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It’s almost terrifying how used Nicholas is getting to being in a group with other people his age.
They’ve been traveling together for a few months now; the damn desert makes it hard to get anywhere, and after the first incident with the sand streamer and the new and dangerous reputation of their motley crew, they’ve agreed to stick to the van, as tedious and uncomfortable as it gets. Either way, he’d say he’s gained their trust after saving their asses a few more times than once (and good riddance too - he’s only being paid to watch over one of them, after all, but in for a penny, in for a pound, they say).
Right now, the suns have set, so the stifling heat of the day has dissipated. Nicholas is leaning against the van, smoke lazily wafting from the cigarette crunched between his teeth. The taste of nicotine and paper is familiar, comforting, and the smell of it against the dryness of the desert air burns his nostrils. Purposefully, he inhales and exhales away from their bed rolls and camping equipment. Meryl had scolded him more than once - “I already have to sit in the van for longer hours than I ever should with two smokers, don’t make my only comfort smell bad too!” - and he doesn’t really feel like being subject to her scolding tonight.
He watches as Vash stumbles on his way through setting up the tent; his right leg must be acting up again. Vash has never mentioned anything about it, but Nicholas prides himself on his observational skills. Roberto probably knows too, and Meryl might have an inkling of something being different about their friend’s gait. The old thing probably isn’t oiled up and fine tuned as much as it should be, because Vash would literally rather die than reveal that he was experiencing any kind of inconvenience.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help us?” Meryl’s annoyed voice cuts through his thoughts, and he turns towards her, looking from above his sunglasses down onto her face. In the light of the moons, her pretty golden earrings glint, and her hair reflects silver.
“Looks like needle-noggin’s got it all under control,” he says, and she rolls her eyes at him, a scoff on her lips. So much for avoiding being scolded.
“I already tried to help him,” Nicholas interrupts as she opens her mouth to berate him. “He told me to bug off.” Vash has been feeling restless to help because they’ve spent too long cooped up in the van. He’s been drumming his fingers on every available surface and yapping Nicholas’s ear off in quiet whispers, amongst constant questions about how he’s feeling. He knows it comes from a place of concern, of wanting to make himself useful, but there’s really only so much Nicholas can take. He ignores the tug in his chest as Vash shoots them a smile and a thumbs up from where he’s laying akimbo on the ground, Roberto helping unwrap him from the sheets. Meryl seems to understand what he means, because she snaps her mouth shut and crosses her arms, leaning against the van with a small pout on her face. She barely comes up to his chest. It’s cute. He buries that thought.
“...then at least stop smoking already,” she huffs. “I know you have lollipops in your pockets somewhere. I already started the fire…” Just as well; his cigarette has burned itself to the last now. He inhales and exhales the last of the smoke before he spits it to the ground and grinds it under his heel, scuffing sand over it for good measure. He can feel Meryl’s eyes on him, piercing, questioning. Already, he’s aching to chew on something, to be in motion, so he follows Meryl over to where she’s spread out the small blanket they sit on when they pretend they’re having some kind of semblance of a normal dinner. The jerky is piled neatly in the center, still boxed in its paper wrapping, so he sits down unceremoniously with a huff and reaches for it. Vash and Roberto join them, having finished setting up the tent, and Meryl sits down with much more grace than all three of them combined. Carefully, Nicholas unwraps the thin string and paper, then grabs a piece of jerky for himself before putting it back down.
They don’t talk for a while, just chew and gnaw, and Nicholas’s back is warm where the heat of the flame behind him manages to reach through his suit jacket. Tonight is far quieter than most, but this is their first break in almost 8 straight hours of driving. Anything there is to be talked about, they’ve talked about. He doesn’t know how Meryl does it, driving like that, and he can’t claim to understand either, when the wind isn’t whipping through his hair and the sand isn’t gritting against his clothes.
“Wolfwood,” she says, sharply, and he jerks to attention, almost choking on his food.
“Hng?” He makes a noise of acknowledgement, and her eyes soften, something akin to worry in them.
“I’ve called you two times already. It’s unlike you to space out like this,” Meryl mutters. “...Is something on your mind?” True, is there something on his mind? Maybe he’s just feeling restless too, but the only thing other than smoking his way through a pack he can do to busy himself out in the desert is carving wood and he’s not about to reveal that particular hobby to these people. Or maybe it’s the 8 hours in the van with nothing but his own thoughts, tracing the skin where his scars would - should - raise and mar the unblemished planes of his body. God, nevermind, he’s had enough thinking for today; dragging himself back down into that cesspool of suffering won’t help right now.
“Sure you’re not projecting, little lady?” He teases instead, and she growls at him, tearing into her jerky with new vengeance. Meryl is so fun to tease; unlike Vash, who Nicholas is sure he’s only able to read because they’re the same brand of shuttered closed, he can flip through her expressions like bounty posters. It’s refreshing.
“Ugh, why do I even bother? You’re incorrigible,” she mutters under her breath, and Roberto snickers. Vash has been silently watching them, a small, soft, and real smile tugging at his lips.
“Don’t worry your little head about me,” he yawns, dusting his hands off and reaching inside his pockets. He unwraps a lollipop and shoves it in his mouth, enjoying the scrunched up look of disgust on her face as he crunches down on it and feels it splinter between his teeth. Strawberry bursts across his tongue.
“Why can’t you just eat them like a normal person?” She sighs, shaking her head in exasperation and carefully wiping her mouth. “Whatever. I’m gonna be out like a light. Good night.” Roberto stands up with some effort, Vash stabilizing him, and follows her, muttering something under his breath about his joints.
“You should sleep too,” Nicholas says to Vash, who raises a hand in protest. “Come on, Spikey, let me have my smoke in peace.” If he frames it like this, like Vash is doing him a favor, he knows the other will be less inclined to disagree. With a huff, Vash begins to clean up after them all, carefully folding the blanket into a square and giving Nicholas a meaningful look. Vash won’t pry. It’s not his nature.
“You’d better actually wake me up for the second shift,” he finally says, more bark than bite, and Nicholas gives him an easy smirk, entirely not planning on doing that.
“Good night, needle-noggin,” Nicholas says instead, throwing the lollipop stick to the ground and replacing it with a fresh cigarette, turning to go sit on the roof of the van. Vash’s footsteps recede in the opposite direction, and Nicholas takes his place like a perching eagle.
Now that they’re all asleep, he pulls the knife out from his pocket and the just-barely carved chunk of wood out from his bag. The haze of the smoke and the quiet scratching of the knife against wood lets him empty his mind again, to just let himself go into his handiwork and expand his senses across their encampment.
He’s about two hours in, three cigarettes and a lollipop down, and a quarter of the way done carving when he hears the flaps of the tent open, and he hurriedly puts the knife and wooden carving back where he got them. It’s Meryl, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She comes to stand at the foot of the van.
“Wolfwood,” she greets him, voice a little thick. In the moonlight, closer to him, he has a sudden realization that it wasn’t sleep she was rubbing away. She sniffs, sounding slightly congested, and scrambles her way up to the roof of the car. She isn’t wearing her jacket.
“You’re gonna catch a cold, shortie,” he says in response. She doesn’t dignify him with a response, just curls up on herself. God damn it. He’s not cut out for this. This is Vash’s job, or Roberto’s; anything but his. “...Here.” He slips his jacket off and hands it to her. Gratefully, numbly, quietly, she pulls it over her arms, and he mentally apologizes for the smell of smoke that will surely linger on her clothes now. “Uh…you wanna…talk about it, or whatever?” His only frame of reference for how he should deal with this are the kids back at Hopeland. She glances up at him, big blues wide and watery, and he’s totally helpless to do anything but stare back.
“...had a nightmare,” she eventually croaks out. “You were in it.” She places her head back on her knees, drowning in the fabric of his clothes. “Vash was too. I thought…” She takes a shaky breath and he places a gentle hand on her back, rubbing between her shoulders as she hiccups and starts crying again. “I had to make sure you were safe,” Meryl mumbles in between gasps.
“I’m here,” he soothes, scooting closer so that the angle of his hand isn’t awkward. “I’m here. I’m fine and alive.” Livio used to have nightmares like this too; everyone left him behind, Nicholas had been taken away, the orphanage burned down, his parents killed in front of him, on and on. He’d gotten used to comforting his little brother, only to immediately turn around and bring those horrors to life. This implied promise he makes to Meryl is dangerous. It isn’t one he can keep. But if it makes her feel better for the time being, he’ll make it.
Fuck, he never should have let her get this close. He should have just been the curmudgeonly undertaker with a strange gun she ran over with her van, not Wolfwood, the guy she scolds for smoking his lungs to death, or Wolfwood, who’s first decision is to take the gunfire away from her, or Wolfwood, who is comforting her because she had a dream he died.
The look on her face when she realizes what his job really is will destroy him. He’s taken a lot of bullets in his wretched time alive, and he can confidently say none of them will hurt as much as the expression of betrayal he knows he’s going to be faced with.
“I know you can’t promise me anything,” she breaks him out of his mind for the third time that day. “But please,” the crying’s stopped, but her sniffles haven’t, and she wipes at her nose with the back of her hand and clears her throat. “Stop treating your body like it’s replaceable, Nicholas. You’re just as bad as Vash.” He swallows hard when she says his name, when she compares him to Vash, and thinks bitterly that she couldn’t be more wrong. He’s hardly a blip of a shadow in the intensity of Vash’s light. He’s about to say that he can afford to throw himself in the path of death, that he’s probably going to be gutted like the rest of Jeneora Rock after his job is done anyway so shaving years off his life really means nothing, but thinks better of it. His callousness will only hurt her further.
“What happened to Wolfwood?” He says instead, because the only way he knows how to make it better is to tease, and she bumps her knee into his side, eyebrows furrowed and a pout on her lips.
“I’m trying to let you know how sincere I am,” she hisses. “Honestly, you have the emotional intelligence of a grain of sand. You’re horrible and ridiculous.” Ah, there she is.
“Don’t worry, spitfire,” he says, rolling the new nickname around in his mouth like candy, “I’ll do my best. I don’t like being riddled with bullets either.” His hand on her back has slowed to a crawl as she recomposes herself. His fingers trace her bones, the planes of her shoulders, the dip of her spine. She leans into his side, her dark hair tickling his ear. If he turned, he could rest his chin on her head. “Are you tired enough to go back to sleep?” He asks quietly. She shakes her head no, and takes his free hand in her own. The hand on her back stops completely as she closes his hand, gently unfurls his fingers, and runs her hand over the callouses and ridges of his palm, swipes the pad of her finger over the ridges of his nails, uneven and bitten down, and interlocks their fingers together. Her hand is so much smaller than his, and far smoother from lack of manual work. Their hands fit together naturally, despite the night and day differences.
He has no idea how to respond. When was the last time anyone ever handled him with such care? It almost feels like worship. Her touch is - it’s burning. It’s the most loving thing he’s felt in years. Every second they remain in contact makes his skin crawl with relief and trepidation all in one. He wants to snatch himself away from her and bury himself in the sand, same as he wants her to keep going. Fuck, he’s Nicholas the Punisher. He’s murdered so many people he’s surprised his hands aren’t permanently stained red. Why is she touching him? Why is he letting her?
“Are you taking me seriously?” She says, a puff of breath into the still night air. “Do you really understand, Wolfwood? You’re not replaceable. You aren’t a machine to be repaired. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. You’re my friend, and it doesn’t matter how freaky fast you can recover, you’re still human, Wolfwood.” She pulls her head off his shoulder to really look him in the eye and pulls his sunglasses off his face. For some reason, he can’t find it in himself to stop her. Her gaze is hard and piercing. Searching for something. “You’ve got to let me know, Nicholas. Do you really get it?”
“I do,” he croaks out, struck speechless and defenseless by how much he feels like he can believe her. The thought of him dying truly distresses her this much? Even though he can’t even call himself human anymore, even though she surely knows he is far less than one, she still insists. Her persistence wears at the walls he set up so many years ago. “I…I won’t die, Meryl.” She jolts at that, dropping his sunglasses. They clatter into her lap.
“You said my name,” she says, voice full of wonder and glee. “You called me Meryl!”
“Shut up,” he snaps back instinctively, cursing the flush that’s risen high on his cheeks. “Shortstack. Shortie. Little lady. Spitfire. I didn’t say your name. You never heard that.” She just giggles. Their hands are still together.
“What’s this?” She suddenly asks, pulling her hand out of his jacket pocket. His blood freezes. The wooden carving he’d been working on now sits innocently in her palm, a rough and unfinished effigy of a bird. “Why do you have junk in your pockets? Do you chew on this, or something?”
“It’s not junk, and I don’t,” he glares at her mutinously, snatching his glasses back up but hanging them on his shirt instead of putting them back on. Since she found it, he might as well tell her. After all, she came to him, spilled her nightmare, let him stumble his way through comforting her. “I do wood carvings.” She lifts an eyebrow at that, surprised, and appraises the chunk of wood again, running her fingers over each ridge. A small smile spreads over her face as she thumbs the curve of the wing.
“Whoever thought! Nicholas D. Wolfwood, killjoy extraordinaire, does have hobbies!” He scowls at her again, grabbing the chunk of wood and depositing it into his lap.
“I didn’t tell you for you to make fun of me,” he snippily says, a little more rough and revealing than he means to let through. She instantly sobers up and sends him an apologetic glance.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like that. I’m just glad,” she tells him. “...you and Vash aren’t very quiet, you know. I’ve overheard your arguments before.”
“You were snooping,” he flatly says, and she at least has the decency to blush, embarrassed by his bluntness. “Well, go on, then, what did you hear?”
“You act like you aren’t human,” she equally bluntly replies. “Both of you. And - well - we know Vash isn’t. Of course not. But you’re not a Plant. Remember what I said earlier? Doesn’t matter how fast you can recover from a bullet, or how insanely strong you are. These physical aspects of you,” she pokes him in the shoulder, squeezes his hand, “they used to define you as human. You obviously aren’t a Plant, or a Worm, or any other kind of Earth creature. Now they don’t, because no human has what you have. But!” She holds up a hand to prevent him from talking, and he bites the inside of his cheek, unable to understand what the point she’s trying to make is. “Who are you?”
“What?” He furrows his brows at her, incredulous. “What do you mean? Have you gone insane?”
“Tell me who you are,” she insists, scowling. “Introduce yourself.”
“Wha - fine, whatever. I’m Nicholas D. Wolfwood, a traveling priest. Happy?”
“That’s right,” she says. “You’re Nicholas D. Wolfwood. You’re a traveling priest. You like to do wood carving. You’re good with little kids, despite what you think. You want to protect the orphanage that was your home. You bite your nails when you’re nervous and think nobody can see you. You bounce your leg when you’re excited. You’re a chronic smoker, even though you know it will destroy your lungs one day. You like strawberry lollipops and hate the green apple ones. You eat Worms raw, like a weirdo. You have a mild light sensitivity, which is why you always wear your sunglasses, even when we’re indoors. You don’t have a single actual scripture memorized. You’re very observant, logical, prudent…you keep yourself closed off from the rest of us. But regardless, even your walls can be broken down, or I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, with you.” She clasps her hand over his, sandwiching him between her. “Would a monster doubt his choices? Would he consider if he was walking the right path? You aren’t a monster, Nicholas. You’re just a man in unfortunate circumstances.”
Meryl is only slightly wrong. He wears his glasses because then people can’t see where he’s looking, what he’s plotting. —Wolfwood doesn’t cry. He can’t cry, that’s weakness - but he does slip his hand out from her loose cage to lift both hands to his eyes, to cover them, to protect himself from the utter vulnerability he feels. She has stripped him bare, laid him open for the two of them to see, unmerciful but not unkind. It is a different vulnerability than the one he feels with Vash, who he fundamentally understands despite the dichotomies of their intrinsic beliefs. Tentatively, just like he did for her, Meryl places a hand on his back and carefully, gently, rubs in circles. They don’t talk about it, and he might not believe it entirely, now or ever, but he knows what she means.
Once he’s finally recovered enough of himself, he rummages around in his bag for his chipping knife. Slowly, he starts up his work again, and she watches him in muted fascination. Sometime around the next two hours, she falls asleep there, curled against his shoulder in his jacket. She is a warm weight. Comforting.
By the time the suns have risen, there’s a pile of wood shavings at the side of his thighs and he’s holding a wooden facsimile of a bird in his hands. He twists it around, checking for imperfections and any areas he may have missed in the final round of carving, and is pleased to find none. Meryl had been moved to lay in his lap while she slept far more peacefully, and now she wakes, stretching like a cat and almost smacking him in the face.
“Hey, watch it,” he grumbles, but there’s no real heat in his voice. She sleepily blinks up at him, then finally seems to process where she is. Red floods her whole face, and she shrieks and flails. If it weren’t for Nicholas holding onto her, she’d have fallen off the van. “Good morning, princess,” he drawls, bowing himself in half and brushing a featherlight kiss on the back of her hand. “Did you sleep well?” She snatches her hand away from him and jumps off the van, turning to cross her arms and glare at him. She’s still bright red. Cute.
“I slept just fine, thanks,” she snipes at him. He lands on the ground with a small puff of sand after pushing the wood shavings off the roof of the van. “...did you sleep at all, Wolfwood?” He cracks an uncaring smile and shrug combo, watching as she visibly tries to hold herself back from nagging his ear off.
“Meryl,” he interrupts her steaming session, holding the bird out to her. He feels a little uncharacteristically shy and awkward, especially after using her name again. “Uh. Just. Thanks for last night, I guess.” She takes it from him, staring at it like it’s the 7th World Treasure, and gives him a soft smile.
“You too,” she says, and takes his hand, leaning down to press her lips into the back of it. “Thank you for taking care of me, Nicholas.” With that, she steps away, leaving him standing there gawking and surely turning red. He’s still standing there, trying to process what happened and trying to calm his flaming cheeks down, when Vash idles up next to him, looking well rested.
“Hey, Wolfie,” the gunman smiles - a real one, with crow’s feet - and tilts his head, not unlike a dog. “You’ve been standing here for a while. Did something happen?”
“N-no,” he stammers out, finally broken from his stupor. He's still too shocked to tell Vash off for the nickname. “Nah. I was just trying to wake myself up. You know how it is.”
Judging by the sly smile Vash is shooting him, Vash knows it’s a bold faced fucking lie, but he doesn’t say anything, just pats him on the shoulder. “Well, let’s eat breakfast and be on our way then!”
His thumb absentmindedly rubs the spot where Meryl kissed him. (She has made him feel loved. Placed her knife to his figure and shorn off wood to give him shape.) He shoves his hands into his pockets; he needs a god damn smoke.
God give him strength. It’s going to be a long drive.
(She still has his jacket when she slides into the driver’s seat. Roberto twists around to give him a stink eye. Fuck.)