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Crona shivered, hands holding their arms in an attempt to warm up a little more. They had learned that winter at the academy was rather different than the summer. Their cell got way colder, and everywhere else too. Miss Marie offered to let Crona stay at Stein’s for the winter, but they refused. Having to share a living space with Marie and Stein after everything Lady Medusa made them do felt overwhelming, if not downright impossible. They shivered again, at the memory rather than the biting cold. But it was possible the cold helped a little.
They stood up and took a pillow off their lackluster bed before retreating back into the corner of their room, holding that instead of their arms.
Knock knock knock! Crona jumped at the sound, looking at their door. They stood up, one hand holding onto their pillow as they approached the door and opened it. Their eyes lit up at who was there. “Maka.. hi.. what brings you here?”
Maka smiled, shaking slightly. Crona assumed it was from the cold. “Hey Crona! Well, I just wanted to see if you wanted to hang out. It’d be good for you to get out of here.. Do they seriously not have a heating system down here?” she sighed before continuing, “I was thinking we could go to Soul and I’s place. It’s a lot warmer there.”
Crona dropped their pillow on the ground, deciding to ignore that they’d have to pick it up when they came back. They nodded, smiling softly at their friend. Maka grinned and grabbed their hand, practically dragging Crona out of their room, much to the surprise of the demon swordsperson.
They found that it was much colder outside than it was in their cell, their shivering increasing severely. They wished they had a jacket or something, they didn’t know how they could deal with how cold it was otherwise. Alas, they owned no such thing. Maka looked back towards her friend, immediately taking notice of how much they were shaking. “Oh- Crona, are you alright? Hold on, we’ll be there soon. When we get there I’ll give you a blanket or one of my coats or something- how does that sound?” she offered, her breath made a visible cool white in the wintry temperature. They just nodded, looking down at the snowy ground under them as they kept going, acutely aware that Maka hadn’t let go of their hand after she had rushed the two of them out of the DWMA.
The two meisters made it to Maka’s home shortly after that, the scythe wielder immediately leaving Crona alone to dash into her room and come back out with a rather large and comfortable looking coat. She offered it to them with a quiet sigh. “Here you go. Tell me if you’d prefer something else.”
Crona gingerly took the coat from Maka, looking over it for a few moments. It looked like a long, cool, dark gray jacket with a pink outline of what looked like flowers across the sleeves. They felt nervous, the very concept of sharing an item of clothing with Maka was stressful. They didn’t know how to handle that! Was this just a normal friend thing? It had to be, otherwise Maka wouldn’t have offered, would she? But the few romance shows and books they had seen made it seem very common for people who were dating to loan clothes. They gulped as they looked back at Maka with a small, anxious smile. “Thank you so much.. you’re so nice.”
“Of course! You are my friend after all,” Maka responded with a smile that crept its way into Crona’s heart. Of course, it was just a friend thing. That took some pressure off them, but they couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment. At what, they wondered? They cautiously pulled the jacket on, almost as if they feared that if it made just enough contact with them, it’d be ruined forever and Maka would be upset with them.
Crona looked down at how the jacket added to their outfit curiously, wondering if it made them look ten times worse in the eyes of whoever could be around them. They looked up almost immediately, thinking they heard Maka say something. “Huh?..” they hummed, tilting their head at the other meister.
“Uh, nothing! Just asking if you wanted to stay for dinner? Soul should be cooking tonight, so I’ll be able to give you my full attention until then,” she asked, waving a gloved hand dismissively before putting them behind her back in a way that tried to look relaxed. Crona absently wondered if Soul was home at the mention of him before realizing that they should answer.
“Um, yeah. That sounds nice,” they replied with a little nod. Maka grinned, closing her emerald green eyes.
“Great! Do you need to study or anything, because I could help out with that. I know you’ve already been here for a while, but you never tell me about your grades so I can’t tell how well you’re doing,” Maka sighed, crossing her arms and tilting her head down dramatically. Crona blinked at her, considering how to answer. The times Crona had seen him, Soul always complained about how Maka forcing help with schoolwork was practically “torture” and “so uncool”. Their grades were alright, weren’t they? They just got B’s and C’s in most of them. That was passing. They understood the material, they just couldn’t bring themselves to spend time on the homework, even the things other students would consider exciting, like the missions where they would hunt kishin eggs.
“Uh, I think I’m doing okay. I mean, I don’t think my grades are that bad,” they mumbled, instinctively fidgeting with their sleeve- or rather, the sleeve of Maka’s loaned jacket.
Maka puffed out her cheeks, brows furrowing slightly at the swordsman. “C’mon Crona! If you need help, you should tell me! It won’t bother me!... Well, I guess it would bother me a little that you’re doing bad at school, but it won’t bother me to help you out!” she groaned, causing Crona to tilt away from the shorter girl nervously.
“Okay, okay! Just please stop yelling at me, it’s very unsettling!” Crona whimpered, squeezing their eyes shut and putting their hands in front of them defensively. Maka took one of Crona’s hands, dragging them into her room as they let out a long whine that could be read as a cry for help.
“Good! What should we cover first? Oh, are you struggling with..”
–
Time certainly passed while Crona was stuck studying with Maka. They weren’t sure if the boredom of having to listen to Maka lecture them was making time go slower or if just having the delight of being able to hang out and listen to Maka’s voice made it go quicker. Maybe time just moved normally.
Once the time rolled around to maybe 6pm, Maka said they could take a break so she could yell at Soul to make dinner since it was his turn. Crona watched Maka walk out of the room and barge into Soul’s, calmly telling him that it was his turn before hearing crashing, causing Crona to flinch. They wondered about the safety of Maka’s weapon after all that noise.
Maka returned to her room, seeming to be seething as she closed the door behind her. “Um.. what happened?..” Crona asked curiously, fearing for the answer they might receive.
“Ugh.. Blair…” was all she growled before sitting down beside Crona again. A single drop of sweat rolled down their cheek. What?
Maka sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose before looking at Crona with a completely different expression of joy. “Anyway.. Soul should be getting started on dinner soon, so I don’t think we should get any farther in your studies,” Maka said, Crona silently celebrating that statement, “so do you want to like.. play a game or something while we wait?”
Crona thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, sure. That could be fun, if you want,” they murmured. Maka smiled and stood up, offering Crona her hand. A light gray dusted their cheeks as they smiled a little and took her hand.
Frustratingly, Ragnarok made an appearance while Crona and Maka were playing a racing game, demanding that he get to play too because he was bored. Crona half-heartedly glared up at the demon, while Maka hesitantly gave him a controller to add a third player. Anytime Crona managed to get a lead over Ragnarok, he’d begin to cheat and distract Crona by knocking the controller out of their hands or trying to hit them, which was rather easy considering he was attached to them.
“Knock it off Ragnarok, it’s not Crona’s fault they're better than you at video games,” Maka scolded after the fifth time Crona’s controller went flying out of their hands. “And if you break our controller I’m telling Soul not to give you any dinner tonight, or ever again! And no dessert either!”
“Agh! What’s wrong with you, lady?! This idiot here isn’t worth getting so pissy over!” Ragnarok raged, glaring at the pale blonde with his eyes that were quite the opposite of intimidating. Annoying was much closer to a proper descriptor.
“Ragnarok, stop it.. you don’t want to never eat Maka’s cooking again, do you?..” Crona grumbled, batting up at the manifestation of their black blood as they moved to get their controller back off of where it had landed haphazardly on the floor.
“She’s shit at cooking, so that’s fine by me!” Ragnarok shouted, pointing at the blonde angrily.
“What about the sweets you get when you’re good? Never again?” Maka asked, not even bothering to pause the game, effectively letting the computers they were playing against to take the lead in the absence of focused players.
“Ugh… I don’t care! Tsubaki gives me way more than you ever do anyway!”
“Well.. what if I tell her not to give you sweets anymore since you were misbehaving?”
Ragnarok hissed, tossing his own controller on the couch as he retreated back into Crona’s body. “Wow, he really ragequit..” Maka murmured, slightly surprised that he actually left. Crona was even more surprised at the notion that Ragnarok would actually leave them alone. They supposed it made sense though, really the only thing he liked besides violence and suffering was candy, so threatening to take that away was likely something that would’ve felt like the end of the world for Ragnarok. Maybe they should start getting him to behave like that…
“Um.. thanks for getting him to leave me alone.. I’m glad he didn’t break anything of yours,” Crona said, barely above a whisper as they returned to the couch, moving the controller that Ragnarok left behind. They watched Maka nod happily at them before looking back at the TV, being greeted with the leaderboard of that round.
CPU 4 - 1st
CPU 5 - 2nd
CPU 3 - 3rd
RAGNAROK - 4th
CPU 1 - 5th
CPU 2 - 6th
crona - 7th
Maka - 8th
“Hey, you got seventh place! Nice job!” Maka offered, scooting closer to Crona. Or was that their imagination?
Crona frowned, looking down at their controller. “.. Thanks, but not really. Seventh place out of eight isn’t really good..” they stated, completely honest. Maka frowned back, scooting even closer and leaning on Crona, their surprise being made very clear with their sudden yelp at the contact. Their ears flushed gray as they realized just what had happened. Definitely not their imagination.
“Well, you got a better place than me, hehe..” Maka chuckled, joyfully closing her eyes. Crona nervously looked down at the scythe meister, half-heartedly chuckling back. They didn’t know what to do. They were no good with girls! How do they handle one leaning on them?! They resolved to just awkwardly sit there, stiff as a board. Maybe if Maka thought they simply stopped functioning completely, she’d stop and Crona could go back to normal. Well, perhaps normal was a strong word, but how they usually acted.
A sigh coming from the direction of the kitchen brought Crona out of their thoughts. “Dinner’s done, go ahead and get-” Soul rounded the corner of the kitchen, pausing at the display in front of him. What a display it must’ve been. Three controllers out with only two people, the TV playing a semi-obnoxious race theme on repeat, and the cherry on top being Maka contentedly leaning against a deathly still Crona. Soul blinked at the two of them, toothy mouth agape at how stupid this must’ve looked.
“... In case you wanted to know, food’s done. I’m just gonna,” Soul gestured back into the kitchen as he backed off to fix himself a serving of whatever he made for dinner. Unbearable heat crept onto Crona’s cheeks, letting them know that they were definitely blushing a deep gray. They glanced at Maka, who seemed to be glaring in the direction of the kitchen.
“Uh- um- Maka- I think- well we should- er..” Crona stammered, having a hard time trying to find the right words and how they wanted to say them, even though they only wanted to tell her that they should both eat dinner. Why was that so hard? Why can’t they deal with this? They put the controller down beside them in order to cover their face with their hands. Maybe they should skip dinner and just leave.
Crona felt Maka nod against their shoulder. “Yeah, we should probably eat dinner now,” she sighed out. Crona pulled their hands away from their face and looked at Maka with their dark lavender eyes. She stood up and went into the kitchen, much to the relief of Crona. They heard some barely audible talking in the kitchen before a loud slam and a drawn out “OWW!”, causing the demon swordsperson to flinch, immediately cringing afterwards.
Maka poked her head out into the doorway to smile at Crona. “Sorry about that! Soul’s just being Soul. How much do you want?” Crona blinked a few times at her, moving to hold their upper arm.
“Um.. just a little, I suppose,” they answered. Maka nodded and gestured over to the dining area before heading back into the kitchen. Crona took the hint and got up to take a seat at the dining table. They put their hands in their lap, awkwardly picking at their already short and ragged fingernails. What was her name again? Liz? Liz would probably lose her mind at the sight of them, Crona thought.
Soul was the first to join them at the table with his serving, and then Maka with both hers and Crona’s. A fourth chair was set up, but someone who could’ve occupied it never showed up. Crona glanced down at their plate- a single pancake and some scrambled eggs. “I made breakfast for dinner,” Soul stated the obvious.
“Breakfast should be for breakfast, Soul. But whatever. Let’s eat,” Maka sighed before digging into her meal. Was that what Maka injured Soul over? Making something different for dinner? That didn’t make any sense. But they were pretty sure they talked a little before they heard the sound of Soul being hurt. Crona frowned, picking up a fork and slowly beginning to eat, not wanting to spend too much energy on thinking about something that would probably never make sense to them.
Maka and Soul talked together, occasionally looking to Crona for some sort of input, to which they’d usually just nod in agreement with whatever they were talking about. Crona finished their food last, despite having the smallest portion of the three of them. They cautiously stood up, immediately hugging themselves. “Um.. I should probably go home now.. thank you for having me,” they murmured, looking towards the front door.
Maka frowned, but nodded. “Okay Crona. Do you want me to walk you home?”
Crona quickly shook their head. “N- no. I’ll be okay. Thanks anyway.”
Maka nodded, seeming slightly disappointed by Crona’s refusal. Did they just imagine that? “Well, alright.. stay safe, okay? See you tomorrow?”
Crona nodded, waving at the two of them. “Yeah, see you tomorrow,” they murmured, offering them a small smile. Soul simply waved back as Crona walked out the door to return to their room in the academy. They closed the door behind them gingerly, shivering a bit in the cold of winter. They felt like they were forgetting something, but carried on to their room anyway.
They dwelled on the events of the night. The minor stuff, eating dinner, studying, playing a game, and then the major stuff. Maka? Oddly offering a really nice looking jacket when they were cold, leaning on them for no reason at all? What happened? Why couldn’t they just deal with it? That stuff is normal for friends! It was hard to tell if their cheeks flushed gray just because of the freezing cold or if it was because of recent memories. They sped up walking without noticing, hugging themselves to try to keep warm.
In a matter of minutes, Crona made it back to their room in the dungeon of the DWMA. They were happy to be back in the familiar space. They took a few steps in before-
“Wh-” they murmured before screaming as they tripped over something, faceplanting unfortunately on the cold stone floor, the clattering of some object letting them know that they weren’t the only thing that fell. They stayed like that for a moment before sitting up on their knees and looking behind them. It turns out the pillow that they left on the floor before leaving was the culprit behind making them fall onto the solid ground.
A familiar cackle was heard behind them, making the swordsperson sigh. “Ahahaha! Wow, you seriously are a huge dumbass, aren’t you Crona?!” Ragnarok mocked, poking their cheeks annoyingly.
Feeling a sting in their nose, they wiped the space under it, automatically registering that they got a nosebleed from the impact, being unable to harden their blood in time to avoid this happening due to the sheer shock of them suddenly being sent hurtling to the floor. “Be quiet, Ragnarok.”
Their eyes wandered to their sleeve curiously. What? They didn’t own anything with a floral print… at least, they didn’t think they did?..
Wait. “Oh- oh no.. I took Maka’s jacket and forgot to give it back..” they whispered, covering their face with their hands, causing Ragnarok to laugh even louder.
“Wow! You’re such an idiot, Crona! I can hardly believe you’re that stupid, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised,” Ragnarok seemed ready to continue ridiculing the poor meister before they both noticed just what had landed beside them. Earbuds ran from the pocket of Maka’s jacket, connected to a music player. Crona gasped and scooped it up, inspecting it for any sort of damage it may have gotten from landing on the ground. Thankfully, it wasn’t broken in any way. They let out a sigh of relief, looking over the device.
“Of course, to top it all off I accidentally took this from her… how much of an awful friend can I be?” they mumbled. Suddenly, the music player was taken out of their hands. “What- hey, Ragnarok, what’re you doing?” they asked, looking up at him to see him turning on the device.
“We already have it, might as well look at what kind of shitty music she likes,” he sneered, already beginning to scroll through the selection of songs on it. Crona’s eyes widened and they tried to reach up to retrieve the small thing, failing miserably as the demon managed to keep it just out of reach from them.
“Ragnarok, quit it! We can’t look at that, it’s not nice! Maka wouldn’t like it!”
“Don’t care! Can’t you stop being such a crybaby for once? She won’t know unless you tell her!” Ragnarok derided, continuing to look through the player, hands just out of Crona’s reach. Suddenly, the demon paused, looking at the device with a look that could only be described as complete and utter shock.
“Huh?.. What is it?..” Crona faltered, looking up at him, surprised at his uncharacteristic quietness.
“.. Ewww! Nevermind, this is fucking gross! Take it, I don’t care!” Ragnarok shouted before quickly disappearing back into Crona’s blood. The music player landed in their hands, relieved that Ragnarok finally relented Maka’s belongings. However, his reaction to whatever he’d seen made Crona curious. They couldn’t help taking a little peek at what was displayed on the device, technically Ragnarok was right, Maka wouldn’t know unless they told her. What they saw made their face go gray with blush.
It was simple, really, but Crona didn’t know how to deal with it. Why? Why was there a playlist in Maka’s music player with Crona’s name?! No way, they weren’t seeing this, it was just some sort of dream, it wasn’t real. They gritted their teeth anxiously, daring to press the playlist in order to see the songs listed on it.
They didn’t really recognize any of the titles or artists, but all the titles seemed rather.. how would they put it? Romantic? That sounded right. Maybe the titles were just misleading or something. They had a hard time believing that Maka would even have a playlist about them at all, and an even harder time believing that the majority of the songs would be so sappy. With shaking hands, they hesitantly pressed play.
After a few minutes of listening to the songs that came up, they were absolutely convinced that this wasn’t real. Those songs definitely weren’t misleading at all, they were quite sweet. They didn’t know how to deal with this at all! Maka had a playlist with songs about being in love with their name as the title, how was that something they could handle?! How was that something anyone could handle?!
They leaned back onto the floor, head conveniently landing on the pillow that was still left on the cool ground. They let out a long, embarrassed groan. “What should I do?.. I could just not tell her I saw anything, but then I’d have to hold this in forever… but what if I tell her and she says it’s just a friend thing she has for all of her other friends?..” Crona wondered out loud, setting the music player on their chest before pressing their hands onto their face. This was too overwhelming.
They sighed, picking the music player back up. Maybe that was just a normal thing she did with all her friends? Maybe if they looked hard enough they could find one about Soul, or Patty, or hell, even Black★Star. Alas, no matter how hard they squinted or slowly scrolled through the selection, they couldn’t find a single thing. Why them?
–
Maka looked around her and Soul’s home, peeking under furniture and in drawers. “Hey Soul! Have you seen my music player?!” she shouted across the house, continuing to look around.
“Nope! Why?!” he yelled back from his room. Maka sighed, looking towards a certain cat that found herself a comfortable spot on the couch now that Crona was gone.
“Blair, did you take my music player?” she huffed, placing her hands on her hips as she stared down the small cat.
She yawned, standing up and stretching before going back to her human form in a puff of lavender smoke. “No, I didn’t. Didja lose it or something?” she asked, dark purple cat ears twitching.
Maka groaned. “Yes, I did. I can’t find it anywhere!” Time to retrace her steps, maybe that’d help her reunite with it. She was wearing her black jacket with flower patterns the other day and went out on a walk. She grabbed her music player so she could listen to it while she did so..
Oh. Oh no. She let out a frustrated, wordless yell. “I left it in the jacket I loaned to Crona!” she shouted, sitting down on the couch and reclining dramatically. Blair patted her leg comfortingly.
“Well, they’ll give it back, won’t they? They’re like, really nice, right?”
“Yeah! But what if they look at it and see the playlist I made? Ugh, I wanted to tell them in a way that wasn’t, ‘hey Crona! I made a really creepy playlist titled your name! Do you want to go out?’ I can’t believe this,” Maka sighed exasperatedly, covering her face with her hands.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad. Literally the only person who doesn’t know you like Crona is Crona. It’d be about time,” Soul stated as he opened a can of soda. Maka hadn’t even noticed that he left his room.
“Yeah, but what if they don’t like me and it makes things awkward?” Maka retorted, glaring at Soul.
“Are you kidding? They’re obviously obsessed with you. Kinda gross,” Soul replied, taking a sip from his can that suddenly went clattering to the floor as in a flash Maka stood up and smacked him. “Ow, hey!”
“Shut up Soul!” she groaned, before actually registering what Soul had said. “Wait, really?”
“You didn’t notice?” Soul grumbled, rubbing the spot where Maka had hit him. Maka shook her head, cheeks going slightly pink from embarrassment.
Maka sighed, looking away. “What do I say to them?”
“Dunno, but you can probably say something at school tomorrow,” Soul mumbled, going back to the fridge to replace the soda that was now spilt on the floor. Maka’s eyes lit up. Oh yeah, there’s school tomorrow! She’ll come up with a good way to bring it up then. Soul passed Maka before turning to look at the drink that pooled on the ground, “You’re cleaning that up.”
Maka blinked, looking at Soul and then looking at the puddle of soda. “Aw, man..”
–
Maka sat down at her seat, both excitement and nervousness filling her body, as this was the period that she shared with Crona. She looked in her bag possibly for the millionth time, making sure that the note she wrote hadn’t miraculously disappeared. She considered doing more, like getting flowers or something, but she decided that was too over-the-top for something as simple as confronting her feelings. And she didn’t want to risk making Crona feel more awkward than they usually do in case they weren’t looking for a relationship. She stared at the door in anticipation for the demon swordsperson’s arrival.
Soon enough, the black robed person stepped through the doors with their black messenger bag, looking fuller than usual. They appeared more anxious than they normally would as they made their way to their seat beside Maka. “Um, s- sorry I took this from you,” they whispered, grabbing the jacket out from their bag and hurriedly giving it to Maka.
She took the jacket carefully, not sure where she’d put it until she made it home. “Don’t worry about it. Umm.. did you see what was in the pocket?”
Crona jumped, looking away from the other meister. “Uh- y- yeah. I’m sorry- I didn’t mean to-” they sputtered before Maka put a comforting hand on their shoulder.
“I said don’t worry about it. I have something for you,” she whispered, digging through her bag for the letter before handing it to Crona. They blinked at it, gingerly taking it and reading over it, their face gradually getting more and more flushed with grey as they read on.
Crona,
I’ve been hiding from my feelings for a while. I really like you, and I wanted to keep waiting for the perfect time to tell you about it. But honestly, waiting for the perfect time is stupid, and I don’t think there’s much point in waiting anymore. So since you probably already know how I feel since you probably saw my music player (unless you didn’t then please ignore that part), I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me?
Maka
“Yes! I- I want to,” Crona shouted, as excitedly as their timid voice would allow. They probably got a lot of stares for that, but neither noticed at the time, and since the bell hadn’t rung yet, they didn’t get scolded by their teacher.
Maka felt a rush of relief flood through her body, letting go of the breath she didn’t even realize she was holding. “I’m glad,” she smiled warmly at the other meister. She decided they’d talk about a time to meet up during lunch, since the bell was going to ring in a moment, and while she was definitely overjoyed, she still wanted to pay attention to her studies.
Maka felt something grab her hand, startling her a little. She looked down, seeing that Crona was holding her hand. She looked up at them, seeing them jump and look away, blushing madly. She giggled quietly at their embarrassment, giving their hand a quick squeeze as she decided she was satisfied with this. The bell rang, and the two got to their studies, continuing to contently hold hands under the table.