1A/N: two notes. A) I'm back to Soul Eater with 3k notes waiting to be sorted but first thing first, a quickie to start the year, and B) I now have a Ko-Fi page.
Arithmetics of Happiness
Living with Maka can be defined with what she adds and substracts.
While he grabbed the opportunity to build himself a new identity and life faraway from the Evans name, he didn't give much thought into the traditions celebrated in the school he was getting into. Partnership and settlement, as important as it was, didn't seem so life-changing at the first glance. Yet, living with Maka could be defined with what she added and subtracted.
Maka took away his freedom to trot around going about business in nothing but boxers, always insisting that she wouldn't take anything less than a pair of shorts despite him claiming that the amount of clothing he wore wouldn't affect his performance in doing house chores. The argument had taken life in many forms, from gentle jabs to attempts at bribery (ice cream and cookies) to various degrees of Maka Chops, but nothing had ever gotten it settled in the way they could both be satisfied with. At least, until a very awkward incident involving Blair happened.
She excelled in her studies (and more or less everything else) and demanded the same out of her partner, meaning that he couldn't really slack off much unless he wanted to risk incurring her wrath. Studying and prepping for exams felt a little bit too much like his mundane civilian life, but he wasn't going to sacrifice what good things he had just because he flunked. So he did study. Maybe he cheated. Sometimes. Just don't tell Maka.
Maka could also be very invasive and she wouldn't tolerate him brooding longer than a few hours on weekends. Try he could be, he would still end up at the basketball courts for a 'friendly' game with Black Star and the gang, at the practice grouds massively exhausted for yet another extra lessons being an overachiever she was, or at their favorite ice cream parlor, she chiding him into talking with obscene heapings of chocolatey goodness. She did respect his privacy despite anything, and as the time they spent together to know each other grew with the understanding of their difference in me-time style and coping mechanisms, she left him more and more to his own devices. The ice cream stayed, though, and he would be forever damned to admit that the two hours of conversations over a Sunday treat would always be one of the highlight in his weeks.
He no longer had his army of gardeners, servants, cooks, drivers of the Evans estate, but waking up to the smell of Maka's freshly prepared breakfast was one of the best feeling in the world. She wasn't a terribly good cook at the beginning, but she improved with leap and bounds because she wasn't going to let cranky stove and old microwave beat her. She sought to master the arts of frying, blanching, cutting, seasoning, what you may, and came out triumphant. That was how dinner was supposed to be like, with him and Maka and occasionally Blair, and maybe Black*Star and Tsubaki if that harebrained muscle saw it fit to crash through the evening, or maybe the rest of the team too because peaceful was never part of their vocabulary. It was those little domestic happiness that he wouldn't tell a soul he cherished.
Maka gave him his music back. Amazingly musically disabled, the little girl had accepted his music wholly, praising him for the dark notes unwanted by people whose legacy he shouldered. While all the education he went through was of his family's will, the music was his. It was his to play and used as he wished, and he would play it for his friends. It was his legacy.
And more importantly, living with her meant he would never be alone. Even after he contracted the black blood, Maka stayed through the thick and thin. She was there with a glass of water after a particularly brutal nightmare, suppressing shy smile to offer him a company. She was there with him curling on the sofa, asleep at the end of the day with the satisfaction of a mission accomplished. He went out for solo assignments missing her chasing him around for a sarcastic remarks or a boyish teasing, then welcomed home by a pair of dainty hands with a surprisingly strong hug.
Living with Maka could be defined with what she added and subtracted, and as far as his arithmetics of happiness was concerned, the equation came out positive.
