I do not own Soul Eater; I do not profit from this writing.

004

Cold

Eruka did not want to be in London. She was tuned in with frogs. Frogs were amphibians. Amphibians hated the cold. Ergo, Eruka hated the cold. She hated it almost as much as she hated Medusa, which was to say an incredibly great deal, and she displayed this hatred by shivering inside of her thick down coat, her teeth clicking as she uttered the darkest of words that still hung over the frozen wasteland sometime after she had gone.

Free, on the other hand, did not care where they were. He did like the cold, however, because he was hot-blooded by nature. Not only that, but he had a thick and shaggy coat of fur he could sprout at any point in time if the nipping frost became too much for him to bear. None of this was even comparable to the fact that he was outside, out of that prison, and with a rather stunning young Witch who had somehow become stuck with his partnership. He could be cold or hot or wet or dry or even painted orange and pelted with toy ducks – he was free, and to not be in that prison meant that he wasn't likely to complain about his state of being at any time for a long time.

They sat outside on the bridge, side by side. They had only arrived hours ago, and they had not yet seen the familiar nuisance that were the students from the academy. They sat there, feet dangling off the edge of the bridge, a few stories above the rushing and icy water, one of the duo hunched and shivering, the other relaxed and comfortable.

"Th-th-th-this is b-b-b-b-ribbit," Eruka stuttered, the adjective for which she was going to use being swallowed up by her tic.

"Why don't you go get a hotel room? I can handle these little pests," the werewolf said, a concerned gaze tossed down at his counterpart. He could barely see her face she had it buried into her jacket so far; only her long, silvery-blue hair was visible. Even her hat looked cold.

"N-n-n-no!" she chattered-yelled. "M-M-Medusa will k-k-kill me if I don't s-s-stay and make sure we hold th-th-them of-f-f-f!" She jerked her head up at him, her round eyes squinted in annoyance and her breath puffing out in frosty clouds.

He stared at her, and then grinned. "Okay," he conceded. He stretched his arms out and stood up, walking the length of the cobblestone to the other side of the bridge. He looked down, and then across out at the other roads; after a few moments, he walked back to Eruka, but leaned casually against the wall rather than resuming his position.

"W-w-why are you so w-w-warm?" she demanded, angry at his obvious lack of discomfort. "I f-f-feel like a f-f-f-frogsicle!" she cried.

"Because I'm a w-w-w-werewolf, silly," he said, making fun of her frozen stuttering. He didn't move when she pointed a thickly-mittened and therefore incredibly disproportionate hand at him, and the force akin to a bottle-rocket popped against his chest, burning a hole in his jacket.

"Hey!" he cried. "Just because I'm not cold doesn't mean you can light my clothing on fire! And this was my good jacket," he muttered, brushing the remnants of her magical pyrotechnic off of himself.

"Then d-d-don't make f-f-fun of m-m-m-ribbit!" she shot back, hopping off of the railing herself and straightening up angrily.

"Oh, Eruka, I was just playing!" he said, his voice apologetic. "Here, come here," he pleaded, holding his arms out to her. She responded by turning her head in the other direction and sticking what part of her nose that he could see from behind her green scarf in the air. "Eruka!" he exclaimed.

It took a bit of coaxing and even the "puppy eyes" (which he was still able to do, even with that crazy old witch's eye, amazingly) to get her to walk back his way, but she finally did. He enveloped her in his arms, trying to put his excess body heat to good use. Right away, Eruka felt her blood begin to warm, though she couldn't say she entirely attributed it to the heat alone, and she was gradually able to stop her shivering long enough to speak.

"If I say this feels amazing, ribbit, you won't take it the wrong way?" she asked, looking up at him. She realized that she came up to the middle of his chest, and at once felt idiotic for her height. She was wearing snow boots, not her normal and quite fashionable heels, and thus she'd lost several inches. She'd never really noticed how big he was before, not until she was pressed directly against him, chest to chest.

"Not unless you keep saying it," he told her. He smiled at her, and it was a different sort of smile than she was used to seeing. It was softer, more honest; when Free smiled, it was more as though he bared his teeth at you, but this was a real expression. Genuine.

In spite of herself, Eruka said, "I don't know, if you smile at me like that again I might." She couldn't help but make a joke, trying to lighten the mood some. She couldn't rightly allow him to make a double-edged joke and get away with it without biting back, right?

For a moment, he said nothing, and then very suddenly he leaned down and planted his lips upon her own. Eruka wanted to gasp, but the moment was so swift that she didn't even have the time. She did have the presence of mind not to stand there afterward with her mouth open like a moron, at least, but only by a small margin. Her lips felt moist and hot from the kiss, and suddenly she realized that she was sweating underneath all of her heavy winter clothing. In fact, if she wanted to really get right down to it, he was making her blood boil.

"Free..." she tried. She felt her tongue become clumsy in her mouth as her brain emptied out of all of the articulate things she could have said. There was no joke or prose otherwise that she could think of to assist the thing she was trying to say.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. Was that – was he blushing? "I shouldn't have done that. It's just that – well, you are pretty," he tried, unsure of how to proceed here. He cursed himself mentally.

Eruka pushed his arms off of her with a roll of her shoulders, and for a moment Free thought he'd really done it, but then she was ripping her mittens off with her teeth in desperation. Once she'd gotten them off, she lunged at him, both of her small hands at either side of his face. She yanked him down to her height so harshly that he bent at his spine and nearly toppled over. She was kissing him then, the act passionate and frantic.

Free had no actual idea of the duration of time that had passed for that lip-lock she'd initiated, but he knew that they were interrupted by the shouts of the annoying teens that had been dispatched to stop them, and he inwardly groaned. Eruka was biting on his lip and he couldn't think of anything he'd rather be doing at that exact moment. He tried to ignore the yelling as it moved closer, but it became inevitable when he caught the blue-haired one out of the corner of his eye, sweeping in for a kill-shot.

"WHAT'S THIS I SEE, YOU TWO LOVEBIRDS DON'T MIND IF I CRASH YOUR LITTLE PARTY, DO YOU?" he announced.

"I'm really going to smash you, brat," Free promised, shrugging out of Eruka's grip reluctantly. He was going to put that new-found energy to good use, and violence had always been an acceptable avenue.