Once she got past the slouching, the slurping, the swearing, and the constant sexist comments, well…he was actually still an asshole.

Except she is too in her own way, and neither of them can quite figure out how to get along at first.

He gets defensive when she tries to compliment him, thinking that her comments are snide and meant to take him down. But then she doesn't take criticism well, instead lashing out at him in a decidedly unkind and unproductive way.

It's hard to find a middle ground, somewhere that they can talk without insulting each other or reverting back to silence. Maka would like to think she makes more of an effort than he does, but that's a dangerous train of thought that just leaves her with a sour taste in her mouth. Because he does try, it just takes her a while to realize that's what he's doing when he's watching her.

Basically, this stupid school project is never going to get done because he's a lazy asshole and she's a perfectionist and that's probably why their professor put them together on it.

—

"Soul! Did you write those paragraphs for the paper?"

He lifts his head up from the desk and inch to look at her, "Nope. Cause you changed everything around, remember?"

"You were still supposed to write them! It would have been good to have for the rough draft!"

Soul just groans and pulls his sweatshirt's hood over his head. Seriously, just three more weeks of putting up with her and then they could present the project and it would be done and over with and he wouldn't have Maka Fucking Albarn hounding him for stupid shit.

"I am not going to get anything less than an A- on this, Soul!"

"Are you fucking allergic to bees or something?" Heh, good one, maybe that stand up comedy gig will work out (lies. He hates crowds).

She whacks him with the history book she had been reading.

—

"There's too much text on these slides, the graphics suck and seriously? Slide transitions? What are you, five?" He's scrolling through her mock up of the presentation (that she made, all on her own, didn't even ask him to help) and it sucks. Like royally.

Maka scoffs and keeps typing. "Like you could do any better. If I let you do it, the presentation would have been three blank slides." Okay, so that may have been a little harsh, but she is tired and stressed and they only have two more weeks and she's totally right!

He ignores her, which isn't unusual and nearly an hour later of awkward silence and tapping keys (the only way she knows he hasn't gone back to sleep) she gets an email from him.

"What's this?" She asks looking at the pretty much blank email. Except there's an attachment. And oh…it's the powerpoint. Or…a new one actually. That looks…kind of amazing. Except all of her notes and talking points are gone.

She opens her mouth to point that out but he beats her to the punch, "They'll show up when it's in presentation mode. I just rearranged it all."

"It looks better. Thank you, Soul."

He actually looks surprised, "You're welcome."

—

"Okay, one more time."

"Maka, we've already practiced three times!"

"And we're still two minutes short! Look, here, that's one minute each, we can do this Soul, I know we can."

"…Yeah, alright."

—

"We're done!"

"Finally! God. That was awful." He blushes and grins at her, "Thanks for saving my ass when I blanked. Don't know what happened."

Maka just smiles at him, "I totally understand. The slides were beautiful, I noticed you changed the font again, I liked this one the best."

Because they went from hating everything about each other, to figuring it out and working with their weaknesses and strengths until it was just second nature.

"Hey, you want to grab coffee sometime?" Soul asks after a moment of thought.

"That would be fun, yes please."

Because even though he's still an asshole, she doesn't really mind as much anymore.