A/N: This was a prompt from khaleesimaka that I had far too much fun fulfilling.
Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater or any musical group listed in this fic. And everything that Soul says about the Backstreet Boys is a lie. They are the best thing to ever happen in the 90s and that includes the birth of me. BSB is life. That is all.
One of the first things Soul realized after partnering with Maka Albarn was that they were very different. Not just different, in fact they were actually extreme opposites of each other in almost every aspect of their personalities. And while that was not a bad thing, it certainly made their living arrangements... interesting.
First of all, there was her music.
Soul was, for lack of a better term, a music snob. He mostly enjoyed classical piano and jazz, a result of his upbringing, but also particularly enjoyed classic rock and many different bands on the punk spectrum. He enjoyed music that spoke to him, not just with catchy lyrics, but with raw emotion.
Maka's music taste, on the other hand, was positively abysmal. Her tastes changed so often from day to day that in one hour she could listen to nothing but Kenyan folk music and then spend the rest of the week listening exclusively to Cher. Soul would often find himself trapped in his own room with his headphones mashed to his ears, knowing that if he left his space he might have to listen to Katy Perry for more two seconds, which might actually cause his ears to bleed.
If that fact alone wasn't enough to make living with her difficult, there was the fact that Maka was a social butterfly. While Soul wasn't exactly practiced when it came to dealing with other people, Maka spent her days actively inviting more people into her life (and coincidentally, their home). She was constantly inviting Tsubaki over for tea and "girl time," whatever that meant, NOT students over for tutoring, and even her obnoxious (though admittedly awesome) childhood friend Black Star over for video games. Soul typically kept to his own during these encounters, not used to his place of residence being such a social hotspot, and perfectly content to hole up in his room until the visitors had left.
The last, and certainly most glaringly obvious, difference between the two was that Maka and Soul were different sexes. Soul had tried not to think anything of it when he first moved in with her, since Maka was a cool person and didn't seem like the type to make a big deal out of it. But being two twelve year olds with very different anatomy led to a lot very strict privacy rules, which were easy for Soul to keep because he spent most of his time locked in his bedroom either to avoid Maka's music or her unending parade of friends anyway.
It was these three differences combined that led to what Maka liked to (fondly) refer to as "The Big Reveal," and that Soul liked to call "The Most Embarrassing Day of His Life."
Maka was going to stay at Tsubaki and Black Star's place for the weekend to spend time with Tsubaki and help Star with homework for Meisters 201, leaving Soul with the apartment for the weekend. Soul enjoyed these weekends a lot more that he should have, because it meant free reign to do whatever wanted without any inhibitions. Being new to the whole "partner" thing meant not being used to spending so much time exclusively with another person. While Soul liked Maka a lot, he needed his alone time as much as the next guy.
With the whole weekend to himself, Soul went about his days as he normally did, though with a much chipper attitude than he was willing to put on when his meister was around. He was able to drink milk from the carton, scratch his ass whenever he wanted to, and listen to his music as loud as he wanted to on his stereo, all with a completely un-Soul-like grin on his face. The boy was in heaven.
After a good four hours of Maka-free living, Soul decided that it was time to stop being a slob and at least act a little bit like a human being for short period of time. He did his dishes, wiped off the counter, and decided to take a shower. Maka must have been rubbing off on him after all.
Soul grabbed his boom box from his room and took it to the bathroom, content to listen to one of his CDs on it since he couldn't move his bigger stereo to such a small space while he was showering. The last CD he remembered putting in there was one of Fall Out Boy's older albums, which he was perfectly content to listen to as he stripped down to his birthday suit and turned on the shower.
Soul plugged in the radio and mashed his finger down on the "play" button, about to turn on the water and hop in when he heard the unmistakable sound of a 90s boyband anthem coming from his radio.
You are….my fiiiiiiire….the one…...desiiiiiiire….believe….when I say….that I. Want. It. That. Way.
Soul swore right then and there he was going to throw up.
Where the fuck did she put his FOB CD and when the hell did she listen to her God-awful Backstreet Boys in his boom box?
All of Soul's hatred towards his meister's awful taste in music came crashing down on him in full force as he slammed his fist down on his radio to stop that atrocious noise from coming out of it.
Soul left the bathroom, in search of his CD stack, and came back minutes later with the correct CD in hand and a disgusted scowl on his face. To make matters worse, he didn't even manage to turn off the music before he left. He had somehow managed to turn up the volume of the sickeningly sweet man-child harmonies. He really needed to sit Maka down and forcibly reeducate her taste in music. Letting this filth taint his radio was the last straw.
It was just as Soul began envisioning locking Maka in a room listening to nothing but Mozart for a week that "I Want It That Way" ended (he hated himself for knowing the title) and a new song began. He threw his hand out to prevent the next song from assaulting his eardrums when the craziest thing happened.
His hand froze. And he listened.
It went against everything Soul stood for. His entire existence banked on him being a cool guy. Cool guys only did the coolest things and listened to the most quality music. A cool guy would not have thought twice about turning off what came out of his radio next. And yet the Backstreet Boys' next song gave him pause.
Because it wasn't what he was used to hearing. Maka's horrendous taste in music spread over a broad spectrum of pop disasters, and Soul considering 90s boybands the lowest of the low. They were conglomerates of unsophisticated lyrics sung to the same four chords over and over again, and if Soul could have erased the entire 90s pop era from existence, he would probably do just that. But something about this song was different.
Or maybe it wasn't. It was still disgustingly simple lyrics set to a catchy tune with a loud bass. That was it. There was nothing special about this song.
In hindsight, Soul would never be able to find something to distinguish this song from the rest of the Backstreet trash he would be forced to listen to in living under the same roof as Maka. And yet, something inside of him must have snapped in that singular moment in that bathroom, because the second the word "Everybody" was sung by the pop group, Soul was frozen in fascination. The beginning of the song was like sitting in a rocket ship preparing to be blasted into the stratosphere. He could actually hear the authentically 90s mixing in the first thirty seconds making it sound like exactly that. And stupidly enough, the cry of "Backstreets back, alright!" hit him like a musical punch to the gut that made him want to pump his fist in the air rather than ram it through the speakers of his radio.
He must have been having an existential crisis, because during the first verse Soul actually found his foot tapping against the tile floor of the bathroom as his head nodded along to the beat. His mind was having a conniption by the time he reached the bridge, because during the (embarrassingly unironic) questions of "Am I original?", "Am I the only one?", and "Am I sexual?", Soul actually found him responding—and singing his responses—with an uninhibited "Yeaaah!" that shook him to his very core. By the refrain, Soul Eater Evans was no more. All that was left was a shell of the cool guy he once was, nothing more than a mindless BSB drone who was literally "throwing his hands in the air and waving them around like he just didn't care."
Soul wasn't sure what happened, but one thing led to another and suddenly he was prancing through his apartment in the buff with "Everybody" by the Backstreet Boys playing in a continuous loop on the highest volume setting, him wailing the lyrics like it was his new religion.
Later on in life, very very later, perhaps when he was old and grey, maybe even on his deathbed, Soul would probably be able to look back on this instance and laugh. But on that day, and in the moments soon to follow, Soul could not have predicted how acutely he would ever want to die.
Because, as previously stated, Soul was a self-proclaimed music snob, but a shy one who believed privacy to be of the utmost importance during his partnership with Maka. Never in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that Maka would walk through the door while he stood on their coffee table interpretive dancing to the Backstreet Boys, and never in his worst nightmares would he have predicted that he would be windmilling his dick during his performance.
It all happened so fast that Soul could only comprehend it in stills. His penis swinging in circles as he pelvic-thrusted to the climax of the song. The door knob turning. The sound of Maka's voice. The amused look on Maka's facing instantaneously switching to a look of shock. The sound of her hands slapping to her face so hard that it must have physically hurt to cover her eyes that fast. And the sound of her shrill shriek of horror.
The following events happened as follows: Soul promptly slapped his hands to his still-dancing dick, fell off the coffee table, grabbed the nearest object to him (one of Maka's dictionaries), violently threw said object at his still-thumping boom box on the bathroom counter, and listened as the his radio crashed to the ground, breaking into about twenty different pieces and ceasing the Backstreet Boys anthem from ringing through their apartment.
All that was left was silence.
Soul panted and stared at his meister's frozen frame, where she still hadn't moved from her spot in the doorway. Absolute mortification weighed down on him, and finally he spoke.
"I can explain."
He couldn't. There was no earthly way that he would be able to justify what his meister had just seen. Even pleading insanity would not explain the absolute shit-show Maka had just witnessed.
"Before you say anything, I'm going to need you to put on some underwear," Maka answered shakily, still not moving her hands from their position over her eyes.
Soul ran to his room faster than he had ever moved in his life, throwing open his drawers and pulling out a pair of boxers. He shoved his legs inside and contemplated what the quickest way to die was. Was it possible for a scythe to chop their own head off? He was very willing to try. He dressed quickly, throwing on a t-shirt and a pair of pants for good measure, sweating and murmuring to himself the best angle to swing his arm for a nice clean decapitation when Maka hesitantly knocked on his door.
Soul could only gulp loudly and let out a humiliatingly broken "I'm decent," before she entered the room, still looking very much like a deer caught in the headlights.
Her gaze wouldn't meet his, but instead of focusing on her feet or the floor, her eyes travelled down his body to the last place on his she saw, the place he never ever wanted his meister to see at all, much less witness in such a state of complete and utter abandon. He wished he could have put on five more layers of pants.
"Maka?" he asked, unable to say much more than her name.
She blinked hard and shook her head, tearing her sight from his crotch and moving towards Soul's desk. She pushed aside two or three of his notebooks, then picked up a book, Resonance Through the Ages: A Study of Partnership.
"I needed to borrow one of your books to help tutor Black Star," she explained. "I didn't know you would be…" She trailed off uncomfortably. Soul could only hang his head in shame.
A long and terribly awkward silence stretched out between them before Maka perked up slightly.
"If it makes you feel any better," she continued optimistically, "that really is a great song. Super catchy!"
Soul fell on his bed, slamming his face into his pillow. "It doesn't."
Soul didn't talk to his meister for a full week after that. Hindsight would tell him that avoiding Maka for a week in their own apartment was probably overkill for his embarrassment, but at that age Soul probably could have gone on that way for much longer. Mortification clung to every inch of him, and every time Maka so much as looked in his direction he would turn pink from head to toe and have to leave the room.
It wasn't until Maka deliberately left her bedroom door open while she was changing that the dynamic in the apartment finally shifted back to a sense of normalcy. It certainly took much longer than before for Soul to come out of the safety of his room, and even longer for him to be near Maka when she listened to music, but as their partnership grew stronger their domestic living became easier.
Later on in their life Maka would be able to poke fun at "The Big Reveal," without Soul contemplating death, but he would never be able to listen to The Backstreet Boys without the urge to swiftly destroy the radio. Just another reason to hate the bastards.