Closer to You

Disclaimer: Alas, I don't own Eyeshield 21, but Hiruma will always be spiritually mine :p

Summary: Hiruma and Mamori talk about firearms. MamoHiru. One shot.

Definition of terms: Ithaca M37 and Jailbreaker are shotguns; M92f, SIG P226, H&K P8 are handguns; S75 and Dragunov are rifles; warhead is your friendly companion to a rocket launcher.

His precious weapons of mass destruction queued up neatly on the floor, their surfaces shining against the pale moonlight that had begun treading the space in bold freedom. She walked in on him without caution as he was polishing them. From an outsider's view, this event seemed incidental, spontaneous. There was no way that either of them could have arranged for this meeting to take place, not when in her crude manner of walking in she breathed loudly. Like what was said, incidental. Her sense of privacy then vanished and she heard the clucking movements of hard material being laid down. His, too, seemed to thin in the air.

"Hiruma-kun." He didn't look up when she took another step forward, but she knew he knew she was there, edging ever closer to reduce the distance. He seemed focused, intense; she hesitated, paused, and scrunched up her eyebrows.

"Hn." His eyes didn't move away from the dreaded objects. His long fingers seemed stuck.

"Hiruma-kun, you shouldn't be here at this hour." she said, more out of genuine affection for him than anything else.

"I'm busy."

"I can see that."

But she was far from giving up. She took a seat near him, careful to cause him as little trouble as she could. She eyed the firearms with no particular passion and saw their sharp edges, their trimmed outlines, and on a more metaphorical level, the enormity of what they could do to her. She sighed.

"Ithaca M37. Double-barraled. This can hurt several people at a time." She lifted one of his shotguns to her eye level, frowning. The thing felt heavy in her hands and she wondered, simultaneously, how someone as small-boned as Hiruma could have single-handedly strapped himself with a lot of these at a given time.

"That, unfortunately, is my intention. Perfect for scaring the hell out of a group of fucking shrimps within the most convenient lapse of time possible. Kekeke."

"To be sure, but I don't understand why you should still have a Jailbreaker when you already have an Ithaca. I was under the impression that you're not a fan of duplicity."

"Let me break it to you, fucking manager, that in all things you need a back-up. Once Ithaca overheats, the next best thing is a fucking Jailbreaker. Fast reload, with a little less firepower, a little more weight and character; no other choice comes close."

"So you say." If it was meant to be an extension of the argument, neither of them attempted to pursue it. She went on, "I've noticed that you don't care much about handguns. I find it ironic."

"Would've fancied them a long fucking time ago. M92f, SIG P226, H&K P8, my drawers used to be full of them sissies. Presently I don't mean to minimize casualties, which is what handguns are for." came his response. For some reason, he was chuckling mischievously.

"But their accuracy would have been perfect."

"I don't have problems with accuracy, if that's what you're getting at."

"Of course." she exhaled. To even suggest that he was an amateur in handling weapons, after all, was unthinkable. "And if you did, you'd always have your S75 in hand. Oh, and look, you even bothered to own a Dargunov."

"Damn useless thing. You can have it if you want."

"No, thanks." her voice came with a smile even when she cringed at the thought of slinging a rifle by the back. She could imagine the look on the Devil Bats team at that sight of her: they, like lambs for slaughter; her, like the tyrant this man before him was. If she wanted to do things for a change, agreeing to his offer would have been the easy way around it.

"Kekeke. Then would you like to try my newest Magnum? S&W M29, fresh off the shop. I assumed that for someone who knows a lot about guns, she'd know how to shoot." he said as though just anyone was unquestionably welcome to give his guns a try.

"I'd have to decline, Hiruma-kun."

"Not so huge on violence, are we?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Kekeke. I always thought you could use some toughening up."

"I don't need guns for that." She muttered and came pretty near whimpering.

"You haven't fired anything, have you?" Hiruma's voice was matter-of-fact, not sneering. "If you know what you're about, you'd have a very good reason for not owning one. Let me hear it."

"With all due respect, you're the only one I know who owns this many. You'd have given terrorists a run for their money with all this. Seriously, what's with all the firearms, Hiruma-kun?"

"Just my way of doing things, fucking manager. You have yours, I suppose?"

"That's a given."

"I figured as much. Let me guess, you love researching."

"You love it too."

"Not when all I'm looking for is an excuse to open up a conversation. You don't get medals for that sort of thing, you know, although you do deserve a little credit if nothing else."

"I'm not sure if I follow you."

"Kekeke. Let me reprise: You obviously hate guns, so why choose to be so well-informed about them?"

It was, if anything, so resolutely out of her calculations to be cornered thus. In the partial darkness, she began to break in sweat. His expression, on the other hand, remained fixed. A sudden, unknowing silence filled the atmosphere. Her ears could almost burst of it.

"I doubt if it was for your Science and Technology class." He continued.

"No, it's not. Just idle appreciation, maybe."

"Indeed?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well then, I'm glad you're taking interest in other things, no matter how inconsequential." he drew himself up as if to cue that the meeting was over, and silently picked up his guns from the floor to carefully tuck them inside his vast locker.

Stung and visibly hurt, she didn't reply. It was either he failed to interpret this silence or he simply decided to ignore it. For her part, she just watched him at this leisure as she would watch her hopes go down in flames. His back turned to her, she wondered, agonizingly, if reaching him was ever possible in the world she lived in. Perhaps, it wasn't. He had, after all, always been so far away. And set as she initially was to dislike his ways, she wanted, more than anything else now, to learn from him, to ultimately learn to love that things that he loved at the cost of throwing herself at him in this manner. In the light of all this, the encounter wasn't an accident. Anezaki Mamori had painstakingly prepared and planned for it to happen.

"Let me help you with those." she felt honor bound to help him as his personal assistant and without waiting for his reply, she began taking after his actions. How she could allow such a thing that caused her so much pain to pass could only be explained by sheer willpower.

"This is nearly done, fucking manager. Go fetch one of my rocket launchers behind the trapdoor. Bring a warhead along." he ordered, his face unusually blank.

"Uh, okay. But what could be the purpose.--"

"I'll be on the field; head there once you've found one."

She obeyed like she would always do. Alone, she pried the trapdoor open only to find a surprising multitude of weapons and ammo reserves gleaming gloriously in the dark. She reached out for a four foot long object the color of pale silver. It had a sizable opening on either end, and for all its hollowness, its weight could easily topple her out of balance. Beside it was a spear-like instrument that fit easily in the hole. She was a long way from understanding what their use could be at a time like this. Nonetheless, with maximum effort, she heaved both things up her shoulder and proceeded to the field. Very few were the times when she didn't stand by, ready to plunge to the unknown at his beck and call.

She could observe him standing on his own on the wide bed of grass. The sky above them was falling to black, star studded and clear, like that in bright summer evenings. She suddenly caught herself wishing it was a lot warmer, for in the winter, she couldn't breathe shallowly. He heard her approach and at close range gave her one of those sick smiles of his when things went his way.

"You're here, fucking manager. Get on board." He snatched the rocket launcher and warhead from her and began loading the weapon before she could give her assent. "This may take a while, but you better watch how I do it."

"Hiruma-kun, what's all this?" she asked and thick whiffs of fog slithered out of her lips. The night was unusually cold.

"Done. Hold it on your shoulder and aim it at a 45 degree angle upward. I'll light up this match. Don't move too much." he was already taking action for the stunned Mamori, whose image with the accursed weapon in her arms painted a scandalous contradiction.

"Hirum--"

There was a loud bang as something fiery and huge shot out of the thing on her shoulder, causing the space around them to flash out in the dark and resemble daylight. Far away, where the rocket had reached its destination, an explosion could be heard but only for a split second. Then silence prevailed, indissolubly merging itself with the darkness. Guilt overrode her in the same instant. She could only wish that everything within its proximity could be as alive and well as they were before she fired the rocket.

"Kekeke."

"Hiruma-kun, what was that?!"

"A common trip of mine."

"Trip?" she repeated. At that point, she felt compelled to be disgusted. "You fire rockets on a whim?"

"What do you suggest is better?"

"I don't know. Don't do it, I reckon."

"Boring!" he hissed. "And yet, here you are taking delight in my little mischief."

"I am most assuredly not!"

"Tell me then, what purpose would knowing my weapons' names and models serve you? It's just more trouble than it's worth. Wouldn't things be better to know how to use them?"

"But that was furthest from my mind! I would never pull any trigger and you know that!"

"I don't know that, unless there was something else. Kekeke."

"Something else? Just what misguided idea are you nursing?"

"Don't be so cut up about it. If your intention was to understand me, this isn't such a bad start, fucking manager."

"Understand you... I can't even begin to tell you how wrong you are..." her voice faltered. What was it in the first place? For the first time in many years, she found it difficult to process the words she needed.

"Never mind how wrong you think I am or how much you hate to own up to it. Tonight, you've done more than just pull the trigger. I'll leave it up to you to clean after the mess. Kekeke." The absence of light didn't stop her from knowing the triumphant smile that now occupied his face.

"Hiruma-kun, wait..."

"You have a long way to go on a thorny path, fucking manager, but you'll get there."

He cantered across the field, leaving the scene. She followed him with her eyes until his figure was nothing but a dot in the dark, gradually disappearing into the night. Were those words of encouragement? To begin with, were those even the right words to choose? In the silence that ensued, she finally came a step closer to where he was coming from.

There are things designed by nature for women to have no business to know, places where their minds should not go. And of all these things, there are those that men have loved irrationally. Such would be the source of the poor woman's confusion, such is her fate to be left in the dark and fend for herself. But here, where Hiruma Youichi had finally let Anezaki Mamori in to his world, a gap was bridged and a wall crumbled down. To learn and love the things that he loved, to be accepted if only little by little, this was the beginning she had pinned all her hopes on.

Alone once again, she cast down all her defenses and smiled gratifyingly to herself.

END