Title: In bloom
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: G
Length: 800ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post canon, Umi and Clef hanging out
Summary: "Clef, those plants are trying to lean on you."

oOo

"Clef…"

"Hmm?" Clef had heard the door open, and hadn't needed to look up to know that it was Umi walking into his study. Ten years and he still refused to call it an office, in the hopes that one day it would be a private space again, but Umi was still the only person who would walk in without so much as knocking.

"Clef," Umi said again, her voice sounding like it was nearly strangled in her throat.

He looked up, and she was paused halfway into the room, staring at - his desk? Something by his shoulder? He turned, and the only thing he could see was the flowers of the couple of plants he'd stuck on the edge of the desk right now. Leaning back, he brushed one swaying stem aside to look past it - and that got a very strange sound from Umi. "What is it?" he asked, and when he looked back, she was very definitely staring at his desk. "I don't even have that much paperwork today-"

She flapped her hand at him, opened her mouth silently a long moment, then managed "Clef, those plants are trying to lean on you."

Looking at the blooms, he shrugged, tapping the closest with one finger and watching the tiny flush of brighter colour run through it. "Yes? They do that - they're ruufu. They get energy to bloom from magic - that's why I have them over here right now, they used to be-"

"Over in the windowsill, right?" Umi crept a little further into the room, and Clef felt his lips twitching at how wary she looked. "What, you wanted them to sit there eating your magic?"

"They're not eating it," he protested. "No digestive system. They just absorb ambient power, which, yes, tends to sit in the air about a mage. They would probably have been fine in the windowsill, but - well, I don't want Lantis having to come 'have a quiet word with me' this year." He scrunched his nose up for a moment at the memory, then tapped at the closest plant once more and picked his pen up again. "Are you going to come in far enough you can actually shut the door?"

"I guess - why did Lantis have to check on you?" Umi pushed the door shut and came over, reaching out tentatively to the closest flower. It leaned slowly towards her hand, the motion just fast enough to be visible. The bell-shaped flowers on the long arched stems flushed a little more, edging further from the palest pink that they'd been when they first opened. "That's so weird. Everytime I forget Cephiro is bizarre, something like this comes along."

"Cephiro is not bizarre."

"It really, really is, Clef." She shot a grin at him, and he sat back in his seat to watch her examine the flowers. "I mean, aside from the weirdo springs-"

"Eterna aside, our springs are perfectly normal, and Eterna does not count-"

"It exists! It's connected to some weird other dimension, and it's the only place escudo comes from, and- are you trying to distract me?" She pulled a face at him. "What did Lantis need to talk to you about?"

"Oh, just - you know the Guard monitor the shields that protect the castle? Well, the shields are magic, and they're in the walls, and apparently having a bunch of ruufu blooming and absorbing power from them made it look like either I was in trouble or someone was trying to get through the walls." Clef sighed. "They're my favourite flower, I'm keeping them, but keeping them from direct contact with the walls does seem to help."

Umi snorted. "I bet Lantis would agree they're weird," she muttered.

"I believe the word he used was 'complicated'," Clef retorted. "Anyway, were you here for a reason, or just to insult my flowers?"

"I didn't know your flowers needed insulting until I got here, so." She waved a hand, pulling her usual chair from the crystal he'd embedded in the edge of his desk. "No, I just came to bother you. Anything interesting been going on?"

"Apart from weirdo plants blooming?" He reached back and poked at the kettle over on the sideboard, setting it to heat. "Not much. How did your exams go? That was this week, wasn't it?"

"Ugh." Umi flopped into her chair, hooked her legs over the arm of it - the pose which meant there was a specific chair designed to her specifications - and started to tell him about her end-of-year university exams.

And if her arm ended up resting on his desk, and her fingers idly tapped further into the flowers as she talked - Clef wasn't going to mention it. At least, not until the next time he wanted to tease her.