Title: (Mis)chance
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen maybe
Length: 1500ish words
Content notes: Alcohol/hangover
Author notes: post-canon, pre(ish)relationship Umi/Clef/Ascot. Completely random! But for the first time in a while I'm not scrambling to post at the stroke of midnight, it's a whole hour and a half before deadline, heh!
Summary: Last night had been the harvest festival, she remembered that.


oOo


Umi woke up reluctantly; the closer she got to being conscious, the more she wanted to stop and fall asleep again. Her head felt both fragile and like it was full of grit at the same time, and her mouth was worse.

The headache wouldn’t let her go back to sleep, pounding harder the more effort she put into her attempts to escape, until she gave in and growled into her pillow, turning to try and find a cooler spot to press her face.

That was when someone said “good morning” over to one side of the bed, and she flinched so hard that the bed jolted – and the person she’d barely realised was curled up behind her muttered and curled tighter in the bedding, dragging the sheets about them self, and-

And not the person who had said ‘good morning’, for one thing.

Umi opened her eyes and then instantly regretted it when the light stung them so badly she couldn’t see anything beyond a blur. But there was only one person she knew who had white curtains edged with gold embroidery about their bed, and that was definitely a drape of semi-sheer white with metallic glinting down the side right in her line of view.

“Um,” she managed, and winced at the way her voice rasped against her throat. If Clef was the person-shaped blur at the table just across the room, then the person behind her- “…Never mind,” she muttered, and pressed her head into the pillow again.

Last night had been the harvest festival, she remembered that. Well, she remembered the Quarter Day meeting of the Mage’s Guild that morning - remembered the triumph she’d felt at finding she’d passed her Iru exams, and receiving her ring and her first official robes.

She’d started celebrating with her classmates that afternoon, before the bonfires were lit for the festival. Remembered Ascot’s congratulations – and then she’d persuaded him to help check Clef was actually coming to Festival and not just working through it?

Things were honestly a bit of a muddle by that point. She hadn’t thought that the nut-based-beer-equivalent they had here was that strong, but this was absolutely one of the worst hangovers she’d ever had, and not knowing how they’d all ended up here was more than she felt up to facing with this head.

“Feeling under the weather?” Clef asked, thankfully quietly. His own voice sounded a bit off this morning, unless that was just Umi’s ears.

“I didn’t know mages went out and partied like that,” she said, quiet as she could, getting more and more memories back of the afternoon when she tried to remember the evening. All eleven of the people she’d been studying with had passed the exams, and there had been pitchers of the not-quite-beer (Cephiro was so weird still!) and sweets and bread and some kind of alcohol-soaked fruit dish…

Clef snorted, thankfully still quietly. “Usually we don’t. But your qualification day is a traditional exception – the final duty of your teachers is to make sure you and your friends all make it through the evening without any mishaps.”

The cloth of the pillowcase had warmed up against Umi’s face until it was unpleasantly warm again. “My head feels like a mishap.”

There was a creak as Clef shifted in his chair. He must have stood up, as the next thing she heard were footsteps across the floor, until he was standing beside the bed. Umi still didn’t look up, face heating for reasons that had nothing to do with her hangover and everything to do with where she was.

She felt the magic he cast more than she saw it, with her face pressed this hard into the bedclothes.

“If you head is that bad, this may help?” he offered, and there was the faint clack of something glass being set down on the bedside table. Then he moved away again, around the bed, and Umi turned just far enough that if she cracked her eyes open she could see the little potion vial he’d set there for her, next to a glass of water cool enough there was condensation running down the sides of it.

By the time she’d managed to get upright enough to drink it, moving gingerly and curling back into the pillows, Clef had reached the other side of the bed. She sipped at the horribly sharp liquid and watched as Clef perched on the side of the bed, by Ascot’s hip, and carefully brushed Ascot’s hair back from his face.

“Hey,” he said, softer still than he’d spoken to Umi. “Ascot? Would you wake up long enough for a drink?”

Ascot’s eyes opened a fraction, a sliver of green showing, and then he flushed just as hard as Umi had.

“It’s okay,” Clef said, with a hint of a smile, eyes flicking back across the bed to Umi. “It’s all Umi’s fault. Including your likely headache.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t all my fault,” Umi muttered, shuffling sideways a little so she could reach out and pat Ascot’s shoulder. “…Probably mostly, though.”

Ascot turned slightly, looking up at her with wide eyes, then at Clef. “…How?” he asked, voice barely there.

“You both refused to leave me alone,” Clef said, holding out a second vial of the hangover potion to Ascot.

“Why-“ Ascot started, fingers wrapping around the vial as he accepted it and sat up a little to drink it, focusing hard on getting it open. He was wearing the underlayers of his robes from last night, Umi realised, staring at the green and gold of the embroidery on his cuffs.

“That,” Clef said, wryly, “I wasn’t able to get an answer for.”

Umi couldn’t help the short huff of laughter that escaped her at that, belatedly reaching for the glass of water to try and hide her expression. (Not that a clear glass was going to be much help, but-)

(She was in her underrobes, too, she realised; the cloth was soft enough to be just as comfortable as her nightclothes.)

Clef, meanwhile, shot her another glance – and his cheeks were starting to turn pink, too. “Not why-“ he cut himself off, an aborted wave at the room ending when he dragged his hand back to his lap. “Why you would decide last night in particular that the two of you had to stay with me, when you were both a bit too drunk for coherence.”

Umi bit her lip and sipped at the water some more. She had a bad feeling that she’d insisted, last night, because being less than sober had seemed like a brilliant excuse – that this morning she could have just said it was the drink and vanished if Clef had… rejected them.

(Because it had to be them, because she was done with sadness and people being left out, and it was a year and a half since she’d moved to Cephiro, and that was long enough that even she had started to notice more than just her own feelings here.)

Only she didn’t know that she’d managed to even propose anything, last night, and as for Clef’s response-

Well, he hadn’t kicked them out, but that didn’t mean he wanted them to stay. Not now they were rapidly approaching sober – had that been a subtle hint that they should leave now? Or that Umi should, at least? He was about right that this situation was all her fault, not Ascot’s, and-

Clef shifted, and Umi’s head shot up incriminatingly fast. He was only handing Ascot a glass of water, same as the one she held.

His cheeks were still slightly pink, and… Umi blinked, realising that Clef, too, was in the thin layer of clothes he must have been wearing under his robes, last night; the soft-looking fabric was wrinkled from where he’d slept in it alongside the two of them.

There had been plenty of time for him to change before they woke up. Enough sunlight was filtering in through the curtains at the window that it had to be late morning – and instead of wrapping himself in the formal armour of his robes, he’d stayed, like this.

“Last night was last night,” she said. “This morning is this morning. What… do you want to do now?”

She really wasn’t imagining it: the flush deepened on Clef’s cheeks as he looked at her, and Ascot, and then bit his lip a moment.

“Well,” he said. “It’s morning, after all. If you’re both starting to feel a little better, we could have breakfast?”

Umi looked to Ascot, who turned back to her, and he was starting to smile, though his eyes were still wide, face still flushed. He nodded, and Umi swallowed.

“Yeah,” she said, trying to keep her voice as normal as she could. “That’d be nice.”

Breakfast, first. And then… they could go from there.