Title: Ticking away
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 750 words
Content notes: Brief mention of threatened violence in the past
Author notes: Spies!au Clef&Emeraude, pre-relationship one-sided Clef/Umi
Summary: “You’re watching the clock today, aren’t you?”





“You’re watching the clock today, aren’t you?”

“Hmm?” Clef blinked, looking up from his laptop to see Emeraude raise her eyebrow at him, lips twitching. “What did you say?”

“You’re watching the time. Plus you flinch every time you get a new notification – which you should really turn off in meetings with your boss,” she said, with a grin as her own phone chimed and she glanced down at it to check for disasters. As she looked up again a moment later, presumably it was a normal message rather than anything urgent – as had been every message he’d received during their two-hour strategy meeting.

“You know half the people we have are too intimidated by you to come interrupt your meetings even when they should do,” he countered, with a hand at the door and the various people outside. When you worked for an international intelligence and peace-keeping agency, there were sometimes things you really did need to be interrupted for. And no news was often good news, when your people were out on a mission.

He was trying to remember that.

“Are you that worried about them?” Emeraude gave up any pretence at looking at the reports they were supposed to be agreeing, and leaned her head on her chin, staring at him. “I mean, if you’re just – invested in someone’s career, that’s okay, but if you’re this worried I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t be sending the three of them out yet?”

Clef froze, caught. On the one hand, he wanted to say yes, he was concerned that all three of their newest agents needed more tempering before they got sent off on a mission without any of the more experienced agents – but it wasn’t, actually, true. They were brilliant, and the three of them together made a remarkable team – Emeraude’s intuition wasn’t often wrong with things like that, and in this instance she was absolutely right. They’d shown all the right skills and the right decisions in the past… nine months?

(Was it really nine months since he’d met Umi, when she’d saved Emeraude’s life? It felt so much longer but also barely weeks ago.)

But if he wasn’t concerned it was too soon then he was over-anxious about them, and-

Emeraude smiled, slowly, and he realised his cheeks were heating up.

“Shut up,” he said, reflexively, staring back at his laptop without seeing a word on the screen.

“I mean, if you’re going to fret this much, do we need to be having an actual conversation about this?”

“Nothing’s going to – no.” He shook his head, face heating further. “…Anyway, I’m not in line of command, and… I’ve told her if she’s ever concerned about me being support for her, she should talk directly to you. I’m certain she would, too – well, if she didn’t just yell at me loud enough the whole place heard, if she thought I was messing things up.”

That got him a blink. “You – when?”

“…About a month after we met,” he admitted to his laptop. “I don’t think she realised why I might have said anything. I hope she didn’t! I don’t want to be awkward! I just-“

Emeraude reached over the table and patted his hand, silent for a moment, and neither of them needed to bring up her own bad relationship history for it to be lurking in the room with them.

He turned his hand over after a moment and held hers, with a sigh. “I know they shouldn’t be checking in yet. And you know I’m anxious at the best of times.”

“This really is a terrible job for you,” she agreed – it was a conversation they’d had a hundred times, so she could say it with a wry smile. “On the other hand… of course you end up liking someone who threatened to shoot you when you met. Where else would you have found that out?”

Clef rolled his eyes, pulling away, and scrolling the report to the next page on his laptop. “If you’d rather I not like people who are adamant about protecting you, then you’re really in the wrong job – and if we don’t get this done and submitted to Headquarters by lunchtime we’ll both be fired and it won’t be a problem anymore.”

Huffing a laugh at him, Emeraude turned back to her laptop too, and they got back to work.

And if Clef checked every notification that came in… well. They still got the report done on time.