Yikes! I forgot the usual disclaimer.

Genre: Romance? Action? Humor? General.

Rating: PG-13 kiddies!

Summary: Usual-ish Vash comes home and finds life a bit harder to deal with than before. Not because of his brother, mind you. V/Meryl fluff... and stuff? Probably with a bit of OOC'ness, as always.

Thoughts, Author's notes , emphasis, title inspired by the Sweet Emotion song by Aerosmith. And that's the only importance of that song. O.o;

Disclaimer: I wish I owned Trigun. That's as far as it goes. :(


He was coming home. Home. The first ever real home. Milly was the first to see him, and as she was waving she pointed the little woman in the right direction. The girls seemed ecstatic, but not half as much as he was. Leaning to one side to counterbalance the unholy burden that was his brother, he waved back and gave a smile that stretched ear to ear.

Milly seemed ready to run to greet the home-coming blond outlaw, but Meryl seemed bolted to one place, her feet not responding either because she locked her knees to keep from falling to pieces or because she saw that Vash the Stampede had grown an extra body on his right shoulder.

Seeing how that was rather improbable (who knew, though... he was different) Meryl figured that it was his brother. His unconscious, defeated yet likely still genocidal platinum blond twin of the outlaw she had unwittingly fallen in love with.

Knives. If he had anything good about him it would be he had a nice ass (well, it was the first thing she saw of him). It ran in the family, she mused. Sighing, she gave herself a mental slap and steeled herself to be serious about this entire matter. Vash was back and she was happy (what an understatement). But also, Vash brought back his daft brother and Meryl was most certainly not happy about that.

"Mr. Vash!" Milly greeted as the Stampede walked right up to the insurance girls. "You came back! Who is that on your shoulder, is that your brother? He looks just like you except that his suit is different and so is his hair and he looks kind of unconscious and evil! How far did you walk to--" Milly continued on talking and Vash blinked at Milly. Meryl followed suit. "--Let me take him inside for you! I'll put him inside your room, but I have to warn you that there's no extra bed right now so you're going to have to start sharing Meryl's room with her, okay?" The big girl effortlessly picked up Knives and started running off toward the small rented house. "What's his name?" Milly paused to ask.

"Uh," said the stunned outlaw. "Knives."

Milly smiled and started running off again.

Meryl almost groaned out loud. Ever since Vash had left to fight his brother Milly had been incessantly insisting to the small woman that he would be coming back and that she should practice saying whatever it was she couldn't say to him when he was leaving so that when he did come back she could "go nuts on him." The not so cleverly hidden hint of sharing the bedroom served as a painful reminder.

But now with Knives the circumstances definitely changed. Knives was probably now top priority. And she was somewhere on the bottom of the list since the beginning, she thought.

"Hi." Vash smiled at Meryl, who looked back up at him with a slight apprehension.

She blinked at him.

He had long ditched the fantasy that when he came back she would run up to him and kiss his brains out. He knew Knives would weird her out somewhat but even then Vash expected a hug or something to show him she was happy to see him back so soon. Or, if she felt differently, an attack of sorts to show him how angry she was because he took so damn long. But neither happened.

"Hi." She smiled. "I think I should go help Milly." And she started walking away.

Meryl was already halfway between him and the door to their humble abode when she heard him call out to her. "Wait!" She turned around, cheeks red for some reason.

Oh, shit. He said that out loud. He turned away from her and tried to distract himself. Wetness... why was it raining? He looked toward the gushing well and pointed. "Whoa, cool! A geyser!" He laughed like an idiot and ran toward the new fountain childishly.

Meryl stood confused. Was she hearing things?


Yo. This is a highly experimental story, and this is more or less a "trial balloon." Comment, please! Tell me if I suck or not.