Title: Thief
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 800ish words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Modern day/mundane AU - marriage of convenience. (And cat shenanigans...)
Summary: Clef's first morning in Japan doesn't start how he might have imagined it.

oOo

Clef woke up when it was still full dark, stumbled to the bathroom and splashed some water on his face, trying to get rid of the horrible foggy feeling emanating through his brain. He cupped some of the water in his palm and drank it, and then paused.

The water tasted wrong. Well. Different.

…Because he wasn't in his flat in England, he was in Japan, in the house of his suddenly-acquired-fiancee's parents, and this was so weird.

He blinked at the tap. You could drink the water from any of the taps here, right? …Well, this house was such a fancy nonsense it must be fine. They probably had a water filter on the house and stuff like that. (Which would help explain the taste…)

Either way, he wasn't getting up at - apparently three in the morning? That didn't make sense at all! And he refused to be awake, so he headed back to bed and managed to drowse through another three hours before he gave in and got up to find something to eat.

The tour of the house yesterday hadn't really sunk in, but he did manage to find the kitchen - but he had help. As soon as he stepped outside his door, he had two very enthusiastic cats greeting him loudly, rubbing up against his legs, and running in the direction of the kitchen for three steps at a time before coming back to trip him up. By the time he reached the kitchen, he'd picked up Momo, remembering Umi's statement that he didn't mind being carried - so that only left the smaller inky trip-hazard who blended in with the shadows still left in the early-morning hallways.

"I'm not feeding you," he said, amused, as their noise got louder the moment he headed to the fridge. He set Momo down on the floor with one last skritch behind the ears. "I'm going to try to feed me, but I'm not going to try to work out what you eat. For all I know you have different diets anyway, I'm not going to guess."

Momo leaned up and hooked his front paws onto the edge of the counter, yelling at him, and Clef snorted.

"No, seriously, I'm feeding me, not you. I'll ask about your food later, but I'm not going to start guessing! What if you're allergic to chicken?" He stared into the fridge, and then shut it again. "…There was a fruit bowl somewhere, and bread, do you think there's a toaster? Or a grill… ah! Bread." He managed to identify the large ceramic container Umi had pulled it from the day before, and fished out a loaf. "It's slightly different bread, but then I'm in a very different place, so that's only to be expected… now, where would a toaster be…"

He looked around the room for about ten seconds - and turned back just in time to see a black blur grab the loaf of bread - through the plastic - and shoot off the counter with it.

"Oi! Cat!" he yelped, and shot off in pursuit before realising he should have shut the kitchen door instead.

Ten minutes later found him with a sulking cat at his heels, telling him off as he walked back into the kitchen with the slightly-mangled loaf. "No," he told Kuromame, "You are not getting bread for breakfast, that is a people food, and you are a cat, I am absolutely certain this wouldn't be right for you. All nutritionally wrong and all that. Anyway, it's mine, you can't have it-" he looked up at some instinct to find Umi stood in the kitchen door behind him, watching the small parade with a highly amused expression. "Do you have a toaster?" he asked, reflexively, holding up the chewed loaf.

"I forgot to warn you about that," she said, lips twitching, "but you seem to have done okay. He hasn't even chewed the whole loaf."

"Only one chunk!" he said, cheerfully. "Is it actually time for them to eat?"

"Not quite, but I'll go ahead, it'll get them out of our way - the toaster is in the cupboard above the microwave, by the way. We have to keep it locked away or else someone knocks it over and eats all the crumbs."

"I can't imagine who that might be," he murmured, and watched in amusement as she gained an insistent chorus the moment she walked into the kitchen, the cats apparently realising he was a failure in terms of serving them breakfast.

It wasn't how he'd imagined his first full day in Japan starting, but it was good.

Even if he had to fend off a cat the entire time he was eating his toast, too charmed by the attempts to steal it to make Kuromame get down from his perch on Clef's shoulder.