Though not on the official roster, Blackheart is allowed to listen in on the raiding channel, waiting outside the dungeon as a reserve. As a result, the guild is self-conscious and extra loud tonight, joking around between trash pulls in an unspoken attempt to show the warlock how cool raiding with Spartoi is. The effort is laughably transparent, but it still makes for a good night. Mostly.
"Eater, what's your chest size?" asks Reaper, and Soul promptly loses track of his DPS rotation, pausing mid-nacho-chew.
"Whaugh?" he garbles.
HungRung answers with, "A-cup," to which both text and voice chat swell with obligatory waves of heckling spam. "I mean, he wouldn't give me a test drive, but I have confidence in my craft."
After a bout of furious chewing, Soul replies, "I hate you. Why are you even popular?"
"I'm an A-cup and I hate both of you," says Reaper. "I meant in inches."
Soul resists an enormously stupid urge to touch his own chest out of curiosity. "Why the fuck do you need this right this second? Or ever?" And couldn't she have phrased that in literally any other way to spare what little peace he can get in the guild?
"I can tank this guy one-handed," she boasts, her desk reverberating with the usual keyboard mutilation. "So I can design cosplays at the same time."
Death isn't impressed. "Either pay attention, or learn to generate more threat one-handed, I don't care which. If we're not in Phase Three in the next twelve seconds, I am raid-kicking all of you."
"Urhg, fiiiine."
"Also," Soul says, "I would like to point out that if I asked you for your measurements, you would punch me through the internet."
Over Reaper's undignified squawking, BlackStar announces like refereeing a foul, "Double standards! Minus fifty DKP!"
"Half the people in this raid don't even know what DKP is," Reaper replies, sour. "Anyway, they were measurements for the plugsuit, okay? AX is coming up!"
Soul leans back in his chair and clamps a hand over his eyes with a groan. Nevermind that he still doesn't know what a plugsuit is because he's too afraid to Google it, but-
"The what?" says Rung on the edge of a laugh. "Does this have somethin' to do with that huge bag of dildos? Because if so, I-"
"What is it with this guild and dildos?" ShadowStag mumbles.
Sounding disappointed over not being able boot anyone out of the raid, Death drawls, "Phase Three positions."
"Yeah, get into position, Eater," says BlackStar.
The best way to confront garbage, Soul believes, is to set it on fire, but his resources are limited and there's a surprising lack of lava in Phase Three. Just as he's debating if he can find a way to kill a particular rogue without compromising the boss fight, his phone rings.
Hands preoccupied with keyboard and mouse, Soul sheds off his headphones with a practiced shoulder. It takes a long blink to process the almost-forgotten ringtone: the Nyan Cat song, painfully catchy jazz edition. He can't confidently say he's heard it between now and the day it was assigned to a contact.
Because Emmett Evans does not call people; he emails them from the one village in whatever country he's hiking through to update the family of his whereabouts for the past three weeks. He sends one-word text messages because he still has a flip phone and can't be bothered with T9. Soul doesn't even have a photo for him- when he scrambles for his phone and anxiously double-checks the caller ID, Dad's dino slippers are there, ironically posed like an instagram photo on the bottom-most stair of the clown house.
"Uh," he says to no one. Remembers he's on push-to-talk, today. Meanwhile, on his neck, Reaper chides people for not having watched Evangelion.
"Okay, but I see no one has disproved the dildo theory," replies Rung.
"If someone says dildo one more time, they're getting raid and guild kicked."
Soul slaps his hand on the talk key, shrugging a shoulder to get a side of the headphones closer to an ear. "Uh. Death."
"What."
"Raid kick me."
"What?"
"The password is 'dildo', broski."
"Are you okay?"
"I gotta get the ph-" In his rush, he can't finish his own sentence as lets the headphones fall back to his neck and anxiously answers the call. "Patriarch?" he asks, and there's a distant murmur of guild-amusement over his stupid parental nicknames because he was too slow to let go of the voice chat key.
"Morning, Son. Now listen, don't panic-"
Phone pressed so close to his cheek it may as well be grafted there, Soul says, "Dad, it's nine at night, you can't start with that and expect me not to panic."
Emmett sighs, the sound weakened by both distance and the background din of wherever the hell he is right now. "Worth a try. I just got a call. Therese was in an accident."
Soul blinks absently at his computer screen, watching his character be auto-ported outside of the dungeon after being kicked from the raid. Therese happens to be Mom's name, which sort-of makes this sudden collision of the game and real life impossible to process on the first try. "Um." He stands, backing away from the computer, but then realizes he's tethered by the headphones. Can not spare the thought process to take them off, so stands stock-still until he remembers how his mouth works. "I- w- Christ, is she okay? Where is she?"
"UMC, trauma center. I tried to call your brother, but no answer. Where is he?"
Fuck Wes, he's not the issue here! "But is she okay? What the hell is a trauma center? What does that mean," Soul demands, voice cracking on a discordant note.
"It means she's not dead," Dad says, succinct and commanding in a way that tranquilizes Soul's fright to more manageable levels. Then, wrapped in something softer: "One thing at a time, alright?"
His knees give a little wobble, and Soul returns to sitting in the chair, perched on the end while his legs immediately begin rattling the junk on his desk with brisk bouncing. "Y-yeah. Okay."
"Where is Wesley?"
"He's, uh-" Soul closes his eyes and glues a hand over them. "He's on some shoot in Belize? I think." The background noise on the line reaches a new levels of frenetically loud, his father speaking a language he could probably name if he wasn't T-minus-fifteen to hyperventilating into a paper bag.
Some beeps from foreign machinery. The roar of engines. Dad says, "I'll keep trying, then. You're in L.A. right now?"
"Yeah."
"You're the closest, so head out when you can."
Soul's hand flies from his face. Not fully aware of why, something has him seeing red and feeling like a cornered dog, and he snarls back, "It doesn't matter how close I am, I'm going!"
"Easy, I'm not implying anything. This is the situation."
"Sorry. Sorry, I just-" His scrambled brain tries to piece together a plan for The Situation. He needs his keys. No, he needs pants, then keys. His phone needs charging. Mom is alone. He needs his keys, why is he just sitting here?
"Take a breath, son."
He does. It burns down his throat yet seems to crystalize, frozen, in his lungs. He thinks, even if he's unsure of the nature of his parents' relationship, that he should be the one calming his father instead of the other way around. A new flavor of guilt sweeps through his bone marrow.
"I'm on standby, but I'll get there as soon as I can. I'll keep trying to get Wesley."
"Okay." Pants, keys, phone and powerbank, shoes, jacket. His bouncing legs quit. He feels marginally better knowing the algorithm, but he still sounds like a lost kid in the grocery store when he asks, "Where even are you, Dad?"
Another sigh, his father finally sounding shaken in the faintest way, and Soul immediately regrets thinking Emmett should be the panicked of the two of them. "Bangkok. Drive safe, okay? Keep me posted."
Time to run program. He gets back up. "Yeah. I will."
"Love you."
"Love you too," he says, and hangs up with a tremoring thumb. Stands in his room, the distant roar of Bangkok International somehow louder in his ears when it's gone and silent. Calls Wes despite the futility of it, because that still somehow outweighs not even trying in the first place. Gets voicemail.
He's adrift, a buoy with a severed anchor, the room tilting around him in tumultuous waves. He knows what he has to do- pants, keys, whatever, whatever, Mom's by herself and hurt and he's four fucking hours away- but the program keeps coming back with errors.
And then ReaperMan cuts through the raucous laughter of voice chat still hanging on his neck, which, until she speaks, he had forgotten utterly. Voice pitched for private binds, she asks, "Eater, are you still there?"
It takes a scattered moment for him to remember which key is set for only her. Leans over the desk to reach both it and the mic. "I'm here. Stuff... happened."
"Are you okay?"
Compared to whatever's happened to Mom, he can't convince himself that any of his issues are worth mentioning. But the waver in Dad's voice keeps looping in his head, stuck, because his father has always been the rock of the family and stones aren't meant to tremble.
The squeak of a chair as Reaper leans forward to anxiously ask, "Soul?"
"Um." His tongue is a lump of hot cotton. "My mom was in a w-wreck?" Hearing himself say it aloud brings the reality of it into a clarity he can grasp. He needs pants.
"Oh no!"
Pulling the headphones off his neck, he says, "She's at the hospital, so I really need to go."
"Shit! Sorry for keeping you," she says in his hands. And then, after he tosses the headphones on his desk and turns away, she screeches, "Wait! Waitwaitwait-"
He yanks out the plug for the headphones in the exact way he shouldn't. "What?"
"Is she here, in Vegas? Is there anything I can do?"
Soul, now somewhat irritated because he's finally found enough braincells to move his fucking legs, is more clipped than he means to be when he slaps his hand on the key and says, "University Medical, some trauma center, and no, I don't think there's anything you can… do. W-wait-" Looking at his phone, he realizes his game life and real life have been colliding for a long time, already. Finally, his brain makes its first useful process. "Actually, this is kind of ridiculous, but is your dad with Wes?"
\\
When it comes down to it, he'd always known, yet he'd never viewed long distance from his mother's perspective, or bothered to think of how she felt with an oft-absent husband and two grown sons leaving her with little except infrequent phone calls and a personal bank account for the clown collection that keeps her company.
And he could've stayed. His father and brother have travel-centric careers, but Soul works where the wifi is, for the most part. He hadn't needed to move, but he'd been an Adult, freshly-minted, eager to get the hell out of the nest and reaching so desperately for that formless concept of away-
Well, mission accomplished.
Dad had told him to breathe, so he focuses on that while the dotted lines on the pavement nearly blur together. Mutes all extraneous thought, his anxiety pressurized enough to seal him shut. He can only hear the sound of the bike as he urges it down the interstate, engine screaming the things he can't say.
\\
Mechanically eats an old gas station sandwich to retain function. Still has an hour to go, but rejects the idea of coffee given the nuke chilling under his ribcage, which would need only the slightest stimulated nudge to detonate.
Throws crinkled wrapper into parking lot trash can. Upon checking his phone, finds one text from ReaperMan:
[[Wes and Papa are flying back from Belize. Call when you can.]]
Doesn't particularly want to, but can on technicality.
Two rings. "You alive?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Wes and my Dad have a connection in Denver, but they are already on the way. Your dad should be boarding soon, connecting in Guangzhon and again in San Fran. He won't get here until late tomor- er, tonight."
Soul slowly mounts the bike, uncertain if he's hearing things properly. If he didn't know any better, he'd say that sounded a lot like his main tank spewing out flight itineraries for his family.
Reaper goes on to say, "Mr. Evans said your mom's out of surgery, and on the general trauma floor now."
"That's-" Alternating waves of relief and worry for Mom try their damndest to break the seal for a few seconds. He then hears himself blurt, "Wait, you talked to my dad?"
"You were driving!" she says, as if that explains anything. How had she even gotten his number? Had she just called him up and said 'Hi, I'm your younger son's friend from an online video game, what's the health status of your wife?'
All business, she demands, "Where are you?"
It's her game voice, and it's ludicrous that the familiarity of it holds him steady; he latches onto it. "'Bout an hour out."
"Okay. I'll let you know if anything else comes up."
"Thanks," he says, unable to drag out anything else because gratitude opens a door for other emotions he can't afford. Gazes at the bright-lit overhang sheltering the fuel pumps, and the moths kissing the lights up there feel vague to him, like a distant hologram of some place to which he is only partially connected. Useless but deliberate, Soul murmurs again, "Thanks."
She seems to know the precise thing he needs. "I'm not the main tank for nothing, Eater."
\\
On the last fumes of autopilot, he exchanges words with one of the men behind the front desk at UMC who, upon a two-second assessment of whatever undertaking Soul's face has attempted for public presentation, decides little in the way of personal identification is required and quickly provides a visitor's pass.
He also gives a detailed explanation of how to get to Therese's room, which Soul will promptly forget in under fifteen seconds. Still, Soul heads in the general direction the man had indicated, hoping to find some elevators and mumbling what he hopes is a coherent form of 'thanks'. This is when he nearly runs into someone coming out of the restrooms, his shoes making a ghastly screech across the floor as he dodges.
The screech is still echoing through the building as he meets mussed hair and skeleton pyjamas.
"What're you doing here?" he says too loud, a spectrum of banned emotions piling up his throat.
Reaper wears one in the morning the same way any normal person would, yet she's here anyway, wiping wet hands on her pants. "Do you really have to ask that," she replies, voice hoarse.
Yes. Well, he's pretty sure. He's also pretty sure she'd meant that rhetorically, but that's too many mental steps to climb right now. He's still stuck on the idea that his mom and Reaper are in the same building, unable to get past it for a couple of blinks. "...Yes?"
She sees The Situation when she looks up into his eyes. Ignoring the question, her expression becomes something soft and subtle as she asks, "Did they tell you which room?"
Short-term memory finally fires and he hears himself spew a number on the fourth floor. Watches dazedly as she pulls out her phone and zooms in on a map. Reaper considers the floorplan a moment and then reaches forward, chill fingers slipping underneath the sleeve of his jacket, gently taking his wrist. "Let's go," she says, leading him away.
Behind them, the man behind the desk calls, "Miss, for the last time-"
"I'M TAKING HIM TO THE RIGHT BUILDING," ReaperMan snarls, her voice shaking Soul's ribcage. "I'LL FUCKIN' BEHAVE."
Soul has questions, and if it were nearly any other crisis, he'd probably ask them. Reaper blows her bangs out of her face like relieving pressure from an angry valve. Her voice cracks when she grumbles, out of earshot, "They wouldn't tell me anything. I get why, but I'm still pissed." She pulls him around a corner, and then another, through doors and different-smelling hallways, and he mindlessly auto-follows until they've reached a scuffed-up elevator door. "It's after normal visiting hours, but I can take you most of the way."
They wait for the elevator to arrive, though Soul has no recollection of either of them having pressed the call button. "They did say general trauma is where patients go after all the life-threatening stuff is taken care of, so. Elsewise she'd still be in ICU or surgery," she says.
It's not 'everything's gonna be okay' or 'I'm sure she's fine', which is what he wants to hear, but he appreciates that she won't say anything she can't prove, and he wouldn't have really believed it, anyhow.
The doors open. She drops his wrist as they step into the elevator, but after they do the required dance to turn in place and face the door, she goes for his opposite wrist instead, her hand sliding down until their palms are together.
With the hum of the elevator pulling them skyward, a taut-lipped approximation of himself confronts him, his reflection in the buffed metal doors warped and sickly pale. He then realizes that Reaper is trying to still his trembling fingers - that he's trembling at all. It's clear to him now just how alone he'd been since the moment he hung up with his dad, four hours of teeth-grinding anxiety crammed into the weakest parts of his spine to fester. And the more Maka entwines their fingers, the more everything he's bottled is drawn out like poison from a bite.
Every worst-case scenario arrives, written on the face of the elevator reflection: Hollywood renditions of unrecognizable shapes beneath sterilized hospital sheets, gauze and tubes and beeping, Mom having no voice to tell him what he already knows. This is what he does, the modus operandi of his heart, but he can't hold it back, because the warmth of another person - maybe, specifically, this one- is the exact curse to make it overflow.
He resents her slow-motion shattering of what composure he has, but now that she's here, he doesn't want to go without her to a generic room with his last name taped to a door. He may dissipate if she lets go; float away to nebulously scream into the terror of space.
The elevator opens and Reaper leads him to a set of double doors she won't go through. "It's not far from here," she says. He's going to throw up, he's going to break- "Call me if you need anything, okay?" Her hand slides out of his, gone.
He's weightless, and when the moment he'd been convinced he would detonate comes, a small, stabling hand on his back pushes him through the doors. And then it's just him, the mere second son, folding straw wrappers and easily breaking into a run because he's always been the closest one.
\\
The Tesla saved her life. She's banged up, doped up, bruised and burned, but Soul is assured by people whose names and medical positions he can't keep straight that she will have a full recovery in time. The worst of her injuries are a jacked-up leg and an angry seat-belt burn across her chest.
Still, until she can tell him all this directly, something childlike and rattled under his skin keeps him awake for several hours, listening to the digital beating of Mom's monitored heart. His mind circles through haphazard plans to stay in Vegas to help her at home; he should never have left in the first place-
Wes wakes him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Oh," Soul croaks, lifting his face half an inch before freezing in place. He has no recollection of falling asleep, and his forearm is numb after being the pillow for his face at the edge of Therese's bed. Mom's hand weighs his head down, fingers in his hair.
Frowning, he slides away, catching her hand and gingerly laying it on the bed. He hadn't heard her wake up at all.
"When'd you get here?" he asks, sitting up and wincing as his entire spine complains. He takes in the Wes's level of dishevelment: wrinkled dress shirt with damp shoulders, hair limp and soggy.
His brother smiles something that is both jetlagged and uncharacteristically self-deprecating. "Just got here. Sorry I took so long." He takes care to sit in a spare chair without making its legs squeal on the floor. "I can take over for a bit."
"No, I-" Soul pauses, brain startlingly empty. Looking over his shoulder for a clock and finding none, he discovers he has no clue what time it is, his body fully incapable of keeping track of it. He could've been asleep for five minutes or five years. "What time is it?"
His brother buffs the face of an Apple watch. "Quarter to nine. Look, I had a criminal amount of espresso on the way here. Mom'll need clothes and stuff, so go and get some sleep and come back fresh."
The child voice in him protests a number of things (he was here first; he still hasn't heard Mom talk yet; the thought of the empty mansion right now makes his guts twist up), but Wes is his older brother and Soul is, evidently, in such a state of tiredness that deferring to older brothers is both reflexive and comforting - like letting a current tow him down a calm river.
His legs are pillars of lead when he stands. Takes one step to the door, but after a second thought, reroutes to the corner of the room, retrieving a blanket the nurse had brought in for him. Pushes this into his brother's arms.
\\
Soul could have been abducted, turned about thirty times, and placed in any unknown building in the world and be just as lost as he is now. He doesn't remember any of these hallways, and kind of half-expects Reaper to simply appear from a random door to save him.
Finding the front desk is more a feat of coincidence than any kind of logic. Outside the main doors, he's met with dreary, low rain clouds, the sky so uniformly grey it could pass as any hour between dawn and twilight.
Rain pelts the hospital entrance awning. Riding the motorcycle in the rain is a concept that makes him want to curl up on the nearest bench until he becomes zeroes and ones.
People bustle around, hurrying out of the rain to the safety of the awning and through the doors behind him. This constant movement of people trotting and scurrying about is probably why he notices the only still figure on the sidewalk, leaning over in the rain to speak to her father through the passenger window of a checkered cab. She stands; the cab exits the puddle-splattered parking lot stage left. She jogs over to the awning, noticing Soul only after she pushes her wet bangs over her forehead.
"Eater," she blurts, then glances at her soaked bone-pyjamas. Makes a resigned sigh. "How is she?"
Soul distantly wonders if his wanting her to appear comes with a price; if some cosmic fee will be charged in return for whatever warped universe this is, created at his whim. "She's sleeping. Doctor said she'll recover fine."
A tired, but genuine smile. "Oh good."
Rather helplessly, he asks, "Have you been here this whole time?"
"No, no." Reaper shakes her head, her hands coming up to rub her face. "I went home and fed the cat, then went to the airport and waited for Papa and Wes, since their cars are in L.A."
"Oh," he says, in awe of the things she's thought of. What has he thought of in the past twelve hours other than worst-case scenarios he can do nothing about? How and why is she doing any of this?
She looks over her shoulder, in the direction the cab had gone. "Papa had to go back to the air force base, so it's just me again."
This is the part where he's supposed to thank her. He managed it before- which hadn't been that long ago yet already feels like a fever dream- but right now any kind of verbal gratitude sounds so shallow in his head. Two words wouldn't do anything to repay what she's done.
Giving wet people things is his only skill today. He shrugs out of his jacket and flops it around her shoulders. Reaper clutches at it in surprise, hunching over to keep it from sliding off.
"Headed home?" he asks before she can say anything.
"Um." He's subjected to a brief, cautious glance before she shrugs. "Are you?"
Soul nods. "Er, no. The one here. Clown house." He rubs the side of his face, the skin feeling rubbery and disconnected. "Mom needs clothes and Wes told me to sleep, I guess. Just trying to make myself drive in the rain."
He already knows what she's going to say, and immediately feels bad about it because he hadn't been fishing for even more of her help. "I'll drive you," she says.
"Reaper-"
"One accident is enough," she cuts in, voice firm. There's a wild light in her eyes when she glares at him, however brief. "You're exhausted."
He remembers why he's here in the first place. "...I'm fine." He's not.
"Eater, even if you could hide it, which you can't, we talk in voice chat every day. I can tell."
If that's the case, he can too; he knows every note of her voice. It's been playing in his ears for months, and Soul can tell when she's muffling how she really feels.
And she's tired. She's worried about him and his family. She's already running out in the rain, hiding under his jacket, and his mouth hadn't opened to stop her.
\\
On the seat is a battle-worn paperback of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man. Its faded blue cover is held together with two different types of tape. She moves it out of the way and makes to fling it to the back of the station wagon like he's seen her do with other things, but she thinks better of it at the last second, gently placing it on the floorboard behind Soul's seat.
The steady pace of the windshield wipers tries to tempt him to sleep, but he has to be Reaper's GPS to the house, and his unshakable need to check his text messages for anything from Wes easily trumps his exhaustion.
Apart from 'turn here' and 'take this exit', nothing is spoken between them, and soon he's getting out of the car again, the clouds spitting on him as he thumbs in the code at the garage door keypad. As the door rolls up, he's faced with the unexpected void where Mom's car is supposed to be. Soul walks across that vacant space and climbs the stairs to the kitchen entry door, a surge of something close to overwhelming him.
He looks back at Reaper, still parked outside the garage, her unsurety behind the windshield refreshed by intermittent wipers. Soul doesn't know if he should invite her inside- if she even wants to stay- but he still hasn't thanked her, and it's awkward standing here staring at her headlights. He waves for her to pull in.
She cuts the engine and gets out of the station wagon, though she doesn't shut the door and instead sort-of hovers next to it: a soaked main tank in skeleton pyjamas and his jacket, trying to gauge where she is allowed to be.
Soul means to tell her that he doesn't know when he's going back, and he can call a cab if she wants to go home and sleep because she's earned it- she's a damn champion- but when he takes a breath in to speak, he can just imagine that empty void in the garage after she leaves, and he ends up saying, "You wanna take a nap?"
Reaper takes a long moment to process that. In the silence, Soul realizes how ridiculous that sounded, and backtracks to add a hasty, "Whatever you wanna do. I can always call a-"
"Yes," she says. "Please. I mean, unless you want time to yourself."
He thinks time to himself is the last thing he needs.
\\
By the power of tunnel-vision focus, he finds towels and some of his mother's (thankfully not risque) clothes, and even manages to deliver these items to Reaper without catastrophe. In fact, it's not until she's gone upstairs to change and he's opening the kitchen cupboard to get a harmless, red-and-white striped glass that the clowns finally get to him.
Evidence of Therese Evans pervades every inch of this house, each one of the dolls or fridge magnets or circus-striped rugs something his mother had gone out of her way to choose, specifically, and the fleeting thought of having narrowly missed the responsibility of removing it all, packing each clown one by one, bubble-wrapping porcelain hands and faces to seal away in a dark box like a cardboard coffin and leave behind 4200 square feet of nothing, chews through him so swiftly that he's forced to crouch by the kitchen counter, shaking as he listens to the ice machine indifferently fill up with water.
How is it now, when all is calm, that emotion sets in? Soul doesn't make a sound, but Reaper was bound to come and find him eventually. Her hand is chilled from the rain and brisk air-conditioning, her touch seeping through his shirt.
The thing about always being prepared for the worst is not so much the brace for impact, but the visualization of what the heart fears most. And it doesn't leave. Not gracefully. Even if the worst-case rarely occurs, it's the letting go of that fear that's frightening. It brings forward what lurks all along, uproots the depths of love, and forces Soul to reacquaint with himself, his lowest points, and how thoroughly entangled these are with the things he cares about.
"You were really worried," Reaper says, her cool hand rubbing between his shoulders for a moment before she gently nudges him away from the counter. She guides him to stand. "But you kept it in. So you could support her, right?"
Right. He needed to be here. And he needed to not be... like this.
He is desperate to bottle it back up. But Reaper turns him to face her, because he's malleable as a mannequin at her touch, and it's this same touch that prevents him from shoving all his feelings away.
Her hand is on the back of his neck, pulling him down until his face is hidden against her shoulder. "You were worried," she says again, justifying the tremors in his body. She smells like the detergent his parents have used his whole life. "It was scary, wasn't it."
Soul hums in broken affirmation as Maka takes the bomb in the cage of his ribs and detonates it, carefully, in her embrace.
\\
Fresh out of a much-needed shower, Soul's droopy, damp hair sticks to his face. It's cool on his cheeks, which are still patchy and flushed from his ill-timed cathartic breakdown. Also there's the added benefit of hiding his embarrassment when he pokes his head around the doorway to the guest room.
Reaper is testing one of the dozens of spare charging cables to see if it fits her phone. "I'll be downstairs if you need anything. Raid the fridge if you get hungry," he says, and doesn't look to see if she responds, fleeing down the stairs before she can reply.
He's been awake for over twenty-four hours, which feels a lot different in the brain now than, say, staying up too late for an expansion pack release does. He can't tell if he's dizzy, nauseous, hungry, or on any measurable physical plane to begin with. Soul dissolves into the forbidden couch, feeling as though he has three hundred things he should be doing right now but unable to focus long enough to be certain what any of those things are.
Settles for turning on his phone, scrolling through unread text messages to see if Wes or Dad have sent anything. They haven't.
He watches the home screen and knows this is the time to sleep, to recharge and be useful again tomorrow (today?), but he needs to take a toothbrush to the sector of the brain that keeps painting Mom's bruises and IV's in the blacks of his eyelids. Soul rolls to the side, couch groaning. Wonders when Mom will wake up; what her first words to him will be.
Outside, the grayscale of drizzle-filtered daylight seems to have stilled the turning of the Earth, time paused in a useless, repeating moment when he can only be conscious and imagining his phone has vibrated when it really hasn't.
He can't measure the length of time he's trapped in this stillness, but one moment he's staring at the draining battery of his phone, and the next ReaperMan is sliding it out of his numb fingers, turning off the screen.
"Wha-" he says, and she takes his hand and yanks him forcefully off the couch. "Did I keep you up?"
Leading him up the stairs, the risers creaking under their feet, she says, "Yes," and tugs him into the guest room.
At the rate his brain is functioning right now, he needs at least three weeks to be able to parse what's going on. Soul balks, auto-follow not cooperating. "Um, sorry, I…" Reaper tugs him to the bed. He digs in his heels. "Why are- Maka," he says, exasperated.
After hearing her name, the look she hurls over her shoulder is bare and straightforward, and her voice is a physical thing that fills the ache in his ears. "Think of it as compensation for keeping me awake." And she points at the bed like demanding a dog return to his kennel.
He's too tired for this. He sighs. "At least give me my phone back," he says, slipping out of her grasp to pour himself face-first into the guest bed.
"No," she says, silent Fido on the end. "I'll wake you up if it rings."
Finally realizing what she's doing, Soul pushes himself upright to argue, feeling stupid, ashamed, and irritated. But he finds Reaper unplugging her phone from the charging cable, substituting it with his. Places her phone next to it, on the nightstand. Turns back to the bed.
"Roll over," she says.
"I'm not a dog," he snaps back.
"Ah…" Reaper looks away, and fiddles with the hem of her borrowed shirt that is, thankfully, sans clown stripes. "Sorry. T-then scoot over, at least."
Perhaps he hadn't understood her intent after all. "Oh." Soul moves closer to the wall, the whole situation a level of surreal that forces his compliance because he can't think of any other options. Maka settles on her back, carefully moving her hair from under her neck before resting her head on the pillow next to him.
At a loss, he lies down too. "Didn't mean to bite your head off," he mumbles, staring at the ceiling.
Reaper weaves her fingers together across her stomach. "I was ordering you around again," she says with a shrug. "I'm bad at saying things. I just want you to rest."
"No," Soul groans, never feeling less cool in his life. "I get it. Sorry. I'm… You don't need to baby me like this. You helped us a lot already, and you didn't have to."
Her feet rub together as she replies, "You helped me with my mom, so. I wanted to."
"But I didn't?" he says, turning his head to her, confused. "That wasn't exactly -" He presses his fingertips into his forehead. "Ugh, I don't know what I'm tryin' to say." What she's done - been doing - makes a couple of emails and a video attachment chump change. That hadn't been something he'd done in a crisis.
She's just smiling as he struggles to form a complete sentence. She says, "Even if you hadn't, I would still be here, though."
"Why?" That makes even less sense!
"Why do you keep asking that?" Reaper unlaces her fingers and rolls over to face him, and he's quickly trapped in a staredown. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"Because? I didn't expect - I mean, I'm glad. That you're here," he says, voice shrinking down to a murmur. Glad feels too insincere of a word, but that's all he has right now. "I'm glad you stayed. But I'm just some guy from the internet, you know?"
"But," she starts, then leans back a bit, her gaze darting away. Reaper's expression goes porcelain-faced, defaulting to neutral mask with a smattering of freckles. The only part of her that moves is her hand twisting up in the hem of her shirt, again. Cautiously, she asks, "Am I some girl from the internet to you?"
Now he's done it. "No," he says, turning to face her, too, but now he feels like an ass and he's blushing on top of it. The back of his hand comes up to shield his stupid face. "No, that's not what I meant at all." He's holding on to so many feelings for her, but conversely she's moving away and he isn't close enough to her to know where, and so he hadn't thought he was eligible for this kind of kindness. "You - you're a lot more than that."
He feels her shift, the bed moving beneath him, and his throat becomes tight.
Maka says, "It's the same for me. And like, people want to help people they care about, whether it's expected or not." The bed shifts a little more, and her voice becomes fainter. "And you're not just some internet rando to me… I think you're probably my best friend."
Stunned, Soul peeks around his hand and finds her curled up, trying to hide beneath her hair, though the fringe doesn't do anything for the deep red her ears have become.
He reaches over. Touches the edge of her wrist with his, and rests here, wishing he could convey how much her words salve something in him he'd been convincing himself wasn't a wound. "Me too," he says. "You're my best friend too."
"Right?" Maka looks up with a bashful kind of smile. She doesn't move her hand away. "So go the fuck to sleep. Let me stand guard or whatever."
Her face is close to his. He's never been more grateful to know her; to have her know he exists and want to keep it that way. "Can you really guard anything while taking a nap?"
"Shut up, Eater."
Soul scoffs, closing his eyes. "Yes, tanktress," he softly replies, clinging to the patch of warmth where they are connected. "Thank you."
\\
She doesn't wake him when his phone starts ringing. In fact, she hardly budges, and Soul must precariously reach over her to grab it off the nightstand. Groggy and disoriented, he's soon caught resting his weight on a hand, leaning above her because the charging cable is too damn short.
It's Wes calling: Natalia Kills chanting one's shirt, shoes, jeans, all off. Shirt. Shoes. Jeans.
Beneath him, Maka finally wakes up to all of this, sputtering to life like a neglected lawnmower. "Hgh, mwhat? Is that noISE?" Her eyes slowly focus on him and his incriminating proximity. She squeaks, sinking into the mattress. "Hhhhhiiii?"
We ain't even at the beach. Even at the beach.
"Phone," he croaks, morning voice reminiscent of an eight-hundred year-old wizard. He has nowhere to go, so settles for clearing his throat and swiping the phone icon to answer. "Uh," he says, waiting on the rest of English to buffer, "First-born. How's stuff."
"Stuff is ...fine? Little brother," Wes replies. "Were you asleep? Figured you'd be pacing and pulling your hair out."
Just how bad is he at taking care of himself? "M'not awake enough to snark," he complains. Then he flinches, startled when Maka reaches up to unplug the charging cable. Damn it, he isn't mentally prepared to see her first thing out of unconsciousness - she's cute and her hair is criminally funny. "T-thanks," he manages to say without laughing, leaning back out of her space.
"How's your mom?" she asks, rubbing her eyes.
In his other ear, Wes says, "Who was that?"
Ah, fuck. His crush? Main tank? Best friend? "Einstein," he says, leaning on the wall with a sigh. He folds his legs, tucking his frozen feet under him and grabbing the blanket for good measure. "How's Mom?"
"Your snark is working just fine. Mom's like you'd expect -" Wes takes a moment for his customary, drama-queen princess yawn. "She's high as balls and refuses to touch hospital food. That's why I'm calling. She wants Chipotle," he says, pronouncing the name 'chi-poddel', which he does just to annoy Mom.
Maka pushes herself to sit upright, face screwed with disgust. "What is it with you guys and cheap fake-mexican food?" she asks, picking up Wes's end of the conversation. "Did he just say chipoddel?"
"Tell Maka she's an angel and you don't deserve her."
This is, obviously, an Older Brother Attempt at making him splutter - which nearly works - but Maka is right there, a foul-mouthed, violent death knight tank preening over being called an angel by a facetious and chaotic evil supermodel.
"No one deserves me," she says, blushing with her Einstein hair.
Soul grumbles, leaning to the side and sliding down the wall to flop back to the bed. "Can I talk to Mom now," he says, thoroughly annoyed with himself.
There's a loud shuffling on the other end of the line, followed by Therese Evans's indignant sniff: a quiet, comedic noise that Soul hadn't known he knew or associated with her. "They thought you were my husband," she says, tone disapproving for all of four words before her grin becomes audible. "Then they thought Wesley was."
"Oh my god, Mom."
"You frown in your sleep, honey. I have some wrinkle cream for you. Oh, that reminds me, there aren't very many, but I need the panties that aren't t-backs, if you would, please."
"MOM." Maka looks like she's close to throwing herself off the bed so she can literally 'rofl' across the circus rug. Rubbing his forehead wrinkles, Soul says, "I guess you're feeling alright."
Therese does that sniff again. "No, Soul, I am starving. It's 2017 and hospitals still haven't heard of carnitas."
Between Maka's silent laughter shaking the bed, and Mom as opinionated as ever, it feels as if his lungs finally, finally allow him to take a full breath. "Panties and a burrito bowl. Anything else, Matriarch?" he asks, a smile inching across his face. Maka puts her head in her hands.
"Hmm, and my laptop. You'll have to help me buy a new Tesla. With the smarts."
"The ...smarts?"
"Yes, you know. All the programs? And smarts. The last one you got saved me, so you ought to pick it again."
\\
Because she had re-equipped the skeleton pyjamas (and his jacket, just to feel less conspicuous), Maka had decided to make the final trip home after she drops him back off at the hospital. "But the chips and guac were pretty good, I guess," she says as he gets out of the car.
He juggles the bags of Mom's clothes and Chipotle. "Told you." Leaning down, he looks back into the station wagon. "Hey. Thank you- really."
She shrugs, turtle-like, his jacket engulfing her. "You're welcome," she says, and the shy smile she has is a secretive, quiet thing, but he knows the secret. He can't stop himself from mirroring it back- not that he tries.
The moment is interrupted when she exclaims, "Oh!" Her hands slap to her shoulders. "Your coat! Lemme give it back."
"Nah, don't worry about it," he replies, and she pauses while reaching for her seat belt buckle. "I'll be in town for awhile. Wanna hit up Denny's or something later?"
He doesn't think he's imagining the way her face brightens. "Yeah! Just t- oh, wait." She frowns, dropping her chin down and attempting to pitch her voice as low as his, which doesn't work at all. "Just text me. I'll show up."
"O-okay?"
She lifts her chin back up. "I wanted to try saying it," she says, and openly snorts at his face. "You do it to me all the time. Mr. 'Cool Guy'."
"Pff-" Soul can't stop the laugh, even as his face becomes the embarrassed surface of the sun. "I have no idea what you're talkin' about," he says, backing up. "BYE."
"BYE!" she yells back, and he can hear her cackling even after he shuts the door. He sees her wave as she leaves the lot.
The rain had stopped at some point, Nevada's heat creating a steamy, humid evening, but even the laden-armed walk to the front doors isn't so bad. He could still use a week's worth of sleep, but he feels like he has full agency of his emotions for once, which is a vast improvement over this morning.
In the elevator, he shifts all the bags onto one arm, finally checking his unread texts. Most are from Blake, which are surprisingly thoughtful, all things considered, and Soul is even more surprised to see a few from other guildies, asking how he's doing and if everything's okay.
There's even one from ShadowStag: [[I rolled tank spec to cover for Reaper. Blackheart took your spot and did very well. Take all the time you need. But remember: pinatas.]] followed by a modest two butcher knife emoji.
Soul steps out of the elevator and stops in the hallway. He'd expected some one-off texts giving him generic hell for ditching the raid, but not actual support from everyone.
Maybe he's not just some guy from the internet to them, either.
Still trying to wrap his head around the concept, he slips the phone back in his pocket and opens the door to Mom's room. Inside, he's startled to see not only Dad, but also Maka's dad, the latter returned from the air force base and bowing deeply before Emmett and Therese. He begs, "Please allow me to court your son!"
This is when Mom and Dad, in synchronized shock, turn to look at Soul.
"Wh- no, not me," he yelps, voice cracking. He points angrily at Wes, who is turning purple in the corner in an attempt to hold in his giggling. "THE OTHER ONE."
special thanks to my huge beta crew for sticking with me this long. you guys keep me alive.