terajk

Title: Praxis
Rating: PG
Fandom: Soul Eater
Ship: Beelzebub/Kid/Maka
Word count: ~870 (The longest Soul Eater fic I've ever written! Go, me!)
Summary: A girl, a god, and his skateboard.
Author’s Note: For my “vehicular” square for kink_bingo
Contains: Nothing explicit, but there are underage characters in kinky situations.
Also contains: MAJOR SPOILERS for chapter 63 of the manga.

Soul is such a jerk sometimes.

Maka knows he can’t train as long as she can--she knows this, no matter what he says--but it’s like he doesn’t even care about learning to fly. And why should he? He’s already become a Death Scythe--why help her do something she wants? She always feels his soul flickering as they soar through the air, shifting like tectonic plates at top speed. Then today he ditches practice altogether to go with Black★Star to some dumb anime convention. And he even invited her with “I know you’re a total nerd and all, so...” His goddamn nerve.

She has no time for stupid things, for him. That’s why she’s in the library reading about aerodynamics, trying not to think about Soul being an idiot. Or how little sense this book makes. Or Gundam.

But there are lots of distractions when you’re hard at work not thinking of things, and out of the corner of her eye she sees a hand, frozen in midair; then it jerks away. Kid does that, sometimes, reaches out to smooth a wrinkle in your shirt or brush your hair back. At first it was annoying being treated like some random object instead of a person, but then Patty told her she had it backwards. (“It means he’s comfortable around you,” she’d said. “Like a hug, except not really.”) It barely surprises her anymore.

What does surprise her is when he scoffs and says, “Why did Father allow that book in this library? It’s useless.”

“I like it,” Maka says.

“A book can’t teach you to fly using Soul Resonance,” Kid says, matter-of-factly. “Praxis is the only way.”

“You sound like Professor Stein. And besides, I can’t practice flying without Soul.”

“Really?” he says, sounding oddly like his father.

***

“The desert is much better--there’s more space,” Kid says, “but walking there would take too long. Besides, human physiology is...what it is. So Liz and Patty tell me.”

“Uh-huh.” They’re standing on top of a hill on the edge of the city; Maka chews her lip, ponders the horizon, this plan. She isn’t sure how a rocket-powered skateboard--a machine--will help her match soul wavelengths to fly; after all, she’s ridden Beelzebub with Kid on missions before and it’s nothing like--

Wait.

Maka closes her eyes, focuses her thoughts on the skateboard. When she opens them again, there’s a pulse in the air, a flicker of a candle flame. A barely-perceptible soul. “Wow,” she breathes.

Kid gestures forward, steps on behind her.

“Do I...ask it permission?” Maka asks, feeling stupid.

“If you want.”

Beelzebub, can we fly? The pulse flattens out, opens up. Beelzebub seems...calm. (Of course. Of course Kid’s skateboard would be calm.) She’ll have to forget about Soul, untangle the yarn-ball of frustration and anxiety in the pit of her stomach if she wants to resonate with it properly. Again, a deep breath. Wings unfolding like flower petals.

“Shall I hold onto you somehow?” asks Kid suddenly.

“If you want,” Maka says. With Kid’s hands around her waist, the wings in her head beat once, slow.

She’s going up and her foot almost slips, awkward on wood that doesn’t yield. She’s used to pliable bodies, Soul an extension of her arm. Kid holds her tighter. The pulse flares suddenly. Here I am. Right here. The wings beat and beat and beat (like drums, the swelling chords of Soul’s piano), as Beelzebub’s soul-flicker--a harpstring now, shuddering, plucked by an invisible hand--keeps time. Maka hears the rockets, feels them under her feet, and she suddenly wants to laugh at how silly she’s been, how ridiculous not to know until now that Beelzebub is alive. It caresses her feet (Kid’s hands around her waist), lifts her up and keeps her safe, purrs throughout her body like Blair asleep on her chest. It’s so wonderful that she asks Kid if he’s doing something, if he’s cheating, because she’s not as strong as he is and surely she’s not making this happen on her own.

“What? No. You’re doing beautifully, Maka. Should I let go?”

Should she analyze that sentence? (“What?” What does that mean? Is there something she should do because Liz and Patty aren’t here and if something happens and he has a freakout she could fall and she really doesn’t want to die here, on the edge of town.) “No,” she says.

“Maka!” They’re plunging now because she let Beelzebub go (die on the edge of town), and she can’t find the string, can’t find the string in the noise. Her heart thumps and thumps and thumps.

There it is.

It’s open, welcomes her with open arms as if she never left, and she sees now she needs to trust it. Trust him. Trust herself most of all.

She can fly.

She has flown.

She will fly.

She and Soul will fly.

No, no. They’re flying now, the three of them, together. And she wants to keep flying with them--with him--for hours and hours and hours.

“Kid? Are you getting tired?”

“Not at all. Are you?”

“Never,” she says, and laughs as they go up and up and up.