Title: A colourful solution
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 600ish
Content notes: None
Author notes: Modern day/mundane AU - marriage of convenience. Umi/Clef pre-relationship
Summary: Setting up their new house, Umi and Clef run into an unexpected issue.

oOo


"How much of this tape do you have?" Umi asked, amused, watching as Clef went through his half-full suitcase pulling out several rolls of strong tape, most of it with patterns on - pink roses on black, geometric gold on teal, blue polka-dots.

He pulled out a sixth, and sighed. "I think that's the last," he said, sitting back on the floor and looking over them. "They aren't full rolls, I just thought I might need what was left."

"We do have tape here."

"But I already had this, anyway I thought I might need some on the journey if things went wrong." Gathering the rolls, he stood, and headed over to where they'd tipped the sofa over to expose the slightly shredded underneath. He'd passed Umi by the time he finished speaking, so he missed her bewildered expression.

"On the journey from England? Why?"

"Well, you can fix just about anything with enough tape, so-" he crouched down and eyed the sofa, then started to tape across where the bottom had shredded.

Umi stared at him. "I don't think you can fix a plane with duct tape!"

"What?" He turned to pull a face at her. "I wasn't planning on the plane being broken! I was thinking more my suitcase might not appreciate how much I'd shoved in it, so-"

"So you shoved more in it?" Shaking her head, Umi laughed. "Okay, that makes more sense, I was imagining some strange action movie - well, more likely a very strange comedy, if you're holding the plane together with that stuff."

"Well, I wouldn't put it out of the question, if you had enough - but it should be fine to fix this." He waved a roll at her. "How about you start doing some vertical strips while I keep doing horizontal ones?"

"Sure." She shook her head, catching the roll he tossed to her. "I still don't know how we missed the bottom of this being so shredded in the shop."

"Easy. Neither of us tipped it over to look. It's still a good sofa, just…" He turned to look wryly at the small robotic vacuum cleaner, who had alerted them to the trailing plastic underneath the sofa when it tried to eat it all and got very firmly stuck. "Dangerous to our beeping friend?"

As Umi had been the one to argue they buy some second-hand furniture so they could get the vacuum within the house budget they'd agreed, she pulled a face at it, and kept taping. "We're going to end up taking it apart to pull all that stuff out of it, aren't we."

"Maybe." Clef didn't look up, but she could see he was smiling, even with his head ducked. "It's okay, though. Even if we lose some of the screws - I can always tape it back together."

Umi tossed the tape in her hand at him, and he laughed as he batted it away, then handed another one over.

Ten minutes later, a lattice of multi-coloured tapes covered the entire bottom of the sofa, and they tipped it back upright. Most of the tape had been used up, the end of the spotty roll all that was left; as Umi dropped on the sofa and sighed, Clef walked across to the notepad on the front of the fridge, where they were trying to keep a household shopping list. Umi didn't need to see what he was writing to know it said 'tape'.

"I'll find the closest hundred yen store. We can go replace your collection tomorrow, if you want."

"Hundred yen store?"

"Like a one pound shop. Lots of cute things too."

"Sounds like a plan."