Author's Note: Just a little drabble that popped into my mind while I was trying to write an art history term paper, haha. It takes place sometime later in the characters' lives (maybe 20 or so?), but it's the original team Ichigo baking together in some sort of shared patisserie (Honestly, I wasn't really thinking of a concrete setting when writing, but that makes the most sense with what I included). I think the characters are mostly IC, though the end seems a little bit OOC to me (though I'm going to chalk that up to them being older). Any comments or critique are very welcome!
Rated: T, for: suggestive themes Uh, there's innuendo like woah in here, mostly Hanabusa and Andou having dirty minds...
Disclaimer: All rights to Yumeiro Patissiere go to Natsumi Matsumoto, Shueisha, and Studios Pierrot and Hibari.
Things just weren't adding up for Hanabusa and Andou. First, Ichigo had gone to the next door stock room for "sugar." This was strange, even though she was making sweets as usual, as they had made sure to get more than enough before starting the day, and she hadn't seemed to make any mistakes thus far. Second, and far more confusing, was when Kashino had wordlessly followed Ichigo out of the kitchen, seemingly to help her deal with the fairly sizable bag of sugar.
They waited for far longer than it should have taken to grab a simple bag of sugar, and were walking towards the door when they heard a muffled noise from Ichigo that was exceedingly suggestive and led the boys' minds to places they would rather they hadn't gone. They backed away from the stock room in shock and wordlessly continued working on their sweets.
Ichigo attempted to start conversation when she and Kashino finally emerged from the stock room with the sugar, but Hanabusa and Andou were strangely quiet, so she eventually stopped trying and finished making her sweets. The two boys felt bad, as Ichigo looked upset at their uncharacteristic lack of response, but they honestly weren't sure how to deal with the seeming couple at the moment. Kashino seemed to quickly pick up on the fact that he and Ichigo had been found out, but kept his mouth shut as was usual for him.
The rest of their time in the kitchen was awkward and they all silently finished their baking as soon as possible. Hanabusa and Andou insisted that they would finish cleaning up and that Ichigo and Kashino go ahead and leave. Once they were sure that Ichigo and Kashino were far from the kitchen, the two boys threw everything possible away and dumped the dishes into a sink full of steaming hot water and an excessive amount of soap. The last thing they dealt with was the pile of unused sugar, which they honestly didn't want to touch (and in fact hadn't touched since Ichigo and Kashino had added to it). Andou made a mental note to force Kashino to bleach the whole stock room and change it's layout to make things a little more hygienic if this was going to be a common occurrence.
Later that night, Kashino attempted to break it to the seemingly oblivious Ichigo that their friends seemed to have picked up on their relationship. To his surprise though, she was already fully aware and blamed it on him for following her to the stock room, to which he bluntly reminded her that using 'going to get sugar' as a codeword had been her idea in the first place. She again responded that she knew, but that it was still his fault for accidentally elbowing her in the stomach, causing her to moan and make it seem like something else had been taking place in the poor, unsuspecting stock room. Kashino simply smirked, said that it wouldn't have been the first time for the "poor, unsuspecting stock room," and went for what he hadn't actually gotten earlier in the day.