Chapter Five: Soul
The next couple of days, er, nights, pass by in a bit of a blur.
The fact that he's been able to avoid being torn apart by Maka's pack is nothing short of a miracle, all that's considering, but he still can't help but feel like the other shoe has yet to drop. Like things have gone just a bit too smoothly.
He's met Stein and Sid, properly, and while the former is playfully unsettling–like he knows his scars and demeanor and general appearance are spooky, and uses it to his advantage–the latter merely gives off a dad-vibe, almost. Or, at least, what Soul thinks a normal dad would give off. (Fletcher Evans was a father, never a dad.) He's met Harvar, too, though he still has the distinct air about him that if Soul looked in his direction too long, he just might steal his kneecaps. As for Blake, however, he wasn't that bad. He'd gotten over his protective hostility rather quickly, and he's slowly but surely teaching Soul his way around some of his favorite card games.
Maka, however, was still his favorite. Some might say it'd be too soon to latch on–especially with how uncertain his future seems at the moment–paired with the fact that he has yet to meet the rest of her fabled pack, but what could he say? She was nice and helpful and almost doted on him, fretted like a mother hen, despite almost every having to be the same age as him. She made sure the others were civil and she'd sat through his endless questioning—though she refuses to tell him if Mothman is real or not; claiming it's a "locals only" secret—and, well, he'd like to consider her his friend. If not now, then maybe someday.
If only she'd loosen up, he feels she'd be less...intimidating. Lose that air of authority. It ages her and makes her slow to smile and stressed; something he's beginning to see that she often is. It makes it hard for him to get a good read on her, if he were being honest. He might be new to the whole supernatural thing, but he doubts that her pack or family or whatever it is would have wound up as tightly bonded as they are if she was this...walking-talking embodiment of imposing intensity. It's also likely that the reason she's so tightly wound is because the pack was to be coming home tonight. Seeing that she'd decided that he was as settled as he was going to get, and that her family should be allowed to come back to their own home after almost a full week of staying away.
The cocktail of anticipation and fear tied his stomach into knots—a surprising development, considering those muscles are presumably petrified or otherwise dead now, but then again, it could just be in his head and what does he know anyway—and he can barely sleep. He spends most of the day tossing and turning in the basement, the dark and the dank doing little to soothe his fried nerves, and doing even less to block the sound of their arrival. The idea of sleep all but evaporates the second their vehicles thunder down the lane, sending vibrations through the earth the closer they draw near, the concrete walls of the cellar aiding only in reverberating the noise against his skull.
He lay still in his bed as they approach, locks his muscles as people begin clamoring out of the parked cars. He counts eight newcomers in all, hears the differences in their respective gaits as they walk about, the differences in their heartbeats. Maka and the others, the ones he's already met, are as familiar to him as...well, not his own heartbeat, not anymore, but you get the idea. He checks his phone (that Maka had graciously loaned him a charger for), checking the time. He still had a good five hours till sundown, at least, so he could avoid the impending introductions for a little while.
Still, instead of sleeping, he listens.
All the new perks that come with being a vampire-the hearing and the sight and the strength-it's like having a new toy, and he can't stop himself from playing with them. He can't see them, not down here, and the whole scent-thing still confuses him. Maka said it'll get easier to discern all the mixing smells in time, but for now it's just a big melting pot of...he doesn't even know what. It's kinda like smelling every candle in the aisle until you go nose-blind. So, instead he listens to their individual footfalls, the rise and fall of their voices. He tries to match them to the pictures he saw upstairs. The one who's voice is high and cheery, who sits close to the uneven thump of Stein's heart must be...the blonde? She was the only one he'd taken pictures with alone, outside the group as a whole. Well, other than a few scattered ones with Maka, and the man he had assumed was her father-he had the same eyes as impossibly green as her own. He thinks one of them was even a wedding photo, though it was in black-and-white, fraying at the edges even from within the frame. She sounds nice, and she laughs often.
There's the rapid fall of running feet, pounding up the stairs, laughter streaming behind them like a kite in the wind. That must be the twins, obviously older than the babies in the photo taking a bath in the sink. Another's heartbeat crackles like there's fire in their veins, a strange sound that he lingers over longer than he does the others, and he can't even begin to place it to a face. The one with the voice that has a strange gravel to it, a buried accent, sits near Sid's now-familiar vibe, and he attaches it to the woman in the pictures with him and Blake; long dreaded hair-or maybe it was braided? He didn't have time to ogle the pictures, maybe he'll do it tonight after everyone's asleep-eyes a bright, unsettling blue. She'd had a nice smile.
He lays there for awhile longer, almost turning his eavesdropping into a game; committing their different sounds and rhythm to memory, hoping to match them to the people once the sun goes down and he can go upstairs.
Somewhere along the way, he falls asleep counting heartbeats.
He awakes to Maka's hand on his shoulder, his cold skin greedily leaching the warmth from her palm. She gives him a soft smile, blonde hair glowing gold from the light leaking from the kitchen upstairs, flowing in from the open door at the top of the stairs, and she presses a warm bag of blood into his hand as he sits up, the springs in his mattress squeaking noisily. She perches on the edge of the bed as he sinks his teeth into it, and he's suddenly struck by the total silence upstairs. "I figured I'd let you eat before you meet everyone." She says, and he notices the relaxed line of her shoulders, the lines of stress that usually creased her face nearly erased. So he was right, then. She really was wound up about not having her pack close by.
"Worried I'd eat them all?" He jokes, though his smile surely doesn't reach his eyes. She gives him a disapproving look, a slight shake of her head, but doesn't deign to give him a reply. He sucks down his breakfast with a little more vigor than usual, excited and anxious in equal measure to meet the people hiding somewhere above ground. Once it's empty, he pinches the corner of the plastic between thumb and forefinger, rolling it back and forth, refusing to meet Maka's questioning stare. "What're they like?"
Her brows shoot up in surprise, but she quickly quirks her mouth to the side as she thinks. "Uh, they're...different." He barks a laugh, and huffs a soft one of her own, but she's shaking her head. "I'm serious! I don't think I could shove them all in a single category if I tried." She nudges him with her knee, "I think you'll like 'em anyway. You've been getting along with the boys alright, and they're the worst of the bunch."
"I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse." Maka crows with laughter, face glowing with some kind of inner light or something equally cheesy, and, for the thousandth time since he's been turned, he's silently glad he can't blush anymore. Still, she somehow manages to pick up on his nervousness (and thankfully not his budding crush) and she plucks the empty bag from his hand, hauling him up from the bed with a hand on his elbow. He follows her dutifully up the stairs, hovering awkwardly in the kitchen as she throws out the bag and ducks into the fridge, popping back out with an armload of various drinks. He raises a brow, but she simply shoulders open the screen door by the counter and disappears into the night, not looking behind her to make sure he follows; knowing he'll be like a puppy on her heels the whole way.
Out in the yard, maybe ten feet from the lake, sits a homemade fire pit, surrounded by cinder blocks stacked three rows high, a roaring fire nestled in the center. Stein pokes at it with a stick absently, a blonde woman sitting at his side with her feet in his lap, her conversation with some woman with pink hair trailing off as he and Maka approach. Maka promptly starts passing out drinks, handing off different colored sports drinks to the set of twins sitting at beside Blake and some other man with a guitar in his lap; they secretly trade drinks once Maka moves on. Drinks passed out, she drops down on a smooth log, catching a spot in between the pink-haired girl and Harvar, leaving Soul with the distinct feeling of being in the spotlight. She pops the tab on her drink and takes a sip, acting like she totally forgot he was there when they make eye contact over the rim of her can.
"Oh! Everyone, this is Soul. Soul, this is everyone." Everyone gives a half-assed wave, and Maka takes the liberty of going around the circle and introducing everyone. Marie and Stein (he was right!), Nygus and Sid (two for two!), her dad, Spirit, Kilik and his kids, Thunder and Fire, Blake, Harvar, Kim and Jackie (oh, she's the one with that strange crackling heartbeat). Introductions out of the way, Jackie-whose laying balanced on the log, legs stretched across Kim's lap and feet tapping along to the rhythm of the guitar that Kilik goes back to aimlessly strumming-reaches out, awkwardly wobbling to keep her balance, and whips out a fold-out lawn chair, haphazardly tossing it his way. Luckily for him, his supernatural reflexes kick in and he catches it easily.
Huh. Well, that was surprisingly little fanfare.
He awkwardly takes a seat, the heat of the fire feeling odd against the ice of his skin. Slowly, they begin to talk amongst themselves again, returning to their world before Soul was in it. After a couple of long minutes in which no one talks to him (but a few of them, namely the twins, keep shooting him odd looks) he lets himself focus on the one thing he was good at: music. He slowly gets into the flow of the music, smiles despite himself when it morphs into a bawdy rendition of Country Roads, the pack breaking into racious laughter as they sing along. Somewhere along the way, Soul watches in abject horror as Jackie reaches out toward the fire, fingers mere inches from the flame, and...pulls the flame into her hand, rolling it into a ball in her palm. She whistles, catching Fire's attention, and tosses the ball at him. Soul lets out a choked off cry, but the ball of fire is landing in the boy's hands before he can even get off his ass, everyone turning to give him a strange look, like he was the weird one for freaking out a little over a little casual pyromancy.
"Oh, shit. Yeah, uh, Soul? Jackie knows fire magic and Fire is an earth shamen. They can kinda...do that."
He settles back down in his seat with a flustered huff, runs a hand through his hair. "Yeah. Yeah, they sure can." Fire tosses the back back and forth between his hands, giving him a silent raised brow, before throwing it back to Jackie, who lets the flame unravel and flit back to its source.
"Good job, bud. You're getting better." Jackie says with a small nod, raising her glass in a salute.
Marie turns and gives him a sympathetic smile. "Don't mind them. Jackie just wanted to show off, since we're all pretty much used to her tricks."
"Not tricks," Jackie intones, humor in her voice, like it was a joke used constantly amongst their group.
Marie shakes her head, but still smiles all the same. Soul can't help but to like her already. She was like the human embodiment of a sunflower. He gives her a smile in return, and she blinks in surprise at his teeth, but quickly smothers it beneath another grin. Thunder, however, leaps to her feet and quickly skirts the fire, getting much too close to Soul's face for comfort as she tries to peer in his mouth. A few strands of hair have strayed from her braided mohawk, and she blows them out of her eyes impatiently. "Whoa, cool! Can I see your teeth?"
"Thunder," Kilik and Maka both chastise at the same time, but Soul waves them off, diligently baring his teeth for her. He's spent his life being ogled for his teeth, why stop now? Especially if it can earn him some brownie points with Maka's...kids? He doesn't know for sure, but he still doesn't think it'd hurt to have the kid like him.
"Wooooooooah, that's so sick." She holds out a finger. "Can I poke one?" He laughs through his nose and opens his jaw, giving her ample space to carefully prick the pad of her finger against one of his teeth. "Oh! I didn't expect 'em to be so sharp!" She laughs happily, pulling her finger from his mouth. "I didn't know vampires got all of their teeth so sharp. I thought it was just the two, y'know?" She mimes having pointed eye teeth with her fingers, drawing back her upper lip from her teeth to help the visual.
Soul laughs, especially as Maka buries her face in her hands with a groan. "I wouldn't know, kid. My teeth were like this before I was, uh, Changed."
"Forreal?" She's practically vibrating with her enthusiasm. "That's so cool! Oh!" She whips around, her long braid brushing Soul's stomach as she turns. "Ma, can Soul come to my game under the lights? The other girls would love this!"
"Uh," she eloquently drawls, echoed only by Soul's hesitant "er", feeling the mood around the fire drastically shift. Maka shares a look with Kilik, very clearly sharing a whole conversation without saying a word. "We'll see, okay? It's in a week, right?" Thunder nods, and so does Maka. "Okay, well, we'll see how things go, and if it's all good, Soul can go if he wants, 'kay?"
Thunder clearly takes this as good as she's gonna get and lets it drop, instead turning her attention back to Soul to pepper him with questions, all of which he answers with little hesitation since he's kinda figured, whats it matter? He's an immortal being, or whatever, and the life he knew before is probably effectively over. Might as well spill his guts to a fourteen year old. And, of course, he knows the rest of the pack tentatively listens in on the conversation. Eventually, some of them even start jumping in with questions of their own, until it turns into less of an interrogation and more of just...a casual get-together. Just a bunch of friends sitting around the fire bullshitting and playing music-Blake even passes off his guitar at one point and goads Soul into playing wonderwall (which, by the way, he nails)-and Soul...loves it.
It's probably the best time he's ever had, and before he knows it, the sky soon begins to lighten.
Kilik had moved to sitting on the ground at some point, allowing the twins to curl up against his sides and fall asleep, too nosey to go back to the house to crawl in bed, and Stein and Sid had transformed to go run perimeter before coming back and curling around their respective wives to ward off the late-night chill. Kim, as it turns out, wasn't a part of the pack. She was, however, a fucking witch, with an apartment in town (where this fabled "town" was, he had no clue; was there just the one? Was it the one he had moved to before all of this? He felt it was too late to ask so, well, he didn't) and she had left sometime in the early hours of the morning, dropping a kiss to Jackie's forehead before taking off and peeling out the driveway in some little powder blue monstrosity.
The singing and the music had steadily gone in and out of playing, depending on the flow of conversation and whether or not someone felt like playing. Truthfully, once Blake had handed him the guitar, Soul didn't want to put it down. It was the first thing to make him feel grounded and normal in days, and he wasn't keen on giving up that stability again so soon. However, once the sun begins to rub the sleep from it's eyes and prepares to crawl over the mountains and hills, he passes it back to an oddly bright-eyed Blake and bids everyone a goodnight (good day?) and heads off back inside to the safety of the basement.
For once, he falls asleep without a problem, lulled to sleep by the echoing memory of the music.