Title: Stainless
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 750ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post canon, Umi and Clef
Summary: “Blast,” Clef muttered, glaring at the small splattering of ink scattered across the top of the paper he was meant to be reviewing.

oOo

“Blast,” Clef muttered, glaring at the small splattering of ink scattered across the top of the paper he was meant to be reviewing. He had been staring at the far wall thinking through quite how to phrase what he wanted to say without being so blunt as to start another argument. The meetings over where to place the road system were long enough already.

Holding his hand over the page, he muttered a few words under his breath and concentrated, slowly lifting the fresh ink from the page with a trickle of magic. Getting the ink up without bringing the words that had been on the page below was the tricky part, but it was nearly done when a voice from the other side of the desk startled him.

“I always wondered why you don’t have ink all over you, after watching you fight all that paperwork those first months.”

“Umi! What-“ Clef’s head snapped up, then he swore and looked down at the page again, sighing ruefully at the ink that had now dropped back down across all of it, splashing far enough to hit the desk and the edge of his sleeve.

“Oops,” she said, sounding barely repentant, and pulled a thin white square of something that didn’t look quite like a cloth handkerchief from her pocket. “Here, let me-“ Reaching over she blotted at the desk and the white cloth of his sleeve, then exclaimed when the ink lifted away instantly, leaving no trace behind. “How did you do that?”

“The Guru wears white and long sleeves, and does a lot of paperwork,” he said, dryly, starting up the spell again over the paper as Umi stared. “It would be foolish not to protect my clothing – and my desk. But as it is frowned on to enchant official paperwork it’s somewhat harder to remove stains.” His lips twitched up, remembering some of his early experiments at working spells into his papers. “Besides which, it does make it hard to write on deliberately when it repels all ink.”

Umi snickered on the other side of the table as he finally pulled all the ink into a tiny ball in his hand, and carefully shifted sideways to drop it into the glass of water that he’d almost finished.

“I guess you’re not drinking the rest of that.”

“Hopefully not.” He set the glass as far away as he could, hoping he wouldn’t absently pick it up and try to do just that. “Were you here for any purpose other than to startle me?”

“I did knock, but you ignored me – I came to bring you this,” she said, and lifted a small box from the depths of the bag she carried. It was a folded cardboard thing, and she set it in front of him with a flourish – not, he noted, on the paper. “I figured you always have too much on to come picnic with the rest of us, and I had too much batter anyway, so.”

Clef opened the box carefully, to find a little cake, decorated just as neatly as the large ones Umi always brought – one of which he suspected was still weighing down the bag. It smelled delicious, like the ‘chocolate’ the knights brought sometimes, and had the little fruits that looked like tiny puragu sliced and laid out over the top in the icing.

“You made this for me?” he asked, startled, looking up.

Umi waved a hand at him, starting to turn away. “Well, you always miss out, hiding up here – anyway, you can find your own fork to eat it, I need to get this one down to the gardens. …Will you be down for dinner tonight?”

He shouldn’t. He had enough work that needed doing that he should really keep at it until he had to sleep, and yet he still found himself saying yes as he stared down at that little cake.

“Good. I’ll see you then!”

Umi vanished out the door, letting it thump shut behind herself, and Clef sat slowly back in his chair.

Well. Perhaps a short break – he needed another drink, after all. A little cake with it might help him concentrate for the rest of the afternoon. If he worked fast enough, he might make it for dinner after all, and not have to vanish too fast afterwards. It had been a while since he’d managed to catch up with friends. Spending the afternoon down in the gardens was impossible, but just an evening… he could probably manage that.