A/N: Whoah! It's been a month since I updated? Jeez. Anyway, I'm at the end of the semester and I've got four tests and two papers due this week, so I figured if I was going to write something due to procrastination, now would be the time. This isn't a huge update, but it'll have to hold you guys over until this semester is finished (ie, next week).

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Vash let her lead him downstairs by the hand. Had it really been two weeks since he had had a proper breakfast? All he'd had to eat since he'd been away was meal replacement bars and water. Vash didn't know how Wolfwood had survived on those things...they were barely edible. Meryl let go of his hand as she got near the kitchen counter and grabbed a couple of plates. He sat down at the table and watched her as she moved around the kitchen. Aside from the impending doom that was his brother, Vash was feeling pretty good about things.

Meryl set a plate in front of him. It was covered in delicious food. There were hash browns, bacon, and eggs, but no donuts. Oh well, this still looked great. Just as he picked up a fork and was about to dig in, Meryl almost shrieked.

"What are you doing?"

Vash looked up at her in shock. "What? What's wrong?!?"

"You...you...actually picked up a fork!" She smiled widely as she moved over to him and put her hand on his forehead. "Are you feeling okay?"

Vash realized the joke at his expense. "You are so cold." He looked up at her and gave her a smug expression. "I know all about flatware. My brother's name IS Knives, after all..."

Meryl smiled at him tenderly as her voice softened. "I know. I'm kidding. I'm just...so glad you're back!" She turned towards the kitchen quickly and he knew it was an attempt to hide her blush from him. When she came back to the table with her own plate of food, her cheeks were still rosy. This whole honesty thing was new to the both of them. How long had she acted like a control freak to mask her true feelings? Furthermore, how long had he played the clown to hide his?

He looked across the table at Meryl again. She was so beautiful with her cheeks slightly blushing and her hair haphazardly in her face. For some reason, he felt like razzing her. "Meryl?"

She looked up at him quickly, her grey eyes filled with lazy anticipation. "Mmmhmm?" she hummed, a sound that came off as incredibly sultry to his ears.

He smiled at her. "Have I ever told you how pretty you are?"

Before he had even finished the sentence, her eyes had glued themselves to the table top. Quietly she whispered, "Stop." She'd had some boyfriends before, but her previous attempts at relationships with the opposite sex had all been painfully practical affairs. None of those boys ever gave her compliments like this, none of them looked at her the way he was looking at her, and certainly none of them made her feel the way Vash did. She didn't want to react, but with his eyes fixed on her, she couldn't not say something. "Stop" was the best reaction she could think of.

Vash looked at her, both amused and perplexed. "Look at me." She did. "Don't tell me no one has ever told you that you're beautiful," her face reddened even more as he continued, "because you're absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous."

She looked at him incredulously but hopefully. "What?"

"'Stop' and 'what' are not how you respond to compliments," he chided her. "When someone tells you that you're the cutest, prettiest, smartest, most wonderful girl he's ever met, you're supposed to say 'Thank you.' That is, unless you just want me to continue to compliment you on your determination, and your bravery, and your beautiful eyes, and your shapely legs, and your killer--"

"Thank you! That's enough!" she said, flustered, but smiling. As Vash kept smiling at her, she got the point. Under her breath, she said, "Killing me with kindness, huh? I won't make fun of you and forks anymore."

She smiled at him while he beamed right back.

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As Meryl cleaned up the breakfast dishes, she heard Vash going through cabinets, looking for something. "What are you doing?" she asked.

He looked a little lost. "Um, do you know if there are any donuts around here?" He kept looking through cabinets.

"Well, Millie's been doing all the shopping, so if you want sweets, you'll probably have to settle for pudding." She saw his expression deflate as he walked over to the pantry to get some not-as-good-as-donuts-pudding. As he opened the door, he heard a rumble, but it was already too late. The door busted open and soon he was underneath a deluge of pudding cups.

"GAAAH!!! HELP! I'VE BEEN ATTACKED!" he screamed. Pinned to the ground by a huge pile of pudding cups, he whined, "Donuts never treat me like this!"

Meryl tried not to laugh as she dug him out from under the menacing desert cups. "Vash, you opened the door too quickly!"

"You weren't kidding when you said Millie was doing all the shopping." He looked around him in a daze, seeing pudding cups spread all across the floor.

Meryl handed him a broom. "Come on, let's clean this up and you can show me how to protect my brain from Knives."

Vash looked up at her confused. "Um...don't you have work today?" When he left, she had a job at the saloon.

"Not anymore. I was...fired."

"WHAT!?!" Meryl Strife didn't get fired! She was so professional, so punctual, so...employable. "What happened?"

She suddenly looked very shy. "Well, I...er...accidentally started...a fight."

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A/N: Sorry guys, this is a lot shorter than I wanted this chapter to be, but that just means there will be another chapter soon...one featuring Millie. Alright, that's all I've got. Hope you enjoyed it.