Chapter Text
“Tell me you’re joking.” She orders.
In the comfort of their own apartment, what seemed like such a warm atmosphere moments ago was destroyed with not much effort. A few words. A single word to be exact. That’s all it took, a single word. She could feel her fist clenching, she wouldn’t be surprised if she was near to drawing blood. Silence fills the room, not a single response or explanation drifts the air, not that it’d matter. Even if one was given, she most definitely wouldn’t hear it. The once loud chatter of their TV can now only be described as distant murmuring. The controllers lays on the ground, fallen from her grip. He stands in front of her, eyes averted, almost ashamed. He should be anyway.
“Go on,” she states once more. “I’m waiting.”
She finds herself walking closer, willingly however? She isn’t sure. She doesn’t feel in control of her own body, yet she marches forward anyway. She stops just close enough that she finds new sounds filling her ears past the murmurs. Another heartbeat, maybe one as loud as her own. Breathing, soft, if not stilled. If she takes the chance to listen even closer, she surely will be able to hear the turning of the rusted cogs in her brain attempting to talk his way out of this one. She sees his mouth open to omit some sort of excuse, but she quickly cuts him off.
“Now, what exactly did you mean by ‘who?' when I asked if you wanted to watch Moana?”
•••
“This is dumb and quite frankly irresponsible, even for you if you ask me,” Soul chides, sprawled out across their couch. He watches as Maka scours through her Netflix page, movie after movie, looking for the “right one” to start off their “Disney Movie Marathon”.
“First of all, that’s why I didn’t ask.” Maka retorts, pausing a moment to process what he said before continuing to scroll for the right movie once more. It’s only moments later her scrolling seizes to glare at him, twisting her torso to grab ahold a pillow that makes contact with his face only a few moments after.
“Secondly, what do you mean ‘even for you’!? I’m perfectly responsible, thank you very much!” She places her hand on her chest in mock shock, before turning back to the screen once more. “Now stop talking to me, you’re disturbing me. If you’re really worried about being up that late on a school night, you’d let me have the peace and quiet needed to pick out a good movie,” she insisted.
“Of course your majesty, anytime your majesty.” He mock bows, or at least tries to from his position, the pillow sliding off his face and into his lap. As much as she’d just love to banter back and forth, he is slightly and surprisingly right. It’s already late and they do have classes the next morning. It’d be smarter to head to bed now and wake up refreshed for the next morning, but after their previous conversation, she doubt she’d be able to sleep peacefully either way. To put the situation into context, it was approximately 5 minutes ago Maka discovered Soul has not only never seen a single Disney princess movie, but also that he hasn’t seen a single Disney movie. At all.
“There!” She turns Soul and watches him slightly perk up, appearing to be on the verge of sleeping. She nudges him a bit as she gestures towards the screen. “How about Cinderella?”
“Sure, I guess. Why’d it take you so long anyway? We could have started from the movie you asked about earlier, ‘Muna’ or something like that anyway,” he yawns out.
“And that’s where you’re wrong again!” She jeered, poking him once more. “You can’t start with the best of the best, you gotta work you way up! Cinderella isn’t bad, but it’s personally far from the greatest. If I were to give a fair rating—”
“Yeah that’s enough from you,” he interjected, covering her mouth with his hand. It didn’t stay there long, his hand quickly withdrawing with a yelp when she sinks her teeth into one of his fingers. He glanced up, firmly glaring at her from across the couch where she briefly sticks her tongue out at him.
“Well if you think this movie’s bad, it must be pretty good,” he grumbles, slightly blowing on the area he was bit.
“I didn’t say it was bad!” She accused as she starts the movie. “I just said it wasn’t my favorite, now pay attention! We have a bunch of movie to get through before the morning,” she states. She turns her focus towards the screen, and as the screen starts to fade into colors, she’s sure that it’s gonna be a fun night.
“Before morning?” He groans. “What happen to a good ol’ bedti- ouch!” He clutched his stomach and took the jab as a sign to close his mouth. She’s sure it’ll still be a fun night. Probably.
•••
Maka doesn’t think she can handle another movie with Soul, forget a movie night. It takes him less than half of one movie to turn into the world’s greatest movie critic. Not a single movie they’ve gone through has been a silent watch, a comment always has to leave his mouth every other second. She thinks she just might be going mental.
“Why is she just leaving with a bunch of animals?”
“That has to be a health concern.”
“That’s not realistic in the slightest.”
She’s not sure how much longer she could take this. Mentally she decided she was done for the night, and put on the last movie for the night, Tangled. Physically, her body decided that the last movie was her final one, and not even 5 minutes into the movie, Maka let her exhaustion drag her into a light snooze.
•••
Barely jolting awake, Maka opens her eyes to the movie still playing. She must’ve not slept for long considering the fact they were still on the very first song, though it was near the end of it. Prepared to face the harsh judgement of apparent movie critic, Soul..Eater? Huh, she never really thought much about his name, but it matches his “job description” perfectly. It was pretty coincidental if you asked her. But is that really his name? Real name or not, Soul himself was uncharacteristically quiet.
Maka wouldn’t necessarily describe Soul as a loud person per se, but he definitely wasn’t quiet. Reserved, would be the better term. He was very reactive, and could usually be found or, heard in most cases, clicking his tongue in derision at something said in passing or just at mild annoyance or discomfort. Now, however, he’s just silent. Starting at the screen, eyes widened slightly.
‘Huh’ is the best could think of before her previous nap came back to capture her as she sunk once more into a peaceful slumber.
•••
Opening her eyes felt heavy. This time she slept a bit too long seeing as she opened her eyes to a black screen and names upon names moving on and off the screen too fast for her to read. Credits. Oh well, she had seen the movie a couple of times before, missing it just this once wouldn’t hurt anybody. She glances over to gauge Soul’s reaction to the movie, though she doesn’t have much gauging to do. He’s face looks just like it does normally, grumpy and uninterested. His face depicts a general uncaring attitude. Or at least it would if not for the tear streaks running down his face creating stains. The only clue beside the tears that even indicate any sort of emotion is a barely audible sniffs heard occasionally.
‘He’s crying,’ Maka registers. ‘He’s crying’, Maka acknowledges.
It’s a delayed acknowledgement and Maka doesn’t think it matters, because she doesn’t know what to do. Maka has never seen or even heard him cry. Even now, less than 5ft away from him on the couch, she can barely hear him. She’s not even sure if she can convince herself he really is crying.
But he really is crying, and right now Maka is useless. She doubts attempting to comfort him would work. He seems like the type to embarrassed about those sorts of things. Talking it out is also out of the question. He’d probably try to deflect or start an argument that Maka would surely fall into and get mad at him, making it impossible to even bring the original topic back up. So she does the only thing she can do right now. She closes her eyes and waits until she drifts once more. Silently listening, waiting. If he really feels like he needs to talk about it, She's sure he’ll bring it up tomorrow, she doubt he believes she’s still sleeping anyway. She has never really been good at faking sleep. She doesn’t have to for long though before she falls and stays asleep for the rest of the night.
•••
She doesn’t wake up to a slightly hard couch under her and soreness anywhere and everywhere one could be sore like she expected. Instead she wakes up to the comforting firmness and warmth her bed brings. She definitely didn’t fall asleep here, yet she’s waking up here now. Unless the world’s kindest robber broke in and brought her to her bed, that left one culprit.
“What a gentleman,” she thinks, somewhat sarcastically. She’s truly grateful though. Getting out of bed, she enters the bathroom and gets ready before walking to the kitchen where she finds Soul attempting to make sense of a cookbook and make breakfast. It doesn’t look like it’s going so well considering that she has now stood between her doorway for nearly 5 minutes and has watched him do absolutely nothing but stare. She guesses she could lend a hand or two.
“Good morning,” she greets.
“Mornin’” he replies, not turning around but moving a bit so she could enter the kitchen. She quickly gets to work with a decent amount of assistance from Soul as she settles on pancakes for breakfast. At last, an hour and a few mishaps later, they sit at their dining table and eat in silence.
“So how was the last movie? I feel asleep so I wasn’t blessed with hearing your criticism.” She attempts to make light-hearted banter, but she’s genuinely curious of his rating.
“Har har, very funny,” he deadpans, but she can’t sense any ire in his voice so she should be in the clear. Seconds pass with her question unanswered that. He takes so long she almost thinks he forgot about it.
“It was okay, I guess.”
She slowly looks up, shocked. She stares a bit too hard as he glances up from his food and gives her a sort of look.
“What?” He blurted out, though she continued staring in disbelief.
“Nothing, nothing at all!” Giddily, she went back to her food, at least one of her recommendations were a success. “What about it did you like?”
“Reminded me of someone..”
“Hm? Did you say something, Soul?”
“No. No particular reason.”