Title: care and feeding
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes:AU
Author notes: Stand-alone, set after the thing I posted a while back for 'prediction', mundane au. Clef & Emeraude. Also for 'interruptions' on my bingo card.
Summary: "Clef, come on, we're going to be late - what are you doing?"

oOo"Clef, come on, we're going to be late - what are you doing?" Emeraude stopped only most of the way down the stairs, leaning over the banister so she could see over Clef's shoulder as he sat on the sofa below, her hair in one long plait swinging down to hit him on the shoulder.

"I'm writing a note for Ferio," Clef muttered, concentrating on the notepad he was holding. His suitcase was already in the middle of the room, with the other luggage the three of them were taking - Zagato had already got half the pile in the rented car, and was busily clanking around in the back garden, taking the bins out.

Emeraude leaned further, and he had to bat her hair out of the way - Cat, curled up beside him and pretending he wasn't there, twitched, but didn't give in to the undignified impulse to catch that dangling tail. "That's not a note," she said, "that's half a novel. What on earth are you telling him?"

"How to look after the houseplants." The first line was about the garden, but it was only 'if it hasn't rained in five days, soak everything thoroughly once. If it gets really hot ask the ladies downstairs-next-door how often they're watering and copy them.'

"…Do you really think he needs three pages of instructions for that?"

"He managed to kill my spider-plant the last time I went on holiday! A spider plant! I'm not taking any chances, I like my plants."

Emeraude snorted inelegantly, and came down the last of the stairs, which were slowly being climbed by a swiss cheese plant. That, at least, even Ferio wouldn't be able to accidentally overwater to its doom, but Clef didn't want it getting too far too fast if it got enough of a drink to put on a growth spurt- he'd only bought the house a year ago, and it was already a third of the way up the stairs.

He could always chop a handful of leaves off and plant them, but he was running out of people to foist extra houseplants on - especially now Zagato and Emeraude were married and also living with him.

"It's only three weeks, I'm sure he can't cause too much chaos."

Clef looked up at her, raising one eyebrow. "When he's going to be desperate to procrastinate instead of revising?" Ferio was going to stay and house-sit while he and Emeraude were on a research trip, visiting a research facility in Switzerland to share notes on soil management for poor natural soils - the local sandy soils having some similar challenges to the rocky alpine equivalents when it came to helping people get the most they could out of a small space without damaging the soil or the local ecosystem - well, that was what Clef was going for. Emeraude was the one who had actually proposed the trip, but she was working on something complicated to do with organic pest-deterrent methods and the effects on local ecological diversity of people introducing biological controls on a large scale. She'd known about the other work going on - there weren't that many leading plant and crop science research centres that they couldn't keep an eye on what everyone else was doing, even as the subject grew more important - and had managed to wrangle them a joint trip.

Zagato was coming along to carry the bags for them, as Emeraude put it. (More truthfully, he had leave he needed to use up before the end of his work year, and was going to go out sight-seeing without them while they worked.)

(Some of their co-workers thought it was more than strange, traipsing off on holiday with his married friends. They didn't know what to think when he pointed out he actually lived with them - well, they lived with him. But it worked for the three of them - Clef liked spending time with his friends, but he liked spending a decent amount of time on his own, too, so Emeraude and Zagato still got plenty of time with each other.)

"…Okay, fine. You have a point. But didn't you go over all this already?"

"He was trying to play with Cat while I was talking. Anyway, it's only two weeks."

Emeraude eyed him. "We're definitely away for three, Clef. I made the hotel bookings."

"We're away for three, but Caldina and Ascot are only off for two," he retorted. "After that, Ascot's going to check the plants."

"Ah. Yes, probably wise." Emeraude sighed. "Ferio is many things, but green-fingered is not one of them - and no matter how much you write, he's not going to be."

"I know, but-"

"So come on, time to get going, or we're going to miss our train - they don't let you walk through the Tunnel if you don't get there on time, you know." She grabbed one of the last bags and headed for the front door.

Rolling his eyes, Clef wrote two more sentences, and reluctantly capped his pen. He set the note - okay, letter - on the kitchen table, next to the packet of biscuits Em was leaving as encouragement to study, and then stopped to look about the room one last time, feeling very much like he'd forgotten something horribly important.

Cat glared at him from the sofa for having moved, curled up with his back to them all, and pretended to go to sleep.

"Goodbye to you too," Clef told him, amused in spite of his anxiety. "I know," he added, as Emeraude appeared in the doorway. "I'm coming."

"Ferio'll be over here in three hours, we can call him every five minutes with something else you forgot to do," Emeraude promised. "Not that I believe we've forgotten anything." She took his arm, and they had the last two bags between them, and headed out to the waiting car and Zagato already in the driver's seat and adjusting the mirrors.

Clef patted the door as he locked it. "We'll be back soon," he promised, too quiet to be overheard, and turned away.