart was constantly beating, so why had it all of a sudden struck her with the force of lightning?

She listened to Soul's breathing change, the normal pattern switching to a deeper slower one, punctuated by occasional snuffles or slurps as he drooled on his pillow. It was a soothing sound, one she had slept beside for years now on missions and when they fell asleep together on the couch after a movie-thon. It spoke of companionship and warmth and leftover popcorn and hotel rooms and drool stains.

Yet tonight, it was another thing that tormented her, reminding her of the fact that he was not just her partner, but was also her friend, and she was so many shades of fucked up that pursuing any sort of relationship was unthinkable. All those insecurities and trust issues and fear of cheating and every other little thing that came from having divorced parents and a serial-cheater as a father…they would ruin him. It would all be taken out on him and crush him under the weight of the baggage she had lugged around with her since childhood.

There was no way she could ever risk losing his friendship over something as silly as a little, really annoying, exceptionally persistent crush…which was starting to feel like less of a crush and more of something even worse.

It was a very long night, spent pondering her heart and its unlucky choices, and she woke with dark circles under her eyes from a fitful and light sleep.

By the next day, they were both regaining some feeling, and had been discharged. However, they got the day off, which was lucky since both of them needed showers, fresh changes of clothes, and in Maka's case, a little more sleep.

It didn't take long for them to have a full recovery, by which point they were back in classes. Things began picking up speed around the DWMA, as news spread like a malevolent disease about a new witch organization called Arachnophobia. There was no doubt as to who had started it, and Maka hadn't been able to quite get over the guilt of knowing that they had let her get away, just like the Kishin. It was blatantly obvious that they needed more training, so it came as a relief that training did indeed pick up intensity as the teachers all buckled down on their students to get them prepared for the inevitable battle with this new foe.

It seemed that Arachne for some reason had taken a liking to magic weapons, according to the news, as she began to collect them left and right. There were new missions posted on the board every day, each of them involving the capture of a magic weapon. It was obvious that the thought behind this was to try and get as many of them as possible first, to keep them from her spidery grasp.

Nobody knew for sure what her goal was in collecting all those magical tools, but one thing was clear. Her actions distinctly spelled out that she was preparing for war.

So they all buckled down and got to work, training harder than ever.

They learned dual resonance, which was not fun for Maka, since resonance with just Soul had been hard enough on her. Dual resonance was the resonating of a team of meisters, to increase all their souls' wavelengths to a maximum. As for Maka, she would be teaming with Kid and Black Star and their weapon partners. But it was very difficult for her to complete, considering her issues. It was something that needed to be done though, because there was little to no chance of winning without it.

At the very least, dual resonance wasn't nearly as deep as meister/weapon resonance. They could feel everyone else's soul, and sense their emotions, but that was it. There was no soul searching, no hopping from soul-space to soul-space, no melding of souls into one … none of that. It was just a way for them all to join wavelengths together and make everyone more powerful. It was still more intimate than Maka was comfortable with - which resulted in her breaking the resonance many times at first - but eventually they started getting a handle on it.

Which in and of itself was a near miracle, considering that the first time they attempted it in the classroom - with the addition of Ox - the entire exercise had devolved into a brawl.

Stein had been knocked over in his rolling chair. Ox had prodded Maka in the behind with his lightning spear. Black Star had been his normal destructive self. And Kid had ended up crying due to a lack of symmetry before blasting them all for the same reason.

That had prompted a full-out fight between Black Star and Kid, which everyone knew would end with Black Star losing and throwing an enormous hissy fit. But when Maka had tried to break them up, she had gotten sideswiped by a rogue punch, and then proceeded to lose her temper at them both and threw two perfect Maka Chops that dropped both boys to the floor.

Things had somewhat calmed after that, as Patty and Liz both popped back into human form - the younger sister raucously laughing while the older just tsked down at Kid disapprovingly. Black Star's weapon partner had shown a bit more kindness. Stein however, didn't show any sort of sympathy for any of them, and failed them as a group…which they fully deserved, considering his glasses had been cracked in the fall.

Things had gotten better with more practice, but it still proved challenging at times. Black Star and Maka particularly butted heads and often broke resonance when they tried to connect. Both were stubborn and hard headed, and Maka's soul would grow to be the same size as his when he tried to boss her around.

But…at the very least they were all getting stronger and preparing for the inevitable.

Author's Note:

And we have the next chapter ladies and gentlemen! This one was just cute fluff and relationship development, I hope you all enjoyed it. :D

As always, a huge thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story so far. You guys are awesome!