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“I’m done,” Vash says, when it’s all over.
Six months—the same amount of time that Vash was trapped on the Ark. Knives is gone. Hunting Vash isn’t so much the thing to do anymore, the novelty of the hunt wearing off, sightings diminishing as Vash abandons his coat, his hair, and even his name.
As No Man’s Land starts to put itself back together, Vash makes his way the new home of the orphanage that was once in a church in December, where Nicholas is waiting, sustained by the power Vash poured into his wounded body, too debilitated to keep fighting but too stubborn to die, tended by the children he once raised and the friend who nearly killed him.
Vash whispers it against the column of Nicholas’ throat, trembling all over, hands fisted in the lapels of Nicholas’ jacket, clutching at him as though he hasn’t already pulled him back from the brink, as though he might lose him at any moment. “I’m done.”
“Me too,” Nicholas replies, smoothing back Vash’s hair. He finds the last shock of blonde amidst the black, winding it around his fingers. It’s barely visible, just a few pale hairs, indistinguishable from streaks of gray in naturally dark hair, except for the fact that Vash, even now, looks too young to be gray.
Nicholas doesn’t know if it’s true—if either of them have the capability to be done, to leave what they are behind—but he’s willing to try. For Vash.
Go, Livio tells them, with wet eyes and a wide smile, half-teasingly drawing a cross in the air with two fingers, like a priest giving a blessing. I’ll take care of the kids.
So they go.
They end up in a town on the outskirts of the settlement just starting to grow from the remains of July. It’s not Nicholas’ first choice, and it’s not Vash’s either, but they stop by to see how they’re managing with their Plant, and it goes the way it always does with Vash—wrapped up in someone else’s problems before Nicholas can manage to warn him off.
It doesn’t come to blows, for once, likely due to the fact that Vash has gained the wherewithal over the months to not introduce himself by name, opting for various pseudonyms instead. Sometimes it’s Alex. For this town, it's a simple Vee. The townspeople don’t recognize him, with his hair worn loose around his shoulders, the bright red coat of the wanted posters exchanged for the white linens of most travelers, who actually have to worry about things like overheating, and just a few straps of armor across his chest.
Vash takes one look at their Plant and throws himself into caring for it, nursing the angel inside back to health, managing the delicate machinery, instructing the townspeople—mostly young survivors of July—how to care for her as she cares for them, so she might sustain them long enough to raise a new July , or so Vash says.
Judging by the teaching, he does intend to leave—he tells Nicholas as much, shaking sand from his boots before he steps into the temporary shelter they’re staying in. We’ll move on soon.
His hair is getting long. Almost as long as it was when he was playing Eriks, hidden out with a little girl and her family. Nicholas keeps expecting it to start growing out blonde again, like the black is just a dye that’s been dumped over his natural hair, impermanent.
But aside from the last remnant of blonde, it stays black. A warning for both of them.
Will we wait for them to start throwing stones? Nicholas asks him. Or just before?
Vash smiles, inclining his head like there’s a weight against the back of his neck. Before, ideally.
But the stones never come, and the leaving doesn’t either. Their temporary shelter grows foundations and solid walls, a roof that’s more than a nailed-down tarp. Vash spends most of his days at the Plant, his nights folded into Nicholas’ side.
One long, hot day (completely indistinguishable from the rest of the long, hot days) a dark-haired, snub-nosed teenager stops Nicholas on his way to get lunch and says they’ve seen him with his gun—just a sidearm now, the Punisher left behind with everything else tying Nicholas and Vash to being Wolfwood and The Stampede —shooting bottles off rocks out in the desert, and would Nicholas like to join the guards? It wouldn’t be a formal position, but it would be nice to have a real adult as part of the force.
Nicholas laughs at that, but he tells them he’ll think about it.
They offered me a job, he says to Vash, over dinner.
Huh, Vash replies, around a mouthful of noodles. Are you going to take it?
And that’s that.
The Plant stops needing Vash’s hands on her before long, passing into the capable hands of the young engineers he’s spent weeks teaching, and their schedules switch—Nicholas spends most of his day circling the town, and Vash spends his time… finding other things to do.
(By the gossip Nicholas hears, Vash probably spends all those daylight hours doing other people’s chores. He hasn’t changed, not really.)
One long, hot day, indistinguishable from the rest of the long, hot days, Nicholas comes back to what is, terrifyingly, starting to be a home, and finds Vash standing in front of the mirror in a sundress.
“Trying something new?” Nicholas asks, trying to meet Vash’s gaze in the mirror instead of raking his gaze against the bare expanse of scarred skin. Vash may dress down now, but he still keeps himself covered from ankle to wrist to neck, hiding all but the scars on his hand and the bare fingers of his prosthetic. The dress he’s wearing now is barely anything—short sleeves, open back, ending just below his knees.
Vash whirls around, his arms clasped over his chest, flushing a vivid red. “Nick, you’re—”
“Home the same time I always am,” Nicholas says, unable to resist a leering grin. “You dressed up for me.”
“I dressed up for me, thank you very much,” Vash mumbles, but he doesn’t sound entirely convinced. He rubs the back of his neck, his arm still clamped over his front.
Nicholas smiles a little wider. A little less teasing, a little more genuine. “You look cute.”
Vash goes even redder, gripping at his own hair. With a dull lurch of shock, Nicholas realizes there are tears in Vash’s eyes.
“Hey,” he says, dropping the smirk and the flirting, stepping closer to Vash. “Are you good, Spikey?”
Vash takes a breath that shudders in his chest, folding further into himself. The fingers of his prosthetic curl against his side, crumpling the fabric of the dress and pressing in so hard that it would bruise, on a different man’s skin. “Yes,” he says, in that same unsure warble, tilted up at the end like he’s asking a question.
Nicholas takes another step forward and swats him on the side of the head.
It’s a little mean, maybe, but it works. Vash squawks at him and bats his hand away, then unfurls his arms from himself to shove him lightly.
They tussle like children for a moment, until Nicholas yanks down the strap of Vash’s dress, and he goes red all over again, buckling into Nicholas’ side and burying his face in his neck.
“What’s with you?” Nicholas asks. He pets down Vash’s back, calloused fingers skating over flimsy fabric and scar tissue, broken occasionally by smooth, warm skin.
Vash burrows further against him, his chest rumbling with what Nicholas can only call a purr, a sound from somewhere behind his sternum that Nicholas only really hears when Vash is injured or upset, or more rarely (though more often these days) when he’s particularly happy.
“I was helping out down the road,” Vash says. He keeps fluting the ends of his words, making every sentence sound like a question. “Y’know, where those two women are doing laundry for everyone? And there was this dress hanging on the drying line, it had been there for days and days, no one claimed it. And I w—I wanted it. They let, they uh, caught me taking it, they said it was okay, so long as I could find a use for it.”
Nicholas keeps his arms settled around Vash, not quite squeezing him, in case Vash wants or needs to duck out from under his grip and pace, in case the skin to skin contact overwhelms him, as it so often did when they were first fumbling with each other, forcing Vash to disengage, dropping himself flat on his back on the coolest spot of the floor of whatever shithole motel they were in at the time, until his skin stopped buzzing and he could handle touch again.
But Vash doesn’t withdraw. He stays folded into Nicholas’ chest, flushed red and unfairly pretty.
“What use did you plan to get out of it?” Nicholas asks. “Did you just want to be pretty?”
Vash flushes deeper. “I wanted to be bad.”
Nicholas blinks. Not what he was expecting, but—not surprising, not really. Vash puts a hell of a lot into being good. His whole self, and then more after that. It makes that he might want to be bad, in a way that doesn’t put his whole life on the ropes.
“You want me to scold you?” Nicholas asks, stroking through Vash’s hair, pulling him back a step to look into his face. “For stealing laundry off the clothing line? Or for starting off on one of your schemes without bothering to clue me in first?”
Vash chuckles. “Either? Both? I don’t… I didn’t really get this far.” He’s still smiling, but his body is curled inward defensively, hands gripping the fabric of his dress.
Something clicks into place for Nicholas, and he smirks, sliding his hand through Vash’s hair to grip the base of his neck. “I get it,” he says. “You were a bad kid, weren’t you? Running off on your own, getting in trouble.”
Vash’s eyes flood, lit with obvious glee behind the tears. He turns his face against Nicholas’ forearm, shoulders drawing up, but his arms drop from around his stomach, falling to his sides, scarred palms facing up. “Yeah?” he says, still in that warbling, questioning tone. “What’d you do to the kids at your church, when they acted out?”
Nicholas considers it. Miss Melanie had been too genial a woman to punish the children under her care with more than a swat with a ladle, but she hadn’t needed to—her disappointment was threat enough for most of them.
But Vash deals with enough disappointment, from less kind sources. That won’t do.
He slides his hand up the side of Vash’s face and grips him by the ear, grinning widely. “You’re grounded.”
Vash giggles, clearly caught up in his own playacting, not taking Nicholas seriously. It’s unfairly cute.
Nicholas yanks his ear a little harder, until Vash yelps, squirming in his grip. “You think I’m kidding, sweetie? You need to learn some responsibility, and some better habits.”
For a minute, Nicholas thinks Vash is going to call the whole game off. His face twitches, abruptly serious in a way that still manages to be cute. Then he loosens his body in a deliberate backwards lean, knees half-buckling, like a full-body sigh of annoyance, leaning his head into Nicholas’ grip on his ear.
“Fiiiiiine,” Vash whines, like a put-upon teenage girl, pouting even more exaggeratedly than he usually does. “How grounded? Do you mean I can’t even leave the house?”
Nicholas lets go of Vash’s ear, petting down the side of his face and cupping his cheek, delicately brushing his thumb over the mole at the corner of his eye. “You can go outside if you want. Just no going into town or running other people’s errands until you can be a bit more responsible.”
Vash turns his face against Nicholas’ palm. “Fine.”
“Don’t sulk,” Nicholas grins. “Although it’s cute on you. Who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy having the time to rest.”
“I don’t need much rest,” Vash says, which is a bold-faced lie. Usually Nicholas would let it slide, but with the way Vash is baiting him…
He goes for it. In for a double dollar, in for the whole bounty. “Bullshit, Vash. You’ve been throwing yourself all over the place recently. You should try to sleep in, at least a little.”
Vash makes a face. “I don’t sleep in.”
Nicholas shrugs. “Maybe you should try.”
That earns him a thoughtful frown. Exaggerated, like most of Vash’s expressions, but it’s possible that Nicholas actually did get through his thick skull, if only a little. He hopes so—Vash doesn’t rest enough, Plant biology or not. He’s practically human these days anyway, but he still sleeps like a radioactive angel with a death wish, which is to say, not much. He’s almost never even in bed by the time Nicholas falls asleep, and he’s always up before him.
He never acts tired or even looks particularly sluggish, but it still grates at the inside of Nicholas’ chest, tugging at the urge to bundle Vash away where nothing can hurt him.
Vash makes a noise, a cut-off word, starting to say something and thinking better of it at the last moment.
Usually, Nicholas would let him get away with it. Usually, when Vash doesn’t say something, it’s for a good reason.
But that’s not the game they’re playing right now.
“What?” Nicholas asks. “Did you need something?”
He hears Vash swallow thickly, watches his throat move, feels the sharp exhale against his palm where Vash’s face is still nestled into his hand.
“What am I going to do all day?” Vash whines. “I’ll get bored.”
“And what do you want me to do about that? You’re the trouble magnet.”
Another whine, all childish. “Would you get me something to draw in, at least?”
Nicholas balks a little, at that. Something to draw in. Meaning a book, with blank pages. The town’s Plant is recovering, but she’s still not quite producing everything the people need. Synthetic paper runs a high price.
“That’d be coming out of your allowance, missy,” Nicholas says, without really thinking about it.
Vash’s mouth drops open. His lips shape the word in a silent echo. For a moment Nicholas thinks he’s screwed up, and then Vash grins, all sappy and bright-eyed. “Yeah, okay,” he says, chirpy and childish.
Nicholas pulls him in and kisses him, slow and sweet as he can. “Okay?”
Vash nods, bright-eyed in his sundress. Some of the weariness he’s been carrying since Nicholas met him has loosened from his gaze.
Nicholas knows that Vash isn’t young—that it’s been a hundred years since he was anywhere close to as young as he looks, and even longer since he was as young as he’s pretending to be.
But maybe they can pretend, for a while.