A/N: There are practically no Rock/Ann fanfics in existence. So I took it upon myself to make one up. This takes place in Forget-Me-Not Valley, Harvest Moon DS style. For those of you who don’t have that game, Ann visits the Valley every Friday and helps Ruby out at the Inn. I think her and Rock would actually make a really cute couple, because they’re polar opposites, and everyone knows that clashing personalities make for fatal attraction.
Let me know how you think I did! Feedback is appreciated, as always. ^^
It was such a pretty day outside. The perfect Friday. The window in the kitchen framed an amazing view of the river, which was literally a babbling brook. Seriously. I bet if someone actually listened to it, it would crackle in his or her ear. Kind of like Rice Krispies. Mmm.
What’s that smell…?
A cloud of smoke caught my eye, and I whirled around. “Oh no!” I cried, running over to the oven. There, on the stovetop, was a skillet filled with charred remains of stir-fry. “Darn it!” I slammed the skillet against the burner in frustration. “Not again!” Ruby was going to absolutely kill me. I kept burning the fresh ingredients that she had to fight Vesta for on a regular basis, and she wasn’t going to be happy about it. Especially since the stir-fry was supposed to be tonight’s dinner, and I had already botched three previous attempts.
With a sigh, I wearily opened the refrigerator door once more and pulled open a compartment, taking out the last vegetables. Setting the carrot, onion, cabbage, and other ingredients on a cutting board, I picked up a sharpened knife and wrapped my fingers around it. This time, I won’t cut myself, I vowed, angling the blade over the defenseless carrot.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Augh!” I whirled around, brandishing my knife as a weapon against the voice that had appeared behind me. As I turned, the blade sliced at my upper left arm, which immediately started bleeding. But the wide-eyed blonde boy innocently eating an apple distracted my attention.
“Rock!” I yelped. The steady gush of blood coming out of my arm finally made itself known, and I grabbed for a towel. I pressed it against my arm firmly as I glared at the nonchalant young man. “You scared me!”
”I heard something banging around in here,” he shrugged. “I just came to make sure you were okay.” His relaxed expression widened as he grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “In fact, it was kinda valiant. What if you were really hurt? I would’ve been the only one around to save you.”
“Well, that was counterproductive,” I winced as I pulled the towel away to show him the blood-soaked towel. “Great,” I groaned, looking at it. “Just another thing to explain to your mother. ‘Gee, Ruby, I dripped bodily fluids all over your kitchen. I hope that’s okay.’” I reached over to the sink and wet a corner of the cloth, wiping some of the blood away from my skin. “And it’s your fault.”
Rock blinked at me. “Geez. Calm down. You’re going to give yourself a complex.” He rolled his eyes at me as he pulled himself up on the counter. He sniffed at the air. “So, when’s dinner gonna be ready? Usually, when Mom cooks, by this time, the kitchen smells great.”
I blanched, ducking my head away so he wouldn’t see. “I’m working on it, okay?” I muttered. “You’re distracting me. So…”
“So you haven’t started yet,” Rock finished. He took another bite of his apple. Juice trickled down his clean-shaven chin, which he wiped away with his sleeve.
“I’ve started!” I defended, motioning at the items on the countertop. “Give me some credit.”
“And yet, the stove is bare,” Rock pointed out, peering over my shoulder at the skillet that still had the remnants of Trial No. 4 of the stir-fry. “Not very impressive.”
”I’d like to see you try,” I snapped, turning my back on him and facing the vegetables. I picked up a different knife, one without blood on the blade, and started chopping the carrot with a vengeance. “It’s a lot harder than it looks. And besides, I’ve been cooking all my life. So don’t give me grief. I’ve worked a lot harder than you ever have, and probably ever will.”
“Whoa!” Rock exclaimed, holding his hands up in defense. “I thought hobbies were supposed to relieve pent-up anger and frustration, not build on it.” He slid off the countertop and took a final bite of his apple before tossing the core at the garbage can. It missed. He ignored that fact as he rummaged in the fridge for another snack, and I stared at him in disbelief.
“Aren’t you going to pick that up?” I asked slowly, pointing with my free hand at the abandoned apple core on the floor.
He looked at it, and then shrugged. “Not my job.” He found a piece of pie in the fridge, and used his fingers as a fork to shovel some in his mouth.
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrows. He raised his in return as I turned away from my cutlery and met his eyes dead-on. “Then whose job is it? Your mother’s, because Goddess knows she doesn’t do enough around here, and for you? The guests’? Mine?” I bit my lip, trying to fight a sudden onset of anger. This guy was really a piece of work. His mom had to man this place essentially by herself, because her husband was away and her son was a lazy bum. If I wasn’t around to help my dad out at his Inn, I don’t know how he’d manage. Hotels were not a one-man business, and Rock couldn’t even do so much as pick up an apple core.
He, apparently, was completely unaffected by this. “I guess what they say about that famous redhead temper is right, huh?” He winked and tugged at my braid, at which point I completely lost it.
“Apple core. Garbage. Now,” I said through gritted teeth. “Or you’re going to be seeing a whole lot more of this ‘redhead temper.’” He blinked in surprise and opened his mouth to protest, but seeing my fingers tighten around the knife, he complied.
“There. Happy?” he said in a patronizing manner, slamming the core into the bottom of the garbage. I smirked and nodded. Expecting him to leave at that point, I turned back to my food and continued chopping the vegetables. But Rock’s irritation had blown over like a cheap fodder silo, and now he was sitting on the countertop, finishing his slice of pie with his fingers.
“So, you cook. That’s hot,” he said in an approving tone. I made a disgusted noise and glared at him.
“You’re such a chauvinist,” I remarked incredulously. “Good Lord. I’m so glad I don’t have to put up with you every single day, but boy, do I feel for your mother.”
“Hey, now,” Rock objected. “That’s not entirely fair. I entirely appreciate the female gender.”
”Oh yeah?” I questioned. The knife clattered on the cutting board as I dropped it and my hands aslant on either hip. “Name one time when you ‘appreciated the female gender.’”
“Well…” He was obviously struggling to think of something. His eyes lit up suddenly as he snapped his fingers and crowed, “Last Thursday, at the beach. Lumina put sunscreen on my back. I definitely appreciated that.” He added with a suggestive tone, “And I appreciated her bathing suit, too. Mm.”
“Pig,” I snarled. “You’re a walking cliché. The good-looking, arrogant, over-confident, selfish bit is way overplayed. Go find a stigma or something. I’ve got work to do.”
But it definitely wasn’t as easy as that. Rock grinned impishly as he puffed up his chest and drawled, “So, you think I’m good-looking?”
I scoffed. “Leave me alone.”
He didn’t, however. Now that I had paid some sort of compliment to his already-inflated ego, he was more than willing to hang around and wait for more. It was, after all, what he was used to, I assumed. I had seen girls lingering in the lobby, trying to sneak a peek at the local Golden Boy. He was looking for a conquest, and I was certainly not going to be that girl.
“You’re from Mineral Town, right?” The attempt at small talk was easy to ignore, and I kept working. I scraped the diced vegetables off the cutting board into a new frying pan, and adjusted the heat on the stovetop as I rinsed out the other skillet. The blonde boy obviously couldn’t take a hint, for he continued, “Your dad owns an Inn there, too, huh?”
”Yes,” I answered curtly, if nothing else to shut him up. “And I actually have a work ethic.”
He considered this for a minute. “So the Inn is kinda your entire life, huh?” He watched me as I turned knobs and stirred the cooking food, adding splashes of oil every once in a while.
“I do spend a lot of my time there,” I replied. “But my dad needs me. My mom died when I was seven, and he’s all alone. I don’t mind pitching in.” I blinked as I realized that I had offered way more information than necessary. I looked at the young man out of the corner of my eye and saw that his cocky posture and expression had softened considerably. I winced. I didn’t want his sympathy; I just wanted to be left alone.
“That’s rough,” he said simply. And for a few blessed minutes, he was silent. I didn’t contribute any more to the feeble conversation, and concentrated on completing this try at dinner.
When the timer announced that the food was ready to leave the skillet, Rock snapped out of his quiet spell and walked over to the counter. “Ever feel like you got cheated out of a childhood?” he blurted out. I stared at him. He continued, his voice gaining strength, “I mean, your mom died when you were seven. I bet that you’ve been working since you were seven, too, huh?” My silence confirmed his confidence. He must have been satisfied, because he didn’t pursue the one-sided tête-à-tête. Instead, he actually started to help me clean up the counter.
“I don’t really think I got cheated,” I answered a few minutes later. I didn’t look up from my work, though I could feel him glance at me. “My dad did a lot for me. But, um, I definitely matured a lot faster than most of the kids in my town. While they were still playing tag, I was making beds and cleaning windows. It wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed to play with them, I just…didn’t want to.” I shrugged. It all made sense to me, but I knew that I had kind of a twisted way of looking at things sometimes.
“Well, why not? Why didn’t you want to play with the other kids?” Rock questioned. He wiped liquid off of the counter with a sponge and washed it off in the sink, trying to appear as normal as possible.
I considered this for a minute. “I don’t know,” I finally responded. “At the risk of sounding egotistical, I guess I thought I was on a more advanced wavelength than the rest of the kids my age.” This wasn’t entirely true. After my mom’s funeral, most of my friends had kept me at arm’s length. For a while, I thought they had morphed into some weird creatures who didn’t accept me at all. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t them who had changed, but me. By the time I realized that, it was much too late. So I accepted it and moved on with my life, simple as that.
Rock whistled. “You do realize that’s, like, the saddest thing in the history of the world, right? Man, my childhood still hasn’t ended, but yours never really got a chance to start.” He shook his head forlornly.
“Don’t you pity me,” I warned. “I’m stronger because of it, and besides, I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t want it, and I don’t need it.” To my dismay, my voice broke at the end of my sentence. I whirled away from him and tried in vain to gather my composure. To my relief, Rock didn’t do anything stupid like cluck his tongue or try to rub my shoulder. He just let me be, thankfully, and continued cleaning up.
After a minute, I resumed putting the finishing touches on the stir-fry, seasoning it with a spice that I found in Ruby’s cabinet. I rummaged in a drawer, found a fork, and took a bite. “Yes!” I exclaimed happily, which immediately broke the tension in the room. “Finally!”
“And which try is this?” Rock smirked. “Sixth?”
“Fifth, thank you very much.” I sarcastically returned his smirk, and he laughed lightly.
“Let me have a bite,” he said, taking the fork from my hand. His fingertips brushed mine, and for some reason that completely escaped me, the blood rose to my cheeks faster than you could say, “curse of the red-heads.” The blush somehow managed to escape Rock’s notice, or at least some stroke of subtlety had slapped him in the face in the last five minutes, because he didn’t say anything before taking a bite of the stir-fry.
I waited for a minute as he chewed, and then, unable to wait any longer, blurted“…Well?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve gotta give you credit, Ann,” he said finally. “You could give my mom a run for her money.”
I grinned. It was the perfect Friday, indeed.
