Here is part 2 of the update.
Untitled Fluff Drabble
The first time Maka calls him "sexy"–
She mumbles it through a kiss. Soul feels the word as it comes out of her mouth, and it tastes like honey and arousal on his lips. He tries to think about whether he's heard her say that word, and he kind of has - but he thought she was teasing.
They're making out on the couch, and it's not the first time, but it's a recent development, and he's so, so glad to hear her call him that in this particular moment, because he's been wondering if his hardened sex pressing into her thigh is erotic or pathetic.
In a thrilling reflection of their flights in the sky, she's on top of him. He pulls her forward so he can whisper in her ear. His voice trembles a bit, isn't as silky-smooth as her hair, but he perseveres. "Yeah, but you're hot as fuck."
My car got stuck in a blizzard and yours was the only house with a light on AU (Secret Valentine for AmberLehcar)
He really, strongly considered not opening the door. He didn't believe in ridiculous monster stories, but he still couldn't quite wipe out the idea of something emerging from the blizzard to eat him alive. In the realm of worries that were slightly more realistic, he wondered why someone would be out in this storm and knocking on his door. Also, he was wearing his pajama pants, the sky blue ones with the little dog-bone patterns all over.
Soul peered through the peephole and saw a petite – girl? Young woman? He couldn't help noticing that she was wearing her hair down and had ice all tangled in it. What kind of asshole doesn't open the door for that?
So he opened the door.
"Hi," she shouted over the wind. The ice was melting around her face. "Sorry to bother you, but my car's in a ditch and – do you have a spare room I could camp in for a little while? Until the storm goes away?"
"Uh." He blinked, and she blinked back. "Yeah, okay, come in." Inviting strangers in during a blizzard? Smart move, Evans. But a person could die outside in weather like this.
"Thanks!" She gave him a bright smile.
And as soon as she stepped in and he pushed the door shut behind her, she had melted gallons of water all over the kitchen floor. At least, it seemed that way. She looked around and whistled. "Wow, it's so cozy in here!"
Soul shrugged. "Yeah, it's my parents' place." And it had all the necessities for a cozy winter's day in: a log cabin interior, a huge living room complete with fireplace, a loft above. Most importantly, it housed no other people at the moment. Soul had gotten his fill of socializing during the holidays, thankyouverymuch.
"Sorry I got snow all over the floor."
"It's fine. I'll worry about it later."
The little blonde stood stiffly, clothes soaked. Only then did he realize she was wearing deep-green hospital scrubs and also holding a bundle of something in her arms – more clothes? The fabric on those was as thoroughly soaked as the scrubs she wore.
"My name is Maka, by the way." She held out one cold, cold hand.
"Soul." He accepted her handshake.
"So, ah, Soul. Do you have a place where I can change?"
He looked, dubious, at the sad clump of clothing and grinned. "You could go to the bathroom, but I don't think there's a point. It's all wet."
Maka glanced down and made a face. "So it is. Well, ah, it's fine – I'll work it out."
Soul nodded. "Alright, then. Bathroom's that wa– hey, wait."
"Hmm?"
Offering this could cast him as a permanent creep in her book, depending on how cynical a person she was, but it seemed…right. He had plenty right now and she was marooned in a blizzard.
"I do have a bunch of extra clothes. It's up to you," he said, holding his hands up placatingly before she could speak, "but it's an option."
Maka glanced over him and paused, mouth open. Oops. He'd goofed up.
"Are all your clothes that fashionable?" she asked at last.
"What?" he began. "Excuse me, but who knocked on my door unannounced soaking wet in the middle of a blizzard?! I didn't exactly have time to style my hair, you know–!"
For all his indignant sputtering, Soul did feel a bit better, because clearly she was comfortable enough to laugh. And laugh she did. "I know, I know, sorry. They're cute. I'll take whatever you've got."
xxxxx
Maka found herself in a strange man's bathroom changing into pajamas that were two sizes too large for her. They were navy blue and covered in an odd, unique little pattern, small orange blobs with faces on them, and they were amazingly soft.
The idea of wearing a stranger's clothes was odd, but not as off-putting as she might have expected. She had to admit to feeling an immediate attraction there; while she'd club him with the heaviest object within reach if he made anything that could be construed as "a move," she wasn't disgusted by the theoretical idea that maybe, after getting to know each other and after he earned her trust and proved he wasn't a scumbag, she might want to be closer with him. Some people might not have found his weird teeth and crazy hair appealing, but she thought it was endearing how he could look at once like a demon and a puppy.
How absurd to be having these thoughts, honestly; she would probably leave his house and never see him again as soon as the storm let up. Ah, that reminded her - getting her car out of the ditch was going to be awful.
Might as well not worry about it too much for now.
When Maka returned to the kitchen, she found the floor dry and a wet clumped-up towel to the side of the front door. Soul was at the counter, back to her, stirring a couple of mugs.
"That was quick," she observed.
Soul turned around, a mug in each hand. "D'you drink hot chocolate?"
"I love hot chocolate!"
He nodded and placed her mug in front of her. "Good. Let's lay out your clothes in front of the stove."
xxxxx
Soul asked the one question he'd been dying to learn the answer to.
"Why were you driving around in a blizzard, anyway?"
"I got out of work. I don't work tomorrow so I didn't want to stay there," she answered with a slurp of her hot chocolate.
"At the hospital? What do you do?"
"I'm a nurse," Maka answered proudly. "I go between the ER and the neuro wing."
The conversation was casual, not too forced but still a tad awkward thanks to the circumstances, and they were relaxing quite nicely in front of a rerun of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (dear LORD the girl loved trivia; he tried in vain not to find it funny and cute) when the power went out.
"God. Dammit." Soul grumbled.
"Uh oh," Maka whispered. "At least the stove is still on, right?"
"Yeah, it'll be fine." He glanced over to the pile of wood by the kitchen door. "Just annoying, that's all."
"Pffft. Oh, well. Now it looks like we have to actually entertain each other," Maka said.
"Can't promise much," Soul answered.
"Well, we can start with the piano." Maka pointed toward the instrument in the corner of the living room - not the grand that Soul was used to, but a console, more for atmosphere than for the fine art performances his parents preferred at home. "Do you play?"
"Ah, yeah, sort of," Soul said, knowing full well how evasive he was being.
"You should show me!"
"Fine," he said, entirely trapped and used to performing for people like a trained monkey anyway, "but it's not exactly gonna be the best sound. We haven't tuned this thing in ages."
"I won't know the difference," Maka said with a twinkle in her green eyes. "I'm just curious."
He sat down at the bench. "Okay, then. What are you in the mood for?"
"How about…Let It Snow?" she laughed. Shit, fuck, fuck, shit, he already had a crush on her laugh. And on her abominable taste in music.
"We really don't need to let it snow right now," he groused. "Also, that's a Christmas song. That was over a month and a half ago."
"Nonsense, we're stuck here so we might as well set the atmosphere, right?"
Soul sighed. "Okay. I've never played this song, but I do know the tune."
"You've never–?"
"My family has always been really focused on complicated pieces. It's weird, but I never got around to some of the simpler stuff, you know? Let's see…"
xxxxx
When he started, she wondered if there was some kind of mistake. She didn't recognize it.
But oh, there was the familiar melody.
Soul played, all right. In fact, he played like a concert pianist. She had a sneaking suspicion that was exactly his profession; off the top of his head, he not only knew how to play this melody he'd only heard and never tried, but he also added a lot of embellishment. And feeling. At first, she expected not to like it as much as the version's she'd heard sung on the bus, on the radio - but the music resonated with her so deeply, and it did indeed set the mood.
It gave her goosebumps, made her hyper-aware of the snow falling outside and the scent of the wood in the stove. It was the kind of music that tingled in her brain, made her heart feel warm.
"Wow," she breathed when he was done. "That's my favorite version of that song now." And she glanced around, heard the fire crackling and saw the warm tapestry hanging from the wall behind the television. "This - with your music - it really is like a scene from a book."
Soul put his hands to his face in mock embarrassment. "Of course you would say that."
"The hell is that supposed to mean?" Maka asked; she was playful, but injected a bit of venom into her voice, just in case he was about to be a jerk.
"Nothing, just that I've known you for three hours and I already know you're a huge nerd."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing," he repeated, shrugging with a poorly-concealed grin. "Am I done now?"
"If you want to be." She stuck her tongue out, and they returned to the couch, this time with a warm fleece blanket each.
She told him about her job, about her career aspirations and why she chose her field, about what it was like day-to-day in the hospital. He told her about where he usually lived, an hour further north in the state, and how he'd come out here to relax and compose a little. She rambled cheerfully about some of her favorite books, he about his favorite movies. And they dipped further into their personal lives, he opening up about his family when she started ranting about hers.
Her last memory of being awake that night was of grinning smugly to herself when she noticed he had fallen asleep first; her first experience in the morning was of still facing him when she woke up and thinking she'd like to kiss his unguarded face.
In the morning, after breakfast, the sun shone on the blinding white landscape, and they set to tunneling out of the snow and excavating her car on the road.
He had to admit that she was a million times faster at shoveling than he. The little weirdo was making twice his progress.
When he realized she was ready to leave - AAA had removed her car from the ditch - he worked up his courage and opened his mouth to ask an important question.
"Hey, Soul?" she interrupted.
"Hmm?" he hummed, trying not to sound startled.
"I'm kind of sorry I have to leave. Want to exchange numbers so we can hang out sometime?"
"Sure. Give me your phone," he grinned. And as they traded back, their fingers brushed.
"Tomorrow night?" he suggested hopefully.
She beamed. "Sounds great. I get out at five."
Forsaken GIF Challenge: raining-down-hearts
Usually, it's more time-effective and less risky to take an airplane than to fly Soul out to wherever their mission of the week happens to be.
But this was the least-conveniently timed flight in history. Or maybe it had been a poorly-timed confession, for them to admit their feelings for the first time in the airport right before boarding, but the lady at the desk had confused them for a married couple and Soul had rejected the notion and when she'd expressed her hurt he'd taken her aside and said–
Well. Something very personal. Then he'd kissed her far too chastely until they heard their boarding call. Now here they sat on an airplane, so close together, in light too bright for a makeout session around all these other people.
They had been casting shy glances at each other for four hours. Oh, there was the usual thrill of holding hands and leaning together. Now was finally the moment she'd have a chance to do more, though, and she was being held back by public decency, something she had not expected until this very moment to resent.
"I apologize for the inconvenience, folks," the pilot started, which was not a great opening. "But we're going to have to circle for a little while due to a weather disturbance at our destination. You may feel some turbulence. We should be landing in an hour."
Soul sighed with impatience and they exchanged a frustrated look. If she couldn't touch him soon, she was going to explode.
Forsaken GIF Challenge: l0chn3ss
"You don't get to 'bro' me until you get all our clothes back and Patti doesn't prank us for a week straight," Soul groused from the driver's seat.
"But bro, we just have to one-up her again–"
"No way. This shit ends now." They were in the car in nothing but towels. Was this illegal? Maybe. He didn't know if wearing only a towel still meant public indecency.
Somehow, his idiot roommate had gotten into a prank war with the brutal Patricia Thompson. She must have had help, certainly from her sister, maybe from some of her other housemates…
…Because she'd managed to steal all of both of their clothes.
It was well-orchestrated to a terrifying degree. Soul had been in the shower when she had managed to break in, apparently - although, in retrospect, Black Star had probably left the apartment unlocked - and take off with both of their clothes.
One panicked call to his roommate at the gym revealed that his clothes were missing from the locker room there, too. Even the really grubby socks at the bottom. And then all that was left was confronting Patti and her housemates from the scant protection of bath towels.
"How closely has she been watching us?" Soul wondered aloud in horror as they approached the girls' door and Black Star knocked.
"Do you surrender?" Patti bellowed as she swung the door open with a flourish. Liz looked smug from where she leaned against a wall in the hallway.
"Neve–"
"Yes," Soul answered flatly. "And if this starts again, you leave me the hell out of it."
He was feeling pretty cool, calm, and collected, really, until Patti's cute-nerd housemate showed up to find out what was going on and made eye contact with him.
Failed Catharsis (April Fool's Day)
Maka let her tears fall uninterrupted on the couch.
At first, it had been hard to cry. She'd had that feeling she was about to throw up, but couldn't quite yet, and there had been restlessness, no sleep, no appetite, but no tears either. While it was trite to think about how sudden it had been, how nobody had expected it, how they could have all appreciated him better, maybe even protected him somehow, she couldn't let go of those thoughts, either, nor could she make them stop bothering her.
His last words weren't "I love you." They weren't "Goodbye" or "I'll miss you."
His last words were "I'll see you later."
He was such a beautiful person, so loyal. Perhaps she'd always seen him through rose-colored glasses in a way, but she honestly could not think of a single flaw of his that didn't charm her.
The word "dead" was heavy on her mind, in the back of her throat. She was used to death, of course, could even be said to worship it in an odd way she'd considered healthy. But this - this was too much. Even Death Children feel loss.
She clutched the binding in her hands. In it were memories, important ones. In it, he still lived. She hated and loved having this in her possession.
She had let herself become vulnerable with feelings and didn't expect the door to the apartment to swing open at that moment.
"I– whoa, Maka!" her weapon, her ignorant, innocent weapon, asked. "What's the matter?"
She bit her lip and stared at the rug through tearful eyes. "You wouldn't understand."
Soul raised his eyebrows, then chuffed when he realized the source of her misery. "It's that book, huh? Didn't go as well as you were hoping?"
Maka nodded, but put on the most defiant face she could muster through so much damn water.
He shook his head. "Yeah, I don't get it– Don't look at me like that! I know how much those books mean to you. And I'm sorry."
She gave her weapon a small smile to show appreciation for his gentleness. "I should have braced myself better. It wouldn't have made sense to finish the series without killing off someone important, even though the last book was so upbeat overall. It really caught me off guard."
Soul plunked down on the couch next to her. "Yeah, I mean, maybe the author has some kind of master plan." He rubbed slow, soothing circles on her back. "Is this why you weren't eating or talking this morning?"
"Yeah," Maka admitted. "I got too wrapped up in my thoughts."
He grinned. "Nerd. I was afraid you were sick or something really horrible happened."
She stuck her tongue out. "I feel kind of sick and something really horrible did happen."
Soul kissed her on the crown of her head, so smooth and casual she could have missed it if she wasn't always alert to her weapon's actions somewhere in the back of her thoughts, and stood up.
"Want me to get you some tea?" he asked.
Maka nodded, real-life joy and fictional depression battling for her heart and mind. She leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling.
Half an hour later she smelled something sweet that was definitely not tea alone, and her partner brought over their tray with two piping teacups and a pile of quick-bake chocolate chip cookies.
"You sure this is all just about the book?" Soul asked, sliding their snacks onto the coffee table, sitting down beside her.
Maka sighed and tried not to sound defensive. "Yeah. He was my favorite character. Favorite favorite. Easily one of my favorites of all time."
She received nothing but a satisfied grunt from Soul. He didn't question her, even though she knew it wasn't entirely true.
"Okay," Maka said in a small voice. "Sometimes my thoughts about stories do get tangled up in my thoughts about life."
Soul nodded. "I guess that's what they're for. Are you okay?"
"Yeah. It's nothing unusual." That was something he'd understand. The story made her think of how dangerous their jobs were, about how Kid was immortal and would one day bury all of them, about how Crona was still up there on the moon and she hadn't even figured out how to go back there yet, about how she missed her mother even though she wouldn't admit it, about a million little, nagging stressors with deeper meanings than she'd care to acknowledge. But he'd also understand that she knew how to deal with those things, and that she just had to let off some steam.
He took her hand. The last time she did this and he teased her about it was years ago. He'd grown up enough not to be a little jackass anymore, to express his concern like an adult should, and the thought pulled her mouth into an unwilling grin.
