Title: Bickering
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen maybe
Length: 1300 words
Content notes: mentions of violence?
Author notes: Spies!AU, Clef&Ferio&Emeraude being a grumpy (partially found-)family?
Summary: “That’s a bold statement coming from you, sir I-don’t-do-fieldwork-unless-one-particular-agent-calls-me-out-“


oOo


“You should tell her you want to date,” Clef said, slightly muffled by the table above him and the cables he was mostly entangled in. “I mean, I’m fairly certain she knows. Given you have in fact been dating for at least six months by my reckoning.”

Ferio, leaning on the table and trying to keep the cables from tangling too hard as he passed them down the back, just huffed. “That’s a bold statement coming from you, sir I-don’t-do-fieldwork-unless-one-particular-agent-calls-me-out-“

“That’s not-“

“Anyway, it’s not the same. We aren’t dating.”

There was a pause, then Clef levered himself out from under the table to stare sceptically up at Ferio. “Different because Umi and I are not dating? Because I’ll agree with that, we are not, that would be a terrible idea-“

“Should I be telling you that you should just-“

“-No, this is a conversation about your inability to-“

The earpieces they both wore crackled slightly as Emeraude sighed. “Could I remind you both that I can hear you?” she said, failing to sound as exasperated as she probably should at her brother and her best friend (or one of her agents and her second in command) getting distracted from a moderately important mission by arguing over… who was worst at failing to date someone?

Clef rolled his eyes, not that Em could see him do it – but Ferio could. “Well, you tell your brother, everyone knows they’re dating.” And with that he pulled himself back into the awkwardly tight corner underneath the table, attempting to unravel the mess of all the cables.

“We are not!” Ferio snapped back, dropping an ethernet cable on his head, probably not deliberately but only because it was impossible to see all that well down the back of the table.

For once, they weren’t trying to obtain anyone else’s information, or even protect their own – not precisely. They were setting up a new small safehouse in a city just a couple of hours north of HQ, and due to a certain lack of technicians and agents hanging about over the new year (they were mostly out keeping an eye on all the public gatherings over the holidays) it had come down to this: the two of them and a couple of boxes of supplies, trying to get the place ready.

Which meant getting a small pc hidden in this table, complete with everything it needed – in this instance, a 4g router with a random SIM taped to it ready to go and the wifi turned firmly off, a couple of ethernet adaptors if someone with one of the new laptops without an ethernet port turned up, a tucked away keyboard and mouse, and the length of HDMI cable needed to unspool so that the tv just across the room could act as a monitor, and pc with a micro form-factor.

The issue was that the ‘shelf’ all this had to tuck into and also be accessible for anyone using this place was designed to look like the underside of the table – what looked, from all other angles, to be a solid piece of wood, was actually hollowed out with a thin gap at the back to get everything into.

It was horribly inaccessible and was also going to cause the poor PC to overheat. Clef hadn’t been involved in the design, none of his team had, and the whole thing was terrible. Not least because he was jammed in under it upside down and had so far hit his head twice, scraped one wrist, and He’d spent twenty minutes grouching about it before Ferio complained about listening to him instead of having dinner with Fuu, which got them onto the topic of Ferio’s inability to admit he was dating the woman that he was absolutely dating.

…It was a nonsense argument, but they were both apparently grouchy enough they wouldn’t drop it. (The security systems had been as well thought through as the desk, and Ferio had managed to nick himself with a screwdriver while trying to fix it.)

Emeraude was several miles away, given she was far too easily recognised to come help fit out a safehouse without someone instantly spotting her and knowing something was up. (That, at least, he and Ferio had agreed on.) They were meant to be headed out into the countryside for a day, once this was done – a very, very small family holiday.

Given the bickering they’d all managed so far, it was certainly going to be a traditional one.

“…Did I actually hit you with that?” Ferio asked, having moved to peer under the table.

Clef sighed. “Yes. Are you sure you won’t switch-“

“I don’t fit under there, and I can’t get my hands into that shelf, sorry.”

“Neither can I, this is a terrible design!”

Emeraude sighed down the comms again. “Duly noted for the fiftieth time, thanks, you can write a report about it to send back to the design team if you ever actually finish so we can leave?”

“No, don’t let him write this up! It’s his report about the lack of uncompromised safe houses close enough to help us if HQ ever gets properly compromised that got us stuck setting this up!” Ferio grinned at Clef, wryly. “If he complains about this, we’ll get put in charge of global design.”

“Would you mind that much if it meant these places made sense?” Clef asked, and Ferio paused to consider it.

“Well. Maybe not. But how much more do you have to do down there?”

“I just need to work out how to jam everything into this gap while leaving it set up so people can reach everything they need to. So – either ten hours or ten minutes, depending on if I give up on that and just shove everything in.”

“Anyone staying here is going to yank it all out to work out what’s in there anyway,” Ferio pointed out, and Clef sighed.

“…Point taken. Okay, ten minutes then.”

Emeraude’s relieved ‘finally’ was clear down the line. “I’ll go get in the van so we can hit the road as soon as you’re back to the garage.”

“You do know that ten minutes is an estimate, right?” Clef asked, glaring at the three metres of HDMI cable which absolutely refused to stay coiled away. “…Ferio, did you have any of those twisty tie things left from unpackaging things?”

“I’m not waiting for you,” Emeraude said, cheerful about it. “So get a move on, and then once we’re in the van you can needle Ferio about whether it counts as dating if you haven’t actually had a conversation about it.”

“Why did I agree to this plan?” Ferio muttered, handing Clef bits of the packaging they’d taken all the new computer and security systems out of. “Oh, yes. The last time the two of you were anywhere away from HQ for more than a day there were explosions and gunfights involved and you got rescued by a newbie agent!”

“She rescued your sister, I rescued them!” Clef insisted.

“Though I do wish I’d been there to see her hold you at gunpoint and steal your knives.” Ferio sounded truly wistful at that.

Em snorted. “I wish I’d been conscious to see it.”

“This trip is the worst idea I’ve said yes to in years,” Clef grouched. “Including that one!”

“You love us really,” Ferio told him, patting him on the shin, and Clef gave in and laughed, because he absolutely did, and he was looking forward to their terrible family holiday more than he’d looked forward to anything in at least a year.

Needling by all parties included.