AN: Some flakey, candy coated slice of Life-pie. Make an appointment with your dentist now; author not responsible for possible sugar highs, or the resultant crashes that follow. Lots of dialogue, T (hard side of T, closer to M?) for so much foul language later in the chapter. Just to ease confusion, this bout of basketball ridiculousness takes place long before the game in the manga where Maka was voluntold as team captain. Run on sentences, FTW!


Basketball Can Bring You Together

It wasn't like Shibusen is the only school in Death City. Or that they were the only teenagers growing up there. They just rarely saw or mingled with any of the civilian teens, since they were so often off in other parts of the country and the world, consuming corrupt souls and trying to hunt down a witch. But most of the time, on the occasions that they were home and out and about, Soul and Maka never really socialized a whole lot with anyone else near their age, outside of their other Meister and Weapon peers. Neither group was really bothered by this, as most of Death City natives took a grain of salt and a lot of friendly indifference from the kids that attended the mystic and dangerous school that protected them.

So it wasn't really something that Maka ever noticed, or gave any care to, when guys from the other schools would give her second glances in public. She was still adjusting to Soul Eater as her friend and not just her partner, and finally having a Weapon to raise up to Death Scythe and replace her lecherous Papa, whom had already put quite a skew on her romantic worldview as it was. Not that she was oblivious, as she was a blooming teenager aware of her peers, and well-trained to be observant of her surroundings. She just didn't register them as anything out of the ordinary. Noticing a few stray glances, or intently interested stares, was not high on her list of priorities of things to earn her scrutiny.

So Soul never initially noticed, either.

Up until the point that he'd solidified his partnership with his new Meister, and his instinctual and newly drilled-in protectiveness began to give him an itch on the back of his neck everytime he and Maka were out around parts of the city that younger people like them often frequented. The record store, the fast food joints, coffee shops, skate parks, basketball courts, whatever. It was seldom, though their partnership was fresh and they had some time between the lower level missions they were taking, but it was still time they spent hanging out together, trying to adjust to each other, and Soul trying to adjust to all of it.

Soul was naturally a little cynical and suspicious, traits that Maka oddly encouraged ("They're helpful to Weapons, Soul.") and he started to realize this itch meant they were being watched, particularly some sort of threat was eyeing his Meister. At first, he could never pinpoint it. There were just other people around, civilians, a lot of them near their age, some older teens among them. It began to frustrate him, because he knew he could trust his instincts but he couldn't interpret them yet.

Then Soul started to notice, confused, antsy and defensive. There'd always be one guy. One or two guys who stood out because of their shifty-eyed glances at Maka, and their completely obtrusive, awkward just fucking standing and staring. Creepy, stalker, freaky, oily, creeps staring at his oblivious Technician. They would always start at a distance and then, quite overtly, move closer. And then closer. Soul didn't think for a second, even after so short a period of knowing her, that Maka needed him in any way other than a Weapon, but as the gentleman his mother raised him to be, he couldn't do anything less. He would start to herd Maka away from the area or activity until the dudes took a hint, or they lost them, but it was getting a little weird, even for him.

One afternoon, he just had to know. Maka was mostly his Technician, but she was also becoming his friend, and he needed to know if it was his buisness to step into this weird shit she seemed to be completely ignoring.

They were hanging out together at the small basketball court near their apartment, enjoying a little home time before Maka took another mission for them. Soul was in his favorite basketball shorts and his black tank top, practicing his hoops solo while Maka, dressed in her Daisy Dukes and form-fitting jersey, with a relatively modest sports bra beneath, sat on the sidelines on the bench, nose happily stuck in a textbook too big to be anything other than a headstone. It was all very mundane, and even his Meister's appearance was pretty plain and unexciting - considering how used to it he was by now, anyway. So Soul was pretty pissed that he'd been tracking another "watcher" from the corner of his eye all afternoon.

Some creeper at least three years their senior had taken up staring at his partner from what was obviously deemed a "safe" distance of several yards from the edge of the basketball court, technically still on the sidewalk. Soul finally snapped his limit when would-be pedo closed his perimeter another three steps, shifty-eyed and dumbshit and everything. Soul loped his ball gently towards his partner's legs, satisfied when it lodged between the bench and the concrete next to her right ankle. He wandered over to her on the bench, giving the stink-eye to the sleaze across the way.

"Oi, Maka." He rumbled lowly, pleased that his voice decided not to crack today.

"Your ball's over here, Soul." She told him kindly, without even looking away from her book. He chuffed at her, sitting down next to her and leaning his elbows on his thighs. He jerked his chin and flashed his shark grin towards the creeper.

"Not that, Dork. You know this guy?"

"Huh?" She looked up finally, unfazed by his tease, peering around confusedly.

"What guy?"

"This guy." He points accusingly at the stalker teen trying to pretend to be inconspicuous with nothing to hide behind, and no one else around for a ten-yard radius.

"Soul Eater, don't point, that's rude! Especially when you're so bad at it, I can't even tell who you're pointing at." Maka lectures, sitting up straighter and scowling into Maka Instruction Mode.

"Can't te - Are you kidding me!?"

He growls at her and points even more ferociously at Freaky Boy, who's finally beginning to look like he should probably beat it.

"Do you know that guy! Oi! You! You know her?!"

He shouts over Maka's growing ire, holding his arm over her and pointing down at her head, grabbing her chin with his other hand and pointing her face directly to Jack Hole, who's now red-faced and making a run for it like his ass is on fire. Maka blinks owlishly and is so confused by the display, and the protective rage she feels rolling from Soul, that she doesn't have it in her to lecture him any more for his outburst. Soul growls like the guard dog he's growing into being, dropping his arm but more belatedly releasing her chin.

"Fucking asshole." He rumbles at the guy.

"Language!"

Maka smacks him in the face with her tome, but at about minus-ninety percent Maka-chop level, still reeling from this very strange occurance and the fact that Soul had been so much more sensitive to a potential threat than Maka, for once. He was certainly learning! She felt a little proud of him for it.

"OW, FUH - my nose!" He growls again.

"No, I do not know who he was. What was he doing?"

Soul glares at her some more, hurt in his red eyes, rubbing his face tenderly with the ends of long, elegant fingers before he answers her guardedly,

"Staring. Creeping on you like a dirty pervert, s'what he was doin'. Him and about a dozen other guys. It's getting weird, Maka, is everybody in Death City like that?"

"What!? No!" Maka exclaims immediately, a little indignant, big green eyes wide.

Then the entirety of what he'd said catches up to her and she actually has to stop and think.

"I don't think so?" She says skeptically, frowning in thought and drumming bare fingers on her book. "What do you mean they're staring?" She asks.

"They're staring." He reiterates, as if it should explain everything, and why is she so dumb?

"What are they staring at?" She grinds out, trying to be patient with her Weapon, who'd finally shown some progress on his instincts today.

"You, Captain Obvious."

"Me? What're they staring at me for, there's nothing to stare at!" She says, thinking of her relaxed appearance and her book, and still so very confused.

Soul eyes his Meister's visible maroon sports bra and Daisy Dukes for the upteenth time, but only mumbles in the manner of a Boy unwilling to admit anything attractive other than friendship about his female companion, and grunts, "You're tellin' me."

Maka stands abruptly and Soul ducks and covers his head, peering at her through drooping, red eyes squinted in expectant caution.

"Well, whatever the reason, he's gone now. Grab your ball and let's go get some ice cream, ok?"

She has so many inflections laden in that sentence that Soul takes another thirty seconds to unlayer it, and the fact that he isn't being chopped for his implied barb. He doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth, however, and grabs his ball from under the bench, falling into step behind her right shoulder as she leads the way down the sidewalk, towards the ice cream place two blocks over. Soul keeps his eyes peeled the whole way for more creeps, glaring and posturing, cool-guy Demon Scythe style, to a few along the way. He's growing ever more satisfied to notice that they remember what he is and take the hint, skulking away from his wild white hair, bloody eyes and salivating shark teeth.

Maka pretends not to notice, but now she does, and Soul can feel a shift in her demeanor, maybe even a little in her soul, and he thinks it feels like pride, but that might be his ego. Either way, they make it to the shop and she's paying, and he's getting three scoops of his favorite flavor, and maybe Death City and this whole partnership is kind of cool in its own weird, growing-up-too-fast kind of way. Maka later ignores the fact that she becomes fully aware of Soul Eater and Black*Star "inconspicuously" getting into fist-fights with area high school boys over the next several weeks.

She ignores this in favor of the fact that if she were to spend the time and effort to contain them, she'd never get any homework done.


A couple weeks later, Soul's camped himself on the couch, dressed down in his pajama pants and t-shirt, with two cold two-litres and enough chips to choke Black*Star. He's got their cheap old TV set blaring Death City's better sports channel, watching the commentary and initial interviews before the big basketball game. Since he's home for the afternoon, and has been looking forward to this game for a week, he doesn't bother to hide his excitement as he leans over the coffee table, one arm resting on his thigh and half reaching for a bag of chips that he's temporarily forgotten about, as he watches the commentators remarking on the two team's stats and chances of winning.

Half an hour into the broadcast, and there's a niggling of something missing at the back of his mind but he can't quite place what, yet. His wandering hand lands on a crinkling bag and he snatches it up, popping it open and shoving chips into his mouth, and then, nacho powder-induced epiphany strikes and he realizes what's missing. He leans back on the couch to yell towards his Meister's partially opened bedroom door, sparkling scarlet eyes still glued on the pre-game chatter.

"Oi, Maka!" He yells politely.

He leans forward again to watch an interview with one of the fowards of the opposing team. By the time its over, he realizes he never got a response. That's ok, maybe she didn't hear him.

"Oi! Maka!" He tries again.

"What?" Comes the muffled reply.

"The game's on, you're gonna miss it! Startin' ina minute!"

"What game?" She sounds genuinely confused, and he drags his red irises from the interviews to peer at her cream yellow wall that is all he can see through the space between her door and the frame.

"The basketball game," he responds, patiently distracted as he shoves more chips into his mouth, muffling his own voice, "Nevada Vs. New York!"

"I don't really like basketball, Soul." She calls politely, and now he's the one confused. "I'm just going to read for awhile."

He grunts through the crunching of more chips, partially perplexed and partially distracted by another forward player interview, this time for the Nevada home team. How could someone so athletic not like basketball? Maka was practically built to play it. He tries to shrug it off and relax back into his previous excitement, since he'd been looking forward to this for so long. But now it wasn't the same, because he realizes that one of the reasons he'd looked foward to it so much was because he had someone to watch it with. Except, now he doesn't, because apparently Maka doesn't like basketball.

"Oi, Maka?" He calls again awhile later, hesitant.

It weirds him out a little just how much he wants to be better friends with her, how comfortable he is with her already. The brush of a link deeper than any he's ever felt sends quiet, barely-there tinklings of hesitant notes through his soul everyday. The empathy between their souls has an annoying habit of spiking randomly, sometimes.

"Yes, Soul?" She calls politely again.

He shifts on the couch, scowling just a little as he musters his cool back.

"You wanna read out here?"

He doesn't get a response for a minute, and the game's getting close to starting officially now, but his eyes are stupidly glued to her partly opened bedroom door. Then Maka's skinny frame fills the small opening, shorts and spaghetti-strap blouse highlighting long legs and defined clavicals as she peers at him curiously, like he'd just asked her to explain the Theory of Relativity to him and she's seriously considering it. He can only hold her intent green eyes for another second before he pretends to be interested in the announcer on TV, as she purses her lips at him. He's not sure if he wants her to refuse and close her bedroom door, or accept and come sit in the same tiny room with him.

She reaches her conclusion with a soft smile, though, and comes out with a massive textbook to sit on the low, wide loveseat next to the couch. She rests her feet on the cushion, heels at her butt as she props the ungainly book against her knees. She observes Soul's relaxed features and the tiny quirk of a grin at the edge of his mouth, where he should be bothered by the drool glistening there, and she smiles wider and resumes her studying, content to deal with the noise of the game while she does so. Some time after the game officially starts, she's all but drowned out the commentators' voices, the cheering, and the sounds of Soul shoveling junk food and soda pop into his maw, like a tiger shark going through a capsized fishing boat.

The phone rings, and she swears she's about to get up, right after this last sentence, until three rings later Soul bounces up to grab it and rush back to his seat on the couch, eyes never leaving the TV. She's amused as well as slightly frustrated by his level of attention on the game, thinking he'd sincerely benefit if he gave their classes that level of astute fixation. He manages to answer the phone without actually saying anything into it, but it apparently doesn't matter as she hears Black*Star's voice clearly screaming over the reciever. She might as well have answered the phone after all, for as well as she can hear him.

"SOUL! DUDE! YOU GOT THE GAME ON? YOU SEEING THIS SHIT, MAN?"

Soul sets the phone on the coffee table among crinkled bags of chips and their many fallen and crushed crumbs, pressing a button and Maka hears the feedback indicating an open speaker conversation is about to happen. She frowns softly, still studying but considering whether she should retreat to her room soon. Soul grunts as a pass is made on the TV and he recalls, almost too late, as they both hear Black*Star suck in another breath to start screaming again, that he's got the lunatic on speaker.

"Shut up, spazz, you're on speaker." He says lazily, and they hear Black*Star sputteringly deflate.

Relative quiet returns as Maka continues through her chapter in the textbook and listens to the boys munching food. They both seem to be sucked back into the void that is this all-important basketball game, cat-calls and cheers occasionally breaking the lulls. Eventually Black*Star pipes up again, startling Soul and Maka both with his random declaration.

"Dude, Soul, go get Maka to watch. She never watches games with me, she totally needs to get into this, she frickin' studies too much."

Maka puffs too quietly to be heard on the speaker, and Soul glances over at her with a grin but doesn't give her away yet.

"She's reading." He comments lightly with a slurp. Not like he was lying.

"So? She reads all the fucking time, she can watch a fucking game once in awhile!"

"Black*Star, watch your language!"

Soul snorts a chuckle as Black*Star squawks with excitement, mouth obviously full of food again as he yells around it at them both,

"Holy shit, you got her to come watch a game?! Soul Eater! You sly dog!"

"I am not watching the game, I'm reading!"

Maka's sitting forward on the loveseat now, long bare feet firmly planted on the floor so she can rest her book on her legs while one powerful fist rests over her prone hip. She's frowning at the phone, and Soul laughs as he watches from the corner of his eye, not losing track of the game as a rare time-out is called.

"In the same room as Soul while he watches basketball?"

Black*Star cackles and Soul snorts a little at his Meister's rising ire and pink cheeks, but wisely covers it by shoving more chips into his mouth as Maka grits, "Shut up, Black*Star!" and brings her legs back up to her chest again, resting her book over her knobby knees once more.

Soul comments idly on his choice of snackage, and Black*Star offers him godly approval on his manly and cool choices. Soul chuckles, asking what Black*Star is eating, since the other Meister has got no manners at all, and Maka needs some breathing space; he can feel the blush on her cheeks and wonders just how hard Black*Star used to try to get her to watch games, and if he should be feeling awkward at how easily he got her to sit through one with him. He knows the rambunctious game, as well as he and their mutual friend, have all but obliterated her studying for the night.

"Tsubaki made me nigiri! Fuckin' great! Not enough, tho."

Black*Star responds to his question, loudly shoving said nigiri into his mouth mid-sentence with disgusting sound effects that Soul is a little jealous of. They hear a small, bashful "Sorry!" from the background, and Soul knows Tsubaki must be watching the game dutifully with her Technician at their small place.

"Use your manners, Black*Star! Tsubaki didn't have to make you anything! You don't have to make him anything, Tsubaki-chan!"

Maka's leaned forward again, book almost forgotten by this point, and her pink cheeks are ones of indignation as she scolds Black*Star for his ungratefulness. A soft, sweet voice comes over the call, and they're both instinctually soothed at the smile and amusement they can hear in it.

"Hi, Maka-chan! Hello Soul-kun! Enjoy the game!"

"Hi, Tsubaki-chan!" Maka greets her friend happily.

"Yeah." Soul grunts with a smile, chugging down the last bit of pop from one of his two-litres. He releases a belch that reverberates in the living room, and Black*Star howels with laughter as Maka chops him in the head with her book, and his team scores a two-point shot. Black*Star's laughter turns into howels of rage.

"Dude, this game is shit! We're down by three!" He thunders through the crackly house phone.

"What're you talking about? New York's winning, I'm good." Soul is smug through his aching head as he waits for the dynamite to boom.

"THE HELL DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE GOOD, YOU FUCKING DICKLESS BITCHFACE TRAITOR!"

And there's his boom, as a resounding crash makes it through the phone, along with more swearing from Black*Star, and Tsubaki's panicky voice attempting to soothe her hair-trigger Meister.

"BLACK*STAR WATCH YOUR DAMN MOUTH!"

Maka screams, and Soul wonders if its automatic that Technicians fly off the handle aggressively whenever they hear another Tech raging, or if that's only Maka and Black*Star. He bounces in his seat with excitement as his team scores another point, and Black*Star starts all over again.

"DEFEND YOUR GOD! WHO'S SIDE ARE YOU ON?!"

"I'm not on anyone's side, idiot! I'm not watching the game!"

Soul peers at Maka, watching her posture - leaning forward with her fists on her hips, glaring hotly at the phone as if it were the god-besting lunatic himself - and he's pretty sure he's never seen her so lively at home since they moved in together. It's kind of fascinating, especially when it's not directed at him. Her face is a neat shade of red usually reserved for frustration when a new scythe technique is giving her trouble. He grins broadly as he listens to his Technician and her oldest friend arguing about sides, and about cussing, and the merits of basketball on society. He's pretty sure he still hears Tsubaki resignedly murmuring in the background, and he watches the action on the TV feeling the most content he thinks he could be.

Nevada finally scores a two-point basket, and Black*Star interrupts his and Maka's argument to whoop and holler, and blasts Soul with smack-talk. Maka gets in on it just for spite, taking up New York's side without even understanding anything that's actually going on in the game. At this point, Soul is only half invested in the game - with time running down and his team's lead, they're not likely to lose. He blasts his best bro with some choice smack-talk of his own, cleverly avoiding swears so Maka doesn't chop him again, and sits back to laugh as his best guy friend and his Meister shriek at each other like the rowdy brats they all are. He's pretty sure he even hears Tsubaki laughing now.

This night couldn't have been set up better if he'd planned it out himself; junk food for supper, the game with his friends, no homework (that he's going to do), and no missions. The only thing that could make it better was if he'd thought to bet Black*Star money on the game beforehand.

"Hey, Black*Star," he rumbles under the commotion, and it takes two more consecutively louder calls to get the guy's attention. He goads the Technician when he finally answers, betting him a hundred dollars and three pizzas that Nevada can't come back before the timer ends, because they suck that much.

"YOU'RE ON, PISSBABY!"

Is the cocky response he gets, and he leans back, slurping drool and pop as he listens to Maka scream a lecture at their friend for screaming, for insulting her Weapon, and because Death damned boys!

The next night they have pizza for dinner, with left overs, and Soul has a black eye, six new records, and a new set of headphones - with cash to spare.

Maka may not understand basketball, but now she thinks she kind of gets why the boys like it.