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fan_flashworks2022-07-10 10:23 pm
down) wrote in fan_flashworks2022-07-10 10:23 pm
Entry tags:
Magic Knight Rayearth: Fanfic: In want of (reasonable) clothing
Title: In want of (reasonable) clothing
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen
Length: 3200 words
Content notes: Off-screen sex
Author notes: Clef/Umi/Ascot poly, mundane/This World!AU, uh. So. A member of our fandom discord suggested blue jeans (and that I might enjoy getting Clef into a tight pair of them) when I was wailing about having no clue what to do for this prompt this afternoon and................. this happened? XD
...The wailing about planes is all me.
Summary: Clef has (just about) made it to Japan, with Ascot and Umi. His clothes... have not.
oOo
Clef stared at the apologetic smile on the luggage attendant’s face, then glanced at Umi to be sure he’d understood correctly – and the frown she was pulling said yes, yes he had.
He hadn’t had too much hope when the luggage carousel had emptied out without his suitcase appearing, but both Ascot and Umi’s cases had shown up, and they’d been together at the time they’d checked in at their first airport! Surely their luggage should have all made it through – but no.
“From the system it appears that your case is still in Amsterdam, rather than diverted elsewhere. Hopefully it will arrive on the next flight,” the attendant said, with forced cheer.
“When does the next flight arrive?” Umi asked, more fluently than Clef could have – he was better at understanding Japanese than managing to come out with sentences of his own, even after a few years seriously learning, especially when he was stressed. Or tired.
Currently he was jetlagged, exhausted, and the terror of meeting Umi’s parents in a day’s time wasn’t helped by the idea of doing it in the clothes he’d flown in – all chosen to be comfortable, not to look as respectful as you could while going ‘Hi, I’m the spare boyfriend of your daughter and her actually appropriate boyfriend and I’m ten years too old for her sorry about everything’.
“The next flight will be landing tomorrow morning,” was the unfortunate response, and he rubbed a hand over his face. “We will send it on to your location as soon as we can – if you could fill out this form, please, and let us know where you’ll be staying…”
There went any hope of getting his things back before the meeting. Great.
At least he’d gone with (very reasonable) paranoia and packed toiletries and a couple of changes of underwear in his handluggage.
“We will provide you with some money to buy replacements you can wear until your luggage arrives,” the attendant continued, and she and Umi got into a swift-moving conversation around how they were staying at one hotel up in Kyoto for a couple of nights, then moving on to Tokyo, so after a certain date they weren’t going to be at the same address… Umi checked her phone was actually working here before swiftly filling out the form, getting a copy back with contact details on so they could check when anything had arrived. She also ended up accepting the compensatory money when it was offered, as Clef was feeling so lost he just managed to blink at it.
Umi sighed at him, lips twitching, and thanked the attendant. “Come on,” she said, switching back to English as she faced Clef. “It’s okay, we’ll get to the hotel and then find you something to wear for the next couple of days. Ascot-“
“Here,” Ascot said, stepping in closer, and his hand was a welcome anchor on Clef’s back, comforting and familiar in the sea of signs he couldn’t focus to read, announcements he couldn’t follow, the two of them following Umi as she led them through immigration and customs, thankfully fairly clear now they’d had to wait for his luggage to not arrive, then out into the bustle of the main area of the airport.
“Wait here a moment,” she said, and Clef didn’t have enough time to protest before she’d waved them at a couple of free seats and vanished into the crowd, leaving her suitcase with them.
“…Well,” Ascot said, a moment later. “Do you want to sit down?”
“I think I want to lay down,” Clef admitted, and won a small laugh from Ascot at that.
“I don’t think you should really fall asleep yet, but… uh…” and Ascot got them both sat down, and Clef leaning against his side, where he could close his eyes and shut out everything else for a few moments. Ascot’s hand rubbed his back, tentatively at first, more certainly after Clef sighed and relaxed into him.
“Sorry,” he murmured, mostly into Ascot’s sweatshirt. “…I did mention I really really hate flying, right?”
“It’s fine,” Ascot told him. “I’m sure you’ll feel better soon?”
“At least hopefully the world will stop spinning,” he murmured, trying not to think about the next step on the journey – they’d been in the air something like sixteen hours. One more on a train was nothing in comparison, right?
The fact he just wanted to be done with little tubes full of other people until he’d had a chance to sleep was beside the point.
Only Umi was back sooner than he’d reckoned on, and when Ascot gently nudged him upright, she was smiling down at them and holding out a couple of bottles of water cold enough there was condensation on the outside of them.
“Slight change of plans,” she said, handing the drinks over. “I’ve grabbed a taxi, it’ll take us straight to the hotel. No trains, no stations, no other people – it won’t be much slower overall, and we can have the windows open if the aircon doesn’t help with feeling like you’re out of the plane. Does that sound better?”
“That sounds so much better,” Clef said, a little too fast. He honestly wasn’t sure he could have got on a train without feeling instantly sick; a taxi was far easier to contemplate. He wouldn’t have to worry about which stop they were passing, or where their luggage was, or-
“Come on, then,” Umi said, and pulled him carefully to his feet – and then hugged him, swiftly, while Ascot got himself stood up.
“What-“
“Thanks for coming, even though you hate planes,” she said, fast, and then turned to Ascot and hugged him too, before swiftly negotiating with him; Ascot ended up with both suitcases that had made it and Umi’s handluggage on top of his own, and Umi took charge of Clef’s carry on as well as Clef himself.
By the time they were in the taxi he was feeling distinctly useless and embarrassed about it – but neither Umi nor Ascot seemed bothered by it, just getting them all settled in the back of the big car, and then they were off.
Clef drowsed against the door, a breeze from the aircon against his face, and even though it was filtered air it didn’t have the same strangely canned quality that the air on the plane had, and Ascot was asking Umi questions about the scenery outside, their voices comforting enough he slowly managed to relax.
By the time they made it from Osaka to Kyoto, he was feeling more like himself, if still a little unsteady: at least well enough to watch the last few roads go by as Umi directed their taxi driver to their ‘hotel’. It was, in truth, a refurbished old townhouse; it had several rooms that could be used as bedrooms, and was easier than trying to get a room the three of them could share in a normal hotel without a lot of attention none of them wanted to deal with on holiday.
Both Ascot and Umi had been adamant they wanted to share properly, not have to have separate suites, and Clef was deeply grateful for the insistence. Even if they got a slightly strange look now from the taxi-driver as they all got out together into the solid heat of late summer here and Umi used the code they’d been sent to retrieve the keys.
“Thank you so much!” Umi said, brightly, as their suitcases were lifted out of the taxi for them – and waved the man off, only starting to giggle properly when he’d gone.
“Come on,” Clef said, with a sigh, tugging her towards the door, bringing one of the suitcases with him – Ascot’s, he thought. “Lets get inside?”
Their rented house had an entryway, kitchen, a little three-tatami room, and then a courtyard garden – and there was a bathroom you accessed via the raised walkway about that garden. Upstairs were two slightly larger rooms both floored with tatami, a collection of futon and such in the giant wardrobes where Umi suggested they put the two suitcases which had made it – and then she eyed the bedding.
“We should probably eat some real food,” she said, lips pursed. “But after that we could always get the bedding out and sleep for a bit?”
Clef sighed – the suggestion was obviously aimed at him, and there was nothing he’d really like better, but if he slept now he wasn’t going to sleep tonight. The more he could do to be coherent tomorrow the better.
Besides. “I need to find a clothes shop,” he pointed out. “I’m not meeting your parents for the first time wearing the same clothes I’ve been in for three days and on two planes in. I don’t want to be in them now, let alone tomorrow, and these aren’t the kind of thing I want to be wearing then.”
“We could wash them?” she offered, but she was eying the soft sweatpants and well-worn old t-shirt he was in, and pulling a face. “Or maybe we could find something in our luggage you could wear?”
Clef looked at her, then Ascot, and whatever look was on his face had Ascot stifling a laugh so hard he wobbled and had to sit down. “Uh, we’re not – we’re not really the same size?” he managed, from the floor, looking up at Clef with a grin.
Given Clef was only barely five foot three, Ascot was close to a foot taller – even Umi was a good inch taller than him.
“Yeah, but maybe we can scrounge something – at least something to wear to the shops this afternoon. You’ll feel better if you can shower and get into something clean, right?”
That sounded so nice Clef had to sigh again, and even Ascot was looking wistful at the idea. “Food first, though?” Clef managed, and Umi nodded, grabbing a small handbag out of her suitcase and chucking a few things into it from her handluggage.
“I’ll go find us some sandwiches and stuff, if that’s okay? I’ll bring a selection back – there’s a conbini just down the road, I saw it on the way in. Unless you’ve got any requests?” Neither of them did. “I’ll be back in a few!” And she was gone, bounding down the stairs with far too much energy.
Clef watched her, then turned to shake his head at Ascot as the door downstairs slid open and shut again behind her. “I know she travelled a lot when she was young, but-“
“No one should be that energetic after a long-haul flight,” Ascot agreed, and yawned, before wincing. “She did sleep, though.”
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Clef eyed Ascot – who had been stuck in the middle, Clef drowsing badly against one of his shoulders, Umi comfortably passed out against his other side.
“A little?” Ascot said, lying badly. “It was exciting though! I’ve not been on many long flights. But…”
They shared a look, not needing to actually talk about it to understand the nerves they were each feeling about tomorrow’s meeting.
The whole idea about coming into Kyoto, not Tokyo, had been to give them both a chance to adjust – to the heat, the language, the timezone – before meeting her parents. Kyoto was a place Clef had wanted to visit, and Ascot agreed he’d like to have a look at more than just Tokyo, so it had been logical enough back when they’d booked the tickets. They would spend half a week here, then head to Tokyo.
None of them had bet on her mother being asked to give a keynote speech at some event in Kyoto the day after they arrived, and happily suggesting they all meet up for lunch beforehand – and dinner afterwards.
In his more anxious moments, Clef couldn’t help wonder if it was deliberate – to meet them when they were both rattled. He had no close family of his own, and Ascot had been in the fostering system since he was orphaned at six, so this was the first time any of them had had to ‘meet the family’. And despite Umi’s assurances that her parents were open-minded and wanted her to be happy and knew she was bringing two people to meet them…
Well, it was a lot easier to be calm about something happening six thousand miles away than something happening in the same room as you were, in Clef’s experience.
“I could look at what I’ve got with me?” Ascot suggested, glancing over at his suitcase. “I should at least have a t-shirt which you could borrow. But for trousers…”
And that was how Umi came back to find them trying to get a pair of Ascot’s jeans to stay up on Clef – even using one of the cloth belts off the yukata they’d found in the cupboard to try and hold them up, they were bunched slightly about his waist – and pooling on the floor about his feet.
Jeans were often too long; Clef was used to turning them over once or maybe twice, until he could be bothered to hem them properly. But it had taken five turns to get one of these legs to stay off the ground, creating a big bulky ring about his foot that didn’t want to stay up even with several safety-pins catching it – and looked bizarre anyway.
“We could still cut them off,” Ascot was saying, and Clef was shaking his head.
“No, no, you didn’t pack all that much for the trip, and it’s not easy to get jeans long enough for you back home, let alone-“
Umi walked in, blinked at them, and started laughing.
“You said-“ Clef started, and she shook her head, having to sit down to not fall over, she was giggling too hard.
“I didn’t think- it’s like a padded hem!” she got out, and continued giggling while she pulled out her phone and pulled up a picture of an outer kimono with the padded hem at the bottom, which admittedly did look a little like what Clef had managed.
“That’s the smallest pair of trousers I’ve got,” Ascot said, sadly – then eyed Umi. “…How about you?”
Umi blinked at him, then grinned, and dove for her luggage. “Maybe! Here – here. Try these?” And she dragged a pair of deep blue jeans from the mass of clothes, managing to make a complete mess of everything in her bag all in one go, all the neat folds now a crumpled pile. “They’ve got some stretch in them, but I think we’re about the same about the hips, honestly.”
Both Umi and Ascot watched with interest as Clef shook them out, eyed them, and then carefully pulled them on.
They were… a bit snugger around his thighs than he was used to, for a supposedly straight cut. And there was less room in them at the top. But they weren’t terrible, even when he did them up, and they only just touched the floor.
He pulled a face at his legs, and looked at the others. “Well? Am I decent enough to leave the house?”
For a long moment, they both just stared at him, and he looked back at the jeans a moment. He didn’t think they were that bad on him, were they?
Then Ascot took a breath that shuddered slightly, and Clef’s head snapped up to look at the flush on Ascot’s cheeks.
“Umi, you put the food in the fridge downstairs, right?” Ascot asked, and his voice, too, had a tone in it Clef knew intimately.
“Yeah,” Umi said, and bit her lip. “It’ll keep.”
Clef looked between the two of them, flushing. “We’re all really tired?” he offered, weakly.
“But you wanted to get clean, right?” Ascot asked, standing and stepping closer. “Before these clothes start smelling like an aeroplane too?”
“Yes, but-“
“How many people do you think we can get in the shower together?” Ascot asked Umi, looking sideways at her, and she was grinning.
“Well, I reckon we should go find out. Showering together would be more efficient, right?”
“We’d save water,” Ascot said, attempting to stay serious, and Clef had to snicker at that, because from experience ‘efficient’ and the three of them in a shower were not concepts he would have put together.
“You really think, with the jetlag and the exhaustion and everything, we should all go get in a shower right now?” Clef asked, standing still as Ascot leaned in, his heartrate picking up – and these jeans becoming somewhat less comfortable by the second.
“I think if we don’t take you back out of these jeans now I’m going to try to get you off while you’re still wearing them, and we want them clean for the afternoon, don’t we?”
Clef’s mind went blank as Ascot leaned in closer, and Umi was beside them, now, sliding one hand into his back pocket.
“My jeans apparently do very good things for your butt,” she said, a laugh still in her voice. “And your thighs, and-“
Clef gave in, leaning up and kissing Ascot, a moan in his throat as two sets of hands started undoing the jeans again.
They didn’t make it to the shower.
They did manage to get enough lovely, clean, washable bedding out of the closet that an hour later, when Clef had his breath back and was halfway coherent again, he didn’t have the pattern of the tatami impressed into his bare back.
The jeans, however, had not survived the experience in decent shape. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that – on the one hand, he did need something to wear. On the other… he didn’t particularly want to meet Umi’s parents wearing those, not after that reaction.
“Sorry,” Ascot murmured, sheepishly, looking down at the jeans. “I shouldn’t have-“
“Not complaining,” Clef told him, with a grin, reaching up to pull him down into another – softer – kiss. “You thoroughly took my mind off the planes, anyway.”
Beside them, Umi snickered, tucking in closer. “I’ve got a lighter blue pair of those with me, too. You can wear them – today, when we go to get you some clothes to meet my parents in which aren’t going to make me and Ascot want to shove you back into bed instead of going to lunch.”
“…If we did stay in bed tomorrow we wouldn’t have to meet your parents yet,” Ascot said, wistfully.
Umi just snorted. “Yeah, and then I’d have to tell them why we missed meeting up with them. No, we’ll get something for Clef to wear, wash it tonight, and dry it for tomorrow. It’ll all be fine. My parents are going to love both of you, and I bet Clef’s suitcase will have turned up by the time we’re coming back, too.”
“Maybe,” Clef said, still dubious – but willing to be reassured when Umi leaned in to kiss first him and then Ascot, the touch steady and certain.
“They will. Which means we should go actually shower now, and have lunch, and then get you dressed without dragging you back in here. Come on,” she said, and headed for her suitcase… and, presumably, the second pair of those jeans.
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen
Length: 3200 words
Content notes: Off-screen sex
Author notes: Clef/Umi/Ascot poly, mundane/This World!AU, uh. So. A member of our fandom discord suggested blue jeans (and that I might enjoy getting Clef into a tight pair of them) when I was wailing about having no clue what to do for this prompt this afternoon and................. this happened? XD
...The wailing about planes is all me.
Summary: Clef has (just about) made it to Japan, with Ascot and Umi. His clothes... have not.
oOo
Clef stared at the apologetic smile on the luggage attendant’s face, then glanced at Umi to be sure he’d understood correctly – and the frown she was pulling said yes, yes he had.
He hadn’t had too much hope when the luggage carousel had emptied out without his suitcase appearing, but both Ascot and Umi’s cases had shown up, and they’d been together at the time they’d checked in at their first airport! Surely their luggage should have all made it through – but no.
“From the system it appears that your case is still in Amsterdam, rather than diverted elsewhere. Hopefully it will arrive on the next flight,” the attendant said, with forced cheer.
“When does the next flight arrive?” Umi asked, more fluently than Clef could have – he was better at understanding Japanese than managing to come out with sentences of his own, even after a few years seriously learning, especially when he was stressed. Or tired.
Currently he was jetlagged, exhausted, and the terror of meeting Umi’s parents in a day’s time wasn’t helped by the idea of doing it in the clothes he’d flown in – all chosen to be comfortable, not to look as respectful as you could while going ‘Hi, I’m the spare boyfriend of your daughter and her actually appropriate boyfriend and I’m ten years too old for her sorry about everything’.
“The next flight will be landing tomorrow morning,” was the unfortunate response, and he rubbed a hand over his face. “We will send it on to your location as soon as we can – if you could fill out this form, please, and let us know where you’ll be staying…”
There went any hope of getting his things back before the meeting. Great.
At least he’d gone with (very reasonable) paranoia and packed toiletries and a couple of changes of underwear in his handluggage.
“We will provide you with some money to buy replacements you can wear until your luggage arrives,” the attendant continued, and she and Umi got into a swift-moving conversation around how they were staying at one hotel up in Kyoto for a couple of nights, then moving on to Tokyo, so after a certain date they weren’t going to be at the same address… Umi checked her phone was actually working here before swiftly filling out the form, getting a copy back with contact details on so they could check when anything had arrived. She also ended up accepting the compensatory money when it was offered, as Clef was feeling so lost he just managed to blink at it.
Umi sighed at him, lips twitching, and thanked the attendant. “Come on,” she said, switching back to English as she faced Clef. “It’s okay, we’ll get to the hotel and then find you something to wear for the next couple of days. Ascot-“
“Here,” Ascot said, stepping in closer, and his hand was a welcome anchor on Clef’s back, comforting and familiar in the sea of signs he couldn’t focus to read, announcements he couldn’t follow, the two of them following Umi as she led them through immigration and customs, thankfully fairly clear now they’d had to wait for his luggage to not arrive, then out into the bustle of the main area of the airport.
“Wait here a moment,” she said, and Clef didn’t have enough time to protest before she’d waved them at a couple of free seats and vanished into the crowd, leaving her suitcase with them.
“…Well,” Ascot said, a moment later. “Do you want to sit down?”
“I think I want to lay down,” Clef admitted, and won a small laugh from Ascot at that.
“I don’t think you should really fall asleep yet, but… uh…” and Ascot got them both sat down, and Clef leaning against his side, where he could close his eyes and shut out everything else for a few moments. Ascot’s hand rubbed his back, tentatively at first, more certainly after Clef sighed and relaxed into him.
“Sorry,” he murmured, mostly into Ascot’s sweatshirt. “…I did mention I really really hate flying, right?”
“It’s fine,” Ascot told him. “I’m sure you’ll feel better soon?”
“At least hopefully the world will stop spinning,” he murmured, trying not to think about the next step on the journey – they’d been in the air something like sixteen hours. One more on a train was nothing in comparison, right?
The fact he just wanted to be done with little tubes full of other people until he’d had a chance to sleep was beside the point.
Only Umi was back sooner than he’d reckoned on, and when Ascot gently nudged him upright, she was smiling down at them and holding out a couple of bottles of water cold enough there was condensation on the outside of them.
“Slight change of plans,” she said, handing the drinks over. “I’ve grabbed a taxi, it’ll take us straight to the hotel. No trains, no stations, no other people – it won’t be much slower overall, and we can have the windows open if the aircon doesn’t help with feeling like you’re out of the plane. Does that sound better?”
“That sounds so much better,” Clef said, a little too fast. He honestly wasn’t sure he could have got on a train without feeling instantly sick; a taxi was far easier to contemplate. He wouldn’t have to worry about which stop they were passing, or where their luggage was, or-
“Come on, then,” Umi said, and pulled him carefully to his feet – and then hugged him, swiftly, while Ascot got himself stood up.
“What-“
“Thanks for coming, even though you hate planes,” she said, fast, and then turned to Ascot and hugged him too, before swiftly negotiating with him; Ascot ended up with both suitcases that had made it and Umi’s handluggage on top of his own, and Umi took charge of Clef’s carry on as well as Clef himself.
By the time they were in the taxi he was feeling distinctly useless and embarrassed about it – but neither Umi nor Ascot seemed bothered by it, just getting them all settled in the back of the big car, and then they were off.
Clef drowsed against the door, a breeze from the aircon against his face, and even though it was filtered air it didn’t have the same strangely canned quality that the air on the plane had, and Ascot was asking Umi questions about the scenery outside, their voices comforting enough he slowly managed to relax.
By the time they made it from Osaka to Kyoto, he was feeling more like himself, if still a little unsteady: at least well enough to watch the last few roads go by as Umi directed their taxi driver to their ‘hotel’. It was, in truth, a refurbished old townhouse; it had several rooms that could be used as bedrooms, and was easier than trying to get a room the three of them could share in a normal hotel without a lot of attention none of them wanted to deal with on holiday.
Both Ascot and Umi had been adamant they wanted to share properly, not have to have separate suites, and Clef was deeply grateful for the insistence. Even if they got a slightly strange look now from the taxi-driver as they all got out together into the solid heat of late summer here and Umi used the code they’d been sent to retrieve the keys.
“Thank you so much!” Umi said, brightly, as their suitcases were lifted out of the taxi for them – and waved the man off, only starting to giggle properly when he’d gone.
“Come on,” Clef said, with a sigh, tugging her towards the door, bringing one of the suitcases with him – Ascot’s, he thought. “Lets get inside?”
Their rented house had an entryway, kitchen, a little three-tatami room, and then a courtyard garden – and there was a bathroom you accessed via the raised walkway about that garden. Upstairs were two slightly larger rooms both floored with tatami, a collection of futon and such in the giant wardrobes where Umi suggested they put the two suitcases which had made it – and then she eyed the bedding.
“We should probably eat some real food,” she said, lips pursed. “But after that we could always get the bedding out and sleep for a bit?”
Clef sighed – the suggestion was obviously aimed at him, and there was nothing he’d really like better, but if he slept now he wasn’t going to sleep tonight. The more he could do to be coherent tomorrow the better.
Besides. “I need to find a clothes shop,” he pointed out. “I’m not meeting your parents for the first time wearing the same clothes I’ve been in for three days and on two planes in. I don’t want to be in them now, let alone tomorrow, and these aren’t the kind of thing I want to be wearing then.”
“We could wash them?” she offered, but she was eying the soft sweatpants and well-worn old t-shirt he was in, and pulling a face. “Or maybe we could find something in our luggage you could wear?”
Clef looked at her, then Ascot, and whatever look was on his face had Ascot stifling a laugh so hard he wobbled and had to sit down. “Uh, we’re not – we’re not really the same size?” he managed, from the floor, looking up at Clef with a grin.
Given Clef was only barely five foot three, Ascot was close to a foot taller – even Umi was a good inch taller than him.
“Yeah, but maybe we can scrounge something – at least something to wear to the shops this afternoon. You’ll feel better if you can shower and get into something clean, right?”
That sounded so nice Clef had to sigh again, and even Ascot was looking wistful at the idea. “Food first, though?” Clef managed, and Umi nodded, grabbing a small handbag out of her suitcase and chucking a few things into it from her handluggage.
“I’ll go find us some sandwiches and stuff, if that’s okay? I’ll bring a selection back – there’s a conbini just down the road, I saw it on the way in. Unless you’ve got any requests?” Neither of them did. “I’ll be back in a few!” And she was gone, bounding down the stairs with far too much energy.
Clef watched her, then turned to shake his head at Ascot as the door downstairs slid open and shut again behind her. “I know she travelled a lot when she was young, but-“
“No one should be that energetic after a long-haul flight,” Ascot agreed, and yawned, before wincing. “She did sleep, though.”
“Did you get any sleep at all?” Clef eyed Ascot – who had been stuck in the middle, Clef drowsing badly against one of his shoulders, Umi comfortably passed out against his other side.
“A little?” Ascot said, lying badly. “It was exciting though! I’ve not been on many long flights. But…”
They shared a look, not needing to actually talk about it to understand the nerves they were each feeling about tomorrow’s meeting.
The whole idea about coming into Kyoto, not Tokyo, had been to give them both a chance to adjust – to the heat, the language, the timezone – before meeting her parents. Kyoto was a place Clef had wanted to visit, and Ascot agreed he’d like to have a look at more than just Tokyo, so it had been logical enough back when they’d booked the tickets. They would spend half a week here, then head to Tokyo.
None of them had bet on her mother being asked to give a keynote speech at some event in Kyoto the day after they arrived, and happily suggesting they all meet up for lunch beforehand – and dinner afterwards.
In his more anxious moments, Clef couldn’t help wonder if it was deliberate – to meet them when they were both rattled. He had no close family of his own, and Ascot had been in the fostering system since he was orphaned at six, so this was the first time any of them had had to ‘meet the family’. And despite Umi’s assurances that her parents were open-minded and wanted her to be happy and knew she was bringing two people to meet them…
Well, it was a lot easier to be calm about something happening six thousand miles away than something happening in the same room as you were, in Clef’s experience.
“I could look at what I’ve got with me?” Ascot suggested, glancing over at his suitcase. “I should at least have a t-shirt which you could borrow. But for trousers…”
And that was how Umi came back to find them trying to get a pair of Ascot’s jeans to stay up on Clef – even using one of the cloth belts off the yukata they’d found in the cupboard to try and hold them up, they were bunched slightly about his waist – and pooling on the floor about his feet.
Jeans were often too long; Clef was used to turning them over once or maybe twice, until he could be bothered to hem them properly. But it had taken five turns to get one of these legs to stay off the ground, creating a big bulky ring about his foot that didn’t want to stay up even with several safety-pins catching it – and looked bizarre anyway.
“We could still cut them off,” Ascot was saying, and Clef was shaking his head.
“No, no, you didn’t pack all that much for the trip, and it’s not easy to get jeans long enough for you back home, let alone-“
Umi walked in, blinked at them, and started laughing.
“You said-“ Clef started, and she shook her head, having to sit down to not fall over, she was giggling too hard.
“I didn’t think- it’s like a padded hem!” she got out, and continued giggling while she pulled out her phone and pulled up a picture of an outer kimono with the padded hem at the bottom, which admittedly did look a little like what Clef had managed.
“That’s the smallest pair of trousers I’ve got,” Ascot said, sadly – then eyed Umi. “…How about you?”
Umi blinked at him, then grinned, and dove for her luggage. “Maybe! Here – here. Try these?” And she dragged a pair of deep blue jeans from the mass of clothes, managing to make a complete mess of everything in her bag all in one go, all the neat folds now a crumpled pile. “They’ve got some stretch in them, but I think we’re about the same about the hips, honestly.”
Both Umi and Ascot watched with interest as Clef shook them out, eyed them, and then carefully pulled them on.
They were… a bit snugger around his thighs than he was used to, for a supposedly straight cut. And there was less room in them at the top. But they weren’t terrible, even when he did them up, and they only just touched the floor.
He pulled a face at his legs, and looked at the others. “Well? Am I decent enough to leave the house?”
For a long moment, they both just stared at him, and he looked back at the jeans a moment. He didn’t think they were that bad on him, were they?
Then Ascot took a breath that shuddered slightly, and Clef’s head snapped up to look at the flush on Ascot’s cheeks.
“Umi, you put the food in the fridge downstairs, right?” Ascot asked, and his voice, too, had a tone in it Clef knew intimately.
“Yeah,” Umi said, and bit her lip. “It’ll keep.”
Clef looked between the two of them, flushing. “We’re all really tired?” he offered, weakly.
“But you wanted to get clean, right?” Ascot asked, standing and stepping closer. “Before these clothes start smelling like an aeroplane too?”
“Yes, but-“
“How many people do you think we can get in the shower together?” Ascot asked Umi, looking sideways at her, and she was grinning.
“Well, I reckon we should go find out. Showering together would be more efficient, right?”
“We’d save water,” Ascot said, attempting to stay serious, and Clef had to snicker at that, because from experience ‘efficient’ and the three of them in a shower were not concepts he would have put together.
“You really think, with the jetlag and the exhaustion and everything, we should all go get in a shower right now?” Clef asked, standing still as Ascot leaned in, his heartrate picking up – and these jeans becoming somewhat less comfortable by the second.
“I think if we don’t take you back out of these jeans now I’m going to try to get you off while you’re still wearing them, and we want them clean for the afternoon, don’t we?”
Clef’s mind went blank as Ascot leaned in closer, and Umi was beside them, now, sliding one hand into his back pocket.
“My jeans apparently do very good things for your butt,” she said, a laugh still in her voice. “And your thighs, and-“
Clef gave in, leaning up and kissing Ascot, a moan in his throat as two sets of hands started undoing the jeans again.
They didn’t make it to the shower.
They did manage to get enough lovely, clean, washable bedding out of the closet that an hour later, when Clef had his breath back and was halfway coherent again, he didn’t have the pattern of the tatami impressed into his bare back.
The jeans, however, had not survived the experience in decent shape. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that – on the one hand, he did need something to wear. On the other… he didn’t particularly want to meet Umi’s parents wearing those, not after that reaction.
“Sorry,” Ascot murmured, sheepishly, looking down at the jeans. “I shouldn’t have-“
“Not complaining,” Clef told him, with a grin, reaching up to pull him down into another – softer – kiss. “You thoroughly took my mind off the planes, anyway.”
Beside them, Umi snickered, tucking in closer. “I’ve got a lighter blue pair of those with me, too. You can wear them – today, when we go to get you some clothes to meet my parents in which aren’t going to make me and Ascot want to shove you back into bed instead of going to lunch.”
“…If we did stay in bed tomorrow we wouldn’t have to meet your parents yet,” Ascot said, wistfully.
Umi just snorted. “Yeah, and then I’d have to tell them why we missed meeting up with them. No, we’ll get something for Clef to wear, wash it tonight, and dry it for tomorrow. It’ll all be fine. My parents are going to love both of you, and I bet Clef’s suitcase will have turned up by the time we’re coming back, too.”
“Maybe,” Clef said, still dubious – but willing to be reassured when Umi leaned in to kiss first him and then Ascot, the touch steady and certain.
“They will. Which means we should go actually shower now, and have lunch, and then get you dressed without dragging you back in here. Come on,” she said, and headed for her suitcase… and, presumably, the second pair of those jeans.