Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Final Fantasy x-2.

A/N: Lol, I feel such pity for Rikku. It'll be pure hell is I had to swap places with her right now. Holy cow! Thank you guys so very much for the reviews! woot! I've finally reached the 100 review mark! All thanks to you guys! And also, now I finally know what the term according to fanfiction, what 'lemon' means. Thanks!

Now, let's continue with this fanfic…

Chapter Seven

I was stuck all in a heap

Rikku heard his voice, but she felt too miserable and too ill to move, much less respond.

"Rikku." Gippal said, leaning down over her. "What's wrong?"

She felt his hand on her shoulder, felt his fingers pull back her braid.

"I'll be all right." She said between gritted teeth, and promptly proved herself wrong. Her body shuddered and heaved, but there was nothing left in her stomach.

"Just a moment." Gippal said, now seriously worried. "I'll fetch Grunyon."

But Grunyon was already standing in the open doorway, his face a study of appalled concern, his night cap askew on his bald head.

"Sir—

"She's ill. Can you help her?"

"Leave me alone." Rikku said. She managed to pull back from the toilet and come up on her knees. She sent a bleary look toward her husband, then a cramp seized her, and she moaned, wrapping her arms around her stomach.

Grunyon dropped to his knees beside her. "Lady Rikku, did you take anything? Any potions for your headache?"

Rikku managed a nod.

"A Hi-Potion, I think, but now I'm pretty sure that it was something else. I'm alright now…no! I wanna to die." She shot a brief look at her husband, who was standing quite close, his eyes narrowing with worry. "Just leave, please?"

"Don't be a Mrs. Grundy." Gippal said shortly. He leaned down and pulled her to her feet and then into his arms. "Grunyon, could ya get me some water and a clean cloth? She's sweating like a Sand Worm on steroids."

Rikku felt too awful to take more than a passing exception to his words. Another cramp seized her, and she twisted in his arms.

"Shush." He said. "You'll be alright, Rikku." He carried and laid her on the bed and covered her shaking body with the blankets. Grunyon handed him a wet cloth and he wiped her face. If anyone could look colorless and green at the same time, she did. Her eyes were tightly closed, her lips pressed firmly together.

"Sir." Grunyon said from behind her. "Here's the vial, but I don't know what the contents are."

Rikku couldn't bear to have this stranger, this husband/man staring down at her as if she were some sort of freak. She forced her eyes open and saw him take the vial from Grunyon and sniff the contents. She turned her face away and said: "I think it was a substance I packed for the machina."

"Why the hell'd you pack something like that?"

"The contents are very extraordinary… and I'm sure you won't have it in your machine faction, I didn't want to forget it."

Gippal said, without thinking: "Well, we're gonna get this stuff outta your system. Come, let—

"There's nothing left in my system." Rikku said, gritting her teeth against another cramp.

"I think a Hi-Potion, sir." Said Grunyon, hovering beside the bed. "An actual real Hi-Potion."

Rikku groaned.

"Fetch it please." Said Gippal. He watched Grunyon's nightcap slide off his head as he rushed toward the sliding door.

He continued wiping Rikku's face with the damp cloth. He said more to himself than to her: "So, you're really ill with a headache after all."

Anger at him fought with nausea and the anger won for the moment. "You thought I wasn't? You thought that I was a liar?"

"Yep." Gippal said honestly. "But not a liar exactly. I just thought you'd do anything to keep me from bedding you."

"You're right about that." Rikku said. The nausea faded and she allowed herself to relax. She sighed deeply, but still kept her face averted. She wasn't wearing her glasses. That, she decided, in a moment of irony, would have been the final touch. She could imagine what she looked like. Yevon, with the spectacles, he'd probably have left her hanging over the toilet and escaped the room without a word.

He realized she was on the verge of feeling a bit better and remembered well enough that distraction was a good thing for a sick or wounded person. For anyone, he supposed. "But why?" he asked after a moment, wanting to distract her, but also utterly serious.

He doesn't even realize how arrogant and conceited he is.

"We're married, Rikku. You know that we must sleep together and have se…and be…er… intimate."

He sounded so genuinely confused that she wanted to laugh. "I saw you naked, you know." She said.

"Wha?" He quickly placed a hand on her forehead, wondering if she'd lapsed into delusion.

"When you were bathing in the Oasis, the day you arrived at Bikanel. I was there. I didn't know who you were, at first."

"Ah." He said, and grinned. He remembered clearly the shock of that icy water. "That means, you must know from your observation that I'm not ill-formed."

"Nope." she sighed. "You're not."

"Least I offered you the chance to see what you're getting in a husband. Wish I had the same opportunity though."

She sucked in her breath.

"Sir, here's a couple of Hi-Potions."

"Thanks, Grunyon. I'll make sure she drinks the last drop. I'll call if I need ya."

Grunyon gazed a moment at Gippal's wife, lying in a wretched huddle in the center of the large bed. Then he looked at her, really looked. Without the spectacles, she wasn't at all unattractive. Not at all. Even though her hair looked sweaty and dull in its braid, it was a lovely color and the braid thick as his wrist. Was Gippal blind? He stepped back and watched his master gently lift his wife and put the vial to her pale lips.

"Come on, drink it."

She felt too weak to argue with him. She drank, all of it. He eased her onto her back, turned, and opened another bottle.

"Please, please, just leave." Rikku said. He'd seen her vilely ill; it was embarrassing,

"I can't. Come on drink some more."

"No, no more."

Her refusal had no effect on him. She drank, but with ill grace. "Great. You deserve a reward." Gippal said.

"Sir…" she begun. "I'd love it if you left me for while…please."

"Sir? Why? Come on, Rikku, I'm not such a cold-blooded brute to leave you alone when you're sick."

"I have to use the toilet." She said baldly, beyond facts.

"Again? Ah, okay. Come along, I'll help you."

"Sir…Gippal, please. Go away!"

"Rikku, stop being an ass." He was getting impatient with her. "I'm not gonna be degusted my watching you puke!"

"It's not my mouth that needs the toilet!"

He laughed, he couldn't help himself. "I see." He said, and quickly rose. "You can manage alone, right?"

"Get out!"

"You've five minutes. I don't wanna take the chance of finding you sprawled unconscious in a heap on the floor." With that, Gippal strode out of the room, pressing the door-panel behind him

"Gippal, why've you left Lady Rikku?"

"You still up, Grunyon? Yeah, I left her alone. She had to use the loo."

"But in that case…" Grunyon headed toward the door. "I'll help her, Gippal I'll—

Gippal laughed. "She had to relieve herself after the three Hi-Potions."

"Oh." Grunyon said, and surprised Gippal by blushing right to his eyebrows.

Gippal grew abruptly serious. "Do you think we should fetch a white mage?"

Grunyon shook his head. "If she managed to keep the tea down, she'll be alright."

"Down and through." Said Gippal.

"Gippal!"

"Sorry." Gippal said. He thrashed his fingers through his hair. "This has been the strangest two days of my life. I really thought she was lying about the headache to avoid…well, to keep from—

"Yes Gippal." Grunyon said quickly. "I understand."

"I think her five minutes are up. Go to sleep, Grunyon. I'm going to." He grinned. "Hell, a first time for everyone. Sleeping with a woman and not having sex with her."

"Sir!"

He quirked an eyebrow at his valet, then quickly entered the bedroom. Actually it was also a first time to sleep with a woman who had been vilely sick. The lights were dimmed. Rikku was turned on her side away from him, the blankets drawn to her nose.

"How do you feel?"

"Alright." She said, not emerging from the warm and protective cocoon.

He wanted to leave but knew that he couldn't. He said: "Look, Rikku, I'm staying with you tonight. If you get sick again, you don't want to be alone."

"I won't get ill again."

"You won't, huh? If you're so smart, then why did you drink down that machina vile?"

"Go the devil." She said very clearly.

Gippal was taken aback for a moment. So she wasn't all dimness and diffidence. There was a bit of bite to her when pushed hard enough.

"Go to sleep." He said. "I won't ravish you tonight."

Tonight.

Gippal turned away and stripped off his clothes. Out of long habit, he neatly folded them over the back of a chair. When he returned to the bed, he saw that Rikku was hugging the far edge, so close that he expected her to crash to the floor at any moment.

Rikku felt the mattress give when he got into bed. She held her breath, but he stayed on his side. So strange, she managed to think some minutes later, finally secure in her belief that he would keep his word. She was lying in bed with a man. She was so nervous that it took her some minutes to realize that her stomach was back to normal and that her husband was asleep.

He turned unto his stomach, grinning in the darkness.

He began to snore.

Rikku gritted her teeth and clamped the pillow around her ears.

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She awoke to find herself quite alone. She questioned her body and found a neutral response. No more cramps, no more nausea. But the thought of another endless day spent on the airship gave her significant pause. At least her husband, in a spate of good manners, had dressed and left her alone. She glanced toward the small clock on the mantel. It was six o'clock in the afternoon. Meaning she had slept the day through.

She quickly took a shower, drying herself ten minutes later. She was dressed, her hair in a severe, dull bun, her spectacles in place, within twenty minutes. She came down the lift, only to draw up at the sound of her husband's voice near the bridge.

"I guess we should hire a white mage. She hasn't woken up since last night, and we don't know any white magic to heal her." Gippal said. "Damn, I don't know. It'll be wasting another day."

"You're right, of course. But where can we find one?" Came Grunyon's voice.

Rikku squared her shoulders and entered the area.

"It's alright. We don't need a white mage, sir." She said.

"Rikku! What the hell are you doing out of bed?"

"I think that I've slept enough, sir. As you said, finding a white mage'll be a waste of time."

"Gippal." he said.

"Yeah, well, Gippal."

"Are you sure?"

She flinched a bit, seeing that he was closely regarding her. She remembered to squint at him.

"Course."

"I think we should have dinner now." Grunyon said.

Gippal nodded. He looked at his wife who had suddenly become very pale. She wasn't the bad sort at all. No weak-willed fragile little female. She had guts.

She was silent as a mouse all during dinner.

Gippal studied her bent head a moment, then said: "You're feeling the thing now?"

Rikku jerked up, unable to help herself. And he saw the wariness, the distaste on her face. She squinted at him and he said sharply, wondering even as he spoke if he would be able to bring himself up to performance snuff. "For Yevon's sake, Rikku! It's not a question planned to get me in your bed."

"Yep." She said, eyeing her dinner with grave concentration. "I'm feeling heaps better."

"That's a relief."

"Yeah, it is."

He eyed her with mounting frustration. Why the hell couldn't she carry on a conversation with him? Then he wanted to laugh at himself, remembering clearly his reasons for selecting her over her sisters. She didn't chatter. She was quiet and homely. She wouldn't bother him or make demands on his time or ask for attention.

"I'll leave you alone tonight."

"That's a relief." Said Rikku, and squinted up at him. She saw him stiffen and quickly lowered her head to hide her triumphant smile.

They reached Mushroom Rock Road two nights later. Rikku was so bored she wanted to scream. And she was very hungry.

Gippal had made up his mind. He had let her be for the past two nights. Tonight, he had to complete their union. The last thing he wanted was for his workers at Djose to find her virgin's blood on the sheets. They'd been married five days. It was about time.

I'll make her relax.

"Tomorrow before noon, we'll arrive at the Machine Faction in Djose Temple." He said.

"Machine faction…" Said Rikku, not looking up.

"I bet you'll like Djose Temple." Gippal continued.

"Yeah. Goodnight, sir."

"Gippal."

"Yeah, if you want. I'll see you in the morning."

Gippal watched her rise, and his eyes went over her body. He elected to say nothing to her. He would simply appear and get the damned business over with.

"G'night." He said, and watched her walk from the bridge.

Rikku showered as soon as she got to her cabin, slipped into a night gown and ten minutes later, she was lying in the middle of her bed, her hair spread on the pillow, the room utterly dark.

She heard footsteps in the corridor outside her room, and frowned. Then the door slid open.

Heart pounding, Rikku sat up, jerking the covers to her nose.

Her husband walked into her cabin and the door slid automatically back.

TO BE CONTINUED…

A/N: (gasp!) what's he going to do? He's gonna…he's going to…she'll..!

Nwaiz, I'll see you guys in a couple of days.