Title: Eroding Borders
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: PG
Length: 2000 words
Content notes: Pregnancy and food issues, mentions of sex-swap (physical, not identity! Because ~will controls form~ on Cephiro), a complicated three-way relationship? Brief mention of Earth's attitudes to relationships being less accepting than Cephiro's. Also, crack, taken far too seriously *grin*.
Author notes: Because Of Reasons, I am writing a slightly-accidentally-large Tarta/Umi/Clef (mostly Tarta/Umi, Umi/Clef, and slowly growing Tarta&Clef) fic which involves Tarta and Umi having a child (mostly partly because of politics?) And. This is a part of it. (I wasn't meant to be writing it yet, but the first thing I wrote for this prompt is so spoilery for an unfinished fic that I decided not to post it, and I've been having a week in which slightly-crackish-self-indulgent-fluff has been very welcome. XD)
For the record? In this, gender and/or sex are pretty irrelevant to Clef (Cephiro has non-sentient intelligent life, they have other things to be hung up on!), Tarta's nearly entirely attracted to women, and Umi's attracted to men and women and is still kind of trying to get her head about that, let alone the fact she's becoming a ~father~.
Summary: Umi's not about much for the pregnancy, so it's a good thing Tarta and Clef have been getting used to each other over the past few years...

oOo

As the pregnancy went on, there were more nights when Tarta and Clef found themselves sharing their bed without Umi. Her father was… not well, and she was spending increasing amounts of time in Tokyo, first persuading him to come to Cephiro and the healers, and then arranging for it to happen. Apparently it took effort for a semi-public figure such as a not-entirely-retired politician to vanish from earth, at least without anyone raising the hue and cry over it.

It also meant that Umi wasn’t there to help when Clef walked into their rooms one evening to find Tarta staring forlornly at a plate of bright orange-red crackers, slumped inelegantly on the sofa.

He put his staff in its stand by the door (which had been insisted on by both women, when they kept tripping over it in the middle of the night. After all, they pointed out – loudly – they couldn’t feel where it was at all times), pulled off his heavy overrobe and mantle, dropping them over another chair before he came across to stare down at the plate.

“What’s this?”

“Bialbero wafers.” Tarta told him. “It’s – I always stole them from the kitchens when I was little, and I want to eat them so much, but.” She gestured sharply at the curve of her stomach, pulling a face.

“They wouldn’t agree with your body, right now?” He said, softly. Tarta nodded, just once. He winced. If Umi was in Cephiro, he would have excused himself somehow, gone to find her; as it was, he was on his own.

“I can’t eat anything spicy, anymore.” Her tone was bitter. “Then my family sent me these, to stop me feeling homesick while I can’t go back – and I know it would be a bad idea to be in Chizeta when this child is born, if we want them able to choose where they want to live, to belong – but I miss my home! I miss Tatra, and I’m uncomfortable, and clumsy, and I can’t fight anymore and – and Umi’s avoiding me while I’m pregnant with our child! ”

Clef sat down on the arm of the sofa, and let a hand rest on her shoulder. Tarta stiffened for a moment, then leant into his side, a mark of quite how upset she was. “There isn’t that long there to go, at least? Just another month – and if this child takes after either of its parents it’s probably going to be impatiently early.” He said, quietly. “And you aren’t clumsy, just constantly having to adjust to your body being rearranged. I was tripping over nothing for months after I took on this form, and that was all done in a minute! You’ve still got two types of magic to terrify people with, and as for the other…” He sighed. “Don’t worry about Umi.”

“Don’t try to tell me she’s busy.” Tarta yanked away and glared at him. “She’s running away-“

Clef snorted. “Yes, she is. She’s freaking out. I figured it might take her a while, with all this stress from home added on, but now she’s upsetting you, which is not part of her plans. I’m going to talk with her tomorrow.”

“No, you don’t-“ Tarta began, eyes wide. “Clef, you don’t have to-“

He sighed again and cupped Tarta’s face in one of his hands; the gesture was rare enough to startle her silent.

“She’s freaking out. Being a parent would be frightening enough, I suspect, but nothing in her world has prepared her for being a father. Besides that, bringing her parents here- has she ever spoken to you about how strange this relationship looks, to someone from Tokyo?”

Tarta shook her head, but didn’t actually move away from his touch.

“Before you and she were – well, we talked.” He shrugged, awkwardly; the whole time when he and Umi had been together but before she and Tarta had been in anything was something he tried not to mention too often, at least not to Tarta directly. “It seems that same-sex relationships aren’t as well respected as differing-sex ones, to start with. That being attracted to more than one gender is apparently even less expected, and being seriously involved with more than one person at once is frequently even illegal, from what she told me. If you take away the age difference and the magic, I’m not so far out of their expectations; but for your sake, Umi has explained these things about herself to her family. And they’ve accepted it, but bringing them here, where the evidence will be in front of them every day… I suspect it’s making her panic, but she doesn’t want to worry you about it, because she loves you dearly.” He looked at her, sternly. “The same way you haven’t been telling her about the worst of your discomfort or how much you miss Chizeta, or even how badly you want her here.”

“I…” Tarta swallowed, voice uncharacteristically small. “Still, you don’t have to-“

“She’s upsetting you.” Clef repeated, voice soft. “We’ve got enough to deal with, between the three – well, four – of us, without the two of you falling out. She and I – we can afford her yelling at me about this. I’ve got a fraction more distance, it won’t hurt quite so strongly.” Then he grinned, unable to help himself. “Besides, I may not be one of this child’s parents, but I do feel somewhat responsible for its existence.”

There was a long moment when Tarta stared up at him – and he wasn’t used to that, not just because he was the shortest person in this relationship, (even Umi had about an inch on him, now,) but because it was more vulnerable than Tarta let herself look, without Umi present to coax it out of her.

Then she laughed, ducking her head down and leaning against his side again. “We wouldn’t have known it was possible, without you! And – and you are, you know. Once of it’s parents. Just not… biologically?”

He swallowed, throat going tight. He let his arm wrap about Tarta’s shoulders, and she didn’t move away. “…Just as long as the Chizetan government doesn’t figure it out.” He said, voice audibly rough, and Tarta started laughing again, shaking with it, folded against him – as much as she could fold up, with the curve of her stomach in the way.

“I still think they’re going to have more of an issue with your giving me Cephiran magic.”

“If the heir-apparent to the Chizetan throne, after you, was also the child of the Cephiran Master Mage… trust me, there would be a very loud fuss. That advisor of yours was ready enough to start shouting before you told him it was Umi’s child and confused him so much he stopped short.”

“…Maybe.” He could hear the smirk in her voice. “Not that it was any of his business, but he did pull a beautiful face when I told him…” She broke off to yawn, widely, sitting upright again.

Clef let go of her, and his attention was caught by the plate on the table, the brightness of the crackers – wafers – on the white ceramic. “I …propose a trade.” He said, and pointed to the crackers. “I’ll try these, I’m curious now, and you can try one of my favourites. Waipaa. They’re savoury, but with herbs, not spices – I don’t think they should upset you?”

“That… sounds nice?”

Tarta sounded confused, mostly, but that was better than homesick and lonely. “You go to bed, then, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Eating in bed? If Umi finds crumbs, we’ll both be in trouble-“

“And therein lies half the fun.” He said, with a grin, one she returned. He pushed himself off the sofa, paused – and bent impulsively to drop a kiss on the top of her head before he left. Today was apparently a day for pushing at the lines they’d drawn back when this started.

(And part of him found it hilarious that such small things could be so awkward when they’d slept together before – and not just in the sense of sharing a bed. Not just with Umi present, either, though it hadn’t happened often. Generally just when one of them had made another terrible decision. Like the day he’d given Tarta magic, which had been a first in… quite a few ways. But there it was; a slowly building connection between the two of them, independent of their connections to Umi.)

oOo

When he made it back, Tarta was propped up on more than half the pillows on the bed: she was struggling to feel comfortable lying down. She took the plate he offered her and stared at the biscuits cautiously while Clef got into his nightclothes.

He did stop, a moment, by the foot of the bed. “Would you – be more comfortable if I changed?” He offered; he hadn’t thought of it before, but Tarta’s preference for him in female form had been marked enough, and while she was feeling off-balance it felt somehow right to offer up a… lesser version of the same. (He didn’t mind changing form, but it was certainly different enough to what he was used to that he was constantly aware of the unfamiliarity.)

Tarta looked at him, then waved the offer aside with a sigh. “That’s okay. You aren’t the man who got me pregnant, anyway-“

Clef snickered. “I think Umi would point out neither is she, at the moment-“

“And, well. Just - this version is you. I don’t mind it.” She turned her attention back to the biscuits he’d given her as Clef took that in, which was good, because he couldn’t stop the rather daft smile at her saying, in not so many words, that she didn’t mind him. In her space, in this life Umi had unintentionally pulled them both into.

“These… aren’t bad, actually.” She said, nibbling one of the biscuits, and he tried hard not to laugh at the surprise in her voice. “Not as bland as your stuff usually is.”

“Our sweet dishes are usually more interesting than the savoury ones, even I’ll admit that, but they aren’t all so bad.”

He got into the bed, and shoved his own pillows over so he could sit next to her, bringing a book and the plate of wafers. (Umi, usually, slept in the middle. But with her missing – well, why not be companionable? He and Tarta hadn’t broken anything yet, not even each other, too nervous to even argue freely. Clef suspected that would come, if things kept going this way. He was almost looking forward to it.) He picked up one of the crackers and eyed it, dubiously. The colour was rather alarming; Cephiro’s food wasn’t often quite so… luminous.

“Am I going to regret not having a drink with me?” He asked, and Tarta snickered – then took the wordless offer of his proximity and leant back against his side, using his shoulder as a headrest.

“Maybe?” Was all she said, tone teasing.

Clef sighed, and took a cautious bite. Flavour exploded across his mouth – rich and layered and warm, stinging slightly, the wafer flaking apart on his tongue. It was… intense, but he had to admit it was worth it.

“…Okay, when the child’s born, we’re going to Chizeta. We can leave Umi with it and go raid the kitchen for more of these.” He decided, and took a larger bite.

“That good?” She sounded pleased.

“Yes.” He finished it, and then had to lick the powder and crumbs from his hand. “…If a little messy.”

He could hear the grin in her voice, as she set her own (empty) plate aside. “Well, you’re the one who wanted to eat in bed. Anyway, the best things usually are.”

Thinking of the way their relationship made the politicians wince – and about their child, who was going to belong to three worlds – well. Clef had to agree with that.

oOo

end

oOo