Not sure what this is. I wanted to do one with Soul as a vampire, but somehow this came out instead. Probably going to be sporadic. Again I fail at making a true oneshot.

Disclaimer: Soul Eater isn't mine, but if it were then there'd be 100% more SoMa makeouts in it.

"Hey."

Maka could barely think. Blood ran from the cut in her forehead down her nose and dripped on the floor. It was superficial, but head wounds always bled way more than she wanted them to. It was just a small percentage of the total blood on the floor, however, now that the witch she had been fighting had given up the ghost so to speak. It hadn't been a clean kill, her mama and papa couldn't know how badly she'd flubbed this assignment. Of course, her probably cracked ribs would give her away pretty fast when she got home tomorrow night.

"Hey. Tiny tits!"

That got her attention, her green eyes focusing on a crouching figure in the corner. Taking a defensive stance, lungs still heaving painfully against ribs that protested every sigh, Maka reached for the curved blade that should have been at her hip but instead was resting in the chilling body of the witch a few feet away.

"Well, you aren't deaf even if you're clearly stupid."

The man in the corner made no move towards her and on closer inspection she saw a shimmering barrier between them. It would have been impossible for a normal person to notice the barrier, but the pentacle carved then burned into the ground would have given things away eventually. The rivulets would have housed blood for the ritual, but it seemed to have dried up prior to her battle with the witch. So the demon had been here a while. He did look… hungry.

"What do you want, cursed one?"

"No need to get hostile, clearly I can't get near you. I was just trying to get your attention." If all you had seen was the loose black jeans and the red t-shirt you might have thought that some crazy old woman had chained up a random frat boy in her basement, but the shocking white hair and glowing red eyes kind of gave up his secret.

Maka stood up slowly, one arm wrapped protectively around her aching ribs and tried to use one tired arm to pull the short sword from the witch's body. It was lodged in there pretty tightly. Ugh.

"Hey, come on, I haven't been able to talk to a non-crazy sentient being in like weeks."

"I'm not interested in what you have to say." Maka said primly. Demons were tricky and she didn't want any part in whatever he thought he could talk her into, even if he looked more like he would be suited to loafing on a couch than any real threat. Appearances were deceiving in her world, though, and she was practically the poster child for that adage. She gave another sharp tug at the sword but it wasn't budging, and Maka only succeeded in giving herself a terrible pain in her side. Soon enough the rest of the coven would come to find out what happened to their archivist, and she needed to get this house blazing before the more powerful members arrived and liberated the spell books and scrolls. This was supposed to be a recon mission only, and Maka had already overstepped her mission parameters disastrously.

"I know you're going to have to 'get rid of the evidence' and even if you send this place up in flames I'm still going to be stuck in this stupid summoning circle."

"It isn't a circle. It's a pentagram." She was really trying not to talk to him, but there were some things she couldn't ignore.

"What the fuck do you care what I call it? You're not the one who gets to be a slave to the next witch who finds me in whatever smoldering heap is left once you set this place on fire."

Maka looked over at him, startled he could guess what was about to happen.

"Oh yeah, you think they don't know what you're up to? They spend a terrible lot of time talking about Witch Hunters you know, monitoring them too. I'm surprised you got the drop on this one. She was a paranoid old bat."

"Will you just shut up?" Maka knew she was wasting time, listening to him. Already she felt kind of bad for him. It wasn't like he had asked to be imprisoned in a basement. It didn't do her any good to have soft emotions for demon spawn. The blood of angels, many times diluted, ran in her veins and shouldn't she hate this guy on sight?

The grin he gave her, showing off his pointed teeth, didn't do anything to detract from that tanned handsome face. He let a hint of desperation bleed into his words. "Look, if you let me out of here before you burn this place down I will do just about anything for you."

"You just want to steal my soul. I'm not listening to you."

"For Death's sake, woman, I'm weak from a month of being starved, trapped in a pretty rock solid summon, and you still think I'm trying to get the upper hand on you instead of being perfectly level about the fact that I'd trade anything to just get the fuck out of here?!" He ran a hand through his mass of white hair and slammed two frustrated fists against the impermeable barrier for emphasis. It crackled with electric energy and he pulled back from it quickly. "What kind of demon do you think I am anyway?"

Maka looked him up and down and took at stab at the one she had always heard was popular among witches. "Incubus?"

"No, but at least now I know you think red eyes are a turn on." He gave her a grin again, then sat down with his legs crossed and leaned back on his hands.

Blushing furiously, Maka tried to control herself to keep her anger from causing her to take those deep painful breaths that came automatically when she wanted to retaliate against someone. One rib might be broken, not just cracked. It was hard to tell.

"Here's a clue." The demon said, and immediately she saw blades spring from his shoulders, sharp as sin and twice as deadly. Her wariness turned to deep elation that she had to stuff down deep inside of herself before he saw how swiftly her mood had shifted.

A demon weapon! "Why would a witch want to summon you? Witches don't wield demon weapons."

"Yet." His words sent a chill down her spine. A witch with a demon weapon would be truly formidable. "But I wasn't going to partner up with someone like that freaky old woman. Shrieking stuff at me from the start, telling me all these things about killing and world domination… sounded like a lot of work."

That didn't go along with what she knew of demons. "World domination not your thing?" She arched an eyebrow at him and walked closer to the barrier. Something about him was mesmerizing to her, even though she knew he had no powers while isolated by the magic that kept him tied to the pentagram.

"I have other hobbies that I find more interesting…" He said evasively, but she could have sworn he might have blushed.

"You must make your parents so proud." She said sarcastically.

His glowing eyes actually dimmed a little at that, and she felt guilty even though she wasn't sure why. "So you told the witch no and she was starving you out until you said yes. What do you eat?"

"Souls." He said evenly. "But I didn't have a taste for the ones she tried to bribe me with at first. Got to have a lot of tarnish on a soul before it's appetizing."

This witch had come onto her mother's radar because she had been killing innocent people randomly and somewhat frequently, so it was nice to know he hadn't been a part of that. The desperate old woman just didn't even try to understand what she was dealing with. Every demon had its own character, even if the vast majority were pure evil. The dumb old witch just happened to snag a demon with a moral compass, or discerning taste buds.

"Anything, huh?" Maka looked down at the demon who had been almost pouting, but now sprang to his feet to walk closer to her position by the barrier. Half lidded eyes were carefully examining her from head to toe, taking in her athletic build and determined expression.

"Just about. I'd even pretend to be an incubus for you, since you seemed into that. I'll ignore how small your chest is." He shoved his hands into his pockets and gave her a sly smile, fully aware he was winding her up.

"I should leave you here to deal with the whole coven for that!" That reminded her how little time she actually had and how stupid it was that she was standing here arguing.

The demon sighed. "You sure can't take a joke."

The dried blood on her face was itching now, and the adrenaline had worn off to the point where she felt more like sagging against the barrier than arguing with the demon inside. "Not right now I can't. Here's the deal—I'll let you out only if you agree to be my weapon."

"Wait a minute…" He didn't like the way things were turning, clearly.

"That means you will fight with me, you will protect me, and if it comes down to it… you will die with me." Maka knew he would never agree to something like that. It was too imbalanced. A demon would be a fool to let anyone own him with carte blanche like that. If he said no then she could turn around and walk away, and say she had tried. Once it was all burned down and after the coven had cleared out, then maybe she'd come back and release him with a proper contract written up. After years of being denied a demon weapon of her own here was the perfect opportunity!

He gave her a weighty stare, his mouth a thin tight line of displeasure, and she shrugged and turned to walk away. Disappointment weighed heavy on her mind as she considered if this might be her only chance.

"Wait!" His voice sounded strained. "You don't know what you're asking."

"You want my soul right? Well, you'd have access to it, wouldn't you? That's how a demon weapon works. We give each other power." She thought of her mama and papa, their fearsome bond, and their massive success at ridding the world of evil. But her mama had ended up losing her heart instead of her soul. Maka wouldn't be that kind of fool. "I might be back. I'm sure the witches won't torture you too badly…"

This battle had come close to killing her. If Maka was going to be as powerful as her mama, or Black Star, she was going to need a demon weapon of her own despite the warnings from her mama that it would change her. There was a reason her mama and papa had never taught her the summoning spell, and had made her swear an oath never to seek it on her own.

"My name is Soul Eater." The demon said in the silent room.

"Maka. Maka Albarn." She hadn't thought he'd really agree to this. Gaining a demon weapon usually involved contracts signed in blood, clauses of use and behavior to bind them both, or at the very least a handshake with some spit on it. Demons were about legality and they didn't just do things on the fly.

"Maka Albarn, your blood is my blood, your heart is my heart, your mind is my mind." It was only half of the binding; she could feel the magic waiting for a response. He would be hers but she would be free unless she wanted to reciprocate. This was the most trust any being had ever put in her hands and she was slightly awestruck that the only man that had taken her breath away in her two decades of life would be a supposedly soulless creature. He looked stricken as he clutched his chest and fell to the ground. "Fuck me, I didn't think it would feel like that!"

"Demon!" Maka rushed as quickly as she could to the barrier. There was a faint glow around him, and a sheen of sweat over his skin. It looked like he was wincing against a pain stark enough to have him biting at his lips. Blood so dark it looked black oozed out slowly from the cuts his teeth were causing.

"It's like someone dropped a anvil on my chest! I need some time to adjust to this. I'm going to transform for a while, if you can get us both out before you get turned into a ball of ash by an angry witch…" Maka sputtered indignantly, and he gave her a pained smile as his body elongated and thinned out. A shining scythe lay where a man had been before.

Pick me up, Maka. His voice came directly into her head, more like a whisper than anything. I belong to you now so the binding should allow you to remove me from the circle.

"Pentagram." She said automatically.

Oh for fuck's sake…

The barrier was just a tingle as she reached through it, and she could feel the tension singing in his demon steel as she pulled him out. If a blade could sag with relief, Soul certainly did once he was out of the summoning spell.

"That heaviness you feel is because our souls are connected now." Maka said, ignoring her sword still lodged in the witch and trudging up the basement steps to go find something to start a fire with. "It will be extra hard for you to adjust at first because I have a somewhat unique family trait." Every few generations there was a grigori soul, but she didn't want to give everything about herself away just yet. The feeling of Soul slipping around in her mind was too foreign and her walls were firmly in place.

She had never trained with a scythe before, only pole arms occasionally to mix things up, but Soul's weight and the balance felt weirdly right. It was her mother's weapon of choice, not hers, but this seemed like fate. The urge to swing him around and laugh was powerful, but her ribs kept reminding her that freedom of motion was a luxury she'd have to wait a while to gain back.

You're petty hurt. I couldn't guess it before, but I can feel it now. It almost sounded like concern. The eye she had thought was painted near where blade met shaft blinked suddenly, and Maka gripped him even more tightly. She always fought fear by pulling it closer to her heart.

"The witches are coming. I don't have enough time to start a fire. Damn it! They'll see everything and they'll know who did this…" Her mama would beat the living snot out of her for being so careless if she got out of here alive.

We'll be fine. Just get that tightly puckered little ass of yours out of here right now. His buzzing amusement at her indignation over his reference to her body parts had her swearing darkly that once she got home she'd store him in a closet for sure.

The rental car she'd used to get to this remote farmhouse was parked nearly a mile away. She started to slog her way through the marshy woods towards her car, and felt the souls of the coven quickly intensify. They were close. She had lingered with Soul too long in that basement and she'd be lucky to get away from this alive.

Do you have cable? Soul sounded so wistful, she actually did smile, feeling her split lip open up painfully again.

"Yes."

Waves of contentment came off of her demon weapon, calming her. Maka suddenly realized that since he was stuck here on this plane of existence now instead of the Infernal realm, he would have to live in her tiny one bedroom apartment with her. He had no money, no clothes, and no I.D. The hope of keeping this a secret for even a little while was basically a pipe dream.

"Better learn to love the couch…" she said, to Soul's general confusion.