Soul liked to revel in the knowledge that he could read Maka like one of the many dusty old books she left open on the cluttered couch in front of the television. When her eyes looked repeatedly to the floor, and her mouth was a tiny line on her pale face, it meant she was worrying herself far past the point of tears. A set jaw and a solemn face meant a quiet resolution that there was work to be done that could be no less than perfection personified.

It was the bond between meister and weapon that allowed him to read her so easily, Soul decided, and he did not consider any bonds that could've gone further.

It wouldn't be cool.

So what was wrong with her now? Maka's face was painted with a soft but flustered expression Soul neither knew nor recognized. Translucent eyes constantly flashing from one side to the next. Was she looking for something? Soul already knew what she was like when she lost one of her many belongings, given that it happened quite frequently. The proof being the 'sea of crap' (as he liked to call it) strewn across the floor to her no-longer distinguishable bedroom.

That wasn't the answer, he didn't want to admit. It lacked the aura of a ticking bomb ready to blow up at the slightest touch - Maka hated losing her things, and Soul had to deal with it quite often.

Puckered and pink lips continuously opening and closing. Was she in awe of something? That couldn't be the answer, either - her eyes didn't have that rapt and starry look to them, a look Soul understood.

Her now tentatively mingled fingers and a slight stutter to her voice every now and again was a cause for concern. Soul couldn't remember a time when Maka ever stuttered.

Even when Soul transformed into a scythe, he could feel Maka's heartbeat through the vibrations of gloved hands - the adrenaline of a fight to come and a steady composure.

Now he could only feel a different, nervous sort of beat resounding from her body to his metal. What was there to be nervous about? She was a skilled fighter, to say the least, and nothing could ever topple her from the heap pile she had claimed queen of. Whatever the problem was, though, she concealed it well. Her game face was on, and with a flurry of well placed kicks and carefully timed slashes of a scythe, another kishin egg had been defeated.

Soul ate happily and glanced over at Maka, who had barely dropped a sweat at their easily defeated target. Her face was normal at most, and Soul was satisfied. He could name her current expression off of the top of his head, and he preferred it that way.

Things were normal a few days later. Maka studied, ate and then studied more. Soul lazed around on the couch and flipped through channels on the television, his tired eyes lolled and lingered on random items in the room before landing on messy pigtails. She had that face again, the one thought he couldn't probe from her mind, and it was driving him insane. Soul watched her hands busily scratching away at the paper in front of her as she fervently skimmed a textbook, her eyes staring off into space. Her expression soon changed to one of frustration (and he would be happy to say that it was a look he recognized) and with a loud grunt, she shut the book, shot up out of her chair, stalked to her room and slammed the door shut. Soul raised an eyebrow, but said nothing and waited. When he heard no sounds from her room, he wasted no time. Vaulting himself over the back of the couch and making sure he didn't fall (that would not be cool), he dashed over to Maka's abandoned chair. Grabbing the book, he flipped it open to the most recent page and almost coughed his soul out of his body when he saw the result of Maka's most recent studying session.

A fairly elaborate doodle of Soul stood out amongst the sea of calculations and long - worded problems he didn't even want to fathom, and he stared. A few more minutes passed before he ripped the page cleanly out of the book and stumbled to his room, shutting the door behind him. A quiet wind whistled in his ears from the speed at which he whipped out the paper again to stare at it a little longer.

Soul noticed two things, the first being the fact that Maka could draw pretty well, of all things. Was this the result of her previously dazed expression? Soul vigorously shook the thought away.

The second thing he had noticed was that Maka had drawn (the fact that Maka was idling away her time was a topic to worry about in itself, she was always so hellbent on studying), what was obviously a picture of him.

Now he really didn't understand what was wrong with her. Her dodgy eyes and occasional trembling lips, Soul had thought it was just some nervous phase all girls went through, Maka would eventually grow out of and he just had yet to understand. But he wasn't that stupid, and he played it as coolly as he could manage (it couldn't be hard, he was the epitome of cool) in the morning when Maka asked about a ripped page from one of her books. Soul only shrugged and felt his eyes move from one side to the next as she interrogated him. He felt his mouth open and close as he waited for the words to come. When they did, he stuttered (but only once, cool people shouldn't stutter) and scratched the back of his head.

Then, he understood. And he did not revel in the knowledge that he was now experiencing a feeling he assumed to be pretty close to what Maka could be feeling.

(But the feeling was only slight, right? Because he was cool?)

Damn.

end.

I'm trying to crawl out of the deep, painful and dank cavern known as writer's block.