Disclaimer: don't own it, wish I did, generic sarcastic, unfunny disclaimer written by me.
Author's Note: Well, summer's finally here. Now I have time to write. Though I know I should be working on my chapter stories, this drabble demanded to be written. Plus, Soul and Maka will just always be my favorite... I guess this takes place around chapter 76 or so, when Soul becomes a deathscythe and gets more and more offers from outside meisters. Or you can just say this takes place a few years post-manga maybe, because I'd say their age is probably like 17 or 18 and so it makes more sense to say that okay too much rambling. A little OOC for Maka... maybe. Her confidence shatters every so often. She's a normal girl inside somewhere, after all. Enjoy. :) I hope I personally thanked everyone who reviewed last time! I love them. They're helpful and encouraging as always.
Love letters, confessions, serious offers. All of them piling in his locker cause changes in her that he notices immediately – starting with the small things.
Like her hair – the pigtails unravel like loosened ribbons, and her dusted-golden waves stretch now beyond her small shoulders. She keeps her hair like this every single day now, and when he asks her about it, she says that it's simply because it is getting colder. But he knows something must be up because they live in Nevada where frost has never taken residence besides the edges of his soul.
Her eyes start to seem wider and brighter somehow, emboldened and accentuated by expertly-applied eyeliner and a light dusting of rouge. The always looked like emeralds to him, but lately it's almost like they have been polished. He asks her where she learned to do that, to apply makeup when femininity is so often the last thing in her mind, and he asks her why. She shrugs, says Liz has been increasingly eager to experiment with new products and that her face is the perfect blank slate for her to start on. Soul leers in suspicion but doesn't bother to prod her further.
She starts to gain weight and height in all the right places, much to his meister's misfortune. He cannot seem to keep his eyes from wandering to her blossoming bosom, her growing curves, her behi-
"Maka-Chop!"
And her outfits gradually grow shades lighter, tighter, and shorter, which brings out a jealousy he can barely contain as he catches other men in the halls ogling her shapely legs, her newly highlighted curves. It's bad enough fighting one demon within him, and now it feels like there are two taking residence within him. He even ends up punching a fellow student in the face as soon as she's out of earshot for a snide comment that leaves him sizzling like a chili pepper, and ends up in detention, his second home as of late.
The bigger changes are the most obvious: her shopping trips with Tsubaki are more and more frequent, invitations she used to try and find excuses to get herself out of. She relates more to Blair. Her laugh has more of a chime-like, bubbly overtone to it. She spends more time with the girls, and starts to take on their tips, he assumes, when it comes to men. Him, most especially, it seems. She takes a sudden interest in his music, his jazz records despite how she proclaims to hate them and not comprehend them. She deliberately allows their hands and skin to graze when she tries to wrestle the remote from him on their late-night TV binges, purposely bends and contorts herself to give him a glimpse of what's beneath these new form-fitting clothes shamelessly. She's becoming nearly as coy as a cat when it comes to him, and somehow, it twists his stomach into sailor-tight knots.
What if she does this to other Shibusen students? What if he's like a guinea pig for her new temptress tricks? He almost wants to warn her father to get her to stop.
He wishes she would return to the old Maka, the one that belonged solely to him, and he alone. The tiny Maka that he wished he could shrink and have sit in his pocket, protected forever. The one that read books as they listened to classical music in silence, despite her protests. The one that could live in a library, would be content to be a book gathering dust on Shibusen shelves. The only one out of the hundred or so letters and offers he received that truly mattered to him.
"Damn it," he mutters as another lonely night goes by, her out with the girls doing Shinigama-sama-only-knows-what.
"Damn it," he mutters as he realizes how much he misses her.
Soul changes, too, but only because she does. It's almost as if his soul is determined to keep pace with hers, as if they are wound together spiritually, two vines overlapping on an old brick wall.
He loses his temper more easily, if only because her exposing herself to all the perverted men of their school halls has him constantly on edge. He never misses a day of school because he feels the urge to protect her from all wandering eyes that were not ruby-red and accompanied by shark-esque pearly whites.
He's taller, too. His alabaster hair grows out a little more. His outfits clean up – less pants hanging off his hips and shoes that don't occasionally slip off. Less t-shirts and more presentable uniform.
It's uncool, but he's more easily stressed. Maybe because he senses a rift between he and his most precious friend. He also senses an uncanny attraction to her that sits like a tarp on his heart, and can not so easily be peeled away.
The vines are still entwined at the roots, but begin to grow in different directions.
Soul sits in his room more, leaves the light out as much as possible. He is like a plant that thrives on darkness, and she is sunshine.
"Soul?" she asks hesitantly, knocks softly on his door. "Will you please come out? I feel like we haven't talked in a while." He can hear the sincerity in her voice, the genuine concern, but somehow it grates on his ears and he shuts her out. He doesn't speak a word to her.
He doesn't deserve her. He should've already noticed her beauty prior to these developments. He does not deserve her now. He should've noticed already that they were growing away from each other and done something about it before it was too late.
"Leave me alone."
They sit at the dinner table in tense silence. The only sound is scraping forks and chewing. He feels like they're strangers, and it makes him sick.
They finish in the same thick quiet that threatens to choke him. He gets up and starts to wash, and she starts to dry. Purposely, he figures, she lets their fingertips brush as she takes a plate from him.
It startles him, it makes him irate, and he drops the dish. The silence is shattered in a million pieces just like the plate.
"Stop it," he says suddenly. "Stop, Maka. What are you doing? What are you trying to do to me?" He impatiently stomps to the closet and gets out the dustpan and broom, and begins sweeping up the shambles. Angry beyond repair, he's unaware of his surroundings and steps on a sharp piece of glass. His blood gushes, the color of his infuriated eyes, and mixes with the soap bubbles gathering on the tiled floor.
"I wanted you to notice me! I grew up!" she shouts back. "I wanted you to look at me. As not just your meister but as a girl."
Tears mix with the odd cocktail on the kitchen ground, and before he can apologize she's hidden herself away in her room.
He's lucky she didn't bother to lock her door, but unlucky because that means she's probably beyond enraged at him. During their normal fights she locks it, because she's not mad to the point of incoherency. Now she is. This is a real fight, he realizes, and the notion has his heart and stomach doing quirky flipflops again.
"Maka," he whispers into the dark of her room, and as seconds tick by without a response he wonders if the blackness sucked it in.
"Maka," he tries again. Before he can stop himself he flicks on the light, afraid that the shadows are really stealing his voice from him, stealing his best friend away.
She shuffles deeper under her covers, wrapping her vulnerable, sniveling self from his steely view.
"Get out!" Her voice is hoarse.
"No." He limps over and rips the covers off of her against her will, and he feels almost like he's trying to smoke out a stubborn fox from its deep hole. She curls up, a withering vine. Shriveling away from him.
"No," he says again, flipping her around to face him. She catches the seriousness in his tone and eyes, and stays put, but her glare doesn't loosen in the slightest. He groans, and kneels down by the bed to get to her level. "I'm sorry."
"Hmph."
"I thought you said you grew up."
"Only physically."
"Honest as always." He runs a hand through his hair impatiently. "I'm sorry, Maka. I really am."
She relaxes visibly. "I know." She bites her lip. "I guess to continue on the honesty thing, I overreacted. And for that, I'm sorry. I must have really confused you with all of the sudden changes." She disconnects their gazes for a brief moment. "But you were just getting so many of these letters - love letters - and I got really nervous that you would consider them. And so I told all of the girls and they suggested that I try to… s-seduce you to get you to stay around." Her face rivals the color of a fresh cherry. She covers her mournful expression with her hands and a few more tears slip from the cracks in her fingers. "I didn't know what else to do. You even said that women like Blair would make the best partners, and I don't have any-"
Soul quiets her uproar with a soft kiss, then pulls away. He smirks, his trademark that instantly puts the brakes on her speeding heart. "I was just teasing you, Maka. And if I knew you took my insults so seriously I wouldn't say them. It's not cool to break a pretty girl's heart, especially your partner's. Your partner for life's. These letters mean nothing to me, and you should know that," he chides gingerly. He sighs, and continues. "And I did notice you. Trust me. I didn't know how to react when all of a sudden we both have raging hormones for each other and live under the same damn roof."
She looks shy, another change in her that he notices – she embarrasses so easily. "You could just kiss me again." She can't meet his gaze.
He looks taken aback for a moment, then gladly acquiesces, running a hand through her longer hair, and across all the other new changes she's developed over time with all the expertise a pianist's fingers carry.
Maybe he's okay with this new Maka, after all. They share roots.
He leans back after a while. "You know, it's pretty cool that you're not tinytits anymore."
"Get out!"
Maturity still seems out of reach for us, he thinks as he takes a large encyclopedia to the skull.