Author's Note: At 7:47 this morning I stopped being a teenager. Wow. Thanks to all who reviewed!

The Story So Far: Three chapters of establishing some facts of those who surround Hiruma. Now we get to see what he thinks.

Hidden

By: Bar-Ohki

Chapter 4: Hidden Within the Body

Hiruma walked into the empty locker room. Everyone had left to get to class that morning, everyone except him. He was always a little late for his first class, mainly because he wanted to shower alone in the mornings. It wasn't that he was locker shy, in fact more often than not he changed with the rest of the team in the mornings. For Hiruma it was a matter of principal; showers were sacred times for him. Times were he could wash away all the stray thoughts from his mind that could be distracting for whatever he planned to do that day.

And Hiruma always had plans.

"Aye!" Hiruma let out a girlish squeak when the unexpectedly hot water fell from the faucet onto his skin. He glanced around, a small embarrassed flush on his cheeks. He let out a small sigh of relief when there was no one present.

That would be the other reason he showered alone, he could never get his water temperature right when starting the shower.

"Fucking shower!" Hiruma growled at the knobs, as he ritually did every morning, and fixed the temperature. Once the water was at the right temperature, Hiruma began to relax and leisurely clean off the grim and sweat of a hard football practice.

Hiruma paused when he started to wash behind his ears (a remarkable amount of crap wound up behind them, even with a helmet to protect them). His abnormally long, narrow fingers traced the edge of his ears. They were tall, pointy ears, unlike anything he had seen on anyone else in his life.

Both the doctors and his parents had told him that he was born with slightly deformed ears. Hiruma had always accepted that, there wasn't any reason not too. Besides the pointy ears did add to the demonic image he created for himself.

'Only one in the family with them.' Hiruma thought absently, silently remembering pictures and faces of his distant relatives. He stopped absently tracing his ears and returned to cleaning behind them. His ears were sensitive to touch, but Hiruma had never bothered to ask anyone else he knew if they also had sensitive ears, he just assumed everyone did. Maybe that's why mothers were always pulling on kids' ears, to make the feel a little agony to drive the point home….

Hiruma opened his mouth to let a little water splash in. He swirled the water around in his mouth and spat out the dirt, blood, and spit that had gathered up in there during his practice. Snarling a little at the crap that had just been in his mouth, Hiruma rinsed it again. Inspecting carefully with his tongue, Hiruma decided his mouth was clean.

Unconsciously, Hiruma ran his tongue over his long canines. They were by far his most sensitive teeth. If he took a drink of something that was too warm or cold, it was the canines that hurt most. If he ate anything too sweet they ached, which resulted in his low tolerance of sugar.

Hiruma chuckled as he remembered his first trip to the dentist, his father and the dentist had argued about his fangy canines and what should happen to them. Eventually it was decided that they would wait for the adult teeth to come in, but that was after the two had yelled themselves blue in the face and caused a large scene in the waiting room. Hiruma himself had remarked that the two were arguing over teeth that were going to fall out eventually anyways, which is what had stopped the argument.

'Serves the bastard right.' Hiruma thought smugly, remembering how his father had been so dumbstruck by the simple fact. Again Hiruma had been told by the dentist and by his father that the teeth were again a birth defect. It was just another fact of life.

Hiruma actively choose not to remember the argument he had had with his father when his adult teeth had proved to be even more fang-like than his baby teeth. It had not been pretty, resulting in Hiruma running away from home the following day.

'Why did that bastard have a fetish with trying to make me look more 'normal'?' Hiruma wondered, recalling having overheard his father on the phone with a plastic surgeon trying to get something done about Hiruma's ears. Hiruma liked his appearance, it was completely natural after all.

With the exception of one thing that was never explained to him, because it had happened after he had left his parents' home. His hair had turned from black to blond when he was 12. It happened over the course of a few days, and made almost no sense. He had told everyone that he bleached it, and everyone had believed him. Part of Hiruma wanted to chalk up his hair to another birth defect, it wasn't that much unlike turning gray prematurely.

All these birth defects were unnerving if you thought about them too long.

'If you have one birth defect the chances of having another range anywhere from .5 to 54 percent depending on the genetic make up of the parents.' Hiruma reminded himself [1].

He stepped out of the show and began to dry himself, pausing to stare at his hands, specifically his fingernails. The nails had been cut into claw-like points. Hiruma had always cut his nails that way once he was old enough to cut them himself. He faintly wondered why he had chosen to start doing that, after all he'd been pretty young when he made that choice.

Immediately he dismissed the thought, it didn't really matter in the long run, he could always cut his nails into a rounder shape if he wanted too. Besides, the claws really did make an excellent finishing touch to his demonic image. One he enjoyed putting on all too much.

With a slightly feral grin, Hiruma left the locker room and headed towards school, a machine gun propped up against one shoulder and his bag slung over the other.

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[1] – I just made those up, do not quote me on them.

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