A/N- Well, after a rather longer delay than I had planned, here we are with Chapter 3 of this romp through the lands of stupid clichés! Huge shout-out to ProMa who, despite being awfully sick, took a few minutes out of her day to let me know whether this was complete trash or not! (That said, I've done a fair bit of editing since she had eyes on it, so any spectacular failures of grammar or diction are 100% on me.)

While in reality it didn't take long at all for Maka to make her decision, the few days she had spent wrestling with whether or not to accept Soul's proposal felt like an eternity. There was a lot to consider. She had a natural tendency towards impulsiveness– probably a trait she had inherited from her father, though her mother could hardly be called an extensive planner either– but this was such an important decision that for once she was determined not to let that rule her.

She had been inattentive at work– not that that was difficult seeing as she'd rather not be there at all even when she didn't have something on her mind– as she contemplated the prospect of leaving this dead-end job for a life of comparative luxury. Although it was something they'd never really talked about in detail, Maka was very aware that Soul's family had serious money. Even compared to her father's not inconsiderable salary as a congressman, they were a tax bracket or three higher still. Soul might not have the same kind of money his parents and grandmother did, but he had a hefty trust fund, and when his uncle had died six years ago, he had left him his house and a substantial sum of money besides. From a few things Soul had said over the years, she was under the impression that he mostly lived on his own income. He was a successful and much in-demand performer, and with his living situation fixed, he didn't have as many big expenses, especially since Soul had never been inclined towards his family's lifestyle.

And as for herself… well, she paid her way. Barely. She was behind on bills and her washing machine was broken and she couldn't afford to fix it, but her rent was paid on time (usually). She knew she could ask her father for help and he would give it, but she had promised herself that the last time she would ever accept his financial support was allowing him to pay her tuition at Dartmouth. She wanted to make it on her own. Perhaps that was a little prideful of her, considering she was very much not "making it" at the moment, but she was too stubborn to concede defeat yet.

Would marrying Soul for his money make her feel like as much of a failure as accepting her father's help would? But no, she didn't think so. A big part of her reluctance to take her papa's money– and her rocky relationship with him in general, actually– was because he was a rat bastard who voted in ways she couldn't respect.

Besides which, while the financial benefits were a definite consideration, if she said yes, she wouldn't be marrying Soul just for the money.

Romance, as she'd told him, was something she didn't have much use for. It wasn't like she was aromantic or anything; she'd had crushes and had tried her hand at dating and relationships in the past. By the time she was out of college, however, she had decided that the exceedingly slim possibility of finding some mythical "soul mate" wasn't worth the bother of dating or the heartache that came when less lasting relationships failed. And yet, despite this acquired aversion to romance, she had still harbored a secret desire to get married someday. She was aware that it was contradictory, and she didn't know how to reconcile the conflicting feelings, but there it was.

Thinking about it now, with a platonic marriage– a marriage of convenience, one might say– presented to her as a very tangible possibility, she supposed that what she really wanted was the companionship. She didn't want to have to walk through the world all on her own, with no one who would put her first in their life. And Soul…

Well, he would. Maka had known him for so long, even if they had been out of touch for over a decade before their unlooked-for reunion four years ago, and she knew just what kind of person he was. She supposed if she had to sum him up in one word, it would be 'steadfast'. She really couldn't think of many people she could rely on more than Soul, and that was definitely a desirable quality in a spouse.

All in all, it sounded pretty ideal. Companionship, affection, financial stability… somebody around to make sure that if she died, she wouldn't decompose before anyone found her. The usual requirements. It had all the perks of a marriage without all the hassle and heartache that came from actually trying to find a spouse she was romantically interested in.

And besides, she did love him. Not in a sappy romcom, hearts-and-flowers, I want your babies kind of way, perhaps, but she did. She supposed if she were to put a name to the feeling, it would have to be called platonic love, although it was different from the platonic affection she had for her pseudo-brother and her other friends. She couldn't put her finger on how it was different, but it really didn't matter, did it? All that mattered was that, even as obnoxious as he could be sometimes, he still had one of the kindest hearts she had ever known, and she loved him for that. And he obviously cared deeply about her as well, or he wouldn't have suggested the idea at all. His proposal had been unusually impulsive for him, but she knew he wouldn't have even brought it up as a possibility with somebody he wasn't truly comfortable around.

Nearly a week after Soul had proposed (if his ineloquent attempt at persuasion actually counted as a proposal), the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back came when she decided to look at the problem from another angle. Namely, what her options would be if she said no.

And really, what would her life be like if she said no? Nothing would really change, her life would go on just as it had before, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. What was she going to do? Keep plugging away at a useless job that had no positive influence on the world and only barely kept her bank account in the positives? Keep going to her friends' weddings and listening to the "it'll be your turn next" and "when are you going to settle down?" comments until she wanted to scream? Never be able to get further than four chapters into her debút novel because she was so exhausted when she got home every day that she didn't have the brainpower to produce anything particularly creative or worth the time it took to type?

No. She wasn't interested in that. If someone had told her, a decade ago when she was accepting her diploma as the valedictorian of her graduating class, that this would be her life, she would have laughed right in their face.

If she took Soul up on his offer, though…

That also wasn't quite the way she'd expected her life to go, but it was a positive outcome rather than a negative one. It might be highly unconventional, at least for the current century– though as Soul had pointed out, an arrangement like theirs would have been very common even just a century ago– but she thought it would make her happy. Might make both of them happy.

Maka felt, looking back, that she'd known that all along, and her decision had been a foregone conclusion. Still, she didn't regret taking the time to think it over.

Even after she accepted his proposal, though, the whole thing felt a bit chimerical, not a concrete reality. It was like the grandiose planning of a child, the heady daydream-spinning accompanied by giggles and absolute confidence in an outcome that never came to pass. It didn't feel real.

Until, of course, it did.

The moment that tipped the scales between fever-dream surrealism and terrifying reality came in the midst of ring shopping, of all things. She was trying on a sparkling diamond Soul had suggested, enormous and gaudy and absolutely not her taste at all, when it hit her abruptly that this was really happening.

Soul had showed up at her door that morning and announced that they were going ring-shopping. She suspected that his hurry to get going was driven by a desire to get this over and done with more than anything else, but it was amusing to watch him try to hurry her along and drag his feet at the same time.

She had to admit, she was frankly stunned when, instead of heading to the jewelry store in the mall close to her apartment in Medford, Soul drove them into Boston proper and lead her into a Tiffany's near the Public Garden.

"What are we doing here?" she asked as she opened the door.

Soul raised an eyebrow. "Getting you a ring, dummy."

"You're buying me a Tiffany ring?" It wouldn't be the first item by the legendary jewelers she had owned. Her father had bought her a little gold Tiffany pendant for her thirteenth birthday, but it an engagement ring, she was pretty sure, was a bit of a different price range than a relatively simple necklace.

"Pretty sure my mother would murder me if I did anything less for her future daughter-in-law," he said with a shrug, hands shoved in his pockets. "And the fewer family lectures I have to sit through, the better."

She gave him an incredulous stare. "So you're getting platonic-married to avoid admitting you told a whopper to your grandma, and you're buying me a diamond from Tiffany's to avoid your mom bugging you?"

He frowned thoughtfully, looking for all the world as if he hadn't actually thought of it that way. "I guess, yeah."

Maka snorted. "You're kind of ridiculous, you know that?"

"Taking the path of least resistance with my family is kind of a reflex at this point, honestly."

She raised an eyebrow. "And spending crazy amounts of money on a fancy engagement ring is your idea of the 'path of least resistance'? I knew you were had a pedigree but I didn't realize you had the trust fund brain damage to match," she teased.

"Bite me."

"Just for that, I'm gonna pick out the biggest, most absurdly over-priced diamond in the store and make you buy it for me," she shot back, and breezed past him into the store with a broad grin on her face.

Forty minutes, one fawning sales representative, and a parade of obnoxiously gaudy rings later, Maka was running out of enthusiasm fast. She'd given up choosing pieces ten minutes ago and was letting Soul take the reins for awhile, hoping that maybe the kind of rings he chose for her would give her a better idea of what she herself wanted. So far, though, that tactic had proved to be an exercise in extreme futility.

"Why do you keep picking out these huge ones?" she asked him, restraining her frustration as she stared distastefully at the big square ring currently dwarfing her slim finger. "This rock's gotta cost ten grand, at least."

"Thirty-six, actually," the saleswoman interjected helpfully.

Maka glanced for just a moment at her in astonishment before turning her eyes back to Soul. "I mean, spending this much just on a ring…"

He shrugged, hands in his pockets. "Even if this isn't a love match or whatever, it's still a real marriage. 'Til death do us part and stuff. You deserve to have the full, y'know, bride experience or whatever."

It was awkwardly explained, perhaps, but it was still sweet, and so sincere she almost couldn't stand it. That was the thing about Soul, she realized suddenly; excepting the times when he was being a complete shit, he was always sincere. It was one of the best things about him, in her eyes. When he said something seriously, he meant it. It was a tragically rare quality and it occurred to her that she was lucky, incredibly so, to be doing this with him.

And that was the moment that it finally hit home that she was going to marry Soul Evans, her childhood best friend, she was in the middle of trying to find an engagement ring she could live with, and in a few months– or maybe even sooner– they were going to say some vows and move in together and spend their entire lives together and…!

"Why're you looking at me like that?" he asked, a puzzled frown on his face.

She didn't bother denying it, because she probably did have some cheesy sentimental look in her eye. "You really are a pretty nice guy, Soul Evans," she said with an unabashed smile.

"Yeah, right." He scoffed and looked away, and it did very little to hide his embarrassed blushing.

She very kindly did not embarrass him further by remarking on how cute he was being.

"Let's just find a damn ring and get this over with," he said in a gruff tone that did not at all match the way he was trying to hide behind his hair.

"Okay," she agreed easily, slipping the oversized diamond from her finger and setting it back on the glass in front of the saleswoman.

Soul eyed the platinum band and asked, "What's wrong with that one?"

Maka wrinkled her nose in distaste. "You mean besides the fact that it's way too flashy and too big and clunky for my hands?"

He snorted and shook his head in an entertaining intersection of amusement and exasperation. "So sue me, I don't know squat about jewelry," he said.

"Clearly, this looks like something a millionaire's trophy wife would have."

"I thought we agreed you were gonna be a millionaire's trophy wife?" he teased.

She smacked his shoulder. "Yeah yeah, rub it in, asshole."

"Yes, because you had such an impoverished childhood, what with your father being a congressman and having such a low salary and all," Soul shot back, smirking.

Instead of flipping him off as she was tempted to do, Maka instead huffed at him and turned back to the ring case. She skimmed over the options before her, trying to find something that didn't seem either gaudy or tacky.

"Anything?" Soul asked, leaning over her shoulder to look with her.

She shook her head. "They all just seem so…"

"Not you?" he volunteered when she couldn't finish the thought.

Maka nodded, and slipped away from him to amble around some of the other nearby cases.

The saleswoman seemed to sense that she was losing her opportunity to close a deal and called out, "Miss Albarn, if you're not pleased with these, I would be more than happy to show you–"

"Not at the moment, thanks," Maka said distractedly, peering through the glass before her with interest.

"D'you find something?" Soul asked.

She bit her lip thoughtfully, studying her find. "Could I see this one?" she asked the saleswoman, without looking up.

The woman practically leaped the distance to the case Maka was looking into. "Which one are you interested in?" she asked.

Maka tapped lightly on the glass. "That one there in the middle… with the sapphires?"

"Ah, that's an excellent choice. Your fiancée has fine taste, Mr. Evans."

"Yeah, sure, just show us the ring," he grumped.

She smacked him lightly on the chest with the back of her hand. "Soul, be nice!" she hissed. She was pretty sure, though, that the saleswoman was not paying a lick of attention, too busy eagerly unlocking the case and extracting the setting in question to notice.

She presented the ring to Maka with an eager smile, and Maka slipped it onto her finger. The display example was a bit loose on her slim finger– as all the rings had been– but she liked the way it looked on her hand. It was much simpler ring than those she had been looking at before, a slim silver band set with a single round solitaire, flanked on either side by a pair of round-cut sapphires. It was distinctive and elegant, but it didn't overwhelm her little hand, either.

"Soul, what do you think?" she asked, presenting her hand for him to inspect.

He studied the ring, taking her hand lightly in his as he looked it over, then looked up at her with a slight smile. "It looks nice," he said.

"Hush, it looks great," she corrected proudly.

"I take it this is the one?" the saleswoman prompted hopefully.

Maka nodded, still grinning at Soul. "I think so," she replied.

"Well then, if you'll follow me, I'll introduce you to our in-house diamond expert to help you select your stone…"

Three hours after he had dragged her out of her apartment, they slouched into his house, Soul having proposed that they go to his place for lunch, since his fridge was currently the better-stocked. Once they had set themselves up with cheese blintzes– which, Soul informed her cheekily, were his personal specialty– they made a hasty retreat to the living room with the intention of vegging out in front of the TV for the rest of the afternoon.

"So what's our story, anyway?" Maka asked, flopping down on Soul's tragically over-stuffed couch beside him.

He looked over at her, brows furrowed over sleepy red eyes. "Huh?"

"You know, our story." She waved a hand in an ineloquent attempt to illustrate her meaning. "Like, what do we tell people? I'm assuming your parents and grandma are going to have to get a story based on whatever BS you told them that started this whole thing, right?"

Soul gave a weak chuff of laughter. "Good thing I was vague, then."

She nodded, biting back a grin. 'Vague' might as well be Soul's middle name. He had mastered the art of answering questions without actually telling you anything when he wanted to keep things to himself. "So what are we working with?" she asked.

"Nothing too detailed. I said we'd been dating for about six months. Figured that was short enough that me not bringing her– you– up to them was still believable, but long enough that I'd be feeling ready to commit," he said. "Like I said before, I mostly kept the focus on how I didn't want to pressure you into more than you were ready for. S'long as I kept hitting that note, they weren't gonna bug me too much for details, you know?"

Maka snorted and rolled her eyes. "You really get yourself into stupid situations, you know that?"

Apparently choosing to ignore her, he said, "So what do you wanna do with that?"

She frowned, lips puckering up as she thought it over. "It's probably best to stick close to the truth, right? After all, we're going to have to keep the story up for a really long time, so if it's as honest as we can make it, it'll be easier to avoid slip-ups."

When she glanced back at him, she discovered that Soul was watching her with an odd look on his face. "Doesn't it bother you that we're gonna be lying to my parents for pretty much the rest of their lives?" he asked.

She shrugged. "A little, but when you think about it, it's not a big lie, is it? We really are engaged, we really will get married, and we really do care a lot about each other. We're just letting them believe the exact nature of our relationship is a little different than what it is."

"...you're kind of scary," Soul said in a low tone. "Hey, do not pinch me, I swear I will retaliate!"

Relenting in her threatened attack, Maka sat back against the couch with a smug grin on her face. "Seriously though, I think we should play up our history. We've been friends for a long time, we can play up the childhood sweethearts thing."

"Were we childhood sweethearts?" Soul asked.

She tilted her head a little to look at him. "I dunno. What would you call what we were?"

"Best friends," he answered, so quickly it made her chest fill up with happy warmth. He really could be sweet.

"Whatever you call it, let's work with it. We were really close as kids. And we've known each other for several years as adults. It would be natural for us to fall in love, right?"

Her eyes met Soul's and he was giving her a strange, soft look she couldn't quite interpret. "Right," he said quietly. "Makes sense."

The warm glow in her chest was suddenly accompanied by a fluttery little kick, and she looked away quickly, uncertain quite why she was feeling so flustered by him so suddenly. "So we'd been friends for years and then one day… what? How did we get from friends to l-lovers?" She tried and failed not to blush at tripping over her own tongue like a shy teenager. It wasn't a weird concept, and she and Soul really were only friends, so she shouldn't be flustered by this!

He leaned back, hands behind his head, too casual for her to buy it. "I figure one day I just thought 'why not?' and asked you out," he said.

She snorted. "Oh please. You initiated it? I don't think so! If we waited for you to make a move, we'd both still be angrily masturbating to bad porn and Colin Firth!"

"Excuse you, I watch the highest-quality porn available!" Soul protested, doing an excellent job of sounding perfectly indignant despite his pink cheeks. "And Colin Firth? Really? Isn't he like sixty?"

"Mid-fifties, and not Colin Firth now, Colin Firth like twenty-five years ago, thank you very much!"

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, whatever, you get off to Mr. Darcy, not information I needed to know, and we're definitely not telling my grandma that."

"So what are we telling her, genius?" she shot back.

"Well if you don't want me to be the one to start it," he said, with a dissatisfied curl of his lip, "how about a New Years' kiss started it? Because like hell am I gonna be the wimp who didn't have the balls to just ask you out. I told them we started dating around six months ago, so we could've gotten caught up in the moment on New Years' Eve and after that we decided to give it a shot, see where it went?"

Maka blinked. "That's… um… that's actually kind of romantic," she said quietly, caught off guard by the unexpected sweetness of Soul's proposed fake origin story. "Yeah, let's… let's go with that. So… aside from your folks, what do we tell everybody else?"

"Well, Wes is gonna have to know the truth, 'coz I already called him weeks ago and told him to keep his damn mouth shut if Mum called him trying to get details, so he knows I haven't actually been dating anybody," Soul said. He rolled his eyes up to shake his head tiredly at the ceiling. "He is going to give me so much shit for this."

"You mean he hasn't been already?" she asked incredulously.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye for a long second, then shorted. "Good point. Mostly I've just turned my phone off whenever he tries to call me, though."

"Smart. I haven't seen your brother in ages, but from what I remember…"

"Trust me, he's only gotten more obnoxious."

Maka giggled, but settled quickly back into more serious conversation. "I also think I want our friends to know the truth. Or at least, most of it. Because obviously they know we haven't been dating–"

"You sure?" Soul asked. "Because with the amount of shit Liz gives me, I'm pretty sure she thinks we're sleeping together."

She couldn't help a snort of amusement. "Liz also thinks Tsubaki seduced the prime minister of the Czech Republic."

"Touché."

"My point is, I can handle a bit of creative fiction where our families are concerned– because trust me when I say it's better for everybody if my father assumes we're wildly in love, it's the only way he's going to be even remotely okay with this– but anyway, my point is that I don't want to go through with this if we're gonna be lying to everyone."

Soul nodded vigorously. "No, definitely, I'm complete shit at lying– don't give me that look, I am and you know it!– and I'd rather just…"

"You'd rather not talk about anything to anyone ever, I know," Maka said with a roll of her eyes. "But we agree that honesty is the best policy with people we can trust not to blab to your grandma?"

"Yeah, I think so."

So that was it, then. She had a ring– or she would, once the diamond they had picked was set and sized– they knew what their story was going to be, and Operation: Get Married For Friendship and Tax Benefits was officially under way.

A/N part deux- There is a link to Maka's engagement ring on my profile, if you are interested in seeing it. Feedback is always encouraged and deeply appreciated. ^_^