Title: well packaged
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 500ish words
Content notes: Slightly dubious driving
Author notes: Post-canon, Umi and Clef in a car. Written in under an hour...
Summary: The snacks weren't meant to be the hardest part of the journey.

oOo

The rustling from the passenger seat was irritating when it lasted for thirty seconds. When it went on for two minutes, accompanied by increasingly grumpy muttering, Umi huffed out a sigh. "Hand the packet over."

"No," Clef said, flatly. "You are in control of this vehicle, you should concentrate on the path."

"I'd concentrate better if you weren't taking ten minutes to open one bag of biscuits! The road is perfectly straight and there's barely any traffic, it's fine, give it here."

"Are you sure-"

Reaching out without looking, she swatted him on the shoulder then reached for the packet of cookies he'd been mangling, shoving it between her knees and glancing down briefly to see what state it was in before trying to get it open with one hand. Unfortunately, the plastic was pretty strong, and it had been warped slightly by Clef's uncertain attempts to get into it.

"Aren't you meant to have both hands on the wheel?" Clef asked, voice sharp.

"If I always had my hands on the wheel I wouldn't be able to use the gear stick, or the aircon, so, no," Umi retorted. "Relax, please?"

It was probably an unfair request - this was only Clef's third trip to earth, the only time he'd been here more than a few hours, and his first time in a car. She always found the expressways a lot less stressful than trying to get anywhere in the Tokyo area, but she was going significantly faster than she had then. Plus, they were both hungry.

"What did you do to this?" she muttered, and checked her mirrors and the road ahead, letting her foot ease off the gas before she brought the package up to her mouth and bit down on the edge, trying to rip it with a twist of her head. Clef yelped and reached out, not quite taking hold of the wheel, and she dropped the packet back into her lap to knock his hands away. "Fine! We'll ignore the biscuits for now, there are other snacks in the bag behind my seat - can you grab it?"

"Why are they back there?" Twisting around, Clef leaned back between the seats in a way that made Umi's back wince sympathetically.

"I wasn't expecting a packet of biscuits to be such hard work!" Umi glanced at him as he hissed and sat back upright, empty handed. "No luck?"

"There appears to be another bag on top of it."

"...Bother." Umi rubbed at her face. "I'd pull over for thirty seconds, but you can't stop on the expressway. There should be a parking area in about half an hour, are you good until then? We can get out and stretch our legs, and reorganise the packing if we need to."

"I can wait," Clef assured her.

Umi eyed him. "Getting you all the way to Tokyo from Cephiro should not be so much easier than just driving up the country," she muttered. "Okay. Next parking stop, remind me to show you how to open a packet of biscuits properly."