He's never been one to believe in make-believe.

Fairy tales are just that - stories, tales, things told to children and the gullible to inspire a sense of wonder. He's never liked those sort of things. And maybe that's made him a bit of a pretentious ass in the past - maybe his skepticism hadn't been seen as the realism it was and instead as negativity - but it's who he was. Soul couldn't afford to get his hopes up and believe in happily ever after. If he let himself hope, it would only make the crash down to reality that much more painful. Oop, there goes gravity.

But make-believe's in his bed, now, and he really doesn't know what to make of it.

He could ignore it. Could choose to not believe her and her tale - seawitch, still inked into his notebook, dark and ominous - and dismiss her oddities. Default to blaming drugs, or alcohol. Anything else, reality. Something he could place weight on, something he could grasp onto and staple together with facts and sensibility. It would be easy, too. Would be so easy to plug his ears and pretend like anything out of the norm doesn't exist.

But that stings. Stings more than swallowing back his pride and admitting he'd been wrong, and that maybe magic could exist, actually.

Ignorance isn't cool at all.

She sleeps through the night. He lets her have the bed, because while he's willing, apparently, to give up his bed to a stranger - a magical stranger, what the fuck - he's not really comfortable with bumping elbows with her. Not while he knows she wears nothing under that shirt he'd leant her. Just because he isn't necessarily attracted to her and what she's got going on underneath doesn't mean he wants to run the chance of accidentally copping a feel. And- he's got a thing about personal space, too. Has a thing about sleeping alone, has a thing about being touched, has a thing about being caught in a compromising position by his big brother.

He has a lot of things.

Daylight burns through his dark curtains. Casts a ray of sunlight directly across her eyes, in that uncanny, disruptive way, and she rouses only moments after, shifting. She doesn't grunt like he does. Doesn't even complain, and for a moment, he's impressed, wondering how someone doomed to the ocean could be so resistant to the harsh light of day.

Then he remembers she physically cannot speak. His expression pinches.

"It hadn't been a dream after all," he says, dejectedly.

Maka blinks at him. God, she's got the longest lashes he's ever seen. Every part of her is delicately shaped, tiny, button nose and soft cheeks. Something about mermaids being so meticulously crafted to be beautiful haunts him. Unnerves him a little, too. Because he can sit here and observe all of her pretty features and still doesn't feel a damn thing.

She smiles sadly. Rubs her hands over her eyes and makes like she's sighing, though he can't hear any warmth of voice. Just the exhale of breath, pure function, zero soul. The musician in him sort of feels like crying. The pressured second-born in him crawls over, shuts the blinds, and revels in the darkness.

A wave of hands. She reaches, sitting on her knees, for the window. "What?"

Maka flaps her hands. Tries to mouth something, but the language still must be new to her. Well, she'd only learned how to form the shapes of words not even eight hours ago. Can't say he'd expected her to have mastered the finer arts of articulation yet. Not while she can't even utilize the new intricacies of the English tongue. Even native speakers have their issues. Soul still can't meet people in the eye when he speaks most of the time.

"Wiiiiiiindow?"

Aggressive nodding. Okay.

"What, you want to look through it?"

She's shaking her head. No.

"... Want it open?"

Yes. Ugh. He groans a little, but relents, despite the early-morning sea breeze chilling his bones. His elbows crack as he raises his arms and props the window a third of the way open. She smiles almost serenely, then, when he turns around, and he thinks she might be further bound to the ocean than he'd originally anticipated. Might be a deeper bond to break, more than trading finns for knees.

It breathes life into her. Her skin's almost brighter, and she kicks her legs over the side of the bed. He's on her before she has the chance to try walking again, preemptively reaching out and grasping her by her shoulders.

It's far too early for falling on her face, but her expression is pure exclamation points. "You don't want to do that yet."

She pouts, like a petulant toddler denied shoving a fork into the outlet.

"No, really. Trust me. I saw you trying to walk last night. Knees are tricky bits, remember?"

Maka glares at him, then. She's gotta remember, because he literally cannot forget the real, adult fear he'd felt as she'd zombie-crawled through the sand at him like some sort of super soldier. Her arms are strong - and he supposes it makes sense, as she must've spent so long swimming, but it's still terrifying, in its own way. Terrifying, that someone so beautiful and destined to seduce and drown sailors is so fucking jacked.

He lets go of her shoulders, then. There are taut, trained muscles there, too, and he is entirely spoiled rich boy meets scene kid. Mermaka might not be able to walk, but should he push the wrong buttons, she could certainly snap him in half.

'Teach me,' she lips.

As if it is that simple. Soul chokes back a laugh and runs a hand through his hair. "Do I look like a parent to you?"

'What?'

"Learning to walk isn't that easy, you know," he says, sensibly. Someone has to be sensible. Someone here who hadn't made a deal with a seawitch. "It'll take time."

She leans, then, grappling for the notebook. Ah. Yes, that will make conversation easier, won't it? Language is always easier written than spoken, isn't it? Her wordless tongue won't have the chance to stumble over grammar. Lips won't have to try and over-enunciate, so that he, stunted virtuoso, will be able to understand her.

Maka tears a page away after a moment of scribbling. Starts again.

I have to learn if I want to get anywhere. Please?

"It will take time," Soul mumbles.

I have a year.

He sighs and scrubs the back of his head. Bed hair, great. His only consolation is he surely looks better than she does - post-swim hair is literally never a good look. If her eyes were less lovely, she might resemble a wet, mangled cat.

A whole year, he thinks. "You're stupid brave, you know," he says, cracking his neck, grunting when his spine finally pops into place, too. "If my brother had found you on that beach, you wouldn't-"

There's a steely look in her eyes. For a moment, he thinks he sees the hunter in her, even though her teeth are blunt now and her claws trimmed to dainty nails. There's that hardness in her stare, the determined lines in her face. Humanness might mute her predatory features, but there doesn't seem like a force in the world that could tame that spirit.

Stupid brave, he thinks, resolutely.

Her hand is quick and angry. I had to. It's important to me.

It's no time for an interrogation, not while his brother and his friends are finally rousing to life, frying pans clanking down the hall, but, "What is?" he whispers anyway, perhaps foolishly. Curiosity killed the cat. Skewered him with her claws and sunk her teeth into his neck.

She chews her lip. Seems momentarily thrown off, and touches her fingers to her mouth, runs her tongue over her teeth before dejectedly realizing that her tail was not the only thing she'd traded. Seems as though she hadn't accounted for this, being a full-blooded human girl, fleshy and soft, with straight, dull teeth. It distracts her, for a moment, from her righteous hell-fire of determination, and Soul yawns in the allowed time and stretches again, as if it will actually cure him of his aches and pains.

His back cracks, noisily. Her lips press together. She winces. She scribbles, is that normal?

"Haaah. For me?" Yes. Absolutely. He is an old man in a twenty-two year old's body. "... I guess."

Doesn't it hurt?

Lots of things hurt. This, though, is not so bad. Growing pains. Morning soreness. He'd slept on the floor, after all. "Eh."

Your posture is the worst I've ever seen.

"Hey, can it. What do you know? You can't even walk, fish breath."

She pinks violently. Aggressively pens her response and then holds it up in front of her, like one of those cheesy Youtube-2010-teen-angst videos. I've seen men before!

The revelation is sort of chilling. Well, of course she has; despite the humor of it all, a newly legged ocean-dweller incapable of walking to the bathroom on her own, it does not change the truth: she's probably killed men before. Probably dragged perfect-postured men to the ocean floor. That's what all the stories say, don't they? Fairy-tales and myths. Mermaids sing their song and seduce their prey into the water. Beautiful and deadly. Forbidden fruit.

Maybe she would've tried to kill him, in another life.

It's a good thing he doesn't really understand seduction. Hm. He's much too calm, with a predator tied up in his sheets, come to think of it. Probably has something to do with the doe-eyed way she keeps looking up to his ceiling fan, transfixed.

Still. Soul grumbles and scratches his cheek idly. From outside his door, footsteps shuffle down the hall. "Whatever. You still smell like a seafood restaurant."

Pink is cute on her, objectively. She doesn't have the time to scold him in ballpoint-pen blue ink before her stomach reminds her of the hour of day and she jumps a mile. The notebook topples off of her lap and she draws a direct line from inner thigh to knee.

He cracks a grin. "Breakfast time?"

Maka looks helpless, for a moment. Tries scrubbing the ink from her skin, but finds it's going no where fast, and looks to him, expectantly.

"What?" he asks, cheekily.

She can't sass him if she doesn't have her notebook. Still, though, he sort of misses her banter. She's a bit alien, in the way she speaks and doesn't understand the simplest of human invention, but she's still witty, in her own way.

Soul shakes his head decidedly. It's been too long since he's had friends.

"I'll try and sneak you some food," he whispers, then finally groans his way to his feet. Ugh. Still too early to be conscious. "Sit here and be quiet. If Wes finds out you're here, I'll never hear the end of it, Christ."

He's halfway out the door when he realizes again that she cannot speak back. Glances over his shoulder to find her giving him such a dry, deadpan glare that he can't help but chuckle, just a little.

And alright, that's fair. What's she going to do, up and walk away? Scream? She is just as much at his mercy as he is hers. Partners in absurdity.