So, I have a cold today, and thus studying is out of the picture- or perhaps I am just being lazy about it- so I decided to give you guys a little something. I miss you like crazy, my peeps! Let's get this rolling again, shall we?

I do not own Shugo Chara!.

J t'aime toujours

Chapter 21: Curiosity

The trio had arrived home with vigor- excluding Ikuto, who now felt more than a little exhausted from a forced shopping spree.

Amu, shopping bags in hand, had rushed upstairs to sort through her new clothes and put together her things to be packed. Luckily, the only belongings Ikuto was in care of had already been packed in his duffle bag, and now merely awaited him as he stuffed the new additions into it. Time had flown after that. Amu had talked to her mother and father, they finished their packing, and Ikuto had phoned Yukari to make sure she still had an open ticket for Amu. Which, with a quick threat of him not showing up if she didn't, the teen had managed to procure- and now they stood on the drop-off landing in front of the airport's terminal and waved to her family.

Her mother teared up, and she stepped over to hug her daughter tightly. "You be safe, Amu-chan. Remember what I told you, alright?"

Amu nodded, a blush crossing her face, and Ikuto wondered if there had been something said that he had missed at some point. He smiled though, brushing the thought aside for a moment, as he gave a brief hug to her mother and Ami who ran to embrace his leg. Ikuto's night dark eyes met the watering depths of her father, and for a moment a shudder ran through him, but he managed to lift a hand in an offering to the man.

Tsumugu stared at the hand, lips trembling, before he grasped it and gave a meek handshake. "Don't you dare do anything to harm my little sparrow," he warned, voice cracking.

Ikuto nodded, eyes serious. "I wouldn't dream of it."

The two youths stepped toward the door, and Midori gave a final wave to the pair, her eyes twinkling in an odd manner. She caught Amu's sights, holding them with a mixture of warmth and an unspoken warning, before she trailed her eyes to Ikuto and smiled at him a last time as they entered the terminal. Ikuto smiled back to her, his thought from before returning, and he turned to look at Amu in hidden confusion.

What had been said...? Ikuto pursed his lips a bit.

He watched his reflection in the polished tiles of the floor, listening to his footsteps and the rolling of the wheels on Amu's frilly suitcase, before his starlit depths strayed back to the girl at his side. She looked perfectly fine, if anything perhaps- dare he think it- happy to be leaving with him. That thought alone was enough to snuff out nearly all his worries and send the catboy straight to heaven, but there was still the ever present nagging in the back of his mind that he was being left out of the loop on something. Ikuto sighed.

He knew quite well about the first issue he was being left out of, whatever had happened at school a day ago, and he knew by now that Amu had no intentions of spilling it just yet. The teen doubted that this was related to that however- unless she had told her mother about it before him, and she had some input into the situation. Which, he'd admit, was how it should be. Her mother had every right to know before he did... But, to think that Amu suddenly had things to hide from him made him a little uncomfortable. He frowned faintly, his mind hitting the self-constructed wall of his promise not to ask until Amu wanted to tell him herself. He couldn't pry into her own business, but still...

The tears... The strange mood swings... Tadase's odd behavior and Amu's near terror at seeing the blonde...

...What on earth was going on in their little world?

Ikuto shook his head slightly, banishing the thoughts before it could get him into trouble. He would rather not go to jail for assault if he came to the conclusion that Tadase had hurt the Hinamori girl. On the other hand, with that thought aside, his mind shot straight back to the odd look Amu's mother had given her daughter. He still wanted to know what had been said.

Ikuto sighed softly, smirking at himself.

His catlike curiosity would honestly get him killed one of these days.

Starlit eyes drifted over the girl's happy face, his sensitive ears catching the sound of her pleasant humming as she walked. Her wide golden eyes glittered as she read the markers for each check-in desk to find their airline, and anticipation in her depths made his heart latch onto the excitement as well. In just a short while they would be on their way to a getaway where they would have more than enough time to indulge in each other's company. Ikuto could feel his heart skip. He didn't know if she was excited for the same reasons as he, but imagining that could be the case was no harm, right? He smiled.

Daydreaming was better than the suspicions he had been housing everytime Amu reminded him of her secret with her odd behavior, by far. But, he still planned to ask her what her mother had meant by, "remember what I told you...".

Amu continued her happy little hum, seeming to forget that Ikuto was there at all until they came to a check-in station, and the teen stopped to stride over to the little waiting area just before it. Amu followed him in confusion, but a light bulb soon lit when she saw a smiling familiar face seated in one of the chairs.

"Nikaidou-san," Ikuto greeted with a nod, smiling faintly.

The teacher put down the magazine he had occupied himself while he waited, standing to nod to Ikuto in return.

His smile, bright and cheery, in full effect. "Ah, Ikuto-kun, Himamori-chan! Yukari told me to wait for you both here so Utau-chan wouldn't see her presents too soon."

Ikuto nodded again, "I know. She said to meet you here when I spoke to her earlier. You have our tickets with you?"

The long haired man scratched the back of his head at the teen's unimpressed demeanor, before he reached into the front of his jacket to pull two tickets free from his pocket. He smiled again.

"Here they are, Mr. Kitty Cat," Nikaidou jested, holding them out for the Tsukiyomi boy to take them.

Ikuto's brow twitched, and he fought the frown he felt coming on as he heard Amu and her shugo charas giggle mirthfully at his side. Nikaidou, underneath the cheery and carefree teacher façade, still knew how to push his buttons for the best effect. Ikuto sighed, reaching with a thin hand to pull the tickets from the former Easter employee's hands. He looked them over in his hold, reading the info to make sure all was correct. They were a couponed deal, part of a six ticket package, so there was little more to read than the arrival and departure specs, seat numbers and term of their stay for the round trip return. He looked over it a last time, slipping it into his pocket, before he turned his sights to the companions of his who were now chatting happily.

"Nikaidou-sensei, I didn't know you were coming along, too," Amu said.

Yuu rubbed at the back of his head again, burying his fingers in the caramel colored locks there. He smiled sheepishly,

"Yeah, well Yukari has been really excited to go with Utau-chan on this trip, and she had extra tickets to give out... So she decided to bring me along, thankfully," he chuckled.

"Sensei, it will be such a romantic getaway for you two, desu!" Suu beamed, drawing Nikaidou's attention to her and making his eyes sparkle happily.

"Suu!" he exclaimed, lifting a hand to gently snatch her from the air.

She gasped in unison with Amu and her other characters, and the middle schooler reached out to try and take her character back from the teacher. She already knew how attached he was to the green little homemaker. Amu whined.

"Nikaidou-sensei, don't just take Suu like that!"

The man pulled the shugo chara from her reach, a pout tugging at his lips. "Ah~, but Himamori-chan! You have so many! Surely you won't mind if I take just one?" he reasoned.

"It's Hi-NA-mori! And I do mind! We have gone over this before, haven't we? You have your own egg to hatch!" she reminded him, reaching to try and snag Suu back from the now watery eyed teacher.

"But it hasn't reappeared yet!"

Ikuto stifled the amused smirk on his lips, sighing and shaking his head at the teacher's pathetic attempts to steal Amu's character away- though, he couldn't forget that at one time the teacher may have gone through much worse lengths to get his hands on Suu and all of Amu's characters. Ikuto's eyes darkened a bit, but he swallowed the vile thoughts. What Easter could force a person to do...

The teen cleared his throat, but didn't manage to get the attention of the squabbling bunch in front of him. Amu, along with Ran, Miki and Dia, were hooked into a chain position and tugging on Nikaidou's wrist to get Suu free, while the man barely managed to keep her out of reach for them. They tugged back and forth, Amu now fuming cutely, and the teacher still whining in his high pitched alternate persona's voice. Ikuto rolled his eyes, turning silently to his own shugo chara.

"Yoru, watch over them," he spoke softly. "I am going to go check Amu and I in," he told the little cat, before pulling Amu's bag along with him without her even noticing.

He strode to the front desk, checked his own and Amu's bags as carry-ons, and got directions to their gate from the woman behind the counter. Within about five minutes, he had wrapped up their processing, caused the clerk to swoon over him, and walked back over to the on going dispute before the little girl had ever realized he had left with her bag in the first place. He tried clearing his throat again, and eventually resorted to tapping at her shoulder to pull her back to reality.

"Ne, Amu, we are all checked in..." he leaned down to speak lowly, breathing on her little ear as he spoke.

She blinked, releasing her hold on the tug-of-war with her characters and caused them to fly off from the released tension. "Huh?" she turned to him.

"Your mind was lost in the clouds again, Amu," he told her, smirking. "We are checked in, all we need to do is make our way to the security gates and we can relax until our flight in the terminal. Let's go."

Amu blinked at him again, as she blushed pink and gave him a short nod.

Nikaidou released his hold on Suu, gasping. "No fair, Ikuto-kun! I waited for you to get here so we could all check in together!" He whined, standing up straight to search for his own ticket and grabbing up his bag from behind him.

"You should have been thinking of that instead of trying to steal Suu." Ikuto told him flatly.

The the teacher's momentary distraction was enough time for Amu to grab hold of Suu before Nikaidou had even been given time to groan in defeat. He blinked at Ikuto's mention of the green character, and he searched his hands for her before his amber eyes rose to meet Suu's who stared happily at him from Amu's grasps. She smiled brightly, waving to him from where she was.

"Sensei, we will see you inside, right, desu?" her high voice trilled as Ikuto pulled Amu away with him.

Amu blushed, looking down to the hand holding hers as Ikuto tugged her along, and she tried to even her heart rate so she wouldn't trip or have a heart attack trying to keep up with him. He really seemed like he had something else on his mind, the way his eyes stayed trained on the path ahead of them, and his thin brows furrowed slightly. Amu bit her lip, welling up strength, and pulled her hand from Ikuto's grasp.

"Ikuto, we could have waited for him, you know! Why are you walking away so suddenly?" Amu's eyes glittered with defiance.

Ikuto paused, turning to look at her, and blinked a few times to come back to reality. He hadn't realized exactly what he had been doing, and he drank in her words slowly to process them. His night dark eyes flickered from hers back to the check in desk left behind them a ways. In a blink, those starlit depths flicked back to her glimmering golden eyes, and he held her in his stare there for a moment longer as he thought silently.

Where had his mind gone...?

The moment he had walked back over to Amu after checking in, and drawn her attention and eyes back to him, he could not help his curiosity from returning in a flood when she looked into his own depths. At the moment, all he had wanted to do was to get away from Nikaidou so he would have a chance to talk to Amu alone. He wanted to know, for a reason he couldn't truly explain, why it had looked as if Amu's mother had shared a warning through eye contact... A warning that he was starting to wonder if it had anything to do with him. Ikuto's eyes narrowed a bit.

He was sure that her mother trusted him, she had let Amu come with him, after all. She had told him she did herself, to top that one. But now, he was second guessing where he stood with her family. That look, knowing and cautious to Amu... It didn't make any sense. Nothing was making sense anymore, to be honest. Amu, whom had always shoved away his advances, was letting him get closer than he dreamed she ever would- even when it seemed to be tearing a hole in her and Tadase's relationship. Her mother seemed to trust him, but then there seemed to be some sort of warning she had told Amu when he hadn't been around. To put it in easy terms, the secrets were killing him.

A cat's curiosity knows no bounds, after all.

Amu stood there still, waiting through Ikuto's silence for him to finally speak, and her sense of strength was quickly dwindling as she got caught up in those starlit eyes. She bit her lip, fidgeting a bit, and she shuffled to straighten her stance. This silence was awkward, and it was making her heart pound extremely fast. Why was he acting so strangely all of a sudden...?

Finally, Ikuto spoke, his voice low and free from any kind of mirthful nature. He was clearly speaking honestly, and his eyes conveyed the seriousness he felt.

"Amu... What was it your mother talked to you about?... She, looked at you really strangely, and then the way she looked at me..." he breathed, "I feel like something was said about me. Was it, Amu?"

Amu's expression scrunched a bit in confusion. Was that all he was worried about? Her and her mother had had a talk before they left for the airport, that was all- Amu's thoughts hit a major speed bump as she recalled exactly what that talk had been about. Her mother's voice echoed in her thoughts.

"Sometimes, especially with older boys, they may want things that you aren't ready for-"

Amu shook her head violently, her face completely red and she was sure that her temperature had just shot through the roof to record heights. No, no, no... She would not go there with Ikuto in mind. Her thoughts would completely melt down and she knew that meant her brain would likely be liquified. Not to mention, she knew she would get another chance to watch her soul fly out of her body entirely. Ikuto wasn't... Well, he was, but... No! Amu's cheeks were on fire.

Ikuto watched Amu's strange mixture of emotions as they flickered through her wide eyes, raising a dark brow as she shook her head and blushed like a tomato. Well, that was odd, he'd admit. It wasn't exactly the response he had been expecting, and now the nervous butterflies in his stomach were starting to turn from painful twists of trepidation to a fluttering of anxiousness. It didn't seem like whatever had been said was too grave of a warning, and even if it had something to do with him, it was making Amu blush where he thought it would have filled her eyes with cautiousness. It seemed, perhaps her mother hadn't faltered in her trust in him.

Maybe she had not told Amu that he was a bad person... A black cat of misfortune. Maybe it was something he could handle.

He let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. "Ne, Amu... Your hair is matching your face now... Ah, and you still haven't answered my question." Ikuto smirked.

The girl's characters hovered nearby, their faces flushed just as Amu's was, and Ikuto's eyes flickered to them as Suu spoke.

"The adult world, desu-" she made a fainting motion, and the other three caught her, quickly silencing her with their hands over her mouth. They smiled sheepishly at the teen, shaking their heads to dismiss their companion's words. They clearly did not want to revisit the conversation they had all been forced to sit in on.

Ikuto rose a brow, his eyes flickering back to Amu. He put a hand on his hip, shifting his weight to stand in a pointed manner, his voice deep and mirthful as he spoke.

"The adult world, hmm? Amu?"

Amu shook her head back and forth again, virtually making visible the metaphorical X of tape over her mouth to silence her, and her eyes squeezed shut in embarrassment. She could not go there... Not right now! Amu shook her head more for emphasis, squeaking helplessly behind sealed lips. She could swear her shy inner character was dying right now... Yep, there went her soul again. She tremored.

"Ah... So, it is something perverted then, isn't it?" his smirk grew wider, and again Amu shook her head in response, desperate for him to drop the topic. It was way too much.

But, of course, he wasn't letting it go just yet...

"...And, it was about me, Amu?" he asked.

Amu tried desperately to hide the truth in her eyes, she tried to shove it to the back of her mind and never see or hear of it again, but the moment he had asked that question a flood of unwanted confirmation swam into her depths. She could feel the heat burning so hot from her head right down to her toes, and she was sure at this point, her blush was making her sweat bullets. She shook her head again, but it was clear in Ikuto expression, he had already gotten his answer. Amu shivered, her soul flying on up to heaven- or maybe down to hell. Now she knew, a person really could die from embarrassment.

Ikuto's grin was beyond the nerve racking suggestiveness of his usual smirk, and Amu could already feel her body turning to liquid starting from her legs up. He crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes never breaking contact with the girl's, and he couldn't help the mirthful chuckle that rumbled in his chest.

He wasn't going to press the topic any further, as he had a pretty good suspicion what her mother might have sat her down to talk about. And albeit it an important talk, he could not pass up how adorable Amu was when she blushed like that. She looked like she was melting, and if cat ears had been present, he was sure he would have heard her heart thundering like a drum. She would probably pass out right now if he didn't stop.

But that didn't mean he had any plans of giving up the topic.

Ikuto smiled. He would simply ask another time, when they were truly alone, and the issue could be pressed without onlookers giving him strange stare as they were now for flustering someone as young as Amu. He sighed, shaking his head a bit. If only he had been born four or five years after he had been... This would not have been an issue then.

He couldn't help the murmur that fell from his lips, "Hurry up and grow up..."

Amu's breathing calmed a bit, not expecting him to drop his teasing so soon. Her brows furrowed, and her hands wrung together over her heart and the Humpty Lock within her shirt. "Wha-?"

"I caught up to you! Himamori-chan, Ikuto-kun!" Nikaidou shattered the moment, sprinting over to them and panting. He stood up straight, fixing the glasses on the bridge of his nose, smiling sheepishly. "I am sorry I took so long. My luggage ended up being too large to be carry-on, so I had to check it instead... I should have looked up the size limit, I suppose."

Ikuto tuned out the mindless chatter that followed as the teacher and student talked about airports and their troubles- Amu clearly happy to be completely off their prior topic. The teen smiled softly to himself, striding ahead of the other two, as they made their way to the security gates. He knew, no matter how far apart he and Amu were- be it age or distance- he was going to make sure she was his. He had promised that to her, and to himself...

… He was also going to promise to hear more about what her mother had warned her about. He smirked.

Amu was as cute as ever when she blushed like that.

How was that? Good? Terrible? Please, let me know.