"We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time," the automated voice says in Soul's ear for the hundredth time. "Please try again later."
From his bed, Soul flings his phone across the room like he's skipping rocks on the sea, burying his face in Blair's shiny fur coat. "She's not answering. What should I do?"
"Meoww."
"Mee-owww," Soul parrots, rolling over onto his side, bringing his cat along for the ride. "You don't have answers either, huh?"
She snuggles up against him, a protective paw on his chin.
"She said she wanted to be alone, so I'm giving her space, but what if it's the wrong thing to do? What if I do go there and she gets… more mad? Sad? I don't know what's happening."
He closes his eyes, Blair taking advantage of his vulnerability to escape, tiny paws pattering toward the kitchen.
"Meowww," she says, the sound of her bowl scraping against the hardwood floor.
"I'm starting to think you only like me because I feed you."
But that's okay. Blair is a cat. Besides, she's cute, and when - if - he spends another night at her place, he'll bring Blair along so he doesn't have to leave. Waiting is agony though, and when he's pouring cat food into her bowl and simultaneously fighting her off his shins, he decides he's had enough.
No more bottling his feelings up. He can open the bottle or toss it away, and he decides the latter will move him closer to the truth. Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst - rejection, an "I don't feel the same" - Soul grabs his keys and helmet.
Time to wear his heart on his sleeve… again. Obviously his plan to confess last night went awry after giving her the bouquet. Damn, he's such a failure.
"Blair, I'm out, keep an eye out for Maka… yeah, yeah, meeow to you, too."
X
"Is Maka here?"
Tsubaki and Wes blink at each other, thoroughly bewildered.
"No, we haven't seen her at all. Are you okay?"
Soul shoves his way into the penthouse, scanning the living room and then the kitchen for signs of his best friend. Besides the clothes strewn on the floor - he truly is too asexual for this, really - and two plates of Eggs Benedict half eaten at the table, the place is spotless.
"We're on our honeymoon," Wes reminds pointedly, offering Soul a glass of sweet tea anyway. "And our plane leaves in three hours."
"I'm here because some asshole apparently sent Maka a bouquet on our anniversary and she thought it was me and now everything's gone to hell in a shitty handbasket."
The couple stares at each other, communicating telepathically. Soul snatches the nearest fork and finishes their breakfast, chomping on it instead of succumbing to his envy - he and Maka used to be that way, before. He can't wait for there to be an after.
"It was me," Tsubaki says, easy.
Soul snaps his head toward her so fast he's sure he's given himself whiplash.
"Yeah, it was me." Her grin is cheeky, sly, no trace of remorse present. "I sent the flowers."
"I promise he's not usually this slow," Wes says when minutes roll by and Soul remains unresponsive. "I think… he's in shock? Might need a little push."
Tsubaki laughs. The reason why she and Wes get along like two peas in a pod is clear to Soul: both take pride in being mischievous, underhanded, meddling jerks, though she exercises more tact and self restraint. Both make her more dangerous.
"When I was calling my clients in my flower shop back in Shibusen, before I moved here, I found the order you placed. I was going to throw it away, since the wedding didn't happen, but then Wes saw it and he got the idea to send it anyway! He delivered it himself."
"Sure did," Wes laughs, refilling his glass. "I felt bad stalking Maka, but I couldn't let her catch me delivering the flowers because that would be awkward."
"Fuck you both," he seethes, chair scraping back as he stands. "How could you play with us like that?"
"I thought it would help," Wes defends, mood flipping completely. Frowning. "I thought Maka would call you up like, 'oh mah goood I still love you too' and that you'd come back to the desert for some smooches."
Tsubaki's giggling, hand clutching Wes's knee, whose remorse lasted about four seconds.
"Maka doesn't talk like that... and so what if I would have jumped on the next plane out here?"
Cue more uproarious laughter, their foreheads touching, Wes sliding his fingers through Tsubaki's hair.
"Your little brother is the cutest," she says, as if Soul isn't present. "So sweet."
"The best, mhmm, he's always been a sort of tsundre."
"I hate both of you," Soul reiterates, secretly glad they took matters into their own hands, furious neither thought to include Soul so that he would have handled the situation better, more irritated at himself for not going through with his idea to send flowers a few months ago, too. It had been there, tucked in his memory banks in the haze of wedding planning and brooding, and it faded away.
"You guys played yourselves."
"Never," Wes teases, but by the time Soul finishes his recount of last night, Maka walking away before he could confess, literally holding herself together, Wes is visibly sick with worry.
"Her phone's… disconnected?" an incredulous Tsubaki stares at her own cell like it'll ring any second. "Not even straight to voicemail, it's like the number doesn't exist anymore."
"I'm sure she's fine." Wes takes her hand, kissing her knuckles. "Maka's tough, she's probably going on vacation - yeah, that's it, that's what she told me." He turns to Soul, full-on lecture mode activated. "Go to her, Little Bro. Honor your feelings, and do us all a favor and confess, because we're all tired and have lost a lot of money betting on when it'll happen."
"I will… if I can find her. She wasn't at her place, her office, the bookstore, the mall. None of our friends know where she is, and Spirit isn't answering his phone either." He narrows his eyes, disgruntled. "Maybe you can use your stalking skills to help me track her down."
"I was helping!"
X
Soul drives into the night and decides to go home. To Maka. To the apartment they shared. After such a long time heading the other way - into the heart of the city instead of the outskirts - the journey is a lot like another kind of step forward.
Checking coffee shops, hotels, the movies, local hospitals, the police station, Spirit's apartment, the pet shelter turned up nothing. The police won't take a missing person's report for either Albarn until forty eight hours have passed since they were last seen, and even then, adults have the right to disappear if they want to, so the cops probably won't follow up.
Setting up camp in front of her door seems like a good idea until he envisions one of her neighbors either calling the state guards or a dog peeing on him. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have a spare key - he gave that to her when he moved to LA.
He knocks, and the door creaks open easily. Huh. Maka would never not lock the door. Earlier it had been secured tightly. His stomach drops straight through him, his blood running cold. What if she's hurt?
"Helloooo, Maka?"
Everything's as he and Maka left it except for a blanket rumpled up on the couch, the television playing for no one. The sliding door to the balcony stands open, curtains billowing in the summer breeze, carrying smoke inside.
Soul trudges in, longing for a bat.
"Oh, it's just you," he says, loath to leave Spirit Albarn alone in this state. He's slumped over the railing, the air about him off. Soul recognizes broody bastards when he intrudes on their alone time, after all. Takes one to know one. "Where's Maka?"
"Yeah, it's just me," Spirit echoes, glancing over his shoulder and puffing out smoke, the cigarette between his fingers coming into plain view.
"I thought I smelled something. You started smoking again?"
"Never really stopped." A deep inhale, savoring the burn in his lungs, probably. "I'm not good at hiding things, though."
"Apparently you have many talents, because she thinks you had quit cold turkey. She's gonna be pissed." Visions of Maka printing out flyers with her dad's mugshot to every store in the city crosses Soul's mind, forbidding them to sell the man cigarettes. Or worse: Maka shutting down, the dawn of a new era dedicated to shunning her dad. "I'm surprised she hasn't smelled the smoke on you yet."
"Me too. Then again, she doesn't like to be near me too much." He puffs once, twice, sighs, contemplates. "Did she tell you she gave me a hug for the first time in four years?"
It's news to Soul, who can't help but feel left out of such an important advancement in Maka's life. The Maka from before would have turned down millions of dollars worth of bribes to avoid contact with her father. The paralyzing, deep-rooted fear of losing her seizes Soul until he rationalizes it off: he's not entitled to know every intimate detail of her feelings, her days, her life. She's growing and bettering, and he's here when she needs him, when she's ready.
"Yeah, she told me I broke her heart," Spirit goes on, puffing.
Soul scoffs. "You knew that already though."
Spirit shoots him a dirty look, rubs out the cigarette, and like the clouds splitting to reveal the sun after a storm, he's charged up, grinning widely. "She also said she didn't hate me!"
"Of course she doesn't hate you, old man." Soul steals the extinguished butt from Spirit's grasp, waving it in his face before chucking it over the banister. "She just hates how you act. There's a difference."
"My little angel is so smart! She told me she loves me as a father but hates my guts as a husband."
"You're... a strange, strange man, Spirit," Soul monotones. Anyone else would have reacted negatively - sulked, cried, cursed, beaten themselves up, but Spirit Albarn takes it in his stride, seeing the good in every bad.
"So…" Soul glances back inside, in case she passes by, miraculously here. "Where's Maka?"
"I dropped her off," Spirit says out of the blue, now sullen. He fishes out another cigarette from his pocket, expertly lighting it.
Soul refuses to believe his ears. "What?"
"Dropped her off at the train station."
"... Why?"
Spirit shrugs, infuriating Soul - what a shitty time for the man to start respecting his Maka's boundaries.
"She's leaving."
It's like millions of pin needles are pricking Soul. "Where?"
"She wouldn't say."
Soul curses, words collapsing into themselves. "Start from the beginning."
"Watch your mouth," Spirit says around his cigarette, no anger behind his voice. So serene, like he's reporting the weather or ordering dinner, not reliving his only daughter's departure. "I wanted to dance with Maka at Wes's wedding because I danced with her at my wedding to her mother. She was two months old and balder than an old man, but she was so cute! I always wanted to dance with her again, but when your wedding fell through…"
"You didn't get to have your last dance with her," Soul finishes for him. "Even though you cried when she told you we were getting married. Said you didn't want to give away your little angel. Weirdo."
"Yep… anyway, I went looking and looking but I couldn't find her, right? So, I came to see if she was here, but she wasn't. I figured she was with you, and I decided to stay until she came back. And then… She caught me smoking out here."
The ultimate betrayal to Maka. Ouch. Regret springs through Soul for his inaction - he should have followed her, made sure she was safe. Walking a fine line between being overbearing, like her father, and being aloof is a hard to master.
It's in Soul's nature to fret, to ask stupid questions: "Was she okay?"
"Hell no, she was riled up about something. She wouldn't tell me what, not that I blame her..."
Soul, probably, because something else besides sand caught in his throat when she had brought up the flowers, the card. A demon wrapping its fingers around his throat, taunting him. Their wedding didn't happen. Therefore, those gifts shouldn't have happened. It didn't make sense, and even after learning of Wes and Tsubaki's heinous plot to play cupid, he faults himself for not blurting out his feelings then and there.
Idiot.
"When she was a little girl, she used to tell me everything, but…" Spirit shrugs, his lack of tears scaring Soul, whose never seen him this sedated. "I forget she's an adult sometimes and that things between us are always going to be rocky... I did some pretty lousy things to her and her mama."
"Yeah," Soul concedes, earning another glare, this one equally short lived. "But - to risk betraying her, she said - she said you had talked it out?"
"A little, but this time… She hates me for sure now," Spirit continues, eerily stable. "She thinks I sent her a bouquet and card for your anniversary. She said she didn't need my pity and kicked me out, but when no taxi cabs would come for her, she let me drop her off at the train station."
So she's gone. The pit in Soul's stomach has been right all along. The loss runs deep, the finality of it hitting him like a truck. He fixates on his hands - just yesterday she had held them, and now she's beyond his reach.
"I don't think she's coming back for a long time." Puff puff, burning himself from the inside out, the only indication that Spirit is crippled with pain. In this faint lighting, he's aged a hundred years, fated to live a hundred more.
"But what about her business? You? Her mom?"
Spirit shakes his head. "She's not coming back, Soul. She's just like her mama."
Maka went without her mother for ten years before she returned, communicating via postcards, letters, calls, and as technology advanced, with text messages, vlogs, video calling. As selfish as he is, Soul can't endure that amount of time without Maka, his best friend. To spend another night without her after sharing her bed -
No, no. He has to make things right.
"I'm getting her back," he says, promises, a quick check of the time reassuring him that he's finally caught a break.
Five am.
Show time.
X
The radio station is a ghost town, most early morning employees ironically night owls and therefore not alert enough to question why he's running through the hallway, helmet discarded mid stride somewhere along the path to the DCMA8 studio.
For once, luck is on his side. When he throws himself through the door, Jackie is not live, instead in the middle of doodling on a sketchpad, apparently in between songs.
"Fuck, Soul, what the-"
He drops to his knees, pleading. "Put me on air."
"Why?" she wrinkles her nose, feigned disgusted rubbing Soul the wrong way, even if they joke like this all the time. "No one wants to listen to your emo songs."
"Nooo, I mean, put me on air. I want to talk. It's Maka, Jackie, her phone's still cut off, and Spirit says she left Death City! I have to talk to her."
She squints at him, doubtful, not understanding the emergency. "So?"
"So fuck you, Jackie, I'm being serious-"
She taps her pencil on his forehead, beat steady, stern. "I need to know why you're trying to get me fired and mess up my career!"
Okay, maybe she has a point, even if she's being an insufferable smartass. "I'm gonna confess."
Jackie snorts, guffawing, back to flipping through the pages in her sketchbook. "Yeah, okay."
"Really really, Jackie." He shakes her by the shoulders a bit, making her cackle harder. "I'm sick of this roller coaster, and I'm worried, okay?
"Soul," she begins, setting down her pencil, ruffling his hair like a mother consoling her injured child. They both know he won't like what she has to say, but she says it anyway: "It's local radio, Soul. If she's not near enough, if she left town… she won't hear you. Local radio signals aren't that strong. You know that."
Yeah, he knows that, but he also knows he can't drop his feelings for Maka. "It's worth a try."
"Yeah, alright, I guess. But only because not having to deal with you whine at me about what ifs for the rest of my life - and yours - is more important to me than any job," Jackie says, jumping out of her chair, pulling him up by the armpits and into the seat, shoving the headphones over his ears in a flash. "When I give the go, start talking. I'll announce you." She tucks her hair behind her ear, leaning forward into the mic. "We interrupt this broadcast for an announcement from a guest speaker! This is for you, Maka Albarn..."
Then she gives him a thumbs up, and it feels a lot like diving off a plane.
"Hey Maka? It's Soul."
He's nauseated, met with radio silence, literally radio silence, dead air. Next to him, Jackie waves her hand in a circle, motioning for him to go on.
"Talk, dumbass," she mouths.
"Maka, it's me, Soul. I hope you're listening. What I wanted to tell you yesterday at Wes's wedding is, well - I still love you. I can't tell you exactly when I started but I probably won't stop any time soon… unless you want me to."
Out of respect for his privacy, Jackie turns her back to him, but he catches a glimpse of her in the window to the sound team, hands pressed flat against one another. Like she's praying.
"Maka, are you listening? I still love you. When you come back, if you do, can we start over?" His stomach hurts. His heart hurts. "I did send you those flowers and that card. I pre-ordered it before our wedding day, but Tsu and Wes delivered it anyway, even though we weren't married."
He pauses, forgetting she isn't there to respond.
"Those were my words, though. I still love you."
It's so quiet. Jackie is a statue, unmoving.
"Can you let me know you're okay? We're all worried about you. Even if you don't feel the same way, I still love you, Maka."
Nothing. There's nothing worse than silence, than talking to the public and not knowing if the one person he wants to reach is listening. Minutes tick by, Jackie screens the calls that pour in, and as each one proves not to be Maka, vomiting all over her work space becomes an eminent danger.
Then his pulse stops when Jackie screech whispers beside him, kicking him, punching his arm, pointing to her headset: "Oh, it's really you, girl! I'll put it through."
Maka's voice is crisp, clear. So close, yet so far. "Soul? I'm fine, I'm fine!" When he closes his eyes, he can see her vivid grin, cheeks pinched. "I heard everything you said - did you mean it?"
"Yeah," he says, holding his breath.
"Can - can we meet at my apartment, so we can talk?"
He's already waited this long, what's another few minutes, a few stop signs along the way, a red light or two or six? It's not night anymore, but dawn takes on that same reality altering quality as he opens her door, the light falling into the apartment and onto Maka, who's standing there with a shy, secretive smile, doing what he does best: waiting.
Before he can think twice, he's rushing to her, footfalls vibrating through his bones, and she melts a little at seeing him, suddenly shy but determined nonetheless, and he opens his mouth, ready to pour out, to confess again and again and again -
She shakes her head, covering his mouth with her hand. "Wait, wait…"
He swallows sand down, finally ridding himself of it, and nods.
"If everything you said on the radio was true, then..." She pauses, her brows furrowing - a sign she's thinking, a sign of inner turmoil. "Remember when I told you I loved you when you found me in the bathtub, when I didn't go to our wedding?" Cue a shaky breath, a brave breath. Her eyes go glassy and she gulps, regret real and jarring. "I was being serious - why didn't you say something then?"
He's shocked, like she drove an icicle through his chest, the burn cold. "What! I thought - fuck, I thought, since you always said it, I thought…" He's a fucking idiot, but, as Wes said, he shouldn't be talking down to himself, should honor his feelings, respect himself. But that's difficult to accomplish when Maka tells him she meant what she said every time, that she interpreted his silence as rejection. "Maka, I couldn't tell you I love you, because then it would have been real, and..."
"It was all real to me," she insists, her intensity fascinating to Soul, who wants to kiss her so bad. "The wedding, the New Year's kiss, everything!"
God, it's been obvious, painfully so - the inexplicable nervousness, the excitement in her eyes when they planned their wedding, the New Year's kiss, the fleeting looks, the sense of being home when they're together.
He's an idiot.
"That's why - that's why I ran away when you said you didn't send the flowers! I thought they were some kind of… confession, but I wasn't sure, couldn't be sure, and this whole time, since you came back from LA, I've been trying to get over you, because I thought you didn't feel the same-"
"I always felt the same, Maka. That night, I didn't realize - I'm so sorry. I didn't see it, you said it so much I thought they were just words and I was afraid if I said it I'd push you away-" Sorrow cuts him off, and he fights it, choosing to revel in this newfound honesty. "I wanted to fix it, I promise, I still love you, I love you so damn much, I meant what I said - I still love you."
"Really?" There's awe in her voice, and he wants to kiss her throat. "Are you… sure?"
Yes, he promises, insisting he'll kill all the spiders that crawl into their house, that he'll be there when she's sick, that he'll grow alongside her, that the absolutes don't matter to him either. "I meant it when I said I would have married you, even if the wedding wasn't perfect. Truth is, I've been jealous of Wes. It's not right to compare, but I found you way before he found Tsu, and I want the same for us."
"Me too, but - I'm scared!" She winces but doesn't look away. "I don't like not knowing how things'll turn out, and relationships are tricky! Look at my mama and papa… they didn't make it. But we're not them, are we? I'm afraid I wouldn't know what to do in a relationship, but - we could work through it together right? Right?"
Some hurts never fully heal, but at least he can be there for her, be here, so Soul touches her hair, traces her eyebrows, admires the bridge of her nose, rubs along her arms until he's clasping her hand, gently moving it aside. "Yeah, we're Soul and Maka, and we make a great team. Maybe we suck at communicating, but we're already working on that!"
She bites her lip, a hint of her mischievousness shining through, making his heart flip, flip, flip. "Well… What if I said I still love you, too?"
Oh, oh, oh… his heart is suddenly full, but why is he suddenly so sad? Maybe it's all the time they lost, that she had to leave, that he couldn't do this in person, that she deserves better. Maka Albarn returning his feelings - it's absurd, impossible, but here she is, holding on to him like a lifeline.
Ahh the hurt feels so good, so right. "Then I'd ask - can I kiss you?"
And then all he sees are freckles peppered on her cheeks as she pulls him down, her eyelashes fluttering, and the dark, dark green of her irises. He closes his eyes, and all he feels is Maka.