Title: Influence
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen maybe
Length: 5000+ words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Umi/Clef, background Caldina/Presea. It’s a youtuber AU. I don’t even know what happened. This hit me on Saturday and now there’s 8000 words of it? (This seemed a chunk that stands okay on its own).
Summary: The first time she’d seen one of Clef’s videos, it was a random suggestion her computer rolled into, and she almost turned it off when she looked up and spotted the title – something about buttons? Really?


oOo

Umi didn’t mean to become an ‘online personality’ – she certainly didn’t mean to start making her living by videoing herself making cakes and uploading them to streaming sites. But a couple of her friends had asked her to upload them a video of her basic chocolate cake so they could make it for valentine’s day as she was going to University half-way around the world from Tokyo and they couldn’t get her to come help them this year.

At the end of the video, she had Hikaru and Fuu both come in to taste the cake. “If anyone’s stumbled on this who doesn’t know me – why? But also, I don’t like sweet things, so here’s some people to tell you what it tastes like,” she said, and let her housemates get on with it.

A couple of random visitors had liked the video, one of whom linked it on a blog post that sent a little more traffic her way, and at least half the comments were requests for a couple more easy recipes that would have good results, so she made a second video, and then a third – six months in she was making a video a week in the terrible kitchen of the student house she was living in, and she got contacted by a pre-made icing company who wanted her to do an ad for their products.

A couple of years later she’d graduated, was renting her own nice apartment, and was making a pretty reasonable living as the cake baker who didn’t like anything she baked. Hikaru and Fuu were both still her friends, and both regularly turned up to try the cakes in her videos – of which she only made two a month, now, but they were a lot more complicated than those first ones. Now she was explaining cake decorating techniques, taking on challenges that watchers sent in like ‘make a cake that looks like a floating mountain from some fantasy story’ – that one she’d done as one long livestream from reading the challenge to finished cake – exploring ingredient substitutions… she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to last, she was going to run out of cakes to make sometime. But for right now, it was fun to have this mini business all of her own.

A lot of her time went into planning videos, recording them, editing them – but she made sure to keep watching a pretty random selection of other creators, just to see what was out there, what people were doing.

The first time she’d seen one of Clef’s videos, it was a random suggestion her computer rolled into, and she almost turned it off when she looked up and spotted the title – something about buttons? Really?

Then the image loaded, and she paused, blinking.

The guy – Clef, presumably, as his handle was ‘TailorClef’, was wearing a puffy shirt that looked like it should be in some pirate movie, only it was purple, just a few shades darker than the lavender colour he’d dyed his hair, and he was wearing a deep blue waistcoat over it that was embroidered with… griffins?

“Now,” he said, smiling at the camera. “Probably most of you know I think that anyone who can should learn how to sew a button on – but what do you do in an emergency, when you’ve lost a button, there aren’t any – or none of the right size – in your sewing kit, and you’re in a hotel room with no stores you can get to and the need for your trousers to stay on when you give a speech to three hundred people at nine the next morning?”

“Ring the front desk and have them help,” Umi told her computer, rolling her eyes.

“Some people might say ring the front desk,” the man continued, and Umi’s head snapped up to stare at him. “But that presumes that they can and will help, which isn’t always a given – especially if you’re in a cheap hotel with over-worked, under-paid staff who barely have time to get their work done, let alone hunt up some button for you. So, here’s a couple of things you can do instead.”

He went through stealing a less necessary button off something you didn’t need to wear the next day, through finding a bit of cloth – “I’ve stolen fabric out of the hem of a pair of trousers to do this before,” he said, ruefully, the way his lips twitched as he looked at the camera inviting the viewer to laugh along with him – and using it to cover a small coin, or stuffing it with thread (or extra stuffing out of a pillow if you were desperate,) on to making a button from thread and a metal ring. “I’ve used a ring off a keychain to do this,” he admitted, “and now everyone is wondering why I’m always losing buttons. I’ve a whole video about the dangers of using vintage thread in load-bearing situations, I’ll link it for you” – and then finally, when all you needed was a small little button to try to keep something closed, making one using thread alone.

When the video finally ended, Umi blinked, and found she’d spent nearly an hour watching a guy talk about buttons when she was so bad at sewing that she’d been banned from trying even in home ec classes at school.

An older video of his was loading as the ‘play next’ option. She should stop it – she really should.

But there was something about his voice… and his hands, deft as they worked needle and thread…

The camera work was good, she told herself, firmly. And the editing. She should watch a few more. Just for the technical video-making stuff.

#
Two videos became ten, became going to his profile and watching through everything he’d made in order, became going back to watch a couple that were particularly… well shot.

If her priorities for ‘well shot’ had changed slightly for his videos compared to anyone else’s, well. She wasn’t admitting anything out loud.

It wasn’t just that watching him be ridiculously competent at handling cloth made her feel… things, he also had really good audio – and a really good voice for really good audio – and the whole… aesthetic of his videos, the flow of them, drew her in. Plus the things he made were interesting: there were some videos on repairing clothing, some on basic sewing techniques, but at least half his videos were making ‘historically-inspired fantasy clothes which aspire to bring joy, not historical accuracy’, as he said wryly a number of times – she suspected his comments had a chunk of people complaining about the things he was doing ‘wrong’. Why people were demanding historical accuracy from someone making fantasy costumery to wear everyday she didn’t want to guess.

He seemed to spend at least half his time making clothing on commission for either private clients or for various tv shows and films, everything on MyTube seemed a slightly accidental second career. Which was a mood – Umi just hadn’t found a first career before she fell into the videos.

And, yes, he was hot.

Plus sarcastic, and outspoken, and a week later she’d watched all his videos, subscribed to his inPic account, and tried to leave a comment on his latest video about five times only to back out not knowing what to say – even though she highly doubted he was reading any comments a week after posting.

He seemed to be running on a schedule of one video every two weeks, which meant she had six days to wait for the next. Maybe, by that point, she would be a little less… interested.

#

She wasn’t.

#

The weekend came, along with it a new video which featured adding gores to a coat for extra swoosh, because it didn’t have enough, and in a contrasting, shimmering colour, because why not.

She watched it three times before the weekly catch-up call with Hikaru and Fuu, both currently back in Japan, and both asking Umi ‘what’s up’ as soon as she came on screen… and not hiding the amusement when Umi admitted her new problem.

“It’s just”- Umi wailed, waving her hands about then using them to cover her face –“his hands, okay, his hands are fucking porn, and there’s all these close-ups¬-“

“I… didn’t think he was straight, though?” Fuu said, carefully, a frown on her face. “I’ve seen a few of his videos, there are… a lot of rainbows, and there’s a man in some earlier ones who…”

“He’s put queer-and-bi in his InPic profile,” Umi said, hating herself for having deliberately gone to look that up. “And he lives alone, he mentioned that just a couple of videos ago, but-“

“You need to come up with some kind of cake-and-sewing collab you can invite him to do,” Hikaru said, unhelpfully. She was also giggling.

“I hate you both,” Umi said, dropping her head on the desk. “I even went to see if I could buy some clothing from him, but he’s had to close commissions for the year. Apparently he’s doing some costumes for some tv show. What would I have even done if he hadn’t? Stand there in a dress fitting trying not to say anything awkward? I don’t know him! I don’t know him at all!”

“Well, that’s not likely to be a problem unless you meet him, and then you’ll just have to get to know him the normal way – actually having a conversation.” Fuu shook her head, but she was smiling all the same.

“That’s not going to happen. If I see him, I’m running miles in the other direction before I embarrass myself irredeemably.” Umi waved the whole concept away. She wouldn’t want to start dating any of the strangers in her comment section who were obsessed with the version of her from her videos. “So, Fuu, what was this event you want to drag me along to?”

“Ah, yes.” Fuu smiled, and the conversation thankfully moved on.

#

London was – well, it was fine, like it always was. She didn’t really enjoy the place, too many people and half of them usually dazzled tourists walking right out in front of you. But at least it was only a couple of hours on the train, and it wasn’t like she could be dazzled by it. She’d grown up in Tokyo, in Washington D.C., in short visits to dozens of other large cities.

It wasn’t like the convention centre was even in a vaguely nice part of London. Even the fancier hotels clustered around it were right on the massive roundabout – but it was good to see Fuu again when she made it to the hotel, and a lot of fun helping her get dressed up for the Friday-night meetup.

Umi didn’t cosplay – she’d been pulled into a couple of group projects by Fuu on occasion, but she didn’t have the patience for making the costumes or any desire to try to act in character. But Fuu was amazingly good at this stuff, and Umi was a fan of plenty of scifi and fantasy and manga; more than enough to have fun spending a weekend at a convention. This time, instead of asking her to help out in a cosplay group, Fuu had asked her to be on a small panel about filming and photography, which was far more up her alley.

The panel was early afternoon on Saturday, so when Fuu headed off to get in costume for the panel (changing into the fairly iconic costume that she’d first got a lot of attention for, the one with the sword taller than she was,) Umi wandered about looking at the things for sale.

It was busy. She headed back to where the few bookstalls were, at least according to the map, hoping that would be a quieter corner – but no, it was just as crowded even this far away from the main panels. Stepping to one side, trying to avoid someone coming through in a full llama costume (…she didn’t know what that was in reference to), she knocked into the side of a table and swore.

None of the books perched on the table fell, thankfully, and she headed back to the side of the massive hall – and that was when something started to feel wrong about her waistband.

“Shit,” Umi said, again, staring down at the place where a button absolutely wasn’t, and knowing she had nothing useful in her bag – she used to at least have a couple of safety pins at the bottom of most of them, but this was a new one, and she’d been trying not to think about buttons or sewing or anything like that – and the skirt wasn’t going to stay up without one, the zip was already trying to creep down.

The whole reason she was over here was because Fuu was caught up and wasn’t going to make it to the Q and A before it started, but who else could would have something to help? First aid, maybe… Bandages got pinned in place, right?

“Hey, Umi? Is that you?”

“Caldina?” Umi blinked, flattening a hand on her waistband to keep the skirt there and looking up, confused – and yes, that was Caldina, looking out of one of the doors with ‘authorised convention staff only’ on it.

She’d met Caldina a couple of years ago – she was a pretty famous make-up artist on MyTube, but she also worked on film and tv productions. Umi had actually met her while doing a collaboration with Caldina’s girlfriend, Presea, who made props – they’d done a short set of videos where they both made a version of an item from the fantasy series Caldina had been working on at the time, only Presea made hers from things like resin and steel, and Umi made hers from cake.

Caldina had vastly enjoyed the cake, and they’d all stayed in touch since, but Umi hadn’t known she was going to be here – it made sense, though. She was definitely working on one of the shows that had dragged half their cast and production crew down this year.

“Who else looks this good?” Caldina said, gesturing at herself in mock indignance, and Umi had to laugh. “Why’re you standing about swearing at the ground, anyway?”

“My skirt, not the ground – hey, you don’t have a safety pin about, do you? I’ve lost a button.”

“I’ve not got anything – come back here, though, I’m sure I can find someone who does somewhere back here.” Caldina grabbed Umi’s arm and pulled her back through the ‘staff only’ door, and lodged her in a little room with a couple of chairs and some tea things before vanishing with a promise to be back soon with some kind of solution.

Hopefully she was going to find Presea, Umi thought, sighing. Presea was a genius at making props out of weird stuff, she was sure to come up with something – Umi only needed to get through the next hour, then she’d be able to head back and change. (And at some point, probably, she was going to need to try out some of those button instructions after all, she liked this skirt.)

No one else was in the room. It looked like they’d been using it as a break-out space or refreshments area or something, there were a lot of empty cups at one end of a plastic table, and then the set of urns, now turned off, someone’s forgotten coat, and a charging cable for a phone. Umi stood looking at it for several minutes, growing increasingly nervous as the seconds ticked away and the panel got closer.

“Someone needed a sewing kit?” said a far too familiar voice, and Umi’s stomach turned over as she turned about; Clef coming through the doorway, a bag in his hand, wearing a set of clothes that shouldn’t even go together so how he made it look so hot-

“It’s not my fault!” she said, automatically, then he looked at her and the autopilot got worse. “I know how to sew a button on, I do, I watched your stupid video enough times I even managed to stop just staring at your hands, but I can’t do it and I don’t have the button anyway, or any pennies, and I’m not cutting up my hem-“

Clef blinked, a flush spreading over his cheeks. “…My hands?” he murmured, and his eyes were even more ridiculously blue in person – and then Caldina appeared and pushed him firmly into the room, grinning like she’d heard every word Umi blurted out.

“Umi’s skirt’s failing her, you can fix it, right? Thanks, Clef!” she said, and shut the door on them so it was just the two of them in there.

“Caldina!” Umi snapped – and Clef said the same thing at the same time, which was enough to make them both pause, look at each other again, and then he laughed and held out a hand to her.

“Hi, sorry – I’m Clef, I guess you’ve seen some of my videos. Caldina said you need a hand with a button?”

“Yeah.” Umi sighed, staring down at her skirt – which, she realised, was going to need fixing while she was still in it unless she wanted to hang out in nothing but her knickers. “The button on my skirt came off, it won’t stay up without it, and I’m meant to be doing a little question-and-answer thing in about twenty minutes. I used to carry safety pins about with me, but I didn’t think to put any in this bag, and- and I can’t sew, okay, I’m terrible at it, I know you think everyone should be able to sew a button on-“

Clef grinned at her. “No, I think everyone who can should learn how to, and that we should help out when someone needs a hand with one. But right now…” He dropped his bag on one of the plastic chairs and opened it, rooting through the contents. “You’ve got a Q and A to do? Are you an actress? …Sorry, I haven’t seen much tv or anything the past year, things have been really busy with all the costumes and the work on my videos on top of that…”

“Oh, have you been working on ‘Stars of the Earth’ with Caldina?”

“I’ve made some bits of clothing for them – I’ve known Caldina’s girlfriend since undergrad, she got me roped in, only it turned into more work than I was expecting – it’s pretty fun, though.”

Umi nodded – and then realised he’d assumed she was an actress, and her face went hot. “I’m just – I do videos on MyTube too, I bake. A group of us are doing a bit of talking about how we got started, what we do about filming and editing, that kind of thing; mostly it’s cosplayers but my friend, Fuu, she dragged me into it too.”

“Oh!” Clef looked up at her, and smiled. “That’s why I recognised you – you made a chocolate cake that looks like a dragon, on one of Presea’s videos, that was amazing. I haven’t seen any of your other videos, but-“

“No, that’s – I mean, thanks, it wasn’t that good-“

“I remember it a year later. It was absolutely that good,” he said, with a grin, and then handed her – two safety pins. “Look, these should get you through the Q and A, but after that, are you over in the same set of hotels as the rest of us, the other side of the roundabout? I know a lot of cosplayers were staying in one, there’s some kind of meetup going on tomorrow I keep seeing posters about…”

“Yes?” Fuu was one of the organisers of the meetup, she’d booked the room for them because of it.

“Okay, lets trade numbers – bring the skirt over this evening, I’ll fix it up for you properly.”

Umi blinked, and then flushed harder – Clef was inviting her to his hotel room?

A few seconds later he obviously worked out why she’d gone silent and his head shot up from digging his phone out of the bag. “I didn’t mean- I just meant I could get this fixed, honest! Not that you’re not- uh.”

His ears were bright red. It was, somehow, adorable.

Umi couldn’t help grinning, even as she made use of the safety pins to fasten her skirt securely where it should be, keeping them invisibly inside the waistband. “It would be really useful if you could,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t pack all that much, I was planning on wearing this home – but you’ll have to let me repay you.”

“…I wouldn’t say no to some cake,” he offered, ears still bright red, but at least he was looking at her now, lips twitching. “If you ever had any going spare, that is.”

“It’s a deal,” she promised – and then she had to go, head spinning, heart racing, and his number and hotel room both saved to her phone.

#

Several hours later, after a pretty successful panel for one of the fan-led things going up against a couple of industry events, Umi hustled back to the room she was sharing with Fuu and dug through her suitcase for a pair of jeans before unpinning her skirt.

“Are you in a rush?” Fuu said, amused, from the doorway. “You’re welcome to come out with us, of course, but we’re not meeting for another hour.”

The ‘we’ involved mostly costuming people, any of whom would probably be able to fix Umi’s skirt for her. Fuu could probably fix it for her.

“It’s okay, I’ve got, uh, other plans?”

“Oh, did you lose a button?” Fuu asked, seeing the safety pins as Umi folded the skirt up. “I’ve probably got a spare about the right size somewhere in here…”

“Don’t worry about it!” Umi said, far too brightly. “That’s, well, what my evening plan is?”

“…To fix your skirt?” Fuu looked at her, with an air of deep suspicion. “You’re terrible with a needle.”

“Yeah, but… I mean, he volunteered to fix it in return for cake, so- don’t look at me like that this is all Caldina’s fault!”

Fuu settled down on the bed, watching her, starting to smile. “You met Caldina? Isn’t she working on-”

“Stars of the Earth, yeah, and she found me when I’d just lost the button and it was right before our panel, so she said she could find someone to lend me some safety pins and-“ Umi flushed, breaking off. “Seriously, don’t look at me like that-“

“Is the Clef who sews fantasy outfits not working on that show as well?” Fuu asked, smile going wicked when Umi’s face heated up to the point it was painful. “May I guess who she found to help you? And now… you are going to find him for the evening?”

“He said he’d fix my skirt! And – I just.” She waved a hand. “I’d rather like to get to know him so this stupid crush can go away, okay? I promised him cake in return for fixing my skirt, and I’ll try to have an actual conversation with him, and then he’ll be a normal person to me and I won’t be all… whatever about his videos.”

For a long moment, Fuu just looked at her, and Umi was growing increasingly tense before the silence was broken with a “Well, have fun then! I won’t wait up.”

“Nothing’s going to happen!” Umi protested, and almost stormed out of the room.

Clef was in the hotel next door, one step up on the rung of hotel rankings, and as he’d given her his room number she headed straight for the lifts and went up.

It wasn’t until she’d already knocked on his door that she stopped to think he might have given her his phone number so she could send him a message from the lobby – too late now, he was opening the door, smiling at her after a moment.

“Oh, hi, Umi – come in. Uh, or we could go somewhere else, if you wanted-“

“It’s fine. I’m pretty sure you’re an okay person, given Caldina left you with me when my clothes were literally trying to fall off,” Umi said. Then she thought about that statement, and blushed almost as hard as Clef was doing as he stepped aside to let her in.

“Have you known Caldina a long time?” He waved her at the seats (two seats instead of one – it was definitely fancier than her hotel) and held out his hands for the skirt.

Umi managed to hand it over and stop clutching the fabric like a lifeline. “Only since those videos I did with Presea, but I stayed with them a week to film it. One of my other friends – Hikaru, she’s back in Japan right now so she’s not here this weekend – she met Presea at some blacksmithing workshop and came up with the whole idea for the collaboration, but we’d only met a couple of times before then. It’s easier for me to bake somewhere else than for Presea’s workshop to move, so…”

“That makes sense,” he said, absently, already examining the fabric. “Have you had this skirt a while?”

“Since I was fourteen. It fits a bit differently now, but it still fits. And I still like it,” she said, defensively – but he smiled at her, and she remembered that he was certainly not the kind of person who would make fun of her for owning decades-old clothing.

“It looked good on you,” he said, and was thankfully looking down at the fabric again before he could see her blush. “But see, here – the thread holding the button didn’t give way, the actual fabric has worn through where it was stitched on. I can put a patch of sturdier fabric over this, if that’s okay, to reinforce it, then attach the button to that?”

“Sure!” she said, then winced. “Not that you have to – I owe you cake just for the safety pins, you’ll have to let me pay you for your time if you do anything else.”

“It’s fine. Something straightforward like this is the kind of thing I find settling after being near those crowds all day. And Caldina’s the one who asked me to help, so she’ll owe me a favour, not you.”

“Still-“ she bit her lip.

Clef glanced up at her. “Another deal, then. I fix this, and you pay for dinner?”

“I – sure?” She blinked. That wasn’t a date, right?

If it was, she’d just agreed to it. But Clef looked back at her skirt again, sounding pleased.

“Good! I watched a couple more of your videos this afternoon, I wanted to ask about your lighting setup.”

Not a date, then, she concluded, trying not to laugh at herself out loud. “I want to know how you make your audio so good, too,” she put in, and settled back to watch as he dug a spare piece of deep blue fabric out of a bag, cut it to size, and set about using it to fix her skirt.

He absently explained what he was doing as he went, just like he did to camera – only with more moments of swearing at the thread if it didn’t do what he wanted. She watched, fascinated, until he was done.

They had just about settled on a restaurant when there was a knock at the door. Clef left her, frowning, to go open it – Presea and Caldina stood the other side, bags in hand, looking ready to head out.

“Hey, Presea tells me we need to be polite and tell you you’re welcome to eat with us-“ Caldina began, before she spotted Umi in the background and her smile turned wicked. “Or both of you can come eat with us, unless you’ve more interesting plans for the evening – hi, Umi!”

Umi sighed and waved at Presea, who looked confused at seeing Umi then even more confused when Clef waved her skirt at them.

“I’m finishing the job you gave me this afternoon, actually,” Clef told Caldina. “But thanks. Tomorrow?”

“We’ll see you then,” Presea said, wrapping an arm about Caldina to drag her away. “Come on, lets leave them alone.”

#

Their first argument started before they even reached the restaurant – it turned out that the mic Clef used for his recording was one Umi had bought, before reading any reviews of it, and hated. It picked up interference from just about anything.

“Maybe, but the building I’m in is an old shoe factory, chopped up into sections, and I’m in what used to be the manager’s office – the walls are all original, and they’re thick. I’ve no trouble with interference, and the quality for the price is really good-”

“Well, that’s nice for you, but most of us don’t have that kind of a space.”

“-and that’s why I read all the reviews before I bought it,” he finished, with an unrepentant grin. “Why shouldn’t I be happy with something that doesn’t work for most people? That’s the definition of my career at this point, I think.”

The arguing was great; it was strangely fun, he didn’t seem to mind her retorting back at him, and it made him very much an actual real person. The whole evening they spent in one long rambling conversation that turned into an argument easily as breathing, but turned back again just as fast.

They’d picked a restaurant it was possible to walk to, even if it meant negotiating the roundabout. It cost a bit more than Clef had wanted her to pay, but given they’d skipped the taxi fare it really wasn’t bad, as Umi told him, firmly.

When they got to dessert Umi took one look at the menu and snorted, winning a raised eyebrow from Clef across the table. “No cake,” she explained, turning it about to show him. “So I can’t cheat and buy you some – I’m going to have to make you one.”

“This really is more than enough in thanks for a little bit of sewing,” Clef protested, but she shook her head.

“The cake was for the safety pins, remember? Dinner’s for the sewing. So I still owe you cake sometime.”

She could see him wavering, but after a moment he smiled and shook his head. “I can’t bring myself to say no to cake.”

They said goodbye on the edge of the car park between their two hotels, waving slightly awkwardly at each other as they both turned away – but it had been fun.

So much fun that even Fuu’s teasing questions couldn’t get Umi to stop smiling.

#