First of all I'd like to thank everyone who left me reviews for this story already! All of the comments I'm getting are pretty positive, which is making me much more confident overall with this fanfiction. Specifically, thank you for showing me that you want an update- it's encouraged me to put this chapter up faster, so remember that in the future!
I'm putting this chapter up fairly early to give you more to read before I put up Chapter Three next Wednesday. You see, this entire story has already been written, but I'm pacing out my updates, just to annoy you. I don't think I'll ever make you wait more than a week, however, so that should be nice enough. Chapter Three will explain the way my male pregnancy works in a more detailed manner as well.
(If you haven't noticed, then I'll alert you to this- some of the words in my writing have unneeded spaces between the letters. This is because the laptop I write on has child blocks on certain words and if I do not catch them before I upload a chapter, they will show up as simply a blank spot. If you ever find a confusing blank spot somewhere, please alert me to it via PM and I will fix it!)
Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to point out any part you liked or didn't like in a review!
Chapter 2- Unexplained Ailment
"Good morning, Onii-sama!" Nunnally extended her arms for a hug as she greeted her brother. Her sensitive ears could easily pick up his footsteps every morning when he passed by her room.
Lelouch snapped his attention toward his sister's call and smiled as he strode over to her outstretched arms. "Good morning, Nunnally, how were your dreams?" He asked, latching around Nunnally's back in a soft hug.
"I dreamed about Suzaku last night! He was coming home early, just for you!" Nunnally giggled, obviously not sharing with Lelouch the greater details.
Lelouch struggled to keep his smile intact, and brought his sister's hand up to his lips where he brushed a kiss upon her fingertips, kneeling on one knee before her wheelchair. "Really now? And what sorts of wonderful pricey gifts did he bring his two favorite people in the world? He had better have brought us gifts." Lelouch responded with a fake glare toward the non-existent Suzaku, and Nunnally laughed with delight.
"He didn't bring us any gifts, no, but he was definitely glad to see you, Onii-sama!" Nunnally smiled and tilted her head at her brother with a knowing look. Lelouch closed his eyes as he smiled and rubbed his hand on his little sister's head ruthlessly. She gasped only slightly and reached up with her hands to cease the action.
"Onii-sama, you're going to mess up my hair right before school!" Lelouch chuckled airily and smoothed out the top of her head.
"You are always beautiful, no matter how 'messed up' I make your appearance." Lelouch reached up and kissed Nunnally's forehead, a hand supporting the back of her head, and rose from his knees to leave for morning classes.
The younger Britannian sibling giggled and smiled warmly at her brother. "You do promise to come back home should you feel sick during the day, right?" She asked, a bit of the cheerfulness dissipating from her voice.
Lelouch gave her a fake smile and said, "Of course. I'll see you later, Nunnally," He called from the doorway, "Don't forget to go to school or anything."
"Lelouch!" Nunnally's overly exasperated voice echoed through their on-campus home at Ashford Academy. "I promise I won't; now you keep your promise!" She emphasized the end of her sentence as Lelouch walked out the double-doorway.
"I promise." He said mostly to himself, and trudged through the fall leaves that currently adorned Ashford's lawns toward his classes. Of course, he would probably sleep through most of the day in actuality.
Lelouch had, after a string of unfortunate hurried trips to the bathroom, successfully emptied his stomach of everything he'd consumed over the past twenty four hours, and had also acquired some much-needed time to think as he recovered on the floor of the boy's bathroom at Ashford Academy.
Such as wondering where Kallen'd been. She hadn't been in school at all for the entire three weeks—interesting; it'd already been three weeks—since Suzaku had left for work. Perhaps she'd been sick again, he mused.
What was going on at Suzaku's side of the day? He'd also asked himself this multiple times in one day. Random rambling to himself, about what could possibly be happening to his missing link's day as he emptied his stomach of digested and undigested food after lunch, often occurred.
Everything he thought about reverted to the thought of his Japanese boy.
It was here that Lelouch, after washing his face and hands in the sink at the boy's bathroom, decided to take his sister's intelligent advice and go home for the day. After washing out his mouth multiple times in an attempt to wash out the acidic taste caked on his teeth, he headed to the nurse's office, which coincidentally was past the Student Council room. 'Just to my luck', he pondered sarcastically. The nurse readily agreed to let him leave immediately. Schools didn't like having puking kids on their premises.
Which led us to the wandering eye that caught Lelouch's leaving self as he passed the Student Council room. Shirley Fenette was a bit smarter than she let other people on to know; she knew something was up.
So when she saw her crush speed by the classroom, she keenly jumped from her seat and chased after Lelouch, eventually catching up.
"Lulu? Are you sick? What's going on?" She asked; worry was etched into her face.
Lelouch merely looked to his right, where Shirley was now following him, and sighed. "I was hoping no one would see me," He said in his fake voice, "I'm fine, Shirley."
Shirley's eyebrows creased into downward upset slants as she frowned at him. "No, you're not! You've been so down for almost a month now, and worst of all you've been physically sick over it for the past week!" Lelouch looked to the ground.
"I… No, really, Shirley, I'll be okay." Lelouch attempted to give her a smile, but she could easily see through his eyes how tired he was.
"Stop lying to me! To all of us…" Shirley then took her turn talking to the floors to hide her face from him. "We all care about you, you know? Can't you just tell us when you're feeling sad, or sick, let us into your barricaded life? I don't want you to be alone, Lelouch." She stopped her tears before they could fall and looked straight into his violet eyes.
Shirley suddenly felt extremely terrible, for it seemed as if her crush was about to break down right there, just from the look in his eyes. "Lelouch, I'm sorry, I…" They stood there together, averting their eyes for a while, when Shirley's voice came out almost a whisper. "It's Suzaku, isn't it?" The tiredness in his eyes reappeared momentarily before he switched his mood to one of surprise.
"No, Shirley, it's not… It's not what you think." He gave her a soft apologetic gaze. She smiled ever-so-slightly, which sort of caught Lelouch off-guard.
"No, it's alright. I've had my suspicions for a while. The way you guys look at each other these days, it's like you'd kill an entire army for each other." Shirley put a hand up to cover her mouth as she giggled like a giddy schoolgirl. Lelouch, on the other hand, had a look of slight bewilderment on his face.
"You're not mad or anything?" He asked sincerely, and Shirley laughed a bit more before giving him a beaming smile.
"Of course not, so long as you're happy, I am! Although, you obviously aren't at the moment, but I can be here to help you now that you finally broke through for me."
"Even though you had this crush on me for the longest time?"
Shirley laughed nervously as she scratched the back of her head. "Oh, you heard about that?" She looked down at her feet. "It's okay, really. Like I said before, so long as you're happy." She shot him a genuine smile which made Lelouch actually feel a bit better despite his terrible mood and health, and he smiled a bit too.
Shirley gasped a bit and pointed at his face, which earned her another confused look before she exclaimed, "I made you smile, Lulu! See, I can help you through this!" She giggled a bit before pulling him into a short, heartfelt hug. "Please feel better, Lulu." She whispered, and Lelouch returned her hug tightly.
"I promise I'll try, Shirley." He told her, and let go first. "I'll see you in a bit, then." He said, repositioning his bag over his shoulder. "Can you promise not to tell anyone about us? I swear I'll kill you if Milly ever hears of it." He gave her a glare that she sorely mistook as a joke and laughed at, before she realized he was being completely serious.
"Oh, yeah, of course I understand; Milly would verbally kill you." She said swiftly, and waved him goodbye. He returned the gesture in regulation, and hurried home to his bathroom where he heaved up anything left in his system and then some in the comfort of his own home.
'What's wrong with me?' He asked himself, and caught a glimpse of his pale, sunken- in face in the mirror as he cleaned himself once again in the sink. Lelouch sauntered into his room and collapsed onto his bed and fell into such a deep unconsciousness so fast, it made Sayoko worry a bit when she found him there an hour later. She did the best she could for him by picking him up out of the awkward position he was in—'My God, he's so light' she fretted internally—and tucking him into his bed before returning to her regular housekeeping duties.
When Nunnally returned home, Sayoko whispered to the schoolgirl her brother's condition, and while she was particularly nervous for him, she spent her afternoon with Sayoko.
"Sayoko-san, are you worried about my Onii-sama too?" Nunnally asked, her mouth turning downward into a slight frown. Sayoko put down the crane she was working on folding and sighed.
"Of course, Nunnally-sama, he just hasn't been himself, has he? I found him sleeping in his bed around noon today; he must have come home sick." She mused, and Nunnally's face twisted into one of even more concern.
"I told him to come home if he felt bad at school today…" She said with anxiety in her voice. "Did he have a fever, Sayoko-san?"
Sayoko shook her head briefly. "Not from what I felt when I put him in bed correctly, no. Did he have one yesterday?"
Nunnally nodded slightly. "A small one, yes," She sighed shakily, "I really don't like it when he's sick, Sayoko-san. I know that I can not help him, even if I so very much want to. Could you take me to his room, please?" Nunnally begged, and Sayoko easily accepted.
Lelouch could barely remember what had happened today before he had to rush to the bathroom again with another series of ha cking and coughing. He obviously hadn't anything left to give to the sewage system, because all he managed to cough up was a bunch of painful air scratching agonizingly at his throat. He downed multiple cups of water before finally leaving the bathroom and returning to his bed. His arms outstretched across the bed, Lelouch lay there in a complete haze of sickness and confusion before he heard his automatic door slide open with a hiss and his sister's wheelchair roll into his room.
"Nunnally?" He croaked quietly through his irritated voice, and he attempted to clear his throat before repeating his sister's name. "Nunnally, what is it? Is everything okay?" Nunnally gave her attention to the ground.
"No, everything is not okay, Onii-sama! You're very sick; we really should take you to a doctor!" Nunnally scolded her brother, but even when she was upset, she did little more than slightly raise her voice.
"Nunnally, I'll be okay once it blows over, I'm sure it's just a virus. I just need a lot of rest, is all." Lelouch smiled at his sister, but she didn't completely buy the story. Nunnally looked up to Sayoko; Sayoko nodded and wheeled her over to her brother's bedside, where she reached out for his hand.
Lelouch gave Nunnally his hand, to which she rubbed against her cheek. "Onii-sama, you should eat some dinner. Sayoko made some soup just for you because she knew you were sick, okay?" Nunnally reassured her brother, and despite Lelouch's dismay as to the way it would eventually leave his system before it would have even reached his digestive system, he agreed to the kind gesture.
Nunnally and Sayoko both disappeared for about a minute before reappearing with a thermos full of tomato soup. While Nunnally discussed what had happened during her day, Lelouch did really try to consume the fresh soup they'd offered him, and even though he was in no mood to even think about how acidic it would be coming back up his esophagus, he managed to drink a few sips before claiming he needed more rest. While Sayoko was very worried for him to have not eaten a full meal in days, he dismissed it and assured her he was perfectly okay, even if he truly wasn't.
Once the noisy duo had left his room, Lelouch immediately collapsed into his bed, and lazily pulled off his clothing in great effort and barely managed to pull up his covers before falling back asleep, as deeply as he had before.
Sayoko swiftly brushed her feather duster across Lelouch's bookshelves in his room as she continued to serve them as their housekeeping maid. She was, of course, incredibly loyal to the Lamperouge family, and they treated her incredibly well, so she had no objections to maintaining the house despite Lelouch's obvious attempts to keep the suite clean himself. He respected her more as a companion to his little sister Nunnally, and she respected his attempt to make her life a bit easier. Thus the two became closer to each other, as if friends.
So it came to her as quite a surprise when she found his books tilted to the side within his bookshelf, something that Lelouch would have never tolerated due to his extreme hatred of objects placed out-of-line.
She was even more surprised when, as she pushed the books back to their rightful state, she saw what she believed to be a note behind said books.
Utter confusion was clearly displayed on her face when she removed the piece of paper only to find that it was a prescription report. She wondered what it was for just a moment before she recognized the name on the slip.
'Oh.'
"Oh, dear Go—" Sayoko suddenly remembered that Lelouch was sleeping just feet away from where she stood, and cut herself off as she stared at the letter. She promptly snapped her attention back to reality and shakily put it back in its previous location, as well as left the books tilted to the left ever-so-slightly, so as Lelouch could also find out on his own.
Sayoko nearly had to sprint out of Lelouch's room to make it out of his earshot before giggling so hard she snorted, something quite unbecoming of a lady. Her cackles slowed to a stop after about thirty seconds, and she set a straight face back on while she calmly walked away from the scene and continued her work elsewhere.
When Nunnally returned home from school that day, she noticed a spring in Sayoko's step and asked what was quite so entertaining as to pep up Sayoko's mood, but she merely responded with a giggle, and a "You'll know soon enough, Nunnally-sama.", which left Nunnally with a lot of questions and a bit of a headache.
Ah, Sayoko, the world's just a bit better with you around. Thanks to all who read, please do leave a review! Any kind of feedback is good feedback! Except flames.
Code Geass and all of its attributes (c) Sunrise/CLAMP/Bandai Entertainment/Goro Taniguchi.
