We have arrived to the Longass Chapters! Congratulations on making it this far!
I do not own Soul Eater, Men In Black, Ghostbusters, or X-files.
2 Burning Trees
"To delete this message, press seven. To listen again, press pound."
Maka Albarn stares at the small bit of carpet between her feet as her mind races into the fog of clueless confusion.
Her phone beeps as she automatically presses the button out of habit.
"Message deleted."
"WHAT."
"No new messages."
Curse her auto-pilot! She wants to hear it again! Her vision swims, and she slowly crouches to the floor, feeling the weight of weird pressing on her shoulders.
Okay. Keep calm. What had that message said? It was Nygus, talking about... about Soul. Who is Soul? What kind of a name is that? Except she knows one thing-slash-person-slash-whatever that has 'Soul' in his name.
And what does Black Star have to do with- NO. What does Mira Nygus have to do with Paranormal Pines?
With a strangled gasp, Maka crawls to the living room, very deliberately not making eye contact with the tr- The tree does not have eyes to make contact with, damn it!
She shimmies on her stomach, soldier crawling to the coffee table. She slaps a hand above her, searching for her laptop. Mashing keys violently, she pulls the device off the tabletop, feeling like she's stealing something that obviously belongs to her, because she is, and stumbles back to her bathroom in a paranoid craze, squeaking the entire way.
Eventually, her shaking fingers manage to find the Paranormal Pines forum as she perches on the edge of the bathtub. She checks the number that the user YucatanLvr had posted. Checks this with the number in her contact list. It's correct. Checks this with Sid and Mira Nygus' personal number.
It's one number off.
"Woah, woah, wait," she hisses aloud, demanding answers from her bath mat. "Okay, so, for argument's sake, let's just pretend that Black Star's family sells possessed trees for a living. Like that's not absurd. Sure. Whatever. Okay."
Mira had sounded awfully aware of Maka having a being of whatever type named 'Soul'.
...Also Soul has a brother, which is a neat idea but not the point at all.
Maka had originally called that number to get rid of the tree, but now it seems like the tree had been purposefully planted. And Black Star knows about it.
BANG BANG BANG!
"Black Star! Open up!" she hollers. She doesn't exactly know what she's about to accuse him of, but the words 'conspiracy', 'haunted', and 'Nuts For Brains' rattle around in her mind.
No one answers. Where could they have gone? She realizes it's Christmas Eve, and that most normal people are busy right now, but she has a conspiracy to unravel, and, to be honest, Black Star is far from normal.
Her phone rings in her ear and spits out a disconnected line message from Tsubaki's cell, and now Maka has to roll her eyes and impatiently wait through Black Star's stupid 'God isn't here right now, please leave prayers with my secretary after the beep' message.
"Black Star, Nygus called me and my tree is alive and I don't know what the hell is going on but I know you're in on it and WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?! You better call me back or I'm telling Tsubaki where you keep all your porn mags!"
Maka angrily snaps her phone shut and tromps back up the stairs to her own apartment. Should she call Mira back? Why had she been given a tree and yet hadn't been told there was an other worldly being living in it?
She confronts the Christmas tree looming in her living room. Her knees are shaking, but her anger and confusion keeps her voice strong. "Were you in on it, too?" God, she's talking to a tree, but it wouldn't be the first time, and this is honestly the least of her irritations. "Alright, you. I know you're there. Or I'm crazy, but you won't go away so I'll just say that I formally acknowledge your existence."
All she gets is silence, but she isn't sure what she was expecting in the first place. Though the red lights on the tree do appear to dim a little, as if intimidated.
"...L-look, just flash your lights or something. One for yes, two for no."
One. Two.
She's almost surprised that worked. Almost. Wait, what did she ask? "'No', you weren't in on it?"
One.
Maka firmly shoves her growing anxiety for communicating in friggen' Twinkle Light Morse Code with a tree far away in the quiet recesses of what's left of her sane mind, and tries to figure out what questions to ask.
"Right then. So we're victims here!" She gestures wildly with her hands. "I didn't want to be haunted, you didn't want-"
One. Two.
She blinks. "You ...wanted to haunt someone?"
The lights on the tree dim for a few seconds before answering. One. Two. Three.
Maka groans, exasperated. "Three? What is that- 'sort-of'?"
One.
"You sort-of wanted to haunt someone."
One. Two. Three.
Her hand not still clutching her cell phone shoots to her messy hair and makes it even messier. "Urgh! Sort-of wanting to haunt someone sort-of? What does that even MEAN?"
One. Two.
How had her life come to this? She's getting frustrated with a pine tree. Keep it together! She's smart. She can figure this out. She can figure this out and then figure out who she's supposed to murder.
"You wanted to sort-of haunt someone."
No.
"You wanted to haunt someone, sort-of."
Sort of.
"You wanted to haunt someone... specifically?"
Yes.
Maka blinks. The question comes out timidly. "You wanted to haunt m-me, specifically?"
The twinkle lights shut off completely for a beat before briefly reporting a faint, hesitant yes.
"Why?" she breathes. He can't answer this though, as it's not a yes or no question. It doesn't stop her from asking more. Her racing heart only pushes more of her confusion out of her lips.
"How do you even know me?"
Silence.
"I guess through Black Star, but why do you know Black Star?"
Silence.
"Why did you kiss me?"
Silence.
"What am I supposed to do with you? What about my cat? People will think I'm nuts as it is, and I can't keep a Christmas tree around all year, that's just weird!" Great, now she's apparently already decided she's going to keep the tree instead of getting rid of it per her previous plan. "And why the hell is no one answering their phones when I actually have a problem?!"
Silence.
"Don't you hide from me, you Soul Eater! I'll... I'll-" Maka speed-walks to her kitchen counter and picks up an old, battered phonebook. "I'll turn you into pulp!"
As she glares angrily at the pine, demanding any kind of response, she sees a lanky shadow peel away from the tree, lurking on the wall adjacent to her fireplace. It's all reflex as she shrieks and hurls the phonebook at it, complimentary coupons flying from the pages.
The shadow dodges the book before it impacts the wall with a loud thud. The Soul Eater seems to bristle in her direction, peeved with her violence, as the lights on the tree blink erratically.
Maka's face goes slack, and she wobbles her way to the couch, grasping an armrest to hold herself steady. Her eyes can't look away from the shadow that shifts warily from side to side on her wall. She makes an incomprehensible noise as a bit of itself peels away like an arm, a dark hand forming on the wall and hesitantly greeting her with one small wave.
One of her hands makes a faint attempt at waving back. And then her knees give out.
'Soul' dallies around in the open, sliding across her floor and furniture near her as if wanting to make sure she's okay, but not wanting to get close enough to get punched in the not-face. The whole apartment smells softly of cider while Maka sits on her couch, alternately staring at the tree spirit and her call-log in her cell phone.
The Soul Eater had wanted to haunt her. Specifically. She isn't sure what that really means, but she's pretty positive she hadn't won any popularity contests with Christmas paraphernalia recently. Mira Nygus and Black Star both had known about Soul prior to giving her the tree- does that mean Tsubaki had known too? It'd been her idea to give Maka a tree in the first place, but Maka's still unsure of her friend's role in all this.
She should just call Nygus. Figure out what's going on. Find out why somebody thought she needed a supernatural companion for Christmas.
Clicking through her phone, Maka dials the Paranormal Pines-provided number, taking a sip from a warm mug of Ghost Cider while trying not to think too hard about where it came from. She glances back at the shadow, watching a dark hand inch across her fireplace and fiddle with her radio on the mantle. She feels an almost relieving sense of apathy for how clearly ridiculous the universe has become, numbly accepting the fact that her Christmas tree is trying to find a decent station.
The phone rings with a constant busy signal. Somehow, she's not surprised. She'll wait. She has all day. She ends the call and hits redial. She takes another sip of cider, which helps her fight off the weary feeling of just having fainted.
Just as she's wondering if trees get hungry, a call-waiting tone buzzes loudly in her ear. Confused, Maka pulls the phone away and reads the ID displayed. Blinks. Hits 'answer'.
"Patti?"
"Heyas! What's up?"
Maka watches as 'Soul' irritatedly (she thinks, anyway- it's hard to tell what kind of attitude a shadow is adopting) turns off her radio after having found nothing of interest.
Well, to hell with it. "So, if I told you I had a haunted Christmas tree, what would you say?"
Patti makes a pondering hum for a moment and replies, "Pics or it didn't happen."
"Hang on a sec." Maka flips her phone to camera mode, snaps a picture of the shadow curiously tapping the faux wood at the bottom of her gas fireplace, and sends this to Patti via text message. "Sent."
She hears some loud button mashing, followed by, "Ooh! Are you gonna call Ghostbusters or Men In Black?"
Maka takes another sip and wonders if Soul Eater has laced her cider with hallucinogenics, but at this point it probably doesn't matter. Though, where would a tree get hallucinogenics? And the cider? She sighs. Her head hurts.
"I thought the Men In Black were for aliens?"
"Maybe your tree's from outer space!"
Hell, anything could be true. Who is she to judge? "You seem pretty calm about this."
"Oh? Been there, done that. My life is spooky, yanno?"
"Okay, Mulder."
"No, really! Sis had an incident," is all Patti says before laughing with gusto. "Is it a mean ghost?"
Maka glances once more at the shadow, which promptly moves away as if trying to not appear to be eavesdropping. She glowers at it.
"Just... perverted."
"Oh hoh hoh! Merry Christmas in your pants!"
"Patti!"
Maka flushes, watching the shadow casting on a wall scratch his head bashfully while Patti says, "So that's why you're not eagerly callin' Ghostbusters~"
"T-that's not it at all."
"Yeah so, anyway, I was callin' to see if you were doing anything tomorrow morning?" The sound of paper crinkling reaches Maka's blushing ear. "I gotchu something," she says, not giving away any indication that she cares she's seen proof of a ghost living in Maka's apartment. "I'll say 'hi' to your new friend."
Upon further reflection, Maka is starting to like the idea of having witnesses to her situation. "As long as it's before noon- I'm going over to my dad's place for lunch."
"That's cool, we're gonna be busy for lunch too, so. Anyway, I gots to go- Sis woke up and she's grumpy. See ya tomorrow?"
She decides to make a pumpkin pie to bring to her father's tomorrow. While she gathers the ingredients for the crust, her movements set to the never-ending busy-line beep of Mira's number that she constantly dials and redials, Soul Eater's shadow stretches thin from the base of the tree, across her living room, and into the kitchen, hanging out on the door of her refrigerator. He forms into a silhouette of a person, curiously watching her move about the kitchen, more or less behaving himself.
Being haunted isn't so bad, maybe. ...Come to think of it, she isn't the only one who's been haunted!
She dials her godfather's number next before balancing the cell between cheek and shoulder, forming the pie crust dough with her hands.
"Good evening," Stein answers. That's the extent of his preamble. "Get rid of your extraneous variables?"
She hears the familiar sound of a cash register. He must still be working on Christmas Eve. Maka tries not to let her voice go too sour at the memory of locking herself out of her apartment even after Stein's precautions.
"Y-yeah. I did. Thanks again."
"You're welcome."
"I was calling to, um, ask you about when you were haunted?"
Receipts being printed and crackling plastic bags answer her for a moment, along with some distant murmuring. "Ah, Maddy, one of those light bulbs needs replacing- ARUUGH-Thank you. Yes, actually, during that time was when I met your mother."
"What? Really? When was that?" she questions as she digs out a rolling pin from a cluttered drawer.
"In college. Fifty-seven thirty-three," he says to someone else. The register chimes again. "I was being haunted by the spirit. You remember, right? Maddy." A pause, and a faint, child-like "Unfortunately," reaches Maka's ear.
Something about this whole exchange stirs a wave of Deja Vu through her, but Maka can't pinpoint the cause. She glances over her shoulder at her tree spirit, who nosily looks under the photographs hanging by magnets on her fridge.
"What kind of spirit was it?"
The register chimes. "I never found out. I was about to... remove some variables when your mother kidnapped him in the middle of my experiment," Stein explains, sounding the faintest bit disappointed.
Maka scrunches her nose with confusion, trying to transfer her pie crust into a dish. The phone slips a little on her shoulder, and she squishes it closer to her face. "Wait, how did Mama steal a ghost?"
"Well he was living in a tree, you see."
Maka turns to stone, staring at her pie crust, keenly aware of the tree in her living room. Behind her, photos on her fridge quietly flutter. "A-a tree spirit? You mean like a Christmas tree?"
Stein makes a pleased noise. "Yes, exactly. Unfortunately, the hauntings ceased after that. There was apparently a fire, and the tree burned to ash. A shame. I need to help a customer, so I must go. Merry Christmas."
She tries to ask him to wait, to explain everything again, but her godfather has already hung up. Maka shuts her phone, smearing floury fingerprints on the cover. She mixes various spices with some pumpkin purees, trying to stir away her intense urge to rip all the potentially hazardous Christmas lights off her tree.
Why had Mama kidnapped a tree? Did... did she set it on fire?! Surely not on purpose. Maybe.
Maka shakes her head- this is the strangest reason she's ever had for wanting to have some kind of contact with her mother. Still, even if she could talk to her, what on earth would she say? 'Hey Mom, it's been awhile, remember that time you hijacked a tree from Stein before I was born?'
She groans to the pie filling, frustrated.
Seriously, what are the chances of her having known not one, but two people her entire life who've had an encounter with a ghost tree? After all the 'coincidences' she's uncovered today, she wouldn't be surprised if the poor burned tree had come from Sid and Mira's freaky tree farm!
Her own spirit catches her attention, leaving the fridge and draping over the edge of the counter. One shadowy hand prods at leftover crust dough, leaving the faintest impression.
"Did you know my mama?" she asks suddenly, grasping for straws, or maybe extraneous variables. The shadow seems to regard her a moment, then morphs into the shape of a shark, smiling with big, serrated teeth. It even has the outline of a Santa hat.
Maka chokes on a laugh. "Yeah. From the postcards." Apparently he'd been reading the ones she'd been trying to keep perched in his tree.
Soul Eater returns to his slouchy, humanesque silhouette and shakes his head, shrugging.
She feels a little crestfallen, but she's used to that around this time of year, and carefully segregates that taste in the back of her mouth away from the more important things at hand. Pours the filling into the pie shell. Washes her hands. Calls the forum number again. Still busy. Calls Tsubaki. Still disconnected. Calls Black Star. Straight to voicemail.
"Damn it, Nuts for Brains!" she barks to his mailbox message before she hangs up. Angrily (but carefully!), Maka places the pie in the oven, and violently jabs her fingers into the oven's timer buttons.
This is the moment Soul Eater apparently decides he's bored and promptly knocks over a half-empty bag of flour all over the kitchen countertops and floor.
Maka whirls on the shadow, hissing. "You have got to be kidding me!" She wonders if she can beat a ghost to death with her bare hands. "Here I am, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with you, worrying that I'm gonna catch you on freakin' fire and accidentally fry you, and you just-"
Soul swipes a dusting of flour off the counter, making an ivory cloud appear in the air and collide with her face.
"I am going to ream you into printer paper, you hear me?!"
Approximately an hour later, the kitchen has mostly finished dreaming of a white Christmas. Maka, hair caked, clothes powdered, mouth slimy with the taste of raw flour, sweeps the last flour pile into a dustpan held in place by a shadowy puddle. She still thinks she's going to end up finding dust in every nook of her kitchen for the next three years.
She's never going to get her security deposit back.
"Why me, of all people?" she asks suddenly, taking the dustpan from the floor and dumping it in the waste bin. It wasn't like she didn't feel a little more loosened up after horsing around having a childish flour war, and she wasn't entirely ruing the fact that she'd been stuck with a mischievous tree spirit for Christmas- she was genuinely curious. "Was Black Star just like, 'hey, I know this scrawny chick that needs pranking like hardcore'? If so, that's... not cool." She turns her head to the side and tries to blow the taste of flour out of her mouth.
The blob of shadow on the floor shifts around a little before darting to the entrance of the kitchen, stretching up to reach the overhead lights.
One. Two.
Maka pouts, out of ideas and too emotionally exhausted to give the situation any serious consideration. She wipes flour off her forehead and muses aloud, "There's not even anything special about me. Hell, everyone calls me The Grinch."
The lights go out. Maka huffs.
The only things giving off light in her apartment are the internal light in the oven, highlighting a mostly-done pie, and the red glow from the Christmas tree in the living room. "This better be like a really, really emphatic 'yes' to my being a Grinch," she warns aloud, but the lights don't turn back on.
Maka glances around, but the majority of the kitchen is now a shadow, and the tree spirit could be hiding anywhere. She's tired, a little hungry, and feels like the world's largest dinner biscuit, so she flippantly tosses the broom to lean against a counter somewhere and shuffles around to find the light switch. But she bumps into something.
Or someone, rather.
And suddenly she realizes this is one of those encounters- where the tree spirit is less of a prankster, and more of a...
"Pervert," she growls, feeling a warm hand blocking hers from the light switch. Heat grows across her back and she really wants to know why she has so much unnatural chemistry with a tree, damn it. "Touch my boob and I'll personally destroy your pinecones."
In reply, one hand flows up her arm while the other gently moves her away from the light switch. Soul Eater touches her shoulders, maybe reassuringly, but she tenses anyway. Skin flushing, Maka makes ready to give a swift kick to the twig and berries.
But then, in her left ear, she hears something soft and quiet; more like a tickle of a feeling than an actual sound. A faint creaking of branches, maybe, or a rustling of pine needles.
He's talking to her.
She freezes in place, now out of intense interest than worrisome anticipation of boob-gropings. She remembers, sort-of (it would be more accurate to say she just knows), that the spirit has talked to her in her sleep, but right now she hears no words.
This bothers her. She wants to hear it- him, whatever- and she desires more than a murky memory of his voice to work with. "I don't..." She turns her head slightly, maybe to hear better, maybe to look at him pressed so closely behind her, though she knows there isn't much of anything to see. "I don't understand," she murmurs.
The weight on her right shoulder disappears a moment and lightly settles over her eyes, instead. She startles, eyes blinking rapidly, and her lashes continually brush across nothing. A hazy sheen filters the dim view of her kitchen, lit by her oven's yellowed, internal light.
Soul Eater whispers treetops and boughs, and Maka breathes in soothing mulling spices that heat her from the inside out. She leans just the slightest bit into him. She closes her eyes. Calms herself. Lets a ghost soothe her. Basks in warmth and hears his voice approach as if from far away, from the edge of sleep on a snowing winter night.
It's a lot less poetic when she deciphers the words.
"...-kept yakkin' for like, five years about his girlfriend's friend- like how grumpy and antisocial she is, and how she hates Christmas and is violent as all hell-"
Maka's mouth purses into a displeased line. Her irritation makes her tense and his voice fades away, so she attempts to swallow her pride a little and focus on staying relaxed, or on at least not punching anyone. Soul Eater's voice comes back to her.
"...said he thought she can listen to trees. And she sounded pretty cool. Wanted to see for myself. But he wouldn't ever tell me her name 'cuz he's a friggen' jackass, like I'm so happy you're not into him- that is the biggest relief, seriously-"
Maka flushes and tries not to choke.
"-and then I got sold- well, Nygus says it's an 'adoption' but what the hell ever- and Nuts for Brains wouldn't tell me where he was takin' me, and then just dumps me here! But... then you heard me. While you were sleeping."
She can almost feel a smile curving against her ear. "And then I knew it was you. He brought me to you."
Her face heats enough to roast chestnuts. She doesn't really get why Black Star had talked about her so much to a... a tree ghost, or how he'd known she could even hear one talk to her at all, but she's not blind to this Soul Eater guy having a weird tree crush on her.
"Listening?"
Maka swallows nervously and nods.
"Can I stay? With you. I... don't wanna leave."
For stupid, inappropriate reasons, blurry memories of a goodbye kiss (or two?) before she had woken up this morning (actually, noon) flash through her, making her fingers tingle like static. Her lips press together. Her chest thunders while the hand over her eyes lifts away to straighten her flour-covered bangs.
She'd already decided it awhile ago, but it's good to say it aloud, even if it's a nervous whisper with her eyes still closed. "I want you to stay."
BUZZ!
Maka jumps and squeaks, the warm body pressing against her back suddenly vanishing. She scrambles to the oven to turn off the timer. Takes a breath to steady her nerves. Takes the pumpkin pie out and sets it on the stove to cool. Chants 'stupid, stupid, stupid' in her head.
The lights turn back on, but she doesn't look for him, feeling embarrassed and shy. She says to the pie, "I'm gonna shower." After a breath, she adds, "Peek and you're mulched," just for safe measure. She needs to get away for just a bit, and hopefully fade the creepy desire to make out with a tree.
She sips soup on her couch, wet hair air-drying, and ends up playing a weird version of charades to learn more about him.
He's over thirty. At her aghast look, he'd haltingly relayed to her that in tree years, it's different. He makes a silhouette of Black Star, complete with pointy hair, for a rough estimate of his 'human' age.
His favorite color is orange.
His favorite smell is orange.
Actually, he just likes oranges a lot in general. He wishes he could eat one.
He wants to fly. He's envious of birds. The closest he's gotten to flight was being strapped to the roof of Black Star's car, and that had been pretty awesome, for her information.
His dislikes are as such, and in this order: termites, squirrels, and ...tree skirts.
"Aw, but it was a gift from Tsubaki," Maka laughs. "You have to wear it until Christmas, at least. That's like in an hour."
Soul's shadow slouches even further down the wall. The lights on the tree dim as if sulking. Maka snorts. "Oh, that reminds me. I think that one show should be on the radio right about now."
The red lights on the tree give an excited, spasmodic series of flashes, and Soul Eater darts to the fireplace mantle, fiddling with the radio. Maka smiles, not grasping why the spirit is so enamored with the Quality Hour show, but finding his enthusiasm kind of endearing.
...Unless he was in love with the female DJ who Maka had met last night at Tsubaki's party. The thought makes her mood sour. She has firm beliefs about men who play around, ghosts included. She's just about to inform him Elizabeth Thompson is taken, but the male voice from last night's show is the one speaking instead of Patti's sister.
"...just tuning in, you're listening to the Quality Hour. We've got a great Oscar Peterson cover of Sinatra that I wanna dedicate to my kid brother. Hope you're having a cool Christmas, bro."
A swinging piano tune rings out that Maka vaguely recognizes. She stifles a giggle when Soul's lights begin to faintly pulse with the beat, seemingly without his knowledge. She decides that maybe the spirit just really likes this style of music, as opposed to a certain female DJ (who must not be working tonight).
Standing and stretching, Maka leaves Soul Eater to his own devices and takes her empty soup bowl to the kitchen to clean. After rinsing and setting the bowl in a drying rack, she notices her forgotten phone on the counter. She hasn't tried to call anyone in over an hour, and she feels remarkably calm about it.
To be frank with herself, she's starting to enjoy the idea of someone being here when she wakes up on Christmas morning. It's probably selfish of her, but Soul wants to stay and she doesn't want him to leave, so it's not like he's in her apartment against either person/entity's will, right?
She finishes cleaning up the pots and pans she'd used to cook both the soup and her pie. She should probably go to bed, but she's not tired at all after having slept in all morning, and she kind of wants to stay in her tree's company. Being around him is relaxing. Well, if she ignores how easily he can heat her blood, sometimes.
When she returns to the living room, she finds another steaming cup of cider on the coffee table. She's really starting to appreciate this fortuitous situation. She grabs the drink, along with laptop, and sits on the floor near the lower boughs of the tree, next to a long-necked, still-wrapped gift. Her lips curl into a small smile, content.
This is the feeling she remembers from childhood. Soothing music plays, the smell of cider and pine floats around her, and her apartment gives off that long-missed feeling of 'home'. Maka idly surfs the internet awhile, sipping from her mug, and after several classic songs and jazz renditions, she feels a little weary. Maka yawns and stretches, arms reaching far to the sides.
Blinking sleepily, she watches as her laptop, possessed, opens up a blank wordpad document over her internet browser. The laptop greets her, typing up 'hey'.
Squinting, she spies the air shimmering near her, Soul's shadow appearing to her left. "Hi?" she says aloud.
It's intriguing to see her keys being pressed without the aid of her hands. He types slowly, but still pretty well for a ghost. Or a tree. Whatever.
"can i kiss you"
She's already sputtering the moment she sees the first 's' in 'kiss' on the screen. "W-what?! No!" Her cheeks tint red from a lot more than the Christmas lights.
":("
Maka scoffs, heart gaining speed in her chest. "...Don't frownie face at me."
":((("
Her hands wrap around her cider as if seeking protection from her growing excitement. "You already kissed me today, anyway," she mutters. Despite her contrary answers, her eyes flit back to the blinking marquee in the document, curious of his reply.
The emoticons disappear. "...that doesnt count"
"Yes it does!" she blurts, annoyed.
"that was a goodbye kiss!" It takes him a moment to find the exclamation point for that one. "this one will be better"
Toes wiggling into the carpet, Maka tries to sound unimpressed. "And why's that?"
After a moment, he types, "look up"
Gazing at the ceiling, Maka squints in the dim light and finds a bushy blob of shadow on the ceiling, a long, dark line running across the ceiling and down a wall, connecting it to Soul sitting next to her. She raises an eyebrow at the laptop. "What the heck is that supposed to be," she teases.
"MISTLETOE duh D:"
"That looks nothing like mistletoe, sorry."
Soul Eater brings up multiple image searches of mistletoe in retaliation, which forces her to give up and giggle. "Okay, okay!" She laughs, feeling equal parts bashful and kind of ridiculous for flirting with a tree. She worries if there's such a thing as evergreen-sexual. "You can kiss me. ...But just once, understand?"
The screen of her laptop shuts and the computer slides away, gliding across the carpet towards the couch. The mug of cider is gently taken from her hands and casually floats away to the coffee table like it's completely normal. He must be planning a heck of a kiss, she muses, to be clearing the stage. Maka shivers, hands clutching at her knees, anticipating the warmth of his shadow, and shivers even more when she finds it closing in around her.
An instrumental version of 'O Tannenbaum' begins, and, eyes shut, she can almost picture the person whose hand caresses the side of her neck, fingers toying in her chilled, still-damp hair. And, like the night before, she has a feeling this kiss will be a lot more interesting than a casual peck under some mistletoe, supernatural or otherwise.
His mouth presses into her lips, nudging her gently. A searing tongue teases into her mouth and she greets it with her own. A few wet exchanges like this and Soul breaks away, kissing the edge of her lips and nuzzling across her cheek.
This is actually happening. She hasn't been drinking alcohol, and she's not asleep in her bed. This isn't a dream or a hallucination. She quietly gasps at a nibble on her neck, and then his body is pressing against hers, tilting her back.
She lets Soul Eater kiss her a lot more than just once.
Sprawled under him, she moans as his lips brand her jawline before finding her mouth again. He hovers over her, heat radiating across her body, but she wants him closer. Maka cautiously reaches up, hooking her arms around where she thinks his neck should be, and tugs. Soul's body mashes against hers, the shadow settling between her legs and slanting his lips more heatedly against her own. A hand traces down her side, clutching at her hip, drawing her to him.
She's panting and completely riled as he kisses across her collar bones. Faintly, she hears that male DJ speaking through the airwaves.
"That concludes the Quality Hour. Merry Christmas from us here at K-DWMA, and thanks for stickin' with us. It's a few seconds from midnight, so you still got time to make a last-minute wish."
Her body feels caressed by fire. Soul is back at her lips, tasting her in what she can only describe as 'thoroughly'. He'd claimed he didn't really have one, but her hands find what should be his face, pressing so close to hers, and she just wants to picture him clearly in her mind, wants to see what forms these cheekbones and this wild mop of what surely must be hair, and these eyes-
Soul slowly stops kissing her, to let her carefully feel where his eyes should be. Before she can fully process it, she makes a wish, even if she can't form the words. Maka hears him whispering things to her that she can't understand again, and she wants, so suddenly, so violently, to see his face!
POP!
The world stops. Or she thinks it does, initially, but it's actually the fuse supplying electricity to her living room popping, causing the radio to fall silent and the tree to go dark.
"What-" she starts to say, confused as to why a mere radio and string of twinkle lights had blown a breaker, but she's interrupted by Soul Eater abruptly pulling away from her and dragging her to her feet. Maka squeaks, still trying to adjust to the dark and now forced to stand. She doesn't have time to ask what the problem is, because the Christmas lights on the tree are suddenly glowing.
The don't glow in that being-fed-by-electricity way, though. More like they burn as tiny suns, glowing brighter and a lot hotter than they should, in that can-only-be-caused-by-the-paranormal way. She watches the lights shine so brightly that she thinks she can hear the little glass bulbs complain with pressure, and just as they begin to explode, two hands land on her shoulders and shove her away.
The Christmas tree catches fire.
"No... Nonono! NO. NO FIRES!" Maka shouts, heart in her throat, memories flashing with the image of Tsubaki's tree from five years ago, and with Stein's voice repeating in a gut-sinking loop of 'the tree burned to ash'.
The tree burned to ash.
The tree burned to ash.
She twists and runs the most direct route to the kitchen, which involves colliding into the corner of the coffee table and hurdling over the arm of her couch. She slides across linoleum and fumbles for the large pitcher she's been using to keep Soul's tree watered, which sits on the kitchen counter. The fact that she finds it fairly easily makes her terrifyingly grateful and panicked, because it's the fire in her living room that is giving off enough light to find it in the first place, and it is currently burning the tree to ash.
There isn't enough water pressure. The water isn't coming out of the tap fast enough. She watches the pitcher slowly fill and makes horrified glances to the tree that has become a veritable firestorm in under thirty seconds.
Come on! She knows in the logical part of her mind that one half-gallon of tap water is not going to begin to put out an inferno, but she has to try, damn it! Pitcher mostly full because she simply can't wait on the tap any longer, she darts out of the kitchen, sloshing water on every possible thing not on fire en route to Soul Eater.
Already the flames are dying down, but she knows it's because the fire has run out of fuel to burn. The apartment grows darker as every needle of the pie tree burns to a crisp. The water she uses to douse the blackened branches only sizzles and evaporates into pathetic steam. As it clears, her apartment is cloaked in shadows and pitch.
It feels hard to breathe. The temperature of the air roasts her in her clothes. "Soul?" she calls out into the silence. Her voice stings with worry. "Soul Eater, come out!"
Maka drops the empty pitcher and clumsily rushes to the front door, which is the nearest thing to the fuse box that she can confidently navigate to in the dark. She can't see a damned thing once she opens the thin metal door to the box- she needs a flashlight or a candle or anything useful at this point would be great, thanks. She runs her hands over the fuses, searching for the one that should seem out of place. It takes her three anxious, rushed tries to find it, and she viciously flings it back into place.
The radio kicks back on, some other night-oil-burning show on the air, but she doesn't care at all what the DJ might be saying. Maka slaps her hands on a wall and follows it to the lightswitch she knows is there, promptly blinding herself with the ceiling lights.
Eyes watering, she's startled to find no evidence of a fire having taken place in her apartment at all, apart from a charred thing that used to be a tree trunk. The ceiling has no scorch marks. There's no lingering smoke, no melted carpet, no burned furniture.
Even Tsubaki's tree skirt is still in one piece.
She doesn't understand how any of this is possible, but she also doesn't care. "Soul," she calls out again, voice wavering.
How is it that any of this had happened at all?! One minute she's makingout with a tree ghost, and the next the Christmas tree spontaneously combusts. Numbly, Maka shuffles over to what's left of the tree, its branches already disintegrating into a fine ash to the floor. She swallows a lump in her throat.
"Of course they can die! What affects the tree affects them as well."
No! She hadn't meant to kill anyone! She'd wanted him to stay, she'd wanted... not this! Tears begin to well up in her eyes, slowly bubbling over. She tries his name one more time but it doesn't come out right- just a whine with a question mark mashed on the end of it- and gets no response.
Trees are fire hazards. She'd known this from the start. Her hand reaches out to touch a gnarled, charcoal branch, and as it dissolves into dust under her fingers, she thinks her wish had been too greedy. Even the little pinecones are burned chunks that break apart at the slightest shift in the air. Soon, the entire tree crumbles into a pile of ashes inside the center of the duct-taped tree stand.
Her hand claps over her mouth and she closes her eyes. "I'm sorry," she says into her hand. When she opens her eyes, Soul is still gone. Despairing and searching for any sign of him, she sees a mostly unburned piece of paper leaning up against an equally unburned, giftwrapped giraffe. Her vision glistens as she picks up the paper.
It's the postcard with the Santa shark on it- the only postcard that Soul Eater would keep in his tree. The edges are slightly browned and crispy, but it had otherwise been saved, along with everything else in her apartment. Fighting to keep her face from scrunching up with tears, she flips the postcard over to read the back and find out why he'd liked this one so much.
It's addressed to 'My Lovely Daughter'. She's expecting the usual 'Hope to see you soon', or 'I'll try to visit for Christmas', but she doesn't remember this one.
It reads:
"Florida has great weather this time of year, but it doesn't get the snow like it does out there.
I'm sorry I'm never around, honey, but just know that I am proud of you and how strong you are, and trust me that it is so very easy to love you. Your friends will always be there for you when I can not, and your father cherishes you more than anything in the world. Have courage, darling.
Always with love,
Mama."
She's trying to have courage. Stiff upper-lip and all that. But Mama isn't even close to being right. Why would anyone want to be at her side? What kind of person is she, to only call when things go wrong, to only speak to her father when he came to her first, to somehow manage to kill a Christmas tree spirit on Christmas morning?!
Looking up from the postcard, tears still crawl down her face. She knows exactly what she is.
"I'm a Grinch," she tells the empty apartment, forlorn.
And then, the tree skirt twitches.
Her first thought is 'squirrel', and that Soul had kept one the whole time even though he'd claimed his intense hatred for them not two hours ago, and he'd spared its life somehow in the fire as well.
Her second thought is even more absurd, but she refuses to think any more about it because she's had enough false hopes on Christmas morning to last ten lifetimes.
Sniffling, she reaches forward to pull back the hole in the center of the tree skirt to see what's crawling around underneath, determined to save whatever Soul might've left behind, but she yanks her hand back in surprise, because the squirming lump gets bigger.
Bigger. Much bigger.
Maka stumbles backwards, gasping as the lump grows taller and wider, lifting the tree skirt as it climbs inches in seconds. She clutches the postcard to her chest and stares, transfixed, as the lump under the argyle tree skirt grows gangly, tanned legs, skin the color of new, unburned pinecones.
From the center of the tree skirt, a shock of the fluffy, white garland peeks out the top of the tree skirt. Except hadn't the garland burned with the tree? From the ashes, a person grows and grows, like a firebird of a weed, and as Maka feels her eyes burn from being unable to blink and miss a single second, a head pops out of the middle of the tree skirt.
His eyes are red, like little burning suns or paranormal Christmas lights. He shakes his head violently, ashes flying from his crazy, snowy hair. He blinks. Sees her. Grins.
He has shark teeth.
Maka's knees buckle and she heavily plops on the floor, her mouth making the epitome of distraught and stupefied sounds in one long "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."
She recognizes his voice as he flings out his arms from underneath his sweatery, argyle poncho and says, "Woah, wait! No fainting!"
This action sets off another three- the first being his losing balance and tripping because one of his feet is caught in the tree stand, the second being the moment Soul Eater accidentally flashes Maka Albarn as his arms pinwheel frantically to keep from falling, and the third being Maka faintly noting that the carpet matches the curtains as he collides into her on the floor, his face and her living room's ceiling spinning away on radio waves as she passes out for the second time.
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Marsh: Helping out the mystery at all? Hope you are all enjoying! Please look forward to the last two updates next week, on Thursday and Friday! And, if I can get around to finishing it, there may even be a little extra M-rated something on Christmas~
I thank every one of you for your reviews, they mean everything to me, and very few things get me as nervous and excited as seeing a new review in my inbox.