Freefall
by. Poisoned Scarlet
9a
Soul wondered if all those crimes he had committed in his adolescence were finally catching up to him, as he stared at the voluptuous woman standing in his living room in a pair of booty shorts and a tight tank top; in black dollies with her hair tied into a side-pony tail.
Because he was sure that Blair would never, ever, meet Maka again after their last less-than-noteworthy encounter.
And he was also very sure he had never breathed a word about Maka's address...
He hated how Nygus kept tabs on him, even after so many years.
"Oh! She's so adorable!" Blair squealed, holding the small cat, who ironically also went by the same name as her, in her arms. She snuggled against it, giggling when the cat mewed and purred. "I bet I'd look just like this if I was born a kitty! Don't you think so, Soul?"
"Blair, what the hell are you doing here?" Soul demanded, watching his friend prance around the apartment with the cat held in her arms. Maka stood by the kitchen archway with a spoon in her hand, smiling at Blair's excitement over her household pet.
"She just arrived, actually." Maka informed him. "She said she wanted to talk to you about something."
"Well, then, talk. Then get the hell out."
"Soul!" Maka chided but he ignored her.
"I just wanted to see what my little Soul was up to, that's all! No need to be mean!" Blair pouted, the cat pressed close to her chest. At his dark look, she cut to the chase: "Word on the street is you moved in with your honey. Blair just wanted to see if it was true!"
"Don't do that, it bugs me." Soul ground out, stalling. He stole a look at Maka and found her looking at Blair; pointedly ignoring him. His gut knotted up at the thought of how he was going to circumvent this problem without causing too much damage to their shaky relationship.
They hadn't spoken of what, exactly, they were.
He put it off and, unbeknownst to him, Maka had done the same.
"Do what?" She asked, innocently. "Blair didn't do anything."
"That! Quit doing that!"
"I think he means referring to yourself in the third person." Maka pipped, earning a look of reproach from Soul and a giggle from Blair.
"Blair knows." Blair laughed when Soul breathed in to compose himself. "So it is true? You moved in with your girlfriend—!" She began to sing before she was rudely interrupted.
"She—she's not my girlfriend!" Soul blurted, thoughtlessly. Maka had turned around before he said it, having known what was coming from a mile away. The room had become strained; silent. "She needed a roommate to help pay for the rent and I decided to help her out. That's all..." He mumbled, averting his eyes from hers.
Blair stared at him intently from over the ears of the purring cat, the only sound in the room.
Soul saw suspicion mixed with sympathy.
It made his fists clench.
"Oh. Okay. I just wanted to see if it was true or not. I guess not, since you're just friends." The word was soaked with sarcasm. Soul narrowed his eyes dangerously. "Anyway, Blair will help Maka in the kitchen! She promised she would!" And she bounced to where the girl was without a second glance at him, a startled yelp telling Soul that Blair had caught her unawares.
And Soul stood in the middle of the living room, digesting what had just happened.
He ran his hand through his hair.
Shit.
What had he just done? Hadn't he been the one who asked her to give him a chance because living with the regret of what could have been would be worse than never having given it a chance at all?
Because he did catch her hurt eyes before she turned away.
He did notice how she shut herself up, frosted her expression, directly after.
And what unnerved him the most was it had been as if she had been expecting him to say those very words.
Soul fell back on the couch, his arm slung over his eyes. He could feel a headache begin to prick behind his eyes and he sunk deeper into his seat at the sound of pots and pans clanking; a sure sign that Maka was just a few feet away, likely reeling from what he had just said, and Blair's overly chipper attitude was not helping.
"Fuck."
He really needed to expand his vocabulary because that word barely encompassed the magnitude of his screw up.
9b
In his opinion, Blair had purposely taken her sweet time leaving. He couldn't count how many times he had simply wanted to grab her by the arm, toss her out, and slam the door in her face. But he had restrained himself, opting to surf through the channels on TV as if nothing was amiss. He answered curtly when Blair came back to initiate idle talk; he pretended he didn't notice that Maka never once came out of the kitchen; and he wisely circumvented questions and hints that Blair would sprinkle in her conversations in an effort to squeeze the truth out of him.
Dinner was terrible.
Blair sat between them, somewhat diminishing the tension, but when he finished nothing changed. Maka didn't look at him and Blair still held that disappointed, annoyed, glimmer in her golden eyes.
And he went back to browsing for something good on the television even though he was attentive to Maka and Blair's hushed conversation.
But the instant Blair left – after leaning down, shoving cleavage in his face, giving him a kiss on the cheek which he tried to avoid at all costs but failed – he turned off the television and dared to venture into the kitchen, where he could still hear Maka soap up the dirty dishes.
"Maka?"
She stiffened but continued in her task. "What?"
He cringed. Clipped tone. He recognized that tone as one his brother would use whenever he skipped his piano lessons. "Uh, about what I said earlier..."
"Oh, that. It's fine, Soul." Maka flatly interrupted. Soul's stomach plummeted to his ankles. "I get it. Don't worry."
"But that's... that's not it. I didn't mean it that way."
"No, it's fine." Maka dismissed passively, turning away quickly to dry her hands on the apron that hung off a hook near the stove. He knew that defense maneuver. He had done it once or twice himself but he was not going to let her get away from him so easily. "We're friends and we're always going to be friends, right? Close friends. That's all."
"You're not getting it." Soul insisted, grabbing her wrist. He pulled her back but she fought for her wrist; refusing to turn and face him. "That's not it! I don't want...that. I wasn't thinking when I said that! I just want..."
"What do you want?" Maka snapped, ripping her wrist from his grasp. "What do you want, Soul, because, honestly, I don't even know what the hell you want! You're always here, you always – always act like I mean something to you but at the end of the day, I don't think so. What do you want, Soul?"
"I don't know!" Soul finally snapped. "I don't even know what we are! I've been trying to figure that out for weeks now! I don't know if I should treat you like my girlfriend or just a friend! You never made it clear!"
"Because you never asked!"
"How can I ask when I don't even know what the hell we are?"
"That's why you ask, dumbass!"
"I didn't want to ruin everything by making things awkward, you idiot!" Soul spat. "You're not easy to read, Maka, not when it comes to this. I wasn't sure. I couldn't be sure because you always shut yourself up right afterward!" When he caught her steadily watering eyes, Soul hastily added: "I wanted to treat you like... like..."
No one spoke.
"Like what?" She asked, thickly.
"Like..."
"Lately, you've been treating me like I'm some sort of toy, but I guess that was my own fault for letting this get so out of hand." Maka stated, bitterly. "I should've known better than to think this could stay the way it is. I let my feelings get in the way." The indirect confession stunned Soul silent. Instead of dwelling on her heavy words, she shook her head and asked: "How do you want to treat me like, Soul?"
The rest hung heavily between them.
This was it.
And Soul was shitting it because suddenly his mind had gone blank and all he knew was that this was something important, something life altering, and he couldn't even form one coherent sentence. He didn't know how much time had passed before he finally, finally, managed to string together a reply. And he knew damn well his answer was fucking pathetic.
"...Not this." Soul gave a defeated sigh and tentatively reached out for her, wrapping his arm around her neck when she didn't pull away. But this time, instead of dragging her into a playful headlock, he rested his cheek against her head and pressed her tightly against him in a rare show of honest affection. "I don't want...to be friends."
He had never confessed before. It had always been the other way around; always the girls who mustered up enough courage to ask him out, to confess their temporary love for him. He selected the few who struck his fancy, the ones who he wouldn't mind being with for a little while before he moved on to the next one. But now it was different: now he was the one with his head bowed and now she was the one looking down on him.
And even though he knew that, to some extent, she shared some of the same feelings he did, it still scared the shit out of him; still made his palms clammy; still drained the color in his face; still invoked that sickening feeling of dread in the base of his stomach. He wondered how those girls did it, how they could so bravely confess something so big to him with the thunderous loom of rejection hovering over them.
He held some new respect for them now because it wasn't easy.
"I know we said we'd stay like this." Soul continued when she did not say anything. "But I meant what I said that night. You're not a toy – you've never been a toy! I... damn it..." He groaned, feeling his face flush. This wasn't cool at all. He had to get the words out properly yet his mouth wouldn't form around them like he wanted to. "I want you!" He blurted, then groaned again. "No, that came out wrong.. I meant... I - like you a lot. No, uh...damn it, this not cool..."
"Soul..."
He felt her shake beneath him. With laughter, he realized with a deepening flush, she was laughing at him!
He was beyond uncool: he was fucking pathetic, and that both pissed him off and made him feel lower than he had ever felt in all his years. And he had gone through enough shitty situations without ever feeling this depressed and embarrassed.
"It's okay, Soul." His humiliation was derailed when she wrapped her arms around him tightly. He could feel her lips against the flushed skin of his neck. "You don't have to keep going. I understand now. I – want something more, too..." she admitted, hushed.
He breathed out in relief, composing himself with a surly mutter of: "This confessing stuff is harder than it looks."
"You suck at it, too." Maka giggled, laughing when she caught a glimpse of his scowl. "I bet even Black Star could do a better job than you!"
"Whoa, hey, let's not get carried away here." He cracked a smile when she laughed harder, clutching the back of his shirt. His arms dropped to her waist. "We'll see just who sucked the most when he gets around to doing it."
"Do you think he ever will?" Maka wondered, as Soul pushed her back a few steps towards the wall. He leaned against it, keeping her in his arms, as he composed his reply:
"Yeah, he's into her." Maka didn't need him to elaborate; she knew exactly who. "And she's probably the only one with enough patience to put up with him." He snorted at the idea. "They're a match made in heaven."
"Don't say that to him." Maka warned, looking up at him with those big green eyes of hers. He wouldn't deny it: she could be heart wrenchingly adorable when she wanted. Although, he suspected she was mainly unaware of her effect on people when she looked at them the way she did to him now. "He's already an egomaniac, no need to make it worse."
Soul glanced out the window to mask his impulsive urge to do something very uncool - like kiss her forehead or something equally sappy.
"Got it."
Maka beamed.
That night, they fell asleep watching television on the couch: Soul stretched across the cushions with an arm hanging off the edge and drool running down his chin while Maka dozed on top of him, lulled to sleep by his steadily beating heart.