Chapter four: In which Maka meets the parents.

"This isn't going to work."

"It HAS to, Soul. You know it has to."

"Yes, but Wes is smarter than me, Maka! And I realized that you were crazy within the first 10 seconds of meeting you. Hey, what the f—OW! Did you just pinch me?"

"Be nice! And you really need to get over the breaking and entering thing. Now that we're dating that memory should be filed under 'quirky and cute' by now."

"You broke my mom's ficus! Blair peed on my couch!"

"That is so not the point of this conversation. Now hold her steady. But look natural! And look like you love me."

"….."

"Try harder than that."

Soul had imagined this going very differently. Having Maka meet his family was a giant step in their relationship, not only because she was meeting his family, but because his family was meeting her. A girlfriend. Which Soul had. Nothing about this situation was a usual occurrence for Soul.

So it only made sense for him to be out of his mind with anxiety about it. After all, Maka was quite possibly the love of his life. Bringing her to meet not only Wes, but his parents, had a very high potential of jinxing their entire relationship. It's not as if the Evans were easy to get along with, or even particularly inviting, for that matter. If Soul had anything to say about them based on how they treated him, they were downright unpleasant more often than not.

But Maka was Maka, a charming and beautiful and intelligent girl who was sure to win the heart of his family so long as she stuck to the notecards Soul so painstakingly wrote up for her to try and teach her something about music. And if she avoided talking too much about her cat.

"Do you think she can breathe in there?" Maka asks, peering down at the luggage Soul was carrying.

Herein lies Soul's main problem.

"Maybe she suffocated in there. Maybe she's dead and gone and all our problems for this weekend will go back to being whether or not you can recognize a quarter note, not smuggling your cat into my parents' summer home."

The heat behind his words is totally lost on Maka, who sees the duffel bag jostle a bit in Soul's careful grasp. She breathes a sigh of relief. "No, she moved. She's still alive."

Soul groans. They are approaching the incredibly large front porch of the Evans house, about to start their weekend trip with the most aggravating family in the world, and Soul can't even properly be concerned about that because he is too focused on trying not to accidentally-on-purpose murder Maka's troublesome cat.

"You could've found a cat sitter," he says between closed teeth to Maka, like he's already being watched by his family and needs to be seen smiling. "I know you could've."

Maka does not share the same paranoia that Soul does, however, and whips her head around to glare at him. "And just who do you think would take her, huh? The only person who can tolerate her—barely—is you! And if I took her to an animal daycare she would either cause fights or break out. I've tried before."

They've had this conversation a million times already, from the time Soul first questioned what she planned on doing with Blair up until the time he heard Maka's extra duffel bag begin to hiss in the back seat of hier car. Maka's eyebrows are tipped down in a determined grimace, her cheeks puffed out a bit in defiance, and Soul can't help but sigh. This is where he chose to lay his affections. The second he found her hiding behind his balcony ficus all those months ago he should have known he was in trouble.

"And it's not like it's MY fault that your parents don't allow pets in their house. I mean really, why were they so hellbent on repressing you as a child? First Disney movies and now this!"

"I told you the Disney movie ban was a lie, Maka. And they weren't 'hellbent on repressing me.' Well, not in this case, anyway. Mom is allergic to pet dander."

Her expression doesn't change. "I still don't like it."

Soul rolls his eyes. She's angry just because she wants to be now, so there's no point in arguing with her. Besides, there are bigger problems at hand now. They're standing on the porch now, and all of a sudden Soul feels like his stomach is going to drop right out of him. This was a bad idea. This whole thing was a bad idea. He's been so focused on the damn cat that he hasn't even had time to mentally prepare himself for this moment. He's seeing his parents after years of being apart—years that he tried his hardest to avoid seeing them, actually.

What the hell was he even doing here? What kind of inane tradition is it to have your girlfriend meet your parents when it starts getting serious? That's how you RUIN a relationship, not strengthen it!

He knows the proper thing to do is knock, but the logical thing to do is run back to the car and drive very far away. He shouldn't be subjecting Maka to this.

But, because he is Soul Evans and therefore never has luck on his side, the door opens in a flourish before he can flee, and standing in the foyer with a thousand-watt smile is Yvonne Evans, in all her glory.

"Hey, Mom," he says, his voice a lot smaller than it was just moments ago.

Her voice is dripping with affection so thick and sugary and fake that Soul can already feel his smile beginning to falter.

"Oh, honey, we've missed you so much! I can't believe it's been four years since I've seen you in person." The implication is heavy enough to knock out a fucking tank. Soul's smile continues to slip. "And to think it's because you finally have a girlfriend!"

And so it begins.

It's 1 am and Soul is still pacing his old bedroom in a blind fury.

"Don't you think you're overthinking this a little bit?" Maka asks mildly from the queen-sized bed that replaced his childhood one the day after he moved out. The lilac sheets accent the tan-colored walls and the cream-colored trim and the absolute dullness of the room as a whole. When this was Soul's room it was cool, with guitars hung on the walls and reds and yellows and blues covering everything in a bright-colored mess that made it very Soul. This room has the personality of a cheap bed and breakfast.

"You don't get it! All of that bullshit, they were doing it on purpose!"

"They weren't that bad—"

Soul cuts her off. "She called you Macey, Maka!" He turns on his heel and begins another round of pacing, his hands linked behind his head. "She knows your name, I told her like a thousand times. She said it wrong on purpose."

"But why?"

"To irritate me. To make her look bashful and forgetful and charming for trying to remember it in the first place. To show that you don't mean enough to her to say it correctly."

"You're putting an awful lot of meaning into one mistake, Soul."

"Just trust me, okay? This is what they do. They make themselves look like honest people while actively trying to reduce the things I care about to nothing. It's the Evans way."

He wished that he still had that rope ladder in his closet that he had when he was little. They could have snuck out of the house in the middle of the night and left this awful place behind. This was a stupid idea to begin with and he doesn't know why he thought it would turn out any differently.

Sometime during his internal monologuing Maka has stood up to stop his maniacal pacing. He can feel her hand rest on his shoulder and tug a little, and with a sigh Soul turns to face her.

"You need to take a deep breath," she says with a small smile. He rolls his eyes and complies, breathing in deeply, and waits. Maka laughs. "And let it out, too." He blows out a raspberry that makes his bangs flutter a bit in front of his eyes. He really does need to calm down. He sits on the dull purple bedspread and Maka follows.

He rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, dragging them down his face. "Sorry I'm acting so weird. I just don't like them treating you like crap."

"Soul, can I say something kind of rude?" Maka asks, and Soul raises an eyebrow. "I think you were raised by a bunch of jerks."

This is not what Soul expected to hear at all, and he can't help the surprised and delighted laugh that escapes him.

"—But I don't really care that your mom is really fake-polite or your dad is really cold because I'm not here for them, I'm here for you, okay? So you don't have to worry about how they treat me, because it doesn't change how great I think you are."

Her honesty makes his stomach do a nervous little flip despite the fact that he's been dating her for almost a year and she's told him this a hundred times before. Being in love is weird like that.

Soul bumps his shoulder with Maka's. "I like you a lot, Maka Albarn."

She nudges him with her elbow. "Back atcha, Soul Evans."

It's at that moment that Maka's illegally-smuggled cat decides to emerge from under Soul's former bed. She's been hanging out in this room all night and has only peed on the floor once, which Soul doesn't blame her for at all. The hastily-put together litter box sitting in the corner of the room has remained immaculately untouched. Neither Soul nor Maka is surprised.

"C'mere, you asshole," he says and picks up Blair from the floor to set her on his bed. He strokes her from head to tail a couple of times, a little bit glad that Maka brought her because it's given him something else to focus on besides his dad's sour-faced scrutiny of Maka when she told him she's a horrible cook and doesn't get along well with children. He wonders how they would have reacted if they found out she sometimes unironically called herself a Cat Mom to a feline that actively makes her life hell. He can only imagine his parents' expressions.

Though nothing could be worse than the look on their faces when Maka said she didn't understand music. That went over well.

It's never mattered to Soul, whether or not Maka was a musician. In fact, it probably helped their relationship that her opinion of a song was solely based on the catchiness of it and nothing more. The lack of judgment meant that for once, Soul was able to play his keyboard or guitar in someone's presence without his stomach climbing up into his throat. He didn't even tell her about the whole "my family is made up entirely of classical musicians who will eat you alive if you aren't a snob like they are" thing until a month ago, when his parents invited him back home for this stressful weekend. His whole tragic backstory about being the family disappointment didn't seem all that important to mention prior to this.

Soul lets out a loud sigh as he lets Blair bump her head against his palm. Maka interprets it easily and pulls him in a for kiss.

"Just one more day, then we're gone," she says quietly, and Soul closes his eyes and nods, his forehead still touching hers.

They go to sleep soon after that, Maka spooning Soul beneath the ugly purple comforter, and manage to get almost three hours of sleep before being jolted awake by Blair jumping off the bed and tearing around the room at speeds faster than human eyes can follow.

Soul wakes with a start. He sits up halfway and mutters a bleary "Whaaa? Who—? Maka, what's happening…"

Her fingers climb up to his bare shoulder and try to pull him back down. "It's Blair, don't bother. She'll get tired eventually."

But her devil cat is running around the room like it's on fire and she's searching for an exit, and when she bangs into the nightstand beside them and knocks alarm clock on the floor Soul sits up again.

"Auhghg, she's gonna wake up the whole house like this. Blair, fuck you, stop running."

Blair keeps running.

Maka snorts and Soul can feel it against the arm she's currently snuggling. "Did you think that was gonna work?"

Soul carefully extracts his arm from Maka's grip, causing her to whine a little, and rolls himself out of the bed onto the floor. He grabs for the cat, who still hasn't grasped that nighttime is for sleeping, and is now mow-mow-mow-ing like it's time for Kitty Choir Class.

"Blair stop, Jesus Christ." He gets both of his hands somewhere on her middle and tries to pick her up, but she's clearly in some kind of mood and not having it, because she swipes at him with a claw and manages to scratch him on the upper arm and run away from him. "FUck," he curses, trying belatedly to lower his voice.

"I told you to just wait for her to stop, but noooo, let's not listen to Maka," Soul hears his girlfriend murmur from behind him. In the darkness of the room the best he can do is swat in Maka's general direction. He feels his hand make contact with some part of her, which only causes her to giggle more at his expense.

"If my family wakes up because of this, you're gonna be in big—"

There's a knock at their door.

Soul turns to look at Maka, not believing it until they hear a second round of knocking. Maka tenses beneath the covers. Fuck.

Soul looks to Maka for some kind of direction, but she looks just as shell-shocked as he is, and someone needs to do something because there definitely isn't supposed to be a cat in this room and Soul doesn't need another reason for his parents to hate Maka.

He doesn't care this time when Blair scratches him again, just picks her up and tosses her in the direction of the bed, waiting until Maka has her shoved under the covers before he opens his door three inches and leans against the frame.

"What's up?"

The hall light illuminates Wes's form, his expression tipped downwards in irritation.

"Are you trying to piss off Mom and Dad?"

Soul's voice squeaks up three octaves. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm not an idiot, Soul. I'm your brother, I know when you're lying. If you and Maka are gonna fool around, at least do it quietly. Our parents are right down the hall from you."

Soul's eyes threatening to bug completely out of his head. "What?"

Wes looks pointedly at the scratch marks on Soul's shoulder. The cogs in his brain begin to slowly turn, and he can feel his face getting incredibly hot. "You're not exactly subtle, bro."

Soul's brain is short-circuiting. "That's not—we weren't—"

"Look, I don't give a damn about it, but you know Mom and Dad will. So tell your girlfriend to keep the moaning to minimum before we all get read the riot act." His eyes slide down to meet Soul's and his mouth quirks up in the shadow of a knowing smile. "Unless those sounds were coming from you."

Soul can't make words. "I—I—that wasn't—"

"Good night, little brother."

And then Wes is leaving, flicking off the hall light and returning to his old room, the one that his parents have left miraculously unchanged despite the fact that he moved out eight years ago. Soul closes the door with a quiet click.

He looks at Maka, who's sitting up and has her covers pulled up to her chin in a way that does look pretty damning, at least until she lets the covers drop and he can see a squirming tabby being held tightly to her body with one arm. Soul can still his heart pounding in his ears, but Maka has a wry smile on her face.

"Did you hear that Soul? Sounds like you need to moan a little quieter. Last thing we need is your parents hearing that you're letting a music-hater have her way with you."

He glowers at her and takes the cat out of her arms so he pin Maka back down to the bed. She laughs again as he hovers over her.

"Your cat is going to give me a heart attack one day, you know that?"

Maka shrugs. "She makes our relationship interesting."

"I need a drink."

"You need to go sleep," she says, pulling him down until he falls messily, landing half on the mattress and half on her. She kisses the crown of his head. "We need to go to sleep, before someone else can yell at us."

Soul rolls off of Maka and trails his hand over the side of the bed until Blair bumps it with her forehead. He scoops her up awkwardly with one arm and plops her on the bed, waiting until the cat was settled in between them before finally laying down completely. T minus ten hours and they were going home.

Packing up to leave is probably the best part of the whole trip, or at least it would be if Blair wasn't, by definition, a pain in the ass.

Soul and Maka stuff their three pairs of clothes and six novels (Maka, why) into two backpacks and then use the other two duffel bags to try and contain one giant bag of kitty litter, at least sixteen feather and bell toys (Maka, why), and one incredibly rowdy cat. It seems that since Blair's been in the duffel once before and knows what to expect, she wants nothing to do with it. The second Maka pulled it out of Soul's old closet, Blair had hidden herself in the impossibly small space between the bedframe and the floor. Soul can't even get his arm underneath the bed.

"Maybe we should just leave her here," Soul says, yanking his arm out from where he had it half-shoved under the box spring, rubbing his shoulder. "It would be due punishment for my mom for ruining this room."

Maka makes some quiet kissy noises near the bed, though Soul knows that it's not going to do anything, since Blair has never listened to Maka a day in her life and surely isn't going to start now.

She sighs. "It's because we want to leave so bad. She can sense discomfort, I swear. I think she thrives on it."

Soul can't argue with this statement, so he goes back to shoving his arm beneath the bed, like maybe doing it a fourth time will magically make the space bigger. He wants to get out of here, before he has to talk to his parents some more about how he dashed all their hopes for him or Wes can look at Maka like she's some kind of harlot. Breakfast had been supremely awkward. The knowing looks that Wes kept sliding Soul's way were incredibly unsettling, and while Maka tried her best to maintain her charming persona for the entire meal, it looked like she was having a hard time looking Wes in the eye. They didn't even do anything, but having Wes think they did was embarrassing enough to make for a quiet meal.

A knock at the door has Soul flinching violently, thinking of last night, so this time he extracts himself from beneath the bed, squares his shoulders, and steps out into the hallway, making sure to shut the door behind him. He looks his mother in the eye and manages to successfully lie that Maka is still getting dressed, praying that she gets Blair in the bag fast so they can go.

"Hey, Mom. How's it hanging?"

He says it mostly as a joke, but she doesn't smile. He sighs. "How are you today, Mother?" The "mother" is a little excessive, but she hasn't even spoken to him yet and he's already tired of this conversation.

"Leaving already?" She asks, eyebrow arched.

"Yeah, well, I gotta get home to work on a thing, and Maka has an appointment, so, you know…." He shrugs uncomfortably. "Gotta get back soon."

There's a thump from behind him that makes his mother glance curiously past his shoulder at his old bedroom door. Soul does his best to not turn around and look with her.

"Sooo—" he says a little louder, trying to block out the shuffling noises coming from Maka and Blair. "It was nice seeing you and Dad again. And Wes. Good family time. We'll have to do this again sometime," he says, and immediately regrets that last part because he really doesn't want that.

"In another four years?" she says, because she knows he misspoke and wants to exploit it.

He clears his throat uncomfortably. "It…probably won't be that long this time. There was just a lot going on, you know."

The judgment in her face is clear as day. "You know, you're always welcome to come back." Soul thinks of the tan walls in the room behind him and knows that's not true. "I know you think music isn't the right path for you, but with a little bit more focus and some extra guidance I know you could make it far. You're very talented, Soul." Soul would have taken the comment graciously if he was still sixteen and his mother had thought to say that after he had played for her, but now it's just salt in a wound that never fully healed.

"I've moved on, Mom. You know that. I have my own life now, my own house, a girlfriend—"

His mother's eyes flick to the door again. "Yes, this Macey of yours—"

"Maka, Mom. Her name is Maka. She's important to me, even if you don't think so. And she's made me happier than playing piano ever has." He says it with a hardness in his voice that doesn't leave room for argument. It feels like an incredibly brave thing to say, and Soul works hard to keep eye contact with his mother after saying it.

His mother's mouth opens, and Soul has no idea what she's going to say, but he doesn't get to find out because it's at that moment that Maka opens the door and slips out, smiling brightly at Soul and politely at his mother.

"Hi! Just wanted to tell you that we're all packed up," she says to him. Her hair is a little messy, no doubt from trying to wrestle Blair into sitting in a duffel bag, and Soul takes a moment to card his fingers through her bangs and smooth them out. He notices his mother staring, but doesn't stop.

"Good to hear," he says, looking only at Maka. "I'll go bring the car up front."

He heads back down the hall without another word, but smiles a little when he hears his mom begin to sneeze.

"I heard what you said to your mom," Maka says quietly as she puts the last of their bags in the backseat of her car.

Soul puts a seatbelt around one specific duffel bag, not responding to Maka's statement because he's not entirely sure what to say. Was it too bold of him? Did she think he was lying just because he was mad at his mom? Should he take it back?

She puts a hand on his, stopping him from closing the car door. He stops what he's doing to look down at her.

"I love you, too."

It's not that they've never said it before, but something about it feels different now, and Soul's heart does a funny little squeeze in his chest. He loves her so much.

He kisses her instead, because he's not great with words and this the best he can do, and he knows Maka knows that and loves him anyway. He doesn't deserve her.

His hands are still cupping her cheeks, mouth still moving against hers, when he hears someone clear their throat behind them. The break apart to see Wes looking at them slyly.

"Just came out to say goodbye, but it looks like I'm interrupting again, so—"

Maka clears her throat a little and turns to face Wes, holding her hand out. "It was nice to meet you, Wes."

He grabs her hand in his firm Evans grasp and shakes it. "Likewise. You'll have to come around again sometime. Maybe sans parents, next time."

Soul agrees wholeheartedly. He hugs Wes briefly, one of those one-armed man-hugs that lasts for two seconds before Wes claps him loudly on the shoulder. "Take care, Soul."

"See you around, Wes."

That's about as sentimental as they get, so Soul places a hand on Maka's elbow and leads her back to the car, intent on finally leaving this whole weekend behind him. Maka makes a little noise from the back of her throat as she shuts the back door, which Soul takes as agreement that she wants to leave, too. He goes over to the driver's side and climbs in, reaching across the console for Maka's keys when she makes that grunting noise again. Soul looks over at her, eyebrows raised, but Maka's not looking at him. She's not making that noise, either. Soul follows her wide-eyed gaze to the back seat, at the unzipped duffel bag still harnessed by the seatbelt.

"Is—is that a cat?" Soul hears from outside of the car.

Blair meows again and presses her paw up against the back window, staring directly at Wes.

Soul takes this as the perfect opportunity to put the car in drive. The cat's out of the bag, and they're finally, finally going home.

A/N: Not to be That Guy, but I'm gonna be that guy. Reviews are really awesome! They're the best part about posting your writing up on the internet! Please leave them! All the hard-working writers who post on this site would greatly appreciate the feedback. (Including meee.)