My internet is being such a bitch right now and not letting me see FanFiction this morning. But my brother is out all day, so I can pretty much do whatever I want without him interrupting me every ten minutes and asking me if he can use the computer. I guess that's a plus. I'll be working of both of my fics today but my #1 priority right now is this one, "Meets the Eye, Meets the Heart," because I've got ideas for it. And my sweatshirt smells like my moms' perfume. Damnit, I wish she wouldn't borrow my clothes…
These characters are not mine. If you are so stupid as to think that they are mine, I shall have no choice but to hurt you. Severely. Now start running.
~*~
Ch 9
I Won't Say I'm In Love
It was late at night when Yuna finally wandered home. This time, she had walked alone, knowing that her dog would keep her safe if someone unwanted snuck up on her. The sun had already set and it was only eight o'clock, and she knew that she'd be in a fair amount of trouble with Rikku, Brother, and Cid when she walked into the house, but she didn't care. She'd spent the whole day with Tidus. And he was going to help her get Seymour off of her back once and for all. And she'd kissed his cheek. Twice. She almost skipped the entire way home.
The door to her house was locked, like it was when she had left. She thought that it was rather odd—Brother usually left it unlocked. She let herself into the house, and let Ursa off of the leash.
"Hello?" She called. "Anyone here?" She saw a light on in the living room, so someone was home, but when she yelled out, nobody answered her. That was odd. She looked around the corner into the living room and saw, to her surprise, Rikku and a blonde man locked in a passionate embrace on the sofa. "Hey, Rikku. You wanna tell me how long you've been playing 'doctor' in here?" She snapped. Who was that guy?
The pair sprang apart like frightened rabbits. The man replaced a black eye-patch and straightened out twisted clothes. Rikku flipped over on the couch so that she was on her stomach and looking at Yuna, her cheeks burning red.
"H-hi, Yunie," she squeaked shyly. Ursa saw the newcomer and immediately began to sniff his clothes and hands. Yuna frowned.
"Hello, Rikku," Yuna said in a sarcastic voice. "Studying biology?" Her cousins' face turned red. The brunette addressed the man, who looked very familiar but she couldn't place where she'd seen him before. "I know you from somewhere," she declared. "Did my dog ever bite you?"
"No, but she might now," he said, hoping the dog would stay clear of his more delicate anatomy. He'd never been really comfortable around big dogs like this one.
"Yuna, this is Gippal," Rikku managed to squeak out.
"Where've I heard that name?" She mused out loud. "Sounds familiar."
"Machine Faction… posters… room… obsessive behavior—ringing any bells?" Rikku asked impatiently.
"Oh, yea," realization came into her face. She knew who this was. "Al Bhed prettyboy." She looked from one of them to the other and back again. "Hate to break it to you, Rikku, but it's getting a little late and Cid and Brother might be home soon. You'll have to kick the playboy out."
"Hey!" Gippal frowned.
"Why didn't you tell me when they would be home?" Rikku gasped. Now she looked a little panicky.
"I assumed you knew, I mean, they're related more closely to you," Yuna said. "Besides, I won't baby you and I left after I got up." She paused and looked at Gippal again. "Rikku, either you kick him out or I will, and you won't like the boot-print I'll leave if I have to do it."
"Maybe I'd better go," the Al Bhed man said meekly. He wasn't used to girls being so aggressive.
"Hey, look," Yuna put her hand on his shoulder. "I don't mind you coming back here, but I just don't want you getting caught. All hell would break loose if Cid or Brother caught you with Rikku."
As soon as Gippal left, the blonde turned to her and planted her fists on her hips. "Yunie, why were you so mean to him?"
"Wasn't intentional," she said. "Besides, I have good news."
"Oh yea? What is it?" She seemed all right, even though Yuna had kicked Gippal out of the house. But Rikku knew well enough that her father did not like her hanging around boys—especially older boys. The Al Bhed were notorious for arranging marriages with daughters and keeping the girls virgins until marriage.
"Tidus agreed to help me with my… problem," she didn't want to say the name, fearing that she might jinx it.
"You serious? You told him about that? What did he say? How's he gonna help? Are you guys dating?" She asked her questions one after another, leaving no time for Yuna to supply an answer.
"Rikku, shut up and sit down, and then I'll tell you!" She couldn't believe sometimes how fast her cousin could talk. Didn't she ever breathe? She shook her head. "Yes, I told him a long time ago about Seymour. Lulu made me promise that I would tell someone and get help. I thought you knew."
"I guess I did. Maybe I forgot. Blonde, remember?" She giggled, tugging on one of her long blonde braids. "Anyway… what else?"
"His guardian works for the police but he didn't say exactly what he does… Tidus said he'd see if he could find some loopholes and get Seymour into trouble for stalking what whatnot."
"Ooh, sounds serious," Rikku drawled. Yuna lifted a hand as if to smack her and the blonde immediately recoiled with her hands up to shield herself.
"He's not my freakin' boyfriend!" She growled.
"I never said he was," Rikku replied. She was getting the best of her cousin—a rare occurrence.
"Oh…" Yuna trailed off, a blush starting to spread on her cheeks.
"Ooh, I get it," the blonde perked up. "You like him!"
"No, I don't!" She persisted.
"Yes you do."
"No I don't!" She stomped one foot on the floor.
"Geez, don't get all defensive on me," Rikku said indignantly.
"I'm not," she said back.
Rikku decided to take a chance. "So then why do you like him, then?" She put her weight on the foot behind her so that she could dive and run out of the way if Yuna decided to suddenly go berserk on her.
Surprisingly, Yuna's eyes went all glazed over and she sighed. "Because he's a sweetheart and nice and absolutely gorgeous." Once she realized what she had done, she covered her mouth with her hands. "Aie! Rikku! Oui'na e crayg!" ["You're a sneak!"]
"Al Bhed, remember?" She sniggered. "E gnaf ed! Oui mega Tidus!" ["I knew it! You like Tidus!"] She squealed.
Yuna sighed heavily. "Fine, then, I'll just go upstairs to bed." She turned and started up the stairs.
"Yunie, it's only eight-thirty!" Rikku protested.
"I know, but I'm tired," she said. This was true. She was pretty sleepy, and she wanted to go upstairs and dream of the days' events as soon as possible. And she felt very shivery, even though it wasn't cold. When she woke up the next morning, she felt like she had been hit by a bus and the absolute last thing she wanted to do was to get up. Unfortunately, Rikku wandered into her room just after noon to wake her up.
"Yunie, this is the second day you've slept past noon! Come on, you gotta get up! No wonder you can't get to sleep at night!" The blonde said, fists on her hips and frowning.
Yuna turned over, bleary eyes glaring murderously at her cousin. "Rikku, how would you like your eyebrows plucked?" She asked venomously. "From the inside?"
"Yunie, what's with you?" She asked. "The least you could say is a simple 'Leave me alone, I'm still sleepy.'" She crossed her arms and turned away. "You've hurt my feelings…"
"Rikku, I don't give a damn. Get the hell out of here or I'll broadcast to the school that you're an Al Bhed," she threatened. She'd use the Big Guns to get her cousin to leave her alone when she felt so sick like this. She'd probably caught a cold. She hated colds. She never got the flu, or a nasty throat condition, or pneumonia, or something that they knew how to cure. She always, always, always got colds. She rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, and not succeeding.
Finally, resigned, she went downstairs in her pj's and sat down at the kitchen table in disgust. She made herself a cup of tea and cupped her hands around it, shivering in her seat.
"Yuna, you not feeling like a well?" Brother asked, incorrectly using the phrase, "Don't you feel well?"
"What?" She snapped. She had to decipher this message herself. "No, I'm not feeling at all well. Now leave me alone or I'll kill you. Slowly. Then I'll use the most powerful white magic curative spell I know and bring you back to life. Then I will kill you again."
His eyes went wide, and he paused for a moment, wondering whether or not Yuna would actually kill him. He decided that it wasn't worth to risk and left the table, being careful to take a very wide berth of her chair.
Rikku noticed Yuna's foul temperament and decided to take a chance and try to do something nice for her cousin. She took her a glass of orange juice and a couple of cold pills and set them next to her empty tea mug.
"Yunie, you think you can go to school tomorrow?" She asked tentatively. The brunette had her head buried in her arms at the table. She looked up, bleary eyed and pale-faced.
"Not unless the Anatomy and Physiology class is cutting up cadavers," Yuna replied dryly. Even through her bad mood, she managed to smile at her own comment, and Rikku giggled a little. Then her face fell. "Aw, dammit."
"What?" Rikku picked up her empty mug and brought it to the sink.
"I have a test tomorrow in second period. I can't miss it, Seymour will use it as an excuse to keep me after class another day!" She put her head down hard on the table. "Why now? Why can't I get sick some other time? Like after I've graduated?"
"Rikku, why are Yuna speaks to her feet?" Brother asked, glancing at Yuna from around the doorframe leading to the living room.
"Hey, scram, stupid!" Rikku yelled, raising the soapy tea mug up as if to throw it. Brother immediately turned tail and ran out of the kitchen. "Boy I really hate him. He's like a mosquito. I just can't get him to stop buzzing in my ears! You know he still thinks that bra I gave him was yours?"
"Rikku, you're a textbook example of why children should not be dropped on their heads," Yuna said.
The back sliding glass door slid open, and Lulu walked into the kitchen and sat down casually at the table, as if she lived there. It was her way. She'd been doing that for years, because she was over so often that she practically did live there. So she would either come in the front door without knocking, or walk around and use the back door.
"My Yuna-is-in-distress Sensor went off. What's wrong? You don't look well."
"Leave me alone to die…" Yuna groaned. Her skin was prickling painfully and all she wanted right now was to unzip it and crawl out of it.
"Yuna, it's just a cold," the mage snapped. "What are your symptoms?"
"My head feels like there's a tap-dancing shoopuf in it, my skin is prickling like my body hairs have turned into needles, and even as we speak, I think a little man inside my head is starting to build a brick wall in my nasal passages."
Lulu blinked. "All right, you have a headache, oversensitivity, and a clogged nose. Sounds like a cold to me. You'll be better in a few days. In the meantime, get plenty of rest and don't breathe on anyone else. Do you have a fever?"
"Doe," Yuna sounded now like her nose was definitely clogged. "But I have a dest id Seymour's class toborrow. I can't afford to biss that!"
"So then go to school up until you have his class, then come home," Lulu suggested, getting up to look through her refrigerator.
"I think I deed a dote," she said over her shoulder. "Lulu?" She begged.
"All right, all right. It was my idea. I'll write you a note to get out early," she conceded.
"I love you, Lulu."
"Speaking of love," Rikku giggled. "How'd your date with Father Teresa go?" [A/N: Absolutely NO OFFENSE intended to those of you who are reading this and are religious, but I couldn't resist putting that in. If you really hate it, tell me and I'll remove it and repost the chapter.]
Lulu sent her a nasty, evil glare. "Fine, thank you."
"So, you gonna see him again?" She persisted. "Or was it just a one-shot thing? A pity date?"
Uncharacteristically, Lulu merely shrugged her shoulders. "I'm unsure," she said. "He's sweet but he's such a… a religious fanatic that it makes me want to vomit." She sighed. After they left the dance, instead of going right home, they walked around the park for a while, and ended up near a churchyard where a very old graveyard sat. The graves were varied, some from that year, and some dating back up to two hundred years ago. She'd admitted to him that she liked walking through graveyards, just not at night. There was something about a graveyard during the day that made it different. It was always peaceful, she'd told him, with messages written on the tombstones about sleep, and rest, and love, and watching over the world. Wakka had given her then a very strange look, but nodded slowly. For a while she was worried that he'd spread rumors about her being a witch or a gravedigger, but no mention of the event came for the rest of the night, and he drove her home and walked her to the door—like a perfect gentleman.
"If you like hib, you'll get over it," Yuna suggested. "Or baybe he'll tone it down a bid." She shrugged. "I dunno. But on the plus side, his being a religious dork will save you from hib spreading rubors about you."
Lulu nodded. "That's the only Yevonite philosophy that I still believe in. 'Do unto others…'" She nodded. "Of course, over the years I've managed to twist it into being, 'Be as horrible as you want to other people just as long as you can take it calmly when someone else is that horrible to you.'"
"If you can't take it, don't deal it?" She asked.
"Yes. Exactly like that."
"Boy I fell left out… I 'ave absolutely no idea what you guys are talking about!" Rikku said. They'd forgotten she was Al Bhed.
"Doesn't batter eddyway," Yuna sniffled a noseful back into her head.
"That's disgusting Yunie! Go blow your nose!"
"I can't, this is only a one-way street." She put her head down. "I'm gonna go upstairs and take a dap. All right? And unless the floor is on fire, I don't want anyone coming upstairs to wake me up." She said her goodbyes and stumbled back up the stairs, her bed a welcoming sight.
Yuna spent the duration of the day curled up on her bed, watching movies on TV. Her mood was lightened a little bit when she caught one of her favorites, an older comedy called "Victor-Victoria," but she fell asleep halfway through it and didn't wake up until eight. She stumbled downstairs for another dose of medicine and a hot water bottle. Rikku was sitting in the living room, fighting with her brother over the television remote control. When she saw Yuna, she let go of the device, sending Brother tumbling backwards over the arm of a chair.
"Hey Yunie," she said carefully. "Tidus called while you were asleep. He wanted to know if he could come over."
"Why didn't you come and get bee?" She sniffled, popping down two pills and heating up some water on the stove.
"The floor wasn't on fire," Rikku said, putting her hands up to shield herself in case Yuna decided to hit her.
"Oh. Okay. Did you tell hib I was dying very slowly?" She asked, wrapping her blanket around herself tightly.
"No, I just said you were sleeping and that you weren't feeling well, that's all," she replied. "Go upstairs. I'll bring the hot water bottle when it's heated up, okay?"
Yuna nodded, surprised at how responsible and even maternal her younger cousin was being. It was probably just because she was sick, she decided. She went back upstairs wrapped in her blanket and fell into bed again, very dizzy, very tired, and wishing that she would just get struck by lightning now and get it over with. When her alarm clock went off at six, she wished more than anything that she didn't have to get up. But somehow, she managed to get up, cleaned, and dressed.
They got to school a little late, because Rikku had to dive them and she wasn't used to driving Yuna's motorbike. Yuna wasn't up to doing much of anything in art class that morning, so she found a chair in the back room where two of the three kilns were running, making the small room toasty warm. She sat down and promptly fell asleep in her chair. Tidus watched her from where he was seated.
"Is she gonna be okay?" He asked Rikku. "I mean… she doesn't look good. She looks kinda green."
"She really shouldn't be here. She should be at home, resting, but she said she had a test in second period that she couldn't afford to miss because you-know-who might keep her after class another day." She went back to arguing with her project.
Tidus nodded slowly. He'd keep a close eye on her for the next class. He was still sitting behind her in that class and he wanted to make absolutely sure that Seymour didn't do something that he shouldn't. But in reality, he'd crossed that line when he told Yuna to come live with him.
Miss Amí from the art room ended up having to wake Yuna and give her a pass to Seymour's classroom so she wouldn't be given an Unexcused Tardy. She came in about three minutes after the bell ran, and she thought that she would just about faint. Her head was spinning, her vision was disoriented, and she wasn't exactly sure, but she thought that she might have felt her stomach turn itself inside out.
Even though she had a signed pass, Seymour still opened his mouth to tell her that she had to stay after class. Someone from near the back of the room spoke just then, saying, "She's got a pass, it's signed, she's excused—just give the damned test and get it over with. Real quick, like ripping off a band-aid."
Tidus.
Yuna looked his way with such a look of relief on her face that he feared that she would melt into a puddle on the floor. Seymour told her to go sit down, then passed out tests. Since the test didn't require too much thinking, Yuna got finished with it in about half an hour, turned the paper in, and put her head down on her desk, shivering slightly. In twenty minutes, she would be allowed to go home. Twenty minutes, she told herself over and over.
She zoned out a few times, managing again to get a grip on reality long enough to stay awake. Something warm and heavy draped over her shoulders, and she recognized the fur lining of her denim jacket, which she had put on the floor when she sat down. Tidus patted her shoulder gently.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"No talking!" Seymour snapped. "Tidus Reina, sit back down in your seat!"
"Sir, she looks like she's gonna pass out. Permission to take her to the nurse and have her brought home?" He sounded as polite as he could muster.
"No, you may not. In your seat, boy."
"What if she faints? Better safe than sorry." He planted his fists on his hips and waited in a stare-down with Seymour until the man broke the gaze.
"Fine. Take her to the nurse and come right back," he said.
He nodded. "Hey, Yuna," he nudged her gently. "Come on, get your stuff. I'm takin' you outta here."
Yuna nodded, clumsily putting her jacket on and picking up her backpack. Tidus led her from the classroom and down the hallway to the nurse. Lucky for them, they were on the same floor as the nurses' office, so they didn't have that far to go. On their way, they spotted a handful of couples completely wrapped around one another.
"How can they do that?" Yuna asked. "Wherever one goes, the other follows! They're like Siamese twins! They're never without the other. They're never alone. If you have to say something, both of them have to hear it."
"No one really expects them to be without the other. I mean, if one gets in trouble, the other serves the detention with them," Tidus said with a shrug. He'd had a handful of short-term girlfriends before but none like the couples that he saw around here, who were more like skin grafts than people.
Yuna suddenly stopped in her tracks. "Even teachers let them have it their way?"
"Most of the time. Usually all of the time." He tilted his head to one side. "Why?"
"I have an idea…" she trailed off. Then she turned to him and took his hand. "Pretend to be my boyfriend. Just to make sure that Seymour never gets a chance to be alone with me."
Eyes wide, Tidus just stared at her. He would rather have been her actual boyfriend, rather than just putting on an act to scare someone off, but he decided to take what he could get and work on it from there. "Okay," he said. "I'll be your boyfriend."
"Thank you," she hugged him tightly, and then slipped into the nurse's office. When she was gone, a grin crept across his lips… she hadn't corrected him when he said, "I'll be your boyfriend" instead of, "I'll pretend to be your boyfriend."
~*~
OHMYGOSH! That took forever, didn't it? Actually, it involves a few interims, two bad grades, one grade screw-up, a fight with my parents, some sulking, and banned computer time. But I'm back, and here's your chapter. So… YAY! Please review and make this very depressed author happy! (Actually, I'm in a good mood. I'm off of my stupid meds and I have my computer back after a few days of being banned.) More coming as soon as possible. Ideas and criticism are both welcome. So is praise. ^_^