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“Thank you for warming the industrial gray of my concrete foundation and turning my bones from cement blocks to rich mahogany wood.”
—Halsey, from Layers
Wolfwood rolls his cigarette to one side of his mouth, fighting down a grin.
“You’re bad at this, Pinhead~”
“Cut me some slack. M’drunk, aren’ I?”
He’s guiding Vash into a waltz for his own amusement, if nothing else. Vash looks more ridiculous than usual; his hair an absolute mess, cheeks doubly flushed from his own embarrassment and because he’d risked liver failure trying to out drink Roberto.
Wolfwood steadies him by the shoulders, “Yep. Very much drunk. Now, follow my lead. Keep an arm around my neck… I’ll hold your other hand. Yeah. Like that...”
“How’s Wolfwood so good at this?”
“It’s called practice.” Although, he supposes he has Mother Lottie and the other sisters at the orphanage to thank for that.
“Mmm, I feel—I feel kinda—”
“Dizzy?”
“No, uh,” Vash purses his lips, leans in real close like he’s about to tell him a secret.
His mechanical fingers intertwine with Wolfwood’s. The metal cold to touch but it doesn’t make him pull away. Quite the opposite actually.
Vash is sweating so bad it makes his little blond baby hairs stick to the back of his neck. His lips are chapped enough to peel, wet only when he remembers to run his tongue over them. They’ve been out in the sun for days, gone a day and a half on empty canteens and plain crackers they’d stolen from Meryl’s bag. And yet the first thing they do upon finding the only town within a fifty kilometer radius is tumble into the bar and drink themselves very, very stupid.
He waits for him with a saintly sort of patience but Vash never finishes his sentence.
Instead, his lips brush against the corner of Wolfwood’s mouth; it feels almost by accident at first. Then Vash kisses him again, with more meaning, or as much as he can muster up while heavily intoxicated and unsteady on his feet.
“Wolfwood,” Vash hums, reverent, tongue tasting like the sweetest malt. “Love you.”
And Wolfwood—he kisses him back—feverishly molds his mouth atop his. He thinks he might burst at the seams—into tiny shards of sharp-edged glass or atomic particles so small the naked eye cannot see; he thinks he wouldn’t mind that at all.
“You too. Always.”