Title: Story at 2:48 AM

Chapter: 6

Manga: Eyeshield 21

Pairing: Hiruma/Sena

Warnings/Spoilers: None, I think.

A/N: Goodness. So many comments about the quick kiss. You all underestimate the abilities of Hiruma's tongue. Apologies beforehand for the short chapter.

Chapter 6

Second class period found Sena staring straight ahead, eyes set on nothing and jaw working mechanically. Around him the chatter of his classmates which had grown to a dull buzz during the brief period of the transition of teachers had been replaced with rummaging for paper and pencils. The second period instructor was busy at the board writing in chalk so only his back saw Sena's inattentive stare. Maybe it was because he was having so much trouble in English that during this period Sena's mind chose to flood with thoughts of everything had had happened so far. Defeating the Hakushuu Dinosaurs and getting into the Christmas Bowl, partying, waking up next to his captain... strange questions from Shin, 200 penalty laps, being told that he's now dating the American Football Team Captain... running into everyone from the tournament, then everyone showing up at Deimon, and what Hiruma probably knew had been Sena's first kiss.

It had been too brief to even be bittersweet, Sena reflected, drawing his hand across his paper as though he were actually paying attention to the teacher's lecture. The foreign characters on the board still didn't make sense. The kiss didn't make sense. Didn't you only kiss the ones you love? But it was Hiruma, Sena argued mildly in his mind, and with Hiruma anything was possible.

'I'm doing badly in this class,' Sena reminded himself, blinking and sporting a half frown, 'I should be paying attention.'

As soon as he finished the thought his mind drifted back to the injustice of that morning.

To the kiss.

'My first kiss(1)... I never kissed a girl before, and I never dreamed I would kiss a guy, let alone a guy as scary as Hiruma,' Sena thought as he dragged his pen across the page, trying absently to mimic the strange combinations of English characters on the board. But what made Hiruma so frightening was his predictable unpredictability. The only thing that anyone knew about Yoichi Hiruma was that you could never know what to expect from him.

What was Sena expecting to gain by going through these kind of thoughts? 'I don't know... I'm not sure,' Sena groaned in his head, eyes sliding from the board and out the window to the sky as morning transitioned into early afternoon, 'I don't even know if there's a point to thinking about it. It's happened-nothing can help that now...' Mid-way through this lamentation someone whispered his name.

"Kobayakawa-san? Kobayakawa-san!"

An unfamiliar voice pulled Sena out of his thoughts. He turned to the apologetic and unfamiliar face of a student from Oujou. The boy smiled sheepishly and whispered even as he took notes.

"Kobayakawa-san, sorry for interrupting you, but class isn't over, and this teacher looks like he's a real stern guy. You probably shouldn't space out too much."

Sena looked back up at the board and down at his paper, then to the other boy's paper. He had already taken half a page of notes while Sena had written two lines. "Ah-thank you!"

"You're Deimon's running back, right? If you get suspended for doing poorly in school, it'll look bad for Deimon."

Sena blinked several times before nodding. "I'm grateful," he said before turning to look towards the front of the room. The other student nodded and returned to writing as well. The thoughts from before were thankfully absent now, allowing Sena to concentrate on the lecture right until the bell rang, and he packed up his things with everyone else and headed to lunch, contentedly thinking of English vocabulary and phrases.

The cafeteria was crowded with more students than usual, obviously the spillover from other flooded schools. Sena wondered which schools hadn't been flooded besides Deimon and who had been sent there. 'Not everyone's at Deimon,' he observed as Sakuraba and another Oujou student made their way through a mob of girls towards the lunch line, 'But there's a lot of interesting people here now...!'

Pleased for once that his mother still made him lunch every other day, Sena trotted outside to find Monta or Yuki or Suzuna. As he searched he was joined by Shin. The senior nodded to Sena, who smiled and invited him along to eat, and glanced to where Sakuraba was being drowned in a sea of too-eager estrogen.

After a fruitless search Sena sat down at an empty table. Shin excused himself for a moment. By the time Sena had sat and gotten the wrapper off of his bento the taller boy had returned with a female-free Sakuraba in tow looking relieved and thankful to have been extracted from all the attention. Sena waved as he joined the table and the three boys dug heartily into their lunches.

"So what's it like," Sena asked over a mouthful of rice, "Oujou, I mean." He'd only heard about the accident in class and in passing conversations between classes. He'd been pretty occupied this morning and last night to have heard anything about it and retain the information. Sakuraba smiled and obliged Sena's curiosity.

"Everything's flooded. Some main pipe burst and water's gotten to every part of the buildings from the top down! Luckily it happened at night so no one was hurt and most of our work was safe at home. There was no way for us to use the facilities there, let alone the classrooms. The field's fine, so we can practice back at Oujou. Coach has us jogging back after classes end!"

"All the way back to Oujou?" Sena asked in disbelief. Sakuraba grinned. "Actaully, it's Shin's fault!"

"Huh?" Sena asked intelligently.

Sakuraba laughed. "Coach was gonna have us share the field with you guys. Shin said that would be an ineffeciant use of a field and when Coach told him he could take a hike, Shin did! That gave Coach the idea, and so now we ALL have to jog back to school every day for warm up before practice."

"It will only build endurance," Shin said after swallowing a bite from his apple before returning to his silent healthy gorging.

Sena laughed. It certainly sounded like something Shin would suggest (inadvertently of course)!

He took another bite so his mouth was full when a familiar hand fell on his shoulder and two familiar voices sounded in his ear.

"Oi, Sena."

"Let's talk."

The brunette put down his lunch and stepped away from the table, apologizing to Shin and Sakuraba as he let himself step aside with his teammates. He walked with the Huh-Huh Bros, only slightly apprehensive of the situation, as they led him away from the lunch area and to the back part of the school. For a moment he wrestled with uncertainty. Sure, they'd bullied him a lot, but that was all in the past... right? They were on the same team now, they all knew he was Eyeshield 21. What was going on? It appeared they were going to let him have it, whatever 'it' was, when they came to a stop behind the school. After a rather pregnant pause the blonde spoke up.

"Look, Sena," Juumonji started, "We know."

"You... you know?" Sena parroted, uncertain of what exactly it was that they could know. There were a lot of things...

"Haaa? Don't play dumb, idiot!"

"I don't understand what you mean," Sena clarified, "What do you know?" What was there to know? It wasn't as though they didn't know his identity as Eyeshield 21. He wasn't sure there was anyone besides the team manager who really didn't know his position on the team-

"Sena," Juumonji startled Sena out of his thoughts, "we know what Hiruma's been doing to you."

For the second time that week, Sena wondered if his face was going to combust with the amount of blood rushing to his cheeks.

"Hiiiii?"

"Yeah, an' we don' like it, ironic as that is."

"But-"

Before Sena could ask what exactly Hiruma was doing to him the Huh-Huh Bros jumped on his case.

"Whaaaat?"

"Haaaah?"

"Don't be such a wimp, Sena!"

"Yeah! Geez. You're Eyeshield 21 now! You don't have ta take that shit from Hiruma."

Sena blinked. "Wait... what?"

"Aaah, stop foolin'. You know what we're talkin' about."

"Um..."

Juumonji crossed his arms over his chest and brought the issue to the table. "...Hiruma's been pickin' on you a lot lately, hasn't he?"

The brunette blinked disbelieving eyes. "What?"

"Don't be like that," the dark-haired teen grunted, waving off Sena's disbelieving query, "Ain't no use tryin' to hide stuff from us, 'specially when it's so obvious."

Sena was sure that the only obvious thing here was the misunderstanding that was occurring.

"We all been late to practice before," Kuroki pointed out, "An' ain't none of us had to run 200 laps straight!"

"Yeah, an' he likes to single you out when anyone's slackin'-not that y'slack," Togano added gruffly, grinding his teeth a bit.

Sena shuffled his feet. "I-I wouldn't call it picking on..."

"Huh?"

"Haaa?"

"Haaaaaan?"

The runner sweatdropped. It had been a while since the three declanations had been directed at him; it had gotten a lot more intimidating during the Huh-Huh Bros time in the Deimon Devilbats.

"Don't play dumb, Sena," Juumonji said, shoving Sena's shoulder, "We're all part of the same team now."

"Yeah!" the other blonde cheered.

"And you shouldn't let Hiruma bully you however he wants."

"But I-"

"Juumonji's right," Togano cut in, slinging his arm around Sena's neck, "We're apart of a team now!"

"We got your back," Kuroki agreed, throwing his arm around Sena the other direction so he was sandwiched between the two, "Even if it's that devil, we'll stick up for you!"

Even though it seemed for a strange reason, Sena was touched by the show of support. "Guys..."

A third blonde cheerfully slapped his own arm around Sena's neck, and that was odd, because there were only two blondes in the Huh-Huh Bros.

"Who's a devil?"

A wail went up from behind the school accompanied by gunshots and cackling, causing students at lunch to flinch in recognition.

When the grinning culprit emerged from the back of the school, a wobbly-legged brunette in tow, there were three figures left behind the school with impressive lumps on their heads.

Sena returned to the table just as Shin and Sakuraba began to consider searching for him. Sakuraba greeted him cheerfully enough and Shin nodded in what seemed to be approval. Sena wondered at that and realized his captain was making an effort to visibly hold his hand where Shin could see. Hiruma gripped his shoulders on his way to his seat, glanced at Shin, and said pointedly, "Dating." He deposited Sena into his seat again and disappeared.

When Sakuraba asked where Sena had gone to the boy's only response was to resignedly spit something into a napkin (2) and replied that it was nothing out of the norm, for with Hiruma, unpredictability, destruction, and chaos was the norm.

End Chapter 6

End A/N: I do hate how I have the end of the story written and am now quite befuzzled as to how I'm supposed to connect all the pieces. Fudgemonkeys. Please leave a comment/review.

(1) Actually, this is not Sena's first kiss. He just doesn't remember that yet.

(2) I'll give you one guess and one hint. It's pink.