General Note: I'm only going to reformat my fics so much when this site is the one at fault. So if the formatting is weird, please check out my profile for more info. Thank you.

A/N: Happy Valentine's Day! Have some crack! (It was sheer coincidence I managed to have this done in time to post today, but hey, might as well roll with it.)

In case it wasn't obvious, this takes place near the end of the series, after Folken defects.

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Scientific Methods

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"We really shouldn't do this," she said.

"If you truly meant that, you would have left by now."

There was a flash of indignation in her eyes. "And you presume to know me so well?"

"Not as well as I'd like," he admitted, with a dark, suggestive edge that was impossible to miss.

Eries's eyes widened, and her cheeks flushed with anger. Gods, did she have any idea how irresistible she was? And then she drew her hand back to give him a stinging slap across the cheek, and it was just the opportunity he'd been looking for.

His right hand caught her wrist, those mechanical fingers of his restraining her with ease, and his other hand snaked around her neck, dragging her closer. She gasped at his audacity, and he didn't hesitate to take full advantage of her open mouth. He plundered, and ravaged, until all trace of resistance in her melted. Until she was veritably clinging to him, and his hand slipped from her wrist to her waist to better support her. After a long minute, the momentum wound down and he finally broke the kiss. She was panting, her lips moist and red, and he couldn't help but run the tip of his tongue over his own lips, marveling at her flavor.

"Strawberries," he breathed. Such a sweet contrast to her sour demeanor, and the taste was tantalizing. It was greedy, he knew, but he couldn't stop himself from indulging in a second course. Nor a third, his tongue growing ever-more insistent against hers.

Eries, meanwhile, could only let herself get caught up in the heady rush that were his kisses. Her hands went around his shoulders, holding onto him as if her life depended on it, and a husky moan rose involuntarily from the back of her throat. Folken's assault suddenly turned passionate, demanding. Her rear end hit the table, and he bent her back over it, mouthing a line along her jaw and down her neck. The mechanical fingers of his right hand deftly picked the buttons of her collar open, and then his mouth was there, pressed against every inch of increasingly-exposed skin. Eries threaded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and arched into those scorching kisses. It was utterly improper, she knew, but what was she to do? This delectable, dark Draconian had crawled indelibly into her mind, into her very soul, and she was helpless to resist.

His hips pressed into hers, pinning her in place, and she squirmed against him, needing more of that delicious friction. And then he moved his mouth even lower, fingers parting fabric, letting his lips close around a pert, pink—

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-o-
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With a start, Eries dropped the journal in her hand as if it were a hot coal, her cheeks absolutely burning. It landed with a crash, face-down, pages open, against the floor of the library, and Folken Fanel—the "delectable, dark Draconian" himself—who had been reading along, over her shoulder, bent down to retrieve it. After a moment of continuing to skim the words (had he gotten as far as she had?—had he gotten even further?), he quirked an eyebrow, and with a polite cough, closed it and set it back down on the table where they had found it. On the upper right corner, the name "Merle" was scrawled.

"And to think, she used to be such an innocent kitten," Folken remarked, almost more to himself than to her.

"I…" Eries started, trying to find something coherent to say, trying to fall back on the safe standoffishness she was known for, but it was to no avail. She couldn't even bear to look at him. Was suddenly all too aware of how closely he stood. Couldn't manage to get the images she had just read out of her head. "I…"

Can't believe someone would actually write such a thing about people they knew? Can't believe they would be so careless as to leave it out in a place where anyone could find it?

Never would have pictured you as the lustful type?

Eries shook off that last question.

"…Don't think we were supposed to see that?" Folken finished slowly. "Yes, I agree." His voice was low and unreadable, his eyebrows knitted together very severely, and he, too, couldn't seem to take his eyes from the journal.

"Perhaps we should…" she tried again, but trailed off, same as before. Should what? Dear gods, what could one do, after discovering such a thing?

"Perhaps…" he said, after a thoughtful moment, "we should forget we ever saw this."

Eries blinked, and let the words sink in. Yes, that sounded like a good option. A sensible option. She took a deep breath and managed to regain some of her composure. "I agree."

"No doubt," Folken continued, "she will soon realize she left this here, and will come to retrieve it. It would probably be best for everyone involved if we simply act ignorant of its existence."

She took another breath and nodded. Yes. That was the thing to do. Trying to return the journal would just result in further embarrassment, and perhaps might even alert others to the contents contained therein. Best to just leave it where they found it and forget they ever saw it.

But how was one to forget about something like that? She hadn't dared to read any more, but had he really been about to…been about to put his mouth on her…?

"I believe you were going to direct me to Asturia's engineering records," he said, getting back to the task that had brought them into the library in the first place, and Eries almost jumped at the sudden sound of his voice. She finally turned to him, catching his eyes as they flicked up to meet hers, and—had he…had he been looking at her mouth? Or else at…?

She shook the thought off before her cheeks could turn red again. Forget, Eries Aria, she firmly reminded herself. She set her shoulders and took another breath. "Yes," she said, pleased to note that her voice had reverted back to its usual cool tone. "This way, if you please."

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-o-
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Things returned to normal after that. Or as close to normal as they could get, at any rate. Eries spent a couple pensive days after "the library incident" (as she had come to refer to it, in her head) waiting to hear something regarding Merle's little…story—some gossip from a maid, perhaps, or a suggestive snicker from a guard—but it seemed Folken had been right. The cat-girl must have retrieved her journal not long after, with none the wiser as to what was contained within.

Well, almost no one.

Try as she might, it was difficult to keep her mind off of it. Because really, what would possess a person to write such a thing? Sometimes Eries found herself wishing she could reread those scrawled words, if only to try to find an answer in them. Found herself perversely curious as to how far the story had actually gone. At the time, she hadn't thought to flip ahead, to see how long the passage was, but now she found herself almost wishing she had. It niggled at her, something fierce, despite herself.

She had a reputation as a prude, she knew, and while it was true that she had never indulged in the saccharine romance novels that Marlene—and even Millerna—had, she was still, well, red-blooded. It wasn't that she was immune to the heat of passion, as so many suspected; it was simply that there were so often so many more important things to think about. And a good princess put the needs of her people above any superficial desires of her own. But sometimes…in the moments before she fell asleep, when the lamps were out, she ran her fingertips down the column of her neck and wondered…

And then there was the matter of Lord Folken, himself.

Things hadn't exactly turned awkward between them—they were both too socially graceful to risk rousing suspicions by acting out of the ordinary—but there were…little things she began to notice. How, when they passed each other in the halls, nodding politely in acknowledgement, his gaze seemed to linger on her just a fraction of a second longer than necessary. How the very frequency at which she passed him in the halls seemed to increase. How sometimes she felt a tingle down her spine as she walked away, as if he was watching her with an intensity that was almost tangible, but she didn't dare turn her head over her shoulder to check.

In her more practical moments, Eries brushed off such thoughts, convinced any perceived change in the former Strategos's behavior was simply her imagination, her mind playing tricks on her. Chances were his polite acknowledgements were as they'd always been, and she'd just never bothered to take note. Chances were he wasn't passing her by any more than usual, and it just seemed that he was due to the fact that she was now attuned to his presence in a way she hadn't been before. And the odd creep she occasionally felt along her spine, well, that was probably just due to drafts in the halls; the weather had been blustery as of late, after all.

It had just been a story. Just a silly, little story written by a hormonal, little cat-girl. It didn't mean anything.

Until Lord Folken showed up at her door.

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-o-
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It was later in the evening, after dinner had concluded and Eries had retired to her chambers for the night. She'd finished writing a couple letters and had just started to take off her jewelry and prepare herself for bed when the knock came, and upon opening the door, she couldn't help but blink in surprise.

"Lord Folken." He inclined his head politely in greeting.

"Princess Eries."

She waited for him to state the reason behind his visit, but all he did was stand in her doorway and look at her, as if she was some puzzle he was trying to figure out. Eries tried not to be unnerved by his focus, and let a good few moments pass before she finally dared to lift an eyebrow. "…May I help you?"

"Yes," he admitted. Almost as if her words had broken a spell, he shifted in place and continued. "Please excuse the late visit, but there is an experiment I'd like to perform, and I'm afraid it requires the assistance of another person."

Eries blinked a second time. "Oh." She was hardly an idiot when it came to science—she knew her vertebrates from her invertebrates and all that—but at the same time, the subject was hardly her forte. A part of her had to wonder why he hadn't called on Millerna; her area of study had been medicine, true, but from what Eries understood, there was a great deal of overlap between the two. Her brow furrowed a little, and she decided to make sure she was hearing him correctly. "And you want…my assistance?"

"If you would be so kind, yes."

She blinked yet a third time. "Oh," she said again. She peered at him a little curiously. "And just what exactly would this experiment entail?"

"This," he said, and in one swift step, strode forward, put his left hand around the back of her head, and brought his lips down on hers.

Eries started in surprise, a muffled noise making its way out of her. Her hands went reflexively to his chest, but after a brief moment, she realized that she really didn't mind his lips on hers all that much, and stopped short of trying to push him away. Instead, she ended up relaxing against him, palms pressing into the leather of his uniform even as his mechanical arm went around her waist and pulled her closer. His left hand tilted her head back, angling it more advantageously, and she couldn't help but to open her mouth to his seeking tongue. It was only after a long, passionate bout of exploration that he pulled back, finally breaking the kiss, and Eries blinked her eyes open, breathless. Her hands, she found, were clutching the cloth around his shoulders for support.

"Not quite like strawberries, admittedly," he murmured.

She kept staring at his mouth, the well-defined lips that still hovered oh-so closely to her own, and heard herself say, "Are you sure? I mean,"—she swallowed, still trying to catch her breath—"I'm no expert, but do you really think just once is enough?"

"I should collect more data before I come to a conclusion, you mean?"

"Something like that."

"Indeed," he said, and let his lips fall on hers again, even as his foot reached out and kicked the door shut.

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Bonus:

Pulling her head back from around the corner, Merle shot a smirk at the acting king of Asturia. Her tail twitched with smug satisfaction. "See? Told you I could get those two together." She held out her paw. "Now pay up."

Dryden blinked incredulously at the cat-girl, but after a moment, reached into his robes with a defeated grimace. He plopped a small bag of gold into her hand, and said, "Remind me never to get on your bad side."

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A/N: A WISE DECISION THERE, DRYDEN. YOU GET ON HER BAD SIDE AND SHE WILL WRITE AN EMBARRASSING SMUT FIC INVOLVING YOU AND ALLEN, OR SOMETHING. (But seriously, Merle writes really well for a thirteen-year-old, don't you think? XD) And while I generally like to follow canon, let's make an exception this once and simply ignore how Folken dies at the end. Because if we don't, it just brings the whole fic down, and this is supposed to be cracky, fluffy fun, after all.

Not one of my best fics, certainly, but it was fun, and a welcome change of pace after the angst and emotional exhaustion that was "The Blaze Across My Nightgown." Writing Merle's, well, writing, was like getting in touch with my thirteen-year-old self of yester-yore, who was way into cheesy romance, but who couldn't be bothered with exposition or anything like that, and instead skipped straight to the makeouts. Kind of like a PG-13 version of PWPs, because I was too embarrassed to write actual smut back then. (Like, shouldn't Eries be wearing a corset, you ask? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' UNDERGARMENTS. I WANT NIPPLE ACTION, DAMN IT. LOGIC HAS NO PLACE IN PORN, DON'T YOU KNOW THIS BY NOW?)

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this bizarre little piece. I'm going to quietly go back to angsty, SRS BSNS fic now. XD