A/N: So this is for the 9th VDay Challenge prompt, Desire. Short, and also a sort of— nod/prequel to an event referenced in Day 5, Blind Date, posted in Unwrapped. Song title/lyrics belong to Beck.

I've been drifting on this wave so long
I don't know if it's already crashed on the shore
And I've been riding on this train so long
I can't tell if it's you or me who's driving us into the ground

She could feel it in her body and in her soul like a living thing writhing just below the surface. She had felt it for several years, mounting, building, consuming every part of her until she was an inferno, a blazing tower of sheer desire.

She wanted. No, she needed.

Needed the oblivious asshole sitting blithely on the couch. The oblivious asshole who could be flummoxed in an instant by a pair of oversized boobs, but who merely blinked up at her passively as she bent over him in nothing but a towel.

"Are you sure there isn't a rash on my neck?" Maka leaned closer, certain he couldn't help but to catch an eyeful of her modest cleavage. Had it really, truly come to this? Was she so very desperate?

But she was. She really, truly was.

"Uh, I don't see anything, seriously," her weapon said flatly, scratching the back of his neck. "So if you don't mind—"

"What about here?" She stood upright and then stuck her leg on the couch, pointing to her inner thigh. She knew—knew—he'd be just shy of seeing her most intimate parts, that she was barely shielded from his eyes by the towel, and hoped that it might finally, finally gain her a reaction, or—or—something.

No such luck. Soul was as stoic as ever, his face a mask of boredom. "Seriously, Maka, there's nothing, and you make a better door than a window, soo…"

"Ugh, whatever! You are zero help, you know that?" she growled out before storming back to the bathroom and slamming the door behind her, feeling hot and bothered and utterly defeated. Maybe she really did have no sex appeal, a curse that, along with a towering sex drive, made her life an exercise in busy hands and utter futility.

Or maybe she'd just fallen for the one guy who couldn't see past the twelve year old she had been to the woman she'd become.

Either way, the desire remained, the beast beneath her skin that could not,would not be tamed as much as she ached for her weapon to tame it.

That was her truth. It wasn't the only truth.

What she never saw was the bulge in his pants under the pillow in his lap as she leaned over him wantonly. What she never witnessed were his sweaty palms, the sigh of relief as she finally, finally left the room. What she didn't know was that when he disappeared into his room minutes later, loud music blaring, it was to rid himself of images of her in a towel and everything he himself ached to do about it and couldn't, because he knew she wasn't interested, was so oblivious that she could blithely stand before him nearly nude as if it wouldn't affect him, as if she were just one of the guys instead of the woman he needed more than food, more than air, more than life itself.

That was his truth, the one she didn't know. The one she couldn't know. For what she never saw was his own blazing tower of sheer desire that was, like hers, writhing just below the surface.