A/n: Welcome to Scream My Lungs Out, my second Soul Eater fanfic and the first fic I've done for SE's OTP. Scream My Lungs Out is the sequel to my other SE fic, Symmetry, told from Soul's perspective.
Let me be frank: I don't like this fic. It's shorter than it originally was - I cut out the really horrible parts - but I'm not satisfied with it AT ALL. I don't think Soul's in-character. I don't think I quite got Maka right. The only one I'm confident about is Blair, and she doesn't even take part in the dialogue! Ugh.
So when you review (hint hint) please, please, PLEASE give me constructive criticism! I want to know what I got right and what I did wrong. I want to know which concepts are awesome that you want more of in a Soul X Maka fic! (Enough responses, and I'll probably write one especially for you.)
Without further adieu, I present:
Scream My Lungs Out
The most annoying thing about Maka, hands-down, was how smart she was.
Actually, that wasn't quite right. It was how smart she thought she was that really irked Soul, especially after he'd been molested by a naked magic cat.
The morning had started out more or less like any other: Soul had dreamed about soul-hunting with Maka and was just about to swallow the kishin egg during a spectacular soul resonance when he was woken up by a particularly strange sensation on his inner thigh. Thinking it was just an itch, he pulled his pillow over his head to get a bit more sleep before his meister came to get him.
"Soul!" Right on time, as usual. "School's in half an hour-"
He heard her kick the door open, and then he didn't hear a sound. Suspicious. He slowly lifted the pillow from his face, just enough that his mouth was uncovered. "Oi. Maka."
She remained very quiet for a moment. "...sorry. I'll leave the two of you alone."
"What do you mean..." The two of you.
Shit.
He tore the pillow off his face and sat up quickly as he heard Maka tear out of the room. "BLAIR!" he yelled. "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING TO ME?"
Without waiting for a response, he leaped out of bed, pulling a pair of track pants over his boxers as he went after her. "Maka, let me-"
She halted and whirled. Soul flinched, expecting – no, fearing – a Maka Chop. Instead, though, he was greeted by her most sugary-sweet expression.
Soul hated sugar.
"I'm sorry for bursting in on you like that," she said in a syrupy voice. "I didn't mean to interrupt. You never said that you two had that kind of relationship."
"Maka, I-"
"It must be hard with me always around," she said sweetly. "I'll just – stay out of the house tonight, then. So you and Blair-chan can have some time – alone."
He froze involuntarily in fear of what that stupid cat would do to him without Maka around to protect him. By the time he recovered, Maka was gone.
"Shit. Shit!"
xXx
The ugliest thing about Maka was her stubbornness.
Normally, that thought never ran through Soul's head. Maka was an angel who saved him from his brother's shadow. She looked good in a skirt and better in a dress.
But there were parts of Maka that were ugly. She was loving, but she had no room in her heart for her father – who probably loved her more than 5,999,998 people in the world put together, despite what an idiot he was. She was mistrustful. She was violent. She was vicious.
All that ugliness reared its head and flared its hood at Soul all day during school.
When he walked into the classroom, his usual seat next to Maka was occupied by a confused-looking Kilik. Grudgingly, he sat between Ox and Kim the entire time, the latter using him as a meat shield from the former.
At lunch, he couldn't find her and instead ate with Black*Star and Death the Kid. Between Black*Star's pronouncements that "that sandwich may be good, but the sandwich that I made TRANSCENDS THE GREATNESS OF GOD" and Kid's refusal to eat an asymmetrical pear, Soul was pretty sure that admitting to Death Scythe that he'd pissed off his daughter would be a much less excruciating experience.
Even at the end of the day, when he finally managed to get a response out of her, it was clear that she was still upset.
"C'mon, Maka. Let's go home. I'll take you on my bike."
She wouldn't look him in the eye. "I can't. Shinigami-sama called me up to his room."
The look on Soul's face must have been very odd, considering the thoughts running through his head. Maka glanced sidelong at him and quickly looked away again. "Don't worry about me – Kid-kun said he would walk me home afterwards."
Maka would be walking home with Death the Kid, who was better-looking and a hundred times more cool than every guy at Shibusen (except Soul, of course) and Soul was supposed to not worry? Death the Kid gave Soul more to worry about than even the Death Scythe!
"Maka-"
She brushed him off, saying, "Just go home. Have fun being alone with Blair-chan."
He opened his mouth, but decided it wasn't worth it and shut his mouth. There was more than one way to skin a cat, anyway.
After enticing Blair out of the house with the promise of new lingerie from Death Scythe, Soul headed straight for the kitchen, pulling on his (extremely manly and cool) cooking apron on. "If she's not gonna listen to me," he muttered, "then she'll bow down before The Power."
The Power of Lasagna.
"Perfect," he declared an hour later when he pulled the pan of pasta out of the oven. The dish smelled perfectly tantalizing, and the cheese on top was Maka's favorite type of melty.
He took the time to dig through the cupboards to find the good set of dishes – Maka's favorite ones with the roses – and a matching set of silverware from the drawer to use for the table. A vase of yellow roses that matched the dishes was already set out; Soul had picked them up on his way home.
Now, the only thing left was to wait. She couldn't be that much longer with Shinigami-sama.
xXx
The worst thing about Maka was her ability to hide.
Shortly after they had first become partners, Maka and Soul played a game of hide-and-seek with Maka's friends. Although Black*Star had been extremely easy to find and Tsubaki was already too tall to hide easily behind that potted plant, it had taken an hour of futile searching until Soul and the others had given up when Maka was nowhere to be found.
Three hours had passed since school had let out for the day.
Soul glanced up at the clock again. The lasagna was cold, the garlic bread was no longer crispy, and the candles he'd lit as a finishing touch were melted almost to nothing.
"Maka," he grumbled, "where are you?"
A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him. She was alone with Death the Kid... what if she somehow became – it hurt to even think – asymmetrical? What if she did that half-smile thing, that cute little pretending-not-to-laugh face she made when Soul did something charmingly stupid?
Someone had to save her.
After asking around, Soul was able to figure out where Maka had been – with that damned emo freak, he thought viciously. Not that he usually had a problem with emos. Or freaks, for that matter.
They had gone down a busy street where shops and cafes were doing a brisk business. Soul shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked down the block in the direction he felt her soul resonating from. All this was completely stupid; Maka was overreacting – must be that time of the month or something – and Blair needed to learn to leave him alone.
Maka was the only girl that Soul wanted to touch him like that, after all, and the only girl he really wanted to see in that state of undress.
Because as much as he talked tough, and as much as he made fun of Maka's flat chest, Soul knew in his deepest depths that only one person could touch his soul in such a way that brought out the best in him.
She wasn't in the boutique, and the coffee shop was closing for the evening. Maka had no reason to go into a cell phone store, and she would cut off her scythe hand before she went into the lingerie shop.
Maka. Below that sugar-sweet expression, Soul had seen something very, very hurt. Inside his pockets, his fists clenched even tighter. That type of hurt was reserved for Death Scythe's philandering, not Soul Eater getting molested. He didn't like to think that he was the one causing Maka to look like that.
He moved quicker now, looking through doors and windows. Maka. Her face was the last one he saw before he fell asleep and the first one he wanted to see when he woke up. She may not have been the girl of his dreams, but she was the girl in his dreams.
Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead. What if she was hurt? In trouble? She was excellent when she was using him as a partner, but alone she could barely take care of herself against a taller, stronger opponent. She wasn't Black*Star, after all.
Soul started to panic. She was close – he could feel her nearby – he just didn't know where she was.
Maka. Their relationship had never been explicit, but always understood. He was there to protect her; thus, he was there to be her man, her source of strength. She was there to wield him; thus, she was there to be his woman, his guiding light. Things had been that way from the beginning of their partnership, and had been that way until he decided to use sneak tactics to get that damnable cat soul.
What had he done?
How could he fix this?
"Dammit," he growled, voice trembling. "Dammit, dammit, dammit."
Finally, he couldn't contain it anymore: she was gone, she didn't want him anymore, she was hiding from him and avoiding him -
"MAKA!" he screamed, his voice full of frustration and the ripping agony of abandonment.
There was no response.
He stood very still for a moment, then sunk to the ground. If Maka was gone, then why was he even in Death City?
"Dammit, Maka," he said, rubbing at one eye. "Why do you take me and my coolness so serious? I only try to be cool because of you."