My brain is a very, very odd place and I can't exactly describe what inspired this but here it is? I really like this but have no concrete idea where this is going. Enjoy this ride with me, I guess. Special thanks to CelesteKeyLucyHeartfilia for letting me bounce this idea before I published it.
The line of conversation this morning between the boys was going to kill her. How Black Star even assumed talking about porn at school was appropriate was one thing but the fact that Soul was nodding along silently, a smirk on his face was even more infuriating and her chopping hand was starting to itch. "Can you idiots talk about something actually school appropriate?"
Black Star snickered at her, "Just because you're a prude doesn't mean we have to change the subject."
Soul just let out a low whistle before that baritone chuckle started from his lips.
"I am not a prude," Maka snapped back but hardly had an argument stored as a back-up beyond that. Spirit's usual flagrant displays of lewd behavior had definitely kept her from even coming close to exhibiting any outright flirting and when you considered the only person she had any kind of want to tease in that type of way was, well, usually as cool as a cucumber and probably not liable to actually latch on to that opportunity with her…
"A prude," Black Star repeated with well-placed emphasis before adding a happy cackle. "Especially since I bet you've never even watched porn."
"Black Star," Soul started but was easily drowned out of the conversation.
"Because it's disgusting," Maka defended, her hands falling to her hips as she took the offensive. "It's not even real and just a manipulation of women and sets unrealistic standards of-"
"Boring," Black Star stretched the vowel over her diatribe. "Some porn is like that, sure, but sex is natural, Albarn, even if you're not getting any."
Her face flared to scarlet and Soul tried to salvage the moment, "Cut it out, man. She's just not-"
"I'm not what?" Maka shrieked at Soul and she watched with confusion as the fight started but then instantly fizzled in his eyes.
"You're not into it," Black Star finished for him. "Again, prude. Not a big deal, but the rest of us…" He waved a hand between Soul and himself, making the white-haired boy's cheeks almost match hers.
"I'm into it, just like everyone else!" The words didn't even hold a second on her tongue before she let them out but once they were in the air her stomach lurched especially as Black Star let out another snicker and Soul tried his best to leave that blank line to his lips.
"Sure, so that means you do watch porn, just like everyone else?" Black Star was obviously goading her and while she could see the hesitation coming to Soul's face, Maka wasn't letting her partner hold her back.
"I could if I wanted to." There was no backpedaling now and with a horror that was thankfully resigned to the back of her mind, she saw Black Star coming to an all too exciting conclusion in his mind.
"Then you will, huh?" Black Star pressed with a wicked smile.
"Black Star," Soul was no longer just the embarrassed bystander, suddenly looking motivated to get in the middle as he literally put himself there, a hand tentatively coming to Maka's shoulder to press her off in another direction.
"Fine, I will," Maka spat back as she ripped her shoulder from under Soul's fingers. "Since it's so normal and then I'll tell you all about how it's absurd and ridiculous…" But Maka let that trail off as she flicked her hair in their direction, turning swiftly to start the quintessential stomp away.
"Dude…" Soul let a smack upside the head speak the rest of that sentence for him before he started the steady amble after his meister. "Maka," he called.
"No," Maka threw over her shoulder.
He sighed before his voice scratched out, "I don't know why you let him get to you. It's some stupid argument once a week and one of you challenges the other to something."
"So?" The answer was flippant and Maka was ready to speed up and get out of his reach when his hand preempted her and grasped tightly around her wrist. She put up just enough of a fight but let him slow her steps and turn her back to him.
"Tell me you're not going to do this stupid shit." That was bordering on an order and it made Maka's blood erupt right back to boiling.
"Why? Because I'm not normal? You think I'm a prude, too?" It was a hard accusation that wrapped a strangling new fear around her heart. Please know how much I don't want you to answer that. I know I'm fighting and I deserve whatever you spit back at me but, please, please, please, Soul…
"Maka…" he sighed and his fingers toyed with her wrist before quickly letting it go. She watched him layer the apathy back on, that thick skin that she hated to see come over his features. "Do what you're going to do."
Maybe that was even scarier than the answer to her questions since he just felt so far away.
Perseverating over that face he'd made was enough to keep her in her room for a majority of the afternoon. It was easy to get angry again, to blame him since why was he bothering being nervous? Why did it bother him if she was doing whatever normal teens did? Black Star had included Soul in that, so whatever was good enough for him wasn't good enough for her? The forced vindication didn't make her feel any better so she opted to open the browser on her phone and just jump headfirst into the terrible mess of feeling she knew was coming.
Her cheeks lit up as she typed "free porn" into the search bar. There were too many choices so she dived into the top hit. The bombardment was instantaneous, snippets and shots of things that a prude would definitely balk at so Maka forced her eyes to focus. She quickly did what she knew best, falling to a list of categories, a not so bland list of terms that Maka had only a 75/25 chance of understanding. Some acronyms were beyond her and her courage stopped there, clicking on what she assumed was a safe space under the "for women" heading. It was barely anything that different from the front page and Maka continued to scroll through page after page of choices.
She hit the brakes by letting her phone slip through her fingers and clunk uselessly into her lap. Her neck tilted back against the pillow, her crown just knocking against the headboard. I'm not a prude. Maka could say this with at least a modicum of truth behind it because she was not in any way, shape, or form immune to at least the thoughts about sex and the myriad of things that led up to it. The only issue was that the star in all of those daydreams was so far from her reach. The way they were together was prudish. Holding hands, sure. In some of her worst moments an arm around her shoulder, yes. Once or twice, or honestly, a few times since she could probably give you dates for each since she memorized those moments, he had cuddled up next to her while they slept, once daring to get so close that his breath had tickled against her neck.
Soul, she sighed and just barely kept that name from coming alive on her lips. It was a conundrum of epic proportions. There was no one closer to her in this world. No one who knew more about her or held more of her secrets in quiet understanding. And while he sometimes reciprocated, it still felt to her like there was a door that he kept shut, a private place that only he ventured into and when he went there, it hurt him. So if he can't trust me with that, why would he trust me with his heart? Why would he even want me to be the one to kiss him? To hold him? To do whatever those normal things are that we're supposed to be exploring in our teens.
So she waited for the heartbreaking moment when he finally picked someone else to do that with. Maka had seen him talk to other girls. Interact with them. Be friends with them like Liz or Tsubaki. Thankfully he'd yet to make that final jump with anyone, though that reality only came with a limited amount of comfort. With a sigh she picked up her phone again and with that torturous thought in her head, Maka typed in "Soul" in the search bar. It was stupid. It would offer her no results that somehow eased the heartache of being in love with your best friend but maybe, at least, it would offer something that wouldn't leave her overloaded.
There were what seemed to be some more romantic titles, "Two soulmates finally share a bed" and similar variations of places where soulmates would meet, but for the most part, the snippets were the same. Two naked people, man and man, man and woman, woman and woman, would be in some position of passionate or sometimes uncomfortable looking love. She got so far that the search was offering channels, probably a last-ditch effort for those like her who didn't have anything particular in mind. A page or two into channels offered her the name 1lonelysoul, which apparently housed a whopping ten videos to its name. She clicked the name and then instantly picked the first video available.
The camera angle was strange, just a body in the frame cut from his jaw to the tops of his thighs. He was clothed, something she assumed was strange for porn since wasn't the entire point what you did when you were naked? Instead, as the video started the body's hand clenched into the sheets and he breathed out a desperate-sounding sigh. "I don't know why I'm doing this."
Probably money, Maka wanted to snort a laugh but maybe this wasn't all that humorous. She'd heard of people being taken advantage of in the sex industry and maybe-
"I'm just lonely, and maybe I want to pretend you're listening."
Technically, I am. She sighed and paused the video. You shouldn't be having a conversation with this. Just watch. Stop every last thought and loosen the hell up. Unless you want Black Star to be right?
Play. "Maybe I'm just fucking pathetic."
Is this supposed to turn people on? OK, Maka, shut up!
The body groaned, not in that fake having an orgasm type of way but another anxious sound, and his hand reached out like he was going to turn off the camera. They hovered but came back. "Nah, if I'm this fucking disgusting I might as well stick with it."
Pause. Rewind a few frames to the hand near the screen. Maka focused on the image and suddenly she was skipping back to the beginning, pressing her headphones tighter in her ears and turning up the volume. "I'm just lonely, and maybe I want to pretend you're listening," repeated again at a deafening volume. The only appropriate action was to toss the phone, ripping out her headphones in the process.
It's Soul's voice.
She stared at it like it was a live animal poised to bite and, hell, did it ever feel like one. Hours of scrolling and her wallowing over her pathetic crush had actually brought her to find him and there was no mistaking it. She couldn't make any excuses. She'd held those hands, examined them, cleaned some of the wounds that were now scars on those fingers so saying that she knew every nook and cranny wasn't hyperbole. And his voice! How she hadn't instantly recognized it was beyond her, but who would have assumed her reserved weapon who only held in his darkest truths would be spewing them on a porn site, even if they were buried deeply under pages of real content.
Or is this real, too? That thought tore her in two, one side mortified for stumbling on him in some private kind of moment, something that they'd always tried to be respectful of while living together but a second strange side filled with… what? Exhilaration? Some kind of secret want of her own? Maka was quick to shut the lid, settling heavily on the idea that this was some kind of invasion of privacy like she was using her soul perception on him. He buried this for a reason so I have to respect it.
So easily thought, but in no way simply done.
It took her an hour before she brought the phone back to her lap. She refused to stick the earbuds back in and simply slid her finger along the timeline, watching the scenes only minutely changing, a hand moving here or a repositioning of a leg, breathing. The video ended without even a touch, with all clothing intact. Maka breathed a warbled sigh of relief before bringing the cursor back to the beginning. Even with her brain screaming in the background, that moral compass trying to point her away, Maka stuck the headphones back in her ears.
"I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm just lonely, and maybe I want to pretend you're listening. Maybe I'm just fucking pathetic." The pause and she watched the hands she knew so well again, causing another fluttered beat of her heart. "Nah, if I'm this fucking disgusting I might as well stick with it."
She paused. Why are you pathetic? Disgusting? You're not doing anything other than talking! For a second she wanted to drop the phone and go to him. How often had he comforted her when she felt like her raw, broken heart was on display? And here he was, hurting but refusing to do it in front of her. When was the last time he had even attempted to show her how he was feeling? When was the last time she didn't have to peel it from his stubborn fingers?
Pressing play was nothing like fighting with him because it came out as an easy stream directly from his mouth. "You want to know the truth? I want you. I used to blame it on being a gross, hormonal teenage boy like I was trying to catch you in a towel in the hallway which I didn't, OK? So don't fucking flip out. And I know the stupid things I've said, how much I don't want you like I'm playing fucking hard to get. Fuck."
One of his hands disappeared above the screen, and in her mind, she could see him running the hand over his face and through his hair, his usual tick with that mess of a mane he dealt with. "But I think about things. And I can hear you right now telling me 'you always think about things' with that goddamn cute little giggle to follow it because, yeah, I get it, my overactive mind is part of the things that you like about me, right? Yeah, right."
That was punctuated by the most forlorn sigh yet and Maka wanted to reach in and shake him. It is! Is it one of the things I like about you. But that's assuming this is about you, Maka, isn't it? He's just saying 'you' not 'Maka' and you're not exactly the only girl he knows.
"Because if you knew what I thought… you'd hate me." His hands came desperately to his chest, squeezing there as if he'd sprung a leak, his heart threatening to bleed out between his fingers. The last minute of the video was him trying to breathe, and to her utter horror, Maka realized he was crying.
Even with her mind in a whirlwind, whispers that he wasn't talking about her and that she'd done nothing more than invading his privacy, Maka tossed the phone to the bed and started desperately through the apartment. He wasn't making noise so it was a game of hide-and-seek, peeking in his bedroom to nothing, then the living room, the nook he'd hidden his piano in, and then finally, frantically to the kitchen.
Soul was mid-glug of water, his eyebrows popping up over the glass as he dropped it quickly, almost choking on the mouthful as he forced it down. "What's up?"
Why was her first reaction to yell at him? To maybe call him an idiot instead of begging him to talk to her? To start a fight instead of asking simply for him to trust her just as much as she trusted him? For the first time, Maka packed the instinct away and rushed forward, pressing past his hand which spilled some water down her back but didn't stop her arms from wrapping tightly around his waist, crushing into him without a word.
"Hey!" He was somewhere between breathless and trying to produce a grumble. "You got yourself wet, dummy," Soul forced as he awkwardly dropped the glass to the counter. There was restraint in the way he touched her, just making it seem like he was attempting to clear away the water, but as the minutes ticked on without even a hint of release from her his arms found their place and his fingers left a welcome pressure on her skin. "You OK?"
The horror hit her because while her courage had brought her here, her logic was finally catching up with her. How do I tell him that's what I want to ask him? How do I tell him 'I just watched you and it broke my heart' without betraying his trust? "Just a… a bad thought," the words weren't an adequate description but he grunted understanding anyway. There were a million and ten things that constituted bad thoughts but all of them were well within his comprehension and just like always, Soul never pushed. He just absorbed and let his cool wash over her.