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“What is love?
Oh, baby, don’t hurt me.”
He had been slumped over his decrepit keyboard for well over three hours now, typing and retyping. Marie had walked past the doorway at least 7 times, humming to alert her presence, and he hadn’t so much as moved. Finally, she meandered over, her bare feet silent, though Stein always knew when she was near.
She hooked her chin over his shoulder and watched as he continued typing and retyping, not even startled.
“Working hard or hardly working?” she asked, sloping her arm over his other shoulder so she could smooth her palm over his turtleneck, free of his lab coat for once. He made an annoyed noise and rested his head back until his skull was cushioned by her.
“Is it too late to quit being a researcher and go back to the desert?”
“Mmm, no. But I’d miss you an awful lot.”
He scoffed. “You’d come.”
Her laugh was soft and easy, the absolute certainty in his voice never failing to make something in her stomach and fingertips fizz. “But who would water my plants?”
He thought for a moment, closing his eyes. “Bring them, too.”
She chortled. “Sounds like you need a break,” she announced and then unceremoniously stood back up from her hunched over state and dragged his chair back and away from his desk. He didn’t even protest, his head falling back even farther now that she wasn’t there to keep him semi-upright, and he rested it back against the soft cushion of his chair, eyes unseeing up into the ceiling until they flickered to life and locked onto her, instead.
“You intend to do the breaking, then?” he inquired, lips tipping up, half teasing, half cruel. Marie, all endeared, merely stopped his chair in a jolt, jostling him slightly, before continuing to roll it into the living room.
“Don’t I always?”
“Mmm,” he hummed, closing his eyes as she finally dragged him beside the couch and, with all the love and tenderness of a small earthquake, pushed him sideways so he thumped onto the enormous purple monstrosity. He made a noise of contentment, adjusting himself until he was on his back once more, staring up at the bare lights that cast unflattering shadows across the room. Marie looked down at him from her vantage point standing but hooked her foot against the seat of his wheelie chair and yanked it closer to her, plopping down backward so she could rest her arms against the back.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“The desert?”
“Your research, silly.”
He let out an annoyed groan. “I thought I was being broken?”
“One of these days, you’re going to have to answer for your sins on this earthly realm,” she shot back, more than accustomed to his purposeful twisting of expressions. On a break indeed. His face split into a full grin, olive eyes twinkling faintly behind his glasses.
“Ah, but who will ask me the questions?”
“Stop dodging or I’ll take your glasses.”
“Dodging?” he asked, almost innocent, blinking at her as though a caricature, all wide eyes and false saccharine. She couldn’t help the snort that ripped through her.
“Yes, yep. You don’t deserve to see, anymore,” she said, and leaned over the couch to snatch up his glasses, even as he cackled and grabbed her wrist, tugging her off of his chair and on top of him, instead. His legs dangled off of the couch, bent in crooked angles so the flats of his feet were still on the floor, and she eeped as he settled her slightly higher, her cheek smooshing upon his chest, his chin settling right atop her head.
Oh, the sneak. If he wanted to cuddle, he only had to ask.
“Do I deserve to see, now?” he asked, and she tried to school her chuckles, her warm breath puffing against his throat.
“No,” she said, flatly, but he was still smiling, and her fingertips had started to glow gold in their resonance, his entire body melted into the cushions. And he was so warm. Maybe she’d make an exception about the glasses.
“I suppose I’ll be stumbling blind, then.”
She was sure he could feel her smile against him as she nuzzled into his soft, wool turtleneck, letting her shoulders relax and popping her legs up at the knees to cross them in the air. He really would always be her favorite mattress.
She sighed contently, looping her fingers up and into his hair, grown long and shaggy, almost always in his eyes. The slight curls were more obvious as he let it grow, and she liked to wrap a particularly evident one around her index finger until it bounced in a spiral. She felt him mirror her, one of his large, warm hands coming to the back of her head and smoothing her hair down, almost as though he were petting her.
“You okay?” she finally asked, her thumb rubbing ever so lightly at the juncture where his ear and jaw met, and he tangled his hand into her hair more fully, shifting slightly as though wanting to be closer.
“Tired,” he confirmed, and she hummed her understanding, giving him some space to speak. “It’s a new experiment.”
“Need a sounding board?”
He said nothing for a moment, but she didn’t repeat. After years and years together, not only as teenagers when they first met, but now as grown people with way too much shit on their plates, she knew how valuable the space between one word and the next was for him. Instead, she reveled in his tenderness, softer than she could have ever imagined he’d be. He let his calloused touch run soft down her neck, down the very top of her spine until he got to her collar, looping back around and into her hair. Occasionally, he’d let his hands run through the locks, shortened considerably since the first time they got together.
“It’s. . .a different experiment than I’m used to,” he admitted, after a while, his voice low and rumbling through her from her spot on his chest. She snuggled in just a hair closer.
“In what way?”
“I might need anecdotal evidence.”
Her brows raised at that one, lifting her head, finally. Instead of letting his touch drop from her, he followed her motion, keeping his fingers looped in her honey hair.
“I thought anecdotal evidence was for-“ she made a face similar to that he’d made countless times and let her voice drop, “sociology.”
Were she anyone else, she would think he were deadpan in his response. Instead, she saw the way the very tips of his ears pinked.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Ha! Then how do I do such a good you impression?”
“Who told you that falsehood?” he teased, and she poked his neck.
“What kind of anecdotal evidence?” she asked, instead, smiling down at him.
He looked up at her but also through her, his soul perception always so effortless. She was more than accustomed to being stripped down near him. Tough luck for him, she was also more than accustomed to stripping him down, too. Soul perception or not.
“Love,” he said, simply, and she looked surprised for a moment.
“Anecdotal evidence about love?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The molecular formulas have proved fruitless,” he said, pragmatically. “As loathe I am to conduct a survey, it’s a logical next step.”
“No, I mean why are you running a love experiment?”
“It’s a barren scientific category.”
That was a lie. She lifted her brow. He was definitely looking through her more than looking at her, now. She’d find the results of his experiment soon enough. She knew if she pushed too much about it, he’d become embarrassed. Dr. Franken Stein hated admitting he had emotions. Nah, he just preferred to show them every single day. The dweeb.
“So who are you surveying?”
“I’m unsure so far.”
“Sounding board?”
“Sounding board,” he confirmed, finally coming back to center and looking at her, again.
“What questions are you asking?”
“What one feels when in love,” he replied.
She hummed thoughtfully, looking away from him and into the distance. “Let’s see. . .who do we know who’s in love like that. . .what about Soul and Maka?” she asked, glancing back.
“Yes, I was considering them.”
“Start there, then. Why not? Good a place as any.”
“Yes,” he said, but she could see he was chewing his cheek.
“After that, you could try Nygus and Azusa? They’ve been so sappy recently,” she giggled, elated for her best friend.
He nodded, something coming into clarity behind his eyes. “We need larger sample sizes.”
“We know a lot of couples,” she pointed out. “But just start small. Get a control, right?”
He finally broke his weird funk, smirking in the way that pulled his stitches only on one side. “You know it turns me on when you use scientific terms.”
“Beaker. Test tube. Centrifuge,” she said, dropping her voice down into a seductive purr and lidding one eye. “Bunsen. Burner.”
He wrapped an arm around her middle and rolled both of them off the couch, much to her delighted shriek.
Maka answered her door wearing a larger-than-usual sweatshirt with her pigtails long missing now that she was 22. After a brief station in Eastern Europe with Soul, her fury unyielding when it was so much as implied that she leave her partner after the fallout of the kishin, she had returned to Death City in a cozy and clean apartment. Stein stood in the hallway, his labcoat pockets weighed down with his recorder, a notebook, and a small tin of cookies Marie had all but shoved into his pocket before he left.
“Professor Stein!” Maka said, smiling. “Welcome! Come in!”
Stein nodded, stepping into her apartment and noticing all of the musical posters plastered up on her walls. He was merely going to call, but Marie told him it would be good for him to get out. Which did not work. Then, she told him that his questions would be more accurate if he asked them face to face. That was what got him grumbling out of the house, at least.
“You can sit anywhere. Sorry, no rolling chairs though.”
Stein shook his head. “A travesty,” he remarked dryly, but Maka only laughed. He situated himself on the couch and Maka pulled up a chair on the other side of her coffee table, littered with magazines and unused coasters. He didn’t even know what the things were if not for Marie’s insistence of not leaving water rings on her table from Oceania.
Oh, speaking of Marie. He pulled out the tin of cookies and set them on the table. Maka, who knew more than anyone gave her credit for, even after her praises of defeating the Kishin, said “Oh! These are Soul’s favorite. Tell Marie thanks for us.”
He nodded, pulling out his notebook and writing a note about it on the first page. Then, he flipped to the next few and found a clean page to write “Maka” on.
She had already grabbed up a cookie and had started absentmindedly munching. “So, you had some questions?”
“For my new experiment,” he confirmed, and Maka nodded.
“Shoot.”
“I left my scalpels at home.”
“Shame,” Maka replied, long accustomed to his morbid humor from sitting in his classes her entire adolescence. “Guess you’ll just have to ask me questions, then.”
He nodded. “How does one feel when they’re in love?”
Maka blinked for a second, brows coming together in confusion. “Uh. . .I guess they feel happy?”
“In measurable terms,” he tacked on.
Maka’s expression looked the same for a second but then seemed to understand. “Wait. . .how does one feel or how do I feel?”
“You.”
“Ooooooh,” she said. She always was one to ask for clarification. “Oh, haha,” she laughed nervously. “I guess. . .I feel. . .kind of giddy. You know? Like butterflies are in my stomach?”
It was Stein’s turn for his brows to meet in the middle. On his notebook he wrote, “ingesting insects?” and nodded. Maka was looking over to the side where a picture of her and her circle were, taken the day of graduation. In the center was Soul and Maka, Soul with his hands in his pockets and Maka grinning and leaning against his shoulder with both arms thrown around his neck.
“I feel. . .lighter. Like there’s not as much to carry. And. . .and rhythmic.”
Stein blinked, writing down “lighter” and “music?” in his notebook as well, making a small note alluding to heartbeat before he heard the door open in the back and Maka’s entire face seemed to illuminate.
“Hey Soul,” she called out before scowling. “Soul,” she said more flatly this time and he heard Soul stop his footsteps.
“Oh, shit, sorry, I forgot,” he said, and Stein turned to see Soul pick his jacket up from the back of the couch, walking over to a door and opening it to reveal coat hangers. “Hey Doc,” he said, as well.
“Soul,” Stein acknowledged, nodding at him.
Soul finished putting his jacket up and moseyed over to Maka, slumping his way into the seat beside hers. She bumped her knee into his and Stein made another note, but felt his notes were somewhat pointless.
“Do you want to ask Soul, too, Professor?” she asked, but Stein looked down at his notes and heaved a sigh.
“Yes, I suppose.”
This was pointless.
That night, he scowled over his notebook. Each page seemed to only conflict his studies more. It made such little sense.
Liz and Tsubaki both said it felt “like floating”, though neither could fly and Tsubaki could only be thrown in her weapon form. Nygus said it felt like being warm and Azusa explained it as a sense of “home”, whatever that could mean. Kim said it felt like a hug all the time and Jackie explained it as all the colors sharpening and becoming more bright.
He didn’t know what any of that meant, objectively.
He groaned and Marie stopped sipping her tea from across him in their living room.
“Okay, that’s groan number 6. Talk to me,” she insisted, and he dropped his notes down on the table, throwing both arms out to lay on the back of the couch.
“The research is useless. These anecdotes make no sense.”
“THE Doctor Franken Stein? Stumped? My goodness,” she said, sipping tea once more.
“Hah.”
“Maybe you haven’t been asking the right questions?”
“What should I have asked, then?”
“Mmmm. . .maybe what they feel about the person they’re in love with?”
“That’s not very objective,” he remarked, closing his eyes as he yawned. Marie laughed, peering at him no doubt with her single golden eye shining.
“This isn’t exactly an objective subject.”
He didn’t respond to her. That was true. He didn’t feel the need to confirm or deny her when they both knew she was right.
Instead of waiting for his reply, he was surprised when she quietly continued. “I mean. . .you haven’t asked me, yet, either.”
He finally opened his eyes to look at her. She was looking at him with her eyebrow raised, eyepatch off and on her nightstand beside their bed to truly show that only one was lifted. He felt his ears warm.
“That would most certainly not be objective.”
“Love never is,” she said.
He squirmed in his seat almost imperceptibly. This was not comfortable waters for them. Sure, Marie told him often that she loved him. He would respond in some way or another, and it always seemed enough for her. But he’d been thinking and thinking.
How was he to tell her that this entire experiment was about her, anyway? That he didn’t particularly care how others felt in love, only that he wanted the objective, rational evidence, something to compare his thoughts against?
How could he tell her that he just wanted to know, once and for all, if he. . .could love her?
“Here,” she said, taking the lead, as she did in the desert when first she grasped the back of his head and rolled over in the dark to him, as she did when they were teenagers and she pressed her foot two inches into the sand declaring their partnership, as she did when they were back and she said she wanted to stay, “ask me.”
She placed her teacup down on the table and smiled at him encouragingly. He swallowed, suddenly wanting the tea she offered earlier.
He almost cleared his throat, feeling much, much younger once again. “Okay,” he said, not knowing how to deny her, “how does one feel when in love?”
“I think everyone feels differently. Could you be more specific?” she pushed, and he didn’t want to.
Once upon a time, he didn’t have to worry about messy, foolish things like human attachments, or caring about others, or worry. He was alone in his grayscale home and he was perfectly fine. Perhaps he wasn’t content, but he had no use for contentment. Joy, concern, surprise: these were dopamine, serotonin levels he could measure. Butterflies in the stomach? Not so much.
He licked his lower lip. This was Marie. Surely, she’d give a more rational answer.
“How do you feel in love?”
Marie smiled, slow and warm, her eye crinkling. “It’s. . .different sometimes, depending who I love. If you’re talking about romantically, I feel like I light up. I’m. . .better, in love, I think. But, Franken. . .be more specific.”
“I don’t-“
“Just ask me, Frank.”
He paused and took off his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His cortisol levels were certainly raising. He knew Marie never knew the meaning of stopping. She was truly an immovable object and an unstoppable force, both. A gentle light and a lightning strike. Confusion condensed, determination distilled.
“What do you feel when you are with who you love?” he asked. That was objective enough, yes?
“When I’m with you, you mean?”
He was 35 damn years old. He had lived through war, through slaughter, through murder charges. He had killed witches, taken down demons, used his own soul as a wire of electric thread. And here he was, fucking flustered. This is Marie, he had to remind himself.
She giggled. “Oh, Frank. So much. I feel safe, like there’s nothing that could hurt me. I feel confident. You just. . . know me. You know my limits, how to push me. . .it feels good. I’m glad to be known.”
He looked at her, not having written any of what she said down, but watching the way her warm, tender, impossibly bright soul was pulsing with her heartbeat, gentle and lovely. He nodded, quietly telling her to keep going.
“I feel annoyed sometimes, too,” she giggled. “You know all of my pet peeves and you just know how to get under my skin.” When he opened his mouth, she stood up, shaking her head so she could plop down on the table in front of him, settling right between his legs and invading his space. He laid his hands on the table to push his notes to the side and make space for her. “Not literally. Yet.”
“Never,” he said, immediately, and her expression morphed to something. . .almost impossibly tender.
“Never,” she nodded. “Yeah. I know. Remember, safe?”
He nodded, overwhelmed. His fingers twitched on the table, so near her and yet so far, but Marie solved that by letting her hands come over his and leaning back slightly.
Her palm was so warm.
“But even when I’m annoyed, I just. . .I just love you. Everything about you, even the irritating bits,” she grinned. “I just. . .feel comfortable. Happy. I’m happy when I wake up and hear you snoring. I’m happy when I see you drinking out of your beaker. I’m happy when you’re doing research or we’re watching documentaries and you burn water helping me with dinner. As you would say, my serotonin goes way up.”
“But serotonin. . .that’s. . .” he struggled with the words to say. “That isn’t enough.”
She tilted her head. “In what way?”
“To measure.”
“Does it have to be?” she asked, and he felt jolted. Lightning bold, indeed. He was always the iron tower she struck, relentless. Only Marie really knew how to pull the foundation out from under him only to realize that the fall would always be soft. Her fingers interlaced his from her spot atop his hands.
“What if it does?” he responded back.
Her brows twitched together. “Wait. . .is that why you’ve done this experiment? You need to measure love?”
He didn’t look away, but he also didn’t look directly at her. His gaze bounced, not too unlike hers had to.
“Wait. . .wait! Were you. . .measuring it because you were. . .worried you didn’t love me?”
Ugh, being known, indeed. He could hide nothing from Marie, nor did he want to. But damn if he didn’t suddenly feel 20 years younger and instantaneously a weird, gangly, awkward 15 year old boy, once more. “Not the way you. . .need to be.”
She snorted, finally, laughing and tipping her head back, so rosy. “But- haha, Frank! You love me every way I’ve wanted and needed to be!”
He shook his head. How could he tell her? How could he let her know that she deserved for love to be a fact, as fluid as breathing, as easy and simple as a measurable formula? That she deserved someone who well and truly loved her, who never had to wonder if they were even able to. “I’ve never said it to you. I’ve never. . .understood.”
“You understand,” she said. Fact, science, ease. “And you say it to me every single day, you silly man,” she reassured, absolutely glowing now, from toes to crown. He shook his head more but her hands left his and came to his cheeks, holding him in place so they had no choice but to look at each other. Marie, made of starlight, heat, the crackle of electricity. Once, he thought he looped around her like an electron to a nucleus, like hydrogen, endless. Now, he feels that he is the neutron to her proton, attracted toward her, who’s gravitation force always sucked him in. Not rotating on his axis and dizzy, but tethered. Her force, her pull: not orbiting but anchored. Not unmoored, spinning out and dizzy, but stable. Her eye bounced from each of his as he memorized her face for the hundredth time. How many times had they been here, just looking at each other? Why did something in his stomach feel. . .different, then?
“Every day, Franken,” she urged, both serious and light, both urging and tender. “You ask me how I slept, or if I’m tired. You buy my favorite tea. You go shopping with me. You. . .you invited me into your home after years apart. You carried me out of fights, held my hair when I’ve been sick. You ask if I’ve eaten, if I’m ready for bed. You walk on my left side so I’m never vulnerable. I mean- Death, Franken, you hold me behind you when I’m in weapon form.”
“I’m your Meister. Those are Meister duties,” he said, weak argument though it was, and Marie looked so overwhelmingly amused. Her fingers moved down, now resting on his chest, one feeling at his heart.
“Oh, yeah. Mhm. Yep. Meister duties. Say, when was the last time you fucked your last weapon?”
He sputtered. “Marie-“
She cackled in response, impressive and most certainly something she picked up from him. “See? What are you hiding from, Frank? I know you love me. I don’t need three words to prove that when you’ve proved it all your life with me.”
“I prove it?” he asked, finally. And there it was, the vulnerable, open wound. The festering infection within him that had never had space to heal, to close, to clean.
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean. . .you choose me, don’t you?”
His brain stopped, stilling and rewinding back to moments with her. At parties, when there was no one he would tolerate but her. In meetings, when he slumped beside her in desperate need of coffee, rolling his eyes at others’ comments. Even years ago, as children, when first he met her in her weapon form and held his hand out.
“Yes,” he said. This, at least, he can answer honestly, simply. He looked at her soul, too, blinking slowly. “Yes,” he repeated.
She played with the stitching on his shirt and shyly asked: “And tomorrow?”
“Yes,” he said, more confident, this time, glancing into her eye. She was the very definition of illumination, resonating with him until it amplified everything in his body, bones humming as if he were using Izuna.
“And the next day?” she asked, leaning in.
“Yes.”
“And the next day?”
“Yes,” he repeated, and before she could ask again, his mouth opened and he thought carefully about what he wanted to say. “I think. . .I would choose you every day. As far forward as I can think. . .yes.”
When they started whispering, he didn’t know. He didn’t even realize how close they were until he noticed that his back wasn’t against the couch anymore and that he was leaning in. Marie fisted his shirt and hauled him even closer to her, something shining in her eye.
“I choose you, too,” she said, kissing his cheek. “Today,” his other cheek, “tomorrow,” his forehead, “the next day,” his nose, “the next day,” she breathed, against his mouth. “Every day, okay? Every day.”
He ran his palms up her arms and wrapped one hand around her to hold her in place between her shoulder blades. When they pressed together, it was as warm as a tropical storm.
When she woke up the next day, he was still sitting on their bed, his bare back flexing as he wrote on. . .something. She lifted her head, yawning and wiping the corner of her mouth. “Frank? Working so early?” she asked, but when she peered around him, she saw that he was writing her name in the calendar she’d bought earlier that year that had been used for a grand total of nothing. She blinked, almost convinced she was still dreaming.
“Morning,” he said, rolling his head and cracking his neck.
“Are you. . .writing my name in the calendar?” she asked, and he looked over his shoulder, as though confused.
“I’m choosing you.”
“Oh,” she said, unable to stop the enormous smile that threatened to take over her face. “Oh. . .well, I’m choosing you, too.”
And, with that, she threw her arms around him and yanked him back into their bed.