A Little Madness

By: DemonClowSorceress

Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.

Summary: Marie goes on a date, Stein is puzzled by how much it bothers him, and Marie gives up an interesting tidbit. SteinxMarie.

"So...where's Marie?" Spirit asked, leaning against the laboratory doorframe a safe distance from the scientist.

Stein halted just before making his first incision. "Excuse me?"

"Well, she's not here."

"Obviously," he replied, continuing with his dissection.

"So you don't know?" Spirit pressed.

"She's not required to tell me where she's going every time she leaves the lab."

"So you didn't know that she's out on a date with that visiting three-star meister from Rio?"

"No." Peel back skin, pin back flap.

"At that new romantic restaurant on 66th Avenue?"

"No." Probe innards, push aside organs.

"And it's almost midnight?" Spirit sounded like he was fighting "a bad case of the giggles" as Marie would've said.

Snip out the lungs and prep them for later incisions. "Is there a point?"

"So you're not worried that she might not even come home tonight?"

Unconsciously, Stein's hand suddenly twitched. His scalpel slipped, severing the liver into two uneven parts. "She's a consenting adult," he said. "What she does on a date is her own perogative."

Spirit's brows knitted together. "Stein, I've seen this guy. He's not exactly bad-looking."

"So?"

"When Marie first met him, she had stars in her eyes."

"Again, so?"

"You're telling me that doesn't bother you?"

It was some more difficult that he thought to say, "Not really." Something small bounced off the back of his head. Stein sent a green-eyed glare at his former weapon. "What was that for, sempai?" he asked calmly.

"Because you're the most selfless idiot I've ever met, Stein." With a cocky grin, Spirit straightened up and left.

Stein shrugged and tried to return to his experiment, but it was no use. His focus wasn't in it. He scowled and cranked his screw three times to no avail. Leaning back in his chair, he let his mind ponder over Spirit's words.

"Stein, I've seen this guy. He's not exactly bad-looking."

So had Stein, at the last social function Marie had dragged him to welcoming the newest three-star meisters. The lack of madness in his soul had been what caught Stein's eye; such a clean soul was rare in the aftermath of the Kishin's awakening.

"When Marie first met him, she had stars in her eyes."

Who could blame her? Carlos was an exotic, dark-skinned man with the greenest eyes, a smooth talker who also had a heart as gold as sunlight. Marie, like so many other female weapons, had been drawn to the man's handsome looks and personality.

"You're telling me that doesn't bother you?"

Why should it? Stein paused, a long-necked flask in hand, and frowned. Why should it? It wasn't as if he had any claim on Marie's time. The knowledge that she was out with a man who was his polar opposite and, by all accounts, a good match for her, meant nothing to Stein.

SNAP!

Stein blinked at the sudden feeling of pain in his fist. Unclenching his fingers, he saw that his grip had crushed the neck of the flask, and slivers of glass had embedded themselves in his palm. Blood welled from the injuries and dripped onto the sterile chrome of his lab table. Red on silver. Color on the colorless. Automatically Stein grabbed a nearby rag and wiped the red liquid clean. The stain was gone, but the table was sterile no longer. It would never be the same.

"Stein! I'm home!"

The cheery greeting pulled the scientist out of his head. A precisely judged push of his legs sent his wheeled chair rolling out of the lab, down the hallway and into the living room. "Hey. You're back late," he remarked in a flat voice to hide the warm feeling seeping through his body that she made it home at all.

"Carlos took me dancing after dinner, so I'm exhausted," Marie said as she hung up her jacket. This presented a lovely view of her rear, and since the little black dress she wore fit like a glove, Stein swallowed hard as his throat went dry.

"So, a good night all around?"

"Yeah. He's so charming, Stein. A real gentleman."

As her back was still turned, Marie didn't see his indifferent mask crumbling like so much plaster. "So when's the wedding?" Stein asked sarcastically.

He heard her sigh loudly. "Who said anything about me liking the guy?"

She's joking, right? "He's male, tall, good-natured, and more than mostly sane. Doesn't that fit the usual criteria?"

She turned around at that, and Stein quickly schooled his features back into calm boredom. Marie rolled her eyes at him. "Those are very narrow parameters, Stein. I could be a lesbian."

"Not from the way you've been eyeing most of the men around us."

"I could like shorter men."

"Nobody's shorter than you unless you're thinking of cradle-robbing, in which case your selection is rather limited."

"I could like complete assholes."

Now Stein rolled his eyes. "No shortage of those around here, but you've pulverized them all more times than I can recall."

Marie's lips puckered as her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "What brought this on, Stein? Why do you suddenly care about the type of guy I'm interested in?"

Because I want you to be happy even if it's not with me. The thought appeared in his brain without hesitation, and the truth of the statement surprised him. Spinning around in his chair, Stein pushed off and rolled back into his laboratory. He heard Marie calling after him, but he smothered the sound of her voice with a slam of the door.

Not a good idea. The door suffered an untimely fate mere seconds later when Marie's punch knocked it half-off its hinges. Standing the doorway with a scowl on her face, clenching her fists tightly at her sides and looking ready to do more damage, she ground out, "Franken Stein, you tell me right now what the hell has you acting so weird, right now."

Stein's eyebrows popped up in surprise at her temper but answered, "I don't know."

"Bullshit."

"I really don't know," he honestly repeated. "Spirit came over earlier and started talking about the date you went on tonight, and I figured since Carlos is everything you'd been looking for in a husband, you would be considering the opportunity."

Her amber eye filled with puzzlement. "Do you want me to leave?"

"I certainly wouldn't stand in your way." Before, their involvement was a strictly business arrangement to keep him from succumbing to Asura's influence and destroying everything in his path, the only thing standing between him and utter insanity. Now that the threat of the Kishin was over, she was just his roommate, the bubbly, cheerful, marriage-obsessed, violent blonde Deathscythe who happened to inject color and life into his sterile environment with the regularity of a saline drip. She was free to live her own life.

The thought gave him a cold jolt that was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. A sort of madness welled up inside him, a different kind of insanity rooted in panic and fear and loss. If Marie left, what would I do?

Nothing in his life was untouched by her presence. No matter how hard he tried to deny the fact, Stein knew it was true. Hell, there was more of Marie in the Patchwork Lab than there was of Stein, and he'd stitched the damn place together more than half a dozen times. Marie had left her mark on his life, on his soul, and on his heart.

If she left, what would happen to him?

"Stein?" Suddenly there was blonde hair filling his vision, soft fingertips touching his face, and a concerned golden eye looking directly into his green ones. "Stein, what's wrong? You look like you're about to be sick."

For some reason, her touch calmed every raging thought in his brain. He took a breath and said, "It's nothing. Just dizzy, I guess."

"From inhaling all this formaldehyde, I bet. Did you eat dinner?"

"No. I was - "

"Dissecting, yeah I figured." Marie shook her head and sighed, but a grin was barely present on her lips. "C'mon, I'll fix you something."

Now Stein shook his head. "You should go to bed if you're tired. I'm perfectly capable of - " He stopped talking when her fingertips pressed harder into his cheeks, a subtle warning that he knew better than to avoid. He sighed. "Fine."

"Good." She released his face and turned to leave the laboratory, but paused just outside the door. "And for your information, I only went out with Carlos tonight because he wanted tips on how to get with Azusa."

The scientist felt his heart race in something other people would call relief. "That a fact?"

"Yup. Sure he was tall, good-natured and - how did you put it? - "fits the usual criteria" but..." Marie glanced over her shoulder and gave Stein a possessive smirk. "Personally, I like my man to have a little madness in him. Now go put away whatever poor carcass you've been cutting into and wash up."

Stein's jaw dropped as she strutted out the door. He remained that way for almost a full minute, then his hand shakily reached up and cranked his screw three times to jump-start his brain again.