Disclaimer: I do not own Eyeshield 21.

Short Pass: Fear

Drabble in a quiet moment. Phobias are irrational, that's why they are phobias.

For once, there wasn't a game that weekend for the Devil Bats, so Mamori decided to take the opportunity to clean the clubhouse. Its condition had taken a rather severe nosedive from when she first joined the team-first by general neglect when they all went to America for over a month, then through just inattention as the Devil Bat's practices ramped up and Mamori got more involved in plotting strategy with Hiruma that an usual manager did.

When the sea of decay from when she first joined started to creep back in, Mamori decided to put her foot down.

She arrived early that morning with a bucket, a new broom, plenty of soap, an apron and gloves. It was going to be a big job, courtesy of Hiruma's rather lavish additions and renovations to the structure-it was hardly recognizable as the poky little storeroom from that spring. Hiruma appeared after she finished the locker rooms, and they got in a friendly little fight when she told him to clean up the various firearms littering the place. When he refused, she invoked the Cabinet Incident (which in retrospect was not quite as terrible as she had thought at the time) and threatened to do it herself. At the thought of losing all his bullets again, Hiruma cursed her but complied as she beamed at him brightly.

He had finished by the time she had finished tidying away all the game tapes, pens, markers, stray equipment, old chip bags and those random little figures Hiruma used to map out plays.

All that was left was to sweep out the front room. Mamori made sure to get every nook and cranny, and even the ceiling corners. Hiruma cursed her again as she kept making him and his laptop move to get every last spot, and blew bubbles with particular violence. She just deflected the expected bullets and finished up. She was chasing the last bit of debris outside the door when...it...appeared.

Anezaki Mamori was often told that she was a brave girl. Her, perhaps slightly overdeveloped, maternal instincts made her stand up to all bullies, regardless of size, age or power; she regularly argued with Hiruma Yoichi, a name most others ran screaming from; and she attended all the Devil Bats' games and practices, even if she didn't participate as intensely as they did. People sometimes wondered at Hiruma's humanity, given his tendency to project the Evulz; they also sometimes wondered at hers, given her tendency to project the extreme opposite.

So it was something of a shock even to Hiruma when she suddenly gave out high-pitched shriek and ran screaming from the door.

He almost dropped his computer. The fuck? He did grab his favorite rifle and launched a hail of bullets across the room...only to see nothing.

"Fucking manager, what the hell-"

A second shock came when she barreled into him, almost tipping both him and his chair over.

"Goddamn-" He'd grabbed her out of reflex. Her front was plastered to his as she hung on to him with a terrified death grip, babbling incoherently. The smell of the soap she had been using, as well as the strawberries in her shampoo wafted to his nose. This wasn't good, for more reasons than one, and he panicked slightly. "What are you-"

"T-there! There! Door, the...thing. It just came out! And it-gah!"

She shivered against him and, wouldn't let go even when he tried to pry her arms from around his neck. Instead, she buried her face deeper, like she was going to somehow burrow into his heart. Shit. At a loss-he was not the comforting type, damn it-he let his hands fall awkwardly to her waist until the shaking slowed. When it did, he tried again.

"You're acting even stupider than the fucking idiot." Well, he did say he wasn't the comforting type, right? "What the hell did you see? A fucking mouse or something?"

She shook her head, the strands of her hair tickling his neck. "N-not a mouse."

"Then what the fuck is it?" When she didn't answer, he huffed. "This is stupid, come on."

"No, wait!"

But with the initial stages of her freak-out past, she didn't have the terrified super-strength anymore and he was able to detach her enough to stand up. She shuffled to his back instead, blue-green eyes wide in a pale face. He reached the door and looked down.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"Is it still there?" Mamori asked. When he didn't answer, she peered fearfully over his shoulder...only to jump back when the spider scurried forward. "Ah!"

"Kekekekeke! " Hiruma laughed so hard he cried. "You're afraid of fucking spiders? Spiders? KEKEKEKEKE!"

"It's not funny!" she protested. "It's HUGE! I was sweeping and it just came out and-"

"Kekekeke!" Hiruma couldn't stop. "Look what all your damn cleaning gets you. Oh my fucking god, you are afraid of fucking SPIDERS!"

"Would you just do something about it already?"

Snickering, Hiruma pulled out a Glock and blasted the arachnid to kingdom come. Mamori was so relieved she ignored the three new holes in the clubhouse floor.

He grinned down at her, still extremely amused. "That's what I like about you, fucking manager, you always make things so goddamn interesting."

Mamori froze. "What?"

Hiruma froze. "What?" Shit. To cover, he hastily added, "Are you going to hold on to me for fucking ever, or are you going to let me get some feeling back into my arm?"

"S-sorry." Mamori was still holding on to his arm with white fingers. She let go as if it burned, but that was nothing compared to what her face felt like as she remembered how she had practically jumped into his lap. Hopefully he would just take her red face as embarrassment for the shrieking at a spider thing. Though it was really bad that she was at a point where that was the lesser of the two evils.

She grabbed her broom. "Th-thank you," she managed, taking a deep breath. "I'll just...finish up here."

He was still grinning at her in that way of his where she couldn't decide if she wanted to smack him or kiss him or-oh no, she was not going to think about that right now. Mamori turned around and hurriedly pretended intense preoccupation with sweeping the last pile of dirt out the door.