Disclaimer: I don't own this series of any of its characters and I don't wish to make a profit from this story.

Author's Note: I wrote this for a challenge on the Z/A livejournal community. Also a big thanks goes to Ameban for beta reading this story for me.

Price of a Kiss

Zelgadis was wet, that was his first observation. His eyes were shut, but he felt too dizzy to open them just yet. What had happened? Slowly, fuzzy memories of his new role as the living anchor for the ship came back.

Oh right, that. He personally swore he would make Lina pay for this. He didn't know when, and he didn't know how, but the girl would pay. He had never been so humiliated-

"Is he alright?"

Amelia's voice broke through his thoughts and was shortly followed by Ashford's voice.

"He's fine, just a little water logged."

I'd better get up and let Amelia see that I am alright.

"Should we give him artificial reip-reipitat...um mouth to mouth?"

Zelgadis's body froze. Amelia would give him mouth to mouth? Her lips touching his? In other words, he could easily steal a kiss. He mentally slapped himself for even considering the thought. When on earth did he become so immature? It would be against his pride to do something so childish. Forget the fact that it had been years since he'd kissed a cute girl.

He paused. Then again, what harm would it do? It would be just one little kiss. No one would know. The chimera wanted to ponder on the dilemma longer, but time seemed to have decided for him. He suddenly felt Amelia's hands on his chest.

He tried to keep his body still as Amelia placed her lips onto his. His heart was beating rapidly. It was short, but sweet. It was hard not to respond. It just felt so good to feel another person's presence against his lips. Although his stone skin made it difficult to feel textures, Zelgadis could feel Amelia's body heat through her mouth. It was warm and felt good. He was beyond content. He felt like a cat that had found a perfect spot to soak in the sun's rays. Zelgadis could linger in this moment all day long. Suddenly, Amelia's breath blew into his lungs and forced him to cough.

Amelia steadied him as Zelgadis sat up. He couldn't help but notice that she was blushing. "Thank goodness!" Amelia exclaimed.

"There, I told you he would be alright!" Ashford chimed in. "If I thought otherwise, I would have been more willing to do the deed myself."

Zelgadis cringed and shivered suddenly feeling he had narrowly escaped an unwanted experience.

"So, how do we catch the sea dragon now?" Gourry asked.

Ashford led Amelia and Gourry to the front of the ship as they talked. Zelgadis climbed to his feet, feeling rather smug. He got away with it. He actually got away with it.

"Ahem." For some reason Lina clearing her throat put Zelgadis on edge. She smiled at him. "Feeling better, Zel?"

Zelgadis folded his arms. There was no reason to put up his guard. It was impossible for Lina to know what he just did. "Yes, I feel fine."

Lina continued to smile. "Glad to hear that, we'll talk more about it later."

Zelgadis tried to ignore it, he really did, but the smirk Lina gave him before turning her back to him made him feel like he was a canary caught between a cat's paws.

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Once Lina's attention was drawn back to obtaining dragon cuisine, Zelgadis felt more at ease and decided to write off his uneasy feelings as paranoia. He didn't think of the kiss again until shortly after they had learned about how long dragon cuisine took to cook and left the restaurant with a kicking screaming Lina in tow. The fear came back as he and Lina were gathering fire wood.

As he reached to pick up a stray branch Lina said "So, you enjoyed your kiss, Zel?"

His heart stopped. He told himself to stay cool. "What are you talking about?"

Lina held the stick in her hands like a baton and twirled it. "Why, I'm talking about your little fake out so you could steal a kiss from our favorite princess."

Zelgadis sweated. She knew! She knew! "I wasn't faking-"

She pointed the stick at his chest. "Save it, Zelgadis. I know you weren't unconscious. The others might not have noticed, but your body twitched when Amelia touched you." She smirked. "Just couldn't resist getting kissed, huh Zel? You sly dog. Tricking her."

"It's not like that! I just thought-" He clamped his hand over his mouth. There was no escape now.

"Ha! You admit it!" Lina paced, placing the stick behind her head. "But the question is now, what do I do with this precious information?"

"It's not that big of a deal."

Lina pointed the stick at him like a teacher with a ruler. "Maybe it isn't to you, but you probably stole Amelia's first kiss. That's a high crime for girls you know." She nodded. "Yup, I can already hear the LONG justice speech Amelia would give you if she knew the truth about your little deception."

Zelgadis's twitched and glared. "That won't happen as long as certain red haired sorceresses keep their mouths shut."

Lina shook her head. "There's no way I could do that, Zel. A girl should always tell another girl when a guy tricks her." She smiled evilly. "Unless, of course, I got a better offer."

Zelgadis groaned. There was no denying what was cooking in that twisted head of Lina's. "You're blackmailing me, aren't you?"

"Bingo!" Lina cheered. "It's a fair trade. I keep my mouth shut and you do me a couple of little favors."

"Such as?"

Lina pondered. "Well...paying for my dinner, doing my laundry or maybe I'll just make you my butler for a day!"

His sense of pride shuddered at the thought of being used as servant. "I'm not doing that!"

Lina nodded. "Fine, then I'm going to have a chat with Amelia."

"Wait!"

Lina smiled and turned to him. "Deal then?"

Zelgadis grumbled and then agreed. He now felt like a swallowed bird sitting in a cat's stomach.

Something was not right. Amelia wasn't sure what it was, but something was not right within their group, especially between Lina and Zelgadis. It didn't alarm her at first when Zelgadis had offered to pay for Lina's meal. She had thought it was odd behavior, but perhaps the chimera was just in a generous mood. Then, Lina asked him to pay for her room and he agreed to it. Again, strange, but Amelia didn't want to make a big deal out of a small issue, she decided to let it go.

Be as that may, her decision changed when Lina had asked Zelgadis to use his fists like a nutcracker and open walnuts for her. As he crushed the nuts between his fingers, Amelia knew something was wrong, especially when Zelgadis feed Lina the nuts by hand.

Later on, she stared in horror as Zelgadis gave Lina a shoulder massage. That night she lay awake pondering the issue. What was going on?! This wasn't like Zelgadis at all. Could it be possible that Zelgadis and Lina had fallen in love without her or Gourry knowing? No! That couldn't be right! Lina belonged with Gourry. There was no way she would fall in love with Zelgadis. Even if that was the case, why wasn't Gourry doing anything? He should be fighting to win Lina back.

A dreadful thought occurred. What if the love was one-sided? What if Zelgadis was in love with Lina and she was just using it to her advantage. That strangely made more sense, but she never imagined Lina would be that cruel. Sure, she would take advantage of people, but to abuse the love of a close friend? Amelia shook her head. She was jumping to conclusions. There was no way Zelgadis could be in love with Lina.

She tried to toss the foolish thought aside, but it couldn't help but resurface at breakfast when once again Zelgadis offered to pay for Lina's meal. The princess felt a weird mixture of anger and jealously. She didn't understand why she was jealous. If Zelgadis was in love with Lina, that was his choice. She couldn't stop him. He could love whoever he wanted, even if it was a girl who was clearly in another relationship. Nope, it wasn't really any of her business. It didn't bother her at all.

"Amelia, you're bending your fork."

The princess jumped at Gourry's voice and glanced down the fork she had unknowingly bent. "Oh, um, sorry."

"Are you all right Amelia?" Lina asked. "You have dark bags under your eyes."

No, I'm not alright since I have to watch you let Zelgadis fawn over you like a love sick puppy and you abuse it with no regards to his feelings! Amelia coughed. "I'm fine," she said briskly.

Zelgadis's eyes narrowed. He looked as if he was about to say something, but was cut off by Lina again. "Zelgadis, why don't you go buy supplies for us."

The chimera pursed his lips. "I believe that it's your turn to buy the supplies Lina."

Lina smiled. "But you're so good at it and you like to do it. Speaking of which, there are OTHER things you enjoy to do aren't there Zel?"

Zelgadis sighed. "I'll get the supplies."

Amelia twitched and her fork got another bend.

The group found themselves on the road again. Amelia was unusually grumpy. She appeared to be very annoyed, especially when she looked to his or Lina's direction. Zelgadis's first fear was that Amelia had found out what he had done, but that couldn't be it. If Amelia had learned the truth, she would have confronted him about it. It had to be something else. He kept waiting for the right moment to ask the princess about the issue, but Lina would drag him away with another errand before he could ask.

This was another growing problem. He hated being Lina's servant and he cringed to see how far Lina would take it. The chimera was starting to have recurring nightmares of Lina using him as a giant nutcracker. He prayed that she would eventually grow bored of it, but since Lina seemed to be having too much fun of ordering him around, he doubted it would happened any time soon.

That night at camp, Lina's cape had gotten mud on it. Before she even asked, Zelgadis took the cape and brought it to the river to clean it. He grumbled loudly as he attempted to clean off the mud. Gourry appeared beside him and sat down on a large stump. Zelgadis had wondered if the swordsman would grew jealous of the added attention he had been giving Lina and worried he had even jumped to the wrong conclusions. However, Gourry had been his same old self during this whole ordeal, which Zelgadis was grateful for. He didn't care for the idea of facing an angry Gourry.

The swordsman tilted his head. "Zel, you can't keep this up."

A large piece of dried mud crumbled off. "Keep what up?"

"Being Lina's servant. She's blackmailing you about that kiss you stole, isn't she?"

The cape dropped from Zelgadis's hands. "She told you?"

Gourry shook his head. "She hasn't told me a thing, but you were only pretending to be unconscious to get a kiss from Amelia, right?"

Zelgadis groaned. Could EVERYONE besides Amelia tell he had been faking? Zelgadis had thought he was a better actor than that. "If you knew, how come you haven't said anything?"

Gourry shrugged. "I didn't think it was that big of a deal, besides that's your business not mine." He leaned on his hands. "However, I can't keep quiet when I see Lina blackmailing you. You can't go on like this."

Zelgadis sighed and lay out in the grass. He actually felt relieved to have someone in on the secret. "I know, but how do I get out of it?"

Gourry sighed. "I would suggest wait it out, but since it's Lina that's not going to work. I think you're going to have to come clean with Amelia."

The chimera groaned. He knew he was going to say that. "So, my choices are to be Lina's slave for the rest of my life or let Amelia take her anger out on me? Do I have any other options?"

"Well, there's always suicide?"

"Not funny, Gourry."

Amelia was conflicted. A part of her wanted to confront Lina about the issue so she would stop taking advantage of Zelgadis, but she worried she would embarrass the chimera by doing so. Her other option would be to talk to Zelgadis about it, but she couldn't see him be willing to talk to her about his love life. She sighed and stared into the small fire.

Lina had gone off to fish in the river and she took Zelgadis with her to help. She couldn't explain why, but just how Zelgadis would instantly leap as soon as Lina said his name was making her feel irritated. She didn't like it at all and she hated that she didn't understand why.

Yes, she didn't like to see people being taken advantage of, but that didn't explain why she felt so jealous. Was it possible that she was jealous of Lina getting all the attention from the chimera? Could she be developing feelings for him? No, that couldn't be possible, Zelgadis was just her friend.

Although, the other day when she had to give him mouth to mouth, the princess had felt very excited. Her heart had been beating like crazy and his lips had felt so smooth against hers. It felt like she was kissing a polished stone, but it was so warm at the same time. It was a wonderful sensation. Amelia blushed at memory. Maybe the chimera was becoming more to her than just a friend. She glanced to Gourry sitting across from her.

Why wasn't it bothering him like it was her? Gourry was not the brightest star in the sky, but surely he should notice how Zelgadis was acting around Lina. Wasn't he worried about Zelgadis stealing Lina's heart? Amelia took a deep breath. She couldn't ignore it any longer. She had to talk about it with someone and Gourry appeared to be the right candidate.

"Mister Gourry, aren't you going to say anything?"

The swordsman speared a potato with his stick and put it in the fire to roast. "Say about what?"

Amelia stared in shock. Did he really not notice? "About what's going on between Mister Zelgadis and Miss Lina?"

Gourry brought out the stick and blew on the potato. "Not really, because there's nothing going on."

Amelia gapped. "Mister Gourry how can you say that?! It's clear that Mister Zelgadis has fallen for Miss Lina!"

Gourry blinked. "Um...you really think that Amelia?"

"Of course I do! What else am I supposed to think?"

The swordsman sighed, sounding very tired. "I was afraid this was going to happen." He jabbed his stick into the ground and left his potato jabbed at the top of it. "Amelia, there's nothing going on. Zelgadis isn't in love with Lina."

"Yes he is-"

"No, he's not." He chewed his lip. "Something else is going on."

Amelia blinked. "Well, what else could be going on? It isn't like Mister Zelgadis to act like this."

Gourry folded his hands into his lap. "There's just something. Hey, how about you roast a potato too?" He handed her a stick. "The potatoes I dug up are really good."

Amelia stared at the stick. Slowly, her eyes narrowed as she folded her arms and frowned. "What are you hiding Mister Gourry?"

"Um...hiding?"

"You know something, don't you?" Amelia pointed her finger at him. "That's why you've been so relaxed about this!"

"Uh..."

The princess gave him a fierce glare that was equal to the ones Lina had given him for each time he had taken the last drumstick. "Tell me what's going on."

"It's not much," Gourry replied sheepishly.

The glare continued.

"Except maybe Lina's blackmailing Zelgadis."

That took her by surprise. "Blackmail? Well, that would explain a few things. But what is Miss Lina black mailing him with?"

Gourry pulled at his shirt collar. "I'm not sure if I should say anything, it's none of my business."

The glare came back. "Mister Gourry."

"Zelgadis faked being unconscious so he could steal a kiss from you when you gave him mouth to mouth."

Amelia stared in shock. "Mister Zelgadis...faked it?"

Gourry nodded.

Amelia kept her lips together in a firm frown and climbed to her feet. She showed no emotion as she said "I'm going to talk to Mister Zelgadis."

Gourry sighed and mentally told himself to pay for Zelgadis's next meal to make up for spilling the beans.

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Zelgadis grumbled as he carried the fish over his shoulder on his way back to the camp. The load was heavy and he prayed his clothes weren't going to reek of fish. Lina had stayed at the river to see if she could get more fish. It's scary to think that this first load might just be for Lina alone to eat. His ears twitched as he heard footsteps approach him.

He paused as Amelia came into view. He felt awkward around her. He was grateful that Lina had actually kept her word and hadn't told Amelia, but he still feared that any second Amelia was going to punch him as payback for the kiss. It didn't help matters that Amelia had been acting grouchy lately. It made him paranoid that she did find out the truth somehow.

He nodded to her and held out the fish. "Lina caught dinner, or I should say her dinner. She's out getting more."

Amelia didn't respond. She folded her arms and stared at him. "Mister Zelgadis, why did you pretend to be unconscious?"

The fish plummeted to the ground. Zelgadis couldn't react. His mind went blank. All he could say was "Who told you?"

"Mister Gourry," Amelia replied as she took a step forward. "But to be fair, I forced it out of him."

Zelgadis sighed.

"Why did you do it Mister Zelgadis?"

The chimera wanted to find a hole to crawl in and bury himself in for the next fifty years. "It was a whim Amelia."

"Snagging a kiss is a whim?" asked Amelia in disbelief. "Did you want to play a prank on me?"

Zelgadis snarled. "Of course not! I would never resort to something childish as that."

"Then why?"

"I don't know-"

"I thought you were my friend?"

"I am!" Zelgadis snapped. "I just wanted to get a kiss from a cute girl alright!!" He regretted his words as soon as he said them. His face turned red as he looked away.

Amelia's jaw dropped. Her cheeks also reddened. "You think I'm...cute?"

"Well...yes," Zelgadis mumbled. "Look, I realize it was stupid, but it had been a long time since a girl kissed me and I had thought it was harmless."

"And you think I'm cute?" Amelia replied, sounding a little happy.

"Yes, I believe we have established that fact." He steadied and braced himself. "All right, hit me."

Amelia blinked confused. "Hit you?"

"With a justice punch or something. You are angry I'm assuming."

"A little, but I'm not angry enough to hit you." Amelia shook her head. "Frankly, I'm more angry you just didn't come out and tell me the truth when Miss Lina started blackmailing you. I went over a lot of stress because of you fawning over her."

Zelgadis raised an eyebrow. "You got stress over me?"

Amelia coughed; she didn't want to go into the subject. "Besides, I think you got more than enough punishment from having to serve Miss Lina."

"Point."

The princess picked the fish off the ground. "You can take this to Mister Gourry. I'm going to have a chat with Miss Lina."

Zelgadis smirked as Amelia walked off. He could already imagine Lina's ears ringing from the earful of justice speech she was going to get.

Lina groaned as the group along the dirt road. "I have a headache." She glared. "No doubt from a certain princess giving an hour long justice speech."

"You deserve it Miss Lina for taking advantage of Mister Zelgadis like that and for ignoring how you could have been upsetting Mister Gourry. You're lucky he didn't get jealous during the whole thing."

"I really have no idea what you're talking about," Lina replied sourly.

Gourry coughed. "Anyway, we should we stop at the next town. A merchant told me that they serve great pies at the local restaurant."

As Gourry and Lina began to discuss the possibilities of the pies they could eat. Zelgadis sighed. For the first time in days, he felt stress free and a load was taken off his chest. He glanced to Amelia. "I'm glad this whole ordeal is done."

Amelia tilted her head at him, tucking her hands behind her back. "Well, not quite. I do want a little payback."

Zelgadis's stomach lurched. He knew it was too good to be true. He might as well get it over with. "What do you want me to do?"

Amelia smiled. "Kneel down and close your eyes."

The chimera sighed and did as ordered. He braced himself for the incoming impact of a punch. Instead, Amelia's hand touched his cheek and gave a kiss on the other cheek. Zelgadis stared wide eyed at the now blushing Amelia. "There, now we're even." Without saying another word, Amelia raced to catch up with Lina and Gourry.

Stunned, Zelgadis rubbed his cheek and proceeded to follow. Without realizing it, his mind began to wonder whether he or Amelia would be first to break the tie between them.