Thanks ProMa for looking this over for me, and thank you to every reader who has left me feedback. I hope you enjoy this enormous chapter.

Soul had always believed that severability was a given, even when he was a kid. His childhood home was essentially an artist's colony. Each of his family members was constantly wrapped up in their own projects, immersed in their own worlds, honing their talents with a focus only sweet solitude could deliver. They crossed paths at meals, in the bathroom, and during social events, but even then the Evans clan was aloof at best. The family didn't used to be so fixated on their inward, artistic lives, but any traces of family unity started to taper off when Soul was still very young and vanished completely after Wes left home.

People weren't built to stay together. They were just atoms bouncing off one another, briefly entering each other's orbits before ricocheting down their own paths.

It was the magnetic anomaly that was Maka Albarn that completely turned Soul's belief on its head.

After never crossing paths their entire freshman year, Soul now ran into Maka everywhere he went.

He collided with her after rounding a tight corridor in the language building ("Oof!" "Where the hell do you thi-Oh, hey!").

Their eyes met in passing outside the library ("Sorry, I was just going this way." "I'm going that way. Um, so...bye?" "Yeah, see ya.").

She stepped on his foot by accident in the pasta line inside the dining hall ("Calm your stompy pigeon-toed feet." "Don't you dare tell me to calm my anything!").

Soul had to wonder if Maka was planning these chance encounters, but judging by her look of genuine surprise every time they bumped into each other, she was just as bewildered by this pattern as he was. Stranger yet, when they did meet up accidentally and decided to talk or walk together for a few moments, the cadence of their footsteps and voices fell into a natural rhythm, as if the cogs of two stalling gears finally connected and began to thrum happily once more.

Their budding friendship was random and sometimes infuriating, but most of all it was easy. Once she wasn't trying to concuss him and he wasn't trying to spite her, Soul and Maka got along exceedingly well. Forging a shared routine was instinctive, smooth. It was soon second nature to shoot Maka a text when he wanted to get food and trudge straight across the muddy quad when he saw her walking alone. She quickly became just as secure a fixture in his life as music classes, greasy dorm food, and odd looks from strangers.

The only wrinkle in their partnership was the arrangement that started it all. In fact, they got on best when neither Kid nor Patty entered into the equation. If Kid streaked across campus on his skateboard and Maka's eyes followed his receding form with acute interest, Soul made sure to make a snarky comment or even attract Kid's attention. It was funny to see her get flustered in Kid's presence, but it was even funnier to watch Maka attempt to contain her frustration and anger. Apparently, part of her grand plan to get into Kid's pants was to attract him with her sweet personality. What a joke.

In his defense, Maka pulled the same shit on him. When she caught his eye straying towards the softball field while Patty was at practice in mid-September, Maka yanked hard on his right ear to pull him down to her height level.

"Stop looking at my best friend like you want to peel off her pretty skin and wear it as a coat," she hissed.

Maka released his ear with a loud harumph! and stalked away. His dopey smile gone and his face drained of color, Soul tailed after her. "I don't look like that! And who are you to talk, you puny little hypocrite!"

Needless to say, their collaborative operation to romance each other's best friends had stalled.

They had met up after Soul's piano practicum and Maka's creative writing class to walk to the dining hall. While she had taken their walk as an opportunity to give him a passionate lecture about something relatively unimportant, Soul endured. Today, despite all the setbacks and bickering and longing looks, they were finally going to make the Trade.

"All I'm saying is that if you have to unhinge your jaw like a snake, you're literally biting off more than you can chew," Maka said. "I'm not asking you to nibble your food. Just smaller bites."

"OH LOYAL FOLLOWERS!"

That loud, oh so familiar voice caused passing students in earshot to flinch and search the quad in confusion. Maka simply groaned as they turned around to face a rapidly approaching Blake.

Sometimes Soul was convinced that Blake was two people trapped in one person's body. He had the memory of a goldfish and the mouth of a howler monkey, and when he saw Soul and Maka walking together on the other side of the quad, he screamed once more at the top of his lungs. "YOUR GOD DEMANDS AN AUDIENCE!"

As Blake cut across the quad, he was closely followed by a tall brunet Soul immediately recognized to be Red Star, one of Blake's fraternity brothers. The two were wearing salmon shorts, boat shoes, and brotanks that said "Sun's Out, Guns Out" and "No Sleeves, No Problems" respectively, and were it not for Blake's stocky build and bright blue hair, they would have been impossible to tell apart. Soul sighed when he noted the excitable way Blake was pumping his arms and grinning.

"Soul, my man!" Blake said to Soul. Casting a wary eye towards Maka, he added, "You two hanging out? Again?"

"We're just grabbing food," Soul said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. His eyes flicked towards Red Star, whose face carried a thirsty, callous expression that set him on edge.

Blake opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by his frat bro. "Hey! Remember me?" Red Star said to Maka. She blinked at him. "Or maybe this?" Laughing nervously, he held out his left hand. If Soul squinted, one of his fingers looked a little swollen and had a slight purple hue.

This man had clearly had a prior run-in with the Palmtop Tiger and wanted some form of apology or retribution, but he was to be sorely disappointed. Maka's response was icy and sharp, "No."

"Anywayyy," Blake segued, "Us guys should meet up for dinner sometime. I'd tag along for lunch, but the rest of our day is blocked off for massage class and working out."

After adopting a look of pure incredulity, Maka guffawed. "A massage course? They offer that here?"

"It's part of the sports science program," Blake explained. "Don't look at me like that-this is rigorous stuff. Bet you can't name all the bones in your arm, or the ligaments in your knee."

Maka scowled at Blake, but her attention was stolen by Red Star. "Plus we get to practice on actual people," he said with a suggestive smirk. "These hands are going to be college educated in the art of soothing frigid women."

She snorted. "So basically you're taking a massage class just so you can feel up girls?"

Red Star, looking aghast, said, "Maybe I really do want to be a massaginist."

"Maybe you already are one," Maka said with a cool shrug.

Blake darted between the two and clapped Red Star on the back. "Oh-ho-ho-kay! We gotta bounce. See you guys around."

Blake dragged Red Star back from where they came with much less energy than when he arrived. "The burn was impressive," Soul finally said as they resumed their walk to lunch. "I'm surprised."

"Please, give me some credit," Maka said. She gave him the smirk of a very full and self-satisfied housecat. "I actually thought it was too subtle for you."

"Maka, give me some credit."

The highly anticipated and much delayed Trade commenced after Maka had finished her sandwich and withdrew a large, immaculate packet from her backpack. In that packet were all of Maka's insights surrounding Patty, which were apparently both numerous and elaborately detailed; 'Overachiever' was definitely an understatement when it came to her. Eager, Soul began to peruse its pages.

At first, the packet read like an online dating profile. It contained stupid stuff, like Patty's astrological sign and birthstone, as well as some irrelevant information, like her allergy to wasps. While it was good to know that he should give her a birthday present made of turquoise instead of wasps, it didn't grant him any special insights into Patty as a person. The next page contained a list of television series organized by five star ratings. Intriguingly, many of them contained reviews written in a familiar perky, if not threatening voice. He looked at Maka, and she began to answer his unspoken question immediately.

"My dad pays for my Netflix and Spotify, and I passed along the passwords to Patty," Maka explained. "Those are the TV shows she is currently watching, and those are the movies she has top rated and reviewed. Her favorite music is-oh, there you are."

He was already flipping through the packet for Patty's playlist of favorite songs. The stuff about her birthstone was nice, but this was exactly what he needed to know. Unable to contain himself, Soul's red eyes eagerly swept through the playlist.

Considering that millions of songs were currently floating around in the digital ether, it shouldn't have surprised him to find almost no familiar tracks or artists on that list. The realization also shouldn't have sliced through him with the stinging quickness of a knife. Music was a vast industry. Everyone was into different genres. Musical taste wasn't indicative how well people got along.

It was better, Soul decided, for their tastes to diverge at first. It gave them something to talk about and explore together. Hell, he had already devoted many lunches to explaining the finer points of jazz to Maka, and even if she was as musical as a bale of hay, their talks were still really fun. Without its initial promise, the Patty Packet hung limp in his hands.

"Well?" Maka asked, impatient. "I showed you mine."

Sighing, Soul lifted his backpack off the ground and placed it on his lap so he could sift through its contents. Truthfully, he had thought Maka wanted to trade cheat sheets weeks ago. His list of facts about Kid had thus been squashed to the very bottom of his bag by his various binders, books, and sheet music. Once he found the crumpled paper, he took care to smooth it out on the table. Maka looked remarkably unimpressed.

"Here ya go, as promised," Soul said, pushing the leaf of paper towards her.

She wrinkled her nose as she inspected it. "You only wrote four things on this." Maka looked up at him, obviously displeased. "This is absolutely useless. Thanks."

"Sometimes having good information is better than having a lot of it," Soul retorted.

"But some of this is complete nonsense," Maka said, examining the paper even closer. "'Minimalist Halloweentown?' What the fuck?"

"It's his aesthetic!" Soul exclaimed. When Maka gave him a blank stare, Soul rolled his eyes and launched into the best explanation he could muster. "If you boiled Kid down to one thing, like simplified his taste in clothes, movies, music, books, everything into one phrase, that would be it. That phrase is literally all you need to know what he is about. Everything else is set dressing."

Maka looked extremely skeptical. "Okay but...minimalist Halloweentown?"

Soul shot her a pointed look and crossed his arms. "This just goes to show how little you actually know Kid."

Growling, Maka reached over the table and snatched back the packet of papers she had given Soul and stuffed them unceremoniously into her backpack. She was taking special care to make sure they became bent and rumpled this time. "Hey!" Soul protested.

"I'm not a pancake, Soul. I don't flip." Maka muttered as she shoved the papers deeper into her bag. "You can have this back when you stop being an unhelpful, stubborn ass."

They threw away their trash and placed their dirty plates onto the conveyer belt that led into the kitchen. The next class period was starting soon, and both of them had places to be. "It's true, though," Soul said as they walked across the quad. "You don't know anything about Kid other than the fact that he's smart, rich, and has a nice butt."

"You can learn a lot about someone based on their butt," Maka replied. "For example, you talk out of yours all the time. Ever wonder what that tells me?"

He chose to ignore that comment. "It's sometimes like you are talking about a completely different person," Soul continued. "There's no way the guy you talk about and the guy I actually live with are the same."

They finally came upon a fork in the path. Soul would soon take off on the left towards the music building, and Maka would continue down the right towards the library. Before they parted ways, Maka turned to her friend. "Maybe you're right and I don't know him well enough yet," Maka mused. "But remember, you're in the exact same situation as I am. Patty isn't the manic pixie dream girl you think she is, and it's gonna be a nasty surprise when you find that out for yourself."

He left Maka feeling haughty and stubborn. The last thing Soul needed or wanted was a lecture from Maka "Stalk First, Flirt Later" Albarn.

Two evenings later, Soul did end up meeting Blake and Red Star for dinner. It was not the brofest it was promised to be. Blake was, as always, incredibly jovial and social, but Red Star simply scowled at Soul and asked a few questions about Maka. Soul's saving grace was that as a pack of twenty year-old guys, they all ate a ton and could cushion moments of awkward silence with gratuitous chewing. He parted ways with Blake and Red Star immediately afterwards, swearing to himself never to repeat that experience again.

When he finally returned to his apartment that night, Soul did not make it to his bedroom. He shrugged off his backpack, groaned as the weight eased off his aching shoulders, and flopped onto the couch.

The sound of Kid kicking his door open made Soul start. He woozily lifted his head, and Soul saw his roommate stride through the room with purpose and fervor. If Soul didn't know better, he would have thought Kid's arms were quivering. "Where are you going?" Soul asked.

Before dashing out the door, Kid briefly spun around to say, "To find answers!" After closing the front door with another abrupt bang, Soul heard Kid's excited footfalls pitter patter down the hall.

Weird. It wasn't the first time Kid had done something like that, but there was a strange urgency about his exit that felt odd, suspicious even. In his haste, Kid had left the door to his bedroom wide open. The bright fluorescent light from within spilled into the common room, and temptation began to pull Soul forward.

He was supposed to get the inside scoop on Kid. While Soul was already pretty confident that he had accomplished that with his four-bullet list, Maka demanded more in exchange for her own wealth of information. And more she would receive. Once he was certain Kid wasn't going to burst right back into the dorm, Soul rose from the couch and entered Kid's sanctuary.

Maka may not have believed him, but 'minimalist Halloweentown' summed up Dean Theodore Kidman perfectly. His room was a collision between the pristine and the macabre, the quirky and the organized. Now that Kid did not have to share a space with a messy roommate like Soul, he had taken ample artistic liberties with the standard dorm decor. He had substituted the default wooden bed frame with a sleek, industrial metal one. The pitch black sheets on his neatly made bed looked so crisp and soft that Soul feared they would crumple like a butterfly's wing at the slightest touch.

Figuring that if he looked at the bed any long Kid would know he had been in there, Soul moved on. The rest of room followed a similar theme. Aside from the splashes of color on his textbooks, every instance of color was dark, drab, and muted. His belongings were all straight lines, sharp corners, and perfect circles. Human skulls, a common motif among Kid's things, were cartoonish and simplified in design. Soul's attention turned to the junk on the desk, where his roommate's many pens and notebooks were neatly arranged in stacks and lines.

He took a panorama of the room and sent it to Maka.

Soul (8:13): when u and kid are finally married and living together and stuff, i hope ur prepared to let him do all the interior decorating

On the desk, one text book lay open almost exactly down the middle. A blue highlighter sat in the curve of the spine, and though Soul had only planned to take a cursory look at Kid's room to find a lead for Maka, he peered at its open pages.

BEYOND THE BINARY

CHAPTER FIVE: THE INVISIBLE SEXUALITY

Soul squinted at the book, immensely puzzled. What class was this for? Outside Spanish and a couple of gen eds he couldn't get out of, Soul's course load was focused solely on music. Spanish Cinema had a sexuality unit of sorts, but judging by the amount of onscreen nudity he had already seen in that class, none of that sex was going to be invisible. Quite the opposite. His eyes drifted toward the text.

"An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. Unlike celibacy, which people choose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who someone is. There is considerable diversity among the asexual community; each asexual person experiences-"

He stopped reading as he became fixated upon the phrase 'an intrinsic part of who someone is,' which was not only highlighted in blue ink, but was also underlined and punctuated with a neat row of uniform exclamation points scribbled in the margin. Soul ran his finger over the notation. No, scribbled was the wrong word. That implied something messy, rushed, or spontaneous. This note was written so deliberately that each exclamation point dug deeper into the page. He could feel the indentations like braille beneath his fingertips, but he could not read what they meant.

Unable to decode the clues on the desk, Soul turned to Kid's bookcase. This was information Maka would want. He snapped a picture of their titles and left the room in a hurry; staying longer would have felt like a true violation.

Sending the picture of Kid's room was harmless enough, but sending a record of Kid's books to Maka seemed like a step too far. Soul ended up inviting her over so he could show it to her and delete it right after. He felt dirty for snooping, even if it he had only stood in Kid's room for a few short moments.

They chilled on the couch in the suite common room, where Maka extracted Soul's phone from his pocket ("Personal boundaries, woman!") and flipped through the pictures from his five minute reconnaissance mission.

"'The Portrait of Dorian Gray?' I love Oscar Wilde!" Maka said. "This one's pretty short, so I can probably reread it so Kid and I can discuss its murkier themes. Wilde was very interested in the messiness and corruption of human desire and sexuality."

Hoping to be helpful, Soul added, "Kid likes to read about sexuality stuff."

"That's something I already knew," Maka said with a satisfied smile. "From class, I know that he is interested in feminism, so it only makes sense that gender and sexuality studies might interest him, too. Let me see what other books there are…" Maka was less pleased to see the amount of Dostoevsky on Kid's bookshelf, but in the name of getting to know Kid's tastes a little better, she grudgingly declared that she would check those books out from the library.

She wasn't the only one with books on her mind. When Kid returned, he had a small stack of hardcover texts balanced on his arms. "Oh, it's you two," Kid said. "Studying together, again?"

"You should join us!" Maka blurted. She still hadn't quite mastered the art of keeping cool in Kid's presence. "I mean, if you want to. I can move my stuff to make room-"

"I think it would be best if I studied in private today." Kid looked back and forth at his friends and smiled thinly. "Maybe another time."

Kid stepped over Soul and Maka's backpacks and binders, which were scattered across the floor, and retreated into the inner sanctum of his room. After closing the door, Soul heard Kid lock it behind him.

Maka quietly heaved her British Literature anthology onto her lap and began read silently. She made a great show of writing notes in the margins and thoughtfully clicking her pen, but her act didn't fool him. It was the little things that gave her away; the pursed lips, the fidgeting hands, the wistful glances towards Kid's door. Soul never asked to be remarkably in tune with her feelings, and he didn't think too hard on why or how that came to be, but he couldn't just sit there while she retreated within herself.

"At least he said hi," Soul offered.

"Yeah," she responded with a clipped tone.

"He said he'd study with you another time."

"I know."

At this point, her morose mood inspired more annoyance than pity. "Well you don't need to be so pouty about it," Soul said testily.

Maka audibly scoffed. "Oh, come on! You sulked for hours after Patty didn't deliver you that pizza!"

Soul flinched; the wound carved by the pizza incident still stung. "I tipped a total stranger ten dollars, of course I sulked."

"That's why I told you to pay her with cash at the door instead of online!"

"My pockets aren't exactly overflowing with cashmoney."

"That's rich coming from Mr. Trust Fund Baby!" Maka's insult du jour was to remind Soul that underneath his ratty clothes and grim personality, he was a cashmere sweater-wearing prep school graduate. This was a fact she learned after they cemented their friendship on Facebook, a decision Soul quickly began to resent.

"That's my parents' money," he reminded her. "It's not like I can dip into my trust fund account for fucking pizza." She huffed and returned to her book, and guilt clawed at him. It was impossible for him to just leave things alone, not when it came to her. "I'm sorry it isn't going well," Soul finally said. "I really thought he'd be more social now that you're here all the time. It's not really like him to be aloof."

She hugged her legs to her chest. "Maybe it's me," Maka wondered aloud with a frown.

"Hey." Soul lightly touched her shoulder, and she gave him a skeptical arched eyebrow. "I suffer from resting serial killer face and Kid went out of his way to be my friend. Hell, he even shared a room with my disorganized ass for a whole year, and he still thinks I'm okay. Don't take his weirdo habits personally. If he doesn't want to hang today, we'll just have to try again tomorrow."

She had been staring ahead with a deep frown on her face, but his encouragement made her eyes soften and a small, pretty smile to play upon her lips. She turned to face him, and his entire body bloomed with warmth. It was at times like this, when her hair framed her face just so and her eyes looked twice as bright as any green he had ever seen, that Soul's heart did a weird flip flop in his ribcage, and the constant anxieties stirring at the back of his mind stilled.

The moment was promptly ruined when the front door was kicked open by the one and only Blake Barrett. He was hunched over, and balanced upon his back was Tsubaki Nakatsukasa, his girlfriend. Blake had hooked his arms around Tsubaki's pale legs, which were so long that they almost touched the ground, and she supported herself by squeezing his waist with her thighs and throwing her arms around his neck. Tsubaki's long, smooth hair trickled down her and Blake's left shoulders in a ponytail. As they entered the room, Soul realized that Tsubaki was wearing both her and Blake's backpacks.

"Move nothing!" Blake shouted. "Obstacles, stay where you are! Genuflect if you must."

"You can put me down if you want," Tsubaki whispered into Blake's left ear with a gentle laugh.

Blake scoffed. "I said I was carrying you all the way to my room, so that's what I'm gonna do." Blake began to take large, ungainly steps through the common room, causing his girlfriend to lurch from side to side. The couple had to maneuver over Soul's legs, which were resting on the coffee table, and avoid slipping on one of Maka's books, which were strewn about the floor. One of Tsubaki's dangling legs bumped into the coffee table, and Blake stomped right on Maka's backpack, perhaps intentionally to avenge his disgraced fraternity brother. Maka responded with a low growling noise, but otherwise said nothing.

"Hi Tsu," Soul said as the couple squeezed by. "Bye Tsu."

Though they had just traversed the living room and were nearly to Blake's bedroom door, Tsu looked over her shoulder. "Wait, Black Star!" she said. Unlike his roommates, Tsubaki had taken more to his fraternity nickname. "I want to say hello!"

Without loosening his grip on Tsubaki, Blake turned on his heel with surprising speed. One of Tsu's feet kicked over a lampshade, and the two lumbered back to Soul and Maka. Since they were sitting on the couch, Blake pitched his body forward so Tsubaki could speak with them face to face.

"Hey Soul!" Tsu said cheerfully. "You look busy. I thought studying was beneath you."

"Turns out I can't coast through my entire college career," Soul said with exaggerated nonchalance. "It was worth trying though."

Tsubaki's large blue eyes quickly moved on to Maka. The two introduced themselves and shook hands over Blake's shoulder. By the way Tsubaki's thin eyebrows shot up when she heard Maka's name, Maka's reputation clearly preceded her. "I've seen you around," Tsu said to Maka with a contemplative expression. "I know! DUJA, right?"

She was referring to the Death University Japanese Association. "I only went to the first meeting," Maka admitted.

"Well you should come to our next one! I'm on the board, and I'm putting together a potluck!"

"Maybe…"

"Do you speak any Japanese?" Maka responded in Japanese, prompting the two girls to talk amongst themselves in another language for several minutes. Soul's sexuality had been defined by foreign languages for a long time now, so he looked back and forth between the two girls, fascinated. Meanwhile, Blake's face darkened as blood rushed to his bowed head. The ease with which he supported Tsubaki and their schoolbags on his back did not waver.

"Psst!" Soul reluctantly gave Blake his attention. "Listen," Blake whispered, unnoticed by the girls. "Are you and her, uh…" Deprived of his hands, Blake made lewd motions with his tongue with a dreamy look on his face. Soul winced.

Tsubaki and Maka wrapped up their conversation, and Blake once again carried Tsubaki away. He set her down at the threshold of his bedroom, allowing her to finally stand to her full height. Tsubaki had always been a willowy vision of grace, especially next to stocky Blake, but it was through their differences that they complemented each other. Before Blake kicked the door shut, Soul saw his friend shoot a rare, tender look at Tsu, who responded in kind.

It was an intimate moment spied for a brief second by two people who desperately wished to attain the same thing. Envy made his heart feel heavy. Perhaps if genetics were on his side, Soul would have already found a person to complement his flaws and differences. Maybe if his childhood wasn't so starved of closeness, he would have compensated for his strange looks long ago.

He noticed that Maka was also staring at Blake's bedroom door, glassy-eyed and wistful. "I didn't know you spoke Japanese," Soul said to her. "What did you two talk about?"

The spell was broken, and Maka blinked quickly before answering. "She just asked if I was your girlfriend. But don't worry, I shut that down pretty fast."

"Huh."

"They're cute together," Maka stated. "Hey, you still want the big cheat sheet I made for you?"

Acquisition of the Patty Packet coincided with a shift in Soul and Patty's acquaintanceship. She shortly thereafter began to sit next to him in class, ask him his opinion about the cinematography of the film they were watching, and lean over his desk so she could say something to Kim or Harvar. Soul might have wondered if he somehow flipped a switch that now labeled him as Not As Big a Freak As He Looks, but who was he to question this amazing turn of events? Better to enjoy the attention while it lasted.

She started to ask him more probing questions. "So what kind of drugs are you into?" Patty asked him in her perky, lilting voice.

The question had come from nowhere, and Soul's answer was so automatic it almost sounded rehearsed. "My eyes are always like this," Soul answered, extracting his wallet from his pocket. "It's even on my driver's license, look-"

"But do you go to the gym?" Patty asked, ignoring him. "And what's your estimated post-grad salary? Ballpark it for me."

"I'm no Blake Barrett but I exercise," he said. "And, uh, shit Patty, I don't know-"

"Favorite movie?"

This time his answer really was rehearsed. "The Lion King," Soul said, gauging her reaction. If Maka's data was accurate, this would win him some approval.

She looked at him appraisingly. "Classic choice."

"What's with the interrogation anyway?"

Patty smiled at him sweetly. "I'm just trying to figure you out. Got class after this? We need to chat."

He responded that Spanish Cinema was his last class of the day and quickly agreed to 'meet up,' whatever that would entail. Their professor popped Amorres Perros into the DVD player, and the class continued its viewing of the film. Having already googled the film's plot summary, Soul took out his phone to discretely text Maka for input.

Soul (2:15): so patty wants to talk to me urgently

Soul (2:16): u know why?

Maka: (2:19): Actually she's mentioned you a lot lately.

Maka (2:20): She said you're good at rolling your r's!

Maka (2:20): Not sure if it's relevant?

Maka (2:20): Unless it's a sex thing?

Soul (2:21): that sounds pretty motherfucking relevant

Maka (2:26): I'm meeting up with her later today. Let me know how it goes on your end.

Maka (2:26): Good luck!

Soul (2:27): :)

After class, Soul waited patiently for Patty to rise from her seat and meet his eyes. She jerked her chin towards the hallway-an invitation to follow. She lead him outside and towards the side of the building, where a forgotten bike rack and a picnic table collecting autumn leaves, utterly abandoned. It wasn't completely private, but it was separate from the usual traffic of students or teachers. They were, for all intents and purposes, alone.

Rather than sitting at the picnic table, Patty put her hands on her hips and addressed him with her head held high. "Soul Evans, I have been watching you," she said. "And I've been meaning to talk about this for a while."

Aloof was usually Soul's default mode of interaction, yet somehow it was difficult to keep his face passive and his voice steady when he was sweating bullets. "Why's that? What are we talking about?" he asked.

She narrowed those enormous, heart-melting baby blues and gave him a slight, close-lipped smile. "Oh, you know."

Soul swallowed, and his adam's apple bobbed painfully. He thought he had been playing with his cards pretty close to his chest, keeping their interactions friendly without crossing the line into creepy territory, yet apparently she had still seen right through him. It was a little disappointing to be so easily found out, but this was what he wanted, someone to see beyond his abnormal coloring, beyond the mask. The way she kept throwing him that bewitching smile, it seemed like everything he had been low-key pining for was about to come together.

As his mind raced to increasingly shameless places, Maka rounded the corner with her usual brisk pace, and she came to an abrupt standstill when she noticed Soul and Patty standing there. "Sorry! I didn't know you were still-I'll leave you two alone!" Maka said, wide-eyed. Before she could dart away, her arm was caught by a wildly grinning Patty.

"Oh no you won't missy!" Patty said with a grin. She cinched Maka to her right side, and with her other arm Patty reeled in Soul so she could pull them both into a tight hug. "I'm just so happy for you guys!"

"I wasn't sure about it at first, but I've decided to give him the Patty stamp of approval," Patty said to Maka. She proceeded to bop Soul on the forehead with a mock stamp. "There. Now you don't have to be all hush-hush about it. Liz said she approves too, but I think that's just cuz Soul's bro won a Grammy or something."

"Approves of what?" Maka asked.

"Your new boyfriend, dummy," Patty said, gesturing to Soul. "Did you think I wouldn't notice you sneaking off to be with him everyday?"

Soul gaped at her, thunderstruck and horrified. In all the scenarios he envisioned for this meeting, Soul had not anticipated this twist. All those little smiles and innocent questions weren't for him at all. They were for...for…

He looked now to Maka, who had covered her mouth to conceal the beet red color of her face.

"Soul, I really did need to talk to you because Maka is very special to me," Patty said with utter seriousness. Something in her voice became twisted and lethal. "Don't be a fuckboy. If you make her cry or mess her around, I'm going to be the one to make you pay for it, hombre."

This wasn't happening to him. Soul must have fallen asleep during Amores Perros, only to become enveloped in an absurd nightmare designed to epitomize the English translation of the film's very title-love's a bitch.

Later, Soul mentally composed an entire monologue that both refuted Patty's claims and affirmed his true feelings for her, not Maka. In the moment, caught between Patty's dangerous scowl and Maka's confused one, Soul could do nothing but stare open-mouthed. It was Maka who took Patty by the hand and dragged her back inside the language building, where she would undoubtedly set her friend straight.

Maka emerged alone. She gave no explanation for where Patty went and simply asked Soul to walk her home.

Autumnal dusk settled over the city earlier every day, and the sky was a cool blue when they began their trek. Despite having hosted Maka at his place numerous times, Soul had yet to visit Maka's apartment off-campus. He silently followed her lead as they meandered further from the university, and it was only after walking for a while that he gathered the energy to speak.

"How did it go?" Soul asked. He tried to sound more interested, but his heart wasn't in it.

Maka shrugged. "She apologized, a lot. Apparently she wasn't the only one to make that assumption about...you know."

Soul nodded. "So this whole thing really was too good to be true." After a beat of silence, he added. "She doesn't think much of me at all, does she?" Maka stiffened for a moment before sadly shaking her head. "Thought so." His voice was tight, like a piece of elastic about to snap. "I guess that's it then. Time to drop out of Spanish and grow a new heart."

"Don't be dramatic, Soul," Maka said. "At least now she knows for sure that you are 100 percent single."

It had been a mistake to hang his hopes on mere scraps of affection. That's all they were-scraps, discarded morsels of love that he had never gotten to taste, and he had eagerly eaten them up like a starved dog. Worse yet, he completely deserved this for not knowing better, for becoming too arrogant to truly interpret Patty's signals. It was his own damned fault.

"We can still fix this," Maka continued. "Like I said, the only problem is that she thought we were dating because we hang out so often. All we have to do is-"

"What?" Soul asked, sharply cutting her off. "Stop hanging out? Not be friends anymore?"

The ensuing silence consumed them both as they meditated on the situation. To cut ties with Maka was a very dismal solution indeed. She had filled a void in him, one that he did not even know he had until it was happily brimming with shared bagels, afternoon banter, and late nights at Deathbucks. What would he even do in his spare time if he stopped seeing Maka? What did he even do in his spare time before he met her?

He glanced at her, hoping to see some trace of conflict or sadness on her face, and found none. Maka merely stared ahead at the sidewalk, hardened and resolute. His heart dropped as he realized that she agreed that severing their friendship was the best recourse after all.

"Tsu thought we were together, and Blake is always joking about it too," he said. Maka abruptly quickened her pace, and Soul hurried to keep up with her. He didn't want her to leave him behind, not just yet. "I bet Kid has his own suspicions. We're obviously doing something to give everyone the wrong idea. I don't like-I wish-I don't want to ruin everything for you just because I flat-out failed." Maka sharply darted around a corner. Was she even listening? "We'll just hang out less," Soul finally concluded. "Not never, just less. You won't even notice I'm not-"

He was cut off by a sudden impact with Maka's back. Soul was making a habit of running into Maka, but who could blame him when she kept stopping in the middle of the sidewalk without warning? She had halted in front of large, yellow shingled house with a row of mailboxes and trashcans. It was his first impulse sneer about her erratic movements, because bad habits die hard, but he stopped short when he saw how her shoulders trembled and her fists clenched.

Seething with unquenchable fire and fury, Maka kicked over a nearby trash can with an angry snarl. "I'm tired of this!" Empty water bottles, cardboard, and yogurt cups spilled into the street, and the metal lid spun on the asphalt with a loud clatter. She wheeled on him. "Everyone acts like you're Jack the Ripper and I'm Godzilla, but we're just a couple of nervous wrecks 24/7. Nobody bothers to see that-nobody cares enough. And now we are the ones who have to change? No way. We are going to be friends whether they like it or not."

Her energy and passion was truly infectious, and Soul shot her a grin as wide and sharp as a scythe's blade. "You're damn right we are! Fuck them! Who's picking up this trash?"

"Who cares! It's my trash can." She proved her point by kicking a water bottle down the street. Realizing that for once it was okay to vent his frustration without fear of judgement-it was her trash after all-Soul joined in and stomped on several scattered yogurt cups. She cheered, prompting him to grin like an idiot and kick some more cardboard. It wasn't a perfect catharsis, but it was more than either of them had had for a long time.

By the time they were done, the front stoop of Maka's apartment building was riddled with the remains of her very own garbage. Flushed from exertion, the two began to collect the discarded trash and replace them back into her poor, dented can. It felt good to destroy, but it was also soothing to rebuild. After they threw the last flattened water bottle away, she turned to Soul.

"Listen," Maka said. "The first chance I get, I'm going to tell Kid how I feel. Once I see that through, I'm going to help you get a second shot with Patty. Things can still work out. I'll make sure of it."

Soul's smile wavered at the mention of Kid's name. "Sounds like a plan," he said.

Maka glanced behind her shoulder at her building's front door, silently deliberating before shaking her head and adopting a more hopeful expression. "Tomorrow's a new day. I'll text you tomorrow when I want to go get breakfast. We can discuss how I should make my move then."

Using a simple one-armed hug to say goodnight, Maka disappeared through the door of her building, leaving Soul to trudge home alone.

Maka's declaration that she would finally admit her feelings to Kid was no comfort. Imagining her and his roommate together in the romantic sense was nauseating, and the prospect of discussing such a thing at a meal was even more gross. Soul truthfully had a tough time picturing a force of nature like Maka on any guy's arm, but then again he could hardly envision himself with anyone either, let alone Patty.

A new, more gratifying image stirred in Soul's mind for a few tantalizing moments, but he pushed it away quickly. There were fantasies, and then there was fiction. After the confrontation outside Spanish Cinema, he had learned how to tell the difference.

Note: The quote from Kid's textbook comes from . Thanks for reading!