Sorry for any accidental errors I missed. My beta is MIA.
Dedicated to my friend Caroline, whose birthday is on July 4th. Happy birthday! :D
It was a gloomy, rainy, and altogether unexciting Sunday. Soul unhappily paced the kitchen floor, looking for a snack that he didn't actually want.
After opening the cabinet for the third time, he gave up and went back to the couch. He flicked through television channels for about the umpteenth time that night and gave a small sigh. There was nothing on.
He angrily flicked the TV to a blue screen. The apartment was quiet, except for the rain bashing the roof and windows.
The way he considered it, there were three options always available for when he was bored: TV, video games, and movies.
TV: nothing on.
Video games: he was bored of them.
Movies: he didn't have the attention span at the moment.
What else was there to do?
He walked to the kitchen again. A single light from the ceiling was on, illuminating a small section of the kitchen while leaving the rest in darkness. It gave the floor an odd shiny spot. Soul grinned, suddenly getting an idea. He removed his shoes and left them by the door. Then he took off at full speed down the hallway. He felt the slight wind rushing through his hair and his speed building up and he knew he was grinning at the sheer awesomeness at it all- for all of three seconds.
The kitchen was smaller then he'd anticipated, and the minute his socked feet touched the floor he went sailing toward the other end of the room and face first into the countertop.
He lay on the floor for a minute, writhing in pain and cursing the rainy weather for making him maim himself.
He picked himself up and stood in the kitchen for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. He decided to go to his room and see if there was anything that could entertain him in there.
He made to leave the room, but stopped near the light switch. He pulled it down and the light went out.
"Good." Soul told the kitchen. "Now you can't hurt anybody else."
He arrived at his room and flopped on the bed, casting his eyes around for something to ease his boredom. There wasn't much in here since he spent most of his time goofing off in other parts of the house. He found an old rubber band ball near the desk and proceeded to entertain himself by throwing it up in the air and catching it. This method backfired on him, however, after a bad throw was made and the ball hit him in the eye.
"How uncool." He muttered to himself, rubbing his hurt spot and feeling grateful that no one could see him goof off at home.
He stood up to retrieve the ball and get his revenge- by throwing it at the wall with all his might. However, since it was, in fact, a rubber band ball, it bounced back and hit him in the face. In the eye. Again.
Soul roared in blinding pain and made to throw the cursed ball again, when he heard a voice through the wall.
"Soul, what are you doing?"
He blinked and looked around, still frozen in a throwing position. "God?"
"Ha-ha." Maka said, her voice muffled. "Now be quiet. I'm trying to work in here."
Soul rolled his eyes. Oh, yeah. It was Sunday. He was supposed to be doing homework.
He glanced toward his forgotten backpack in the corner and considered actually doing it.
Then he shrugged and decided to blow it off. After all, what did he care about the internal structure of a parrot?
But, it did give him an idea of what to do.
He opened his door and peeked into the hallway. It was empty. He grinned to himself, stepped out of his room, and quietly shut the door behind him.
He was doing a great job of being stealthy- until his sock slid on the carpet and caused his entire body to topple over in a most conspicuous way.
"Stupid socks! This is why I always wear shoes inside!" he told them.
He finally made it to Maka's room and peeked inside. She was hunched over her desk, papers spread out around her and her pen moving very fast. It appeared she was so involved in parrot anatomy she hadn't even heard him fall in the hallway.
"Well, it's very comforting to know that if I ever screamed for help from outside your door you'd completely ignore me and let me get murdered." He said, leaning on her door post and looking vey cool for the first time that day.
Maka barely even looked at him. "Soul, don't you have work you should be doing?"
"Yes." Soul said, without moving.
Silence.
"Well, are you going to do it?"
"No."
"You know, this is why your grades are so bad. You really should put more effort into your work…" Soul tuned her out. He hated these motherly lectures. After all, they were partners. They were supposed to work together, not lecture each other.
He took the time to observe her in her bookworm element. She was wearing a yellow sweatshirt and her hair was down, except for a small piece at the top in a ponytail. Her room was spotless, except for her desk, and she looked like she'd been sitting there for hours.
"Soul?"
"What?"
"Why are you staring at me?"
"I'm…not."
She gave him an eye roll and went back to frantically writing. "Whatever. Just go do something more…productive."
Soul turned his head sideways. "Like what?"
"Homework."
"Besides that." He said, just to be difficult.
She groaned loudly. "I don't know, Soul! Just go do something somewhere else."
"Okay." He said, and sat on her bed.
She glared at him stonily.
He grinned. "I'm somewhere else!"
Maka clenched her pencil. "Don't you have anything to do? At all?"
"No. That's why I came here. Entertain me!"
Maka threw an eraser at him. Soul grinned and stood on the bed, then proceeded to bounce up and down like he was five.
Maka threw more objects at him, some as small as a paperclip and others as big as a wastebasket. Soul tried to do cool matrix moves to avoid them, but really only succeeded in looking foolish and almost falling several times.
Eventually they both tired out. Soul lay back on the bed and Maka went back to her writing. Her room now bore almost as more clutter as Soul's, and he took great pride in his work. He found a piece of paper on the ground and folded it into a triangle. Then he took aim and threw it at the back of Maka's neck.
She didn't even flinch. He found another piece of paper and made a long tube with it, and then poked her repeatedly in the back. "Hey, Maka. Hey, hey, Maka. Hey-"
"What?" she screamed.
"Hi!" he said happily.
"MAKA-CHOP!" she said, and hit him with her hardest book.
After he had recovered from the attack, he sat back on the bed and stared at her. But, perhaps this wouldn't work on someone as thick as her.
He tried anyway. He sat and stared for twenty minutes straight, And still, she never turned around. And gradually he came to realize something. "You're cute."
"And you're annoying." She retorted, still writing.
Soul shrugged and walked out of the room.
Maka didn't stop writing until she had finished a beautiful diagram of a parrot's bone structure, and constructed a color-coded chart to go with it.
"Ahhh…" she said, leaning back in her chair and putting her hands behind her head. She thought back to when Soul was in her room, and the annoying scene replayed itself in her mind. She got up to make dinner when the last conversation finally caught up with her. "Now I just need to- wait…what?"