Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater.

Seal Print
by. Poisoned Scarlett

He's had enough: she always takes forever to take her clothes out and he has things to do, music to listen to, sleep to catch up on. He always see's her on these days and usually there's another dryer he can use, but today they're all packed and hers is the only one that has stopped drying. Yet she hasn't taken her clothes out; in fact, she's just started a new chapter in her book by the way she settles comfortably in her seat.

Soul taps his fingers impatiently on top of the washing machine, chewing his inner lip and contemplating the pros and cons of taking her clothes out so he could dry his. He's particularly short-tempered today: he misplaced his brand-new Beats earphones somewhere and his brother keeps calling him to have dinner with him and his wife. Soul just wants a night where he can lay back and relax, not be caught up in the chaos of his brothers eccentric, and not to mention moody, wife.

That's it, Soul thinks, steeling his resolve. I'm taking her clothes out. If she has a problem with it, I'll just tell her I'm in a huge hurry or something. It all settles nicely in his head: he takes out her clothes, makes sure none of them fall on the floor, and places his in. When she comes over he can tell her he took her clothes out because he's in a huge hurry (doctors appointment, he tells himself, that's what he'll tell her) but he kept an eye on her clothes so it was all cool. It was civil and she can't be too angry by it, right?

He's shoveling her clothes on top of the washing machine when he comes across a funny pair of panties. He tosses some jeans and shirts with the rest of the pile as he snorts down at the animal print underwear. They're little seals with hearts all over them. He hasn't seen underwear like this since he was six—

"Excuse me, but what the hell are you doing with my underwear?"

Soul turns to face one slowly infuriating bookworm, her panties stretched out in both his hands. He darts his eyes down at them, then back at her, and puts his foot in his mouth, "…Aren't you a little too old for these?"

She flushes a furious red. "Wh-what does that matter? Why do you have them in your hand in the first place, YOU PERVERT!"

Soul winces; she's loud, and people are starting to look. "Would you keep your voice down? I'm not some closet perv, I was just taking out your stupid clothes because unlike you, some people have shit to do and you take forever because you get caught up in your dumb books!"

"If you needed me to take out my clothes faster, you could have asked me, you moron!"

The idea doesn't strike him as obvious until she points it out, but it's too late for regret. "Look, can you just take your clothes so I can dry mine?"

"Fine," she bites.

"Here...and take your unsexy underwear with you, too!"

But she gasps instead, green eyes sparking dangerously, and Soul prepares himself as she screams that what type of underwear she wears is none of his goddamn business. Pretty soon, the underwear is forgotten. Instead, he snaps back even though he knows it's wrong and he shouldn't, because although they were animal print, he was the one who had the brilliant idea of taking her clothes out without asking first. He could've kept his mouth shut, maybe thought it but not said it, and when he argues that seals are the least sexy animal in the animal kingdom, things just take a nosedive for the worse.

"Then what would you consider a sexy animal?"

"I-I dunno—wait, bunnies!" He points out with a smug grin.

She blanches. "Bunnies? How are bunnies even sexy, they're tiny and they run away!"

"Ask Playboy. Actually, maybe pick up magazine sometime."

She gives him a disgusted look. "That's just…gross. Although I'm not surprised you read that bullshit, since the only company you'd ever have are pictures!"

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

"You have a horrible attitude and no one would date you!" She sticks her nose up in the air and he glares, stung.

"I haven't picked up a mag like that since I was fifteen, bookworm, although given how uptight you are, maybe you should buy yourself some smut books. You look like you need it," he snidely says and she grits her teeth, getting up in his face. Soul fists his hand and glares down at her, not backing down. She smells like vanilla and honeysuckle.

"I would never reduce myself to such levels like you have!"

"S'not about reducing yourself, s'about chilling out for once in your life," he deadpans. He wants to stay mad at her, but she has these creases on her forehead again. Her eyes are glittery and he can see how hard she's trying not to publicly assault him. "You look like you're about to snap."

"I do not!"

"Do too!"

"Do not!"

"Do too! Every time you're here, you always look so fucking stressed—the books you read only add to it, y'know!"

"What would you know about stressed!"

"Pretty sure if I looked up 'stressed' in the dictionary, your name would be under it."

She screams in frustration and piles her clothes in her arms without another word at him. She snaps at him to stay away from her clothes, stay away from her actually, before she storms off to her laundry basket, dumping her clothes in and stomping out right after. Soul watches her leave with a sense of remorse, rubbing the back of his neck because okay maybe it was not totally necessary to snark at her like that. He was just in a bad mood and he admits that taking it out on her was also a moronic idea. She had a right to be angry: if someone went rifling through his clothes, he'd be pretty pissed, too. And it wasn't like he didn't have his own embarrassing pair of underwear: he wore the boxers with cartoon crossbones on them a lot more than he should.

"Man, so uncool," he mumbles, figuring he'd apologize to her the next time he saw her. If he saw her again, he cringes, she looked very angry. She might not even return to the laundromat. He's about to put in quarters for the dryer when he realizes he still has her panties. He opens his fist slowly and groans: yeah, seal-printed and innocent, kinda' tiny actually. He squints down at them and then thinks about her ass and how she'd look with them on and then immediately shoves her underwear in his pocket because his thoughts are going places they really, really shouldn't. He wasn't lying about not reading porn mags since he was a teenager; he really didn't need to go down that road again just because some pretty girl with animal print undies got stuck in his head.

But he had a more pressing problem than that: it was awkward enough when she caught him with her undies, how the heck was he going to give them back without making an even bigger ass of himself?

He's thinking about this when he hears loud footsteps. He turns and stares as she approaches him, red-faced with her lips pressed tightly.

"Uh," he falters then points at his pocket dumbly, "You left your…yeah."

"That's why I came back. So if you would give them back so I can leave?"

"Right," he coughs. He reaches in his pocket and pulls them out, giving them back to her silently. She snatches them from him and before she can leave, he reaches out, fingers touching her arm briefly. She flinches and he feels a little worse. "Uh, listen, before you go, I wanna' apologize for being an ass earlier…I'm not having a good day, and it wasn't cool to take it out on you like that so…sorry."

She eyes him for a moment and decides his uncertain and hunched posture is truth enough that he does feel bad. The look in his eye is also apologetic. She relaxes a bit. "It's okay. I forgive you. Just next time, ask me to take out my clothes so you can dry yours."

"Yeah, I'll keep that in mind," he half-smiles. She smiles a little, clutching her panties in her hands. That brings him to another point he needed to amend for. "And about your underwear, there's nothing wrong with seals. I guess."

"You guess?"

"I wear crossbone boxers sometimes?" He offers and she snorts out a giggle. "So we all have our uncool underwear. Whatever. Not like anyone sees it."

"Exactly."

"Unless you have a boyfriend, then ditch the seals."

"I don't so I can wear whatever I want!" She growls. "Same goes to you."

"Sorry, I'm not gay."

"I meant girlfriend."

"Don't have one, too troublesome," he deadpans immediately. She cocks her head at him, a strange look in her eye. "What?"

"What do you mean, too troublesome?"

He shifts uncomfortably. "I like my space."

"So do I but that doesn't mean I wouldn't mind having a boyfriend. It's nice to have company."

Soul makes a face at that.

"What was that for?"

"It's better to just…not," he pauses. It's better for him to shut up, he decides. She doesn't need to know about his revulsion to physical contact. But at her curious look, green eyes open wide, he scowls. She's going to keep asking; she's one of those types of people. "Nevermind."

"Mhm…" She drops it, unlike what he expected her to do. He expected her to ask again. So she's not that type of person, he thinks. "Well, hopefully your day picks up! I'm Maka, by the way! Hopefully we can be friends now!" She holds her hand out for him, smile wide and happy. She picks herself up really fast unlike him.

He shakes her hand, finding that his swallows hers almost comically. She really is tiny. "Soul."

"Soul?"

"Yeah. Just Soul," he says and he wants to ask about her name, because Maka sounds foreign, Japanese even, but instead he wraps up their conversation and goes back to his dryer, with Maka bidding him a better day tomorrow again. He watches her leave from the corner of his eye and looks back forward when she glances over her shoulder at him.

Maka.

It suited her, just like seal printed underwear weirdly suited her as well.

A/N: Another prompt I filled in Tumblr!

Scar.