Hello and welcome to the 5th chapter!

Sorry you had to wait, like, a century for this.

Enjoy~

Soul grabbed his keys and wallet that were in a little clay bowl on a square table by the coat hanger. He checked he had a reasonable amount of money to feed him and Maka for about a week, that should be enough, right?

"Maka?" Soul asked for her attention while they walk down the stairs of the apartment building.

"Uh-huh?" Maka mumbled, not really paying attention. She was mentally noting all the food she wouldn't pass as edible.

"How long are you planning to crash at my place?" Soul asked blankly.

Maka was unprepared for this type of question. She had absolutely no idea how she would live for the time being, she really was lucky that she had bumped into Soul at that bookshop in more ways than one.

"Well, I... You see... Only for...ah..." Maka failed to find an answer his question. She wanted to say a long time or long enough till she's ready to face her father but could she really ask that of someone?

Soul sighed, not a sigh of irritation, but a sigh that sounded he had made his final choice about something that he had been mulling over for a bit. He stopped at the door of the apartment which led out into the rain soaked streets of Death City and turn towards her, directing his next statement right at her.

"You can stay as long as you want." Ruby eyes were staring right at hers, showing the exhaustion but also showing that he wouldn't dream of making that up.

Maka opened her mouth to speak but words did not come out.

"You can take the spare room; it's the room with the white door next to my room." Soul was so matter of fact about the subject. Lots of Weapons like to say that they would die for their Meister and Soul had proved that he would put his life on the line for his Meister before but letting his Meister live in his own apartment without question as well?

"But there's two conditions" Soul said as he held up his index and middle finger up. Maka was taking this all in without saying a single word.

"Condition one: You gotta help me with rent and food costs. Affording stuff will be easier with you helping out." Explained Soul as he put down his middle finger.

"And condition two: No prying into super private stuff." He finished.

"Do these rules apply for the both of us?" Maka asked almost ready to jump at the offer.

"Yeah, I don't see why not." Soul shrugged, deals work both ways of course.

Maka held her hand out, "I accept your offer." Maka said with a smile.

Soul reached out and shuck her hand her hand and smirked. "Now, let's get some food...that fight really took it out of me..."

"Tell me about it..." Maka said with a groan.

And with that, Maka and Soul left for the shops and they were acting the way they always do yet with a slightly stronger bond between them.

"That wasn't far." Maka said with a sigh of relief knowing that it meant that the journey back to the apartment in the rain will be a short one.

"Yeah, I was lucky that the DWMA pick out that apartment for me. It's not far from anything that I need." Soul replied.

"Like what?" Maka said as they both started to walk though the supermarket, casually checking the different foods with each other as if they had done this ever since they became Meister and Weapon.

"You know..." Even though it was easy for Soul to explain, he leaned against shopping trolley* showing his current state of fatigue. "You know... A few clothes shops, a bookshop or two, a good supermarket." Soul gestured around them at that last part. "And of course others things but I can't for the life of me think of them right now..." Soul rubbed his eyes as he finished his last sentence.

"Lazy and tired is a bad combination for you, Soul." Maka said as she carelessly dropped several food items into the shopping trolley as they went through the store. Even though she said that to Soul, Maka herself was visibly worn-out and she trudged her feet across the supermarket floor. "Speak for yourself, bookworm." Soul said in response.

A loaf of bread hit Soul square in the face and then lightly plopped into the trolley.

Soul's face was unchanged by the aerial assault of wholemeal bread. Soul's eyes gazed at Maka like dull gemstones, losing their shine. "Run out of dictionaries?" Soul chuckled. After turning his gaze away from Maka, Soul was suddenly aware of other shoppers silently soaking in the conversation between the two teens and letting smiles stretch across their faces and the colour red dye their cheeks. There were some shoppers whose trolleys told Soul that they had finished their usual shop yet still stayed in the aisles and from the way they kept glancing and following the two it was like they were absorbed in a romantic novel that they demanded to read cover to cover. Soul thought about that for a moment, he turned his gaze back at Maka for a second. He never looked at Maka in that light before. He couldn't say why, the thought just never went though his head.

Man, I really need some sleep... Soul dismissed his previous thoughts.

"Come on Maka, let's finish this up quick." Souls complained to Maka in response to seeing her holding two different brands of cereal and almost weigh them in her hands, as if they would be different and that would make a fundamental difference in her choice.

"Aaaaannnnd done!" Maka said after choosing a bright yellow cereal box and dropping it into the trolley.

"Finished? Great, let's get outta here." Soul was desperate to leave no matter what god-awful things Maka had put in the trolley, the other customers were starting to creep him out. Soul told himself that there was nothing romantic about him and Maka and those customers weren't a hundred percent. Yet even as they both paid for the food and made their way out of the store and towards Soul's apartment, Soul couldn't shake off a small, strange feeling in his gut that arose when he looked at his Meister.

The front door clicked as Soul turned the key and opened the wooden door. "You can put the bags on the kitchen counter." Soul said as he dumped three plastic bags on the said counter. Maka did the same. "So... what now?" Maka asked. In response Soul opened the white-door which led into the spare room. "Err... There should be some sheets, a pillow and case and a duvet and duvet cover in there somewhere."

"Sure." Maka was listing off all the things that Soul had done for her in just one day. How on earth was she going to pay me back?

"I hope you like pizza, Maka!" Soul called out as she was making her bed.

"Really Soul? We bought some nice stuff back there!"

"I aint cooking anything fancy tonight!" After a short pause. "You're welcome to try!"

"No thanks!" Maka called back as she finished making her bed and made her way back to the kitchen to see Soul pushing the buttons on the microwave and slumped on stool at the kitchen counter. As the low hum from the microwave filled the room. Maka struck up a conversation, well, she tried. "So... What do you do on weekends?" Maka didn't spend time with her Weapon on weekends. It must be the fact that Maka lives with her father.

Soul chuckled and ran a hand through his mop of silver-white hair. "Really?"

"What?!" Maka's checks turned a slight red at the unexpected response.

"It's just that sounded like you have just me for the first time, that's all."

"Well, I don't..." Maka trailed off and straitened her composure and looked down at her hands subconsciously.

"Relax, it's not like you just flipped off the Queen of England." Soul reassured.

Maka eased a little but fidgeted as if the Reaper was judging her.

Guess I lead then... Soul sighed. "You know that homework Doctor Stein gave us? The one from yesterday?"

"The one about madness wavelengths? Yeah, what about it?"

"Tomorrow can you, err, help me with it...?" Soul looked away out of embarrassment.

Maka forgot her previous embarrassment and looked straight at Soul. "You need help with that?" Maka almost laughed. Soul admitted that he couldn't even get past the first question. Maka explained the whole theory behind it and its effects and even its recorded appearance. Soul didn't interrupt the 'lesson' even as he got the pizza and both ate it. And he didn't interrupt the bits that he already knew because he thought that Maka deserved to end this day on a cheerful note and feeling good about herself, even if he didn't know the whole story about the way he found her. He could wait until she was ready to talk about it and, of course, not incredibly pissed off about it. Plus it was Friday night, meaning that the weekend had arrived and he didn't have to juggle school and whatever was going on with Maka.

Finally I got round to finishing this chapter!

*Trolley is basically a shopping cart, but I'm British, so I will write different things like that. Just a heads up!

I'm sorting my life out, so I should have time for more of these.

Well, stay tuned folks and thank you for reading!

Soul~