A/N: This was a prompt from rebornfromash to try to shake off writer's block. It's short and not particularly good. I tried doing something different, so second person present tense happened. Is what it is.

Since the phrase is also translated no rest for the wicked, I took that cue. Thank you Cage the Elephant.

No I can't slow down
I can't hold back
Though you know I wish I could
No there ain't no rest for the wicked
Until we close our eyes for good

You've never been a good person, but you'd never thought you we're a bad one either. You just are, like the scuff on the floor no one can quite polish out or that lone unmated sock whose match is long lost—you aren't wanted, you don't belong, but you aren't bad either, more like irrelevant, an irritant, that one annoying outlier in an otherwise perfect spread.

At least, that's what you'd thought before you came here, to Shibusen, to the one place where all the other scuffs and outliers seem to gather. Maybe you don't find a matching sock, but at least you find one you coordinate with, like the mismatch is intentional, complementing each other to create a more interesting, more appealing effect than could ever be possible with a perfectly mated pair (not that you could ever tell your friend Kid that, he might die of some sort of neural overload.)

You never expected your complimentary other to be a sweet faced girl with pigtails, a girl full of passion and life, not when you have a face like a monster and a heart made of stone, but perhaps you should have. You love music, and while she may be practically tone deaf, she is music. Green and red are complimentary colors, so maybe it does make sense.

You never expect it, but it is and has been for a long time now, and at this point, you can't imagine a life where you never met her, where she isn't a part of it, where she isn't at the heart of it. You realize you'd do anything to protect that. You'd die for her. You'd kill for her. There's nothing you can imagine you wouldn't do for her, and it scares you just a little.

So maybe you are a bad person. You could be. You could be a bad person if you had to be, if she needed you to be. You know that's wrong. You're more comfortable with yourself now than you were years ago, you accept yourself now because she accepts you so completely, because she sees the best in you. Sometimes, though, you realize she's never seen the worst. You wonder if she did, if she could, if she would run screaming. Probably not. She's Maka and she loves fiercely and wholly and has never had much sense of self preservation. You know she cares for you, loves you. Not the way you want her to, maybe, but her friendship is still everything. Perhaps you aren't happy, but you aren't unhappy, and that's the best thing you've ever known.

One day, long ago, she said something to you that's been with you since:

"Have you ever heard the saying, Soul, nemo malus felix?"

She'd been sitting in the branches of a tree during free period, kicking her feet languidly into the air below, and you had squinted up at her and shook your head. It sounded familiar, but your Latin is worse than rusty, the language drilled into you by tutors during early childhood long since fallen into disuse.

"Some people translate it as 'there's no rest for the wicked,' but it's more literal translation is 'no bad man is happy.'" She looked thoughtful as she met your eyes. You always felt like you could drown in her gaze when she looked like that, like somehow, you could find the secrets of the universe in her eyes if only you searched long enough. "I think, maybe, it's true. We—we fight a lot of bad men, and they're never happy. Though, you know," she'd continued, shaking her head, her voice growing soft. "Sometimes I wonder if anyone is ever really happy."

"I think some people must be," you'd offered after a short pause. You weren't sure you believed it at the time, you still aren't sure you do, but you think it's probably true. You know you could be happy. You know she could make you happy, though she never will.

Nemo malus felix.

You aren't a good man deep down. You must be a bad man, to have the one thing that could make you happy so close, yet so unreachable. She loves you, but she's never looked twice at you, not the way you look at her. She loves you, but she doesn't need you, not the way you need her. You are her friend, her partner. You are hers, but she will never be yours.

Nemo malus felix.

Then again, you don't deserve to be.