I've been wanting to write a Maka/Soul fanfic for soooo long. Glad I got round to doing it. That said, be prepared for the most fluffy piece of drabblish rambling your poor brain has ever been forced to endure. Wooo fluff! I'm sure this idea has been done a million times but MEH. I don't care.

Reviews are appreciated! Enjoy!

Not So Normal

1.

The day Everything Changed begins as any day does. It is, in fact, a decidedly normal day, if a day at Shibusen can ever be called normal, but for Maka Albarn, at least, it is normal.

Alarm goes off at 6.00 am. She's in the shower by 6.02 and out of the shower by 6.15. She dresses. She eats breakfast at a languid pace – cereal. The kind with useless plastic toys rammed at the bottom like someone's forgotten sock in the washing machine, and where the cereal pieces are more E numbers than actual cereal. She double checks her packed bag (organised the night previous). She recaps yesterday's lessons. By then it is 7.00 am. Class starts in two hours and it takes half of one to get there. She waits until 7.15, then commences the ritual of getting her lazy, good-for-nothing partner out of bed.

It involves cursing on his behalf, yelling on hers, several large books and the stealing of covers, but eventually he concedes at 7.30, staggers into the shower and out again, grumbling about lack of privacy as Maka stands outside the door, hurrying him along. He turns his nose up at her kiddy cereal and eats two slices of toast marinated in a profuse amount of butter. They argue about the washing up. They argue about who left the milk out overnight (it was Blair). And all the while Maka is tugging her hair into pigtails with reckless abandon, yelling at Soul around the hairpiece gripped between her teeth as her hands ungently shape her mousy locks into some kind of style.

Maka overlooks that her and Soul's relationship is a well-oiled machine and though he (and she) can be a pain-in-ass, without one another the morning wouldn't be normal at all – it would actually be quite terrible.

So normal is good, in Maka's opinion, because normal is uneventful, and uneventfullness means more time to study.

They're the first to arrive in class due to Maka's insistence on being punctual, a habit Soul would rather she break. He loudly and repeatedly expresses his envy for Black*Star, who is allowed lie-ins all the time by Tsubaki, who must be such a nice partner, such a gentle, lenient, cool partner.

Maka Makachops him to shut him up, then does it again when she spots the 'Motorcycles Mayhem' magazine tucked between the larger pages of the (ironically titled) 'Development of Souls' textbook. She throws him a 'you'll-be-sorry look', which he shrugs off with a 'Psh'.

Distracted by his hopelessness, she doesn't hear Patty sneaking up on her until it's too late.

"Maakkkkaaa!" Patty squeals like she didn't just see her yesterday, then dislocates various spinal nodes with a Death Squeeze. Liz disengages her sister with practised ease, throwing Maka a drowsy wink and condescendingly patting Soul on the head, who barks something disgruntled at her.

Maka turns a cheerful expression towards Death the Kid, who, as is his wont every morning, is arranging the articles on Cid's desk into something more… aesthetically balanced. For a moment she contemplates what the 'normal' ritual in Kid's house is, and is abruptly thankful the most she has to worry about is her partner's punctuality. "Morning Kid!"

Kid doesn't reply until he's finished manoeuvring Cid's pencil a third of a millimetre to the left, then he glances up uninterestedly and says "Good morn –" before doing a double take. His golden eyes, intimidating at the best of times, glean with a kind of frantic insanity. He slams his hands onto the desk and leans across it, mouth drawing down into an idiotic gawp.

"E-eh?" Maka stutters, recoiling a little from Kid's incredibly unsettling stare. "D-do I have.. something on my… face?"

Kid crosses the classroom like a lightning bolt and doesn't stop until he's literally two inches from Maka's face. He smells like mint and boy-cologne and this close his eyes are molten with enigmatic passion.

She becomes aware of her classmates. Lots of them. Staring. Mostly she feels Soul's eyes on her, piercing and heated, his body tense as a coiled spring. Her cheeks slowly begin to redden, but she is way too terrified of Kid to back away even an inch.

"Maka…" he breathes. "Don't… move…"

Then he brandishes a ruler from Shinigami-only-knows where and rams it onto her head. He grunts. Then he leans back and smacks her on the forehead with his thumb, which he rotates to the side and up again, repeatedly, eyes growing more dangerously psychotic by the minute.

"Wha…?" is about all Maka can articulate.

"Maka… Maka…" Kid purrs her name like it is honey on his tongue. Maka doesn't know whether he's going to cut her head off and mount it on the wall or kiss her. "Your… your pigtails are… PERFECTLY SYMMETRICAL!"

Maybe both, then?

"Uh… Oh…kay…" Maka says, self-consciously lifting a hand to touch her hair, but Kid is faster and swats it away. He yells, "DON'T TRIFLE WITH PERFECTION." Then much to her horror he adds, "You look perfect."

Oh dear sweet Shinigami, Maka thinks as she mentally wills some kind of natural disaster to distract her peers from this particularly embarrassing spectacle. A hurricane, a thunderstorm, a goddamn swirling vortex of death – anything!

But no disaster occurs and her thoughts are chorused by the tittering of her treacherous classmates and simultaneously singed by her own cursed blush. She entwines her hands in her lap, fearful of Kid's swift retribution if she dares to touch her own damn hair.

Liz comes to the rescue and yanks Kid off her like he's a dog humping her leg, seething: "Leave her alone, you brat!"

Cid saves the day when he arrives to start the lesson.

Black*Star and a flustered looking Tsubaki arrive fifteen minutes late. Maka tries her best to ignore Kid's disturbingly dreamy expression and Soul's unusually furious one as she attempts to be swallowed by her chair.

2.

Physical Education is next and Maka is almost too scared to get changed in case she messes up her hair.

It doesn't, so Kid drifts over to her the moment she steps out of the changing room, nodding approvingly at Maka's hair as if it's having a bloody conversation with him. Soul's glare could stop a speeding truck but Kid doesn't notice. He doesn't even break his trance when Liz berates him for the millionth time about being mentally deranged and threatens him with a case of harassment.

Teacher announces the goal of the class. Simple sparring. Normal enough. Except Kid sidles up to her and says, "How about we be partners today?"

Maka's jaw drops so fast it almost dislocates. Yep. That's it. Kid has definitely gone insane.

"How would that even work?" Maka blurts. "We're both meisters!"

"Details," Kid scoffs – as if that answers her question.

"Um… No. Thanks, but… no. No. Just no," Maka stutters, taking a few safe steps away. "Anyway it'll be more productive for Shibusen if we just stay with our assigned partners and -"

"Of course it will," Kid passionately agrees. "I'm merely proposing that for this physical education class –"

"Hey Kid," comes the gruff voice, dangerously level and creeping up behind Maka like a stalking tiger. "Why don't you back off, huh?"

Maka turns around, bemused. "Soul?"

Soul looks angry. In fact, he looks more than angry. He looks positively mad. He's hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts but his fingers are trembling with rage. His face is expressionless but his eyes are flashing, jaw tense from where he's gritting his teeth. Maka feels an alien emotion flutter in the pit of her stomach, sickly but pleasant; it makes her heart race to see him get worked up over… over…

Me?

Then Soul pulls her hair and the feeling dies.

"Yow!" she yelps, eyes watering from the pain. No book in sight, Maka karate chops him in the stomach and he doubles over with a grunt. "You idiot! What was that for? I haven't done anything!"

One red eye is closed in a wince, but he cocks the other up at her with a triumphant grin cracking his smug face. He's holding one of her hairbands.

Dumbly, Maka touches her hair and discovers half of it loose against her shoulders. Her gaze shoots to Kid, who stares wide eyed at her for a moment, before falling to his knees with a melodramatic wail.

Everyone is largely unsympathetic.

3.

The next morning begins as any normal morning would. Alarm goes off at 6am. Shower, breakfast, bag check, lesson recap. Acting as Soul's alarm clock, ushering him into the bathroom, hassling him out of it, cringing as he devours butter-drenched toast in three huge bites. They argue over who burnt the casserole last night (it was Blair). They argue over whose turn it is to do laundry. And all the while Maka struggles with her pigtails.

Then the normal morning is broken.

Half way through, Soul crosses the room and catches her hand in his, then brushes it gently to the side. He plucks the hairband held between her teeth and leans forward.

"What are you…?" Maka mumbles, and finds herself leaning back a bit. This in itself is a strange thing to do, for Soul and her have been connected in ways a normal person will never experience – their very souls have merged into a singular, tangible entity where their thoughts are as readable as written words.

Yet this seems much more personal. This is not a battle, or Soul Resonance. His long, pianist fingers make deft work of her hairband as he tugs her hair into pigtails, and all the while her eyes trace the strong curve of his neck, the unruly chunks of snowy hair brushing against his collar. He smells like buttery toast and toothpaste and she can see the slight rise and fall of his chest.

Then he takes a step back and holds out a thumb, just like Kid did yesterday. Maka feels a blush creep onto to her complexion beneath his crimson gaze as he turns his thumb left and right.

Eventually, both his hands retreat into the pockets of his biker jacket and he offers a satisfied nod.

"Perfectly Unsymmetrical," he says. "And don't even think about movin' 'em."

Maka decides that not-so-normal days can be pretty good too.