Title: City's Breaking Down.
Fandom: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle/Magic Knight Rayearth.
Warnings: Nothing.
Characters/couples: Clef/Presea (mentions of several CLAMP characters)-
Summary: They still fight and they still disagree in just about everything, but they just go together, somehow.
Rating: R/NC17.
Notes: Written for
springkink: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, Clef/Presea (Infinity World) - gunkink - "I'll never fake it or pretend"
reversedhymnal and I have talked a LOT about what we think Infinity is and somehow we started adding characters, so. Er. Sorry?
City's Breaking Down.
The new kids were always surprised by how dexterous she is with her guns. Presea likes showing off - something that had unnerved Clef when they had just been made partners and to this day, ten years later, it still irked him - and she has no qualms on taking apart guns and then assembling them back in less than five minutes, causing wide eyes from the kids they were training.
Still, he has gotten used to it, something that makes Presea who she is, just like her short dresses, or the way she sometimes cries when she thinks he's not looking, when the job gets to be too much.
He won't ever tell her that he's relieved that she does that, that she remains human enough to mourn, even if her loyalty to the Vision family won't ever change.
Remaining human means that that she'll survive longer than most.
*
Presea is barely eighteen when Karura says she'll stay with him for a while, that he should train her until they can find her another partner and there is no reason Clef can find for him no to accept, not even the whole 'being wounded' thing.
It's supposed to be just for a while, just until they can see who she matches with well enough. That's one of the things with being one of the three oldest guardians, that lady Ko trusts them with the newbies for this.
She's loud and brash, wearing skin-tight shorts and high boots, a short jacket that surprises him when he realizes just how many guns she's got in there. She's beautiful and she knows it, and she decides to use that to her advantage, make people underestimate her.
Clef gives her five months tops before she quits or she's dead, and five years later he's almost surprised to still find Presea still there, right besides him.
*
“But you fight so much,” Geo says, careful. Presea's mood swings are well known, and Geo has been on the receiving end of Presea's fist often enough to know better.
Still, she grins and shrugs, finishes with the gun she hands to Geo and sands up.
“I'm waiting for the next generation to switch up gramps here, kid,”
“And who,” Guru Clef asks, closing his book so that Geo jumps a little and starts backing away from them. “Are you calling 'gramps'?”
“I wonder,” Presea smiles, charmingly and sweet and he doesn't buy it for a second, but Clef does smile.
*
They stopped fighting when Clef got a bullet to the chest for Presea. It was stupid of him, but he saw the opportunity and he just stepped in.
He almost dies then.
When he woke up in the hospital, she was sleeping on a chair by his side, tear tracks upon her face, and Presea wearing his jacket. She hadn't stayed when he fell because they had to take care of Eagle and Suu. She had called his name but she had kept on moving, and Clef had passed out with a quiet sort of pride on her.
And then she opened her eyes and there's fear in her eyes, and Clef breathed in and out slowly, reached for her hand. Presea took it and they never spoke about it again.
They still fight and they still disagree in just about everything, but they work better, too.
*
She's better with guns than him. Clef watches her go through the several guns she keeps, the dangerous hidden and the not-as-dangerous plain on sight, because sometimes being mistaken by frail or a newbie saves your life, and Presea is not above doing that, if she needs to.
Presea covers his back often, a soft, warm line behind his back. Sometimes she presses herself completely against his back and he can feel her breasts against his chest, and the way she slides her weapon up to his holster.
“Knock them dead,” Presea whispers against his ear and Clef does his best not to shiver.
*
That Night - when lady Kou is killed and half of their people are put to the hospital and the other half to the ground, when Hikaru's put into a coma and Eagle's expression shifts, shudders, changes and not even Lantis and Geo can make it better - they got ambushed on the street.
It was far too fast and still, they both had known they'd go down fighting and protecting the Vision family. Presea covered for him as he ducked behind a car, firing from her automatics as Clef got his gun ready. He got two more guns ready for her, sneaked his hand up her dress where her holster was, then inside her coat, getting a grenade from where she kept them hidden.
Presea rolled over him and they danced: Clef got a laser gun and Presea handled chains, she pressed against him, her breasts to his back and then his arm around her waist as they rolled and fired and killed as many people as they could and even as the bullets rained on them, Clef couldn't regret a single thing.
*
“It's nothing but a scratch,” Presea says. Clef rolls his eyes and he doesn't believe her at all, not when he had had three bullet-wounds (just a miracle that they missed his vitals) and a broken arm. Not when her leg is broken in three places and she's wheezing a little from her surgery, not when her hair still looks dirty and gray. “You're not getting rid of me so easily, Clef.”
It's been ten years now since they got together at first, and the idea of Presea not being loud and silly and angry and a thousand more things besides him as they do their job makes him feel sick. But instead of saying that, he leans close and kisses her. Presea shivers and moans a little and kisses back, reaches with her hand to touch his face, covering one of the bandages he has there, and he knows that they'll most likely never talk about this again, not about the loses or pain if he can't help it.
But like this, with her mouth on his and she still breathing, Clef would be hard pressed to say that he'd change it at all.