It wasn't hard to spot him in the thick crowd. After all, with the arrival of warmer weather everyone had made the transition to lighter clothing, yet he chose to wear a scarf, which he was currently busy tugging at and readjusting nervously as he made his way through the small café. From her seat in the corner, Alia watched as he shuffled over towards her, raising her eyebrows at the sight of his bright scarf. Edging past a group of schoolgirls preoccupied with the café menu, X finally reached Alia and sat down onto the seat opposite her with a sigh.

"Sorry I'm late." He grinned sheepishly. "Signas gave me another pile of paperwork to do last minute."

Alia giggled, giving her cup a light swirl with one hand and waving the other. "It's alright, it's alright. I understand. I'm just glad you managed to show up at all."

X adopted a look of feigned hurt at this. "Oh come on, have some more faith in me, Alia. We're friends, of course I'd show up."

"Ah, that's right. You're too nice to leave a poor defenceless woman alone by herself."

"I'd hardly call you 'defenceless', Alia. Remember what you did to Zero the last time he made fun of you? He's still traumatized about it, you know." They laughed at the memory, and immediately fell to catching up on lost time; it had been awhile since the two had last seen each other, and there were many things each wanted to tell the other. For a while they talked of this and that, and when they finally started to feel tired they decided to take a short break. During this time X decided to order something to drink.

It was after the waitress left with his order that Alia decided to pop the question that had been nagging at her in the back of her the moment X walked into the café: "X, can I ask you something? What's with the scarf?"

To her surprise (and suspicions) X startled and began to blush. He coughed once, twice, and gave the ends of his scarf a nervous tug. "N-nothing, really. Just f-felt like wearing it today, that's all," he stammered, staring down at the table as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.

Alia gave a snort. "X, please. It's summer now, you know. Everybody's out wearing shorts and skirts and sundresses and you're wearing a winter scarf of all things. I highly doubt you'd wear it in this weather just because you felt like it."

X remained silent for a moment, still staring down at the table. Finally, in an almost inaudible voice, he replied, "I didn't have any other scarves…"

Alia raised her eyebrow again. "Listen, X, you can tell me…" she began before footsteps and a familiar voice cut her off.

"Heeey X! There you are." A particularly cheerful Zero plopped down into the seat beside X. Grinning from ear to ear, Zero wove his fingers through the smaller man's soft hair and gave it a good ruffle. X shot Zero a glare, which Zero responded to with a quick peck on the cheek. "Nice scarf, by the way."

Alia watched in growing confusion as X's blush deepened. "Shut up," he muttered, clearly embarrassed. Zero's grin widened and he wrapped an arm around X, pulling him close and chuckling to himself as he slid his fingers between the scarf and X's neck and gave a gentle pull. X gave a strangled squawk and began to squirm desperately in an attempt to knock Zero's hand away, but to no avail. Zero peered downwards, and he chuckled to himself.

"Hmmm, I can see why you're wearing this scarf, X. I really did I good job last night, didn't I?"

For a moment Alia looked from X to Zero and back again, a look of confusion on her face. A very nearly visible light bulb suddenly went off above her head. A blush quickly spread across her cheeks as she quickly held her hands up to lips, muffling her giggles. Sighing heavily in defeat, X slouched against the back of the chair and pulled the scarf over his face, glaring at Zero from over the top all the while.