See end of chapter for details.

"Welcome home, Cain!" Merry called from the kitchen as the door opened. Cain ignored her, shut the door behind him and tossed his keys on the hall table. Without a word, he slumped straight to the couch and flopped down, hiding his face in the leather. "…Long day?"

He groaned in reply.

"Don't do that, you'll wrinkle that suit."

Cain could just picture her, standing in the kitchen door, one hand on her hip and not remotely sympathetic to the plight of a bisexual workaholic confronted with an absolutely delicious looking man repeatedly and without any sort of warning. He covered his head with his hands, wishing he had at least thought to take his fountain pen out of his pocket before flinging himself dramatically onto the couch. It was poking into his stomach.

"Well fine, if you want to sulk I'll leave you to it." Merry returned to the kitchen, where he could hear her doing something unnecessarily noisy with metal pans.

After five minutes without an audience, Cain followed her into the kitchen and sat at the counter. "He told me I was wrong!" He started to cross his arms, but Merry shoved a cutting board, cucumber, and extremely sharp knife in front of him. "Hey!"

"If you're in the kitchen, you work, especially if I have to listen to you whine. Start slicing. It's going into a salad." She turned back to the oven, swinging it open and poking at whatever was inside. Thank God she dressed sensibly while cooking-so many ruffles were bound to catch fire. Although, now he considered it, Merry probably wanted to preserve her various dresses, practicality aside. "Salad, Cain!"

Cain rolled his eyes, but pulled the cutting board closer. "What are we having, anyway?"

"Eggplant parmesan," Merry answered, turning towards the sink to start washing lettuce for the salad. "Ten more minutes or so, you got home just in time. Now, who told you you were wrong about what?"

Abruptly, he regretted bringing it up at all. "That doctor came by my office today," he said as casually as possible. "Raffit?" Cain tried very hard not to see Merry's grin out of the corner of his eye, and almost succeeded.

"Really?" she asked. "Then why are you mad? I thought you liked him?"

"He told me I was wrong!" Cain repeated, punctuating his words with an insistent thrust of the knife in Merry's general direction. "Me, wrong!"

"Oh, shut up, Cain, you've been wrong about a lot of stuff before. What was it this time? The case?" Cain stood to fetch a bowl for the sliced cucumber. "You showed him the case."

"No comment."

"You did. Cain…"

"I was frustrated! It was late He caught me off guard with his intelligence and his hands and his damn supplements!"

"Mhm…" Merry remained far too smug for this conversation. "So you showed him the case and he told you exactly what you've been trying to figure out for the last three weeks…" She pushed several carrots towards Cain as he returned to the counter. "Why did he come by anyway?"

"Supposedly to check on the gunshot-which is fine, by the way-but really he just wanted answers."

"So you actually told him you were investigating the scene of the crime?" Merry raised one eyebrow.

"He'd figured that much out himself… He'd been researching, apparently." And had apparently been losing sleep over it, too, given how rundown he'd looked. Cain added the sliced carrots to the bowl, which Merry instantly reclaimed.

"Nope, I refuse, you're not putting any of your nasty green olives in this. Go on, then. What did your sexy doctor have to say about your precious case?"

"Merriweather Alegra Hargreaves, he is not-" Cain protested, but Merry raised one eyebrow and turned towards the oven again. Cain rolled his eyes. "He said the gunshot wound was given post mortem. Or at least he thinks it was… So the whole case is built on lies."

"See, at least your crush is useful," Merry said, putting the tray on the counter. "Get plates down, would you? Silverware, too."

"I don't have a crush!" Cain protested again, but fetched the plates.

"No, of course not," Merry agreed. "When are you seeing him again?"

Cain glared. "I am going to drop by his clinic on Friday to see if he's more certain about the gunshot."

"Where you will then ask him to dinner."

"No, because-"

"Where you will then ask him to dinner," Merry repeated. "Right?"

Cain glared at her. "Maybe," he conceded. "As colleagues. To discuss the case." This seemed to be an acceptable answer, as Merry then gave him a plate with eggplant already on it.

"Living room?" she asked. "I've Tivoed Face Off. And you're doing the dishes tonight."

"Of course." Cain sighed. "What's the challenge for this week, do you know?"

"No, I haven't watched it yet. I knew you'd be furious if I did without you."

Cain shook his head, but followed her into the living room anyway. "I need to change before we eat, though."

And the subject was, thankfully, dropped. At least for the night.

A/N: This is just a bit of filler, really... I needed some sassy!Merry. I still intend to go through all my Godchild fic and edit for consistency more than anything else, but I also haven't written anything in at least two weeks because of my exams, and I wanted to throw this up here really fast.

I hope all of my American readers had a good Thanksgiving!

Oh, side note: Face Off, the show Merry mentions at the end of this chapter, is an American reality TV show based around make up artists-people who create prosthetics, do make up effects for movies, haunted houses, so on and so forth. I've decided this is what Merry wants to be and why she went to art school-a prosthetic makeup artist. She practices on Cain when he needs a disguise.

Anonymous review replies!

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I hope you still like the way I'm handling the characters! Thank you very much for your kind comments upon the rest of my writing. I've got places for pretty much everyone... And Cain as a vigilante lawyer kind of fits him a little too well, you know? I'm glad this works so well for you, and I hope you continue to enjoy my offerings to the fandom.

A general note to the other people who review my stories and have accounts...

I am woefully behind on replying to all the lovely reviews I receive. I'm well aware of this and deeply apologize. I'll be back on top of that as of this chapter. Again, I'm very sorry, but real life has kind of gotten in the way of, well, everything.

Thank you very much for reading!