Enjoy.


Chapter 7: Amu's POV:

They stood together in silence for awhile waiting for the other to make the first move through the pine. Ikuto stared at her curiously, and Amu met his gaze. The air was awkward and the wind was beginning to bite at her arms. He was the one to mention walking, and so she was waiting for him to take the lead.

"Well?" Ikuto said suddenly, breaking the silence. "Are we going to walk, or are you going to just stand there and stare at me?"

She felt her cheeks warm considerably and averted her gaze from his, "I agreed to go on a walk because you said you'd show me your glamourie if I did. You clearly have some kind of spooky motive, so I think it's fair that you start walking first."

Ikuto smirked and shook his head. "Your suspicions of me come and go quite a bit, you know. You can meet with me alone in the middle of the night but cannot allow me to walk behind you. Do people ever tell you that you're too wishy-washy?"

Amu smiled with pride. "You can never be too cautious. I don't know how committed to your word you are."

He shrugged in response and began walking ahead of her, "Fae cannot tell an outright lie. So you must listen carefully to-"

"What they actually mean." Amu finished. She'd read the same line in an article.

"Indeed. And, I don't get anything out of lying to you anyway," he added.

She followed him through the pine and once they were both through, they'd stopped once again. A person was walking on the outskirts of the playground, a the hood of their jacket hiding their face. A white cord from their headphones dangled in front of them as they walked, and it was clear they were in their own head. The person didn't look in her direction but seeing them did remind her that if Ikuto were telling her the truth, she would be standing alone and talking to herself to the outside eye.

She immediately turned to Ikuto and crossed her arms, an expression of annoyance on her face. "You're also an amazing distractor. But I think that if I'm going on this walk with you, that I need to at least not look like I'm insane." She said, "if people see me talking to myself I will never live it down."

Ikuto shifted his weight from one side to the other and raked his hand through his hair. "Hmph. Fine. But I do have to say that you're doing an awful lot of persuading for nothing special. My glamourie is not up to par with a lot of my kind."

Amu did an internal victory dance but focused back to the conversation as soon as she'd noticed Ikuto raising an eyebrow. She shrugged and shook her head in response. "I mean, it's not like I surround myself with otherworldly creatures to even know what to compare it to anyway? Just show me."

"Fine!" He snapped, and it was her turn to arch a brow.

She was impressed to see that his personality seemed to begin to show through to her more and more, and she found herself lost in taking in his appearance once again. The moonlight really did compliment his skin. He was not only free from blemishes but the light hit him in a way that made him look luminous, milky and yet not washed out. She eyed the curve of his neck and the lump that sat at the base, leading her eyes to his collarbones. She had never wanted to touch someone so badly; she wasn't even a hugger. But when she was with him she practically undressed him with her eyes. It was only when Ikuto caught her eyes with his own that she ripped away from her analyzing and focused on the mulch beneath their feet. A blush burned on her cheeks and she cleared her throat in attempt to gather her bearings.

"Look at you, I haven't even done anything and you're eyeing me up. Voyeurism isn't acceptable for Fae as well, you know." He chided. She could hear the tinge of amusement hiding behind the layer of annoyance he had in his voice, and it only made her more embarrassed.

"I'm not a voyeur!" She said, snapping at him.

"Then stop staring at me." He teased in return. The amusement she caught in his voice before was now undeniable and she looked up to glare at him. It was ineffective however, since he was looking away from her.

"Oh fine! Whatever," she sighed, placing a hand over her eyes. She made it a point to show him that she wasn't looking at him, and tapped her foot impatiently. "Just do it before I go home."

Although she couldn't see the change, the shift in the air around her was noticeable. She felt warm and the shift that she sensed was almost tangible. She'd only compared it to feeling like a seductive breeze running along her skin and moving towards his direction. She shuddered and took her bottom lip in between her teeth, hating herself for the reaction instantly. He's dangerous. She scolded herself. If she let herself give into to these emotions, she would definitely not survive it. Be it heartbreak, or her literal end if he were telling the truth.

"What's your favorite color?" A soft, almost inaudible voice spoke suddenly. She pinpointed it as Ikuto and grew confused with the switch in his tone.

"Huh?" She pulled her hand away from her eyes, and looked over at him, her brows had pulled together only to fly up in awe when she made eye contact with him. "O-Oh..." Amu managed around the lump in her throat. There were a lot of thoughts that swirled around in her head. The fact that his fable more than likely is the real deal, the fact that she was snarky and flirting with someone inhuman, and the fact that she knew that she had a genuine attraction for him. All of these thoughts were far too much.

The fact of the matter is that 'human' Ikuto was about as unreal as normal him. Although not much had changed, she could see slight differences such as the now flattened points of his ears, and his eyes were not as mirrored and reflective as they were before. His skin seemed duller as did his hair. While he still looked as hot as before, he had become... realistically hot. His clothing had been entirely changed and instead of the tunic he wore a grey zip-up jacket with a thin, taut black shirt underneath. The jacket wasn't zipped up all of the way, and part of it hung loose and off of his shoulder. He wore standard denim jeans that showed off his figure well. He wore shoes that she had been unfamiliar with but took note that they were black and white and didn't add anything to his height.

No matter how good he looked, the expression on his face told her that he was uncomfortable and must have wanted out of it as soon as possible. He shifted, and send a glare that would kill pigeons in mid-flight at his shoes. Maybe that's what he didn't like. "Amu?" He interrupted, "your favorite color?"

Oh, that's right. He did ask her that. Amu felt her cheeks go red before she finally responded, "it's pink."

Ikuto's POV:

"Ready to go for that walk?" Amu suggested, looking flustered when she motioned them to walk ahead.

His thoughts were in mayhem. The way that she kept glancing at him for extended amounts of time made him strangely self-conscious. She was analyzing everything about him and it had made him feel a way he couldn't remember feeling in such a long time. Anxious? He couldn't help but to look down at his apparel to make sure everything looked the way it was supposed to look. He didn't think that he was too far away from the times to not be able to keep up with what was considered fashionably acceptable. Maybe I should shed from this glamourie. The shoes really irritated him as much as these scratchy denim and he felt like he was covered in bubble wrap on a hot, sunny day.

I could never be a modern teenager. The thought kind of depressed him.

"Alright. Let us walk." He said after a while, taking the first few steps through the park. They passed the play structure and made way to the sidewalk on the outskirts of the park. They walked in silence for a moment and he found himself relishing and memorizing the sounds of the steps she took beside him, the way her breath hitched and the number of her soft exhales. He realized that if she were eyeing him perversely, he was using all of his other senses to get a feel for her as well.

Ikuto played with the zipper on his jacket, trying to keep his balance in the shoes that he wore. They were clunky and he felt as those his feet were inside cruel and unusual tourniquets with each step he took. "Amu, I really can't see how you mortals can walk in these damned things," he said, filling the silence.

"Well, some people feel the same way but at the end of the day, shoes keep our feet from getting cut, cold and at the worst, amputated." Amu tried to explain.

Ikuto shook his head in disgust, but said nothing as they reached the end of the park. He stared at the paved sidewalk in disdain, the topic of shoes still on his mind. "You're holding yourself back from the beauty of feeling the Earth under your feet. The grass and the dirt. I step on sharp things all of the time, but that's the beauty of going barefoot. Surprises. It's exhilarating."

Of course he understood that humankind dealt with their own mortality quite a bit and created these things to aid with it. But humankind created social norms that out-casted those who went about lift differently. Each human generation grew more biased every day and he grew to understand that people would think less of those who went into the public eye with no shoes on. He'd even walked by many signs that said: "'No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service.' He knew that he was getting to be worked up and forced his brain to think of something else.

Ikuto shoved his hands into his jean pockets and kicked at the leaves that were in his path silently. He glanced over to Amu who seemed to be in her own head just as he was and he wondered what she had been thinking about. Deeper than the concept of shoes, he imagined followed by a small laugh. Amu must've heard him because she looked over to him with a questioning expression. Her lips were pursed and he found himself so interested in them for a moment. The shape, the color; they looked soft and warm.

His eyes moved back to hers to find that she had been watching him in the same way. Before he could say anything, he felt his shoe catch onto an uneven patch in the pavement and if he hadn't have caught himself in time, he would have tripped over it. Frustration built up within him and he immediately gave up on wearing his shoes. Without saying a word to Amu, he stopped walking and eyed his shoes with intent. He could feel them as though there were a layer of glue and imagined himself peeling it from his feet. It took concentration and he felt Amu eyeing him but he was intent to remove the shoes from his glamourie. Bit by bit, the shoes dissolved into nothingness until there was nothing obstructing his bare feet from the concrete. Once the shoes had gone, he couldn't help but to sigh in relief.

Amu watched him with what he'd hoped to be awe, and he decided that he wouldn't accuse her of voyeurism again. Instead he said, "maybe I'm a bit overdramatic, but I just couldn't do it."

A smile graced Amu's face and he felt a pang in his chest as result. "I understand," she said, before motioning the two of them to continue walking.

What was she thinking? He stared at her unabashedly, as if making a feeble attempt to pry himself into her mind. Sadly, he was no mind reader. But he did sense that she was just as overwhelmed as he. He wondered why he hadn't hesitated to share everything with her; he hadn't even stopped to wonder how she'd intake all of it before dumping it onto her.

"Hey, are you hungry?" She asked suddenly.

Ikuto looked over to her and silently waited for her to say something more. They made eye contact with each other and he raised an eyebrow.

"W-Wait," her cheeks turned pink. A beautiful color. "Can you even eat human food?"

He shrugged. "I can eat it, yes. But it's not my first choice." He said. Really, he'd only eaten while he used his glamourie in order to keep up the game of playing human. In his normal form, there was no use in pretending and since human food turned to ash in his mouth outside of glamourie, he never even entertained the idea.

"Well, you're missing out because mac and cheese is quite literally the best." Amu laughed, and shoved her hands into her pockets. He eyed the goosebumps that were clear as day on her arms and knew that she had to have been cold. Maybe the best course of action would be to find a place to go inside.

"Oh, I bet," he said dryly. "Fae food is out of this world. In fact," he brought them both to a stop before he turned to look at her, his tone more serious than it had been the entire walk. "Never accept food offered to you from the Fae; not even from me."

He didn't give her time to reply and just carried on walking. There was a few businesses up ahead of them, and he knew that she would probably appreciate getting out of the cold for a while. "let's go to this bakery up here."

Amu met back up with him after he'd pointed out the building and she could see her nodding in what he assumed was inner thought. She met his gaze and gave him another nod, finally coming out of her silence. "They actually have some pretty good ice cream."

Ice cream? In this weather? He wasn't one to judge; at least openly, but that was not what he had expected her to want to get from a bakery.

They made their to the shop and he took notice of the security officer sitting out on the bench on the side of the parlor. Ikuto took notice of the officer and the way that he eyed the two of them as they walked up to the door. Before he could open the door for Amu, the officer stood and walked around to face the two of them.

"Excuse me, sir," the guard said, "you can't walk in there without shoes one." He pointed down to Ikuto's bare feet.

Amu stared at the officer in confusion, and she was the first to reply. "I'm sorry?"

Ikuto pulled the door open and held it for Amu to be able to make her way in, but before she could move, the officer stepped in front of the open path, shaking his head.

"You can't walk in there with no shoes." The guard said once again, pointing down to his feet.

Amu's annoyance after the guard repeated himself was thick when she replied, "we were just planning to run in and ou-"

"That does not matter, sir. You can't walk in he-"

Ikuto raised his hand in the air while letting go of the door, interrupting the back and forth that was beginning to form. "- without shoes on, yes. I get it. Fine." He didn't think that whether he wore shoes or not was a big deal; his feet weren't disgusting or anything. But he also didn't want to make a big deal out of it.

The more the officer spoke, the more irritated he was becoming and so he made it a point to walk over to the bench in which the man was originally sitting and plopped down onto it, kicking both of his feet up to fill the seat in it's entirety.

Amu walked over to him with her brows pulled together, and he looked up to her with a shrug and smile. "You heard the man. Why don't you go on ahead and grab your ice cream? I'll be out here."

He expected concern or disappointment to show on her face, and instead found anger. It had shocked him to feel the anger that steamed off of her and he stared at her wide-eyed as result.

"No, that's alright." She snapped, "I have ice cream at home." She walked back to the front of the store and Ikuto shifted off of the bench to watch her.

"A-Amu..." Ikuto stammered, shifting uncomfortably. He'd wondered if he'd said something wrong and if he had ruined the night by being so particular about his shoes.

His concerns vanished when he watched as she bent over and practically tore her shoes from her feet. She peeled off her socks, and threw them at the security officers' own feet. She turned around, turned to Ikuto and motioned him to follow her before she stormed off in the direction they came. He caught the small smile that she gave him before turning away and he wasted no time in hopping off of the bench and jogging behind her to catch up.

"Amu, your shoes..." He looked back at the stunned security guard. When he caught up with her he turned to look at her with incredulousness. "Your feet are going to get cold; you and I are not the same."

She shrugged and looked at him apologetically, her mind focused on something else entirely. "Ikuto, I honestly don't have ice cream at home. I'm sorry."

As Ikuto stared at her, a mixture of awe, confusion and amusement swirled within him. Amu was fun, spontaneous and he felt dread at the idea of parting ways tonight. And ice cream? Really? That was what she was thinking about?

"T-That's okay..." He murmured, still stunned.

Amu laughed, and stared at him. "I wanted to stick up for you... That rule is stupid to me, anyway."

Ikuto shrugged. "It's the way things are. Like you said, shoes protect your human feet from a multitude of things..." he paused from a moment before smirking, "you didn't have to throw socks at him, though."

Grinning, Amu lifted her hands into the air, as if in an 'oh well' gesture. "Yeah, well, I really didn't want those, anyway."

His gaze travelled and locked onto one of her lifted hands, and the urge to touch her rang strong within him. Except, it was a different type of physical intimacy he craved. Without a second thought, he glamoured a solid, black glove onto his hand and held it out to her.

She smiled to him before lifting an eyebrow "this won't make me rabid, will it?"

"No," he replied. And as if that were exactly the answer she wanted from him, she grabbed onto his gloved hand without a second thought. They continued to walk and he sighed, the warmth that he felt from her hand through the glove he wore brought him a calm he didn't expect he would feel. And he smiled with the realization that this human was truly shedding him of all of his defenses.

What would it feel like to touch her without killing her?


RR is greatly appreciated. ^^