Day 3: Stuck in the Rain

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During their next secret resonance meeting, it began to rain.

"Shit," Maka said when she could no longer ignore all the drops. Soul materialized out of weapon form beside her.

"I have an umbrella," he said, dashing to his backpack. "It's small, but it should keep us at least a little more dry. For a while. I can walk you back to the border."

"Good!" Maka beamed. "But also, let's wait and see if it goes away."

The rain lasted, steadily getting worse. Soul and Maka crowded under the umbrella and groused about the weather interfering with their plans.

This close to him, with no sensation but the cold wet outside and the heat of his body warming her from the right, Maka's world shrunk. It became nothing but his eyes, his heartbeat, his lips, only inches from hers. She wondered if he was thinking the same.

Of course he wasn't. That would be ludicrous. She was not the kind of prize that could be worth the ostracism he would face. All the same, so much thinking about it made Maka a little guilty, and she risked a glance at Soul.

Oh. That involved a lot more eye contact and a lot more heat in his gaze than Maka was prepared for.

"What?" he said.

"I - nothing," she answered, licking her lips as she thought of what his kiss might be like. He noticed, and stared at her mouth in a fascinated way she'd never known him to stare at anything before, except possibly his favorite sheet music.

"I want- I'm just curious," she whispered, as if there were any concern of anyone else hearing over the roar of rain on the umbrella.

The spell broke. "Absolutely not," he said, abruptly pulling back - her heart sunk; she hadn't even noticed that he was leaning in.

"How can you possibly answer before you knew what I was gonna say?" Maka channeled all of her embarrassment into her scowl. At that, Soul hesitated.

"Okay, fine," he said at last. "What is it?"

Instead of giving voice to the real issue at hand - her truly absurd desire to kiss her weapon friend - Maka blurted, "My father was a weapon," at which Soul's eyes nearly bulged out of his head.

"You - he was? What happened to him? I thought your parents got...?"

"Divorced?" Maka finished. "Well, like I told you, they did break up. And it was mostly because he's a cheater. But there's another reason. When Mama finally had enough of his games, she chased him off entirely because," and she tried to soften her voice as much as she possibly could, as though she were softening a hit to his face, "she thought my life would be harder with a weapon for a father."

"Oh." Soul blinked, mouth hanging open a little. "Um. That sounds rough."

Maka felt the rain on her arm and noticed that he had drawn further away.

"Soul, that wasn't what was wrong with him," she said. Damage control. "He was a cheater. I think Mama used him being a weapon as an excuse. So he wouldn't make a fuss over getting custody of me. They weren't legally married."

He allowed the rain to patter on the umbrella for a few moments. "Do you - can you blame her?" Soul asked, studying the grass with a frown.

What kind of question was that? Was it rhetorical? Was he implying that she would do the same to him someday?

"You're a million times better than my father," she muttered, despairing in her ability to save the situation. Soul's brow furrowed even more at this.

"What?" He looked at her directly. "But we're not...you know."

"Yeah, I know," Maka said in her tiniest voice. Her arm was soaked.

"Unless you're saying you see me as a father figure, in which case, I'm not sure where I went wrong," he added, in possibly the most depressing attempt at humor that Maka had ever heard.

"No!" she barked, causing him to jump visibly.

He regained his composure. "Well, that's good. So...what were you really curious about, then?"

"Ah, what? Oh, it was nothing," she said, biting her lip.

Maka tried to tell herself that she was imagining the weight between them, that there wasn't anything really wrong and that ignoring her own anxieties would lighten the moment. But nothing improved, and when she couldn't stand the tension anymore, she said, "I don't think the rain's gonna let up."

"No?"

"No. So I should just...go."

"Let me walk you," he offered again, but his voice faded into the rain as she took off. "Wait, what the hell, Maka?!"

"It's okay, don't worry about it!" she shouted back, waving nonchalantly. The rain wetting down her hair ruined the effect.

"You're an idiot," he called, jogging toward her, but she shook her head.

"It's not that far and I'll be fine."

"You'll get sick."

"Please go home! I don't want company," she called back, voice lighter than her words. When she stopped at the border, he was no longer following.