Title: Qualified
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 2000ish words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Clef/Ascot, pre-relationshipish. Communication/stages/choices challenges. Follows on from another couple of short fic on here but should be entirely intelligible alone. Paru = summoner, Iru = mage, Pairu is my headcanoned title for someone who is qualified as both.
Summary: Ascot may be Clef's apprentice whether or not he wants to be something else.

oOo

Pairu Ascot. If you want to claim the title.

It was three weeks since Ascot had learnt that, in the eyes of - most of Cephiro, as it turned out - he was Clef’s apprentice. That clef thought him more than qualified to pass the Iru qualification - thought him, in fact, ready for mastery. The quiet, rueful words echoed in his mind any moment he gave them the opportunity.

He was a Paru. A summoner, plain and simple - he didn’t want the joint qualification if it meant people would just focus on the mage part and not the summoning. Like they did with Lantis or Clef -

The instinctive rejection of apprentice as a label was harder to explain.

It hadn’t been a lie, when he told Clef he wanted to be his friend, instead. And he’d thought - really thought - that clef smiling back at him, quiet and startled, meant the ‘yes’ on his lips was real. But obviously he still didn’t know how to read people, because ever since, Clef has been avoiding him.

Lessons were still fine, of course. In fact, lessons were the only moment which felt normal anymore. Outside of that… Ascot hadn’t realised how much time he’d started spending with clef - at meals, or ‘dropping off some new books’ in the evenings, until it abruptly stopped. Clef came to the dining hall late, let himself be caught by members of the mage’s guild who want to pester him with questions, instead of putting them off ot eat with Ascot - with friends. The books now appeared outside Ascot’s rooms, with a note.

then he’d gone and gotten himself horrifically drunk, with Caldina - of all people - who had been cackling and preparing to leave clef drowsing on the table in the dining room when Ascot found them. He’d insisted on taking Clef back to his rooms - Caldina downing the last of her drink, had cackled, “Go ahead, he’s not going to be a problem right now, at least!”

Clef muttered nonsense and apologised all the way back to his rooms, leaning into Ascot’s shoulder and sighing. Ascot got him into bed with his boots off and a sheet over him, then hesitated. Weren’t you meant to look after drunk people somehow? Caldina always looked after herself…

In the end, he took a breath and cast a quiet monitoring spell. One which would only alert him if Clef was in some danger, and would fade as the danger did.

Ascot had almost persuaded himself that Clef’s muttered excuses about having too much work were true, when in their next lesson he was in the middle of practising a modified hand-signal for directing a summoning without verbal input when he realised Clef was staring at his hands, intend in a way which mad Ascot falter, heat rising to his face.

Clef’s head shot up, and he turned bright pink, before rattling off something about the time and a meeting he had to go to, and vanishing.
Still sat in the middle of the little practice room they’d been using, Ascot blinked, and stared at his hands. He… just lied? he thought, bewildered both by what had happened and by anyone being so bad at lying that Ascot, of all people, realised.

The silent murmur of his friend doing the psychic equivalent of shrugging settled about him. /Well, he likes you,/ Lanos said.

/He keeps running away from me!/ Ascot snapped back.

/Well, maybe it’s awkward wanting to kiss you when you’re not meant to do that kind of thing with your apprentices, are you?/ Yaris put in. Not that his frineds used those words, precisely, but their meaning was translated through their connection to Ascot.

Who had frozen at the thought kiss. “He - does?” he whispered aloud.

/Went bright red. Ran away./ Lanos again, with the strangest sensation of a shrug. /Reckon so./

“But -” Ascot stood, the plain wooden chair he’d been in clattering down to the floor behind him. He winced at the noise and yanked it upright - not everyone who used these rooms could creat their own furniture, and it was kept basic because of the high chance it would be broken five times a month as people learned their first spells here, but he shouldn’t break it himself. He clung to the back of it, looking down at his white-knuckled hands, trying to find some more logical explanation for Clef’s staring…

But the only thought which Ascot could grasp hold of was Could he be thinking about me… touching him?

Ascot flushed and jolted back from the chair, almost toppling it again, an image in his mind of his fingers sliding across Cle’f cheek and back into the tousled mess of his hair. His lips…

His friends were the kind of silent which sat about his shoulders and waited. If summoning them could have burned off some of the nervous energy flooding Ascot’s blood, he’d have done it in a heartbeat. He stared about the room, barely seeing it through the wave of - nervousness? Something. There were notes on the table - he waved a hand, called them all into the gem on his glove. They were probably his. Then he spun on one heel and shot for the doors, barely keeping himself from breaking into a run.

Two minute later he slammed into the sitting room he shared with Caldina and LaFarga, and stopped dead in the middle of the floor as the door slammed behind him. “But I’m not his apprentice!” he wailed, sharp confusion echoing through him.

LaFarga, sat alone at the table with a heap of paperwork, stared at him.

“…Is this about the Guru?” LaFarga asked, tone cautious. He pushed a chair out beside his; Ascot took one deep breath, another, and flopped into it with a nod.

“I even said I didn’t want to be his apprentice! But everyone - and now -” he waved his hands.

LaFarga was sitting up straighter. “You told him you didn’t wish to be his student?” he asked, slowly.

Ascot rubbed his face. “No, just not his apprentice, a month ago when he apologised for not realising -” LaFarga had relaxed again slightly through that, the high shoulder guards on his armour shouting the move. “LaFarga?” Ascot’s voice tried to crack, his throat dry.

“You agreed to study with the Guru for an hour or more a week?” he asked, and Ascot nodded. “And this for more than three months?”

It had been more like six hours a week, and it was three years, or close enough. “Why?”

“the you are his apprentice, in law, even undeclared. With the same rights as any other - acknowledgement if you want it, recourse to your teacher’s home and funds…” LaFarga eyed him, the barest hint of a flush on his cheeks. “Protection from any - inappropriate advances.”

Ascot made himself breath again. “…What would make an advance appropriate? If I was the one who…” he trailed off at LaFarga’s look.

“There are no appropriate ‘advances’ with your apprentice. Nothing of the kind.”

Either the panic was settling down, or Ascot was becoming numb to it. “…So that’s why?” he breathed, hearing again Clef’s drunken scrambled apologies. “LaFarga, how do I end an accidental apprenticeship?”

There was a pause, while LaFarga looked straight at him, before nodding slowly. “To end any apprenticeship in Cephiro, you must either meet the terms of your agreement, or have them declared null by a judge if there is a specific allowance in the agreement for this, or complete the qualification you have apprenticed for.”

“We don’t have an agreement,” Ascot muttered, heart sinking. He didn’t want to be an Iru! If he really had to… “Isn’t there another way? What if I just stopped learning from him?”

“…Only the death, imprisonment for a capital crime, or revocation of their power and Guild by either party could also dissolve an apprenticeship. I did not think those would be suitable, though.”

“No,” Ascot shuddered. “Not - no.” He sank lower in his chair. “…Guess I should think about it.”

LaFarga reached across and patted him on the shoulder. “You could talk to your Guild Administrator,” he offered. “But it’s not the kind of thing to rush.”

Ascot nodded, and let his head fall back. He didn’t even know what he wanted, right then, beyond Clef talking to him again.

His next lesson, however, was an agonising hour-long fight not to stare at Clef and wonder what it would be like, to kiss him - a curiosity so strong Ascot was terrified he was projecting it loud enough for Clef to hear. What if he was wrong? If Clef really was just overworked and embarrassed he’d accidentally taken Ascot to apprentice?

Then Clef’s voice faltered, halfway through a dry commentary on some of the more… unexpected theories about summoning. Ascot realised in a flash he’d been caught staring at Clef’s lips; his gaze shot up immediately, only to find Clef staring at him with a fierce blush splashed across his face. For a moment there was nothing but a taut silence.

“I should - go.” Clef said, again standing, gathering his things with hands which trembled slightly and looking everywhere but at Ascot.

“No - Clef, please. Stay?” Ascot asked, feeling helpless as he watched.

“I can’t,” Clef said, his voice rough. “I - I’m sorry, Ascot. I’m just - I’m sorry.” He left the room, shoulders hunched forwards like he was freezing, leaving Ascot as alone as he ever was.

Ascot dropped his head into his hands, shaking slightly. He was miserably aware that his body didn’t care about the rejection one bit - excited by the thrill of that look, it was apparently determined to stay that way. “…Answers that part of the question, I guess,” he muttered to the empty air.

The offices where the guild administrators worked - only one of who was The Administrator - were fortunately far enough from Clef’s offices there was no chance of him spotting Ascot fidgeting in the waiting room. Even here he couldn’t avoid the topic for a moment; there were signs hung on all the walls listing the steps one needed to qualify as Iru, or Paru, or half a dozen other minor titles the mage’s guild could award.

He drifted to the one describing how to achieve a mastery instead, and read it through without paying much attention to the words, then paused and read it again.

By the time Livina was free, he walked in with his head high, a plan lighting hope in his chest. “Please - am I right that you can pass a mastery from Paru status instead of Iru?”

The woman opposite put down her pen, regarding him curiously. “Yes, that is correct, though it is somewhat unusual.”

“And someone with a mastery cannot be an apprentice in the same Guild?”

“Yes?” She tilted her head. “Are you interested in applying for a mastery, Paru Ascot?”

It was her job to know all the people associated with her Guild, Paru or Iru or otherwise. But from the smile she gave him, he rather thought she might know more than that.

Ascot drew in a breath, and smiled at her, nervous but certain. “Yes,” he said, “I am.”