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“Why are we moving, again?” Soul asked with a grunt, heaving another box full of dishes out of the kitchen and towards the front door.
“Better rent, actual balcony, closer to DWMA, less creepy superintendent,” Maka responded, ticking each item off on her fingers as she spoke. She was looking down at a list she’d scrawled out that morning on a notepad on the coffee table.
“Right.” He stacked the box on top of a plastic storage container. “Still, it’s a lot of work.”
“Kid and Crona should be along soon,” Maka answered absently. No sooner had she said it than they heard a knock on the door.
“Speak of the devil,” Soul answered, opening up. Kid stood in the hallway, Crona hanging awkwardly behind his shoulder. “Hey guys.”
“Good morning,” Crona answered softly, following Kid inside.
“Hey!” Maka greeted, jumping off the couch to give each of them a quick hug. “Thanks so much for offering to help!”
“Of course,” Kid agreed, his eyes already sparking. “Purging and organizing are two activities I’m happy to assist with.”
Maka matched his determination instantly. “Yes! I knew you’d be able to help me with that!” Grabbing her list off the table, she continued, “I have a whole plan! C’mere, tell me what you think…” She waved him down the hall toward her bedroom, and he followed eagerly.
Soul blinked, watching them disappear. “Huh,” he said, after they were gone. He glanced at Crona, who offered him a cautious smile. “Uh. Well. I’m packing up the kitchen… you wanna help?”
“Sure, of course,” they agreed with a nod, and followed him to the cupboards. Soul opened up a new box, taping the bottom shut, and put it on the counter.
“Basically just fill ‘er up,” he said with a shrug. “Bit of newspaper between each dish, and to fill the gaps. Lemme know if you find anything broken or nasty or whatever, but I think we got rid of all that stuff when Tsubaki helped us clean.”
Crona nodded, lifting down a stack of mismatched cooking pots and peering into them. “She probably did a good job…”
“Yeah,” Soul agreed, setting up another box and starting in on the utensil drawer. “She came over for like a day and a half to help us deep-clean everything so we could get our deposit back. She’s kind of a wizard with cleaning, honestly. And I’ve never seen anyone enjoy it so much.”
“Well… I sorta get it,” Crona responded, shrugging. “It can be very satisfying, I think.”
“I guess.” He tossed an old butter knife with a broken handle into the open garbage can sitting nearby. “I’m grateful she came to help out, anyway. She and Black*Star are out on an assignment for the rest of the week, but the cleaning was a big thing out of the way. It’s almost surprising how huge a step that part is. Besides, I dunno how helpful Black*Star really would’ve been in a move, honestly. He’d probably end up breaking something.” He snickered.
Down the hall, a burst of laughter came from Maka’s room, and Soul and Crona both paused to look up curiously. They exchanged a puzzled glance.
“No idea what could be that much fun about all this,” Soul muttered, and Crona shrugged again.
By the end of the day, most of the apartment was either packed into boxes to be moved or tossed into garbage bags to be thrown out or donated, and everyone was tired. They sat down in the living room with boxes of Chinese takeout before Kid and Crona left for the evening. Soul eyed Kid and Maka where they sat comfortably together on the couch, grinning over some private joke from earlier in the afternoon. It was strange – they’d spent most of the day sequestered away in another room, chatting and laughing about who-even-knew-what. Soul wasn’t sure why, but something about that rubbed him the wrong way.
“Did you and Crona get everything from your room packed up?” Maka asked, before they turned in for the night.
“Pretty much,” Soul answered with a nod. “We should be on track to get everything done and out by Saturday.”
“Awesome,” Maka answered brightly, before turning into her bedroom and shutting the door behind her.
The next morning, Soul got up and took the subway to pick up the little cube van they’d rented. By the time he made it back to the apartment, Kid and Crona were there once again. Crona was packing the last of the bathroom cupboard’s contents into one of Maka’s various canvas shopping bags, and Kid and Maka were engaged deep in conversation as they hauled boxes and containers from Maka’s bedroom into the living room.
“Oh, you’re back!” Maka said cheerfully when Soul came through the door. “Kid and I were just talking – we thought that you and Crona could load up the van and start moving things, and we’ll stay here and get the last few odds and ends packed up.”
“Oh.” Soul blinked, taken as much by surprise now as he had been the day before. “Uh, don’t you wanna come along and tell me where stuff goes?”
“It’s not like it’s a big apartment,” Maka said, with a playful roll of her eyes. “Your room, my room, kitchen, living room, bathroom. Surely you can handle that, right? We’ll arrange the furniture and stuff after everything’s moved over there.”
“Well… yeah, I guess,” Soul said, looking up at Crona. They met his eyes and nodded.
“I don’t mind,” they said. “Whatever’s most useful.”
So Soul and Crona loaded up the van – with all of the garbage and donations, for starters – and headed out, making a stop at Maka’s favourite second-hand store and then at the Death City Dump. An hour and change later, they returned to the apartment to find Maka lying on the living room floor, wheezing with laughter, and Kid leaning on one end of the couch, sleeves rolled up past his elbows and face red with mirth.
“What’s so funny?” Soul asked, raising one eyebrow high.
“I don’t think I could explain if I wanted to,” Kid answered with a chuckle. He reached out with one foot and nudged Maka in the side with his toe, making her giggle again and roll away when he accidentally prodded a ticklish spot. “Come on, Maka, you won’t get anything done like this.” He was grinning.
And the day seemed to carry on this way. Every time Soul looked at the two of them, they were talking intensely as they sorted books off her shelves into sturdy boxes, or smiling at each other over a piece of furniture they were moving, or giggling at some joke he didn’t have the privilege of being included in. By the third trip he and Crona took out of the building, he was fuming behind the wheel.
“Um… Soul,” Crona said quietly, maybe five minutes after the two of them had started driving. “Have I… have I done something wrong? Did I upset you somehow?”
Soul glanced over at them in surprise. In the passenger seat, they were leaning against the far window, as if nervous about getting too close to him.
“What?” He lifted one hand from the steering wheel to wave it at them, as if trying to clear the tension from the air. “No, no, of course not! I’m sorry, Crona, it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Oh.” Crona breathed a sigh of relief, straightening up a little in their seat. Then they eyeballed him again for a moment and asked, “Um, then, what’s wrong? Can I help?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Soul answered automatically, checking his mirrors before he made a turn.
“I… I don’t think that’s true,” Crona said, cautiously. “You’re very… tense.”
Soul fidgeted, drumming his fingers on the wheel a little bit. He hated to admit it, but… “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Kid and Maka are just getting along so well. And, I dunno, it’s just not sitting quite right with me. I can’t figure out why. Ugh, it’s probably stupid. I’m sorry for stressing you out, Crona.”
“It’s not stupid,” Crona answered. Soul glanced at them as he rolled up to a stoplight, and their expression was very earnest. “I understand. I used to get jealous of you, you know. For a long time Maka was my only friend, or at least, I thought she was my only friend… but you’re her best friend. And I was afraid you might take her away from me…”
Soul shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yeah, I guess,” he replied after a second. “But, I mean, after everything you’d been through, that makes sense. I’ve never had an issue with Maka’s other friendships before, with Kid or otherwise.”
“But have you ever felt worried you could lose her to someone?” Crona pressed, intent but kind. “Could that be what’s bothering you now?”
He considered that for a few long moments. “It’s something to think about,” he said finally, genuinely uncertain.
And it was. Soul chewed on that idea for the rest of the afternoon, but Crona didn’t seem to mind working without much talk, so he was left to his contemplation. Maka and Kid were still getting on his nerves, but he felt better having vented to someone about his frustration – and Crona, always sensitive to the feelings of others, helped him not to get too irritated. Each time they went back to the old apartment and Kid and Maka were sitting together on the floor, deep in discussion as they disassembled a bookshelf or unplugged and wound up a mass of cables, Crona would wordlessly lay a gentle hand on Soul’s back, and he’d force himself to relax. It was nice, he realised, to know someone was watching out for him.
The third day of the move went on the same way – this time, after packing up the last of the furniture, Kid and Maka took the subway over to the new apartment and began to arrange the living room and unpack the essentials. Soul and Crona did a final sweep of the old place, dropped the keys in the superintendent’s mailbox, and returned the van before heading along to the new apartment to help out.
Kid and Maka were in Maka’s new bedroom, door shut, talking intently. And when Crona caught Soul staring holes into the closed door, they put a hand on his shoulder, smiled gently, steered him into his bedroom, and asked where he wanted his posters hung. Later, when he bristled at the sound of them laughing together over yet another story he hadn’t heard, Crona pressed an armful of folded sheets and blankets into his chest and asked if he wanted to make the bed while they unpacked his video games.
“Yeah,” Soul agreed, coughing and looking at the floor. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Crona answered softly.
They managed to get the apartment arranged and the most important of their belongings unpacked by early evening, and Maka asked Kid and Crona to stick around for supper and a movie on their newly-set-up TV. Before Soul could even say a word, Kid offered his assistance, helping her chop up vegetables for a quick stir fry. He was fussy about cutting things evenly, but it was clear that he was practiced at it as well, so it didn’t slow him down too much.
“Let’s make sure your game systems are set up properly,” Crona offered, and Soul started. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Crona watching him with their eyebrows raised. He’d been glaring again. Caught, he offered a sheepish grin and agreed.
Around the table, Maka seated herself between Soul and Kid, across from Crona. When she leaned over and elbowed Kid at some point in their discussion, an amused glint in her eye, Soul gripped his knife a little tighter and cut through a strip of beef with somewhat more aggression than necessary. Crona nudged his foot under the table, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathed, and put a smile back on.
They got through a movie without any further issues, and eventually Soul breathed a private sigh of relief after Crona and Kid left for the evening. Finally he could focus on getting his things back in order, and take the rest of the weekend without seeing Kid. And maybe he’d feel better once life returned to normal.
“You and Kid sure have been having fun this week,” he commented as he navigated around Maka in their new kitchen, heading for the sink to pour himself a glass of water. He’d meant for it to be casual, playful, but it came out just a little strained. Accusatory, even. Inwardly he cringed, but she didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Yeah, we have,” she answered, and he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and saw her… smiling. A lot, actually. He wasn’t exactly certain why that stopped him in his tracks, but it did.
Maka looked his way and grinned when she saw him watching her, apparently still not realizing that he was acting kind of weird. She bit her lip, hesitating, then asked, “Actually, can I tell you a secret?” She was beaming.
Without thinking, Soul braced himself, because she was entirely too smiley about all this and whatever was coming next couldn’t possibly be good. “Sure,” he managed, the sound barely making it past his vocal cords.
Her grin grew even wider, somehow, green eyes shining with excitement. “Kid wants to tell Crona how he feels,” she blurted, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “He knows I know Crona better than anyone else does, so he asked me for my help. We’ve been working for days on the best way for him to approach it. That’s why I had Crona stick with you – so we could talk about it without them overhearing anything.” She bit her lip again, barely able to contain herself.
And this was so far from what Soul had been expecting that he felt almost winded for a second. Crona? Kid was going to ask out Crona.
He started to laugh.
“What?” Maka asked, indignant, though not enough to actually wipe the smile from her face or the bounce from her posture.
It was relief, honestly, but he couldn’t tell her that. “I don’t know, the whole thing is just… funny,” he excused, laughing all the harder for her narrowed eyes and half-suspicious expression. “Your enthusiasm, the way you two have been acting… the whole thing.” He gestured vaguely, as if tracing a circle around her.
She blew a raspberry at him, then returned to grinning. “Well, I am enthusiastic,” she said, elbowing him away from the sink so she could finish washing her frying pan. “He likes them a lot, and I honestly think they’d make a great couple. He’s being so careful and sweet about the whole thing.”
Soul shook his head, still chuckling. “Good night, Maka,” he said, taking his water and heading back to his new bedroom.
The relief was so profound – and the feeling of relief, in itself, so hilariously absurd – that he had to share it with someone. Stretching out on the bed, he pulled out his phone and shot off a text to Crona.
Soul
So it turns out that Maka DOESN’T have a thing for Kid, after all
And he doesn’t have a thing for her eitherCrona
oh, i didn’t realise you were worried she did!
that’s good though, i’m glad for you
Soul blinked at the response and put his phone down. I didn’t realise you were worried she did.
He hadn’t realised it, either.
He hadn’t really thought about it, during the conversation in the kitchen, or even when he’d pulled out his phone to text Crona. It hadn’t truly hit him until he saw their response. He had been worried. When Maka had asked can I tell you a secret and he’d braced himself for the worst, that worst had been something like I really, really like him, or I think Kid might ask me out, or maybe even Kid and I are dating. And when it was nothing of the sort he’d been relieved, because he didn’t want them to date. He’d been agitated at their closeness the last several days because he hated thinking about them like that.
His phone buzzed again.
Crona
so you’re feeling better, then?Soul
Well, yeah, I guess so…Crona
…are you sure?Soul
I mean, yeah…
Now I’m just not sure why.
Crona sent a gif, then, a tacky old-school animation of a generic character giving a solemn nod. From anyone else it would’ve made him roll his eyes, but Crona used a lot of those, and it kind of made sense from them – they so often communicated non-verbally that a gif was somehow a more honest response than any words could have been. Plus, it was hard to blame someone who’d been so thoroughly deprived of a normal upbringing for being a little out-of-touch with pop culture. The animation told him that Crona understood, and sympathised, and somehow instead of making him feel like he was trying to text with an octogenarian, Soul felt a little comforted.
He put his phone aside on the nightstand, rolled onto his side, and stared out the new window at a new nighttime view of Death City.
“He did it!” Maka said excitedly several days later, leaping onto the couch and startling Soul right out of his skin. She was practically vibrating with excitement. “Soul, he did it!”
“Who did what?” he squawked indignantly, muting the TV and throwing down the remote. “What is so important that you had to scare the shit out of me like that?”
She didn’t apologize. “Kid!” she answered, bouncing on the cushions. “He told Crona how much he likes them and asked if they wanted to go out with him, and they agreed! They’re going out tonight!”
Soul made a face, still incensed by her entrance, then said, “Good. That’s great. Good for them.”
Maka smacked him in the shoulder. “Why aren’t you more excited?!”
“Am I supposed to be?” he asked, flinching away from another smack. “I’m happy for them! I am!”
Maka smiled, mollified, and then sat back and settled herself into the cushions. “You should see the way Kid talks about them,” she said, a dreamy look in her eye. “It’s so sweet, Soul. He really is totally enamoured. It just makes me so happy to see him like that… and Crona deserves it, too. Someone who sees how totally great they are and makes sure that they know it, too.” She put her hands to her cheeks, struggling to contain her joy.
Soul rolled his eyes, but he was smiling slightly, too. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Crona’s pretty great, and they do deserve to be adored. I can’t disagree with you there. I hope Kid takes good care of them.”
She was watching him with a smile. “Aw,” she said, pleased. “I guess you and Crona must have gotten a little closer, last week during the move. I haven’t heard you talk about them that way before.”
He glanced away, then, back at the television, though he didn’t bother turning the sound back on. “Yeah, well. They had my back while I was in a weird mood, which somebody else never seemed to notice.”
“I– I was busy!” Maka huffed, emerging somewhat from the cushions. “Why, was it– was it a big deal? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he answered, not meeting her eye. “Like I said, Crona had my back. Checked in with me, pried a little to make sure I was all right, and then just like… helped me not overreact to anything, so we could just get everything done.”
Maka’s excitement had evaporated now, and she looked concerned. “Damn, Soul, I’m really sorry I didn’t realise you were having a bad time. Are you sure everything’s okay?”
Soul passed a hand over his eyes. He should’ve known better. She didn’t often worry much, but this was the kind of thing she’d latch onto and pick at all day. It didn’t matter if he was entirely over whatever the issue had been – she’d fret and ask and double-check until he told her. She hated thinking she’d missed something important in her partner. “Listen,” he said, agitated now, “it was nothing. I just felt weird about how much you and Kid were talking and hanging out and getting along, all… privately. But I get it now and it’s fine.”
She was quiet for a long moment or two, and he might have thought the discussion was over, but he could practically feel the gears in her head turning. Finally he glanced at her, just in time for her to ask softly, “What do you mean, you felt weird?” Her brow was furrowed, and she chewed her lip uncertainly.
Embarrassment turned him surly. “I just felt weird!” he repeated, throwing his hands up. “I dunno, you kept laughing and you were practically hiding from me and I thought– I thought you liked him or something! And that made me feel weird!” It was his turn to shuffle back into the couch cushions, only he wasn’t nesting like she’d been doing a few minutes ago – he was shielding himself, suddenly insecure.
Maka’s eyes were wide and a little confused. “That… bothered you?”
“Of course it did!” he snapped, aware his face was flushing now. “You’re my partner, Maka! You’re my best friend, and my roommate, and my meister, and basically the closest, most important person to me, and… I dunno, I hated the thought of you being closer to Kid than to me!”
She hesitated, picking up one hand as if to reach for him, then pulling it back. “So it doesn’t… it doesn’t just seem natural to you, that one day we might be closer to other people than to each other?”
“No!” he answered, hurt at just the thought of it. “Not at all! I mean, we’re… we’re always gonna be partners, aren’t we? We’ll always work together, and just… just be together. I can’t… really imagine it any other way.”
Maka bit her lip again. “I didn’t know you felt that way,” she told him. Watching his face, realising that her statement had worried him, she quickly straightened up and waved her hands. “I mean, I do too! I can’t imagine working with a different weapon, or anything, ever. I just, um… I kind of wasn’t sure if you felt the same.”
“Jeez,” Soul muttered, kicking half-heartedly at the carpet. “I belong to you, Maka.” Meeting her eye again, he felt a new rush of blood to his face. “I-I mean, as a weapon! I’m… I’m your scythe.”
“Right. And that’s… I mean, the way we resonate… it’s hard to be closer to someone than that.” Her own cheeks had turned pink, now, too, and she stared at the floor.
And he stared at her.
Of course it didn’t seem natural to him, that one day they might be closer to other people than they were to each other. That sounded the opposite of right. He never wanted anyone to be closer to her than he was. He never wanted anyone to know her like he did, to feel her soul like he could, to become one with her the way he did when they resonated.
“Maka,” he said, and she looked back up. His face felt like it was burning. “I know that Crona is… delicate, and you can’t spring stuff on them, and that’s why you and Kid had to come up with a whole plan. So that it wouldn’t scare them. But, you’re different from Crona.”
“…Yeah,” she answered, like she was agreeing, though she didn’t seem to quite understand what she was agreeing with yet.
“And I love you.” He had to say it now, because he knew it now, and this was the time, and if he kept it in he had no idea when he’d manage to get it this close to the surface again. Her blush deepened, and she watched him with wide eyes, clearly taken by surprise by his straightforward declaration. Before he could overthink it any further, he leaned across the couch and kissed her.
When he pulled away, she was silent for a second or two, and then began stammering incoherently. “I– you– it’s–”
“Maka,” Soul repeated, with some concern, when she still couldn’t seem to respond.
Finally, he felt her reaching out with her soul. It curved against the edge of his own, and he let her in instinctively, so accustomed to it now that it didn’t even require any thought. And as their wavelengths fell in line with one another he felt himself flooded with warmth. It always felt good when they resonated, but this was new – this filled him with joy and comfort and love like it had never done before, and he realised that his feelings were entirely reciprocated, even if she was struggling to say so out loud. His eyes refocussed on her face and she was blushing brilliantly, but she was also looking at him with such steadfast and certain affection that he was completely bowled over by it. He tried to return the feeling, with his soul and his eyes and everything else he had, and hoped that she could feel it as overwhelmingly as he could.
And for good measure, he reached out and cupped her face and kissed her again.
This time she kissed him back.
Their link overflowed with feeling. Soul sighed against her, simultaneously embarrassed by his own obliviousness up to this point and overwhelmed by the rightness of this moment, of finally coming together with her this way. Obviously. Obviously this was where he belonged. Where they both belonged.
The waves of emotion finally began to ebb, and they pulled back from one another, both reeling. Maka, evidently embarrassed herself, rested her face against his chest and murmured something barely-audible into his sweatshirt, a muffled kind of little “love you too.”
Soul rubbed her back for a moment. Finally, trying to lighten the mood a little, he joked, “We’re going to have the same anniversary as Kid and Crona, I guess. Damn, that’s corny.” Maka snorted slightly, her nose pressed into his clavicle.
He’d have to text Crona later and let them know he’d figured it out.
He had a feeling they’d be proud of him.