Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater or any other references.
First Day
Author's Note: Inspired by Holy Ground by Taylor Swift. I absolutely adore that song. This is what happened. AU and I'm sorry if Maka and Soul are OOC. Review if you want blah, blah. Mainly, I hope you enjoyed reading this! Oh and this isn't a songfic... I actually do read the rules and guidelines. Speaking of guidelines, how does one go about writing bloopers? I'm confused. Oh. They are also of legal drinking age so no one is underage. Hehe heh... :3
Unrelated Note: "AU and I'm sorry if Maka and Soul are OOC." My computer believes that "I'm" doesn't fit in this situation. It feels that "I are" is more fitting. There you go guys. I are sorry.
"Lemme guess? Your real name isn't Maka Albarn, right?" He snickered. He flashed a devilishly intriguing smile, revealing his trade mark pointed teeth. I know that I shouldn't be enticed by this, as he was mocking me somehow, but I'm finally starting to see why all the girls swooned over him. I ran my pointer finger around the rim of my wine glass that was only filled with grape juice. It was beginning to come to my attention finally that a drunken Maka made for very bad yet humorous cover stories. Grape juice was fine at the moment. Although, right now I wished that I had been drunk. Then I wouldn't be forced to analyze the man standing next to me in such excruciating detail. His sun-kissed skin, his oddly pigmented hair, his slender yet muscular build, and of course his blood red eyes that seemed to know everything. In a word or two, he was peculiarly charming. But I was getting ahead of myself.
"No," I shot back slightly sharper then I had originally meant to sound. "My name is Maka Albarn and what about you mister Soul Eater?" I wasn't about to let him take hold of this conversation. I wasn't a complete sell out… or one at all. Even though all this fame had happened virtually overnight, I felt like I was still pretty well grounded and normal. Maybe a little less normal. I mean I was having a real conversation with THE Soul Eater Evans, the most famous musician ever! But he wasn't at all how I had anticipated him to be. He was pompous and just ugh. I couldn't verbalize my thoughts for him at the moment. Must've been the grape juice, what with all its high sugar content…He nodded slightly. If I hadn't been watching him as close as I was, I never would have seen his head bob, I guess he had accepted my side of the debate. "Ya know you could be a little more cool. I mean you've been watching me since I had struck this exchange."
"Your eyes haven't even moved! You've been staring off at who knows what the entire time!"
"So you admit that you were staring at me?" He chuckled and took a sip, setting it back down on the railing. I felt my face heat up, half from anger and half from embarrassment.
"So I see that arrogance is one of your prominent features, huh." I can play cool too. However acting like a dictionary wasn't one of my better choices. Man, I wish this was wine. Nice job, Maka! You finally meet your idol and your acting like a complete tool.
He rolled his deep crimson eyes and ran his long, pianist fingers through his hair that contrasted the deep night sky. The moon was a ghostly golden crescent, golden implying nice, ghostly implying not so nice. The setting was weird, just weird. His features hadn't changed since my lapse in words. Maybe he hadn't heard? No, he was ignoring me. I appreciated the silence in a way.
"You probably want to know what happened to me right? That's why you're here." Soul added gruffly. His entire persona that he had held just a little bit ago seemed gone? No, that wasn't the right word. It was more like hidden. He was simply hiding that part of himself. For what reason I would never guess.
I held up my hands in defense. "N-no?" Why did I sound so unsure? I always was bad at lying. Of course I was interested. He showed up one day with nothing and then boom, like that he blows up into super stardom in record time. He could sing, he could dance when he tried, but what I loved about him was his piano playing. It was mystical and creepy. I and the whole world lapped it up. Nothing so interesting had been done before. Meeting him now, I understand the oddness and complexity of his creations. They were just like himself. After capturing the hearts of people everywhere, he just vanished. News about him stopped showing up in the trashy magazines that everyone bought as a guilty pleasure. No more words about new music ever showed up. Interviews stopped. Everything halted but moved on in an instance. Every now and then I would find late night stories about his strange disappearance. "Fine," I sighed in defeat. "I do want to know. You can't really blame me though. You had everything and five years later after going missing, I find you here at some low budget town that specializes in rose gardens."
Soul tugged at his tie. There was no denying that he was handsome. It only highlighted the fact that he was a true talent as a musician. I wasn't envious nor jealous (yes, there is a difference. Envious is a more intense version.) I guess that I just wanted to
be like him. He inspired me. I truly wanted to know what went wrong?
"You really want to know?" I nodded. My hands smoothed down my burgundy colored dress that had been ruffled by the wind. "It's uncool." I gave him no response. My green eyes latched onto his own red ones. My perseverance wasn't about to falter right now. His eyes shifted away from mine, probably settling on the moon. He parted his lips. "Can I ask you a question first?"
"Y-yeah. What is it?" I replied. My voice felt shakier than usual. Could this be called nerves? Probably.
"Why, why did you want to be famous?" It was a simple question as was its intent and its answer. Just the way he said it so quietly and so calmly, I felt the need to think over my answer before I just splurted out more brain dribble. Which was for the best. Although, I never really had thought about that answer. I knew that getting away from my family had been made priority, but why did that involve me being famous? He must've sensed my answer because he spoke before I had the chance. "I, I was ten when I first began playing. It wasn't that I like it much, I just felt the need to play. My brother was a
proclaimed genius, academically and musically, so I felt the need to play."
I had almost forgotten about his brother, Wes. Soul looked just like him. "As the years went on though, I wanted to play because I actually liked it. One day, some big hotshot approached me and the rest is history. I played at sold out stadiums around the globe, girls tended to my every beck and call, crazy parties, the whole nine yards. But I wasn't happy." He paused to sip his wine and after a few collective seconds, his speech began again. "It got to the point where doing what I loved made me feel like a sellout. I hated it. So I ran away and never looked back. I don't miss anything."
"Why? You traded in Madison Square for this." I deadpanned. What he was saying didn't seem to process in my brain. It was like the cogs had stopped turning whenever I had started to think about it. "You had everything."
He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to get an invisible piece of food out of them. "Let me rephrase it in a way I think you might understand." I frowned again because I figured that he wasn't taking me seriously. That or I was clearly slow on the uptake and he was pitying me. Also a possibility. How embarrassing... "New to town, with a made up name. You were hoping to stumble across stardom and lucky you!... You found it. Camera flashes were the fibers straight out of a dream. In short, you were living the dream of people everywhere."
I nodded hesitantly. "Where are you going with this?" I asked wrapping my shawl tighter around my shoulders. So far he had described me spot on. The me that I really was. Vain.
"No place really." Soul added with the flick of his wrist. The smug grin intensified as he turned on the heel of his black dress shoes. I'm not quite sure what they're called exactly. That's why I have a stylist. "You're lucky. That's all."
"Wait," I found myself reaching out for Soul as he was leaving. He stopped. "Before you go, can you tell me why I'm lucky? Because right now I don't feel it at all." I couldn't believe I was saying this.
"I'm interested. Tell me more."
"Uh, well," I began. I laced my fingers together behind my back and my feet rose and fell awkwardly to the beat of a song playing in the background. "I guess the paparazzi is pretty annoying." Crap. I didn't actually think that he would ask me! I just wanted to sound interesting. I sighed in irritation as I pushed past him, leaving my grape juice swaying doggedly with every gust. This had to be the most humiliating thing to ever happen to me. This might've not been the best escape route but I was going to take it. If there was one thing I felt was my string suit, it would definitely be my utter lack of self confidence that came and left as it pleased.
"Wait, dance with me?" His voice lulled smoothly causing me to stop in my tracks. There was something about him that made me want to stay. I glimpsed over my shoulder. His red irises were flickering against the eerie night skyline. Soul's right arm was extended, offering me his hand. Cautiously, I accepted and he led me to the makeshift dance floor filled with a minuscule number of five couple dancing at the time.
He was the being of temptation.
The hypnotizing melody of an unknown piano song swirled throughout the room. Maybe Soul had written it. His arm wrapped around my waist encouraging me forward. I settled my arms around his neck as we swayed in tiny circles around the floor. Soul's face didn't cast any emotion. I hoped that mine didn't either.
"You really want to know why I disappeared?"
"I would." I said firmly. That was the whole reason I had approached him in the first place.
"First let me place some perspective." He paused to collect his thoughts. "When everything goes right so fast, there's always that daunting possibility of failure. That's what happened to me."
"Really?" My mouth had a mind of its own really. "Sorry. That was just the last thing I expected you to say."
"Oh?" Soul added sounding surprised. "Why is that?" Now his long fingers had entangled themselves in my loose hair. Should I stop it? Probably. Was I going to? No. I was book smart not street smart. And even book smart me wasn't about to wreck a perfectly intimate moment with an awkwardly misplaced disconnection.
"It's just that you're so, so sophisticated. Cool. I didn't think that failure was in your vocabulary."
He chuckled, wrapping his fingers further into my single strand pearl necklace. Heat flocked to my face and for the first time ever, I appreciated the bad lighting. "Don't get me wrong though. For what it was worth, it was good, but it wasn't what I wanted."
I furrowed my brow. This felt like déjà vu. "Haven't we been over this before?"
"You're over thinking this, Maka Albarn." He moved forward in one swift motion, colliding his face with mine. He smelt overwhelmingly like mint and cinnamon? No, it was roses and orange. It was the best thing I had ever smelt. Ever.
The kiss lasted for maybe ten glorious seconds. Short for my liking but good things definitely come in small packages. Out teeth didn't even hit. It felt right... perfect. Everything was starting to fall together from that one kiss. Cliché as it sounds; I understood a feeling that I thought that I might never have known. My head was buzzing and I didn't entirely trust my mouth to make any unwanted verbalizations. I did know that I wanted to keep dancing with him. Right where we stood was fine with me. Was this the feeling of having something to lose?
Simple. He made me feel like I had known him my entire life. I enjoyed the feeling that pulsated through my veins, enveloping me in what felt like an everlasting feeling of bliss.
Maybe I was over thinking this. All at once it felt like we were the only two in the whole city. He was right; it was good.
Now I knew why he stopped playing piano. The cameras and the fame were intoxicating, but this was true holy ground.
