Something was tickling his nose. He twitched it, eyes still closed, trying futilely to dislodge whatever bit of fluff had taken up residence on his pillow, fluttering irritatingly against his nose. Finally, he brought up his hand to forcibly remove the aforementioned annoying bit, and came away with a fistful of blonde hair.

"Ouch! That's attached, you know." Rikku snuggled deeper into the covers, and her hair slid between his fingers, drifting in sunny disarray down over his pillows. A delicate hand skittered over his blankets, violent pink colored fingernails grasping at the coverlet and jerking it over her head.

"Cid's girl?" Gippal scratched his head, wondering if Rikku's appearance in his bedroom had been the result of his copious ingestion of alcohol the night before, or something else entirely. He was hoping for option two.

She mumbled something, but the covers over her head muffled the sound. Gippal took the opportunity to lift the covers to ascertain the status of his undergarments – or lack thereof. He was somewhat relieved to see that he was wearing boxers – the pair that Rikku had given him as a gag gift for his twenty-first birthday. He was sober enough at this point to realize that if she caught him in them, he would never hear the end of it. So he rolled out of the bed, grabbed the nearest pair of pants – on the floor, a full five feet away from the clothes basket, where he'd haphazardly flung them last night on his way to bed – and jerked them on in record time.

Then he studied the figure sprawled out on his bed, mostly concealed by his blankets. Her dainty feet stuck out from under the covers, toenails painted a fluorescent orange.

"Hey. Cid's girl." He poked what he assumed to be her side, and was rewarded with a twitch.

"Go away. I'm sleeping."

"Not in my bed, you're not." He jerked the covers off of her, and then immediately wished he hadn't. She'd borrowed one of his shirts to use as a nightshirt, and it just barely hit mid-thigh. The sleeves drooped past her hands, and the collar dipped completely off one shoulder.

"Gippal. Gimme the covers back." She made a little annoyed sound in her throat, feeling along the bed for the covers.

"No way. My bed, my covers. How'd you get in, anyway? I could swear I locked the door." But he had been more than a little drunk.

"You did." She sighed, lazily pulling herself up to sit cross-legged on the mattress. "I never met a lock I couldn't pick." She pulled her disordered hair over her shoulder, stretching luxuriously. The shirt rode higher, almost-but-not-quite exposing her. Gippal twitched.

"You can't just crawl into my bed whenever you feel like it, you know." He gave her his best scowl, tossing her ridiculously short skirt and ridiculously shorter top at her. "We're not kids anymore. Your old man would kill me if he caught you here."

She shrugged. "Pops never leaves Bikanel, and we've been best friends ever since I can remember. You're more like a brother than a friend."

Now that hurt. Because when she turned up in his bed, wearing his shirts, he didn't feel very brotherly toward her. It had been this way as long as he'd known her. He'd always been the best friend, the confidante – he was willing to bet he'd never even been considered boyfriend material. And it was making him crazy. Because he'd been crazy about her for years, and she'd never taken a second glance at him. He'd been practically cemented into the dreaded 'best friend' role, relegated forever to midnight commsphere calls and tearful episodes in which she threw herself into his arms to lament the end of her relationship with whatever boy she had been seeing. Because they were all boys - he could never bring himself to think of any of them as men. They were too soft, too city for Rikku, who could never be content with a simple apartment in Kilika or a hut on Besaid. She needed adventure, craved excitement. She couldn't sit still for a moment, and she was still unable to see that Gippal was the one who could give her all those things, someone she'd never grow bored with. He was so frustrated he couldn't see straight.

"Look, kid. Someday you might decide to just pop on over while I've got company, and you'll get a nasty surprise," he warned. Rikku rolled her eyes.

"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that you still have sleepovers at your age."

He gave her a speaking glance. She realized her error and flushed.

"Oh. Oh. Well. Um." She jumped up, clutching her clothes, scampering towards the door. "Well. I mean, uh...it was nice to see you again. I'll make sure I call before I stop by next time. Sorry!" She fumbled with the doorknob, twisting the knob frantically, desperately.

"It's locked," he said, stifling a grin at her obvious discomfiture.

She glowed with embarrassment. Of course she'd relocked the door when she'd entered in the early hours of the morning. She'd just forgotten in her haste to escape the disconcerting situation in which she'd found herself.

"Thanks," she mumbled, flicking the lock open. She wrenched the door open. "I'll…I'll call sometime."

She practically dove from them room.

Gippal sighed, closing the door behind her. While he'd meant to embarrass her, he hadn't imagined that his comment would upset her as much as it had. He wasn't a monk, and he'd never claimed to be one. She couldn't expect him to be celibate, after all, since they weren't involved. Still, he harbored the hope that it was jealousy rather than the sudden realization that Gippal was a man with a man's urges that had caused her flight.

- - -

In the hallway, Rikku patted her hot cheeks, hoping that her blush had receded enough for her to get the hell out of Djose without being teased by any of the laborers.

Sure, she'd known that Gippal had women. Still, she'd never asked about them, and he'd never talked about them. On some level, it was disconcerting. She'd always thought that she was the only steady woman in Gippal's life, that no matter how many women he slept with, they would still always be best friends. The idea that someday he might not want her around was scary. What if she and his future girlfriend didn't get along? Would Gippal choose his girlfriend over Rikku? Was it possible that their friendship wasn't nearly as solid as she liked to think it was?

And why now? Why had Gippal chosen that particular moment to mention that she might not always be welcome?

He'd been looking at her rather strangely. It was a different look, a calculating look, one that she couldn't quite decipher. Sometimes she just didn't understand him.

But, wow, did he ever look great without a shirt.