11I do not own Soul Eater. WARNING – MULTIPLE DRUG REFERENCES. High amount of swearing. Enjoy.
RUMOR HAS IT
by Lisp.
Day Three
Excellent.
He's been here for about three days, and he's already that guy.
At high school, everyone has a weird little alias, a personality defect that gets tacked onto the end of their name. Cheerleader, slut, nerd, shy kid. His is usually somewhere along the lines of demon or Satan's long lost kid, holy shit, thanks to the blessed genes which decided at birth partial albinism needed to fuck with his already deficient chances at people skills. But now, he's got this one too, a niggling little add-on that'll make these next two years a whole lot harder.
"Hey, did you see the new kid?"
"Oh, you mean that scary-looking guy with the giant headphones? Yeah, he seems totally indie, above it all, you know?"
"Oh, you mean that dude who always taps out piano rhythms on his desk? I heard he transferred here from some prodigious musical program."
"Oh, that one who has the concert violinist brother? Yeah, I heard he's really famous over in Europe."
"Oh, you mean music guy?"
Music guy. For the love of God. What has he just spent seven months trying to escape from? It's like the universe hurling shit at him in the form of Shibusen Academy, because Soul hasn't just wasted the better half of the year escaping from the parental-approved O.N.I School of the Arts to be lumped in with the alternative band-obsessed musos of his first ever public school.
Okay, elite academy. But one filled with lockers and regular children, and most importantly, no reality-TV star moms.
Damn him for thinking some familiar playlists could keep his social anxiety at bay for the first week. Damn him for forgetting that not everyone was a weird artsy genius here who would think nothing of leather jackets or headphones. Damn him for being too paranoid of his creepy vampire eyes to just walk up to a random kid and introduce himself.
He's going to stop listening to music in the corridors starting tomorrow.
If only everyone was a little more scared of him here. They're whispering about his weird hair and 'hipster' mix of genetic complication and badass wardrobe in the back rows of biology classes, he's well aware. But they're not quite fearful enough to prevent speculation about his rich family or semi-famous brother, and the ties that come with it.
Soul twists his locker handle and sighs when it opens to reveal a bunch of rainbow fliers. Apparently the word on his former school has gotten out, because the goddamn concert band, orchestra, choir and a bunch of dead-beat garage acts keep sending him enrolment forms or concert tickets. He's pretty sure one singer-girl even thinks he's secretly a record-label worker looking for the next big thing. Who the fuck welcomes a new kid not by shaking their hand and saying 'hi', but filling their locker with a whole tree's worth of paper?
"Damn it all to Hell."
He ignores furtive glances from the departing student body – "Does anyone even know his real name yet? I think I heard it on the roll, but it's really weird, maybe they're foreign superstars" – and starts to shovel out the nuisances. There is a nearby bin, and he dumps whatever doesn't slip out of his arms unceremoniously, cursing when his English novel falls in there between a CD demo and a tryout time for the choir.
Right. The halls are nearly empty now. Maybe that means he can try to find the library to borrow some new sheet music in secret, without everyone starting rumours he's working on a full studio album of celebrity covers.
After getting lost in no less than four different corridors, he ends up in front of a set of mahogany and bronze double doors. Sighing at the eccentricity of what initially seemed like such a nice, mundane place, he enters and instantly shrinks into his jacket a little at the cavernous space above him.
"How do they even reach those shelves up at the ceiling?" he muses aloud, trying to see the tiny blurred squares which must be books all the way at the top of the rows. It's relaxing to talk to himself, batshit crazy as it sounds – no questions get asked when you already know you're a semi-failure prodigy with no mysterious angle.
Well, at least he thinks he's by himself, which is why the voice from above scares the living crap out of him. "That's what these tall ladders are for, obviously."
"Christ, who was that?" he mutters, spinning comically to find the voice's owner. "Who's there?"
"Look up," the disembodied voice replies, and his gaze follows one of the stepladders until he notices a girl half-way up the one to the right. Hell, he hadn't even seen her until now – the faded navy sweater she wears blends in perfectly with the encyclopaedias she blocks. It looks like a girl, probably a junior by her petite form, with ashy hair loosely tied up in twin tails. "See me now?" She waves for emphasis, still perusing the heavy tomes.
He nods, transfixed for a second because she's in such a perfect state of camouflage, before snapping back to his usual self. Cold exterior on, slouch activated. She'll turn around and figure out who he is in a second, this petite expert of disguise.
Music guy.
And oh, the stares or frightened shrieks or whispers will flow.
"Ah, cool," he replies vaguely, preparing to escape.
The girl turns and smiles at him, although she's still a little pre-occupied with looking at the stairs as she starts to descend, so she hasn't really looked at him yet. Once she's three from the bottom, she jumps off with a light spring, the huge volume tucked under her left arm still perfectly secure.
She could be a dancer at O.N.I. She really could.
"Do you need help finding anything in here?" she asks confidently. "I know my way around pretty well." Huh. Maybe not a junior?
"'S'all good, thanks. I was just looking for the music section, you know where it is, uh - ?"
"Maka. My name is Maka," she replies, misunderstanding his trailed-off speech and sticking out a hand for him to shake. He takes it, feeling bemused. Only his tutors and his brother's social connections do handshakes, as far as he knows. Surely kids aren't this far from what they look like on the movies.
He realises too late his mistake.
"Hey . . . aren't you the new guy who started here on Monday?"
Shit. Her eyes are lighting up with interest now. The girl – Maka – is the first one he's really spoken to here, and he'd been doing so well! She hadn't gotten excited or scared looking at him for that little space of time, and he'd started to let the walls down. Now he's gotta' do what he does best and run for it while he can.
"Yeah. Name's Soul." His tone is succinct, not really going anywhere with the conversation and showing it. However, Maka persists and asks him whether he's enjoying Shibusen. Probably just working her way up to a scoop.
Soul decides then and there that he doesn't have the energy to be judged again today, critiqued and picked apart until he feels like he has to fake his way through something as simple as conversation with a peer, so he gives a non-committal grunt, answers a few quick queries, makes an excuse and walks right back out of the place.
Maka looks a little disappointed, left holding her heavy book and welcoming hospitality bundled up in her arms by the doorway. He flinches and turns back, justifying his cowardly run.
There's probably still kids studying in there. He forgot that dance classes or musical recitals won't take up public-school afternoons. Sure, he might want to improve his friends list at least a little, but going in there with his dumb brain and trying to chat up the brainiacs will just make everyone realise sooner that he isn't truly smart enough to be here.
Oh, how easy it is to spot the rich kids at elite academic academies.
There's gotta' be a music shop somewhere in town; but if anyone sees him go in there, his music guy reputation will be confirmed before he can shake it. Man, it would be nice to not refrain in order to make a first impression that combats his scary face and oh-so-perfect brother. Maybe he should bring Wes here for a day and parade him around until he, Soul, is once again underrated and old news as usual.
Footsteps follow him down the front staircase of Shibusen, stragglers leaving the school later like him with cars or bikes or tolerant parents. He'd burned fifteen minutes or so bumming around, and some after-school meetings must have finished. Maybe Maka's behind him. He still feels a little dick-ish for just dismissing her like that, but it's what he's on auto-pilot for. Maybe if he'd just persisted and spoke a little more around those horrid sharp teeth, she might have given him a place to sit for lunch. Maybe he should try to talk to her in English tomorrow, he's pretty sure they share it . . .
Soul is keeping his head down – as much as he can with that stupid shock of white hair – when his watch starts to beep.
"Shit, is it four already?" he asks the air.
Indeed it is. The watch won't shut up now, but it isn't just trilling the hour. It's telling him he has to take his medication, right on schedule.
Sighing, Soul ducks away from the rest of the stragglers, leaning against one of the great spires at the side of the building. He pulls a little box out of his pocket, shuddering at the pink and blue pills inside. Well, it's gotta' be done.
He places the blue one on his tongue, swallowing quickly. Warfarin has never particularly been kind to him, as lifesaving as it may be. When he's dry-swallowed all the necessary medication, he slides the clear plastic box back into his pocket. That ought to keep him healthy for another day. He shakes his head twice, rubs his eyes, and fishes around for his keys in his pockets, laughing after a minute to himself when he realises they've been sitting in his motorcycle's ignition all day.
Unfortunately, he doesn't see the boys leaving the science block as he slips back around the corner. Soul doesn't take any notice of anyone, simply letting his medication work its way through his system as he mounts his bike – yet another cause for discussion in the student body, but fuck them, he loves this thing – and starts the drive home.
As his wheels turn under him and the wind whips his jacket out into the warm Nevada air, a new add-on is making its way into the life of Soul Evans, a tag-line which might just prove more damaging than the musical thread.
"Oh, that Soul kid? Yeah, Harvar and I saw him popping pills this afternoon behind the main office. He just started laughing afterwards for no reason, it was weird."
"I heard he drove around for hours high on some hallucination shit."
"Oh, the new stoner muso?"
"Yeah. The kid on drugs."
Day Sixteen
Soul kind of wishes he'd just stayed the cool foreign millionaire kid. He never thought he'd admit that, yet here he is. God, this academy is cruel.
A drug addict.
Since he only regularly talks to one person in the whole place, it had taken him a fair while to figure out what was being said behind his back.
By then, it was too late. Seven more people had seen him taking suspicious bright tablets on the oval or in the parking lot, and someone mentioned that they'd seen him throwing away a used syringe out in the city. He was officially no longer music guy, now drugged-out burnout with criminal connections, thanks to his trusty motorbike and shark-tooth combo. He looks like an axe-murderer, and hey, who knows what a cashed up druggie will do for a fix?
It's funny how everyone likes to call him this when he walks past. Before, it was a sort of hushed awe that kept the rumours at bay. Everyone was half terrified of his satanic looks and half amazed at his clear foreign-ness and rich-ness and celebrity connections. Now that they think he's a waste of space loser with nothing better to spend cash on than LSD and weed, they have no problem with loudly criticising him as he walks past. Well, not too loudly – they don't want him to whip out an army knife and fuck their shit up right then and there.
He's seen that girl Maka a fair few times since the meeting in the library. After talking to her, he'd decided – she was going to be his first attempt at making a proper friendship here. She'd be his test of the waters, to see if anyone here might be anything more High-School-Musical, less Easy-A. She has English with him, as well as Bio. She's one of those A-student stereotypes, apparently, top of all her classes and involved in every extracurricular thing she can get her hands on. Seeing this made him feel a little better on the days after he'd first talked to her, when she'd seemingly given him the cold shoulder. He'd believed she just hadn't had time to still be friendly so he could apologise for dodging her.
Once he heard the rumours, he figured out why she was avoiding him like the plague. It didn't take long to confirm his suspicions about her opinion of him, because it oozed out of her every time they passed in the hall. Each time, she made eye contact – more ballsy than most of the other judgmental hypocrites, then, to look at the 'blood stare', or so the football team was calling it – and sniffed, striding away usually accompanied by a tall Japanese girl.
Apparently, popping pills really kills the welcoming vibe. How he wishes someone had told him. Maybe he could put that with his serial-killer appearance on a resume and be the next horror movie villain.
Maybe if he hadn't been so antisocial on his first day, he'd have made an alliance with someone enough to share the extremely personal fact that oh yeah, he takes daily medication for a rare combination of blood conditions.
He's on Warfarin to prevent blood clots due to a premature and repeated issue with hypercoaguable state and repeated overproduction and early expiry of red blood cells*, and these people think he's on acid. Of course, the staff know he isn't an addict, because it's all on his enrolment files. They can't tell anyone though, because his parents have ramped up the privacy on his files due to their mistrust of public schools. He's never told a soul outside his family circle about the medical issue willingly, but now he wishes he had a little bit of forward planning. Even at O.N.I it would be weird to start taking tablets on campus. It's just easier here than at home in his apartment with no visual stimulation or people to remind him. He has to take the damn things twice a day, at twelve-thirty and four, one to thin out his blood and the other to provide vitamins and nutrients which prevent the blood cells from dying off and cutting off his air supply. But nobody asks why the tablets are always taken around the same time of day, or why he had a cotton ball taped to his arm as a clear sign of a blood test last week. Nobody cares.
Soul's taken to wearing his headphones again now. It blocks the whispers out for a little while.
All he wanted was to become another run-of-the-mill, regular high-schooler. Now he's a fucking protagonist for the most depressing teen-outcast movie ever.
Day Twenty-Three
He slams shut his now-empty locker, noting with humour that nobody wants him to listen to shitty mix-tapes anymore and that's a bit of a relief. The track sports team has training today, and he's spent the last two weeks watching a kid called Blake, or Black*Star to the squad, run his laps and do his training routine, out on the bleachers.
God bless Blake. He's a kid who seems to love attention so much that he doesn't care who gives it to him, be it a music-producer or a convicted junior criminal pothead. Black*Star is too busy preaching about his supreme skill to listen to Soul's justification of his medication, but he also yells so much that the bitchy students get drowned out. Not many people seem to tolerate him for long, but Soul reckons they'll get along fairly well. It's like the ultimate radar protection, hiding under something that shines so bright you're temporarily invisible. Plus, the kid lets him carpool on Wednesdays, so he ain't gonna' turn down an opportunity to save fuel.
He hauls his iPad out of the locker, bringing his headphones and a Biology textbook along to occupy his time. He's gotta' haul ass to keep up in these academic classes, because Blake is only here on sports scholarship, and he doesn't have any nerdy friends to copy off.
Blake's blue hair is already visible on the other side of the oval when he gets out there, but a tanned and thickly muscled arm punches the air in a wave and salute combination. Soul flicks his wrist in reply, trying not to draw too much attention to himself, and collapses on the hard metal seats. He's got to take his medication in twenty minutes, so he needs to be ready to make a 'bathroom break' then. Black*Star gets suspicious if he isn't being watched for over five minutes, but Soul doesn't want to be seen taking his tablets.
Eighteen minutes to go. This respiratory system theory is just flying over his head.
Fourteen minutes to go. Black*Star's lapped six kids now, and he's not even sweating enough for a drinks break.
Seven minutes to go. A guy called Kilik comes over to retrieve a baseball and says a few words to him. As far as Soul can tell, Kilik doesn't think he murdered his uncle like a group of sophomores were saying. It shoots a burst of warmth through his veins.
Two minutes to go. He stands and waves to his only friendly acquaintance and vacates the stands, feeling for the accursed clear box in his pocket and wishing he didn't have to take the damn things periodically on the timer, yet knowing that if he waited half an hour every day to take them, he'd surely cramp up. The coast is clear as Soul strolls casually to the bathroom – nothing wrong with a regular guy going there, right, no way he's off to sexually assault a poor by-passer or stab a cop. These stories people invent about him really are fantastic. . .
"On school property? You're disgusting, Evans."
Oh. Oh no. His hand freezes in its withdrawal of the plastic box. Too early! He isn't quite at the bathrooms yet, and now the worst possible person has come along.
Maka eyes his medication shrewdly, unimpressed by the admittedly suspicious plastic baggie it is in inside the clear cigarette lighter-sized case. He tries to shove it back in his pocket, but it's too late and he knows it.
"What are you doing here?" It's all he can manage in his shock and humiliation.
She raises a pale eyebrow, unimpressed. "Cheerleading practice." That explains those booty shorts – shit, stop looking, she probably thinks you're gonna jump her and add to your minor offences register. "I would ask what you're doing, but I already know."
Despite his trembling hands, he steels his nerve. Fuck it, he's got every right to be here. "For your information, I'm here watching my friend Blake train for track. He's giving me a ride home this afternoon."
So there. He's not shooting up or swallowing things or whatever it is, Hell, he literally knows nothing about drug terminology for fuck's sake. He isn't hanging around here like a weird loser. He's just doing teenage things, he's a cool guy who nobody can cut a break to because he's a little bit of a dick and actually quite sick, and nobody will let him explain that they've all got the wrong idea.
"Really." Maka looks half-surprised for a moment before she zones back in on the Warfarin. "Then what's that in your hand? Because it looks to me like you shouldn't be taking it on school property."
"It isn't – wait, just school property?"
"I don't care if you do it at home, but here? That's just giving the school a bad name, and you're too new here to have a right to impact its reputation."
"Look, Maka, could you just let me explain?"
"No, Soul!" she interrupts, advancing. He's too surprised that she remembered his name to react. "Now, I don't believe half the rumours floating around here about you, but this kind of gross act just can't happen at Shibusen. You're going to drive home on your bike while off your face and kill someone. What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking I need to stay alive, thank you very much!"
Her eyes soften a little and he jolts back when he realises she's right in front of him. "Soul, high school is hard, and it sucks moving away from where you're comfortable. But drugs aren't the answer, so don't say they'll help you live!"
"No, I don't mean they make me feel good," he says, exasperated, "I mean, they're what lets me breathe-"
"Maka CHOP!"
Oh Jesus. He's just been murdered, he knows it. Soul drops to the ground, his head screaming like it's just been split open - it might have been with a blow like that. How does a tiny-ass junior-looking girl make a punch like that? Dear God, his normal-high school fantasy is turning into something out of fucking Fight Club. He shakes his head to try and dislodge the bits of brain which are surely leaking out into his hair, seeing three of everything and trying not to throw up.
Maka looms over him with her arms crossed, his plastic pill box in her hand. She gives it a rattle and shakes her head at him, looking disappointed. "I thought I could get through to you, Soul, I really did. Yet you were going to take them here anyway, weren't you?"
He's too busy trying to figure out which of the four Makas in his blurred line of vision is speaking to defend himself.
"I can't let you break the law on school property anymore, and I don't want you to just throw your life away here because a high takes away your problems. Everyone has issues, I know, but there are better ways to work through them."
Yeah, she's got problems. Nosiness and the fact that she currently has six eyes. Fuck, she thinks he's on drugs but he's sure she's gotta' be on steroids for a blow like that. He shrugs himself into a sitting position and rubs his temple, trying to gather his thoughts coherently and get this shitstorm sorted before the tornado hits.
But it's too late for that.
"This is for your own good, Evans," Maka says calmly, tipping his medication onto the ground at his feet. Before he can pick it up, she slams one trainer-clad heel into the centre of the plastic baggie and the pills inside shatter into brightly coloured dust.
"There are counsellors and people who can help –"
"Why . . ."
"– and people who'll support you through it. I know it isn't my business, but I just hate to watch people throw their lives away –"
"Would you . . ."
"- so if you want, I can help you work on quitting, you seem like an all-right guy –"
"Maka, I've got a blood disorder and you just gutter-stomped my medication."
Her mouth freezes mid-word, a comical pink 'O'. There. It's out in the open, someone knows he's actually some Fault-In-Our-Stars reject rather than a beanie-wearing addict, and it doesn't feel nearly as reassuring as he'd hoped. Instead, it makes his stomach squirm. Oh, how he hates confiding any sort of defects in himself to people.
At O.N.I, it was so easy to be cool, to speak to nobody because he was able to pretend he was a successful artist who expressed himself through music rather than words. Despite how long he'd fought with his parents and Wes about this, maybe he wasn't ready for public school when he started up. He sure doesn't feel like it now.
"Blood d-disorder?"
"Plasma's defective so I have a hypercoaguable state, meaning it clots at random unless I take blood thinners. I also have a condition where the red blood cells aren't sustainable or in fast enough supply in my system, so I have to take supplements." There's no emotion in his voice. He may as well be telling the doctor where it hurts. Soul rises to a shaky stand, clutching his head. "Specialists reckon it's caused by the gene defect of the albinism, but I just think my blood's black."
"Then the syringe –"
"– Was actually just a pricker. I have to check my iron and blood sugar levels every week because some of these meds haven't been tested on people my age. Hell, do you do karate or something? I think my brain's busted."
She looks thunderstruck and sheepish and he is goddamn glad. That guilt worming across her features is well deserved, it's deserved on everyone. "Crap, I – I had no idea. I mean, I didn't believe you even did drugs until I saw you taking some last Wednesday before Gym. I've been trying to tell my friends to stop about the criminal stuff, too, but all the signs were there, and you . . ."
"I'm actually just a bit ill," he mutters, crouching to pick up the pieces of crushed baggie. When she doesn't move, he plucks the plastic box back from her grip too. "Now, if you don't mind, I have to get home and fill these back up. Maybe slip down a few roofies while I'm at it to forget this whole thing. Who knows, with this headache we might get lucky, and I'll O.D. on painkillers. Later, Maka. Can't wait to see what the school says about this tomorrow."
This time she's left watching him retreat yet again, but her pride has been dropped to the ground and regret spills from her eyes to fill up her empty arms.
Good.
By next week he'll probably be told by the student body he has stage four cancer and they're all starting a support rally for him.
He hates Shibusen. He hates everyone in it.
He hates everywhere he goes. Maybe the buildings aren't the problem.
Day Twenty-Four
She's so adept at this whole camouflage business that he doesn't even see her until she's right beside him, her tray balanced expertly in one hand and a block of chocolate in the other.
"Hi, Soul."
"Hey."
"Sorry."
And that's how he finds himself seated beside her in the cafeteria, ignoring the weird stares he gains for having the audacity to sit beside the head cheerleader, debate team captain, prom committee leader and student body president.
From that day onward, he never leaves her side, and she never leaves his life, and the only tag that gets added to either of them is the 'Evans' tacked on to the end of her name.
*- A hypercoaguable state is a legitimate blood disorder, and daily doses can sometimes be used to treat accelerated cases, but Soul's condition was made up from minimal scientific research. I really like taking the idea of him having the Black Blood into other AUs and seeing how it works if it's just a regular human problem.
