TITLE: Machine guns and Cream Puffs – 01 – "Names"

PAIRING: hirumaXmamori

TIMELINE/SPOILERS: vol20 chapter170

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Eyeshield21 and I'm not making any profits with this fanfic. Eyeshield21 belongs to Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata.

A/N: A little something I wrote while waiting for my laptop to be fixed. I just finished the whole series a couple of weeks ago and I love it- the art, the character development, and ALL of the characters. Last arc was too rushed and the main devilbats people were kinda shunted aside in the last few volumes, but oh well. Sad that hirumamo didn't become canon, but with so much shiptease and the fact that Mamori stuck with Hiruma in the end, I'm one super happy supporter hahaha

"Names"

He started calling her 'fucking wife'.

Despite coming from the disciplinary committee, Mamori had learned to tolerate Hiruma's penchant for giving people nicknames. 'Fucking fatass', 'fucking dreads', 'fucking monkey', 'fucking eyelashes'... There was no use scolding the guy every time. It was built in his vocabulary— no, his entire being.

However, her new moniker didn't settle well with her, and she wasn't alone. Monta was up and about, going 'mukyaa, mukyaa' and shouting that Hiruma didn't have the right to call Mamori-nee-san as his wife when he wasn't even her boyfriend. A large number of the male student population was also quite disgruntled, though they never outright expressed it especially infront of Hiruma. Most of the devilbats were uneasy about the name, wondering what drove the guy to call Mamori as such when they knew the two were often at odds with each other especially when Mamori was just a new manager, and they could never imagine Hiruma to actually fall in love with somebody.

'Fall in love'...

Perhaps Musashi and Jumonji should be blamed. When the latest AmeFuto magazine came out, it had interviews with a player from all the top eight teams in the Kanto fall tournament. Hiruma had been chosen instead of Sena, perhaps a deliberate move by the former to be able to promote the team in his own way. The interview was pretty much standard, but perhaps it was because the interviewer was a girl, or the fact that the players were in all high school, there was a question that asked the interviewees what they liked in a girl. Surprisingly, Ojou's Shin's and Deimon's Hiruma's were pretty much the same, in a sense. Shin wanted someone who could 'take pride as a part of the team', which Musashi and Jumonji have commented on as the quality of a team manager. When they checked Hiruma's answer, everyone paled as they read he wanted a girl he could 'use'. Monta's imagination ran rampant and he nearly hurled on the floor in horror, while Musashi and Jumonji repeated their observation that it basically meant 'manager', especially considering everything Mamori had been doing for their team. Since then, Hiruma referred to Mamori as 'fucking wife'. Why he chose that word instead of 'girlfriend' was most likely to incite more shock from people. Hiruma was a devil who thrived in shocking, surprising, and outsmarting people, after all.

Or maybe the article itself was to blame. Really, there was no need to ask those guys' preferences. It didn't have any relevance in American Football.

"Fucking wife," Hiruma interrupted her lunch one day. "Add this information to your notes. They're match-ups for Christmas Bowl training when we get there."

Hiruma handed Mamori a file folder and left.

"You're not really going out with him, are you?" One of Mamori's friends asked.

"No," Mamori said with a slight frown. "It's just Hiruma-kun being himself."

The same question came up a number more times, this time coming from other students in their school. Mamori kept denying she was going out with the demonic quarterback, but Hiruma kept calling her 'wife' even outside their team's activities that everyone eventually started believing they were indeed a couple and Mamori was just too shy to admit it. It didn't help that the rare times that Hiruma was questioned he never denied it and only cackled in glee as he usually did. It became so widespread that Mamori overheard the principal congratulate Hiruma one time, and their class adviser told her that perhaps Hiruma would be less scary now that the 'angelic' Mamori was his girlfriend. Doburoku-sensei even jokingly asked when the wedding was, and he shut up about the subject when Mamori's glare was more pronounced that it had ever been.

Figuring there was no way Hiruma would stop even if she pleaded, Mamori decided to let her worries go and just tolerate the new nickname. Everyone calmed down after a week, and Mamori was thankful that at last people weren't pestering her any more.

"Fucking wife," Hiruma said as he continued tinkering with his laptop. "Have you finished editing the video yet?"

Mamori ejected a flash drive from the laptop she was using and handed it to Hiruma. She briefly wondered if she should buy a laptop for herself and learn to use it faster and more effectively. She paused in her thoughts as Hiruma looked up and sneered at her, causing her to think back on whatever she did to earn such a reaction from him.

"Getting comfortable as my wife, fucking manager?" Hiruma teased.

Mamori slammed the club laptop shut. "I know you won't stop calling me that, so I'll just let it slide."

"Then what about I call you fucking 'cream puff-loving hippo'?"

Mamori's ears heated up. "That's too long for you to bother with."

"Is that a challenge?"

Mamori paled as Hiruma started cackling.

"Just stick to 'wife'," she frowned at him.

Hiruma laughed once more, but Mamori took it as a positive answer when he returned to his work.

Thinking back, she should have demanded that he just return to her name or 'manager'.