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Not all winters are bad.
Most aren’t. Most winters, Nai moves back and they go to the gym before lunch, and Vash cooks for two, and someone reminds him of something other than the collapse of the world into its base canvassed form. They play the piano. Vash sleeps badly, but he sleeps.
But this year Nai is in his final year of college, and Vash doesn’t know what to do with himself.
He and Nai aren’t codependent, no matter what Rem says. They’re just close. If they were codependent, Vash would have chased Nai to the other coast and done a law degree with him. Instead, he stays here despite the winters and despite the cracking in his chest and the aches in his body, and survives the end of another year.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Vash does everything he did with Knives. He does it alone, and it doesn’t help. The world feels like it’s sinking, and all of Vash’s best efforts can’t seem to hold it up.
He does everything he does alone. He volunteers as much as he can, hoping that filling up his days can protect him from the cold a little longer. He fills his heart with other people’s smiles, and waits for his own to stop leaking out all the good he tries to put in it.
Knives doesn’t call, being far too busy, but he texts Vash every day to check whether he’s eaten.
Sometimes, Vash lies. That’s what you do with older brothers, isn’t it?
Breathe in, breathe out, wait for the pieces to settle into place.
His downstairs neighbor, a doddering old woman who lives with her daughter and her dog, knocks on his door late one afternoon and asks if he’d be willing to watch her dog for a few hours. Vash agrees; he’s watched Jenny before, and she’s cute, energetic and decidedly certain that she can run circles around Vash if she tries. He takes her out for a run to tire her. With his feet thudding against the dead, slippery grass of the park and Jenny keeping pace joyfully with him, Vash wonders for a second if he could ever just run from everything. But he knows by now that it’s not possible, and he doesn’t hope for it.
He has to carry Jenny home; she sits down and refuses to walk on the snow despite her adorable doggie snowshoes. He doesn’t mind. Her wagging tail smacks against his thigh. He clutches her tight and peers around her as best as he can, ignoring the telltale twinge in his shoulder.
It starts to snow as they walk back to Vash’s apartment building. Jenny smells like dog fur and excitement, her heart beating against his body so hard he can feel it through the layers.
He adjusts his grip on her, and keeps on, counting blocks in his head.
A car drives past. The lights glint against the glass of a display, disorienting him so badly he nearly slips and drops Jenny. She wuffs concernedly in his ear.
The nearest shop sells coffee, a drink Vash cares little for and especially not in winter, when everything he tastes is bitter. But he ducks in anyway, lowering her to the floor gently and hoping she lets him go. His arm feels like it’s about to fall off, which is a risk Vash takes on a regular basis, but he doesn’t want to drop her in the snow.
Jenny barks and nudges his knee. He pets her head with his other hand.
Compared to the outside, this little shop feels like a furnace. Someone’s spending a great deal on heating. The decor is all wood, sofas at tables and golden light. The rich scents of coffee and baked bread waft towards him, but Vash fails to be comforted. Quite the contrary.
Still, he’s in here, and he needs a break. Jenny barks at him again. Belatedly, Vash remembers they’re indoors, and gets her leash out of his pocket to clip it to her collar.
Breathe out, breathe in. Melting snow, dog fur, coffee and bread, a hint of vanilla. Vash’s skin crawls. It’s so much.
The coffee shop isn’t empty, but the other occupants are busy with themselves. Only some of them look up at the sight of Jenny.
He heads to a table for two, leaning down to wind her leash around a table leg. “Good girl,” to her, reassuringly. “I just can’t keep holding you. We’ll only stay for a bit, and then you can go back and have your food, yeah? I’m gonna be fine soon.”
Vash isn’t honestly sure that he is. He stretches his shoulder, and something aches from his back to the phantom of his wrist. He gets flashes of sensation from the existing arm, but they’re inconsistent and jagged. He wishes—but no, that’s ungrateful. Vash is determined to be grateful for all things at all times, lest someone take them away again because he didn’t love them hard enough.
“Just a second,” he tells her quietly. “Gotta buy something to sit here, yeah? Hold on.”
He scans the blackboard menu behind the counter. It’s mostly coffee and things that will taste like coffee. Vash is wondering if he should offer five dollars for a bottle of water when he spots the croissants, and heads over.
The man behind the counter is beautiful, with an expression and demeanor that puts him out of Vash’s league so immediately that Vash puts his appearance out of his mind soon after. “One butter croissant,” he says. “Um, do you have something I can give my dog?”
“Your dog?” the guy says skeptically. “I can give you water, but we don’t have dog food. This is a coffee shop. Do you want a drink?”
Vash closes his mouth on purpose. He has a feeling he’s being mocked, which he doesn’t mind except sometimes, like now, when Vash just wants to go home. “No,” he manages. “Just the croissant. And water.”
“Sit,” the guy says, turning back with cavalier dismissal as he rings the order. “I’ll bring it over.”
“Isn’t it—I mean, it says that it’s—” self-service, but Vash’s words trip his tongue over.
The guy says, “We’re empty. I’ll get it.”
“Oh, okay,” Vash blinks. “Thank you so much.” He scuttles back to his seat and pets Jenny until his heart stops feeling so loud.
That wasn’t so bad, Vash tells himself. He’s had worse times in coffee shops. He can ignore the fact that it hasn’t been good yet either. It’s all about the silver lining. The guy comes with his croissant and a shallow dish of water, setting the one down on the table and the other on the floor. “I’ve seen a little old lady with the same dog,” he says, as he straightens up.
“She’s my neighbor,” Vash tells the croissant. “I didn’t kidnap a dog.”
“I see,” the guy sounds amused. “I’m Wolfwood, Nick Wolfwood.”
Vash has been considering the problem of the croissant, which inevitably presents a range of options for the first bite. He was trying to decide between the right and left corners, versus the prudency of ripping it open first. He took a moment to register the words at all, let alone compute his own response. “I’m Vash?”
“Are you sure?” Wolfwood asks.
“Well, I have a twin brother,” Vash says unthinkingly. “It can get confusing.”
Wolfwood laughs softly. “I bet,” he taps his fingers against the table, and Vash finds his attention held up for a moment. Long, beautiful brown fingers. “Enjoy your croissant.”
He returns. Vash stares after him.
The croissant is good, but Vash isn’t hungry. He manages two bites before slipping the third to Jenny, who is only too eager to steal from him. He eats a third and feeds Jenny the rest, between her aggressive lapping at the bowl of water. Vash thinks longingly of his bed.
There’s a book in his pocket, one that Knives gifted him that he hasn’t gotten around to yet. Vash doesn’t remember putting it there, but his pockets are cavernous. He starts in on it on the principle that now is as good a time as any, petting Jenny absently once in a while. His phone pings with a text from the only person whose messages notify Vash, but he ignores it.
He only looks up when Wolfwood slides another plate in front of him. “Huh?” Vash says.
“I saw you feed most of your croissant to the dog,” Wolfwood says. “It’s on the house, go on.”
“I’m not hungry,” Vash says automatically, but he is, and he tries not to turn down food people give him. So he adds, “Thank you. Why don’t you sit down?”
Too late, he remembers Wolfwood works here. But Wolfwood pulls out a chair and sits in it sideways. He’s wearing a blue navy jumper and a grey shirt underneath, Vash feels like a fire truck by comparison. “What’s that book about?”
“I just started,” Vash gathers his thoughts for a moment. “It’s about a brother who loses his little sister, because of something he did, and then he tries to make it right.”
“Sounds like fun?” Wolfwood has a pleasantly dry voice, like desert sand.
Vash says, “My brother likes it.”
“What do you like to read?”
“I’m a little dyslexic,” Vash says. “I read a lot of graphic novels.”
He doesn’t say, I nearly failed a grade because I couldn’t read and my brother had to do all my homework so I didn’t end up in a different class than him.
It’s better now, but Vash still reads slowly.
Wolfwood perks up. “The other owner here—Milly, she’s not around right now—has been thinking of stocking up a little bookshelf on that wall so it isn’t so empty. You can recommend some graphic novels to us. I don’t like reading,” he adds.
“It’s a bit overrated,” Vash says carefully. He likes it when Knives read out loud to him.
“I’ll leave you to your book,” Wolfwood says, not like he’s ignoring Vash but like he’s checking his phone for the time. “I have to get back behind the counter. Can I get you something to drink?”
“I don’t like coffee,” Vash blurts out.
“I make a mean cup of tea as well,” Wolfwood says easily. “We’re just out of ingredients today. Wintertime rush. That doesn’t help you right now, though. How do you feel about hot chocolate?”
“It’s not on the menu,” Vash says. He has no feelings about hot chocolate.
“Right at the end, easy to miss. What do you say?”
“Sure,” Vash feels a little brittle. Wolfwood is very nice, and all the various parts of him appear to work in a harmonious whole quite unlike Vash’s own badly-pieced together act. “I don’t like mint either.”
“Noted,” Wolfwood’s mouth quirks into a slight smile. “Anything else?”
“Just that,” Vash says awkwardly. “Thank you.”
He eats the croissant despite the tenseness of his stomach. His arm is settling down. He’ll need to treat it properly when he gets home, but for now it’s getting better. Maybe it’s also the warmth in here, and the interaction with someone that’s more than Vash has let himself have in weeks. All the work he does and still tries to close himself off from people, lives behind closed windows out of fear of what’s on this side. It’s only the unexpected that cracks that shell.
The croissant vanishes fast enough that Vash stares down at his plate in mild bemusement, hoping to materialize another crumb.
“Here you go,” Wolfwood says. “Tell me if you want anything changed.”
He vanishes before Vash can so much as thank him, probably due to the small crowd at the counter. Vash would have come and picked it up, and he wishes for a moment he could say that too. But Wolfwood is gone, and the chocolate smells like fudge and Vash is still so hungry and more than a little cold inside. Winter creeps into his body and seeps outwards like a seed of frost, and he’s never been good at being brave about such things. Knives buried himself in work and ambition. Vash just fell through the floor, and let snowdrifts swallow him whole.
There’s a layer of toasted marshmallows on top. Vash eats them first, savoring the burnt-sugar and heat, then sips the drink itself. He thinks he detects a hint of spice, faint enough to not overwhelm his senses even as it makes itself known. The chocolate itself is so rich and deep that Vash has to pause after the first, letting the feeling settle.
Breathe out, breathe in. Jenny, curled up at his feet to nap. The scent of almonds on his fingers and chocolate in the air, coffee tempered sweet. A graceful man behind the counter. Vash catches his eye without meaning to and offers him a tentative smile.
Wolfwood nods, gaze darting back to the client in front of him. Vash tells himself he isn’t a little disappointed.
Nothing can take away from the hot chocolate before him. It’s so good that Vash catches himself thinking of summer and autumn, better months when Rem visit him so he can bring her here and make her taste this. The smooth sweetness of it gilds his frozen insides, melting him until he’s convinced, inanely, that he can still recall the taste of the sun. it should taste like this all year around: cinnamon and an earth-bright rich chocolate and vanilla and marshmallows. It’s so comforting that Vash shivers, overcome.
Even with his slowest sips he’s done too soon, and Jenny’s awake and growling softly at passers-by. She’s too well-trained to demand food before they’re home, but he’s kept her waiting too long already.
He unwinds Jenny’s leash and heads over to the counter to pay. There’s almost no one there—a customer prior to Vash who shuffles off by the time Vash gets there. “That was amazing chocolate,” he tells Wolfwood breathlessly. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Wolfwood says, looking very pleased. “Are you done?”
“I have to feed Jenny,” Vash explains.
Wolfwood’s eyes flick down, softening briefly. There’s a hard, clear brown. “Come again, and“I’ll give you something else to try.”
“You don’t have to bribe me with something new,” Vash says. “I’ll come anyway. That really was excellent hot chocolate.” He’s starting to sound a little too enthused; how does he explain that this is the first thing to make him feel alive in days? He moderates his voice on purpose. “Thank you. What’s the total?”
Wolfwood bills him, head bobbing to some faint music that sounds from behind the countertop.
“Thank you again,” Vash says. He doesn’t know what else to say.
Wolfwood winks at him, sliding the bill across. “Thank me by coming again, okay?”
Vash tightens his grip on Jenny’s leash and holds his breath. “I will.”