Thank you to all my readers. I hope you're enjoying the story. Please leave feedback and let me know what you think; alternatively, send me e-mail. Nothing brightens my day more than seeing a review or an e-mail in my inbox... and believe me, I could seriously use some day brighteners right about now. Also, please excuse the excessive fluffiness that is apparent in some of the chapters... basically, it's there to make the author feel better about life and get a smile. I hope that it does the same for some of the readers.

RyRy

Chapter Ten

"Mm, good morning," Gippal said, rolling over as Baralai wrapped his arms around his shoulders.

"Morning," Baralai replied, nuzzling against Gippal's cheek. "Did you sleep well?"

Gippal didn't want to admit that he had spent the entire night holding Baralai against his chest, trying to comfort him, attempting to chase his nightmares away. "Yeah, just fine. You?"

Baralai seemed to not know how to answer that question. "It was okay. Some nightmares… but… they went away."

Yeah, Gippal wanted to say, they went away about an hour and a half ago. He had been awake, holding Baralai and smoothing his hair back for the entire night.

Gippal hadn't really slept much since he had started his period. It was a combination of Baralai fretting in his sleep and the discomfort of having blood pouring out of his vagina that kept Gippal awake.

He also had to go to the bathroom. "Lai, I'm glad, but I have to—"

"I know," Baralai said as he wiped the sleepers out of his eyes. "Go ahead. I'm… not going to get up yet. Too warm."

Gippal smiled at the look on Baralai's face -- it made Gippal want to kiss him… but unfortunately, it hadn't exactly become a commonplace occurrence to kiss Baralai. Yet.

However, Gippal had to go to the bathroom, and so he crawled out of the warmth of the bed (and Baralai) and shuffled to the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom.

Gippal pulled down the dark purple silk pajama pants and the cute dark blue underwear he was wearing. The plastic of the pad in his underwear made a ripping noise as it dislodged itself from his skin, and Gippal had to grimace. He hated that feeling and wished it would be done with, except that any elation he got at the thought that it would be over with soon was snuffed by the fact that it would be back again within a few weeks.

Sighing, he sat down on the toilet. He was still in a haze from the night before, remembering how it felt to hold Baralai and to feel him stop shaking, to feel his breathing change from frenzied to even… it was a good feeling, especially since Gippal knew that it had been due to his efforts that Baralai had finally been able to sleep.

It felt so good that it unnerved him a little. It wasn't supposed to feel this good… but he felt like he knew Baralai so much better after all this. He felt like he understood his old friend in a way he had never understood anybody before.

That, and Baralai was really nice to cuddle with. He had meat on his bones in a way that he hadn't when Gippal had first met him. Gippal remembered Baralai to be little and skinny, like he had been starved to death as a child. But now, the Praetor of New Yevon had some substance in the form of a healthy layer of fat around his bones and his stomach, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders weren't as hard and rough as they had looked before. Baralai had grown softer around the physical edges, and Gippal thought he kind of liked that.

When he was done urinating and musing about his bedmate, Gippal reached for a palmful of toilet paper. He reached down and wiped, then stood up.

Then he realized that he needed to change his pad. Sighing, Gippal sat back down and reached for the supply underneath the bathroom sink. He squeezed his eye closed, hating to look at what was in his underwear, and began to dislodge the pad from its position… a process which was made doubly hard by the fact that it had scrunched up during the night, contorting into a weird sticky thing that seemed like an alien's head in his skivvies.

Unfortunately, he had to open his eye to fold it up and wrap it in toilet paper, or else he would risk getting some of that gross brown-red fluid on his fingers. Gippal steeled himself and blinked his eye open.

The pad was clean and white.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Gippal leapt into the bed, squealing like a girl. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. Well, maybe not the most exciting, but it was really, really, really awesome, in his humble opinion.

Baralai blinked up at him sleepily. "What's going on?"

"It's over!"

"What's over?"

"Everything!"

Baralai blinked and looked down Gippal's body. "You're… still a woman?"

Gippal sighed and tumbled off of Baralai, landing on his side, facing the other. "No! My period's done!"

Baralai closed his eyes and sighed. "That's wonderful, Gippal."

"No, don't you get it?" Gippal grabbed Baralai around the shoulders and hugged him tightly. "I can be a normal person now!"

"Aside from the whole wrong gender thing," Baralai replied, putting his arm around Gippal in response.

"You know, that's even starting to feel normal," Gippal replied, nuzzling Baralai's shoulder. "I… kinda like being a woman."

"You do?"

Gippal smiled. "It allows me to be able to be with you like this."

"Now you're just flattering."

"It's true!"

Baralai sighed and rolled his eyes. "Gippal…"

"You know what this means, though?"

Baralai turned his head back to face Gippal again. "What?"

Gippal smiled and lifted his face close to Baralai's. "This means that you can kiss me without the… messy side effects."

Baralai looked at him in momentary confusion, then laughed. "Is that all you think about?"

"It's hard not to," Gippal replied, nosing Baralai's chin. "You're so close, and it's so nice..."

"You really are turning into a woman."

Gippal smiled. "Does that make you more or less inclined to kiss me?"

Baralai returned the smile, and finally caved into Gippal's wishes.

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Kissing was a very distracting activity. Gippal really shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as he did… before, he had always been sex sex sex, with no time for cuddling and niceties that the girls had always wanted.

However, his worldview had been changed when he had been practically raped with consent in that dressing room. Now, suddenly, cuddling seemed really important.

And Baralai was a really good cuddler.

"Gippal," Baralai said in a breath between kisses. "I'm not certain we should be… doing this…"

"You don't like it, Lai?" Gippal replied, breaking a kiss for the sole purpose of saying that. It was a waste of breath, he thought.

"I'm just… afraid it'll… go too far," Baralai answered, not resisting when Gippal kissed him between every two words. Their kisses were growing faster and more heated, their tongues and lips moving more quickly with each kiss.

"Why… is that a… problem?" Gippal didn't see any problem with this.

"Gippal…" Baralai pulled his mouth away, looking down and breaking his gaze from Gippal's eyes. "It's… strange… because it's you…"

"Because it's me?" Gippal didn't know whether to be offended or amused.

"You're… you're Gippal." Baralai sighed. "I… don't want to go too far with you. I don't want to make a mistake."

There was no such thing as too far to Gippal! And certainly not now, of all times. "But Lai, I don't think there'd be a 'too far', you know?"

Baralai's eyes widened. "You mean… you…?"

Gippal nodded. He figured that saying anything would ruin his chances.

Baralai looked away again. "But I… don't know," he continued.

"You don't know?"

"…what I'm doing."

Gippal was floored. He thought that Baralai had just admitted to being a virgin? He had to check. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Baralai nodded.

"Aww, Lai," Gippal said, wrapping his arms around the other. It was a shock, yes, but it wasn't entirely surprising. Baralai seemed like the type to be scared to touch a woman. "You don't have to be… afraid, or whatever it is that you are, about this."

"Gippal, don't you get it?" Baralai looked him sternly in the eye. "I've never been with a woman before because… I don't think I like women."

Gippal blinked. "But you said… that you liked women before… the first time we kissed." He felt his heart racing in his chest. "Don't you remember…?"

"I know," Baralai replied. "But… well, I wasn't lying, but… I don't know what I like. I don't know who I'm supposed to be with. Inside, I like men but outside I like women and New Yevon wants me to have a wife but I can't even decide who I'd like to have sex with."

A silence descended over the pair in the bed. Gippal didn't know what to say, but he continued to hold Baralai in his arms. Could this be the truth? If Baralai couldn't decide who to have sex with… did that mean that he couldn't have sex? If he wasn't interested in either… that meant that Gippal's rule about alive people having sex… didn't apply.

Gippal couldn't bear to let that be the case. Baralai couldn't be dead, and Gippal had to prove that to him. It was his current mission. Finally, it occurred to him that they were in the same position – the woman inside of Baralai wanted a man, and the man outside of Baralai wanted a woman.

Gippal was both of those things. "Lai," he whispered, lifting his eye to meet Baralai's tentative gaze. "You… do want, though, right?"

Baralai bit his lip, nodding slightly. "I do… but I don't know how, or with who, or what…"

Gippal let Baralai's words die in the air, then he pressed forward and upward, pressing his lips to Baralai's gently. Gippal watched as Baralai's eyes closed, and it made Gippal's heart skip to see that Baralai wasn't pulling away.

After a moment, Gippal pulled back. "You like that, right?"

Baralai nodded, his eyes still closed.

"Lai, let's try," Gippal suggested, nuzzling Baralai's nose affectionately. "And if it doesn't work, that's okay. But if it does work, that's okay too."

Baralai opened his eyes, met Gippal's gaze, and watched him for a moment. Gippal's heart raced in his throat and he felt his palms sweating just slightly.

Finally, Baralai nodded, and they kissed again.

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It didn't feel disgusting. Feeling Baralai inside of him wasn't revolting, and even after it was done and Baralai had left his remnants inside of Gippal, the gut-wrenching stomach pains didn't assault him like they had the first time. Instead, Gippal felt a deep warmth, and knowing that the warmth was brought by Baralai and what Baralai had left inside of him made Gippal's heart flutter. He felt pleased and happy instead of revolted and disgusting.

They lay together in a sweaty mess, and Gippal could see on Baralai's face that he was truly happy. He could see it in the soft smile that graced Baralai's lips and the way he slept so lightly and contentedly, cradling Gippal against his shoulder.

Gippal smiled too, shifting his legs and getting comfortable. He laid his arm across Baralai's chest, pulling himself in closer.

Their bodies locked together like two pieces of a puzzle, and finally, Gippal slept.