Everything is upside down.
Maka's head hangs off the side of her bed, her left wrist directly in front of her face. Her line of vision shifts between her Sentence and the pile of books across the room from her.
She'd gotten a total of 12 books last week at the bookstore with Soul, and she had only bought 3 of them. He had insisted on buying her any book that she even remotely mentioned looked good, and she'd left with quadruple what she had originally thought she'd leave with.
They had gone from the bookstore to some of the other shops downtown, talking about different things and learning bits of information about each other through the small talk. She didn't think she'd ever laughed as much she had then - being out with Soul had almost been as natural as breathing.
Her cheeks grow warm, and she isn't sure whether it's from the blood rushing to her head or the thought of Soul.
She sighs and pulls herself up to sit cross-legged instead, facing her window. She touches her cheeks, a small smile on her lips.
She wonders if this is what having a soulmate is supposed to feel like.
If it is, Maka thinks that she might not mind it very much.
Everything is upside down.
Soul nearly drops his keys as he walks into his apartment, his mouth hanging open as he absorbs the fact that every piece of furniture in his apartment is literally flipped upside down.
He stares, gawking at the scene in front of him for at least a minute. He's so confused; he had just left for 30 minutes to run down the street and grab some milk?
He hurries to the fridge and places the milk inside, but not before noting that the contents of the fridge are upside down, too.
Which would mean….
Oh no.
He leaves the fridge door open in a haste to see if his hunch is right… and it is.
He stands in the doorway of his room, hands on the top of his head, speechless.
Everything is upside down. His bed, his dresser, even his bookshelf. All of it.
A note sits on the top of his flipped mattress. He makes his way across his room in two strides, snatching the paper and skimming over the sloppy message written on it.
He pulls out his phone, and calls the first person he can think of.
"He what?" Maka shoots up from her place on the bed, striding to her dresser and pulling out a pair of socks, pulling them on and reaching for her boots. "Soul, slow down. You're not making any sense."
"He flipped my entire apartment upside down, Maka! Everything!" His voice is a mixture of laughter and panic. She can't tell which is more prominent.
"Who?" she asks, phone jammed between her ear and her shoulder as she pulls her boots on.
"Black-Star! He left a note," there's a crinkling on the other end of the line. She assumes it was him straightening out the note to read. "It says 'Bwa-ha-ha. Dear Soul, think of this as a good-bye present. Love, the great Black-Star'."
She hears him groan and re-crumble the note, and she stifles a laugh.
"Makaaaaa," there's a desperation in his voice that makes her laughter harder to hide. "Please help."
She smiles, shrugging on her coat. "Give me 5 minutes."
She can hear his smile through his words. "Okay, I'll see you then."
When Maka makes it to his apartment Soul is on the phone, arguing with the person responsible for his apartment's re-arrangement. He opens the door for her, nodding for her to come inside, mid-sentence as she skirts her way around him.
"I don't give a shit what your plans were today, Black-Star! Get over here and help Maka and I put the apartment back, now." He sees Maka stifle a laugh next to him, and his heart leaps into his throat.
But he plays it cool, determined to get someone with more muscle strength down here. There's no way he and Maka can fix this whole place themselves.
"Bwahaha! Yeah right, Soul! Just look at the gift your God has given you. Now you have the whole place to yourselves, just you and Maka. This is working out better than I'd hoped!"
Soul can feel his face heat up, and he turns away from Maka before she can see. He pulls the phone closer to his ear, hissing.
"Will you shut up? Just come down here and help. We can't do this oursel-" he can hear Black-Star talking to someone in the background, and his eyes narrow. "Is that Tsubaki? Put her on the line."
"Wh-what? No way dude! Nuh uh it's just me here Tsubaki's- hey! Hey! Give that back!" Soul gives himself a triumphant smirk as Black-Star's voice fades on the other end of the line, and a much nicer voice takes over.
"Hi Soul! It's Tsubaki. What's up?"
Soul's smirk grows as he explains the situation. Tsubaki sighs once he finishes.
"We'll be over in 20 minutes."
He hangs up, turning to face Maka, chest puffed out. "I won. They're on their way over."
"Yeah, sure," she saunters to the couch, flipping it over by herself. Soul watches, unmoving, trying not to look shocked at how easy the action was for her. "But you had to go to Tsubaki in order to get him here at all. Does that really count as a win?"
She sits down, smirking up at him. His eyebrows furrow as he takes a seat next to her.
"Uh, yeah, it totally does. Like you could do a better job at it."
"I could. Just you wait until they get here. I'll handle it no problem. Besides, this place looks like it could use some cleaning anyway. So we might as well take care of that while we're at it."
Soul sighs loudly, letting his head drop back onto the couch cushion. She's been in his apartment for 3 minutes and is already criticizing it.
"You have a habit of doing that, don't you?" He asks, head still leaning back. He looks to his left out of the corners of his eyes, seeing her stiffen at his question.
"Doing what?"
He pulls himself up to face her. "Controlling things. Criticizing things. You know, making sure you're the one in charge."
Her mouth falls open and she stares at him, her eyebrows furrowing just as his had earlier.
"I do not."
"I think you do." He pokes her forehead, and she smacks his hand away. He lets it drop, letting out a huff of air meant as a laugh. She smiles despite herself, picking his arm back up from where it lay on the couch.
His breath catches in his throat as she takes his left wrist, turning it upward so his Sentence faces the ceiling. She runs her fingers along the letters softly, her smile faltering a bit as she gets to the end. She sighs, tilting her head up to look at him. Her eyes are glossed with concern, and her eyebrows are together again - only this time, they're drawn with worry.
"Do you… hate it?"
The question takes Soul by surprise, and he stares at her for a moment longer than he wants to.
"No."
It come out slowly, though he doesn't want it to. His hesitation is more due to the fact that he isn't sure which she's referring to: his Sentence, or their pairing in general. The way she asked makes it seem like a combination of the two.
She drops her gaze to somewhere at his feet, seeming to stare at imaginary words that have settled there in big, block letters. They seem to upset her.
"You... Hesitated."
He opens his mouth to explain himself, but sighs instead. It takes him a moment to speak.
"I don't hate it. I'm just… worried. That you hate it."
Her eyes flicker quickly to her wrist, and she pulls her bottom lip in between her teeth. She closes her eyes, and it feels like hours before she opens them again.
"You know what? I do hate it."
Soul feels something tighten in his chest, can feel the words Maka had said constrict themselves around his lungs. He feels them work their way through his lungs into his stomach, where they sit, weighing him down nervously.
"I really hate that this was the Sentence I got stuck with. I mean, there has to be a million possibilities that could have been better than this."
Soul winces as she continues.
"But you know what? I do like that it was your Sentence I got."
He looks up to find Maka smiling at his hands, and his chest tightens again. This time, it isn't from worry.
"Yeah. I think the words are terrible, but the person who said them is pretty cool." Maka looks up at him, and Soul feels as though he can fly right then and there.
Everything is upside down right now.
But he's pretty sure that he and Maka can straighten everything out together.