A/N: I've been having a ton of Writersblockian problems with Pencils, so I made this to get me back in the writing mood.

So I'm in love with Soul Eater, and this is an idea I've been playing with for a while.

It's shoddy, and if I end up offending anyone, either with my writing or the ideas being addressed in the story somehow, then I apologize in advance.

I know nothing of AP Calculus so I used Google. Shoot me.

Sometimes I Think I'm Dead

Chapter One: Freaking Buses, Freaking Idiots

Pairing: Soul and Maka.

Disclaimer: Atsushi Ōkubo made 'em. I write about 'em.

Song: Home - Cavetown

Often I am upset

That I cannot fall in love but I guess

This avoids the stress of falling out of it

The heavy rain pelts down from a grey sky, and as water pools inside Maka's boots she just knows today is gonna be a shit day.

She already feels grouchy enough because she's bone-tired: pulling an all-nighter was supposed to be something she could do easily, but she definitely overestimated herself last night. That, paired up with the fact that her stupid alarm had failed to go off, making her wake up an hour late and miss her bus, is enough to send her into a dark mood. Now she's standing under a shoddily constructed bus shelter at nine o' clock instead of seven, in the rain, and it's cold as hell. She glares daggers at the sky, as if that'll make her feel better.

As the minutes pass, the remnants of sleep she sacrificed in the name of studying for her AP Calculus test begin to resurface. In an effort to stay awake, she rummages through her bag and pulls out her textbook, forcing herself to read on asymptotes and partial derivation and vector functions and GOD this is only making her feel sleepier, and eventually she's too far gone to even notice that more people are huddling under the shelter, she only knows that now it's cold and wet and horribly moist.

She's almost completely slouched over when someone touches her. It's a small, deliberate bump against her shoulder, but it's enough to make her gasp and jerk upward. She looks up annoyedly, a flurry of insults on her tongue and a scowl at the ready, but she stops short at the sight of the man beside her.

It's his eyes - a deep, intense crimson - that catch her attention; they stare lazily into her own green ones as she reorients herself. Then her gaze shifts to his hair. It's white as snow, spiked back and held with a small hairband. He looks down at her with a slightly tired, detached expression, and then speaks.

"You shouldn't be falling asleep in a place like this. You'll get robbed," he says, and she raises an eyebrow.

"By who? You?" she asks, staring pointedly at him.

He looks her up and down, taking in her black leggings, red checkered skirt, and the huge grey sweater she's wearing over what he knows is a dress shirt. He scoffs. "No, thanks."

She frowns. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, and he chuckles a little.

"You're offended by me not wanting to rob you? Jeez, you're a weird one."

"I just want to know what made you say that. I mean, you certainly look the part."

He shrugs, ignoring her obvious jab at his appearance. "You just don't look like someone who'd have anything of value. This," he says, lightly flicking the book hanging limply from her hands. "Is a good example."

She pulls her textbook towards her chest, sending him a withering glare. He just rolls his eyes and stares forward, his expression clearly stating that he's done with this conversation. The sight of his amused grin makes her annoyed all over again, and she turns her head away so she can quell the unabating urge to hit something or someone, preferably him.

But he's a stranger.

"That's something a thief could say," she mutters instead. "So I wouldn't be surprised if you tried to rob me anyway."

He doesn't respond, so she huffs and opens her textbook again, but the words might as well be bouncing off of her eyeballs.

The bus comes, and almost immediately Maka lurches forward as they crowd to get on. She groans. She hates this sardine crap, and it always happens with the nine o' clock bus. She pushes her way through the throng of bodies that only gets more humid the longer she stays there. She has to hold on to her textbook for dear life so it doesn't go flying in the swarm of people struggling to enter.

When she finally gets on, she realizes that the universe has picked today to royally screw with her because, despite the fact that she was the first person to get to the bus stop, there's no one standing but her. Every seat, every blessed seat is occupied.

With a stifled groan of aggravation, she pays and walks further in. Her feet squelch loudly inside her boots with each step, and she decides that the next time she's late on a rainy day, she's going to call a cab.

Money wastage be damned.

As she moves forward, her gaze catches on a bit of white hair sticking out from a chair further back. She's just about to look away, but then she notices the occupied seat beside him. Only it's not occupied by a person.

It's occupied by a black blob that, from this distance, bears an uncanny resemblance to a bag.

Her eyes narrow, and she practically marches over, moving from handhold to handhold so she doesn't topple over as the bus lurches forward. Sure enough, it's a black backpack that, despite being reasonably full, doesn't deserve to be given a freaking seat. She shakes her head.

"Wanna be nice and offer me a seat?" she asks flatly. He's slouched against the window, eyes closed. He's not asleep, obviously, and he's doing a pretty poor job of pretending to be. So she speaks louder. "Hey. Move your bag over."

He doesn't flinch.

She frowns. She's starting to feel dumb, standing expectantly in front of him, humidity clinging to her person. And it's making her annoyed all over again.

"Hey." Her voice is hard now, with a sharp edge to it; a tone that would make a regular person drop the obnoxious act of pretending—unconvincingly—to be asleep. When he doesn't do so, she casts aside all courtesy, snatches the bag up from the chair and hurls it right at his face.

He nearly falls off his seat at the unexpected hit, and casts a confused glare at his attacker. Maka levels it with a glare of her own.

"What the fuck?" he hisses loudly, and Maka wrinkles her nose.

"There are a lot of ways to tell a person you don't want them to sit beside you," she responds. "Playing deaf is one of the stupid ones."

And then she sits down, opens her textbook, and ignores—relishes, but ignores—the extremely offended look on his face. Out of the corner of her eye she sees his expression become darker, his mouth turning down in a frown. For a second she thinks she may have overdone it a bit: it was just a bag, she could've just tapped him—

But then he scoffs annoyedly and wedges the bag in between them before turning to glare out of the window, and all remorse fades. She can't bother to waste her thoughts on someone so...

Immature. She finds the word. But with an appearance like his, she isn't sure what she had expected.

So she turns her full attention to her textbook, to series and limits and continuity, and she might as well be staring at the floor.

Death Academy has never looked so crappy in the four years she's been a student.

Well, normally, the academy tends to look dreary whenever it rains, and maybe it's just her mood, soured by the poor weather and her sleep deprivation, that's painting everything in an undesirable way, but looking at the architecture just makes her want to turn tail and go back home.

She doesn't get this feeling a lot. Only on the shit days. And this is when Maka starts to lament in advance because she knows that shit days are way worse than bad days because nothing, nothing ever goes bleeding right.

She's wailing over her test already.

She's so invested in feeling bad about the oncoming onslaught of bad luck that she doesn't hear the shout of her name until it's right next to her.

"Maka!"

She jerks backward, snapped out of her thoughts too quickly. Then she recognizes the long dark hair and bright eyes and upbeat tone of voice. She relaxes.

"Tsubaki," she murmurs, almost a sigh, which makes her friend tilt her head to the side, expression turning worried.

"You look exhausted," she points out, and Maka resists the urge to roll her eyes and mumble 'no shit, Sherlock' because Tsubaki's her friend and she's worried about her, like she always is.

"Pulled an all-nighter, and it was not a good idea." She rubs at her eyes, telling herself that she should've just slept on the bus instead of trying to fool herself into thinking she was reading. Would've saved her the possibility of passing out in class.

But then she remembers him. How she'd enjoyed watching, with her peripheral vision, how he'd shot her a glare, waiting for her to react, and turning away when she didn't.

She can sleep during lunch.

"Take this, then," Tsubaki says, placing a still steaming cup of coffee in Maka's hands. She stares up at her friend in confusion at this: Tsubaki doesn't drink coffee. "I figured you'd want to kill yourself studying, so I got it for ya."

She smiles. "Thanks." She'll need it if she doesn't want to slump from her seat during Calculus.

They start up the incredibly long flight of stairs, and she looks down at the cup before taking a long swig, letting the heat slide down her throat and seep into her bones. With this, she'll be able to last through the day, at least.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I'm totally unprepared for this test?"

"Of course not," Tsubaki responds flatly, making her laugh. "And even if you weren't, you'd most probably still ace it."

"You think so?"

"Absolutely."

Tsubaki has a thing for being very believable.

She stares down at the cup again. Smiles a bit before taking another sip. It burns as it goes down, her legs burn as they climb swiftly up the stairs, and she starts to think that maybe this won't be that much of a shit day, if she tries to make the best out of it.

Maybe it'll just be a shitty start to the day, she thinks.

Those are more common.

"So who'd you really buy the coffee for?" she asks Tsubaki, who hesitates for a moment before sighing.

"Black Star."

"...you're kidding, right?"

Her attempts to make the best out of things were abruptly shut down by the universe from that moment.

She fell on the stairs. Twice. The second was a faceplant that grazed her knees and spilled hot coffee all over her sweater. She doesn't even want to think about that damned Calculus test, and her locker's jammed.

So now she's cold, burned and injured, reeling from her horrendous test, all while walking to music class—her least favourite class yet—without any books.

Yep. This is a shit day. Hell, Lucifer's probably sitting up there somewhere sniggering at his handiwork.

The class's already half full, and she wants to keel over and die when she remembers that they're getting a new teacher today, because last week Friday Justin finally caved and swapped teaching this class for teaching Religious Studies instead. So the school had to find someone who actually knows music theory and instruments and whatnot.

She genuinely doesn't care; she doubts anyone will help improve her horrible ear (and eye and pretty much everything else) for music.

She all but collapses into her seat, massaging her temples and laying her head on the desk to try and sneak in a few micro-sleeps before class starts—

"YO, MAKA!"

She grabs the only object on her person—a stubby, blunt pencil—but still manages to hold it up threateningly. The owner of the voice pays the action no mind.

"I HEARD THAT'CHA STOLE MY COFFEE!" Black Star bellows, and Maka groans into the table, looking up to face the blue-haired, grinning idiot as he marches up the staircase and along the row at which she's seated. "I almost passed out during basketball practice!"

She's thankful that he's managed to lower his voice to a less ear-splitting volume. It makes her comfortable enough to send him a glare. "There is no basketball practice in the morning, you moron," she growls; he skips class so openly she's surprised he hasn't been expelled yet. "And you're enough of a feral dumbass without the added caffeine."

"You realize that without that coffee my level of godliness decreases by—"

"Oh my god, Black Star, please shut up and leave," she pleads. "I'm exhausted and you're not. Helping."

"I'll leave when you buy me another coffee," he says with the extremely rare tone of voice that sounds almost normal. "If I pass out in English Comp. again, I'll get an F!"

"S'not like it's your first," she says, and then adds, "Or your fiftieth."

"I'M GONNA GET KICKED OFF THE BASKETBALL TEAM, GODDAMMIT!" He's at full volume now, and she grips the pencil with purely malicious intentions. "QUIT BEING SUCH A SHORT-TEMPERED OLD HAG, MAKA—UMPH!"

She doesn't even use the pencil. But the punch does more damage and shuts him up, so she's satisfied.

"ARGH!" Black Star roars from the pile of tables he smashed into, getting to his feet in an instant. Maka stands too, wanting to stab him in the eye or something equally painful because she is so not in the mood right now. "FREAKING—"

"Kickin' kids out wasn't the kind of man I was, but this isn't your class, Black Star."

Maka wants to kiss Sid's shrivelled face, but then she rethinks that, because ew.

Black Star whirls on the blue-skinned teacher, opening his mouth to retort, but he's cut off as an exceptionally thick book slams into his face dead-centre, knocking him out instantly. Sid casts a tired glance at the sprawled-out form of the blue-haired teenager and sighs.

"Someone get him out of here," he says. "And get my book."

Maka slides back into her seat, rubbing at her temples again. Why the hell is every day like this, she asks mentally.

She really has to stop accepting stuff from Tsubaki.

Once Black Star's out of the class, Sid's lips widen in a grin. "Okay, now that that's over, time to get to business." He walks over to the board and faces the class, and the grin slowly dissipates. "So...erm...I've never been good at introductions, and you know what we're doing today, so uh..." he turns to the open door and gestures for whoever's behind it to come in.

Maka's eyes shift toward the door, and it takes her a long second to process what she's seeing though her tired, sore eyes.

When she does though, she freezes.

Oh god.

"Everyone," Sid says, placing a hand on the shoulder of the tall, white-haired man who grins boredly at the class. "This is Soul Evans. He'll be helping us out for the day."

Oh GOD.

"Eater," he tells Sid. "It's Soul Eater."

She hears the stifled laughs and whispers around her, but she can scarcely comprehend them because she's spiralling into an enormous chasm of OH MY GOD NO WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING HERE WHAT THE HELL IS THIS WHY IS ALL THIS CRAP HAPPENING TODAY—

"Hey," Sid snaps, and the class lapses into silence. His companion only laughs.

"It's okay. S'not like I can hear 'em," he says.

Sid suddenly casts him a questioning look, and he shrugs, and Maka feels dread well up in her stomach like tap water. She doesn't know why, but she sees Sid turn to the class again, and she just knows he's gonna say something that'll make this day so much worse.

"This shouldn't change anything, because it won't affect his work, but..." he begins. Soul Eater's eyes wander around the class slowly, and she wants to take a nosedive under the table, but then his gaze meets hers.

For a moment, something like annoyance flashes in his eyes, but it's gone as fast as it appeared and he stares at her emotionlessly.

Ah, jeez.

"You can talk about my freakish appearance all you want," he says suddenly, since Sid looks incredibly conflicted about speaking. "You can even say it to my face, actually."

She knows what's coming. She's not an idiot.

But oh, how she hates herself for saying what she said in the morning. How she hates this day, hates drinking that coffee because now she's wide awake, hates waking up today, hates this class, hates hates HATES.

She closes her eyes, bracing herself for the bomb.

"I won't hear you. I'm deaf."

A/N: a deaf music teacher this already sounds so obnoxious :-/

So uh, I'm already working on the next chapter, but I can't say I'm focusing on this fic too much. I'll post when I post, when I can't post Pencils or any other PpG fic coming up later.

So...yeah.