Chapter 2: The Supremely Awkward Moment!

Meryl sat at the small, condensed table in her bedroom. She was utterly exhausted. The past week's events were more than she could handle, and it was times like these she would reminisce about her old life, before she had met the Humanoid Typhoon, no matter how much she loved him.

She started to think about how she missed her family. It was something she barely ever spoke of, yet all the same cared about just as much as her cohort Millie, did.

'I've never once wrote them a letter to reassure them that I'm still okay… Family…' Meryl thought, attempting to lift the ancient typewriter off of her barren floor.

With a disheartened sigh, she took to inserting a blank piece of paper; the very first account of her love for her family even though they neglected her, as well.

She could remember them each vividly in her memories. Her father, a tall, thin man with a slightly protruding belly. He always wore plaid flannel shirts and worn jeans because he claimed he felt young in them.

She envisioned him laughing, his cheeks puffy and rosy; how he always was. With dark, wispy hair and deep chocolate eyes. He had high expectations for his daughter, and she was well aware of them. She was very upset, however, that she never achieved them.

Her mother was a small, petite woman like herself except for the fact that she was quiet and solemn almost constantly. She barely ever raised her voice in the most heated of situations.

Her mother then joined her father in the displace of her mind, they were smiling, laughing, like they had done so long ago. She loved them, but she wasn't so sure if they loved her, too, anymore.

Meryl envisioned her mother's face, smiling and laughing; then abruptly turning into what she saw as a sorrowful discountenance. Meryl recognized this look as her way of showing the disappointment in her daughter's path of life.

"Merylin, when are you gonna come home and get married? I've been wanting some grandchildren!" A phrase she heard many times as soon as she came of age.

'Dad…'

Meryl saw his exuberant expression fade to that of dismay.

"You should've married that Vaughan boy! None of this 'get an office job' shit. You're a woman; you should know your place…"

Meryl just remembered why exactly she rebelled in the first place; her parents would just never agree with her way of life, no matter what she did. They wanted her to be a housewife; mopping the kitchen floor, making holiday feasts, tending to the children.

Meryl wasn't ready to be that, she was twenty-six and still knew she wasn't cut out to be 'just a housewife'.

In a fit of new-found rage, she gripped the would-be first letter to her parents and ripped it out of the typewriter, tearing it into as many pieces as she could and scattering them about herself like a personal blizzard of annoyance, just before plunging her head into her arms and letting a parade of tears flow…

Her relief was short-lived as a certain insane man barged into her bedroom.

Meryl, being one to hide her weaknesses, wiped her eyes in embarrassment. She was stronger than he thought she was, and she had to maintain this; she would not let him see her fail. In fact, the word 'fail' didn't exist to Meryl. She felt the only person to please was herself; even if others detested it.

"Change my bandages!" He yelped, fixating intensely on Meryl's back.

"How dare you demand me to change your bandages! If you can WALK THEN CHANGE THEM YOURSELF! What are you doing barging into my room at this hour WITHOUT KNOCKING!?" She screamed, unleashing her true feelings.

Knives only looked at the woman with disgust and, clutching his injured shoulder, slammed the door.

"How dare I?!?" She heard him spit eagerly. "How dare you make me WALK! An injured person, in pain, to WALK to his own caretakers room?!? YOU ARE A DISGRACE, JUST PROVING WHAT FILTH HUMANITY IS. Bitch."

He was so loud, that his voice seemed to carry through the grains of her door; it seemed as if he was standing right in front of her, taunting her.

Yet she couldn't give up; it just wasn't Meryl's style.

Upon his exiting, about twenty minutes later, she collected herself and grabbed the gauze from the supply closet and was off to his room.

'It's times like these when I wish I could escape… but a job's a job!' She grinned, relieving the tension she had just previously experienced.

So, just as he had done to her, she barged into his bedroom without so much as a knock or an "Are you fully clothed?".

This time, she stared him in the eyes, no shame. He was not better than her, and she wouldn't allow him to intimidate her anymore.

Knives was sat up in his bed, sheets ruffled to a lumpy pile receding past his feet. Once again, a look of discontent and some crossed arms.

He looked like a little kid who didn't get his way; a little child with a five o'clock shadow! (This caused Meryl to hold back a chuckle.) He had been careless with himself lately, she observed his matted silver-blonde hair, open pea green button-up shirt, wrinkled beige pajama pants, and sock-less feet.

He was pouty for someone so smug.

She pranced over to his bedside defiantly, taking a seat in the sable wicker chair she had sat in day-after-day without complaint.

"Arm, please." She stated bluntly.

Knives was like a stone statue; just wouldn't budge. Instead, she hastened to grab his arm; an act he reacted stiffly to.

"For someone who complained so long about how they wanted me to change their bandages you sure are picking a fight." She couldn't help but laugh a bit at her latest comment.

Knives gritted his teeth under her close speculations and slowly outstretched his arm, holding his breath dearly.

"Gee, now was that so hard?" She muttered mostly to herself.

She hummed a conservative tune as she wrapped his maimed arm carefully, seeing the bullet holes riddled throughout him daily without effect. Knives could be the biggest baby she'd ever seen; Vash had an endurance for pain much unlike his brother's.

Knives' anger eventually subsided and he went back to his usual clean-slated self.

Now she had to tend to his rather large chest wound, something that required him to take off his shirt. Meryl was still uncomfortable with it to this day.

Firstly, she eased his arms out of his sleeves ever-so gently and dropped his weathered garment on the pavement-like floor; then she took a wet cloth to his bullet-holes.

Knives, being a bit stingy, jumped at the touch; whimpering a little after she had applied a slight pressure.

Meryl always found it hard to avert her eyes from his torso when forced to pursue this act of utter sensitivity.

Ever so slowly she unwound the tinted gauze from his breast area; her eyes struggling from the want to wander a bit.

It was easy for anyone to see why this was so; his scars were few, and his body looked like it was chiseled by a prized sculptor. His chest was defined mercilessly leading down into a bumpy, muscular stomach. His arms, although with an appearance not unlike that of Swiss cheese, still showed typical signs of fitness; long, lanky but toned. His shoulders were broad and manly, the body of someone unbelievably agile. His thigh muscles were incredibly thick, cascading down into a lean calf. Vash, even with his imperfections, had an incredible body and Knives' was even more the embodiment of perfection.

'Sad that such a beautiful man had to go to waste…' she thought to herself unknowingly.

Surprisingly, there was no voice to answer back to her.

"Do you impudent people have anything to read?" He suddenly asked her, failing at hiding his curiosity.

"Well, occasionally Millie reads to herself so I'm assuming she has quite a few books somewhere around here." Meryl had no idea where they were.

"Hm… if you could be so kind to fetch them for me?" He asked unpleasantly.

'Ugh, just call me "Maid Meryl"'

"What was that?" He asked, his tone growing colder and colder as their conversation dragged on.

"I would really appreciate it if you stayed out of my mind for the time being."

"Oh, and it's nice to know a spider like you was visually making a pass at me." He sneered, reverting back to his state of crossed arms.

"Oh don't flatter yourself! Your attitude is absolutely disgusting so it doesn't matter anyway."

"In regards to that, I'd like to note that both your appearance and your attitude is despicable." He liked to play mud-slinger.

"Humph."

"You're going to find me those books." He demanded, regardless of her aversion to him.

"After the comment you just made, I think we'll be taking a rain check on that one." With that, she rose up, and slammed the door in his wake.

'Asshole.'

'I don't think you should throw that around so casually.'

'Shut up!' Who knew that her life would come to daily mental battles with a psychopath.

So, in regards to the situation, she went to her room and heaved a sigh of relief.

'Days like today just seem to drag on and on…' She pondered.

She sifted through her drawers digging for something comfortable to wear to bed. It was about 10 o'clock and the sight of her disheveled bed couldn't look anymore wonderful.

She was delirious with sleeplessness, but as soon as she hit her mocha sheets, all desire left her. Instead, her tiredness was replaced with an endless tossing and turning; a rock constantly being overturned by circumstantial wind out of it's control.

Sick of laying in bed, Meryl rose at about eight A.M., rushing down to the bathroom to take a much-needed shower.

The melodic humming she had taken to the day before returned to her as she expected to push open the door to find an empty bathroom ready for her arrival.

In an almost instantaneous shock, Meryl had pushed open the door to find something she wasn't expecting; a completely and utterly nude Knives staring blankly back at her.

Her eyes widened in a sense of blank terror, certainly not what she wanted to see.

Within seconds she had covered her eyes and slammed the door in what was perhaps the most embarrassing moment of her entire life.

Knives, on the other hand was calm and went about drying himself off.

"Some people need to learn how to knock." he snorted.