Super inspired by a song but I won't write songfic because that just isn't me. So you can thank Blu Cantrell for this silliness.
This is a two shot. First one is Soul's POV, next is Maka. Yay?
Disclaimer: I don't have any ownership of the Soul Eater characters or of the brilliance that is Hit Em Up Style.
Soul saw the cascade of socks followed by a similar rain of what looked like designer briefs as he was able to ascertain first hand when some Hugo Boss landed square on top of his carefully gelled and artful bedhead.
A distinctive shirt was fluttering down like a bad art house film and the purple paisley was familiar enough that he quickened his pace to Maka's apartment. Ominous feelings magnified as his ears perked to a cacophony he could name.
The sound of happy hardcore was booming so loudly that her doorknob was vibrating. The key that Maka had made for him that time she had gone on vacation and he had watched her cat (prior to Hiro and his "allergies" at which time Soul had been gifted a very pretty black cat named Blair until Maka could think of how to bring her home again) jangled in Soul's pocket.
The neighbor in the condo across the way opened their door and Soul sucked in a breath, always hating encountering the steely bespecled woman. Just his luck she wasn't on a business trip, like normal.
"I respect you, Mr. Evans, so I trust you will get Ms. Albarn to arrest that horrifying music prior to my informing the authorities." It was an empty threat. Maka's dad and his friends were the cops in this part of the city, and it was unlikely a call to them would result in much more than Spirit Albarn begging Maka to be a good girl.
"I'll take care of it," and because they woman had a glint in her eye that made him gulp, he added "Ma'am."
"Soon." She added for emphasis before shutting her door firmly.
Soul took a shaky breath, wondering what new hell he was entering as he opened the door and was assaulted by a dance mix so aggressive that you'd have to be on speed to be able to keep up. Chirpy voices and booming beats were only vaguely muffled as he stuck his fingers in his ears. The noise cancelling headphones he loved were at home on his desk next to his laptop and he wished he could open a portal to a dimension that would allow him to pluck them from the air. Or if he could somehow morph into something without ears.
The beat made him feel like he had two heartbeats, one of which was in cardiac arrest. Only time would tell which one it was.
Maka was at the center of the midday weekend rave, systematically pouring expensive looking colognes into one big mop bucket. The smell from the concoction was almost as repulsive as the music.
"Maka!" Soul yelled, but she seemed perfectly content to twist off another cologne cap and add it to the bucket. "Maka!"
She still couldn't hear him, it seemed. He didn't want to wait for a lull in the music, so he moved to tap her on the shoulder. Rookie mistake.
Faster than he could even process it, he was on his back with his head cracking sharply against the hardwood Maka had insisted were one of the most charming things about this apartment when Soul had toured it with her and Tsubaki two years ago. Simpler times.
This was just like those dreams he had but would die before he admitted to: Maka straddling him half dressed and face flushed with color, hair wild, but the part where her forearm was sharply pressed against his windpipe had not featured prior to today. He was seeing stars and things were starting to go black and red when he saw her face register his identity and her mouth may have formed his name. Soul couldn't tell anything over the music.
All at once, the music ceased and the silence wooshed in on him, which meant that those whining noises periodically happening were coming from him. He needed to man up before Maka got back, even if he wondered if he needed to be checked for a concussion. Clearly the pulsing pain meant she had dislodged a clot somewhere and he was about to seize up and die.
"You're not going to die," Maka's amused voice and smiling face peeking over down on him brought him back to the present moment. She helped him sit up and handed him a bundle of ice in a dishtowel. "Soul. So you got my text."
"Yeah." If the single all caps sentence ALL MEN ARE PIGS hadn't been an invitation to come over, he was getting rusty at reading his best friend's intentions.
Feet bare and legs shown to best effect in the shortest of green athletic shorts, Soul wondered if it made him a bad friend that last night in his unconscious mind those legs had been wrapped around him. He hadn't asked for the dreams, they were just a weekly or so feature since he was about fourteen. He took it as a sign that he was brain damaged. Maka was his friend and that's all she had ever been and ever would be, he had convinced himself of that.
Clearly the brain trauma was causing his free association to be much worse than usual. He put the ice gingerly against this back of his head and watched Maka wander over and fasten her hair in the pigtails he hadn't seen her wear since, well, Hiro had told her he liked her hair better long and down her back. Soul didn't care what Maka did with her hair, but all signs were pointing to perhaps Hiro not being in the picture any longer.
"Look at this." Maka shoved her phone in Soul's face and his eyes bugged out of his head. She was crouching over his extended legs as he sat on her floor propped up by one hand, so she knew all he could do was gaze helplessly forward at the screen mere inches from his face.
"For death's sake, Maka, give me a fucking warning before you shove a dick pic in my face!" She dropped the phone in his lap, and it bounced against his sac painfully. He wondered if she had dropped it there on purpose, but she had already stood up and wandered over to the bucket of cologne.
Graceful, as per usual, she didn't spill a drop as she quickly moved out of the room. "Let me flush this real fast. Just scroll to the text part."
Soul had a sick feeling in his stomach both from the sext, and because he had a sinking suspicion that what followed it was another nail in the coffin of Maka's ever tenuous faith in the male half of the species.
"Hey my sweet goddess Kimmy I can't wait to run my tongue down your… gross. Man… he's an idiot…" Soul hated being the cleanup crew for Maka's breakdowns now that they were adults and he couldn't just go beat up whatever bugged her.
Normally no one got close enough to Maka that they even had a ghost of a chance. With her model body and cute face there were enough men who wanted a try, but a five minute conversation where she tore apart their assumptions and danced circles around them with her academic accomplishments and Olympic level decathelon training usually left them too petrified. Hiro had been some combination of totally oblivious and totally devoted that he had seemed harmless, even good for her.
Soul had hated his guts from minute one.
Watching Maka change for a guy, any guy, even in little ways had made him feel like there would never be any constant in his life. Maka was his rock. She was the one that was there when he needed a stabilizing phone conversation at 2 a.m. when the panic attacks felt so real and nothing seemed like it would ever be normal again. Maka was the backseat driver when they took his motorcycle on winding mountainside roads. Maka was the one with the plan, the boss.
And right now Maka's plan seemed to include taking that empty, but clearly not rinsed out bucket that had contained all Hiro's cologne and to fill it up with his personal items in the room. She was picking up trinkets and tossing them in as she went, throwing them with enough force he was sure some of them broke. He waited for her to talk, watching her take a calming breath before seeking out Soul's hooded gaze. The ice was helping a little, and he wished her problem had as easy a solution as time and a cold compress.
"I don't know why I thought he would be any different than my father. He's a philandering pig, and a moron." She set the bucket down and flopped on her bed. "Scratch that. He's a philandering pig and I'm the moron."
"Maka…" He had only seen something play out like this once before, and it wasn't nearly this bad. For one thing they had been like fifteen, and it was over the black eye she had given their now friend Blake for trying to ask Maka out to get to her friend Tsubaki. She had seen right through that, and the one day suspension for fighting had been the best day watching movies they had ever had together. All the slasher films had been super cathartic.
"Don't say it Soul. I know how this goes. You try to tell me I shouldn't feel so bad. And then I tell you how I should have put together the signs ages ago because didn't I grow up surrounded by the signs? And then you tell me that it's different when it's the person you're dating. And then I tell you that's no excuse for being conned by yet another filthy, lying, scheming…" Not even sitting up or looking at it, Maka gave the bucket a curving kick that sent it flying into a wall, scattering all the male jewelry in various directions.
Soul stood up slowly, feeling a little dizzy for lots of reasons, but mostly from concern for the only person in the world he knew he would gladly take a bullet for if it ever came to that. He wished he could shift her pain to his own screwed up mind, which was so full of anxiety that a little of hers probably wouldn't make a dent in his madness.
Sitting down on the bed, he saw how her shirt had ridden up so far he could see a peek of her orange sports bra. She often jogged in that bra, or so he knew when he agreed to be dragged to the gym for his own good every blue moon, but he still focused very carefully on her eyes and forehead.
"This isn't your fault. Stop acting like it's your fault."
"But I should have—"
"Nope." Soul smiled down at her, and he was relieved to see her smile back and close her eyes to take another calming breath.
They sat there, enjoying the late spring breeze through the window that was clearing out the cologne stench and Soul felt the tug in his heart again. He wanted so badly to gather her up in his arms and let her know there was one person in the world that had her back come hell or high water. Friends first, they were a team. But the instinct to protect was too tightly wound these days with the emotions that had never shifted an iota from the day he realized he loved her in high school. What a shitty gym class that had been for multiple reasons.
When her hand tangled with his he didn't even look down and just savored the moment. Maka needed him and he was here. Best to just stick to the basics today lest his heart grow two sizes larger in poisonous hope.
"I bought some moving boxes. Can you go pick up all the clothes I threw out the window? They should be ready now."
Soul was confused only for a moment. "Ready?"
"It just rained a bit ago, after all." She darted up and pulled on some boots. They clashed horribly with her t-shirt and athletic shorts, but she didn't seem to care about anything right now. "I'm going to gather up all the kitchen appliances while you do that and then we can head to the pawn shop, ok?"
Clearing his throat, Soul felt like he was watching what a manic episode looked like. "Are you sure that you want to be doing this?"
Maka wandered around the room and picked up the items that had once been in the bucket, one by one, and plopped them in more gently this time around. Sniffing one, she made a face and let it fall in just the same. "Absolutely positive. I already sorted out all the jewelry I'm taking there, too."
Peeking over at Maka's dresser he saw with a flutter of satisfaction that the silver and onyx ring he had bought he as a joke during her goth phase (strictly speaking it was their goth phase, but if she was the boss she could take the credit for their failures as well as their successes) was still lying in plain sight. There were some other items he recognized as having been given to her by her mother, but Maka wasn't really big on the whole jewelry thing. Her hobbies didn't really allow for wearing it often.
"Most of what he has is clothes, so once I box up those, and all his stupid toiletries, then all that's left is to list the TV on an auction site or something… and then put out an ad for a roommate."
"You can't do that!" The words flew out of his mouth, head pain forgotten as he scrambled to his feet from the bed.
Maka was already moving toward the kitchen. "I know you love that TV, Soul, but I'll be able to afford one on my own eventually. Movie night will just have to be at your place for a month or two, tops."
Soul abandoned his spot on Maka's bed and followed her into the kitchen where she was grabbing all the attachments to a food processor out of a cupboard and putting them on the counter.
"You can't just live with some stranger, Maka."
She was assembling for the food processor so it would travel more easily as she answered his concern lightly. "It's just my name on the lease, and I thank everything for that, but I can't afford this place on my own since they cut back my hours at the library. Once all Hiro's clothes are out of here I can take that room I filled with books and other storage and move it all into my bedroom. I'll have lots of room once I get a smaller mattress anyway. Now go grab the stuff out in the street, I'll be done in here pretty soon and come get you." Her voice was deceptively cheerful.
Woodenly, Soul marched into the living room and grabbed an empty box. As he tried to think of a way to derail the runaway train that was Maka's new life plans, he imagined all sorts of terrible circumstances while in the elevator going down:
Maka living with some secret serial killer, who would then chop her up into little pieces while she slept.
Maka taking in some party girl who would sweep her up into clubbing all the time, turning her brain to mush in the process.
Maka not finding anyone and moving back in with her father, only to go to jail for patricide.
It took about twenty minutes, but Soul was reasonably certain he had found all the socks and underwear (the purple paisley shirt was nowhere to be found) when he spotted Hiro in the distance. The guy had the gall to come back after… oh shit he was smiling and waving. Maybe he didn't even know he had sent his dick pick to the wrong person!
"Hey Soul, what's with all the clothes? Going to donate them somewhere? I might have a thing or two to toss in there." Hiro was wearing all that super colorful designer clothing he liked, but Soul just wanted to punch him in his stupid ascot. That impulse was nothing new, regardless of the circumstances.
It would only be fair to try to avoid having to bail Maka out for assault, if at all possible. "I wouldn't go up there right now, if I were you."
Hiro looked confused, but to be fair he often was confused. Soul had been resisting the urge to kick his ass for eight months now, for walking through life in a confident haze while Maka organized everything around him. Having been the recipient of Maka's perfectionism, he knew what a comfortable existence it was, so this would probably be a shock.
"Check your phone, dude. What's the last thing you texted Maka?" It was all the clue he was going to give him, and much more warning than this waste of humanity deserved for the pain and fallout in Maka's life.
Hiro pulled out his phone and scrolled through it casually, then went chalk white and very still. He made eye contact with Soul, and then locked on to his phone again. The sweat that formed on his brow looked cold, and Soul had zero pity for the situation he had created for himself. Shifting the weight of the box of clothes, Soul shoved them at the blond man, who dropped his phone on the sidewalk with a crack as he instinctively grabbed it.
"Here's what you're going to do." Soul felt like he was channeling something inside of himself that was evilly powerful, a dark voice that hypnotized him as well as Hiro as he spoke. "You're going to take that box and you're going to back to your side piece and hide out for a while. Coming back here, for any reason, while Maka is also present is a mistake and I'll tell you why: if she doesn't kill you I just might to save her the trouble. See, Maka's trained for maximum efficiency and minimal pain when taking someone down, but I'm not like that when I fight and I would make sure you suffered. You'd feel every broken bone, every rupturing organ…"
Hiro opened his mouth to say something but Soul cut him off.
"Go. Now." He cracked his knuckles for emphasis.
"Are you ok?" Soul ran his fingers over the candle flame over and over until Maka gave his wrist a wringing slap to make him stop. "Dammit Maka, that hurt way more than the fire…"
"I'm not ok. I thought the fully loaded potato was a great idea, but I ate the whole steak too and I think I'm going to puke."
Since this day wanted to make a mockery of all of Soul's secret dreams, they were here at the most expensive restaurant in town in a private booth in the corner and eating a luxurious dinner by candlelight but there were some differences to Soul's fantasy. For one thing, in his version of it in his mind they would be dressed to the nines but here they were in the same clothes Maka had dragged them to the pawn shop in: Soul with his t-shirt and jeans, and her in her casual athletic gear and buckled leather boots. Instead of looking deep into his eyes and saying something sappy, she was instead slumped on her side of the booth looking a little green from having eaten too much.
Soul had successfully eaten his feelings along with his weight in crab meat, but then Maka had said order the most expensive thing he wanted. The whole evening was on her (or rather, on the proceeds from her food processor, mixer, immersion blender, juicer…)
Staring at her silently while giving his best resting bitch face, which he figured was his version of puppy dog eyes, Maka finally caved in. "I'm ok, really. Looking at me like that isn't going to change anything."
"You were throwing clothes out of a third story window just a couple hours ago."
Wincing, Maka sat up straight and he could hear her bare flesh peel off of the vinyl seat cover as she tried to face Soul properly. "Theatrics aside,"
"Which are ongoing—"
"Theatrics aside," she emphasized, "While I'll fully admit I'm raging over yet another infidelity that I had to be unfortunately associated with in any way, and that I take joy in every punishment I mete out to avenge, I'm not actually upset that Hiro and I aren't a thing anymore."
There was a lull in which water glasses got refilled and dessert got ordered. Neither of them were hungry for it, but if they were going to do this spend all the money hand over fist thing then they needed the literal cherry on the sundae to round it out. Once alone, Maka finally continued her thought, as if the current had pulled it under but then forced it to resurface. Soul knew if he was silent long enough, it was bound to happen.
"I was angry at first, and I'm angry now, but I'm not sad. I feel like I'm supposed to feel sad, and the fact that I didn't made me feel a little sad." Irritated that they were talking about feelings, as Maka didn't like being very reflective as a rule, she turned on Soul. "Do you want me to be sad? Would that make this more normal for you?"
Maka was queen of compartmentalization, but she wasn't dishonest about her feelings. Not with him, anyway, not since her parent's divorce and the two-year train wreck he had been witness to that was a tween Maka Albarn. Come to think of it, that had coincided with their goth phase.
Soul shrugged. "Whatever you feel is your own business, I'm just here if you want to talk about it."
"No offense, Soul, but I'll probably call up Tsubaki in like an hour and just dump on Hiro while she nods and smiles remotely. You don't want to hear the things I'm going to complain about. It's at least 30% about how lame he was in bed."
"Now I'm going to puke." Soul sighed, and as the two servings of limited batch house made ice cream arrived he tried to remind himself that not punching Hiro on the street when he'd had the chance was a good thing.
Soul was making his way through his spicy dark chocolate cinnamon scoop morosely when Maka piped up. "You're the only person I called, you know."
"I know." His tone was bored, but they both knew he was smiling and he couldn't stop the muscles from continuing to give away his pleasure. Traitorous body. "So I was thinking, since you need someone to move in on short notice… what about me?"
Maka was twirling her spoon down into her strawberry vinaigrette, boring a hole to the bottom of the bowl instead of eating it. "Ha ha. I'm not some charity case. You can't throw money at me just because you're worried."
Always with her damn pride. He didn't just throw money at things, did he? Shit, he was getting off track already. Focus, Evans. "I mentioned a few months ago that ever since I quit grad school I didn't have much of a purpose, and I hate living at home again. You'd be doing me a favor."
There were long agonizing moments as Soul wondered if she'd allow that flimsy explanation to pass through her wall of pride. She didn't want to be supported by any man, ever, even her best friend in a time of need. However, it was true that Soul hated living in his parent's townhouse. They might have been physically at their palatial home in the countryside doing whatever rich musicians did with their days, but he was surrounded by reminders of his wildly successful family at every turn and had taken to living in the basement to get away from it all. Getting out of that situation would actually be a huge plus.
"There would need to be some ground rules." That was Maka-speak for yes! Soul tried to play it cool.
"Yeah, like what? You don't get to make all the demands if I'm going to pay half the rent."
"Bathroom times will be scheduled." She took a bite of her ice cream, grimaced, then pushed it aside. "I know how long you take doing everything and I refuse to be late for work because your late night somehow became an early morning and you felt like a bath."
Soul bristled. "Then TV time will be on a first come first served basis, barring special programming. You don't get to make me stop watching before I'm finished with my show."
"I'm not doing your dishes."
"I won't touch your laundry."
"Ok, then." Maka blinked suddenly, as if realizing all at once what she'd agreed to.
Soul polished off his ice cream and pulled Maka's half melted scoop over to work on that too. Maka was blushing, but for once he wasn't sure why. She didn't seem angry, but neither did she seem relieved. Maybe this was a mistake.
"Look, if you don't feel comfortable with living with me—"
Maka's smile snapped onto her face at once. "No! No. This will be great. It'll be like when we go camping only with indoor plumbing. Why did we ever stop doing that anyway?"
I only owned one tent, Soul thought, and we're a lot bigger than we used to be when we had sleepovers in the backyard. "Dunno." His shrug spoke volumes while saying nothing at all.
