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It’s rare that Meryl is the last in bed in the morning, even on a day off. Vash and Millie are strictly morning people and will typically be up before the suns, but Nicholas likes to sleep in—moreover, he likes to cuddle, particularly when the other two have slunk out from under the sheets, so Meryl will generally wake up on a Sunday to arms tightly wound around her midsection, a scruffy chin hooked over her shoulder. It’s one of her favourite ways to wake up; even when she comes alive with a gasp, her heart racing, gruesome memories still at play just behind her eyelids, the sight and feel of Nick, his hold tender, his chest rising and falling against Meryl’s, is enough to bring her back down again.
In the absence of that embrace, Meryl wakes up to cold sheets and a tremor beneath her skin. Even as she straightens and reaches for the comforter that she’d discarded hours ago on account of overheating where she was sandwiched between three of her partners, she can’t seem to settle back into her own bones. She can hear a faint din from the kitchen, Vash’s voice pitching up and down with whatever anecdote he’s regalling Millie with as the two of them prepare breakfast. She can also smell the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke, a habit Nicholas had kicked several months back… Following her nose out of the bedroom and into the sitting room, where they have two glass doors overlooking a balcony, Meryl is quickly able to locate the source.
Doubtlessly, Millie and Vash have noticed already. If they haven’t said anything, it’s for a good reason… so Nicholas must be in a mood this morning. Not that Meryl isn’t. She smooths her hands down her upper arms, which are spotted with goosebumps. When she drags her palms up to her face, she presses down on her eyelids and feels a heady ache. Last night’s sleep hadn’t been a sound one, even if she usually sleeps better with the loves of her life on all sides.
Waking up without Nicholas there always leaves Meryl feeling cold and lopsided, with a bit of a residual stomachache even though she knows she didn’t eat anything off-colour. It’s a silly, childish compulsion that she just can’t seem to shake; Meryl Stryfe does not cling, she does not attach herself to Nick’s back out of fear that he’ll slip through her fingers like sand, because she knows the way the world works. If the day comes that Nicholas should leave her, god forbid, she’ll be ready for that. A pillar of strength and resolve for her partners, who have lost Nicholas once before just as she has, who had taken it twice as hard at the time. Meryl, after all, only grew closer to Nicholas during her second life. She has no room to be holding him so close.
Yet her skin still tingles like there’s a charge in the air. She dumps the comforter on the floor and ambles towards their shared dresser, her hands automatically drifting towards the pile of natural tones that belongs to Nick. He’s broad in the shoulders and the chest, and taller than Meryl to boot, so there isn’t an item in his closet that fits her comfortably, but the cardigan she selects smells like him. Not like cigarette smoke or gun powder, the two vices that Nicholas has since discarded in his retirement from the Eye, but faintly of wood and aftershave, of freshly made rice and sandalwood from the incense sticks he’ll light up during prayer. The soft yarn of the sweater is indulgent, and the way the sleeves pool off the end of Meryl’s fingertips makes her feel a little young again in a comforting way. To ground herself, she gathers the front of the sweater against her face and breathes in deep.
Nonetheless, before she joins Nick on the balcony, Meryl is sure to roll up the sleeves and button the cardigan over her night gown. When she does step outside, she finds Nicholas leaned against the balcony next to the old ashtray, two cigarettes already put out in the little pile of ash. He’s fidgeting with his lighter, the old familiar motion of flicking the lid on and off with a repetitive click. Meryl watches him for a moment, then wordlessly slides the balcony door shut.
“Not in the mood for a lecture,” is how Nicholas chooses to greet her as she comes to stand by his side. Meryl scoffs and nudges at his upper arm with her elbow; she shakes her head.
“I’m not here to deliver one. Are you okay?”
Nicholas lets out a long, low hum. He closes his eyes. He has distinctive eyelashes, thick and dark like the hair on his head. He’s grown it out since he moved in, so now the curls are long enough to hook over his ears, to pool at the back of his neck. Soon it’ll be long enough that he can tie it out of his face the way that Vash does when he isn’t using product. Nick will look good with a little ponytail, but what Meryl likes most about it is she can run her fingers through the dark waves of hair and feel it glide over her knuckles, strong and soft, still faintly warm from sitting against Nicholas’ scalp.
“Not sure how to answer that,” Nicholas finally murmurs. He sighs. His lighter returns to his pocket, and he shifts, sinking into the rocking chair that Millie likes to sit in while she knits, watching the sunrise. He doesn’t bother pulling the folded blanket out from underneath him, instead dropping against the back of the chair and closing his eyes. Meryl watches his adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “‘S nothing that you have to consider yourself with, Princess. You should go back inside, they’re making breakfast.”
In these situations, Nicholas is sort of predictable. That had surprised Meryl when she was first getting to know him. As Vash’s friend, the priest, Nicholas D. Wolfwood always seemed inscrutable, unflinching. A bit smarmy and insufferable, but ultimately reliable, even when Meryl could never tell what was playing on his mind. In the end what she realised through getting to know him is that she and Nicholas have a lot more in common than she’d realised. When Nick feels upset, what he yearns for is solitude—not because he needs it, not because he doesn’t want to be seen while he’s in pain, but because his inclination is always to try not to be a burden on other people. He never wants to be anything but an asset, but a mild inoffensive presence that can be relied on no matter what.
Meryl had never seen the point of being that way until the Age of Chaos, where she carried the century of carnage seen by one person as she witnessed new depths of depravity through her own eyes. Through it all, Millie suffered and lost, she languished and toiled, and still she remained consistent, always there at Meryl’s side, always ready to lend a helping hand… and Meryl… was eaten up by it at times. She couldn’t bear how useless and fragile she’d become. In this second, gentler life, sometimes it makes her feel like her throat is closing up to accept help at all, to know the person holding her through waves of tears has waves of their own to be crying.
She understands, then, why Nicholas tells her to go back inside, but that isn’t to say she intends to listen. She sets her hands on the railing and curls her fingers, takes a deep breath to ground herself. What she needs right now is to keep it together, because the moment that Nicholas gets an inkling she was upset to wake up without him, that she had any kind of bad dream, he’ll shift the focus from himself entirely. He’s too good at doing that. For all Meryl knows, that’s why Vash is leaving him to his own devices this morning… Though Millie’s motivations, Meryl will have to hear directly from the toma’s mouth. Even with someone as skilled in the act as Nick, Millie isn’t so easily deterred.
It’s a tall bar to clear this morning, being calm, but Meryl has enough experience at least coming across as levelheaded. She draws her hands back and folds them across her stomach, leaning her hip into the railing while she looks over Nicholas. In the years since Vash and his brother’s final confrontation, the climate of No Man’s Land has changed in subtle but noticeable ways, particularly in December, where the four of them eventually chose to settle down. There is a “winter” now, where the air gets nippy and cold and eventually wet enough for there to be snow; in the “fall” there are periodic rain showers, and even thunderstorms—though the thunder itself isn’t such a new thing as sandstorms on this planet were frequently accompanied by lighting strikes as well.
There’s nothing all that special about the weather this morning though. It’s balmy, both suns high overhead by this hour, and there isn’t much of a breeze. The sunlight illuminates the bags under Nicholas’ eyes, the tousle of his hair, like he’s been running his hand through it again and again. Speaking of his hand, the one that lays over his lap twitches on occasion, as if he’d like to reach for another cigarette. He doesn’t, nor does he angle towards his pocket, but Meryl has to wonder if he would be showing so much restraint if he was still alone out here.
“...You don’t have to hold back on my account,” Meryl finally says.
“‘M trying to quit,” comes Nicholas’ drawled response. He cracks an eye open, peering at Meryl with a small slip of deep brown. “Besides, it’s rude to do in front of a lady.”
“You never seemed to care that much before,” Meryl notes, albeit with a smile. There are three chairs out on the balcony, mainly because they couldn’t get a fourth to fit. Rather than sink into one of the other two, Meryl drops into a crouch where she’s standing and folds her arms across her knees. It’s warmer out here than it was indoors, so she might need to take off Nick’s cardigan soon, but she’s not quite ready to give up its tactile comfort. Obscuring her hands beneath the fold of her arms, Meryl curls her fingers in the fabric and breathes out. “...Can you talk to me? What’s going on?”
Nicholas sighs. His eyes close again, and the hand that twitched in his lap moves to massage between his eyebrows, instead. It doesn’t seem so much in reaction to Meryl’s question as it sort of indicates that Nick might have a headache. Meryl bites back her first instinctive response, which is to ask if Nicholas has drank any water yet today, and then her second, which is to make some sort of snarky, biting remark about how hard it must be for him to confide in her. There’s really no place for that. He’s clearly thinking, as well, so Meryl doubts there’s anything to be gained from pushing too hard right now. Though it never comes naturally to her, she holds her tongue, folds a hand over her mouth just to make sure she doesn’t speak too early.
Eventually Nicholas shrugs. “I don’t know what to say,” is his eventually, earnest-sounding response. He opens both of his eyes again, and he looks somewhat fragile, his gaze faraway. Those lashes make him look awfully delicate at times, though the soft tone of voice and the closed posture don’t hurt, either. “Just… needed a smoke this morning.”
Meryl hums up and down. She can’t understand that one… not because it defies understanding, but simply because Meryl has never been a smoker. Millie’s always had such a terrible alcohol tolerance, Meryl tends to hold back when they go out so her partner has someone levelheaded to see to it that she gets home in one piece. As for other vices, other additions… There’s really no reason to compare herself to Nicholas, who had no other means to escape, no other way of getting time for himself. For six years, he was nothing but miserable, forced into a position where he had to kill in order to survive—to defy what he believed more powerfully than anyone else was the right way of living and be selfish, even if Meryl has never truly thought of him as such a word.
Still, she nods. Because Nicholas sounds as if he’s being honest. Not that he’s deflecting because he doesn’t want to talk about it—although if he said as much, Meryl would try to leave him alone, as difficult as that can be for her at times—but that he truly just isn’t sure what else to say. Further, the fact that Vash and Millie had chosen to give him space probably speaks to that fact… The exchange they had just now likely wasn’t all that different from the one Millie must have had with him however long ago it was that he left Meryl alone in bed.
Though it isn’t cold on the balcony, Meryl shivers again and rubs her hand over her head, then down to her neck. Unfortunately, Nick’s eyes are open to catch this motion; he sits upright, with more clarity in his expression than there’s been since Meryl came out to join him, and Meryl suppresses the urge to groan. She was doing so well too.
“It’s fine,” Meryl clarifies before Nicholas can ask. She scrubs both hands down her face, then leaves them there and sighs, muffled against her palm. “I just… woke up kind of abruptly, is all. I can’t remember the last time I was the last person up.”
It’s not an ‘adult’ issue. That is, it’s not an issue that adults should have in their adult relationships when they’re trying to live their adult lives. Meryl never shared the bed with her parents as a little kid, even when she’d have nightmares, she usually found it in herself to roll over and go back to sleep. She roomed with a stranger in university, but by then she’d had the practice to keep herself quiet at night, even if what she was dreaming about was particularly unpleasant. While travelling with Millie, though, Meryl got herself accustomed to—the act of it. Sharing a bed with someone, not because they liked to (or at least not explicitly for that reason) but in order to save money on lodgings. It was just the decision that made sense.
There was a brief stint, after the Dragon’s Nest incident, where Meryl slept alone again, because her night terrors were so horrible and visceral she couldn’t stand to keep Millie in the room with her, let alone tucked together under the covers. She didn’t want her own worsening sleep quality to sacrifice Millie’s… but that didn’t last very long on account of everything that came to follow that incident. Bernadelli’s collapse and then the collapse of the very world they grew up in… They were lucky if they even found a bed to sleep in. Forget about resting in separate rooms.
Meryl has always prided herself on her ability to compartmentalise. She’s not somebody who is overly messy or reliant on others—at least, she’s tried very hard not to be that. After all, in a word like this, you have to be competent. You have to keep your head screwed on your shoulders and you can’t let the inevitable tragedy or devastation shake you. Meryl knows better than most; she’s seen about a hundred and fifty years more than most. So something like Nicholas getting out of bed before her, waking up to cold sheets when it’s immediately obvious that the rest of the house isn’t empty and there wasn’t some kind of catastrophe, it’s not a problem and it’s ridiculous for Meryl to be crouching here and shivering like a child left alone in the dark. She won’t vocalise her feelings to Nicholas, either, who has enough going on… No matter what, Meryl refuses to let herself be selfish.
A hand lays itself over Meryl’s. She jumps as she realises that she’d spaced out—not just that, but badly enough for Nicholas to get up and get down to her level without her noticing at all. Meryl had episodes right after receiving all of Vash’s memories—these, dissociative episodes where she couldn’t tell fact from fiction, reality from memory… but typically she was still at a baseline level cognisant of her surroundings. Perhaps she’s relaxed too much in this easier, more peaceful life.
This time the groan escapes. “Don’t look at me. I’m being embarrassing.”
“You’re not,” Nicholas says. His other hand moves, his finger nudging against her chin. It’s brave of Nicholas to initiate the touch, particularly with his hands, which he’s almost always angling to keep away from her. It’s that more than anything that makes Meryl’s resolve crumble, and she exhales heavily, pressing into the delicate touch and shutting her eyes. Nick’s hand is warm with callouses and scars on his knuckles, his fingertips, all from years of hard work and more recently the wood crafting that he’s been spending more time honing his skills in. It’s familiar and pleasant against her skin and Meryl presses needily after it. That much, she’ll allow herself to take.
“...Sometimes,” Meryl whispers, and she isn’t sure what it is that shakes the words out of her, just that they continue, “when I wake up and you’re not there, I… It’s different, than when Vash or Millie is up first.”
“Meryl,” Nicholas murmurs. He says her name so tenderly, like the word itself is precious to him. It squeezes Meryl’s stomach into knots, solidifies something leaden in the base of her chest, right where her ribs meet. She’s fortunate in that sense that Nicholas usually calls her by a nickname, Princess most often these days, because hearing her name in that voice more often might tear her apart. “‘M sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You were upset,” Meryl huffs. “What were you supposed to be thinking about?”
Nick’s hand shifts so his large palm engulfs Meryl’s cheek. Meryl sighs into it, turns her face to kiss him there.
“Would’ve rather been thinking about you,” Nicholas admits. His thumb brushes underneath her eye, drums there a couple times, contemplative. “...If I woke you up next time, would that…”
Meryl opens her eyes. “You don’t have to, if you want to be alone,” she insists, furrowing her brow. “I wouldn’t want to—I mean, if you need space—”
“I didn’t,” Nicholas clarifies, with a little curl of his lip. It’s a handsome smile, slightly lopsided and sheepish, and it makes Meryl smile at him too. “Just didn’t wanna bother you.”
“You could never bother me,” Meryl says automatically, before biting down on her tongue. “Well—not if it isn’t on purpose, at least.”
Nicholas snorts quietly. He ducks forward, and the slight press of his lips against Meryl’s forehead is sweet, makes her heart flutter even though they’ve been together for far longer and have had the opportunity for much more direct gestures of affection. When Nicholas withdraws, Meryl thinks about jumping him for a proper kiss, or else just dragging him down to press his head against her chest, where she can feel him against her neck on every exhale, but before she can act on either impulse, the glass door behind them slides open.
“Breakfast is ready.” It’s Vash. The hand that falls into Meryl’s hair is also Vash’s, long spindly fingers, a warm palm indicating that it’s not his prosthetic. “...Sorry. We made eggs. Millie thought we should do something that would be tasty cold, but we’re out of flour…”
Nicholas gives Vash an incredulous look over Meryl’s head. For his part, he doesn’t seem surprised by their partner’s arrival, but then, he’d probably seen Vash walk through the living room to get to them, the way he’s sitting. “We’re out of flour?”
“...Yes,” Vash says at length. It sounds as if he’s pursing his lips. Meryl snorts. She knows for a fact that they weren’t running that low, but while Vash can bake if he wants to, he usually ends up banned from the kitchen for goofing off, and that’s probably what has happened here. Rather than probe further, she lifts her arms, and beams when Nicholas obligingly scoops her off the floor. Hooking her legs around his waist, Meryl cosies in against him and breathes in deep… then finally turns back to look at Vash.
“Thanks for cooking,” Meryl says, “if you really were cooking, and you weren’t just using the time to flirt with Millie and distract her.”
Vash’s eyes twinkle for a moment, and he leans in, planting a kiss on Meryl’s forehead, then leaning past her to bite down on Nick’s nose. “Guess you’ll never know.”
“Oi!” Nicholas splutters as Vash skips back into the house. “You damn animal, she gets a kiss and I get a—you want me to tell you about the nightmare I had last night, you spiky pain in my ass?”
Meryl settles against Nick’s shoulder. “You remember your nightmare?”
“Not a thing,” Nicholas admits, in an undertone. “I’ll make up somethin’ real bad and he’ll leak like a faucet though, you watch.”
Meryl giggles as Nicholas carries her over the threshold into their house. And indeed, the account that Nicholas comes up with is absurd, but Vash does cry, and the eggs that were definitely absolutely only prepared by Millie are salty and crispy at the bottom and delicious. It’s too bad they don’t have something sweet like pancakes or waffles to go along with them, but well… They’d need flour for that, so, Meryl supposes beggars can’t be choosers.
The best part of it is that Nicholas places Meryl in his lap at the breakfast table and doesn’t move her, even when he needs to reach past her for salt, or to flirt with Millie, or to twig Vash’s nose. One of his hands stays secured, warm and strong, around Meryl’s waist… and when Meryl’s done eating, she melts back into him. She was robbed of a lazy wakeup with him, after all. As it’s a Sunday, and none of them have anywhere they need to be until Melanie’s tonight for dinner, Meryl doesn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t doze off right here and catch up on lost time.