I had to finish this. It was eating at me and preventing me from moving forward on another project. Of course it wasn't like there was anything all that crazy or elaborate to add. I just needed to buckle down and do it. Much SoMa love to all and sundry this holiday season.

Disclaimer: see part 1

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Fucking hell, Maka!" Soul, drinking directly from the orange juice container, knew he was busted and dribbled onto the floor in shock.

How Maka had ninja-ed her way behind him when she would have had to make her way across the nightingale floor hallways blew his mind a little. Even Blair made the floorboards creak when she did her nightly cat laps around the apartment to burn off energy.

Her pastel yellow robe wasn't tied tightly and there was a thin stripe of flesh where her tank top and pajama shorts didn't meet. Soul sighed at his brain for taking the time to notice that fun little detail. He'd been trying to be better at thinking of Maka platonically ever since Black Star had called him out over 'being a puss' over burgers, but it was like everything about their living situation was attempting to derail that goal.

"While you're in there you might as well grab the jam for me."

By some miracle she was neither berating him for drinking from the container nor smacking him for said infraction. It made the hair stand up on the back on his neck thinking that Maka was probably plotting something much worse.

"You're eating carbs after 9pm on a weeknight." Soul said flatly as Maka stared at the glowing toaster. He scratched absently at his bare chest, painfully aware that he had sticky spots where juice had splashed on him. Soul wondered how weird he would seem if he ran to his room for a shirt, and decided that given they were in their own apartment and the only person he would be hiding from would be Maka that the answer to that was 'very weird indeed.'

"What's your point?" Maka's fingers danced against the eject button on the toaster, but she didn't press it yet. The toaster was already dialed to her preferred doneness, but something twitchy in her never wanted to let it finish. This usually resulted in needing to toast it twice, and sometimes burning it.

"Something on your mind?"

He saw the muscles in Maka's shoulders shift under her thin robe and he knew she was thinking deeply. A restless mind ended up being a restless body for his best friend. Sighing, she popped the toast early, inspected it, and shoved it back down with a grunt.

"No." Came her emphatic reply which Soul knew to mean yes, but I don't want to talk about it.

"Someday you need to buy something other than strawberry jam. You always get the cheap stuff that is like 1% strawberry. What are you, like ten?" Soul shifted the jam into her waiting grasp.

"It's cheap. At least I drink my juice from a glass like a civilized human being," she chided as she watched her toast like a hawk. Finally popping it and dancing the hot bread between her fingers, she said off handedly. "Hiro sent me an apology text. I've blocked him now, of course."

"Ah." Soul didn't know what else to say. He knew Maka wasn't the type to hold a grudge, exactly, she was more the type to lance someone from her life like a boil and ostensibly forget all about them.

Maka found the biggest, sharpest knife in the kitchen to spread her butter and jam on her toast and Soul physically willed himself not to back away slowly.

"He didn't bring up how I destroyed his stuff. Or all the things I sold. Or even those flyers I put up about him…"

"… when did you put up flyers…"

"He just said sorry for hurting me. And that he hadn't meant things to happen the way they did." She was gesturing with the knife into the air, and Soul continued to maintain a safe distance. "He was so decent about it all. Polite. Sorrowful." Her temper was rising, and Soul actually let out a breath he didn't know he was holding when she dropped the knife in the sink with a clatter. "He's trying to win the breakup, the bastard!"

Time to sweep in, Soul realized. "I don't think it's a competition."

"Everything is a competition, Soul."

"What about our friendship?" He asked simply, and watched with great satisfaction as all the wind left Maka's sails. This was not the first time he had pulled this move on her, and it worked as well this time as it had years ago when she was raging over a bad grade that threatened to drop her out of the running for valedictorian.

With a wry laugh, Maka picked up her toast plate. "That's so unfair. That you can just do that to me."

"Do what to you?" Soul, asked, playing as innocent as he dared.

She walked over to him and he dutifully opened the fridge so she could place the jam back in its spot on the door shelf. Lookup up at him, her huffed laughter caused goosebumps to raise on his peck. "You know what you do to me," The words were fond, touched with something else that he was afraid to name, but his body picked up on it and his eyes got wide as he realized his pajama pants would hide nothing from her shortly.

"Outta the way, Albarn, I need to take a wiz. We good here?" Without waiting for her response, Soul practically ran from the kitchen, his bare feet slapping against the linoleum. He almost tripped over Blair in the hallway, and he was so preoccupied with self loathing he didn't even hear Maka's no doubt sarcastic comeback.

Something was up with Soul and Maka knew it was her responsibility as his best friend to figure out what it was. She had gone over their interaction in the kitchen two nights ago over and over like it was a crime scene that needed to be solved. For some reason he had been avoiding her after that night and she was convinced it had something to do with those few moments they spoke. So preoccupied was Maka with the mystery of Soul's mood swing, she hadn't even punished him for drinking from (and thereby ruining in her estimation) the orange juice. She wasn't about drink his backwash.

Soul was out drinking with Black Star tonight, as Black Star celebrated his dominant win in his latest match. He may have been sporting a split lip, and some bruises in creative places, but nothing kept Star down for long. Maka hadn't been invited because this was some brofest testosterone packed trip to a strip club, which is why Maka was sitting in the living room with the TV on full blast as CSI marathoned. Soul hated strip clubs, and Black Star's MMA friends who spent the whole time talking about their protein intake and who would beat who in a fight, so Maka was doubly convinced that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that Soul had been replaced by a pod person.

Calling Liz had netted her nothing but a long screed about Liz's current issues with Kid and how he never seemed to find the time to really make her feel special these days. Maka hmmed and hawed until Liz lost steam, and then Maka had politely declined to come over for an impromptu makeover. She didn't feel like getting tarted up just so Liz could then drag her to a club and men could paw them both so Liz could bolster her own self esteem. Maka had had enough of men, the Platonic ideal, at the moment.

Tsubaki had listened but hadn't had anything helpful to add. Talking to Tsubaki was often like arguing with a mirror. She didn't usually have much to contribute, but she listened with the patience of a saint. Every now and then she had something profound to add, but this was not one of those times. Maka thanked her politely for being a good friend and letting her get things off her chest, but she was still at square one with her worry about Soul.

Typically the best person to bounce ideas off of was Soul himself and Maka realized with a sinking feeling that there had never been a time in her life where Soul was her problem. Soul was her rock. And she was deathly afraid that the reason he had gotten all weird on her was how, right before his ignominious retreat, she had basically thrown herself at him.

You know what you do to me…

She hadn't meant it to be so breathless, and in her mind she might as well have been stripping while climbing him like a pole at the same time. It was just that she had been so upset, and he had reminded her all at once that the only male on the planet she didn't think was a waste of space was standing in front of her. Shirtless. Sympathetic.

Maka had been horrified when he brain said the thing she should be licking jam off of was Soul's chest, and careful pretense that this roommate situation was just another thing they could do as best friends was neatly disassembled by her hormones.

But then, Soul had always been the densest person on the face of the planet when it came to women so maybe it wasn't that issue at all. He was such a mess of inward directly anxiety and self-loathing that every attempt women had ever made to get his attention had been hopeless in school and beyond. Maka never worried about some girl swooping in and supplanting her or removing him from her orbit because it would be a miracle if he noticed being hit on. They would need all the subtlety of the strippers he was no doubt in the presence of at this very moment, and he was too skittish to respond well to someone that forward.

Looking down at her modest chest, practically flat at the angle she was slouched on the couch, Maka sighed. Something in her back tweaked, and she realized she had been in the same position for the last two episodes, and her muscles were all locked up. Time for a steamy bath and an early bedtime before she gave herself a tension headache.

"C'mon Blair," Maka shooed the cat off her lap. Stretching, hearing her back give several loud pops, Maka groaned. All this worry was wreaking havoc on her self-care. Damn Soul. Damn hormones. Damn Hiro for starting all this trouble by being a garbage human just like her Papa.

Soul had a sour stomach from all the cheap beer he had drank to keep from having to socialize with Black Star's friends. Star's invitation had been a good excuse to get out and not spend an evening cooped up with Maka. Last night he had dodged a bullet when she spent her whole Friday in her room on the phone with her girl friends, probably talking about Hiro again since he had had the nerve to poke the dragon. Soul had sunk down into sound editing one of his new compositions and before he knew it the apartment was dark and still and he had gone an entire evening without talking to his best friend.

It felt wrong. Not talking to Maka about what was bothering him was giving him hives, or at least that's what he assumed before he scratched at it and realized it was just body glitter. The only halfway decent thing that happened to him all night in that loud, neon hellhole was when one woman had come out in a school uniform that resembled the girl's uniform at the hgih school he and Maka had attended. He'd immediately thrown all his cash at her while Black Star slapped him on the back hard enough to wind him a bit. Star had meant to be encouraging and in his own macho way, he was trying to help Soul get over what was ailing his friend. But huge tits just weren't doing what they once did for him, and when a woman got really athletic on the pole Soul couldn't help but wonder if Maka could do it better.

He hoped to GOD he hadn't said that out loud, once the fourth pitcher of beer had made its appearance.

Well, he had finally reached his limit and no disparaging voice in the back of his mind speaking doomsday prophecies of the end of their friendship was going to preventing from coming clean tomorrow. Over the pounding techno beat, Soul had put together a plan that over the course of the night seemed to make more sense. He would sit Maka down and say, 'Maka, I know we've been friends since we were kids, but I've been in love with you for most of that, and while I thought living together would be great, I get blue balls every time a pair of your underwear static clings its way into my laundry.'

Less buzzed, he realized there may be some flaws there. It was a work in progress.

The point was that he was going to tell her that he had more than friendly feelings for her and see where the cards fell. It didn't have to mean the end of their friendship. When she inevitably smacked him upside the head and told him to snap out of it, he would finally be able to ground himself in rejection instead of float in the limbo of hope. Everything would be fine.

As he jiggled the handle on the bathroom, cursing how sticky it got sometimes, he fully didn't hear the beginning of the yelled OCCUPIED when he leaned his shoulder into it.

A cloud of steam escaped as Soul was greeted with the glorious sight of Maka, legs shining from the moisturizer she always put on after shaving them, holding a hand up that clutched a nail polish brush in pearlescent baby blue. She was clad in nothing was a towel, wet hair darker than her usually ash blond and eyes snapping.

"Soul!" Her shriek knocked the sobriety back into him, even if he still had to pee very badly. "What the HELL!"

"Sorry!" Soul backed out, grateful there had been nothing convenient for Maka to throw at him in that moment. This was going to make the whole love confession thing all the more complicated now that Maka wanted to grind his bones into powder, no doubt.

His spine stiffened as muffled words passed through the bathroom door. "I don't care how drunk you are, we are having words when I'm finished in here. Mark me, Soul Evans, you can't run from me! I'm faster than you!"

And she was too, damn it all. Even when he had a head start.

Maka's hair was still wet at the root, having just blasted it with the fastest drying she could stand before pulling on an old t-shirt and some pajama shorts. As she entered the kitchen she saw recognition flare in Soul's eyes, along with something that seemed a terrible lot like satisfaction, and she realized with an inward curse this was one of the band tees she had stolen from his laundry accidentally. It was so big she had mistook it for a sleeping shirt.

"We need to talk about boundaries, Soul," she crossed her arms and wandered over to where Soul was hunched over a glass of water at the kitchen table. It seemed like the tiny, two person table didn't have enough room to keep them apart and she decided not to sit yet and possibly knock knees with him.

"It was an accident," he mumbled, clearly still horrified. Maka found she was a little insulted he would be so cowed by seeing her in a towel. It wasn't like she was hideous.

Maka grabbed his nearly empty water glass in front of him with a growl and filled it up from the pitcher in the fridge before handing it back to him and taking up a station opposite him at the table, scooting back just a tad. His hooded eyes couldn't meet hers, but he glanced up as he took the water and mumbled thanks.

"Clearly it was an accident, that's not what I'm upset about." Not totally the truth, but she forged on. "I need you to tell me what's been going on with you."

The silence was deafening. Soul made a gurgling noise, then it seemed like his own vocal cords cut him off. Maka knew his anxiety paralyzed him sometimes, and she had seen this before when he was in college and his parents would call him to quiz him about what kind of progress he was making. It had happened then because he cared about their opinion so much and he felt like a waste of space, so it was all the more curious it was happening here and now.

"Ok, I'll go first. I'm so sorry." Maka ripped the words from her soul, sincerity in every syllable, hands folded in front of her.

"What?!" That startled him into acting more human, Soul looked like he was about to leap to his feet but instead kept pulling his hair back from his forehead.

"I think I said something to you a couple nights ago, I won't repeat it, and it made you feel like you need to distance yourself from me…"

Soul's eyes already looked bloodshot, but that could have been either a reaction to the various perfumes and colognes in the strip club or because she knew he had barely slept last night working on some project. "God Maka… no… everything is all fucked up…."

"I assure you I won't ever do anything to endanger what we have or change how we are now and you don't need to worry that—"

Sputtering, unable to form words to stop the apology spilling from Maka's mouth, Soul leapt up from his seat at last and crossed the kitchen to use one large hand to cover Maka's mouth before she could say anything else.

"How dare you silence me!" Maka said at him, at once transforming from contrite to enraged. The gall of him! Stamping down on his insole from her seated position, Soul backed up with a hop and a curse.

"I didn't, ow, mean it like that! I just… don't promise me we'll never change." He leaned on a counter so he could lift up the crushed foot and finally turn his bedraggled face towards her. "Maybe I want a change."

Maka wasn't entirely sure what he was implying, since he surely wouldn't look like a kicked puppy if their friendship were still rock solid. So she hazarded the worst case scenario, like ripping off a bandaid.

"We're still friends though, right?"

"Yes!" Soul had responded before she even finished the question.

"So what kind of change do you want?"

The question hung heavy and Maka watched Soul fidget and struggle with words some more. She had just wanted to get this over with so she could get a good night's sleep, being the kind of person who didn't do well with unresolved issues, but Soul seemed to be overwhelmed and there was going to be no progress at this rate. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole.

"Tomorrow you better be ready to talk. I just feel sorry for you because you had to spend a whole evening with Black Star." Maka said darkly, and she had stood and turned to go back to her room when arms circled her from behind. She fought and conquered her first instinct, which was to flip him over her hip and punch him in the throat, as that was just the years of self defense talking. Maka knew those arms, even if this embrace was a little different than other hugs they had shared.

It was his lips on her neck that shocked her, truly, as the warmth seemed to spread outwards from where he was softly kissing to encompass her whole body. His tongue flicked over a tendon, tense from earlier and no more relaxed now, before he pulled back to mumble into her ear. She could smell the sourness of the beer on his breath this close, but his words were sweet if indistinct.

".. love you, Maka."

She took a deep, deliberate breath. He pulled her closer and there was no missing the physical effect she apparently had on him. Unlike pretty much every other time she had had an erection pressed against her, she felt expectant. Maybe even a little but excited.

"No matter what the answer, it's ok." Soul said, just a hint of tremor in his voice.

Even If she hadn't known her own mind, Maka wondered as she turned around in his grasp and placed her hands gently against his jaw to pull him down for a kiss, would it have even occurred to her to say no? This was the boy she felt like she knew as well as she knew herself most days. If anything defined rightness in her world, it was Soul Evans.

He tasted like hell warmed over and he smelled like the scent section of a department store, but this was somehow perfect. Maka allowed herself something she never thought possible and trusted, leaning into the kiss and slipping her tongue into his mouth. Soul held her tightly, seemingly trying to also pull his hips back so the evidence of his desire didn't poke her so insistently. Smiling against him, Maka dropped her hands to his hips and firmly pulled him into her.

"Maka…" Soul groaned her name and Maka knew that wasn't the last time she was going to hear him moan her name tonight if she had a say. "I don't want to move this too fast and royally fuck it up."

"Soul," Maka said as she allowed him just enough distance to furtively try to shift himself. "Don't be scared."

He laughed, a short bark followed by a slow blink before he refocused on Maka's intent expression. "How come everyone assumes I'm going to run? I've been waiting for this chance for years."

Rooting out how many of their friends knew about Soul's feelings before Maka did was something she would devote herself to another day.

"Years, huh?" At Maka's arch tone Soul blushed a deep unflattering red. "Then I guess we've got some time to make up."

Soul looked hopeful, and she brushed a finger over his lips.

"But first you need to brush your teeth, ugh."

Upon seeing Soul and Maka sharing a furtive kiss outside the venue at the next group get together, money quietly changed hands in the background among their friends. Patty, as usual, cleaned up on 'first observed form of PDA' but Black Star surprised everyone by having guessed the correct amount of time it took them to get there as a couple.

"Anyone can see he's a sap for her," said Black Star with a shrug as he counted his winnings. "Always knew she'd have his balls in a vice someday."