Disclaimer: I do not own Eyeshield 21.
Author's Note: The obligatory Valentine's fic.
Short Pass: Valentine's Day.
First of all, it was pink. Overwhelmingly pink, which was just a red that didn't try hard enough.
"Thanks for helping me out with this," Suzuna said.
"Sure!" replied Mamori. "I was planning on making some for the rest of the team anyway."
The two of them were in Mamori's kitchen, making chocolate. It was the day before Valentine's Day and Suzuna had asked the older girl for help in making the sweet treat. They had started at Suzuna's but Taki kept spinning in, declaring himself a master chocolatier despite a tendency to burn anything he put on the stove, and generally making himself a big nuisance. Suzuna had finally smacked him in the head with one of her skates and asked if they could go to Mamori's place instead.
The younger girl watched carefully as Mamori made the first batch. For the second, Suzuna took over. Under her friend's eye, Suzuna chopped the chocolate bars into fine slivers to melt easily into the just below boiling cream on the stove, stirred in a bit of liqueur for additional flavor and then carefully poured the mixture into a prepped tray.
"Perfect!" said the older girl. "Now we just put it in the fridge next to mine to firm up." She smiled at Suzuna. "There, not so hard, was it?"
Suzuna rubbed her forehead. Easy for you to say. The skate girl had been nervous the whole time, desperate not to mess up. She'd never been into supremely girly stuff like cooking and making sweets, and was always more interested in skating outside. Consequently the stove turned into this arcane object that terrified her when she decided that she wanted to make her own chocolates for this year instead of buying store-bought.
She really envied Mamori's graceful ease about the kitchen-and, actually her relative effortlessness in anything she seemed to do. From Sena, she knew that Mamori was one of the smartest people in her class, and involved in the school Disciplinary Committee as well as the American Football team. She stood up to You-nii on a regular basis and of course was extremely pretty. Suzuna might have hated her on general principle if Mamori wasn't also one of the nicest and least self-centered people she'd ever met. Because she was, Suzuna instead looked up to her enormously.
That didn't mean that she didn't like to tease her friend at every chance she got though.
"So," said Suzuna, bouncing on the couch as Mamori brought over a tray of snacks they could eat while the chocolate set, "who are you going to give your chocolate to?"
Mamori looked thoughtful. "Well, my parents, of course. My friends Sara and Ako. The American Football team. The other members of the Disciplinary committee-"
"No, not them!" Suzuna waved a hand impatiently. "I don't mean your friends and family, I meant is there anyone special."
Mamori got that long-suffering look on her face again, but Suzuna was determined. Suzuna had watched Mamo-nee and You-nii together during practices and it totally clicked. Really, they were perfect for each other. Mamori's sweetness and calm tempered Hiruma's over the top antics, while his craziness helped shake up her sometimes conservative-to-the-point-of-almost-stodginess. They would make the cutest couple ever and had so much chemistry they could run their own science experiment.
Too bad they couldn't see it. Suzuna had seriously thought something would happen after You-nii got hurt in the game against the Dinosaurs, or even the Christmas Bowl for goodness sake, but nothing. She was honestly almost to the point of locking them into the clubhouse until they had to confess to each other. But when she floated the idea to Sena the other day-after the running back had repaired his brain and come back from oblivion at the thought of his secondary mother figure and his hellish team leader getting together-Sena had suggested that it was better to let them work it out on their own. Thinking of how she had waited for him to reveal himself as Eyeshield 21, Suzuna had sighed and agreed.
That didn't mean that she couldn't still nudge them though.
However, Mamori responded to Suzuna's insinuation about You-nii like she always did. "Everyone is special to me, Suzuna." But then she turned the tables. "What about you? Did you make a special one for Sena?"
The skate girl blushed, and boffed Mamori with a pillow. "Not fair! You can't ask that!"
Mamori ducked and laughed. "Why not? You tease me about Hiruma all the time!"
"That's different!"
"Is it?" A funny smile played around Mamori's lips for a second but Suzuna was too embarrassed to notice and continue to attack her with the pillow.
Hiruma Yoichi thought that Valentine's Day was stupid. While he could appreciate the way the Japanese confectionary industry had manipulated the masses into spending wads of dough on the holiday each year, the holiday itself was still stupid.
First of all, it was pink. Overwhelmingly pink, which was just a red that didn't try hard enough.
Second, it was sappy. Everything and everyone seemed to have gotten hit with the lovesick idiot bat, and all week he was bombarded by sappy lovey-dovey posters, sappy lovey-dovey decorations, sappy lovey-dovey commercials and sappy lovey-dovey made-for-tv movies. How the hell was a guy supposed to plan how to utterly crush his opponents in one of the most physically brutal sports on the planet in the middle of all this crap?
Third, and the more egregious offense, the holiday seemed to make everyone dumb. Hiruma was used to being the smartest person in the room, but this was ridiculous. People who were decently intellectual the other 364 days of the year acted like their IQ's dropped a hundred points. There was the old adage "Love makes you stupid," but that was bullshit. Hiruma hadn't suddenly turned into an idiot.
Then he opened his locker on Valentine's Day and found it...empty. This wasn't an unusual occurrence. His locker was always empty on Valentine's Day. He couldn't remember ever getting any chocolate on this day, not even from his parents. Which was just fine with him. He was perfectly aware of his fearsome reputation-he specifically cultivated it, so why the hell would he be disappointed if no girl was brave enough to give him chocolate?
But he wasdisappointed. Not because no girl had given him chocolate but because a certain girl hadn't. Even though that girl appeared to have given chocolate to everyone else on the American Football team-and even the non-Deimon players who were just there to train for the World Cup like Shin and Kakei and Taka. She even gave some to Gaou for fuck's sake. The only other player Anezaki Mamori didn't give chocolate to was Agon, but that was only because the fucking dread never came to practice anyway.
Hiruma was disappointed, and mad at himself for being disappointed. What was he expecting, some sort of gushy declaration of love? There was 0% chance of that ever happening, especially since he had refused to take Musashi's advice and tell her how he felt because the idea was just as ridiculous now as it was then.
But he couldn't stop thinking about it, and the more he thought about it, the more irritated he got. He tried to hide it but evidently something was leaking out. At practice that afternoon, his gunshots and evil grins and curses had more bite than usual and the other players started looking at him strangely. He was glad to see them go afterwards, and went back to the clubhouse to attempt to lose himself researching their opponents again.
The problem was that the fucking manager was there as well, cleaning up, organizing files, checking their supplies and whatever else she did. Normally he enjoyed this time when it was just the two of them, but today her presence just grated. Their normal banter grew edged until finally she put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
"Hiruma, what is with you today? You've been angry about something all day and taking it out on everyone. What is it?"
"What's with me? What's with you? What the hell, did I piss you off again or something?"
She looked puzzled. "What? No. What do you-"
The quarterback couldn't take it anymore. "Then why the hell did you even give the fucking caveman chocolate and not me?"
She gaped at him, those blue-green eyes wide and that pretty mouth hanging open. "W-what? That's what you are so angry about? But I did! That's the first one I dropped off this morning!"
"Like hell. My locker was so empty I could fit my M-16 in it."
"I didn't put it in your locker, I put it in the clubhouse." She pointed at the table. "I know you always come here first so I put it on the roulette wheel so you would see it when you walked in this morning-"
They both looked down at a roulette wheel that was completely devoid of chocolate. There was, however, a curly white and red ribbon caught in the spokes-one end of it ragged as if yanked by a pair of teeth.
The quarterback and the manager stared at the ribbon, then at each other, and then ran outside to Cerberous's kennel.
"You goddamn dog-" Hiruma snarled. Cerberous grudgingly flopped over inside his house to allow Hiruma to pull out the sad tatters of more curly ribbon and red foil. There were even a few smears of chocolate still on the foil.
"Oh no..." groaned Mamori as she knelt down next to Hiruma to take a look. "He must have gotten in after I left this morning and stole it. Isn't chocolate bad for dogs?"
Hiruma shrugged. "I've never seen him get sick from any of the shit he eats."
Mamori's face looked tragic. "I'msorry, I should have put it in your locker after all." She sighed. "I even made it out of the darkest chocolate that I could find, since I know you don't like sweets."
Damn, now he felt like an ass. She was apologizing to him. All because of a stupid holiday. "Don't worry about it."
"Are you sure? I might still have some left, I can make you more tomorrow-"
"I said don't worry about it." She was looking at him with those sad eyes again. He forced a laugh. "Kekeke. It's a dumb holiday anyway."
Her hand was warm in his as he pulled her up. They walked back to the clubhouse in silence and Hiruma made himself comfortable in front of the computer again, this time to actually concentrate. Mamori walked around, finishing her cleanup and taking the kettle off the hot plate to pour him a cup of tea.
She set the cup in front of him and called his name. "Hiruma?"
"Hmm?" He flicked through the latest online reports of Panther's player stats. He's going to be a problem...
"I'm going now. Don't stay up too late, ok? And I'm sorry about the chocolate."
He snorted. "Ke! For the last time, don't worry about it. It was the damn dog's fault." He flipped to Clifford D. Louis's stats next, then-she was still standing there. He looked up. "Fucking manager-"
Whatever he was about to say was cut off as soft strands of auburn hair brushed his face and warm lips pressed against his cheek.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Hiruma," she whispered, cheeks bright. Then she rushed out the door.
This time it was his turn to gape and he continued to stare at the place where she had been long after she'd gone. Long fingers touched his cheek where the feeling of the kiss still lingered. Suddenly he burst out laughing and smiled the first true smile he'd had all day.
Well. Maybe it wasn't such a stupid holiday after all.