Disclaimer: I don't own money or Soul Eater.
Author's Note: I have no idea what this is. It just happened and I couldn't stop it and it's gross I'm so sorry. have a nice day. Also, my keyboard was being a douchebag so there might actually be words and commas missing. I've gone through it a million times to make sure that's not the case, but I probably missed some. ;-; ALSO A SPACING ISSUE
[stops]
warnings: swearing and 18 year olds having one beer each (only one)
She is a book before she is a person.
She sits on a hutch that extends from shelves of old, old novels, cross-legged and eyes perched on a single line (or reading in between two). There are only three dark-wooded shelves on each bookcase but they are stuffed with all kinds of unmarked literature.
He sees a piano in the center of the room on floors so splintered he's certain it'll just fall through in just a few moments. He sits on the bench. Her eyes do not leave the page, and he wonders if she's some character torn from a story, stuck in the last position the author described her in.
He clears his throat. "Will it disturb you if I sit here?"
Her sea glass eyes stay put. "As long as you don't speak anymore, no."
Her attitude assaults his ego. "Jeez. Bitch."
The softness of the sea glass in sand shifts to jagged-edged broken glass on pavement. "Excuse me?"
He glares. "Well, aren't girls supposed to be nice?"
He yelps when a dictionary splits his thick skull near in half. "Wha-"
"Misogynistic bastard. I hate men like you. Being born with a vagina for a sex organ doesn't mean I have to be nice to small-schlonged jerks like you."
He is still struggling with her first insult.
Her eyes pluck painfully at the confusion in his expression. "Right. Sorry. Forgot who you were. Mr. Soul Evans, who can't get his head out of his ass long enough to read a textbook."
He can't keep up. She strides over to him, leans so close their noses could touch.
She says, "Misogynist. Also known as an absolute douchebag, or better yet, a modern-day caveman."
He stands up to regain some sense of dominance with his height. "I am not small-schlong-"
She grabs his collar. His cologne hits her, and it's almost identical to her father's; it's like cigarettes, perfume from other women he knows by body and not soul, and some fraction of pine. She remains silent as she loosens her clutch on him, picks up her heavy book, and storms out of the tiny room.
She leaves the key to the hidden room in a corner of the third floor hallway on the hutch. Maka Albarn thinks that was their first meeting, and hopes it's their last.
He knows it's neither.
"Just give me the key back!" she all but shouts at him. "It's Ms. Marie's! She entrusted me with it, not you."
His releases a few notes from the piano. "Which one? I can't give you them; then the piano wouldn't sound so good, now would it?"
She pounds a clenched fist on the deep end of the instrument, and the dark sound that results causes them both to jump like they've been jolted. "Give it back."
He fiddles with it in his pocket. "On one condition."
"I kill you to earn it?"
"Harsh. No." He smirks, all shark-toothed and smarmy and the hair on the back of her neck jumps. Soul closes some of their space, so their lips are just about to meet. "A kiss."
"Ok."
His eyes widen. "Ok?"
"The kiss of death!" she yells as she knees him in the groin.
He coughs and crumples up in a heap on the ground, covers what remains of his family jewels.
She stands over him, lets a foot hover over the pulsing area of his neck. "Since I've seen you passing notes and giggling with Black Star in the back of our anatomy class, I'm assuming you're unfamiliar with parts of your body that aren't your dick." She smiles, all flat-toothed and smug. She presses lightly on his throat, not enough to even hurt, but he still tries to back away. "I press on what's known as your trachea long enough and you'll be unconscious quite quickly. Maybe dead. So give me the key if you know what's good for you."
He catches his breath for a moment. "Fucking crazyass bitch!" he splutters. He genuinely hopes those aren't his last words. Somehow, though, he pictures them fitting pretty neatly on his epitaph. He sucks in another glorious lungful as she eases up on his brakes. "I'm not letting go of this key."
"Why not?" she groans.
"You're not the only one here who needs a fucking escape from this shithole of a school, okay?" His red eyes bore right into her vicious glare and are so full of longing and some sort of unrecognizable heartbreak she steps off of him and resumes her meditative position on the hutch closest to the window.
A late-summer breeze flits in like a chilled ghost that wraps around and cools them both.
He coughs, and sits underneath the window on the opposite side of the room from hers. He continues to give her a ruby-hard stare. "Jesus. Where did you learn to throw people around like that? You're so little."
Maka jabs back at him with her own solid leer. "I'm a black-belt karate instructor."
He curls closer into himself. "Well, fuck," he croaks as he buries his head in his thighs. "Fuck."
"Still want to share a room with me?" she asks as she flicks the next page of her novel.
"Damn right I do." He laughs. "You're nuts, but really cool. I think I wanna be friends."
Her eyes are fine-China-plate wide. "I only choked you for a second but that was enough to kill what was left of your brain cells, huh?"
He chuckles again and lets the smells of late September move through him. "Maybe." He smiles. "But I think it's a good thing."
He tries and fails multiple times over the next two weeks to get her to talk to him in their room. He sits at his window, she at hers. She does not give him the time of day and it's making him lose his head. He's used to girls begging for his attention, not the opposite. He's Soul, only son of the noble and musical Evans family. He's rich and he drives a cool motorcycle and sits in detention more than class.
But she just keeps her stare intent on the pages of her books, which change each day.
He has one more idea, though it will require accomplishing something he's never done before: homework.
The word sits like a knot in his stomach, but he unties it by force as he sits at the piano bench and begins scribbling in his English notebook. He restrains a smirk as he runs a hand through his cool hair. "Um, Maka?"
She flips another page. This means, he has learned, she is listening but doesn't care.
"I need some help with this Catcher in the Rye assignment, and I'm sure a bookworm like you will have to know."
Her eyebrow arch. She sighs. "What about it?"
Yes, he cheers in his head. She has spoken at last. "I need to find a symbol in the book and explain it, but I read the whole thing and can't find any."
She scoffs, and gets up to stand behind him, over him as he pretends to look through the book. She reaches over and moves to a page early in the story. "Are you kidding me? The whole thing is full of symbols." Her finger slides down the page and stops. "His red hunting hat."
He looks up, and as usual, they are too close for comfort. "What does it mean?"
He sees her swallow thickly, like she's about to bolt from the pressure of their proximity. "Everything, really. It's part of his identity. It's part of what makes him, well, him, even though he still doesn't know what… him is. You understand what I'm getting at?"
Maka shuffles away as he looks back down to construct a paragraph from her few jumbled words.
"Maka?"
She looks up, and he likes the red tint to her cheeks. "What?" She puffs them out.
"Thanks."
Her father isn't home again. All she has to know he's still breathing is the same note he leaves on their dusty dining room table every single night except one Sunday a month.
My dear daughter,
I'm out on business again tonight.
I love you. Be good.
Spirit.
She starts to clean the house. She brushes the dust gathering in all the places meant to be well-worn: couches and cabinets and bedrooms. She vacuums to block her out her own occasional tears and to remind herself that there is life here, though so little of it. She puts his note with all the others on the kitchen counter.
She curls up on the living room floor with the television on. She needs voices, since she knows she'll never have hands.
"Hey," Black Star says and nudges him so rough he's about to fall off the cafeteria seat. "You leave her alone. I'm calling her off-limits right now."
Soul turns to him with food plugging his mouth. "Huh?"
"Maka. You keep staring at her, dude. Like, right now, and you were in anatomy. I'm stupid sometimes, but not blind. But I'm telling you right now, don't get involved." He never sees this much seriousness in his best friend, and it scares him. It's like he's gone from child to adult right before Soul's eyes in under a minute.
"Why is she off-limits?" He stuffs more mystery meat in his sandwich.
"Because she's like a little sister to me and if she becomes one of your little conquests I will kick your ass, right after her, okay?"
Tsubaki nods behind him.
Soul rolls his eyes, plays nonchalance. He knows just as well as Black Star that after she kicks his ass there would be nothing of him left. "I'm actually really interested in her."
Black Star takes another bite of his meal. "The only way you can prove that to me is if you can get her to marry you."
Soul's thought about it, briefly.
He sneaks in his bedroom window of his own house every single night after school, and rarely leaves on the weekends once he's locked himself inside.
Soul is so desperate to avoid his parents he's established this routine since he was eleven.
As he falls into his room, he places his new set of finished homework on his barely-used desk, right near the only picture he has left of Wes, salvaged from their attic.
"Hey, Wes," he says with a sigh as he sprawls out on his bed. "It's my senior year of high school now. I've chosen a college," he reports. "I'll finally be getting out of this town."
He closes his eyes. "And maybe taking a nice girl with me."
"Get off of her, Giriko!" Maka shouts from the other end of the hall of student-vacated lockers. She stampedes down the empty corridor. "Leave her alone right now."
He rolls his eyes and shoves his wailing ex-girlfriend against his locker, and she flinches at the sound of Medusa's head hitting it as if it were her own injury. "A relationship is between two people, Maka. Stay out of it."
She shivers at his use of her name. "It's between me too when you're hurting her like that. Get off."
"What are you going to do about it, little girl?" he sneers.
She runs and jump-kicks him right in the chest, sending him straight to the tiled floor. She gestures for Medusa to run and the girl does, right out the door into the December chill.
Maka follows suit as Giriko is left in tears on the ground.
Near winter break, he experiments with the piano as they sit in silence in the room.
"What's that song?" she asks as he ends it. "It seems familiar." She even lets her eyes leap off the page to meet his, and they are jade and wide with wonderment.
"I…" He hesitates, sheepishly scrubs the back of his head and stares at the keys. "I wrote it. A long time ago. For somebody."
Her smile is faint, but clear to him. "It's dark, but it's beautiful."
Soul almost cries (but knows how uncool that'd be) at her compliment, partly because she means it and mostly because it's the first comment he's received since his brother. "Thanks, Maka."
She sits next to him on the bench, and her smile is bolder. He's so startled by her sudden dislodgement of the fear of them being too close he slides to the other side of the long seat, like if he even breathes her innocent air he'll break her right down. They can't open the windows because of the cold from outside anymore, and all he can smell is the sweet honeysuckle from her hair and it makes him nervous.
She laughs, and he likes the sound much more than his music. Because it is a sort of music, the rare and heart-skipping kind. Maka pats the bench close to her. "Can you teach me to play?"
He nods, and scuttles back near her.
He laughs at how proud she is to learn Mary Had a Little Lamb.
She plays it over and over in different tones until she stops and asks without thinking, "What are you doing for Christmas break?"
He looks downtrodden. "Um, my parents always go away and I always tell them I'm busy with school. Then I end up usually staying with Black Star and playing video games all break. But this year, he's got Tsubaki so…"
"You…" She plays with the end of her plaid skirt. "You can stay at my house, if you want? My parents are both gone so…"
"Okay."
She's not sure what she's doing.
He isn't either.
He sits on the couch, feeling like he's about to meet the parents of his girlfriend for the first time, even though they aren't dating, and no parents are involved. There's an unexplainable pressure that tells him he has to succeed for the next twelve days or he'll lose her.
She opens her fridge. "Would you like something to drink?"
"S-sure."
Maka sits next to him, and hands him a bottle of beer.
He almost drops it, like it's burning his hands to hold it. "M-Maka I-"
She holds a finger to her lips, and laughs. "I won't tell anyone if you won't." She takes a swig, and he realizes this can't be her first time. She doesn't scrunch her nose at the taste in the slightest.
He smirks. "Well, well. If the goody-goody isn't a regular drinker."
She crosses her legs and puts her feet up on the coffee table. "There's a lot you don't know about me."
He copies her posture. "Mind if I find out?"
She laughs. "Not at all. If you're good at keeping secrets, anyhow." Her eyes sparkle, mischievous.
They begin to talk.
She likes that when she comes home now there's a sag to his side of the couch.
She throws away her father's letters.
"You think you're the only one with problems because you screw with the justice system of our school? Well, bullshit, Soul!" Tears pour down from her glass-green eyes and he thinks he's going to be sick with all the emotion she throws at him. He's not used to it. Girls crying.
He stomps a foot. "Oh, please? Daddy goes on business trips all the time and you're alone and that's why you're sad? Get over it!"
"There are no fucking business trips!" she shouts with such force her lungs crack. It's the first time she's said this, to anybody. She never expected to let go of this. Especially to a hotheaded guy in the middle of an argument that somehow started with Scrabble. Her breathing is erratic, heavy, like she's just run a hundred miles from him and then back. He looks like he's been slapped. "He's with another woman every night because he's trying to erase the face of my mother lying in a coffin!"
Maka looks down, fists clenched at her sides as she keeps crying. It doesn't stop. He wants to make it stop be he knows she has to continue.
She sinks to the floor, and he falls with her. Before he can stop himself, he reaches out and hugs her against him so tight he's afraid she'll be smothered to death, but doesn't care.
He strokes the top of her head as she sobs more. "My brother died when I was eleven," he says between her labored breaths. "I look so much like him that sometimes my parents think I'm him. And when they know who I am, they wish they didn't. They wish they still had him instead of me. He was the only one beside you who liked my music." He buries his head in her feather-soft hair, and knows he's crying now, too. "I was so happy when I found someone else who liked my music. I'm sorry, Maka. I'm so sorry for what I said. I don't want to lose you."
She grips his shirt tighter. "I don't want to lose you, either."
He lifts his head from her scalp, and gently lifts her by the chin to meet his eyes. "Good. I never intended to let you go." He pulls the key out of his pocket and shows it to her. "That's why I keep this."
She laughs. "I could have had Ms. Marie take it back from you at any time."
He laughs in response. "Good thing you're just a bookworm, not a tattle-tale."
A few months back in school, and he likes that he can smile at her in the halls. But he likes even more that they can meet in their third floor room and talk for hours until the school closes.
She's always there first, on her hutch. But today, she isn't. Instantly, a rot starts in the bottom of his stomach and he searches all the halls for her, to no avail. He passes Ms. Marie's room, and halts after running in circles for at least an hour.
"Damn it," he says, out of breath.
She gets up from her desk. "Soul, what is the matter?"
"Have you seen Maka?"
She gets closer to him as she senses his urgency. "No, I haven't. Is she okay?"
"I don't know," he grinds out as he runs out the high school's doors.
He finds her at the playground down the street, on a swing. She's got a black eye, multiple cuts and scrapes that bleed too much for his liking. Without asking or announcing himself, he picks her up bridal style and carries her to her home, faster than he ever remembers.
He lets her unlock her door and then kicks it shut behind him as he moves to the bathroom. He closes the toilet seat and sits her on it, and slams the medicine cabinet doors as he searches for a first aid kit.
"Soul, why won't you relax? You're making me nervous."
"What happened to you?" he asks with such an edge to his voice she almost topples off her seat.
"Giriko cornered me." She smiles. "But I got him good. He won't be botherin' me or any girl again." She winces as he starts to stitch the worst of the cuts on her left knee. "That hurts, Soul," she whines.
"Good!" He puts down the kit and runs a hand through his hair. "Damn it."
"What is your problem?" she hisses.
"I was worried!"
She snorts. "I can take care of myself, as you know."
"Put your pride aside for one damn minute!" He pounds fists on the outsides of her thighs, closes her in. "You could have asked anyone for help!"
"I told you, I don't need help!"
"Bullshit!"
"Why are you so worked up?"
"Are you oblivious? Because I like you, you fucking idiot! A lot! And seeing you hurt when I could have prevented it is making me crazy! I should have been there to help you."
A silence louder than his outburst fills the bathroom. There is just her heavy breathing, and his. His confession made her lightheaded and she isn't sure if it's more the blood-loss or the fact that he just admitted he liked her a lot.
They stare at each other, his face red as his eyes and hers fearful.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I'd react the same way. Because I like you, too."
"Thank goodness," he says, laughing.
"Um, Soul."
"What?"
"You're supposed to kiss me now."
He grins. "Do you even know how?"
She thinks of the hours they've spent by the piano and how much better she is than when they started. "I'm a quick learner and you're a good teacher," she says after a moment of thought.
He leans in, and though he tastes blood and it causes guilt to turn his stomach this is what he's wanted to do for a while and he ignores it. Ignores that he could have been her hero instead of her being his. But this is good enough. More than enough. She's been his hero for a while and he wants to get used to it. To her always being around.
He carries her again – carefully – to her bedroom and lays her down as he works his lips along her neck and anywhere else she allows it. He wants to know every inch of her, even the battle bruises and the tender cuts. He wants his touches to take them away as if they can just be wiped off. Like they're not real.
He does heal her. And makes her feel selfish, too. She knows this is the love she's read so much about: that he's a part of her but it's still not enough, it's never enough.
They lay in her sheets and he's pleased to pick up on a warmth in the night breeze that sweeps in, less like a ghostly wind and more like a spring heartbeat. Alive and new. He revels in their legs tangling, that her pigtails are gone and he can play with the ends of her hair.
"Maka," he whispers as he watches her eyelids start to flutter shut.
"Mmm?" She gets closer.
"Should I have asked you to prom first, then my girlfriend, then this?"
"We're both really rebels, though, aren't we?" She puts her head on his chest. "That's why we work."
"Yeah," he says with a smile. "True. But will you go to prom with me?"
"I'll think about it."
He creases his eyebrows. "Bitch."
"Funny how that's how we began."
He greets her at her door in his best suit. The pinstripe with the tie that matches his eyes that she picked out just for him last week.
And she's got the dress to match him, but frillier, blacker, and one that rests nicely on her late-forming curves that he decided was perfect for her.
He holds out his arm as he takes in her beauty. "Ready?"
She shakes her head. "I have a better idea than prom."
"What?"
"Since we've graduated, and we've ended up at the same college, let's just leave tonight."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. I'm already packed. Looks like you're behind again, Soul Evans."
He sighs. "Ok. New York it is. But can I have at least one dance?"
She smiles, and puts a record familiar to him on. "I guess just one is fine."
His older brother's funeral was already seven years ago, but he remembers it as if it occurred just yesterday. His casket sinks and most of the spectators, family, and friends have left. He was famous; a lot of people are mourning. But at eleven he believes only he really buries his heart with Wes. His parents are already gone. He still suffers by himself.
He clutches his pants and cries with his head down.
He stops when he feels a glare directed at him, from just a few inches in front of him. A girl his age, in a black dress and pigtails. He glares back in defense.
He realizes she's just squinting, not leering. They both loosen their eyes at the edges. She smiles, comfortingly, and sits next to him.
"You're Wes's little brother, right?"
Soul nods. He thinks she's about to say something about how they look alike, how much she'll miss his brother. He grimaces.
But it never comes.
"My dad plays your family's music all the time. He tells me Wes was a violin player, a really good one. I heard it. It's okay. But I really liked the piano and my dad said, oh, that's Wes's little brother who will also be a prodigy." She puts a quarter in his hand. "My papa also said to always give back to those that give to you. Your piano record gave me a lot of happy times with my father, which I don't get to have anymore. So this is my thank you. It's my life savings so far, so take care of it. And don't ever stop your music. I'm sure your brother wouldn't want you to, either. It's amazing. I hope I get to hear it again in the future."
She gets up and runs after her father through the rain-bogged dirt, her blonde hair flying behind her.
He's glad he kept the quarter all these years.
It goes really well with the key in his pocket.