Pocket Aces

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Pocket Aces – a poker term that refers to a pair of aces, the most powerful starting hand in Texas Hold’em

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He imagines what it would like to see Fuji Yuuta really, really, mad. He’s never seen this phenomenon before, to tell the truth, and he’s starting to wonder. He spends a lot of time flipping the idea over and over in his mind.

He can imagine scenarios at the drop of a dime. He can imagine a thousand hateful words spread out, fanned in every which way, like a deck of cards that he can manipulate into a straight, a full house, a royal flush. Few know that he’s such a poker fiend, what with tennis and plotting –- devious scheming, to be exact -- taking up a majority of his time.

It isn’t surprising really, he thinks. He’s so adjusted to the idea of bullying, hiding, playing pleasant and quiet as he works out a pattern, a way to somehow see ten steps ahead and into the mind of his competitors. He’s good at betting and he knows when to fold and when to go all in... or, at least, he likes to think so, now that he looks back on some games here and there he’s starting to lose focus.

They don’t have much to do in the winter, the students of St. Rudolph’s, that is, when everyone is sluggish from exams and the merits of indoor-tennis start to wear thin among the jittery students (read: Yuuta-kun) who studiously avoided crossing his path, just in case he would plan a sudden and vigorous training session. The benefits of being able to drip honey and poison at the drop of a hat allows him to round up the better-part of St. Rudolph’s tennis club regulars to play him a few hands whenever he wants, and he likes the slow drawl of tired bodies when placing bets. They are sleep-deprived from cramming and sore from weight-room training in order to build stronger mind, wrist, and shoulder muscles for various new and conspicuous tennis moves and stratagems.

So, he reasons between hands, seeing Fuji Yuuta mad, really mad for the first time ever, must be like seeing the slow fruitation of the perfect hand, the calm wait of getting a royal flush. There must be that same tension that builds as the dealer stacks chips up with the calm of a fossil as he himself sits with electricity running down his fingertips.

Maybe, he thinks as he slides his hand down the felt of the table (he insisted on getting a professional table for the common room), that with a quick word here and there he can break that stammering awkwardness that pervades through Yuuta-kun.

He could slip it out one-day, these hateful words, lean over and whisper them in an unsuspecting ear. He can feel them rolling around in his mouth, sliding over tongue and teeth. One day he’s going to let them slip out, all quicksilver and painful, right into the jumbled up teenage awkwardness that is Yuuta-kun’s little mind, just like the pair of jacks he slips into his hand from his sleeve.

Everyone just gives him a look, when he slides a glance down the table at his teammates; they’ve all played this game with him a million times and can usually get through a game without wincing whenever he starts to chuckle as he does now. He’s a genius, in some ways, and that tends to scare his teammates. They aren’t that good at poker but, admittedly, they aren’t always into the game. They spend the majority of the hour or two just sitting there and taking their hands blankly just to avoid running miles on the treadmill, or doing butterfly presses, or getting the cold shoulder, even, because he manages to make them feel insubstantial in the slight narrowing of his eyes. For all the miles to run and all the presses in the world, that is the worst feeling of all.

Yuuta-kun returns from making his, now regular, phone calls back home that usually contain the word “aniki” in various levels of horrification at whatever remarks “aniki” has managed to slide in, and sits down at the table. It only takes one look at the back of his cards before he’s called out by the slightly flustered Yuuta-kun.

It’s ironic, then, that it’s always Yuuta-kun that catches him cheating in poker, and that as much of a poker fiend that he is... he, Hajime Mizuki, was possibly the worst player of the lot.

Fin.

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Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis certainly does not belong to me. Le sigh.

Author’s Note: Which is to say, I have way too much free time on my hands when I end up writing silly little things like this. I find Mizuki interesting, if not lacking in fashion sense because, come on... A purple sweater? With pink roses? Bitch, please.

And yes, I do play a little bit of poker, though I have possibly the worst poker face on the face of the Earth. Texas Hold’em, my personal favorite, is what I watch on Wednesday nights to bide the time between homework and boredom because there’s nothing quite like watching others lose an extraordinary amount of money in one fell swoop. XD