Ever since the tabloids had pasted her celebrity father's face on the front covers, she's become hounded by paparazzi. Maka Albarn can't even make it off campus without her image being stolen by a dozen reporters.
He's in a few of her classes, and they might be friends— he's not really sure about that blurry line between friends and acquaintances— but in any case he's positive she's near her breaking point when she shrieks during lunch break and stomps across the courtyard to punch some dude holding a camera in the face.
So maybe scratch that— she is at her breaking point.
"Chill," he says, wrenching her away from the victim before she stomps the kid into the pavement. "He's on the school newspaper."
Eyes containing the fury of every seventeen year old girl that's ever existed, she turns and snarls at him instead, snatching her arm away and pushing him with the other simultaneously. "Back off! He was ta— Soul," she blurts, and all the anger in her face leaves so abruptly that it makes her dazed in its wake. "Oh."
"You okay?"
"Is she okay?" the kid she'd punched gripes from the ground. "I was the one attacked, here!"
"You didn't ask permission!" Maka shouts, instantly enraged.
Baring his teeth and getting on his feet, he retorts, "I was taking a shot of the fountain— you just happened to be standing in the way!"
"You're so full of shit—" She lunges for him, but Soul blocks her and starts hauling her away.
Behind them, the kid with the camera sneers, "You just want attention like your slutty old man! Bitch!"
Soul wisely releases her and doesn't interfere for a good three minutes.
Fame runs in his family (though it had notably halted to a dead standstill when it caught up to him), and he's learned a few things about avoiding cameras by virtue of being around his older brother.
"Listen, you really can't beat up every dude with a camera."
"Watch me."
He sighs, putting his feet up on the library table despite her dirty glare. "That's only gonna get more attention, punchin' people. Better to lay low until they get bored."
She frowns at her bruised knuckles, rubbing them tenderly. "I just wanna go somewhere where nobody knows me."
He stares at her for a moment, and he almost tells her that that plan doesn't work either, because he's tried. Instead, he says, "You'll be fine. I'll be your bodyguard or whatever."
Her bangs fly around when she scoffs. "Are you qualified?"
"Totally. I've had practice avoidin' those wanks."
"'Totally'!" She hisses as they sprint across the street into a dark parking garage, "I thought you said you were qualified!"
He holds her hand tightly in his, weaving around parked cars. "Fuck 'em, they got smarter since I was a kid—" They turn a corner and find a set of elevators; he smashes a button. "Though you make it a million times easier for them to find you with those pigtails, idiot."
Panting, she scowls. "I refuse to change my hair just because of them! You're not any better with that color."
Soul fumbles for his hair and realizes his bandana had fallen off at some point. "Damn it to hell."
Maka laughs as the elevator arrives, and she pulls him forward with their still-connected hands. He can't help but be painfully aware that she doesn't let go even after the doors close. "Do you have time?" she asks, hitting the floor number for the shopping mall connected to the parking garage. "We can probably lose them for a bit here."
God, he's sweaty and flushed, but he'll blame it on sprinting four and a half blocks. "I uh, yeah, I can. Though I can probably draw them off too, with this mess," he says, pointing at his pale hair.
Her smile makes her eyes crinkle. "Aw, you'd do that for me? I'd feel bad though. …We're better off together, I think."
"Y-yeah. Me too."
His brother texts him a picture of the latest tabloid cover, and they're together on it, she standing up on her toes to whisper in his ear, and the angle makes it look like a kiss, and the stupid look on his face makes it look like a kiss, because he'd really wanted a kiss right then and it's painfully obvious on his stupid face.
She'd actually been telling him that she hates math, like it's some horrendous secret for someone trying to be valedictorian. He'd still been thinking about kisses, regardless.
His horrified groan catches her attention. She sits next to him in the theater, setting the extra large soda in the cupholder between them. "Uh… Sorry, if you don't like sharing the drink I can—"
"No, that's not even—" he sighs. Shows her the image on his phone without really thinking— more eager to prove he's okay with using the same straw as she— before suddenly remembering the derpy face he's making in the stupid tabloid cover.
Maka looks furious and terrified. He braces for a punch to the face.
She says, "I am so sorry. Now you're mixed up in this."
His mouth hangs open. "W-what? Why are you apologizing?"
"I'm the one who said we should stick together! Now they're gonna follow you around everywhere and—"
"No no no, you don't even— they follow my family around all the time, I'm used to it, I don't care—"
"Well I do! You've been trying to help me out and I know you don't like being the center of attention, Soul."
He has nothing intelligent to say to this, because he knows he's never told her anything about that.
"We should stop being together," she murmurs.
"No," he says more fiercely than he'd intended. She's startled, eyes wide and suddenly gleaming, because the lights are dimming and the movie previews are reflecting off her face. He hears himself say, "I don't wanna stop."
Then she's flustered and glancing between him and the screen advising everyone to turn off cell phones and stay quiet for the film. She doesn't have an answer for what he hasn't asked, and he leans back into his seat and watches the opening credits while sweating in dweeby panic. She follows his lead and says nothing during the movie, the drink between them untouched.
She stops asking for his help. Which is awful, because he sits next to her in math and now she won't even leer at his scrap sheets on the harder problems. Wes keeps sending him stupid tabloid shots like it's his favorite sitcom, the latest one with a headline that reads 'Trouble In Paradise?'.
Prom is tomorrow and he'd been trying to find a way to ask because he knows she wants to go, but then The Movie Theater happened and everything sucks ass. Kim had told Patti who told Black Star who told him that Maka plans on going in a big stag party with all the single girls, but prom is being held at the capitol, Maka's old man is a chaperone, and that place essentially breeds paparazzi like an ant farm.
She doesn't speak a word to him. He doesn't speak a word to anyone. He asks what the fuck he's doing at least four hundred times before calls in a huge favor from his brother.
She's a pissed deer in the headlights at the capitol steps, wearing a clinging, glittering thing in aquamarine that makes her eyes that much more intimidating as she glares at all the camera flashes. She's swarmed by them, separated from her group of friends by reporters asking her a multitude of questions ranging from her romantic life to her father's romantic life, and her gloved hands slowly fist at her sides.
Then his limo parks and suddenly all the cameramen recognize the license plates. They're on him like flies the moment the driver opens the door for him. He stands and straightens his tie before hooking his still unworn jacket with a finger and slinging it over one shoulder.
"Soul Evans, we heard you'll be performing next week with the philharmonic—"
"Is it true you and Spirit Albarn's daughter are engaged?"
"Do you have anything to say about your mother's alleged affair?"
"What are your thoughts on Wes Evans's sexuality?"
Some of the questions make his eyebrow arch— just what rumors had Wes spread to get this kind of attention?
He just pushes his way through and climbs the stairs, colored after-images burned into his vision. The pressure of them all makes him nauseous, but they're off Maka and that's what he really cares about.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, one of the cameramen tumbles over with a clatter. As he turns, he sees the second shoe drop, soaring into another man's face.
Maka Albarn runs barefoot up the steps, taking his hand and making a break for it.
They hide in a dark corner, the sound system blaring pop music and shaking the walls. Her arms rest over his shoulders, holding his jacket open and shielding his stark hair from view while he curves around her body and kisses her.