Title: Embracing change
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General?
Length: 1500 words
Content notes: Post-canon and therefore associated canon traumatic events reflected. Touch starvation.
Author notes: Clef & Ferio.
Summary: That touch, unanticipated, startled a flare of magic from him. Electricity cracked loudly as a visible flash of static shot between them, setting Clef’s fingers stinging.


oOo


Almost a year into the rebuilding of Cephiro, a new chance Clef had never expected them to get, and things were going alright. For the most part.

Clef summoned himself up a chair facing the windows, where the verdant green of the view before him could be appreciated better. Cephiro was starting to bloom again – literally, a fertile spring blossoming across the land, all manner of plants coming into flower (and all manner of people celebrating it very enthusiastically in ways that meant their communities were beginning to rebuild as well as their land).

It was therefore ridiculous that he himself felt… hollow, somehow. At a distance from both the rejoicing and the relief.

Not that the entire community wasn’t still grieving, but it felt like Cephiro’s people were slowly starting to heal, under the influence of the land itself and the determined work of their Priests, led by a new Soru, governed by a new Council that he was helping to set in place, and he had so much work to do in helping with that, in reforming his own Guild so that the imbalance between students and the few teachers left to guide them could be managed.

The work was never-ending, and he felt mildly glad for that, because every time he stopped moving – stopped doing – well.

He had never been great at being left alone with his thoughts.

Not that, today, it seemed he was going to be left alone with either thoughts or the stack of old legal books that he’d brought to his private rooms to read through. A knock at the door had him twisting around, hand forming the gesture to open them – that knock was familiar, as was the man standing the other side, with an apologetic smile and another sheaf of papers.

Ferio came in, nudging the door to shut behind him. “Sorry, but could you give me an hour? I need to get the last snags worked out of this proposal for the Treasury’s principle guidelines before tomorrow’s meeting, and I’ve stared at them so much they don’t make sense anymore.”

“Of course,” Clef said, trying not to sound too grateful that he wasn’t going to be left alone with his thoughts after all. He summoned up another chair, and a low table, and the two of them settled in to go over Ferio’s paperwork paragraph by paragraph, finessing the final small details.

The sun was starting to set outside by the time they’d finished, and Clef glanced out of the window to look at the deepening sky just for a moment, while they gathered the papers back up. So he didn’t see when his hand strayed just a little too far – wasn’t expecting it when Ferio’s hand brushed against his.

That touch, unanticipated, startled a flare of magic from him. Electricity cracked loudly as a visible flash of static shot between them, setting Clef’s fingers stinging.

“Sorry!” Clef yanked his hand away, flinching as far back into his chair as he could go. “I didn’t mean- sorry, Ferio.”

Ferio, for his part, didn’t even look startled, just…

Well, he looked concerned in a way that had Clef worried himself.

“I’m fine,” was all he said, however – only then he reached out to touch Clef’s hand again.

The noise Clef made wasn’t dignified, nor was his flinch away. Only Ferio didn’t hesitate at either that or the sharp crack of static that flashed between them before he even managed to touch Clef; he just kept reaching out, steadily, until he was holding Clef’s hand in his own.

Clef’s next breath shuddered into his lungs, and he made no conscious decision to do it – but his fingers wrapped about Ferio’s wrist, clinging on to him.

“So,” Ferio said, moving closer and crouching down before Clef’s chair, right where Clef couldn’t avoid looking at him unless he did it very pointedly. “When’s the last time you were actually in contact with another person for more than a few seconds? Because that didn’t use to happen.”

Taking a breath, Clef tried to find a way to answer that which wasn’t… petulant. Of all the things that had needed attention in the last few years, this had hardly been important. But his mind was void, entirely, of the ability to properly think through any response. It felt a little like a tiny shout in the back of his mind had just gone silent in a way that echoed all through him, blanking out everything else.

“I’m sure I collapsed on you more than once last year,” he said, giving in to blunt honesty, staring down at his smaller hand clutching at Ferio’s wrist. “And then LaFarga supported me there at the end, when the world… didn’t quite dissolve as planned.”

Ferio’s short hiss through his teeth had Clef flinching back into the chair, again. He was going to end up with bruised shoulders if he kept doing that, he thought, distantly. He hadn’t padded the back of the chair out enough to cushion any kind of impact.

“Clef. How many of your friends survived Zagato?” came the question he should have realised was inevitably coming next. Ferio had spent enough time in the castle as a child, sent here with his sister, to have seen Clef with several of the people he’d known and trusted well enough to relax with. Nearly all of them powerful mages in their own right – people who weren’t intimidated by his magic.

The kind of people who had stood up against Zagato taking effective control of the land after Emeraude sent Clef away and imprisoned herself, because they were all people who tried to do the right thing. And he had been flung into isolation, bound by his vows and the order Emeraude – his Pillar – had given him. It had taken several weeks to work around the magic enough to communicate with anyone.

By then, it had been far too late.

“You survived,” Clef said, voice cracking slightly in a too-dry throat. “Lantis, you-“

And Lantis had headed back to Autozam more than six months ago, to attempt to help co-ordinate the relief response.

Swearing under his breath, Ferio ran his free hand over his face, saving Clef from seeing what expression that had given him. “Right,” he announced, when he looked at Clef again. “Get up a moment.”

“…What?”

“Well, jamming both of us into that chair is going to be hard, and I’m a lot taller than you right now, so if you don’t want me to squash you – or you could do what I know you’ve been considering and actually grow up some-“

Clef blinked at him. “…Ferio, I am not sitting in your lap.”

“Well, if you’d really rather do things this way…” Ferio smiled up at him, and then he stood, and there was a somewhat confused flurry of motion that resolved into Ferio jammed sideways into the curved chair, knees hooked over the side of it, somehow managing to keep most of his weight off Clef’s legs by squashing himself into the tiniest gap the other side of him. Clef was sure he’d gone to push Ferio back, and yet found himself holding onto him instead, as Ferio leaned in and wrapped his arms about him and-

Another flurry, this one an unravelling of long-sustained magic, and Clef was staring at Ferio from a much closer distance as the room spun slowly about them.

“…I don’t think I meant to do that,” he murmured, closing his eyes against the dizziness, opening them again when that only made it worse.

“I wasn’t actually expecting you to do it, either,” Ferio said, sounding, if anything, more worried than the moment he’d decided Clef needed a hug and there apparently wasn’t a moment to waste.

“You were just planning to squash me?”

“Eh. My butt just about fit on the chair with you, you’d have been fine.”

Clef had managed to keep hold of Ferio through both being sat on and then growing, and the thought of letting go, even now, made his hands grip tighter. He sighed, resigned, and at a gentle tug from the arm Ferio had managed to wrap about him he gave up and leaned in. Resting his head against Ferio’s shoulder, he hesitated a moment longer then twisted further until his forehead was actually touching the warm skin of Ferio’s neck.

“…I’m glad this new circlet of yours isn’t quite as stabby as the old one,” Ferio said, and startled a laugh from Clef. “What? That thing can’t have been comfortable to wear while you hugged anyone. These robes are a bit better than the full formal set, too.”

“I’m glad you approve?”

“Well, it means I’m not trying to undress you so I can hug you without injury.” Ferio was suppressing his own laughter, but tight against him like this, Clef could feel it shaking him. “That seems a little forward for a first time. Don’t you think so?”

“…That depends on what kind of a first time you’re aiming for, I suppose,” Clef said, feeling slightly smug when that startled a bark of laughter from Ferio.

So they sat, together, as the sun set outside, and slowly the dizziness faded away as Ferio’s weight anchored Clef into the form he’d snapped back into. He very deliberately decided he wasn’t going to worry about anything else – even about whether he was going to keep this form. Not now.

It could all wait for the morning.