Disclaimer: The Prince of Tennis belongs to Konomi Takeshi.
Cuisine
It took Ann three classes to realize that the redhead in the row before her with the annoying gum was someone she actually knew.
Her first thought was to march up to him and strike a conversation because all the other recluses in the cooking class were mothers or fathers who had no idea how to tell one end of a spoon from another. Her second thought was to process what she was seeing – she'd become much better at that over the years, learning to think before jumping headfirst into something – and then her nose scrunched up in the slightest of distaste.
Rikkai.
She didn't delude herself into thinking that the dislike she'd harbored over Kirihara Akaya was completely gone. It was still there, flickering to the surface whenever she heard his name mentioned on the pro circuits – usually followed by the mention of someone being sent to the hospital. The question was though, if she still extended that dislike to the rest of his team, if they could even be called a team anymore; all of them were probably neck-deep in their jobs without time to think of anything else.
The more she thought about it the more curious she got and Ann gave it until the next class before she blurted something out to the redhead whose name she honestly couldn't remember for the life of her. There was the option of asking her brother but he'd just get that mildly interested look on his face before interrogating her in that freaky way of his that only made her realize he'd been doing it a week later.
So yeah. That was out. And apparently it wasn't needed either.
"I remember you."
Ann wondered vaguely how long he'd been on that one piece of gum. And if the fates had been listening to her thoughts recently. "Nice way to start a conversation."
He grinned. "It is, isn't it?" There was a haughty, pompous air in his voice that made her pause for a second, fingers resting on a cookbook's battered cover.
"Why are you impersonating Atobe?" Ann cracked open the book, made a face at the dust that fluttered into the air and searched through it until she found their 'project'. Honestly, being here made her feel like she was back in middle school with the boys, where the only thing they had to watch out for was the teacher as they piled baking soda into a cake.
"It's fun," he said, breaking through Ann's musings. She watched as he pulled on a pair of oven mitts for a few seconds in silence.
"What," she asked at last, "are you doing?"
His eyes danced with what she assumed to be amusement. "I'm your partner. Unless you'd rather be stuck with the eighty plus woman over there."
Ann didn't have to look behind her to know that Morioka-san was probably already causing a fire without even having touched the oven. Still, a hopeless old woman or an old rival whose name she couldn't remember… "Do you have a coin?"
He laughed and Ann found that she liked the sound. It was carefree and genuine and something about it made her lips twitch upwards. "You're sarcastic, Tachibana's little sister," he said, watching the way her eyes widened with a gleeful expression. "See, unlike you, my genius allows me to actually remember people from nearly a decade ago."
Genius. Arrogant. Red hair. Gum. Ann propped her chin on her fist thoughtfully, hiding her smirk with her fingers while he waited impatiently. She remembered him now – Marui Bunta, the volley specialist, only that his hair was shorter now. 'Course, that didn't mean she would allow him the pleasure of knowing that someone remembered his so-called 'genius'.
"You know what?" Marui snapped his gum irritably as he fastened on an apron. "I know you know – and I know you won't say anything, so you win this – what?"
Ann stared at him and the bunny-print apron he wore. "…Y'know, you're probably the only guy I know who can pull off that look."
Marui didn't say anything. Instead, he deliberately stared at her frilly pink apron with an eyebrow raised.
Ann gave him five seconds. Then ten. And then until Morioka-san brought out the fire extinguisher and the class had to be evacuated out of the building – with most of them still wearing the rather atrocious aprons, Marui and herself included – before saying in a dry voice, "For a genius, you can't pull off The Look very well."
"What?"
She waved a hand at him. "The Look. Capitalized, probably made into a trademark too. It's what most geniuses have – that condescending look that makes you wonder what the hell you're doing near them. Fuji-kun probably has the best one whenever he's near Mizuki-san."
"I," he said loftily and Ann tore her eyes from the nearing fire truck towards him, "am a genius of such epic proportions that the look doesn't apply to me."
"You didn't capitalize it."
There was a pause. Firefighters walked into the building that already had smoke billowing out of the windows. Morioka-san's wailing reached an all-time record and still Marui didn't say anything. It was when Ann was considering taking him to see the standby nurse brought with the fire truck that he said slowly, "You are quite possibly the strangest person I have ever met. Including Niou."
After that rather odd and mystifyingly amusing meeting classes were suspended indefinitely though Ann just took that as them trying to keep the money people had paid in advance. She didn't particularly mind – the reason she'd gone to the classes in the first place was because of an incident at her parents' home one weekend that involved the kitchen having a makeover complete with marinara-sauce-red walls and flour-white tiles. There was the small feeling of wistfulness though, whenever she spotted a redhead or heard gum snapping. It wasn't that she missed Marui…just missed what could've been.
"So is it our thing or something to meet near food?"
Her hand rested on the shelf housing her crackers. Ann scowled. Those were her favorite crackers. Absolute favorite. And because of some redhead she hadn't seen for nearly two years, she'd have to put off on shoving them in her cart, which put off buying them, which therefore put off her eating them, and then that resulted in her being cranky and that usually meant her having her head bitten off by her flat mate.
"I wouldn't know," Ann replied airily, turning to face Marui. It didn't really surprise her to see that he didn't look much different from before – actually, he looked a lot more like his middle school self, with his hair growing out again.
There was an amused smile on his face that could have been patronizing. For once, Ann couldn't bring herself to get fired up over it, only feeling somewhat relieved that his personality was the same. "I don't know," he said, watching as she grabbed three boxes of crackers, "it's just that it was a cooking class the first time and a grocery store the next. What's next?"
"How about a kitchen?"
Marui's eyes slid to hers, not even slightly surprised even though Ann couldn't completely hide the nervousness she knew was showing on her face. "I was thinking more along the line of a restaurant. Kitchen next?"
Ann laughed loudly, and for a second her crackers were forgotten.
"You know," Ann said one night, "I always thought when we were younger that you'd know how to cook."
Marui's eyes remained on the oven's timer. "Why's that? You saw me in the cooking class."
Ann shrugged. "You were always eating those cakes of yours or chewing gum. It was just implied I guess."
"One of my aunts suckered me into going," Marui said and Ann twisted on the couch to look at his scowling face with an amused smile, "something about it being a world-class cook."
"The teacher couldn't tell how to crack an egg open."
"Yeah." Marui's scowl threatened to overtake his face. "But I'd already paid for them by the time I figured that out."
Her laughter drowned out the sound of the timer. Their dinner was burnt beyond recognition but Marui didn't mind much. He figured that since they'd done the classes, grocery store, restaurant date and then home date, something involving burnt food was bound to come eventually.
Ann was just preoccupied with finding the fire extinguisher Marui had shoved into a corner of their apartment and thinking, Mom was right. Guys do think with their stomachs.