Title: Paperwork
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: PG
Length: 600 words
Content notes: Polyamory? Some kissing~
Author notes: This goes in the fic series I am writing in apparently tiny separate segments, which is Umi/Tarta and Umi/Clef, and this is mostly how that starts, the Umi/Tarta bit, anyway. (THREE THINGS FOR A BADGE WHOOP.)
Summary: If Umi could stop talking about Clef, this would probably go a lot easier...

oOo
Tarta was in her rooms on the Bravada, growling at paperwork she couldn’t get out of doing now Tatra had stayed on Chizeta instead of coming along for the visit to Cephiro. She didn’t even look up when Umi was announced, just waved at the lone guard still in the room and told her to get out. “Umi will stop me setting the paper on fire or stabbing myself with my pen, won’t you.”

“I’ll – do my best?” Umi didn’t think she sounded very certain, but the guard bowed wordlessly to them both and let herself out. “Tarta-“

“Import-export forms are the worst thing in the universe,” Tarta hissed, stabbing at the papers with her pen. “Why do I have to check these figures!?”

“…Because trade makes up over half Chizeta’s economy and you’re officially here to make sure that the new agreements with Cephiro and the other places round here are going well?” Umi offered. She was still half way across the room, hovering in the middle of the carpet, and Tarta turned to frown at her.

“What are you doing lurking over there? Anyway, weren’t you meant to be hanging out with your boyfriend this morning?”

If Clef hadn’t pointed it out, Umi wouldn’t have noticed the way Tarta’s tone twisted on ‘boyfriend’. What else had she been missing? She folded her arms about herself and held on, still with no idea what to say. “Clef said – um.”

“Very intelligent of him, I’m sure,” Tarta muttered, turning back to the papers and glowering at them.

Umi bit her lip, and launched in again. “He said! That you, um. Like me?”

Tarta went still. “...Are you not allowed friends now? We have words for people who say stuff like that to their partners – ‘you’re going to jail’, mostly.”

“That you like me,” Umi insisted, and her voice was shaking. “And that I- like you. And should talk to you. About that.” Turning in her chair, Tarta stared at her, wide-eyed and apparently speechless. “…And I do like you. So. Do you like me?” She winced at the blandness of the words, but at least it was almost coherent.

Slowly, Tarta pushed her chair back from the table and stood up, but otherwise stayed where she was, a good five metres space between them. “You and the Guru are-“

“Still together, he wasn’t telling me to go away, but – he said – he doesn’t care how many lovers I have, just that he’s one of them.” She bit her lip again, and looked at the carpeting, which – had tiny elephants all over it, she noticed, and bit down on a laugh. “I didn’t come here to talk about him-“

“That’s what you started out doing,” Tarta pointed out, and Umi had no idea what her tone meant.

“-I know! I’m sorry! I didn’t know what to say, I just – look, do you li-“

“Yes,” Tarta said, and by the time Umi looked up Tarta was most of the way across the room. Tarta reached for Umi’s arm, hand warm on her bare skin, and Umi’s chest felt like gravity had stopped working, defeated by nervousness, her heart pressing up against her ribs. “I do, I-“

“Talking’s hard, can we stop talking now?” Umi babbled, as Tarta leant in closer, and the final distance vanished in a rush as they both moved. Which made the kiss something of a mess, at first, but a good one. And Umi had two years experience with kissing, even if she’d been kissing someone else – someone without such an amount of chest, which did make it slightly different to negotiate – but this was so much easier than talking, it was fine. It was brilliant.

It was a very long time before anyone left that room, and the paperwork was absolutely not done. That, too, was fine - it could wait.

oOo