Maka has, at heart, always been a practical girl. She wears skirts not because she's trying to be more girly (no matter what her peers think), but because they're the easiest uniform Shibusen offers that she can move in. She can't imagine doing the kind of gymnastics she manages with anything less than the full range of movement that her skirt provides. Paired with her sturdy boots, it's a logical and effective combo.

So, when puberty slams into her like a well-placed wrecking ball, she adapts. Maybe not well at first. Soul's first inclination that something not normal might be up with his meister is the fact that he's getting a rather lot more chops to the cranium for what seems like the most inconsequential things. He doesn't immediately make the connection, however, that she's thirteen and her hips are starting to widen and her breasts are growing slowly but surely, and he blames it on the fact it seems he spends a good portion of his time in varying states of book-induced unconsciousness. She feels a little bad about it, but not enough to really stop until she figures out that she's not really mad at him, she's frustrated. She's frustrated and starting to stare at her partner in ways that are new and unsettling, and moreover, irritating. She catches herself anticipating his daily strut between the bathroom and his bedroom in naught but a towel, or the way he and Black*Star take their shirts off when they start playing basketball. Really, it's Black*Star that does it for her. Soul she can kind of understand; when she starts staring at her childhood friend, at the way his muscles bunch and stretch, at the sweat gleaming on his skin, and feels her cheeks flush and her abdomen ache, something clicks in her brain.

Because it's Black*Star, and she's never been attracted to him before, her nerd brain finally puzzles out what's been going on. Times like these, she wishes that her mother was still here. This particular problem wasn't something she would ever talk to her father about (assuming she would talk to him about anything personal ever again, which wasn't looking likely), and it wasn't really the kind of conversation she wanted to have via a letter that she didn't know would arrive before her mother had moved on to her next location. Instead, she has coffee with Liz and Tsubaki and Pattie, and manages to only blush a little when she blurts out,

"How do you deal with this?"

"Deal with what?" Tsubaki asks, head cocked to one side.

"This," Maka says, gesturing to herself. "Puberty. Stuff is happening to me, and my brain is going funny, and I'm angry all the time and...and," she leans in closer, voice a strained whisper, "boys." Liz laughs at this, and Maka glares.

"Boys? Is that all?"

"I caught myself staring at Black*Star," she hisses, and Tsubaki's eyes widen.

"So? He's not bad looking," Liz rejoins, and Tsubaki's eyes dart over to their blond friend. Maka still looks completely traumatized.

"Black*Star is like my brother. A brother I can barely stand. He's just...ugh-"

"Muscle~y?" Pattie supplies.

"Ripped?" Liz adds.

"Oh, oh, beefcakey."

"Studly?" There's the sound of ceramic shattering and Tsubaki is wide-eyed and red-faced, holding a broken tea mug.

"Can we please stop talking about Black*Star," she asks, voice strained. The Thompson girls raise matching eyebrows and Pattie barely restrains a giggle.

"Oh god, yes please stop talking about Black*Star. I think I'm going horf." Liz just grins and taps well-manicured fingers on the table.

"Maybe we should discuss Soul, instead? Those piercing red eyes, that dreamy tanned skin..." Maka can feel her face flushing atomic pink and she snaps,

"Only if we start talking about Kid, too!" Liz blushes faintly, but doesn't back down.

"Sure, if you want."

"Muscle~y," Pattie adds. Maka's head thumps onto the table.

"Let's just...not. I just need to know how to not feel so-"

"Wired?"

"Crazy?"

"Frustrated?"

"Horny?" Her face gets redder and redder at the different suggestions, primarily because she can't really discount any of them. They're all pretty accurate to what she's feeling on an hourly basis.

"Yes," she mumbles into the table. She doesn't anticipate Tsubaki's hand patting her shoulder consolingly, or her soft voice providing the answer.

"It's simple," she says, and Maka turns her head to stare at her friend. "Masturbate." It's said with the sort of quiet finality that only Tsubaki possesses, and though everyone's jaw drops at her pronouncement, Maka's brain is also turning swiftly. It makes sense in a strange way. She is feeling very tense, and orgasms are supposed to release all manner of endorphins. She sits up and gives her friend a speculative look.

"How?"

And so, Maka adapts.

Soul, for the most part doesn't notice. If he's subjected to fewer strikes to the brain, he's not questioning why, because that might result in more chopping. Anything that takes his meister's attention away from him is a-ok in his book, because he too has been hit hard by the puberty stick. The problem is not so much that he's spending more and more time staring at his best friend and roommate, but that his body seems to think that just about anything Maka does is a great reason to get a boner the size and force of which is really just completely unreasonable. His pants get baggier in an effort to draw as little attention to his new-found propensity for erections, and he's never been happier for Maka's continued distraction.

The worst part is that it's not like he doesn't crank it. Cause he does, dear god. It's just that he shares an apartment with a nosy, cranky girl who wants to do things like bang his door down when he doesn't answer her immediately, and then by the time she's calmed down, they've gained another fucking roommate who has even less respect for personal space. He's pretty much limited to locking and barricading himself in the pisser if he wants to rub one out, and even then he's gotta be quick cause there's only one bathroom.

He's sixteen before he stops popping boners every time his meister bends over in that skirt or when she comes out of the bathroom in a towel...or her sleep shorts, or when she's sprawled on the couch with her stomach exposed, or when she loosens her tie and starts to unbutton her white shirt, or when she shakes her hair out from her pigtails...the list is longer than he wants to think about. He's just relieved that he can finally stop being so fucking self-conscious, and he assumes that this means he'll stop being so damn aware of Maka and everything goddamn thing she does. What it really means is that he doesn't get quite as many awkward stiffies, and he still watches her like some kind of attentive dog.

On the plus side, at least it's not a national emergency every time he goes into his room for some alone time. As a result, he eases off being quite so stringent about knocking on every closed door in the apartment. On the downside, that means when he knocks on Maka's door, and he hears her muffled reply, he automatically goes ahead and opens the door. He's not really expecting anything other than his meister, maybe sitting at her desk, or curled up on her bed reading, so when he's confronted with the sight of Maka, long legs spread haphazardly across her delicate pink bedspread, fingers still buried deep in her crotch, and eyes wide and startled, it takes him a moment to process the scene before half of his blood rushes to his face and the other half goes immediately to his dick, and he's turning around and shutting the door as fast as he can.

Alone in her room, Maka whines in frustration. She pumps her fingers a few more times, but she's completely lost the build up. And then there's Soul. She'd been immersed in what she was doing, but she'd caught the look of complete shock on her partner's face. There's a ringing bang from the kitchen, and she sighs again and gives up, tugging her skirt back down over her thighs.

When she emerges, Soul is in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher with as much force as possible. She thinks that he might be muttering under his breath, but she's not entirely sure.

"Soul?" He whips around fast enough to give himself a crick in the neck, and she can't help but feel a little pleased that his face is still bright red at the sight of her. He whips back around to grant his attention once more to the hapless dishes, but not before Maka notices he's still sporting wood. There's a tiny seed of an idea growing in her brain, but what she says instead is, "I'm sorry." He chokes a little.

"For what, choking the chicken?" Maka grins a little, but Soul is still studiously staring at the dishes.

"No, more like playing with kitty, since I lack the necessary equipment to 'choke the chicken'." Soul does choke this time, and she can see the delicious flush of red spread down the back of his neck. "And, no, I'm not apologizing for masturbating. It's a healthy, reasonable thing to do to trigger the release of endorphins."

"Oh is that what you were doing; I didn't notice." It doesn't take a genius to decipher the sarcasm.

"Like you don't? It's a good way to relieve stress. Sometimes I just get so...frustrated and wound up and there's nothing works so you just have to release the tension somehow." She's moving closer to her partner as she talks, almost unconsciously. She can feel the lingering tension in her body, curling through her abdomen at the sight of Soul's broad shoulders, the way his hair brushes the collar of his t-shirt. "You look tense, Soul." At that, he finally turns and shoots her a look over his shoulder.

"You think?" It comes out as a frustrated growl, which does things to that tension in her abdomen. The seed of an idea is sprouting and she's close enough now that she wraps her arms around Soul's torso, fingers splayed across the muscles of his stomach. Her body hums in response to the tactile sensation.

"I have a...solution for tension," she offers, and it feels so bold, so wicked, but her voice is still just a whisper in his ear. Maka is nearly pressed completely against his back now, and she swears she can feel the blood pounding through his veins. Soul groans, and she feels it reverberate through her chest as she watches his fingers clench and unclench on the counter.

"Do you?" he finally asks, and she's about the say yes when he continues, "Because I have been tense around you for the last three, nearly four years, and now you're offering a solution?" Unsure, she loosens her grip slightly, and Soul takes the opportunity to twist in her grasp, and suddenly Maka is presented with empirical evidence of just how strung out her partner really is. His jeans do little to hide the feel of his cock, hard and pressed insistently against her abdomen. Rather than making her back down, Maka feels as though that seed of an idea has grown, and she rubs her hand against the denim of his jeans.

"Unless you'd prefer Rosie Palm and her five friends?" she suggests, eyebrow arched. She flicks open the button on his jeans. Soul rolls his eyes.

"I swear to god, who is teaching you these things?" he asks, and then he's kissing her, mouth hard and soft as it slants against hers, and she can't respond because they're kissing-hot and wet, mouths meeting and parting hesitantly as they figure out how to breathe-and she's not sure how it happened, or how Soul's mouth can be her whole universe, but it did, and it is. She's on fire again, and she presses against him, aching for the feel of him. With a muffled oof, his ass hits the counter, and Maka's arms wrap around his neck, fingers threading into soft white strands. She tugs, directing his mouth, and he groans again, hands latching on to her hips and keeping her pressed against him.

He's going to dry hump himself straight into blissful oblivion, he thinks somewhere in the part of his brain that isn't hazy with lust and drunk off the smell of his best friend, his Maka. He's having a hard time thinking at all because Maka has decided that the best use of her hips involves grinding them against his, and the sensation is hypnotic. The little moans she's making into his mouth are a whole different level of distracting, and he tightens his grip on her hip, slowing down her frantic gyrating into something that isn't going to make him cream his pants in short order. It's marginally successful, insofar as his ability to retain some semblance of control is concerned. He keeps one hand steady on her hip, and the other he slides between them.

His fingers are met with smooth skin, and Soul breaks off their kissing to exhale shakily. His thumb smoothes over her thigh, over a few lingering bumps that he can only assume were razor burn. His fingertips brush the back of her thigh and more daringly, the bottom of her ass. Maka squirms against him again and brushes her hand against his dick again. He groans, burying his face into the crook of her neck, hand squeezing her ass.

She's not wearing underwear.

The thought slams into him with a strange sort of crystal clarity. He pulls back enough that he can meet his meister's gaze, and she flushes slightly.

"I was preoccupied," she mumbles defensively, and he gives her a grin before nipping her gently on the neck and slipping a finger between her folds. She shivers against him, eyes shut tightly. Soul is mesmerized and swipes his finger against her again.

"Aaah." She bucks her hips against him, and he swirls his finger against her. Maka is flushed and panting. She doesn't understand how something that she does to herself on a regular basis can feel so different...so much better. He adds another finger to the mix, wavering between stroking and rubbing. She thinks her eyes might roll into the back of her head and then he slips those fingers into her, and his thumb is rubbing against her clit, and she's quivering and shaking uncontrollably.

Her grip on his hair tightens, and it would be painful except Soul's far too focused on the way Maka's thighs are trembling and the way she's gasping and moaning against him. She cries out and bites his collarbone and Soul slips his fingers from her pussy, planting kisses along every inch of skin he can get access to. In his arms, Maka groans and glares up at him.

"Why did you stop?" It comes out much more petulant than she intends, but she was so close and this is twice now Soul's kept her from coming. He looks confused and embarrassed, and she can't find it in her to actually be mad. He is criminally good with his fingers, and Maka is pretty sure that she won't be able to even look at a piano in the future without blushing furiously.

"I...I thought you were done," he says, and she grins sheepishly, trailing one hand down his chest. She wants to take his shirt off. Hell she wants to get him naked, but she's not sure if that, of everything, would make this weird, and so she says,

"Ah, no. Not exactly," and slips her hand underneath his t-shirt. His skin is softer than she thought it would be, and her fingers easily trace the outline of his abs, brush against his scar. She can hear his breath hitch.

"'m sorry," Soul mumbles, and Maka smiles at him, slow and sweet and wicked, and then slips her hand into his jeans.

"It's all right. You can make it up to me," she assures him, rubbing her palm against his cock. He buries his head into her neck again, and she can hear a muffled,

"Ok," against her skin, between his lips and teeth and tongue roaming her neck and shoulders. He presses his hips into her hand, and it's just not enough, not even close, but he doesn't push, doesn't throw his jeans across the room like he wants to. He waits instead, feasting on Maka's pale skin while she makes little distracted noises and cups his balls and, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."

Her right hand is surprisingly warm against his cock and he's pretty sure that that was the hand she had been going to town with earlier, which does funny things to his brain but her hand is stroking him now and it's all he can do to stay upright...well, he thinks, upright isn't exactly an issue, but standing might become one soon so he rests some of his weight back on the counter again.

She doesn't know what she was expecting...in all of her fantasies, where Soul is unendingly romantic and confesses tenderly his love and then they have hot steamy sex, or where he's a complete scoundrel and whisks her off her feet to go have steamy sex, or the one where she rescues him from Medusa and he confesses breathlessly that she's his hero and would she please have sex with him-she's never really thought much about what that might entail. Oh, she knows the essentials, the clinical act, the embellishments Liz and Tsubaki took delight in regaling her with, but not the little details like the texture of a penis or how heavy it is in her hand or how it twitches as she jacks off her partner. Or, for that matter, how her partner's hips keep jerking against hers or the way that touching him makes her feel-powerful, sexual, bold...incredibly turned on. She's not sure why getting him off is making her so wet, but she's going to go with it. Soul continues to be fascinated with her neck, and she twists her mouth so that it rests against his ear and she moans,

"Touch me, Soul."

He whimpers, and for a moment, she thinks that maybe she's asking for too much in terms of concentration, which is kind of gratifying in it's own right, but then he releases his deathgrip on her hips, and drags long fingers up her torso, slipping under her shirt, and she squeaks because he's found her nipples through her bra and he's pinching and massaging and how did she not know about this? Her grip tightens on his shaft and he groans, retaliating with fingers slipping underneath her bra to play with her breasts. They fit perfectly into his palms, and he's pretty sure that, aside from the mutual masturbation going on with his meister in the kitchen of their apartment, this is just about the hottest thing ever.

Maka is torn because his hands feel incredible and she had no reason to think that simply touching her tits could result in her body becoming even more wound up, but this is not the kind of touching she meant. She is aching and he is decidedly not helping.

"Hnng, Soul, please." She knows she's whining, but he's teasing and she's past the point of caring. She changes her grip on his cock and brushes her thumb against his head; it comes away slick and sticky all at once, and for a moment, she's distracted, fascinated by the sight. Experimentally, she drags her moist thumb down his shaft, hand sliding more easily as she does it again and again. Soul's breathing quickens, hips pressing into her hand helplessly as she pumps his cock and he bites back another whimper.

She feels the way his fingertips burn a path down her stomach, before disappearing and reappearing under her ineffective skirt. There is no preamble this time; Soul's fingers are dexterous and he knows where he's going this time.

"Sorry, your tits are distracting," he says, and apologizes with his hands. Maka's teeth sink into his neck as his fingers slide home, stifling her cry, and she can feel Soul react in her grip. She nips him again and feels him twitch once more. She files that away for later (later? She hopes there is a later, she can't even imagine going back to flying solo) and tries not to fall apart at the feel of his fingers stroking her, the sensation of his thumb dancing around her clit.

She's trembling again, the pressure in her belly is coiled, ready to snap and send her body plummeting into ecstasy, but Soul's fingers keep going, dancing around her orgasm, keeping her hovering on the edge. It's pure exquisite torture, and Maka can't stop shaking. Soul isn't in much better shape. He doesn't know how she's concentrating on getting him off when he can barely remember to keep moving his fingers, but she is, and it's hard to breathe for the way her fist grips him and the fact that this is Maka and he's dreamed about this, about the sounds she would make when she comes for him, about the way she would feel in his arms, under him, around him...

"Ohohgodpleaseplease," she sings a soft litany against his skin, but he can hear her like she's shouting, and fuck that's hot, she's hot, her hand is hot and he can't believe that they're actually doing this. Against him, Maka stops trembling and shaking, her body tensing completely, and then she's sobbing his name, voice shaky and she's shivering and spasming around him as she falls, suddenly and completely. Around him, her grip tightens, and Soul thrusts into her hand, muttering his own litany. Her name on his tongue gives her strength when all she wants to do is slide to the floor, boneless and relaxed, and she meets his thrusts with renewed vigor. Her lips find his, and she kisses him lightly, teasingly, moves her lips to his jaw and neck.

She nips him again, licks along his collarbone, and strokes him faster. Soul still has his fingers buried in his meister, and he swirls them again. He can feel her walls spasm around him as her hand clenches around his dick and she's so wet and her hand is slick and she's started her infernal whispering again and when she moans, "come," he does because it's too much and this is Maka and he's forever following her orders happily. He cries out and presses against her tightly as his world goes dark for a second or an hour, and they're shaking against each other.

They stay there for some indeterminate amount of time because she's having a hard time remembering how legs and arms and limbs are supposed to work, and he's having trouble remembering where he is and believing that it wasn't all a dream. But his spine is tingling and he feels good and if that weren't enough proof, his jism is coating his shirt. And Maka's shirt. And part of her skirt. And her hand. And his hand is covered in her juices and before his brain spirals off, he hazards a glimpse at his best friend.

She looks like she's about to fall asleep, which might make him feel a little self-conscious, except that he's exhausted too, and she looks relaxed in a way he hasn't seen for a couple of weeks, mouth curled in a small smile. She meets his gaze and her smile widens into something incredibly satisfied. She holds up her hand and looks at it wonderingly.

"You're a lot messier than I am," she says like she's talking about the weather, then tentatively licks the back of her hand. Soul is reasonably certain his brain is actually fried. She makes a face. "Blech. Weird. That is weird."

"Uhhuh," he mumbles because what do you say to that? He's still not sure it even happened. He looks down at his own hand, thinks for a minute, and then shrugs. He's not sure how to describe the taste, but it could be worse. Maka looks curious and he shrugs. "Eh. I'll get used to it."

The implication is out there now, and clear-that this isn't just a one-time thing, that he wants to do this again, that he wants to do other things. Maka smiles up at him.

"Good," she replies. "Shower?" Soul grins in reply, eyes lingering on the red brands peppering Maka's neck.

"Yeah. I'll start a load of laundry if you start the shower." She kisses him quickly, and answers by shucking her stained shirt and skirt at him. Her bra follows and she's naked and grinning as she walks to the bathroom. It's amazing, he thinks, shoving their clothes into the machine, what a releasing a little tension can do.