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“Do you get off on this, or something?” Wolfwood asks, incredulously.
Vash looks up. He’s sitting cross-legged on the hotel bed, using his teeth and the two undamaged fingers of his prosthetic to wind a bandage around his burn-blistered forearm. He’s damn lucky, Wolfwood keeps thinking. Usually, trying to smack a grenade out of midair with your bare hands nets you far worse consequences than a splash of second-degree burns and a walk of shame back to your mechanic.
“I’m sorry?” Vash asks, his voice tipping within two words from shock to something in the realm of offended. “What?”
Wolfwood lights a cigarette—his second of the night, but he deserves it, after watching Vash almost blow himself up—and takes a long drag before he answers. “I asked if you get off on this. Playing hero, when you know it’s not going to get you anywhere.”
Vash huffs at him, apparently not inclined to dignify that with a response. “Help me with this?” he asks, holding up the trailing end of the bandage.
Pushing himself off the wall, Wolfwood crosses the room to him, pausing only to pinch out his cigarette and set it in the ashtray on the table by the window. He should wash his hands for this, but apparently Vash’s weird Plant biology makes him stunningly resistant to infection. Thank God, or someone, at least.
“Shit, Vash,” Wolfwood mutters, as he sits down on the bed and winds the gauze the rest of the way up Vash’s forearm—bright red and already starting to blister, smeared with as much of the burn salve Wolfwood could spare from the fist-sized jar he keeps in his things. It’s usually for sunburns. Not shrapnel-scraped explosion burns. Wolfwood has a strong stomach, but it had made him a little nauseous, to tend. “It would’ve been fine.”
Vash shakes his head. “It would’ve bounced right into the crowd.”
If it were anyone else, Wolfwood would’ve said you can’t possibly know that, but knowing Vash, he’s probably right. As it is, he swallows how do you make self-sacrifice so fucking selfish, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Your mechanic’s going to be pissed.”
“They’ll just be happy I’m visiting,” Vash grins. His smile is hollow, papered on over a wince. There’s no way they can afford enough ice to soothe this much burned skin. Vash is just going to have to live with it.
And Wolfwood’s just going to have to live with that. “You want me to stay behind this time? Give you some space with your folks?”
Vash has the nerve to look bothered about that. “No. I mean—unless you don’t want—but after the first time—”
Wolfwood waves a hand at him, sparing him from having to cut himself off for the fourth time in a row. “Sorry I asked. Probably best for us to stick together, anyway.”
Vash nods, but he stays quiet for once, his chin dropping toward his chest. It’s not an expression Wolfwood sees on him often—the smile’s slipped, into a taut, pinched look of pain, his eyes glistening wet.
“Not a fan of burns, huh?” Wolfwood guesses, tucking the end of the bandage under itself and sliding his hand up to Vash’s shoulder, squeezing gently.
Vash shakes his head, and the movement spills a tear down his cheek. He makes a move like he’s going to scrub it away, but neither of his hands are free, so Wolfwood reaches up and brushes it away with his thumb.
“Why do you do this?” Wolfwood asks. Gently, this time. He really did want to know. “And don’t give me the usual shit, I know you live for other people.” He winces a little—he should probably get out of the habit of reading Vash like the open book he is, before he scares him off with it. Though, if Vash was going to be scared off, he would’ve been already. “What do you get out of it?”
For a moment, Vash doesn’t answer, taking quiet, ragged breaths through his nose. He flexes his wounded hand, flinches. Wolfwood pities him—burns are a special kind of hurt.
Finally, Vash closes his eyes, his body listing towards Wolfwood’s. “I don’t get off on pain,” he says, pointedly.
“It’s a figure of speech, Needle-noggin,” Wolfwood says, kneading at Vash’s shoulder to hold his attention. “Tell me.”
Vash sighs at him. “Fine. Don’t—” his breath gets caught on a wince. He flexes his hand again. “Don’t laugh at me, but there’s this moment—before it hurts. The adrenaline rush, and the relief , that no one else has to get hurt. It feels… don’t laugh at me,” Vash repeats. “It makes everything feel a little more worthwhile.”
Wolfwood feels sick. Sicker than he’d felt smearing burn salve over Vash’s blistered arm. He hears more from what Vash doesn’t say than from what he does.
It makes everything feel a little more worthwhile.
God.
“And I thought I was an adrenaline junkie,” Wolfwood scoffs, before the silence can stretch on long enough to be incriminating. He slings his arm around Vash’s shoulder and pulls him down against his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, scowling at the unpleasant taste of hair product and sweat. “You fucking scare me with this shit, you know that?”
Vash nods against his chest. His breath is hitching again, less like he’s just in pain and more like he’s on the verge of tears. “Sorry.” His voice breaks. “I know.”
Wolfwood hugs him closer, hooking his chin over the top of Vash’s half-ruined mess of hair, all but pinning him there while Vash quietly starts to cry into the front of his jacket, mumbling apologies irregardless of Wolfwood shushing him and petting at the back of his head, working strands of black hair between his fingertips.
“Knock it off,” Wolfwood says, the fifth time Vash tries to say he’s sorry between hiccuping sobs, his wrecked prosthetic braced loosely against Wolfwood’s thigh like he’s trying to gather up the strength to push himself away. “Just let me do this.”
Vash quiets. He curls his arms against his chest—the prosthetic folded protectively over the burned one—and settles his weight against Wolfwood until his breathing evens out again.
Wolfwood shifts his hand from the back of Vash’s neck to his chin, easing his head up without loosening his arm from around him. “Better?”
“Yeah,” Vash mumbles. “I’m—” he starts, then meets Wolfwood’s gaze and pointedly closes his mouth. “Thanks.” He winces. “Fuck, I hate burns.”
“Me too,” Wolfwood says. He brushes a tear from Vash’s cheek with his thumb. “You’ll be okay.”
Vash smiles at him, weary but genuine. “You think?”
Wolfwood leans in, kissing his forehead, rocking slightly from side to side in some instinctive gesture of comfort. Vash exhales, long and slow and steady.
I promise, he would say, but it would be a lie.
“Yeah,” he says instead, softly. “You will.”