A/N: I love this pairing. They would be absolutely marvelous together, and I feel like Jacqui, of all the characters in this series, needs more love. Ugh. I just love them. Somebody else write for them so I can read stuff.
I do not own Soul Eater.
Enjoy!
Working part time at the library had its pro's and con's. The pro's normally outweighed the con's, which was how it should be with any job worth keeping. Jacqui noticed, however, that the con's had a way of revealing themselves in the most inconvenient of ways.
"I'm really sorry to put this on you, Jacqui-chan, but I just can't endure anymore," Jacqui's supervisor whimpered dramatically, being led to the door with an arm slung over her charges shoulder. Jacqui sweat dropped.
"Just make sure you get home quickly and sleep so you can recover. Over working yourself is only going to make a cold worse."
"I wanted to finish the schedule for tomorrow, but it seems I'll have to take it home and work on it…"
Jacqui smiled shyly and produced the schedule book, scrawled with notes and information on Shibusen history and education.
"I'm almost finished with it anyway. Why don't you let me finish the schedule, and then I can also give the tour? The students might feel more comfortable asking questions anyway if a fellow student is guiding them around."
Her supervisor looked at her, smiled, and shook her head. "Sometimes I wonder what I did before we had you around."
"Think nothing of it," Jacqui said thoughtfully. "Just focus on getting better, and you don't have to worry about a thing. I'll supervise the staff meeting, and then I'll make sure to get here on time tomorrow for the tour."
So here was a new con.
Jacqui sat in the back of the room, reading a book she'd chosen at random to entertain herself with while the adults discussed lesson plans and the inconveniences that were caused because Lord Death was busy on the other side of the world. (Doing important, diplomatic, Lord Death things.)
The kicker was that she'd finally made plans to go out tonight for the first time in months; on a double date with Kim and Ox. Which meant sitting through another evening of implications that she and Harvar, who, by the way, was capable of making even someone as stoic as herself feel awkward talking about nearly anything, were destined to be together. Not that he wasn't a nice guy, just not the guy. And this would've been the fourth time she'd had to confirm it if her superior hadn't come down with a sudden severe case of the sniffles.
So maybe this wasn't a con. But was it a pro?
Well, let's have a look-see over at who she was babysitting. All familiar faces. Doctor Stein complaining that it was prejudice against his right to pursue happiness that everything he happened to fancy cutting open appeared on an official Endangered Species list formulated by none other than Lord Death himself. Not much sympathy was being shown from Death the Kidd, a much less intimidating stand-in for his father.
Jacqui studied her peer's face, his eyes oozing boredom and voice flat with indifference to Stein's plights. She decided to let out a quiet giggle, amused at the prospect that they were both probably thinking the exact same thing right now: let me leave.
She blinked and blushed a little when those gilded eyes caught hers, quickly going back to reading about the art of…breast feeding? How the fuck had she found this anyway? Had she been so completely out of it that she hadn't even been paying attention to what she'd picked for reading material? Well that was just perf-
"I apologize for taking up so much of your time like that," Kidd's sleepy monotone spoke out, closer to her than she could've expected and making her jump. Apparently the meeting had finished and everyone had dispersed while she was busy contemplating her choice in literature.
Her foot got caught in the steel underwire of the bar stool and she flailed desperately before faceplanting onto the floor. She hadn't even had the mind to drag her book down with her, so Kidd found himself perplexed as he leaned over a page of explanations of why breast feeding was beneficial to see if she was okay.
"Please ignore my reading material," she said miserably. He sweat dropped.
"I won't ask. Or should I congratulate you?"
"I'm not pregnant."
"Then I wish you and your partner success in the future?"
"I'm not trying to get pregnant."
Kidd was out of ideas, so he went around the help-desk bar to help her to her feet. She thanked him and quickly gathered the book into her arms, stalking away to put it back.
"Marie-sensei brought out this box from the storage closet," Kidd called before she could get to the staircase that led to the second level. "Would you mind opening it for me?"
"It should already be open," she said over her shoulder, running up ahead of him and dashing back behind a shelf and pushing her book into a random empty space just to get it out of her hands.
"Um," Kidd said awkwardly, coming back through the door and giving her a pleading look when she came around the corner, "this closet is huge. Would you mind helping me find where this goes?"
So she sucked it up, hiked up her metaphorical big girl panties and followed him inside, cursing her own helpful nature.
They walked for a full three minutes until they reached the back of the storage room, the box, of course, having come from here. And if Jacqui was really lucky, it probably came from the very top corner or something ridiculous like that…oh…yep. Looking at the label, she cringed and looked around for a step ladder.
"Want some help?" Kidd offered, putting a platonic hand on her leg when she wobbled a little.
Well, it probably felt platonic to him. Her face reddened in non-platonic contemplation of how very close he was to the edge of her skirt. And then she inevitably started thinking about whether he'd be able to see her panties if she stepped any further up. Damn Marie-sensei. Damn her and her boxes from sexual tension creating hell.
But this was normal, right? What girl wouldn't get nervous around Death the Kidd? He was an attractive, friendly, and sometimes amusing male specimen. It was alright to admit that, right? There would never come a circumstance where he might get nervous around a girl like her, so it wasn't like-
"I don't think reaching further is going to be a good idea," Kidd warned her, bringing her out of her thoughts and alerting her to how very low the ladder really was. It didn't reach high enough. How the hell had Marie-sensei…oh. There was a taller ladder behind the arts and crafts shelf. Figured.
Jacqui jerked a reach one too many times, felt her organs shut off as she fell head over knee socks into Death the Kidd's awaiting arms, and practically tackled him to the floor.
"I told you it wasn't a good idea," he grunted miserably. She groaned and was slow to get off him, one of her knees in pain and probably bruising with floor impact.
There came a call of 'Anybody in here? No? Alright…' from the front of the room, a loud click as the lights went off, and an even more ominous click as the door was shut and locked from the outside.
Kidd and Jacqui lay on the floor, entangled in each other's arms, and staring into the black abyss.
"The janitor," she groaned pathetically. "I left my keys on the floor when I fell behind the desk…"
"Should we call for help?" he whispered close to her ear, making her blush. She sighed and said just as quietly, "No. He didn't even hear the ladder clatter to the floor or me call out when I fell, remember? He's pretty much deaf. I could try to see if there might be something to pick the lock in here…"
"It's locked from the outside, right?"
"…Oh yeah…"
Sweet silence. It was sinking in that they might be stuck, and Jacqui was, surprisingly, not panicking. What was there to panic over? They wouldn't starve if it was just one night. And Kidd wasn't unpleasant company. He was actually…very…
In the dark, she might've gotten a bit bolder, but she let herself lay on him for a little longer than was probably natural. If she needed an excuse, she'd say she was just tired and in pain, but he hadn't asked. So she assumed he was okay with it.
"You asleep?" he asked gently. "You're not hurt are you?"
"No," she answered quietly. "Just thinking about how funny this is, I guess."
He chuckled. "It is kind of a strange turn of events. You aren't freaked out? Afraid I'll take advantage of you?"
She laughed softly into the jacket he wore over his suit. "No, no. I don't think you would do something like that. Not to someone like me."
Her eyes had adjusted enough to see his sour expression. "What do you mean 'someone like me'? Are you implying I'd be more inclined to take advantage of someone else?"
She blinked. "No, I just don't think I could see someone as handsome as you doing those things with someone as plain as me."
He blinked his golden eyes at her now burning, humiliated face.
"I…I mean…"
"You're not plain," he said flatly, as if she'd insulted his taste. "You're perfectly symmetrical. You don't even have acne. And when you read you lean with both elbows evenly on the desk. And your hair is a good length…"
He seemed to catch on that he might be giving too many hints to how much he studied her behavior and turned away, pinking in the cheeks just the slightest bit.
"I don't mind you laying on top of me," he finally decided, awkwardly placing his arms over her back to mimic some sort of bear hug move, "as long you move so you're distributed evenly over my body."
It sounded so wrong. And yet he was serious. She shifted over his torso into an awkward straddle. They both tried not to think too much on it. They were both tired, and one body on top of another was better than being cold, right? And it was cold in this closet. Jacqui had left her jacket in the office, so this felt pretty good; snuggling up to Kidd and not being ashamed. (And he smelled really nice, too…)
They started to drift; him unfortunately unable to escape the basic thoughts of a hormonal male and struggling with his urge to focus on the softness of boobs on his chest, and her slipping into slumber with no biological clock in mind.
She awoke the next morning to the pain of having her keys press into her thigh through her skirt pocket. When had those gotten there? Had they been there the whole time?
It didn't dawn on her that she might have somewhere to be until she heard a familiar voice explaining the importance of studying from outside the door.
"KIDD," she whispered in a panic, scrambling to get off of him. "GET UP."
He woke with a start and was half dragged to the front of the storage closet, stumbling over the box they'd dropped the night before and falling into Jacqui's shoulder as she shoved the key through the lock on their side and opened the door with a flourish.
They were both greeted by the group of potential Shibusen students, who in the time it had taken the two of them to register that it was later than they thought and open the door, advanced to the second level of the library and were focused on whatever Professor Stein had to say. Until now.
"Speaking of the pro's and con's of skimping on studying," Stein started amusedly, glancing at Kidd's pants and shaking his head, "can anybody who actually read the handbook tell me what violation these two are guilty of?"
"I'd say something out of section B, paragraph ONE, clause R," a girl at the back of the group called, everyone bursting into giggles.
In the weeks to come, Jacqui often pondered the pro's and con's of her night in a closet with Death the Kidd.
On the one hand, she'd been chewed out by her supervisor and given a lecture by just about every teacher Stein had blabbed to about the importance of safe sex practices. And then somehow Kim had heard something and wouldn't stop teasing her…
"I'm on my lunch break," Kidd declared, barely getting through the library's double doors and startling his girlfriend out of her thoughts as he swiftly closed the gap between them and practically leaped into their unscheduled make-out session behind the desk-bar. She struggled to breathe, both of them toppling out of the chair and to the floor. Miraculously, nobody had felt like studying much today, so she didn't even have the pleasure of scolding him for being lewd in front of others.
"You could at least wait until we get to the-"
"Already on it," he announced, picking her up and carrying her up the stairs.
Well, for the sake of putting something in the pro pile, she never had to go on a date with Harvar again.
The End.
**I don't hate Harvar, I just don't think it's fair to assume they go together because they're both weapons and their meister's happen to be "involved". :P
Hope you liked!