A/N: High school!AU, ahoy!

Disclaimer: Usual credit, do not own, am playing in the sandbox with a new set of toys.

She meets him in history class. It's an advanced class and the first assignment he turns in is full of letters that look like large, jagged teeth made of blue ink sprouting out from a spacey bed of gums made from the lines of binder paper. She reads his name and thinks it's fairly ridiculous. What kind of name is Soul Eater Evans? Ridiculous.

He doesn't turn in a lot of homework assignments after that, and Maka is baffled. Advanced history is meant to be full of work, and yet he isn't turning in anything.

He frustrates her. He's not stupid, that much she can tell because sometimes he whispers the answers to questions that history teacher asks out loud even though he looks like he's sleeping. And other times he'll make a snide comment about some idiot in history and one time he even muttered something about an alternative military tactic one of the Louis' should have taken. He's not stupid. But he doesn't try at all, and he slouches as he walks out the door into the cold mornings.

And then there's how he's always cool. Always. He has a girlfriend that waits for him after class just a little ways down the open-air hallway. She's always stylish, and sweet, with her leather cowboy boots and short shorts and skirts. Patti is cute and cool and a little crazy, just like Soul. Her fair, bouncy hair compliments Soul's pale, spiked hair nicely and their eyes hold the same kind of liquid brilliance. Red and blue pools set into inkwells for faces. They are pens just waiting to explode. Maka feels like she is the washed out highlighter in this pencil box of a school.

"Do you listen to Radiohead?"

"Yeah…"

"Are you a fan?"

"Sort of."

"Hm…"

"I've listened to some of their songs, but I'm not a devoted followers. I do like their music though."

"…"

"Why?"

"You seem like the type to like good music." Soul says and adds a sharp grin with his shark-like teeth for good measure. His eyes scrunch up at the corners just a little bit when he offers her a smile.

Maka feels her self give a half shrug half nod that makes her head do a little figure eight. She can feel her pigtails swing. She wishes she had taken a shower yesterday, but she settles her nerves by fiddling with the fraying edges on the cuffs of her sweat shirt. Soul confuses her. She knows that he's going out with Patti and she thinks that they're really cute together and how they just are and maybe she's just jealous of the connection they have. She hopes that they realize how luck they are to have each other. She'd be lucky to have anyone to talk to other than Death the Kid or Black*Star or Tsubaki or Kim or Ox.

"Oh. Um…Have you heard of Artic Monkey?"

"Yeah. A while ago, I think some of their stuff is pretty cool."

Maka feels herself give that weird shrug-nod thing again and she turns back to try and focus on the movie and the time period it's set in. The teacher has told them to try and analyze the way the people dress.

"What happens next?" Maka whispers as she twists herself to look at Soul, who sits behind her. His eyes are clear and bright in the dark and they draw her closer.

"Oh, you know. He gives up his life for revenge and all that. He finds treasure and then he kicks ass." Soul replies in that offhanded way that's almost like a casual brush off, but the effect is always ruined because he's always watching with his red, red eyes. She knows he doesn't just talk like this with her, but she can't help but feel like she's special. She's never seen Soul and Patti talk together, but it's not like they can't talk…

But she pauses that train of thought and deletes it like a program that takes too long to load. It'll slow down her hard drive of a brain.

She's eating lunch with Tsubaki and Kim when she sees Soul and Patti walk hand in hand down the hallway that she and her friends are huddled in trying to eat their packed lunches. They always sit on the same dilapidated wooden bench and everyday they get a kick out of the fact that their combined weight hasn't destroyed this relic of ancient times, yet.

Soul and Patti don't talk and they don't even look at each other. He doesn't even look at Maka as the two of them pass. It's like nothing in the world holds the two of them down to Earth except for their joined hands as they float above the ground.

Maka sees them walk down the hallway the same way two more times until one time she sees them approaching but they suddenly turn down another route. They don't walk down her hallway again.

Maka walks from her locker in a daze. Friday. The day causes every student at Shibusen to lighten up for even the briefest of moments on the way to his or her first class. The prospect of leaving that first class is like anticipating a mini-Christmases as the bell rings. She's feeling good as she heads towards the locker rooms for her next class.

As she walks she passes through another hallway where Patti and Soul are walking together. Soul and Maka have the same second period too. As students pass by, Patti turns and kisses Soul on the lips. Maka doesn't even slow down like some of the others, she just keeps trudging along and the only glimpse that she caught was from the corner of her eye. She feels her lips stretch even though she has no idea why she's laughing and then giggles into the sky as sea gulls try and eat the breakfast food already thrown onto the ground.

"Why can't we all just get along?"

"Because monarchs are stupid with scepters stuck up their royal butts."

"They always do something wrong. It's like a fatal flaw. What if, like, one of them didn't do something quite as stupid with his country? Would we have better health care now?

Maka laughs but she can hear the seriousness of Soul's tone. His eyes are like rubies glittering from a cave. His face is a smooth wall of marble and his hair is the dangerous cliff.

"But of course. The philosphes would be having a fit though."

"Would they?"

"Of course. People living long and prospering is so not their thing. They live for something to fight for."

"Ha. Ha." Soul says with a straight face.

"What book are you reading?"

"This? It's just…you know. About that last war against Insanity."

Maka takes this thin book into her hands carefully and reads the summary and then skims through the pages. She reads a few paragraphs on the page that Soul stuck his bookmark and looks up at him with wide eyes.

"I didn't know you read stuff. Like this."

"Uh…yeah. I don't really read a lot."

"Do you have a favorite book?"

"Um…Not really. You know, I just read what I think is interesting."

"Oh."

Maka likes to make things of favorite books. Fantasy novels usually make the person a dreamer, and autobiographies usually point to a sense of insecurity or a lack of self. Sometimes not everything works out quite the way she thinks she does. Soul is failing to fit into her labeled boxes.

She wants to say that he's nothing. He's just another "cool kid", but then he takes her by surprise. Even though he doesn't spell "you're" right in his essays.

"Well, I think the book you're reading is really cool. I think I'll check it out some time."

Soul sends her one of his shark-like smiles. That's when she first notices that he only has one dimple and his eyes crinkle when he actually means his smiles. He always seems to mean his smiles when he sends them to her. Or it could just be the dark room and the dim lights of the overhead projector casting shadows onto Soul's face. Either way.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Mine? It's green. Yours?"

"Grey."

Soul hums thoughtfully at her answer.