42_souls, table 3, theme 3: "no worries, darling!"
Romance level: Low. Good for those who prefer Stein/Medusa.
Written while listening to Ali Project's Peony Pink. (No. I don't watch Clamp School Detectives. I just really like the song.)

There were moments --brief, but frequent-- that dotted Stein's existence when Marie was present. Moments of a certain insignificant, everyday persuasion. But perhaps since "everyday" referred to the "everyday" of others (namely, not Stein), that was why they stood out to the professor.

For instance, once, he had made her angry... some reference to how big her feet looked in those boots... and woke up with an assortment of doodles and comments scribbled on his face with pink marker.

Or the night he had accidentally walked in on her while she was in the middle of buttoning up her sleeping blouse, toothbrush dangling out the side of her mouth (he could be justified; the door was slightly ajar, so he assumed she would have no problem in him going in to retrieve his pair of spare glasses).

Or even the time he'd heard her muttering to herself in the kitchen and, upon investigation, found her reaching desperately for the flour. Which happened to be situated on a very high shelf. Not high for him, of course, so he walked over to help. Fortunately, he was able to retrieve the flour for his house guest. Unfortunately, "retrieve" in this case meant "accidentally miscalculated the weight of a bag of flour (he hadn't really cooked for himself in months) and dropped it, resulting in a minor explosion and a very powdery duo." She wasn't happy with the result. Apparently, flour was very difficult to wash out from long hair. Lucky him, he was tall enough to escape most of the white substance. The Marie-sized body shield probably helped as well.

This wasn't so different. Franken Stein had caught a cold. It was almost certainly Marie's fault; he had tended to her in her own valiant battle with the flu, and he'd caught her bug. The good news; it was Sunday, and Marie was home, making a proper fuss over him. The bad news; this was his scheduled date of the makeup session for the lesson a few of his groups had missed the previous Friday. He'd promised them pain and torture if they didn't come (though he was sure they knew that there would be pain and torture waiting for them when they did), so what would they do if he didn't come?

He wasn't sure yet if he particularly cared, but when he voiced his previous plans for the day to Marie, she nodded with understanding. Moments later, he could see the resolve set in her eyes as she placed a cup of soup on his bedside table (when was the last time he had laid in this bed? Too long for the memory to compute, so he quickly put it out of his mind with a sneeze). "You look like a woman on a mission," he said offhandedly to the blond, who had brought a sweater with her into the room and was currently putting it on. "You're not going out to give them the lesson, are you? They can just wait for my wrath to come next weekend. It's cold out. There's no point in catching the flu again unnecessarily."

"No worries, darling," she said with a smile, leaving the room with his door ajar. In less than a minute, she was at the front door, slipping her boots on. "I'll run into town and chastise them for you and be home in time for dinner. You should sleep."

The surprising part was that he rather enjoyed those moments, even though most of them ended out of his favor.

(Most. But not all.)