This was a birthday gift for the wonderful professor-maka on tumblr. She wanted Dire Circus fluff! :)

"Hey."

"What?"

"You're falling asleep."

"I am not," Maka mumbled, even as she wound her arms around his neck and slung one leg over his own, burrowing closer.

Soul quietly combusted while stroking her hair. "You're definitely asleep."

"No," she said petulantly, yawning into his shoulder. "Keep reading."

"If you fall asleep I'll leave you out here," he threatened, ignoring her order and dog-earing 'The Secret Garden', the better to wind both hands through her pigtails. "You'll get eaten alive by mosquitoes and probably carried off by a bear or something."

She snorted, but with a sigh, she gave in and sat up, stretching lazily. "Happy?"

No. Why had he told her to get off him again? "Mm. Oh, I think I hear that bear."

"I don't think bears can climb ladders."

"But do you know that?" he teased, peering theatrically over the edge of the dog's train car roof. The train stretched out before and behind them, a long dark line of softly shining metal just barely catching the moonlight, and he could hear Blair's cats talking gently to each other in the distance.

She tried valiantly to fight down a giggle, and in turned he tried to keep an idiotic smile off his face. "You're the man here. Aren't you supposed to say you'll protect me?"

He raised his hands defensively. "Never. I'm not that foolish or that deluded, thank you."

"Good answer." She yawned again, cavernously, finishing with a squeak, and then flopped back down beside him, setting 'The Secret Garden' very carefully out of the way with a disapproving look at the folded page. "Listen to the tigers."

"Mm. Sound hungry, the poor bastards." He wrapped one of her pigtails around his hand again and watched her lips curl helplessly, though she didn't look at him.

"They're probably conspiring with the bear. You know, freedom in exchange for eating all of us in our sleep."

"Gruesome. You're gruesome. It's fantastic."

"I know." She tilted her head to the side and pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, glancing up at him quickly to gauge his reaction; he tried to keep his expression neutral, but judging by her pleased, flushed face, he hadn't succeeded. Not for the first time, he reflected on how very well she could read him. "Tsubaki was explaining about constellations to me," she said after a moment, crossing her arms behind her head and staring straight up. The sky was inky blue-black, sugared with more stars than he'd have believed possible, but then that was the magic of being so far away from civilization. Out here, with the metal of the train cool against his back and the soft chirp of crickets in his ears, everything had always been easier to see.

"And?" he prompted, watching her.

"She showed me the little dipper." Maka lifted a hand and traced a shape. "But she said there's a lot more."

"Ehrm— well, I know Orion's belt. Umm…" He hunted, then jabbed upwards. "There, those three in a line."

"Where?"

"There— no, hang on, come here." He slipped an arm under her shoulders and yanked her closer until their temples were touching, and then he pointed again.

"Oh! More."

"I'm not an astrologer—"

"Please?"

"I really don't know any others," he admitted. "I know there's a serious dog somewhere, and a lady on a throne, but I dunno where."

"Oh." She considered that. "We should find a book about it."

"Ugh," he said with feeling. "It's fine for you to be a bookworm but it's a bit much when you drag me into it. Adventure under the sea, fine, redheads with an 'e', fine, crazy broads who keep their wedding cakes for fifty years, fine, but the governesses and the textbooks are just— why are you laughing?"

"You liked 'Anne of Green Gables!'" she snickered.

He pinked. "Dry up!"

"Sorry," she wheezed. "Make up some stories for me, then. Whatever you like."

"Now? Uh…" He was about to beg off, but she sent him one of those big-eyed, pleading looks that she'd obviously stolen from his dogs, and he wilted immediately. Damn, she was good. "Fine. Umm." He stared at the stars for a few minutes, feeling foolish, but also aware of an entirely masculine sense of self-satisfaction over how neatly she fit against him. "Okay. These ones, right here." Again he traced a shape in the sky. "See? What do they remind you of?"

"A… tomato?"

"A horse! It's a horse—"

"—Of course—"

"And it enjoys stepping on the toes of innocent bystanders at every opportunity, it likes to sneeze green crap all over them and get hair everywhere."

"I like where this is going."

"So all in all it's your typical shitty horse. Except that one really bright star, right there, that's its rider. She's the important one in the constellation. She keeps the horse from trampling all over the serious dog, and she keeps everything pointed the right way. She's pretty good at her job and she looks peachy doin' it, too."

"I really like where this is going."

Soul's chest may or may not have puffed up. "She's in charge of helping the stars that fall get home," he said on a whim. "They tend to get kind of lost down here in all the muck, you know?"

"That's a very important job," Maka said quietly, and then she propped herself up on an elbow to kiss him.