Finished log~

[inyourbusiness.livejournal.com]

When; November 24th (a'fore Razlo asplosion)
Rating; PG
Characters; Vash the Stampede (mildlyreckless) and Meryl Stryfe (inyourbusiness); this time, with less screaming.
Summary; Meryl taking Vash up on his promise for a walk with her. Albeit a bit later by a few days than originally planned. He programs her cell phone and everything.
Log;


Well, he did tell her it was okay to be a little pushy when she wanted to do something with him. Admittedly, she didn't the evening of Thanksgiving because after it was all said and done, she was very literally ready to keel over and die from being so tired. Cooking, cleaning, dealing with perhaps the most dysfunctional set of people and their guests in the entire City... it had all proven so exhausting.

Ah, but the present day. With the right combination of wonderful events, Meryl found herself feeling rather cheery. For Meryl. And brave, too. Which was why she currently found herself standing outside Vash's bedroom door, an ear pressed against it to listen for signs of life. If there wasn't any, he was sleeping. Or dead. Either way, she wasn't going in. If there was, she had to be sure of the kind, because she wouldn't be going in based on that, either.

There was a shuffle. On the floor. Okay, he was awake. But that still bidded the fear that he was doing something scandalous, and so perhaps busting in really wouldn't be smart. So, Meryl pulled her right glove off tenderly, and rapped her knuckles against the door three times. "Mr. Vash?"

Vash was pulling Sneakers out of a sweater he'd managed to get tangled in when the knock at the door gave him quite a jolt. He'd known someone was out there, but he hadn't expected a knock, and he CERTAINLY hadn't expected Meryl's voice afterwards.

"A-Ah, it's open, you can come in!" he called a bit hesitantly, still trying to get Sneakers out of his woolen trap.

Meryl slowly opened the door at his voice, noting exactly that hesitancy in his voice. It wasn't all that clear to her, but it was enough to put on the best smile she could as she pushed the door open and looked at Vash's little project set before him. "...what in the hell happened?" she asked, staying in the doorway for the time being as she eyed the moving sweater.

Vash grinned sheepishly as he freed the kitten and let him leap down to the floor, tossing the sweater onto the bed.

"Sneakers thought he saw something in the sweater and got a bit wrapped up in it," he said, giving the cat a dubious look. He had serious doubts about the cat's intelligence sometimes. Maybe he should've taken him to the vet after that incident with the dryer... "What brings you here?"

"Wow." Meryl readily admitted cats confused the hell out of her, and just... didn't bother to question it. Especially when it came to Vash's cats. His insanity begat insanity in those animals, she swore.

Rubbing an eye, she offered that smile once more and said, "Well... I was wondering, if you're not too busy, Mr. Vash, maybe you'd like to go for a walk with me? It's really nice outside, and I'll take you to get some coffee?"

Vash paused for a moment. Honestly? No, he didn't want to go anywhere. He wasn't feeling all that great and he'd have no problems with just being ignored for a day or so. But he'd told her that he'd go for a walk with her the other day and she'd never taken him up on it...

"Okay," he said, offering a small smile. "That'd be nice. I could use some coffee."

"Come on," she said with a wave of her hand and a friendly squinting of her eyes. "There's something I really want to show you, too. But we have to go to the shops around the city square."

She left the doorway and busily tugged on her glove again as she went. Meryl was still speaking as she did so. "I won't keep you out for any longer than I have to, you bum, but do you need anything before we go? I'll get it for you, if so. But don't worry about your wallet, if you don't want. This is on me." He deserved it. Lord knew how much money he spent on her. She still technically owed him for her overly abused PDA that he leant her money for.

Vash followed after her quietly, shaking his head.

"No, I don't need anything, thank you. Where is it you want to go?"

If anything this would be a good excuse to just not think for a little while. He'd been doing too much of that lately and it was starting to wear on him.

Okay then. Meryl bustled her short self to the door and tugged it open, turning to chuckle right at him as she leaned into the door as a gesture of holding it for him. "Mm. I'm not telling you until we get there. But I think it's something you can appreciate."

A hand went into her pocket then, and she decided to whip out in ambush before he left the apartment a small cell phone, clearly brand new, and displayed it to him. "And on the way, you can teach me how to use this piece of shit before I flush it."

Vash blinked, but nodded as he moved to step out the door, but was nearly whacked in the chest before he could leave. He looked at the device and then back at Meryl before speaking in the same tone one might use with a small child.

"That's a phone, Meryl. You call people and talk to them."

"...do not patonize me." Her free hand grabbed his arm and she tugged on him to drag him from the apartment, the other flipping the phone open to display the complex keypad. It was far beyond a standard cell phone, and one would probably wonder how badly Meryl was sweet-talked to convince her to buy such a thing.

"Look at this! It's supposed to receive e-mail, Vash. How the hell do I get to my e-mail on here? And what's caller ID? And what does a ringtone do?" Meryl? Hadn't bothered to read the user's manual.

Vash didn't bother to hide his surprise as he was dragged outside and clumsily took the phone to look it over.

"How am I supposed to know?" he demanded. "I've never used one of these! ...There are a lot of buttons, aren't there? Were there instructions?"

"See, that's what you get for patron..." And then he had to ask about the instructions. Of course there were instructions, but Meryl wasn't the sort to bother. She preferred to try until she was successful or ended blowing it up. No matter how many times she'd chastize others for not reading the instructions themselves.

"...no," she responded, releasing his arm and hurrying forward to grab doors for their exit, to hold them for him. "I think they were left out of the box..."

Vash cocked an eyebrow.

"Is that right," he said, rather than asked, heading out the door and still holding the device. "Well, I don't know, Meryl, give me a few minutes with it and I could probably figure it out, but I thought you were taking me somewhere."

Meryl hugged herself as she released the door and hopped over back beside him. It was so cold. "I am! Two somethings, as a matter of fact," she said, her voice bouncing with her feet on the pavement. "We're going to the square. There's a little coffee kiosk that has the most delicious quick-serve coffee, and then I'm taking you right over to what I want you to see."

She reached out and tugged on his sleeve. "Just see if you can't figure that out for me in the meantime. If you can't, we'll launch it into traffic and watch it get torn apart. Or give it to Livio as a paperweight." It wouldn't take too long to get to both locations, fortunately.

"All right," Vash said, setting to work on fiddling with the phone while trying to keep up with Meryl's pace. It had a lot of features for something so small...

"You know, if you drink too much of that coffee, you'll get reliant on it."

Had Meryl feathers, they would have ruffled. She looked at him, looking fairly offended. "Reliant? I'm not going to get reliant. I don't drink nearly enough to become reliant, what would make you say that, I only drink a fair amount every day like any other human being in the existence of ever, and I am very offended that you would even verbalize such an assumption that I would ever become reliant on something so silly as coffee." The speed in which Meryl said that, akin to someone already buzzed on far too much caffeine, escaped her.

Looking so very offended, and muttering her objections to Vash's comment still, Meryl looked around the street they had to pass for any incoming traffic, before going to cross it. "...reliant on coffee, like I have some sort of problem... you have some nerve, Mr. Stampede! Maybe you're the one reliant on donuts!" Meryl was convinced that made sense.

Vash stared at Meryl before following her across the street. Had that even been in English?

"No, yeah, you're right, you totally don't run on caffeine," he said, slightly worried. "I'm sorry I said anything."

He turned back to the phone and continued to play with it for a while before looking satisfied with himself.

"There. I think I got you all set up. Here's your email account and here's where you can store numbers and addresses and stuff."

He conveniently forgot to tell her that he'd set the ringtone to "London Bridges"; some godawful song he'd heard on the radio by a woman who called herself "Fergie".

Meryl hopped onto the curb on the opposing side, before turning to him and grinning as she took the phone appreciatively. "Thank you, Mr. Vash," she said, looking over where he was pointing her to, before clapping the phone shut and tucking it into her pocket. It must have been nice to be able to figure out technology so quick. Meryl had figured out a few of the scanning machines back home, sure, but she had the motivation to scan the objects from the Gung Ho Guns given to Vash. Learning a cellphone was hardly a life-or-death situation, so why bother?

Tugging him again, she led him to that small kiosk she told him about to get a speedy cup of coffee. She was already ready that, if he didn't like that, after their second stop, she'd treat him to coffee at Fai's shop. Or, if he whined enough, she'd drag him to dinner. "Hi," she said to the teenage boy manning the machines at that point, "I'll take my usual, and~ whatever Beanstalk here would like." A hand was waved to Vash to grant him "permission" to speak.

Vash shot Meryl a look and then offered his friendliest grin to the barista.

"Do you have any of that pumpkin stuff? I had some the other day and it was pretty good..."

He looked down at Meryl as if daring her to make some sort of comment.

...and comment she did, in the form of a snorting snicker that had her leaning over a little as she stared at him. "Pumpkin stuff? Pumpkin stuff? Are you serious? You can't be serious." Was he serious?

He probably was. And another laugh, this time a real laugh, forced its way out. "Oh my God, you're a cafe sissy."

Vash pouted. A lot.

"It tastes like pumpkin pie and I like it, okay?! There's nothing wrong with that! You're just mad because it turns out I can have refined tastes about some things and you wish you had it too!"

He smiled back at the barista sweetly.

"I'll have one of those then, thank you. With whipped cream on top, please! Shut up, Meryl."

Meryl tried to shut up. She did. She had her hands over her face, and was completely ignoring the cup of basic, absolutely pitch black coffee that was set out for her, whisping steam upwards in the cold. It was so bitter, she could already smell it, but she couldn't stop.

Fighting it was a nightmare, and suddenly she sputtered out a laugh again and stomped her right foot, because her left knee was still hurting from Rem's hammer, and she choked out, "Are you trying to kill me? Are you? Oh, Jesus." Her hands dropped from her face and wrapped around her torso. "Oh my God. Cafe sissy. Would you like a bagel with that, good sir?"

Vash made a face, but then turned his nose up snootily.

"I only eat the finest pastries, thank you. Bagels aren't one of them."

Meryl just couldn't help it. And now he was playing along, and it only made it more amusing. "Well then," she said through her snickers as she grabbed her bitter coffee, "perhaps we shall just go to the local bistro and obtain some nice strawberry shortcake with the finest of imports for you, hm?"

She was grinning madly as she went to pull out the appropriate money for payment, plus a bit extra to tip the kid attending them. Hey, it didn't hurt to tip the poor bastard. "I would so hate to harm your delicate sensibilities."

"I should think so," Vash said coolly, taking his coffee gratefully. "But first I want to see this thing that so strikingly reminds you of me."

He smiled and called a farewell to the kid as they began to walk off and looked around the Square.

"Which way now?"

Meryl was smiling with less vindictiveness as he brought up taking him to the core of her reason for dragging him out. She rocked on her heels contemplatively as she simply stared at him, and then sipped her coffee, before turning and heading towards a row of buildings across the way. "This way. And you have to promise not to laugh if you think it's funny, or I'm taking out your knee and you can be handicapped like me for a week."

Vash blinked and followed after her, more than a bit curious now.

"I'll do my best not to laugh. ...What's wrong with your knee, though?"

She looked at him over her shoulder, coffee rim up by her lips, and she was smiling as she said it, showing she really was over it and just complaining in hindsight as Meryl Stryfe was known to do, "You're mother tried to kill me, remember? That and my chest." And she was looking forward again, not giving Vash much room to react as she came up to a store window lined with white Christmas lights and blue garland, giving off a pre-Christmas warmth to the entire shop within.

"Do you see that?" She pointed in to a display amidst the Christmas glamor, of several statues of varying displays. The one she was pointing to was one that was about four feet tell in total, and was the scene that she had read off from memory to the tall man during the curse that had them in their younger years: Alice standing below a tree hosting the ever-gleeful Cheshire Cat. It was an elaborate statue, with a sign swinging around Alice's neck and draped down her back with the word 'Reserved' clumsily written on it. "This is the first of two to show you."

"I didn't hear all of THAT story," Vash said, then turned to look in the window and nearly dropped his coffee in surprise before simply staring at the display within.

"...Whoa," he said finally, after nearly five awe-inspired minutes. There was something positively captivating about the scene, but he wasn't sure if it was just his inner child or what.

Meryl watched his reaction through the corner of her eye, before placing a hand on the glass, over her own view through to the statue. "That thing is going to eat out my account, but when I saw it, I had the idea to donate it to the orphanage," she said as she drew sober.

"I had to put a down payment on it, but I didn't want to do it until I got your opinion on it," she said. Her head tilted so she could look up to him. "You are my Alice in Wonderland cohort, after all."

Vash dragged his eyes away from the display to stare down at her.

"...You're the one who reserved it?" he asked, a touch of admiration in his voice. "That's..." He looked back in the window. "That's really nice of you, Meryl. I bet they'll really like it too. I know I do."

"Really?" she asked, as though she had almost been anticipating being told that it was impractical, or in poor taste. But, oh, she felt relieved to hear his approval, and smiled a little more. "Then I'll make sure to make the rest of the payment by Christmas. Just don't say anything to Miss Rem. It's for her as much as them." It could be heard in her voice exactly how much his approval meant.

Her eyes trailed in deeper into the store, and she tapped her finger on her lips. "What do you want for Christmas?"

Vash nodded and turned to smile at her; one of his real ones for once.

"She'll like it too. It's really nice."

He turned back to the display and seemed a bit surprised by Meryl's next question.

"...For Christmas? I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it... What about you?"

"Well, I want you to think about it. I was going to show you something else, but I think it can wait now that I think about it, because it's pretty important that I know."

Her hand was pulled from the glass, and she swayed towards him and bumped into Vash playfully, chuckling. "What could any of you guys give me that I haven't already received from you?" After allowing her eyes to linger on something deeper inside the store for a little longer, Meryl swung away. "You had better decide! Or else I'll end up buying you a tie that lights up and plays music. And demand that you wear it."

Vash's smile faltered a little at Meryl's question, but he quickly brought back, though a little sadder this time.

"I'll think about it, don't worry," he assured her. "But you have to think about what I can get you too, okay?

Meryl turned to him, squinting one eye shut as she watched him, before sighing and saying, "I'll think about it, okay?" It was a lie, because she honestly would have felt bad to ask for anything from him or any of them, honestly.

And then, subject change!get! "We should go buy bunny ears and visit Livio with them on. Coffee in hand and everything."

"Okay, g--" Vash cut off to stare at Meryl again. "...Bunny ears."

His reaction made her grin darkly, and she reached out to gently shove at one of his arms. "Kidding. Although it'd be hysterical to see his reaction." Meryl winked a brown eye at him, before shuffling inside her jacket and she allowed herself to look back inside the store. "Hey, what would it take to possibly meet back up with you at your apartment in about... oh, thirty?" Her tone was mischevious and calculating, and her eyes were smiling as she watched something so very interesting within.

Vash looked back into the store wearily and stared inside, not really noticing Meryl's grin.

"Don't know," he murmured quietly. He just really wanted to go home and stay there for a while. He knew he wasn't going to be able to keep up his perky act for as long as he normally could. "I was sort of thinking about taking a nap." Except he wouldn't. He hadn't slept in a while, and he knew he wouldn't be anytime soon.

His head was starting to hurt.

"Will you need something?"

Well, wasn't that well timed? Meryl picked up on the undertones, and her face fell as she looked up to him. Taking in a deep breath, she was glad she gave him that out without realizing it.

She shook her head, before swaying at the hips, and then opening her arms to him, as a motion for a hug. "Maybe just a hug before you go?"

Vash looked down at her and seemed to shrink inside himself a little. Oh, God, a hug... They were so hard to give now. Humans were so fragile... And Meryl was so petite... All Vash could think about was how easily Wolfwood's spine had snapped when he'd been cursed so he WOULD do that to a person. He hadn't accidentally hurt a human by doing something like hugging them in decades, but now he was just so aware...

"...All right," he said finally, opening his arms and stooping to hug her. He'd held her only a few days ago. He could do it again. It would be all right.

And there was Meryl, despite everything, trusting him implicitly as she wrapped her arms around him acceptingly. It was hard, not being around him anymore unless she was in such a horrible state of mind that she couldn't be left alone. She couldn't watch him and observe him like she used to, so reading him just wasn't that simple.

Her arms tightened around him, not at all knowing what was wrong, and she rocked a little to sway him. "Are you tired?" she asked. It was more that she wanted to ask what was wrong with him, but she didn't feel it her place.

Vash hesitated before relaxing a little and returning the hug, closing his eyes. He still remembered. He remembered what their bodies could handle. It was okay.

"Yes," he murmured. "I'm very tired."

What was wrong with him...? Meryl firmed her hug and squinted her eyes in an intent focus on nothing in particular behind Vash, and sighed as she rocked him again. "Okay... Okay."

After a squeeze of her arms, she gently pulled from him and looked at him in the eyes. One hand reached up to idly, and increasingly characteristically paw at his hair to "fix" it. "I'm sorry... I didn't know. Why don't you go ahead and go home. I'll stop by tomorrow, and I'll bring breakfast for you?"

Vash smiled weakly and nodded. He felt bad for apparently killing the mood, but he'd probably end up making Meryl more miserable by pretending longer and falling harder.

"It's okay. And I'd like that, thank you."

"Okay." She offered a warm smile to him, as a means to show she really was sorry for disturbing him. Meryl had no idea, but she believed Vash understood that. If anything, Vash was more than reasonable when it came to such things.

And then, she waved him in the direction of Building 12. "Shoo, then. I'll see you around ten. And--" She pointed at him directly. "--be safe, or I'm going to be really upset, you hear me?"

Vash smiled back and stood back up. He liked it when Meryl smiled. It always told him a lot about what she was thinking.

"I will," he promised. "You too. I'll see you tomorrow."

Meryl nodded to him and held her smile, and before she started into the store that kept grabbing her attention, she reached up and poked at his nose gently. Why was he so sad? She didn't know, but it bothered the small brunette greatly.

So, a poke to the nose was given, and then she hurried into that store; there was something there that she had to look at, and potentially buy for her departing company. "Goodnight, Vash. Have sweet dreams tonight, and we'll give you a better day tomorrow."