"Uh… I… Uh… H-Hiruma-san?" Sena squeaks. Yoichi, feeling a very severe case of déjà vu, glances up. Sena is fidgeting in the doorway, looking around nervously, like he's never been in the American Football club room before. Yoichi is half-expecting and deeply hoping the Mamori will appear out of thin air to soothe Sena, but it seems she chose today to allow Sena his independence and left Yoichi to clean up the mess. Yoichi is starting to have doubts about any kind of favor being worth comforting the shrimp.
If any of this transfers onto the field and his running back does anything short of his very best, Yoichi is going to be pissed. But then again, he sees the way the oldest Huh Huh brother looks at Sena when he thinks Sena can't see, and the shrimp never avoids a run because Juumonji is there, so Yoichi figures Sena is probably capable of shoving unease deep, deep down on the field. As he should be.
"Che." Yoichi sighs finally, setting his laptop down. He has a bad feeling this morning is going to echo yesterday afternoon and he will not be allowed to work and talk. Oddly enough setting the laptop aside does nothing to alleviate the shrimp's nerves, in fact Sena looks like he's deeply regretting his entire life and about to dash the 4.1 straight out of Deimon. "Did the fucking manager explain the situation?" Yoichi asks, pinning Sena in place with a glare.
"Mamori-neechan, she said…" Sena trails off, looking doubtful and terrified in equal measures. He's fiddling with bottom of his shirt and Yoichi is having terrible flashbacks to the beginning of the year when all he wanted to do was bash the shrimp's head against the floor until he paid attention and stopped stuttering and maybe even grew a backbone, though that seemed extraordinarily unlikely back then. Even Yoichi could be wrong sometimes. Yoichi figures this is going to be like pulling teeth anyway it happens, so he might as well cut the chit-chat and the waiting for Sena to stop being a moron and get straight to the heart of the shrimp's fear.
"You are in need of someone to scare off suitors. I get a free favor from the manager." Yoichi looks Sena straight in the eyes. "That's it." He says seriously. Sena's brow furrows and then smoothes out. This is going to take so much longer than Yoichi thought and he takes a moment to mourn all the blackmail he's probably missing out on right now due to this conversation.
"That's all?" Sena asks, and really, Yoichi was going to have to get himself a therapist license by the end of this conversation. He does hate to repeat himself but what was he on when he made that agreement? There wasn't even a specified time limit. Yoichi was going to end up killing himself, or Sena, by the end of this charade, he was sure.
"That's all. Are your ears broken, fucking shrimp?" Yoichi responds, baring his teeth. Sena flushes an embarrassed red, and Yoichi is a little surprised not to see any fear accompany the flush. He must be loosing his touch, too many guns, and too few subtle manipulations. He would be fixing that shortly. After the contract with Mamori expired, she'd probably try to have him arrested if he blackmailed Sena while in a 'relationship'. "You're in charge here, that's been made abundantly clear." Yoichi relents, trying for pacifying and ending up somewhere in the 'vaguely aggressive, but not enough to kill a small child' region. It was, he figures, close enough. "Make the best of a bad situation and make your decision quickly." Yoichi finishes.
"It's not that bad of a situation." Sena mumbles placatingly, while blatantly ignoring the second part of Yoichi's statement. Then he freezes, draws his shoulders comfortingly up to his ears, and scrutinizes Yoichi's face. When he sees, or rather, Yoichi expects, doesn't see, what he's looking for, Sena's shoulders drop back down in a relaxed state and Sena smiles gently.
"Get dressed and on the field shrimp. Practice starts in 15 minutes." Yoichi says, in lieu of an actual response. He picks his laptop back up to get some actual work done for once and as a very clear indicator that this conversation is over. Sena, however, is not very good at subtleties and slowly, carefully tiptoes his way into the club until he's standing in front of Yoichi, half hidden by the laptop screen. He bites his lip again, which Yoichi thinks is a terrible habit and he has to restrain himself a little from dragging his guns out from the secret seat installed in the window he likes to sit in. His favorite thing about the old man was that he asked no questions and had friends in the furnishing business who asked no questions.
"Thank you Hiruma-san." Sena says, pausing a little like he was going to say something else, but instead he smiles again and scampers off to actually do as he was told. Yoichi is not sure he's going to be able to put of with the damn shrimp being grateful for any period of time. Everything he does is sickeningly sincere and Yoichi is definitely neither of those things. Well, he considers, he is probably sickening, and proud of it. In any case he hopes Sena makes up his mind very soon. While he hasn't though, they're going to have to have a conversation that goes 'people don't refer to their significant others by their last names'. Sena will make it so much more annoying and long-lasting than it really has to be, of this Yoichi is sure.
Practice, for once, goes relatively smoothly. Yoichi chases the shrimp squad around, guns blazing, until they reach their top speeds and sustain it, which takes less time than it normally does. He sets Cerberus to watch over them, hungrily, but Yoichi doesn't expect he'll be needed today. Yoichi leaves the linemen to Kurita, he's too soft, but they will get better little by little with him in charge, argues briefly with Mamori about plays and even gets to train a little himself.
About halfway through practice he introduces a new technique, based on the weaknesses of their rag-tag team, because eventually the weaknesses will be exploited. He's surprised it hasn't been already, but then again people seem remarkably set on believing that the Devilbats have had extraordinary luck all season, and aren't worth scouting. All in all it would be a brilliant practice that Yoichi could feel proud of if he didn't keep noticing little behaviors he hadn't before Mamori stormed into the club yesterday. The way Juumonji smiles a little too long at Sena, even when he is looking now, and how Taki spins just that much more extravagantly when Sena is looking his way. Even the monkey behaves differently around Sena. What he notices most is how Sena's smile tightens every time a behavior that could be seen as flirting occurs, how his eyes flick just a little bit between Yoichi and Mamori. Mamori glares knives at Yoichi across the field, so he figures he'd best hold up his end of the bargain. He questions why Mamori couldn't have done this herself, but decides not to think too far into it. The manager's mind is a terrifying place, and that's coming from Yoichi, who has actually been called a demon almost every day since he was 5.
"Shrimp, come here." Yoichi calls, and Sena trots over, staring with some amount of trust and a great amount of relief up at Yoichi. It's a stupid change from this morning, a couple sentences and a lack of emotional response to what Sena says apparently does wonders for improving team relationships. Yoichi is actually kind of angry, if this is what Sena's been doing before people show interest in him, no wonder so many people are lining up to try their chances. It's his stupid optimism and trust, like Yoichi couldn't just be hiding his feelings a little deeper- Yoichi cuts off his thoughts there. He's not going to talk himself into a relationship with Sena while they are supposed to be playing at a fake relationship. They have less than nothing in common and it would never last. Yoichi minutely shakes his head to banish the thoughts, before focusing back on Sena and his agreement with Mamori.
"Yes Hiruma-san?" Sena asks, still panting slightly from the practice. Yoichi glances briefly at a clock hanging on a nearby wall. (Some people had raised concerns about clocks hanging outside looking tacky but Yoichi had smiled and said that the American Football Club needed to know what time it was always and these esteemed gathering of people wouldn't want to make them late to class now would they, and suddenly it hadn't been a problem anymore.) Practice was almost over, there was about a minute and a half until it was time to change clothes and run to class, which meant Yoichi had just enough time to start phase 1 of his plan to get this over as fast as humanly possible, and with Sena it should go about twice as fast.
"Here." Yoichi dumps a towel on Sena's head. Sena struggles with it for a couple seconds, before it slips backwards resting on his fluffy abomination of hair and his face pops out, looking confused. The whole practice field has gone miraculously silent. Juumonji in particular, Yoichi notes, looks ready to murder him. Yoichi smirks. "Kekeke." He laughs, rubbing the towel into Sena's hair. Yoichi then proceeds to prop an elbow up on Sena's head and lean in close to his face. Sena looks very nervous, but Yoichi just raises an eyebrow and grins until Sena manages an uneasy smile back at him. Good enough. Yoichi knows, from the angle the rest of the team is standing, exactly what just appeared to happen, and figures that fulfills his boyfriend duties for the day. Yoichi straightens back up, minutely separates himself from Sena.
"Ya-ha! Practice is over, hit the showers." Yoichi yells, firing a gun in the air, and Sena darts out, fast enough that Yoichi almost feels insulted. This farce was never going to work if Sena couldn't step up his acting skills and pretend not to hate the idea of a relationship. As it was, a person would have to be a complete monkey to not realize- Yoichi turned very slowly, already regretting his mental word choice. Sure enough, there stands Monta, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Yoichi looks at him with a politely questioning expression. Monta takes two uneasy steps back and Yoichi can't help but grin madly.
"As-" Monta looks at Yoichi suspiciously, waiting for the polite look to come back so he can high-tail it out of there. Yoichi, though, despite how fun it is to torture Monta's tiny brain, has decided this probably has something to do with Sena and can be used to springboard the idea that they are dating, and so is good and doesn't make any faces. He's going to have to go on such a blackmail spree when he is done pretending to be Sena's boyfriend, he feels like an upstanding citizen and it is probably the grossest feeling he's ever been faced with.
"As Sena's best friend, I demand to know what is going on." Monta finally announces after it becomes clear that Yoichi is done terrorizing him. Monta is brandishing a finger, pointed vaguely at Yoichi but with all the random flailing it's a little hard to tell. "You were MAX hanging all over him at practice." No monkey, it was just the last minute of practice, Yoichi wants to say so badly, but instead he unloads a round of handgun shells at Monta's feet. Monta backs up quite a bit more, but he's still glaring at Yoichi. So, Yoichi figures, it's the perfect time to enter phase 2 of the farce for which he's really beginning to suspect is not going to be worth 'a favor'.
"Don't you know? We're fucking boyfriends." Yoichi says, grinning widely. The look on Monta's face actually convinced him a little that everything was going to be worthwhile. He regretted deeply making a decision not to bring his camera with him while he was practicing because that look would warm the cackles of his heart until the day he died.
"Sena!" The monkey screams, running into the clubhouse. "Sena, say it's MAX untrue!" Yoichi turns to raise an eyebrow at the rest of the team, none of whom have moved at all yet. Then he grins a Cheshire grin and unleashes a rain of bullets at their feet. As he chases them into the clubhouse he laughs a little. Juumonji is definitely going to strain something glaring as hard as he is.
Hey, this actually got a response which was both surprising and nice. Anyway just so everyone is clear and no one is confused or let down, this is going to be a Hiruma/Sena fanfiction, regardless of what other pairings may pop up. Sorry. Also it's highly unlikely the next chapter will show up this quickly in the future. Real life sucks hard core sometimes. Also again, I know nothing about football so if that is abundantly clear I apologize.
