He was kissing her, and it felt wonderful.

She'd been kissed a few times over the course of her lifetime, hidden in the hedges of the garden as a teenager or sometimes in the stale dusty air of an unused room in the offices. Generally she found them to be only mildly interesting but necessary affairs; the kissers generally tasted like mints or toothpaste, carefully groomed with the scent of some expensive cologne or aftershave. The motions of love-play were as structured and orderly to her as a dance; once the initial bow was made and accepted, follow the correct steps, find the right triggers... everything proceeding as expected. It was all about as interesting to her as her latest report (in fact a time or two she'd spent her times in a lovers arms reviewing the wording on her latest report rather than concentrating on the person she was faced with). Meryl simply hadn't seen what all of the fuss was about.

She'd watched as her friends around her had scurried from relationship to relationship, always worrying about whether or not the other person liked them, whether they would stay together, whether they should stay together, trying desperately to find that one ideal person they wanted to be with and she'd never been able to understand any of it. She'd never been swept away before so when people tried to explain to her what passion meant she'd always looked at them with that confused look that a dog gives its owner when they put a strange food in their food dish and the dog is sitting there staring at it uncomprehendingly with his head cocked to one side wondering what the heck he's supposed to do with it. Despite her hot-tempered and volatile nature, Meryl hadn't felt the all-consuming burn of passion in her life so trying to explain it to her as speaking in tongues to her. She'd had no frame of reference.

Oh she'd thought something like this might happen, had even idly hoped for it. She wouldn't have admitted to anyone, not even Milly (who probably knew anyway) but she'd worn the dress for him. She'd gone out of her way to look as attractive to him as possible with the idle thought that maybe he'd pull her aside for a kiss and end this foolish tap-dance going on between the two of them where both of them were afraid to lead and sooner or later someone was going to get a foot stepped on. She hadn't really thought much about what the kiss would be like, she was a sensible woman who didn't hold with mooning about like a schoolgirl with her first crush, so any thought she might have given about what it might be like to kiss Vash was with the mild, detached expectation that it would be something slightly more pleasant than the kisses she'd had before but still... it was only a kiss.

Thus she had not been prepared, and she was caught blindsided by the sheer intensity of feeling and emotion of what should have been nothing more momentous than a simple meeting of lips. She wasn't prepared when conscious thought stalled as fire and lightning raced through her body in a sudden wave, stealing her breath and replacing the air in her lungs with a strange swelling feeling expanding from her heart until it felt too great to hold. She wasn't prepared when her knees turned to water and could no longer hold her up and she was forced to cling to him like the last anchor in a sandstorm as the universe around her flew apart into whirling sensations.

His kiss actually tingled, like a mild current, pins and needles spreading over her lips where his lips touched hers. His scent, dry, soft and slightly spicy, was the air she breathed to live. His arms, both of them strong enough to bend steel, were wrapped gently around her, like he was afraid to break her. His kiss was a gentle pressure, making no demands, sharing rather than taking. But she suddenly needed him more than she needed air to breathe, so Meryl tightened her arms around him a little more and pressed her lips more firmly to him tacitly letting him know that he was free to deepen the kiss.

His arms tightened around her waist and she was abruptly lifted off her feet and pulled against his chest as his mouth opened against hers and tasted her. He tasted like the air heavy with the scent of a storm, like wind and lightning, and his kiss had the same effect on her inner landscape as a sandstorm did on the desert, raising it from its place on the ground to be borne aloft by the wild wind, changing the shape of the dunes forever with its passing.

The kiss ended slowly and reluctantly as he gently set her back on her feet. She couldn't hold herself up, she felt so dizzy afterward and so she leaned against him. She couldn't breathe or think, and apparently neither could he, because all they did in that still silent moment after the kiss ended was stare at each other in speechless wonder, neither able to say anything to break the spell. She wasn't sure who started it, but Vash's face slowly transformed into one of those rare, soft smiling looks, where she could see his gentle soul radiating out from within him and she just knew that her own expression mirrored his. She wouldn't have been able to find one of her walls or defenses right then if her life had depended on it. Fortunately for her right then, it didn't; hidden away safely from prying eyes and gossiping servants she was free to be vulnerable and in love without anyone remarking on it.

She wasn't sure which of them initiated the kiss that followed, her eyes had sort of drifted shut as she gave herself over to the feeling of his arms around her holding her securely in his embrace and the wondrous sensations that filled her entire being when he kissed her. When he pulled her closer one of his hands remained wrapped around the small of her back (right where the damned corset dug in tightly) and the other traveled up her back, past the edge of the corset to cradle her head at the nape of her neck controlling the pressure of the kiss but also supporting her head, his fingers tangled in her hair sending small shivers down her spine even as he worked the soft flesh of her lips tenderly with his own. Meryl sighed wordlessly and relaxed completely, surrendering herself to the moment and allowing herself to just feel.

What felt like eternity and only an instant later at the same time, Vash pulled away from the kiss. Gratifyingly enough he seemed just as breathless and out of sorts as she felt.

"That was.. um..." he said, apparently feeling the need to try to articulate something that could only be felt.

"Yeah," she agreed, her voice coming out in a dreamy sigh instead of her more normal firm tones. She just stayed there in his arms, not willing to move anywhere else, just in case he should decide that he wanted another kiss. He seemed content just hold her, for the moment anyway.

There was another long pause then he said

"I should have done this a long time ago." His tone was considered and decisive.

"Well..." Meryl said, injecting a little coyness in her voice, no point in not encouraging him now. "You could... you could always make up for lost time."

"Sounds like a good idea," he said huskily, leaning down for another kiss.

It was just as wonderful as the first two kisses, even as his arms tightened around her waist and pulled her against him, making the damned corset dig into her skin. The dragon-lady must have been a closet sadist, for she laced the thing up so tight that Meryl couldn't breathe... of course, maybe she couldn't entirely blame that problem on the corset either, she realized as a soft noise of enjoyment escaped her throat when he ran a hand down her bare arm and around her back. She could feel him smile against her mouth at the noise. But she wasn't expecting the sudden movement when she found her legs pulled out from under her and scooped into his arms, all without breaking the kiss. She realized why a second later; he was quite a bit taller than she was and he had to stoop over quite a bit to kiss her, so it was natural that he'd get a crick in his neck after a little while.

Vash carried her over to a pile of foam polymer mats and plas-fabric blankets that she'd found in a storage bin long ago (some old SEEDs ship surplus that her family had packed away in an attic) that she'd appropriated for herself because the material never got old or musty. She'd liked to sneak down to the cool hidden rooms underground for a siesta in the hot afternoons when she'd been a child. Vash sat down on the pile of them with his back braced against the wall and settled her sideways across his lap. He resumed the kiss with renewed interest and things probably would have been perfect, if it weren't for the damned metal herringbones of the corset poking into her flesh and constricting around her ribs. She squirmed a bit, trying to loosen the thing.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sounding dazed and a little worried.

"Damned corset's digging into me," she muttered, trying in vain to reach around the back and loosen it just a little so she could breathe better. Her wish was apparently his command, for a fraction of a second later the buttons on one side were undone and the cursed thing exploded outward as she sighed with relief.

"Better?" he questioned, his lips feather light against hers. Her answer was a noise of agreement as the tiny gap closed between them. Meryl tried not to smile in either mischief or delight as his prosthetic hand started working its way up her voluminous skirt, while the other one contented itself to trace circles in the exposed skin of her back. It was a little unfair that he still had all of his clothes on; true, she was mostly still dressed, but her clothes were easier to work around. That jacket had to go. Meryl, while not as quick as Vash was, still had the front buttons undone in reasonably short order and she pushed it off him. There was a small struggle as Vash had to quit touching her (something he was loath to do) for a moment in order to get his arms out of the sleeves but a few moments later, as she whipped the black bow-tie off him and tossed it somewhere, they were both a lot more comfortable.

His hand resumed its place at her knee, and started slowly working its way up her thigh while the other hand crept down her lower back now that her waist wasn't locked away inside the prison of the corset. Abruptly he stopped, jerking away in shock as both of his hands found foreign objects simultaneously.

"No wonder they call you Derringer Meryl," he said a moment later, laughing as he pulled a derringer out of a thigh holster on her garter and another from a waist holster in the small of her back, just under where her skirt belled out.

"I never go anywhere unarmed," she informed him, trying to keep a straight face as he playfully started patting her down for more weapons. Some areas he searched more thoroughly than others. He quickly found the other one located on the other thigh.

"Am I going to have to strip search you?" he teased after he'd pulled it out.

"Said the pot to the kettle," Meryl replied archly as she pulled his own handgun from the small of his back. It was significantly larger than hers of course, but he had bigger hands.

"But that's only one," he argued. "You've got three on you."

"Shows what you know," Meryl smiled up at him impishly, just daring him with her expression to see if three was all she really had on her.

"Sounds like I am going to have to strip search you," he murmured. There was an edge of huskiness to his voice that belied the playfulness of his tone.

It didn't feel much like a search when one hand started working its way around to the front of the corset from the open side and the other caressed its way up her thigh. She wasn't complaining though, she sighed in delight as she threaded her fingers in his hair again, her body automatically arching into his caresses. His lips detached from hers as he dotted kisses up to the tiny hollow in her neck just underneath her ear. Meryl wasn't aware she had made any noise, so drunk on the sensations tingling through her body, until she felt his chuckle rumble through her where their bodies were pressed together.

"Sounds like I'm not the only one having fun," he murmured into her ear, breath hot on her skin. He began working his delightful way down her neck making her skin shiver and pucker up in response. She made a noise of agreement as her fingers slid down his broad, muscled chest to try undoing the buttons of his shirt. He caught them gently at the wrists and pulled them away from their mission but before she could ask him why he'd stopped her her thoughts flew abruptly away as the hand that was working its way inside her corset found the sensitized flesh of her right breast and squeezed. Her whole body seized up in surprised pleasure, and she definitely heard the noise she made into the silence of their room. It was a good thing they were underground, someone definitely would have heard otherwise, but even so she tried to modulate her tone.

He didn't appear to care for her attempts to silence herself for he pinched the over-sensitive nub of flesh on her breast, causing her to gasp in surprise and pleasure as an unexpected jolt of need lanced down at her core. The hand that had been caressing at her thigh apparently found what it was really after for the buttons fastening closed the waist came undone in a split second, when Vash made a small, pleased noise of triumph. The dress hung loosely off her, held up mostly by the simple fact that their bodies being pressed together pinned the fabric in place. Vash lifted her up a bit and began to tug it down.

"Wait," Meryl whispered. He froze immediately.

Meryl again reached for the buttons on his shirt. It was absolutely not fair that she was nearly down to her underthings while the only thing she'd managed to remove from him was his jacket and tie. Vash stopped her again from taking off his clothes. Meryl looked at him questioningly, refusing to be sidetracked this time even as his lips did something to the skin at the join between her shoulder and her neck that pulled white hot lava from her blood. She firmly detached him (her body not at all pleased with the decision) and looked him in the eyes.

"Why are you stopping me?" she asked him. "Surely you have to know that this can't be done with your clothes on?"

Vash's face flushed a little and he looked a bit embarrassed, which was sort of odd considering what they'd been up to up until that moment.

"It's not something that I like people to look at," he said. Meryl felt a flash of deja vu and understood what his problem was; he was a little self-conscious about his body because he was so badly scarred.

"I'm not people," she assured him. "I'm Meryl, and I've seen it once or twice before."

She smiled, trying for a bit of levity.

"I'm sorry, you're just going to have to find something else to add shock value to my life."

His smile, bright and beautiful, could have easily lit up the darkness.

"Now move your hands so I can get that shirt off," she commanded.

"Yes Ma'am," he grinned, attacking her lips with a definite sense of joy while Meryl discovered that she was suddenly all thumbs as Vash found fun new ways to distract her. One hand was tracing down her calf and over the pad of one foot with a feather light touch while the other hand made soft, lazy circles over one shoulder and back around to the back of her neck to ruffle the short hairs at the base of her head. She got the sense that he was not really trying to stop her, he just liked seeing how flustered he could make her while she tried to get something done. Every time she looked back up at him he just grinned innocently at her with an expression of "no no, go ahead, keep going, I'm not stopping you".

"You imp, you're doing that on purpose," she accused as she tried for the fourth time to get the third button through the damned button hole. She was just about ready to admit defeat and rip it off him.

"Well yeah," he said, his eyes dancing with amusement. "Are you going to rip it off me?"

Well now that he'd asked her to, no.

She was not about to admit defeat to the cloth or to him so she made a small hmph-ing noise and forced her hands to steady. She smiled in satisfaction as she managed to get the rest undone, the smile quickly faded to seriousness as she surveyed what he generally went to great lengths to keep hidden. It was nothing she hadn't seen before. As the senior partner and the one with the most field training in first aid, it had been Meryl that had bandaged him up before he'd went to fight his brother. Seeing it again reminded her a little of that time.

Meryl remembered looking at them in a sort of hypnotized, faintly horrified, fascination. She recalled trying to wrap her mind around the idea of just what all of those wounds meant. How many times had he been in danger? How often had he been trapped, betrayed, shot at and hurt? How many times had he willfully thrown himself into the path of danger just to save someone else? It had been that moment, when she'd been faced with that realization, that Meryl had acknowledged to herself that she couldn't run away from how she felt about him anymore.

The playful mood which had seemed to characterize their love-play until that moment evaporated, quickly replaced by a subtle tension. It had the feeling of the two of them being balanced by a very thin thread, the slightest movement one way or another could make it snap.

"So..." he said, clearly very anxious. "If you don't want to, I... I understand."

His tone was one of weary defeat, as though he'd expected that all along, and Meryl felt a momentary flash of irritation at him that he thought she was so weak. It was replaced again by tenderness at the look of longing and dutiful resignation on his face. He would never force her into doing something she didn't want to, even when he clearly very much did.

Meryl cupped the side of his face tenderly with one hand and looked at him, her heart felt like it was swelling inside her chest and she was surprised to find her throat tightening just a little. She couldn't find the words to say what she wanted to... she wasn't really good with them anyway. Instead she slid her other hand up over the rough, scarred flesh of his chest, lingering slightly over some of the worst of them to trace them with a fingertip as she hadn't dared to when she'd been bandaging him for fear of waking him up, and leaned up to kiss him firmly again, communicating wordlessly that this was indeed what she wanted.

He couldn't seem to believe it at first but then he slowly returned her gesture. The casual playfulness was gone and the soft exploring touches and gentle kisses had turned to something more serious. Before that moment, there had been the feeling that either one could break it off at any time and there'd be no hard feelings on either side, but now they had reached the point where it wasn't about having fun or curiosity. They'd reached the point of no return.

A desperate tenderness made his arms tighten around her until it was just shy of being painful and he leaned forward and rested his weight on her bare shoulders. Meryl was more than happy to hold him up, and wrapped her arms around him in an embrace that mirrored his. There was a soft intimacy to the moment, a feeling of being bound, and freed at the same time. It felt, good, right being so near him, loving him and supporting him. Meryl felt that there wasn't likely to be a better time than this to say what was in her heart.

"Meryl," he said softly into the enclosing darkness, just as she took a breath to tell him how she felt.

"Yes?" she asked, running a hand through his hair. She suppressed a minor twinge of jealousy and the thought that his hair was so thick and soft while hers was baby fine.

"Knives keeps reminding me that we're really very different," he said softly. "And I know that's true. I will outlive you. You'll grow old and die while I continue on, I've watched it before with all of my friends. I'll tell you something I've never told anyone before..."

"What's that?" she asked, nervous now that he was leading up to pushing her away again.

"I used to hate them for it, a little bit," he confessed.

"Hate them for what? Dying?" Meryl asked gently, her tone not condemning him for the way he felt.

"Living, I guess," he said softly. "I was always watching from the outside, you see. They'd all get to find people they loved, and live with them, have children with them and grow old with them and I... I didn't. That's what it means to live outside of time, it means you always get to look and want, but never have."

"Oh, Vash," she murmured, holding him tighter, as if, if she held him hard enough she could hold back time itself and keep him from the pain of loss forever.

"But there is something else," he said. "Even though her time was short and I outlived her, I never regretted having Rem in my life. I missed her, yes, but I never regretted her being there. I think with you, the only thing I'd regret is if I never got the chance to be with you while I could."

"For as long as we have, for as long as you want me..." Meryl said softly, hesitantly. "I'm yours."

Still, Vash being Vash...

"Meryl, You don't have to... You can still-"

She cut him off with a finger athwart his lips.

"You're a sweetheart, and your mama raised you right," she informed him. "But shut up and kiss me."

"Yes ma'am," he murmured, smiling against her lips as he willingly complied.

X X X X X

I know, I know, awful place to leave off isn't it? But if I were to write anything more I'd have to write a full-fledged lemon, and the good old FFN won't let us post those without certain repercussions, and being as they're hidden away in a secret room underground where no-one can hear or find them I couldn't think of a way to interrupt the affair. So... I'll just have to leave the rest to your imagination. Or, if anyone wants to prevail on me, I guess I could possibly write out the rest and post it at media miner, leave a note for me if that's the case and I'll put the rest of it there.

Sorry it took me so long to post this up, I've been sucked into the Final Fantasy void again... it's eight this time. I've never actually played eight before; I've watched others play eight, but this is my fist time playing it and I love it. Going to go play it right now as a matter of fact, after I finish posting this. I hope you enjoyed the chapter... took them long enough didn't it? Sheesh, I've seen glaciers that move faster than those two.