Title: Story at 2:48 AM

Chapter: 2

Manga: Eyeshield 21

Pairing: Hiruma/Sena

Warnings/Spoilers: Beyond the usual 'I don't own this series' and 'there's yaoi/shonen-ai ahead', no warnings.

A/N: Thank you for reviewing. Written encouragement, since that's the only kind you can offer unless you know me personally, is really the best encouragement for me to write more. Thanks again to all the people who read the story and commented, and to those of you who read but don't comment. (: I know you're there.

Chapter 2

It was a new record of seventeen minutes and thirty-five-point-two seconds. The prior record was four minutes and nine-point-nine seconds, set by Yuki, who had only barely escaped his mother's hawk-like surveillance to make it to practice at all. Hiruma had let him off with 100 extra laps around the field.

Sena began to wonder if Hiruma would ever let him stop doing laps as he carefully stepped onto the field.

"FUCKING SHRIMP!"

The freshman swallowed. That was most likely a no, then.

The rest of practice seemed to pause, Musashi still half-way through his sweeping kick motion, Kurita and Kosumubi with palms facing outward to push back an invisible enemy, Monta's arms outstretched to intercept a pass, as every eye turned to train on the late Sena.

Sena saw it in slow-motion. There are moments in one's life when things happen very, very suddenly and yet seem to go unbelievably slow. This was one of those moments for Kobayakawa Sena, and what he realized as every eye turned to him and Hiruma cocked a gun in his direction was that even with the long walk he'd taken to slowly ease his legs back into the habit of moving forwards and backwards there was no way he'd be able to dodge the shots. And everyone would want to know why.

Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you read the situation, he didn't have to.

He had begun half a step in the opposite direction when a much larger, broader body stepped between him and the field. The shots hit all their marks on a much bigger, sturdier body, which stood practically immobile before Sena like a wall. Like a shield. Hiruma had fired off ten shots before his body reacted to what his disbelieving eyes saw and he retracted the gun.

Anyone else would've moved Sena out of the way of the oncoming shots; Shin simply let them hit his body. The impact didn't even cause him to flinch.

Now practice was stalled in full. If time had been going slow for Sena, it was now frozen for the rest of the Deimon Devilbats. Monta had missed his interception and the ball bounced on the grass of the field. Musashi's kick had come off as barely a punt, sending his own ball bouncing pitifully on the green. Taki and Yuki had fallen out of a run and into a jog which halted at the sight of Oujou's senior standing in front of their fastest teammate.

Dead silence washed over the field in the following moment.

Hiruma feared nothing. Maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration. He didn't fear anything or anyone, but that didn't stop him from being apprehensive. Apprehension and fear weren't the same, no, but stupider people could mistake apprehension for fear.

And there was certainly something to be apprehensive about in the dark eyes of Oujou's senior lineman.

It was unavoidable at this point. Even if he turned around and fired at the others to make them get back to training they would only question him later about it. Hiruma slammed the gun down into its holster and faced off with the boy between him and his star running back. Their gazes met and a rumble of silent thunder flooded the field. This was an unyielding force and an immovable force rushing to meet each other, and perhaps this was more effective on the Deimon Devilbats than any number of Hiruma's rounds, as most of them paused in their advances towards the dangerous side of the field. The tension was thick in the air. It felt as though not only time had stopped but gravity had increased as well.

Of all the players gathered for practice, only Monta was brave enough (or stupid enough) to ignore the terse air and jog steadily straight over to Sena, still on two shaky feet behind the massive wall that was Shin.

"Oi, Sena! You're late!"

Sena, broken free from the stillness of time and the unnatural weight of gravity, made a frantic motion for Monta to be quiet and stay back. It was to no avail as the other boy slowed his jog to a walk as he headed for Sena. Even when Monta reached Sena, Shin and Hiruma had yet to break off their silent war. Sena wilted slightly from the ominous air surrounding the two taller boys while Monta glanced between Sena and Shin.

"What's Shin-san doing here?"

Sena laughed nervously. "Actually, that's because...."

**Earlier**

The early morning sounds on the streets were every-day sounds. The rushing of cars, the padding of feet, the gentle murmur of the wind. The temperature wasn't bad and the weather was good. There wasn't a big crowd of people gathered for a celebration or a long line of automobiles headed to work, not at this time anyway. Shin chose to run at this time not because of the emptiness of the streets or the temperature, which were convenient, but their absence hadn't been the reason he'd chosen to run at this early hour. It was simply because he'd already accumulated the appropriate hours of rest required to bring his stamina back up to 100% after yesterday's practice.

His footfalls on the pavement were one of a few sounds that morning. It just happened that as he jogged along the consistent rhythm of one-two-one-two made by his own feet was interrupted by another rhythm. Any other rhythm would've been ignored, incorporating itself into the background noises that Shin's mind filtered out during his training, if it hadn't been for the identity of the runner himself. The components clicked together smoothly, quickly, in Shin's mind.

A small structure, light-weight, Deimon high school freshman uniform. This was Kobayakawa Sena, otherwise known as Eyeshield 21.

Sena.

And then there was a strange emotion trying to invade Shin as he watched the familiar legs press against the earth and propel Sena forward that was reminiscent of worry and wonder compressed into one.

There was something odd about Sena's run.

Before he could stop himself, he had jogged up behind Sena and called out his name.

"Kobayakawa Sena."

The running back did a funny dance coming to a half a few feet away from Shin. The Oujou senior slowed his jog to a stop and focused his entire attention on the smaller boy's legs. There it was again, he noted, eyes narrowing minutely in observation. That strange unexplained stiffness in Sena's stance. Shin waited for Sena to finish greeting him, contemplating the possible ways of politely inquiring about the difference.

"Y-you know you can call me Sena, right?" the younger boy was saying. Shin nodded and glanced down to the other boy's legs.

"Your gait," he said, pausing to see if that were enough.

"Eh?"

Shin blinked and reconfigured his question. He had to be more direct, apparently. "Your stride," he said, eyes still lowered to Sena's legs.

"M-my... stride? My steps?" Sena replied, glancing down at his own legs.

It was a little embarrassing but curiosity won out over propriety. Even more direct to the point of being blunt, then.

"The way you walk."

Understanding finally flushed across Sena's features, accompanied by an understandable red tinge.

"M-m-my walking..."

"Yes," Shin said, cutting Sena off in hopes of relieving him from some of the embarrassment of having to say it for himself, "Your gait is different than usual." If Shin could read minds, he would hear Sena's slightly awe-struck wondering of 'does Shin-san really know how I walk?'. Of course, Shin couldn't read minds. Instead, he was mentally checking off a list of possible reasons for Sena's strange stride. There wasn't a long list of things that could physically impair you from walking correctly. Shin gave Sena a serious look.

"Koba... Sena. Are you injured?"

"Hiiiiii?"

"Are you hurt?" To the point that your walking is impaired? It must've been a serious injury. Shin's eyes mobilized, searching for signs of excess strain or even blood. More red materialized on Sena's face as Shin knelt to one knee for a better look.

"S-S-Shin-san, there's really no need--"

Dark eyes rose to meet Sena's. The intensity of Shin's gaze shocked the Deimon running back. Words failed Sena in that moment. Taking the silence as a sign of permission, Shin lowered his gaze again to the running back's legs.

"Well," Sena murmured, his face ablaze, "I... guess you could call it an injury..."

Shin paused in his inspection of Sena's legs to look up at the boy's face. "What happened?"

Sena reached an impressive high note and shook his head.

"You don't want to talk about it?"

More fervent shaking.

The Oujou senior frowned. There was something wrong with the running back but with no sign of injury on what was visible of Sena's legs the list of injuries that could be impairing his walking became frustratingly short. But was it his place to be asking such personal questions at all, Shin asked himself. The boy wasn't dumb. Sena wouldn't withhold information about a serious injury from him. It was something else, then, and Shin had been inconsiderately pestering him about it. He felt foolish and tried not to let it show on his face. Shin stood up, a touch of stiffness to his own stance.

"I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, Kobayakawa." The senior moved to step back. Sena stopped shaking his head and gave Shin an apologetic look.

"It's not that, Shin-san--hey, didn't I say you could call me Sena?"

The Oujou lineman stopped his retreat and nodded. Sena took a moment to consider everything in his head and properly breathe. This was really too much for one morning. First, waking up in Hiruma's room, now having Shin worry about him... wait a sec.

Hiruma. Morning Practice. 200 penalty laps!

Sena's eyes widened considerably.

"Hiiiii~! Morning practice! Hiruma's going to get there before I do!" Sena bowed in a hurry to the Oujou senior and blurted out his apologies for running off and needing to be at practice. He spun quick enough to give anyone else whiplash and made to take off in the direction of school.

A twinge of discomfort from the previous night's activities threw a kink in that plan.

Shin's eyes followed the boy's motions. Very much like Deimon's quarterback, who could read Sena's capabilities flawlessly, Shin could see the accident in motion before it happened. Shin was able to correctly predict which one of Sena's legs wouldn't bend at the right angle (for whatever injury Sena refused to tell him about) and to which direction he would end up tripping. Being matched only by Sena in speed, Shin also predicted that if it had been anyone else they would have been too slow. He had pushed off from where he had been standing before Sena had time to hiss in discomfort.

Sena bounced harmlessly against the lineman's well-built body. Shin wondered at Sena's unusual clumsiness while the running back adopted what was surely a newly invented shade of red.

"You shouldn't train with this kind of injury," Shin advised finally as Sena squirmed to get away from his loose grip.

Deimon's running back took on an apologetic look at the other boy's words. 'Shin-san...'

"But, I have to practice," he argued, "Hiruma-san will--"

There was a moment in which horrible, horrible things popped into Sena's head that Hiruma, being who Hiruma was, certainly COULD and probably WOULD do to him, should he be any later than he already was in which words failed him. He laughed nervously.

"Ahahahaha... ...actually, I don't want to think about the things he'll do if I'm late to practice. Later than I am already, though, right?" Shin's flat gaze took Sena's paltry attempt at humor and flattened it.

Shin's mind was racing behind a rather blank, if hard, stare. Pieces of an ugly puzzle were beginning to fall into place. His morning jog didn't take him by Sena's house, his evening jog did. It did take him through the area where Deimon's quarterback lived. The strange stiffness to Sena's walking. Sena's evasive behavior. Sena's conviction that being on the field practicing with an injury was more important than resting at home to recover. Surely, all of Deimon's whining about how unfairly their captain-coach treated them was just jest? There was no way... But all the clues were pointing to something Shin wasn't certain he could stomach.

"Does your quarterback do horrible things to you?" Shin asked abruptly.

Deimon's running back scratched his head nonchalantly.

"Well, it's Hiruma-san, so it's nothing that isn't expected," Sena replied without thinking, "Even after yesterday, there's practice..."

Sena fell quiet as he realized the Oujou senior had taken on a strange look. He tilted his head to get a better look at Shin's face and blanched at what he found there. Seeping through Shin's impenetrable mask of calm was anger...! Shocked, Sena wondered what in the world he had said to cause such righteous fury in the taller boy's eyes. Everyone knew about Hiruma being who he was, being the way he was. And everyone practiced hard. And then he retraced Shin's words.

'...horrible things to you.'

"Ah! Shin-san, it's not--"

Dark eyes flashed with concrete concern this time as Shin scoured what was visible of Sena's body for wounds. Now he didn't ask permission. Sena backed up into the nearest wall as Shin's searching eyes bored into him. Even his yelps of protest didn't stop Shin from reaching up and pulling the collar of his jacket away.

"--like that, Hiruma-san would never--"

"These," Shin interrupted, an iron-like grip around one of Sena's wrists and the pulled-down collar of Sena's jacket clenched in the other. Dark eyes narrowed as his suspicions were confirmed.

"They're bite marks."

Sena wondered if he were going to pass out with the tremendous amount of blood rushing to his face.

"They... b-bite marks?" he repeated, feeling a bit feeble.

Shin released the other boy's jacket and traced one of the red welts with two fingers. Steam threatened to plume out of Sena's ears.

That confirmed it in Shin's mind. That had to be it. He released Sena's jacket and wrist, apologizing with an averted gaze for mishandling the running back, and began to march steadily in the direction of Deimon's field. Sena had no choice but to chase after him, getting the feeling somewhere along the way that the Oujou senior was deliberately walking a step ahead of what Sena could comfortably manage. They weren't far from the field when Sena had worked up a comfortable stride which Shin had easily one-upped to keep ahead. The smaller boy was beginning to redden at the ears at the thought of Shin confronting Hiruma on the field and he found the strength in his legs to lunge. He managed to tackle Shin's back with all the effectiveness of a fly slamming into a wall. The Oujou lineman actually stopped walking out of surprise.

"Sena?"

The younger boy fought off a look of discomfort and half-bowed to the taller boy. "Please! It's not the way you think! Hiruma is..." He swallowed, coming back up from his bent-over position with a shudder, "...Hiruma-san isn't awful. He doesn't do horrible things to us, Shin-san. He just acts like it to intimidate us and other teams." Sena's eyes shone with sureness. "He means well."

Shin took a moment to nod. "Really, Shin-san. I promise it's not the way you think." The taller boy's eyes dropped from Sena's gaze to his collar again. The younger boy blinked and rose a hand to test out the marks. The red welts weren't that bad to the touch. Maybe they looked horrid from someone else's eyes but Sena hardly noticed them anymore aside from a sting in the background. A genuine smile blossomed across Sena's face and he bowed again.

"I'm sorry for making you worry, Shin-san."

Unseen by Sena, Shin tilted his head and averted his gaze. He wasn't 100% comfortable with being thanked for such a thing. Of course he was going to worry about his rival. Who else could compete with him fairly on the field?

"Well, I've got to get to practice," Sena was saying, picking up the bags that he'd dropped during his tackle, "I'm sorry that you had to come all the way out here with me."

The senior lineman monotoned something about incorporating the lost time into his evening routine.

With that, Sena cheerfully (or as cheerfully as one could, knowing they were LATE to one of Hiruma's practices) made his way towards the field.

Shin watched Sena walk.

The stiffness was still there.

He pulled on one of his gloves as he followed Sena silently towards the field.

**Present**

"...I w-w-was walking here and Shin-san happened to be jogging by! W-W-We kind of got into a race and ended up running around and around and around and almost got lost! Eheheheheh..."

Monta fought down a laugh. Sena's eyes were moving at light-speed! It was a MAX lie, for sure.

The Oujou lineman's even breathing was broken for an instant as he considered the lie Sena had spewed. His stance shifted and Hiruma could only be infernally curious as to the senior's real purpose on the field.

"It's true," Shin said suddenly, causing Sena and Monta to jump in surprise, "Sena and I have been running." His gaze got even darker, if possible, as he continued. "So he doesn't need to do more running right now. It won't advance his training."

The field was deathly still. Someone was telling Hiruma not to train one of his star players? Musashi half-expected Hiruma to open up that little black book and send the Oujou senior fleeing with tears from the field. Instead, to the shock and surprise of everyone present, Hiruma didn't consult his little black trump card. A pink bubble, probably infused with several unheard curses, swelled in front of his face. Another stretch of tense silence. Sena didn't realized he and everyone else was holding their breath until that pink bubble finally snapped and Hiruma barked in his direction.

"What'd'ya think, fuckin' shrimp?" Hiruma said, popping his gum into the ominous silence, not looking away from Shin's hard gaze, "Think you've run enough for one day?"

"U-Um..." Sena's wobbling legs probably weren't going to support him much longer and Hiruma was letting him off if he said so? Was he dreaming or were there really such things as miracles? "Y-Y-Yes?"

The staring contest was still on.

Now even Monta was wise enough to take a step back from the openly hostile but silent air between the taller boys. The tension was nearly tangible. The Oujou senior's donned glove was as much a threat as the firearm at Hiruma's side. With neither boy taking a step in either direction Sena had the impression that they were in a western-style standoff. The first to move usually won...

"Keh."

Snap!

Sena blinked in disbelief as Hiruma turned to the field and roared for the others to get back to work. Practice took up again in full swing, Monta scrambling to get away from the dangerous side of the field as fast as he could. Nearby, Ceberus looked up at all the commotion.

Hiruma was still yelling when Shin came up behind him and put a hand on the slimmer boy's shoulder. Sena could only watch in horror from the sidelines...

But Shin stepped back a moment later, leaving a genuinely surprised look on Hiruma's face that Sena hadn't expected.

The Oujou senior made his way to where Sena was. His dark eyes met Senas, dropped to his collar, then rose again. "Your captain wants to talk to you. Then you are to go home and rest, Kobayakawa Sena." Sena nodded. Shin held his gaze captive a moment longer before turning from the field and removing his gloves. With that, Sena was certain the day's danger--or at least the morning's danger--had passed. He put a hand to his chest and sunk to the ground, sitting gingerly on his knees to give his legs a moment of rest. Even if he hadn't been running for some reason his heart was racing. He had the distinct feeling that somehow he had dodged bullets.

Hiruma was back to his cackling self when Sena trotted over.

"Um, Hiruma-san, about Shin-san..."

"Eh? I thought you were going home, fuckin' shrimp," Hiruma said over his shoulder. Sena swallowed.

"I-I am!" But he was curious about what Shin had said to Hiruma to cause that look, as though Shin had threatened Hiruma...

"...what did he say to you?"

Hiruma cocked his gun and hoisted it to his shoulder, turned, and gave Sena a long look.

"He said he'd break every bone in my body if I did it again."

Sena's jaw dropped.

"Hiiiiii~? B-B-But what did--that is, if--" Sena's cheeks flushed even as he asked, "--if you did what again?"

He felt as though gravity had reversed, otherwise how else had all the blood in his body gotten to his face so fast? Oh kami, why had he asked that? He was pretty certain what was causing the irregularity of his walking by now. He was pretty sure he knew. Did he just want to hear Hiruma say it out loud?

The blonde captain's face was fixed in a strange expression over Sena's head now to the point where Shin was still visibly walking off. Although Sena couldn't read minds Hiruma's face pretty much showed his puzzlement at what he'd been warned against. The Devilbat captain was seriously worried about how badly he'd misjudged Shin's level of idiocy as he finally answered Sena's question.

"If I set Ceberus on you."

End Chapter 2

End A/N: Looking back, this chapter was actually really short. It would've been, I suppose, without that middle piece. Please leave a comment/review. (: