Chapter Fifty Four: Sounds of Settling

Disclaimer: I do not own Eyeshield 21.

Song Playing: Kiss With A Fist

Theme 78: Kitchen

She just felt so out of place, like she was intruding. It was a feeling she did not like and it wasn't fading. In fact, it was getting worse.

In all honesty this was partially her fault: getting so excited about moving in with her longtime boyfriend to the point that she deliberately left out his less appealing qualities when imagining their new life together. On the other hand a very large part of her was placing the blame on Suzuna: who had been the one to get her excited about this in the first place. She was the one who had kept going on about the romantic aspects of it, how cozy it would be, and it had kind of rubbed off on her. It had left her feeling giddy and a good kind of nervous that she hadn't felt before she had started talking to the smaller girl.

The feeling had lasted until she had first opened the door into his- their- apartment the day she moved in.

The place was a sty. There was no nicer way of putting it. Clothes appeared to be growing from the floor and was being fertilized by the discarded trash. If she focused she could make out roster forms, game plans, phone trees, and diagrams mixed in it all. All of which she had helped to create; literally littering what she assumed was the furniture.

Her fingers absolutely itched to clean it all up but felt like that might be an invasion of his privacy somehow. After all this wasn't like the clubhouse. This was his living space. The place where he came to relax and unwind.

Admittedly unwinding involved a lot of mess and a massive quantity of takeout but, really, who was she to judge?

Two and a half weeks of not feeling comfortable in her new home had her re-thinking this whole moving in together thing. Then she stumbled into the kitchen. In contrast to the rest of the apartment the kitchen looked like it was never set foot in.

Curious she began muddling around and found it to be completely below her standards. For one it was dusty. What wasn't dusty was grimy, which she wasn't sure which she found more repulsive. Two it was under stocked. The cabinets and fridge did contain some odd assortment of past the expiration date and junk.

Though she had been pleasantly surprised that it was complete with cook and cookware. Hers in fact, when had he done that? This, however, did not make up for general lack of hygiene and sustenance.

Rolling up her sleeves she ventured back into the living area where the majority of her moving boxes still resided.

She shuffled them around for a few minutes before finding the one marked CLEANING SUPPLIES. Opening it up she smiled at the familiar sight of gloves, solutions, and rags. Donning the yellow rubber gloves and a bandana she marched back into the kitchen to begin an intense cleaning regiment the likes of which had never been seen before.

Working through the morning and into the afternoon, she only paused to empty out her swampy mop bucket. She scavenged what she could from the meager food supply they possessed to start on dinner.

Sitting in her spotless kitchen waiting for her rice to cook, her eyes couldn't help but wander over to the cluttered living space. A quick glance at the clock informed her that she had some time to kill. So, grabbing several trash bags she set about ridding the apartment of any garbage.

Then, while she was at it, she started sorting the recyclables and stacking papers she knew were important.

XxX

Hiruma was getting ready for a confrontation. Utilizing the long train ride home to organize his plan of attack that provided the highest level of success in the least amount of time. After almost three weeks of his girlfriend skating around him like she didn't know what to do with herself, he was fed up. He'd waited long enough for her to settle in but she seemed reluctant to do more than have her brush in the bathroom and share his futon.

It unnerved him in a way that nothing else had before.

There was terrible nagging feeling in the back of his head. He couldn't shake the thought that she was ready to leave the moment the two of them disagreed on something. Over all it made him feel like he was walking through a mine field.

So he was going to do the responsible things. He was going to man up and talk to her. He was going to sit her down and explain how it was her home as much as his. She could unpack her stuff. She could rearrange the furniture, if she could find it under his piles of crap. She didn't have to pick her way around carefully like she was going to disturb something. He was cool with it. He wanted her in his personal space, in his life. He wouldn't have asked her to move in with him if he wasn't sure that it was what he wanted.

Glancing down to make sure the mutt was still at his heels and hadn't left to terrorize one of the neighbors, he let himself into the apartment. Then he almost turned around and walked right back out. There was a brief disorienting second where he actually though he had walked into the wrong house.

The place was in clean in a way it had never been before: even when he had first moved in and hadn't had a lot of stuff to clutter it with. Her boxes that she hadn't unpacked were no longer taking up space in the entry way. There was also the suspicious smell of something cooking: not burning or rotting but actually cooking. He was mildly surprised when his stomach growled lightly in response. Cerberus also seemed confused, nose in the air as if to confirm that this was the same place they had left that morning.

Then a familiar cheerful female figure peered around the corner that entered the never used kitchen.

"Welcome home!" She wiped her hands on a dish cloth. "You should go wash up. Dinner's almost done, I'm just waiting for the rice to finish up."

Then she disappeared right back into the kitchen.

He continued to stand in that doorway, looking down to share a long look with Cerberus. The mutt shifted his shoulders in a way that suggested a shrug before giving a huff and trotting in after her. Well, he slipped his own shoes off and finally closed the door behind him, all right then.