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“Yeah I was going to hit the grocery store on the way home, everything on the grocery list?” Chikara waved to the receptionist as he left the building, phone to his ear and a shadow lurking underneath his collar and listening to the conversation.
“Yep, yep, love you too, I'll be home soon. Yes I have her with me, I know it's getting late, I'll be careful.” Chikara hung up after Keiji finished saying goodbye, tucking his phone into his computer bag and reaching up to pretend to adjust the collar of his shirt. In actuality, he just let Mai brush against his fingers and climb over to sit underneath his watch.
He liked walking relatively alone sometimes, as much as he loved his partners, they tended to draw an awful lot of attention. Something about Mai's human form was just wildly unsettling to most people so they tended to give her, and by extension, them, a wide berth. Keiji was, of course, gorgeous, so he drew stares, although it combined weirdly with Mai's aura of unsettling vibes. People would spot him first, start coming over or start to call out, spot Mai, and immediately think better of it. Probably wise, Mai did not take any flirting with them very well.
Sometimes Chikara really wasn’t sure whether Mai or Keiji was more out of his league. Mai was the literal manifestation of the city, an eldritch goddess that had decided they were cute and she wanted to date them. She could be considered to be out of everyone's league, but it also wasn't exactly something Chikara could have done anything about since she was the one that noticed him and Keiji. So she may be out of his league in a major way, but she was something else entirely.
Keiji was out of his league in a far more human way, gorgeous, tall, kind, funny, surprisingly petty, and just a fantastic guy.
Chikara really was a very lucky man.
It was nice to walk relatively alone on occasion since he could blend into the crowds and just walk through the city like he wasn’t dating the very manifestation of it.
He said relatively alone because to some degree he was never quite alone, especially out and around in the city. Mai tended to, at the very minimum, keep a close eye on them while they were walking around in the city, since it was a large city and wasn’t always the most safe. Most of the time she either walked with them, in a human-ish form, or like she was doing now, hung out as a presence somewhere on their person. Under the collar of a collared shirt was probably her favorite spot, since she could hang out near their necks and keep a close eye out for things, but in sleeves or around their ankles weren’t uncommon spots.
It had been weird at first, particularly while they were still working on the concept of boundaries and the fact that humans find some things really really weird, but at this point, Chikara got faintly unsettled whenever he left the city to visit his family or friends or something and Mai wasn’t keeping an eye out for him. Over time it had just kind of morphed from ‘something is watching me’ to ‘someone I love is watching my back’.
Chikara turned to walk down a moderately shadowy alley, mostly on habit, since it was the one that was right between he and Keiji’s works, so they frequently ended up in it if they got out at the same time. It also lead from the street he’d been on to the one that he usually used to get home. He could wait and cross over at the big street up ahead, but he was used to this path so he used it.
Well it wasn’t exactly his downfall, but it was probably not the wisest decision, given how late it was.
Mai abruptly went ice cold around his wrist in warning, but he didn’t really have time to react more than just kind of hissing because geez Mai that was really really cold, before he heard the person behind him.
“Wallet. Now.”
Chikara tilted his head just far enough it didn't quite look like something a human could do, giving him a good look at the mugger.
No shake to the hand holding the gun, no fear in his eyes, or, well, there had been no fear until the unsettling feeling started creeping up on the guy as Mai's influence seeped into the shadows of the alley.
“I don't think you want to do this,” Chikara said calmly, knowing it was already too late for the guy.
Ah there was the shake. He was becoming uncertain.
Chikara flashed his teeth, purposefully letting there be too many too sharp teeth visible. “Oh well. Too late I suppose.”
“Wait- wait you're the-the guy! The cryptid!” The mugger yelled, although he didn't get much further before Mai descended, the shadows swallowing him whole.
“Do try not to get us suspected in another murder investigation,” Chikara said mildly, getting out his phone to text Keiji about this. He would find it funny right up until he started lecturing Chikara about actually walking into a shadowy alley this late at night.
A shadowy tendril split off and brushed against his face affectionately with a faint rumble before rejoining the rest. Well, at least she'd try.
The guy didn't actually do anything, so he'd probably get out alive. Which wasn't always the nice option, but y'know. It was better then Keiji and Chikara getting investigated for murder again.
Since he was a nice polite boyfriend, Chikara waited for her to be finished, texting Keiji in the meantime, just idle things, debating dinners for next week, picking out new movies to watch with Mai, considering games to try playing with her, that sort of thing. At the moment they were contemplating getting a recently out horror game despite the fact that neither of them really liked horror games, they just thought it'd be funny to show Mai and see what she thought of it.
Chikara honestly still didn't really like horror, but at least it was funny watching it with Mai. Her current rating system was mostly about whether she could beat the horror present in a fight. The amount of movies with terrifyingly powerful horrors that Mai casually declared that she would beat in a fight was slightly horrifying.
Chikara was opting to settle for just being glad that if he was ever in a horror movie, he'd have something powerful on his side.
FInally the shadows dispersed, or, really, abruptly collapsed inward and went back to being normal shadows. Mai pulled a human form out of the darkest remaining section, trotting over to him, clearly very pleased with herself.
“He’s not dead, right?” Chikara double checked.
“Nope! I just dropped him off on the other side of the city. Near a shelter, don’t worry. He’ll probably be fine!”
He didn’t necessarily trust her ability to actually determine if someone would be fine, but he probably wouldn’t be implicated in it at this point, so it was probably fine.
“So, grocery store?” She asked, eyes bright and swirling with the colors of the city.
“Grocery store,” he agreed, leaning down enough she could kiss him. “And then back to our boyfriend.”
“He’s just reading a book since you finished texting,” Mai informed him cheerfully, linking their arms together and beginning to tow him back out towards the main roads. “It’s that boring one he insists is really interesting but it takes him an hour to get through a chapter.”
He did know the book she was referring to. Keiji’s mother had given him the book, and he was too stubborn to admit he didn’t like it until he finished the entire book. Chikara was pretty sure Keiji’s mom wouldn’t mind too much if he didn’t actually finish the book, but Keiji was stubborn like that. It wasn’t like it was hurting him anyway, so they were leaving him to slowly read his boring book and only sometimes teasing him about it.
“I suppose we’d better hurry then,” Chikara mused. So as to not make him suffer through it for too long. “Grocery list shouldn’t be too long anyway, it shouldn’t take that long.” Although grocery shopping with Mai in human form could get entertaining because she had a lot of questions. Usually ones no one could actually answer.
It was always fun though. Even when it made things take a lot longer.