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“Whatcha doin’?”
Vash turned his head slowly to look at the growly prompter of the question, as if still caught up in whatever kind of trance the book on his hands had put him in. He stared back at Wolfwood with a slight smirk.
Could have been anyone sneaking up behind him, the priest couldn’t help but think. Could have been someone else. And he was open. Careless. Unguarded. Trusting.
He takes a longer drag of the cigarette on his hands than usual, waiting for the answer as he stares into bright blue eyes.
“Nothing, really”, Vash replies, turning back to the book and flipping a page. “Just catching up with some reading.” It was a testiment of how tired they really were that he didn't try to get away from questioning with a snarky comment right off the bat.
“Never seen ya read before”, Wolfwood scoffs around the cigarette stick, because it’s true. It’s not like they have much time to indulge in such activities either – always running from people who want to kill or at best capture them, always on high alert and waiting for bounty hunters to arrive at any minute. Explosions and screaming were hardly a fitting soundtrack for some relaxing time. Not like they deserved that, anyway.
“I used to”, Vash answers idly, his eyes skimming through the lines in front of him, “back then.” He raises his gaze again to Wolfwood, one of his many empty little smiles plastered plastically onto his face. Wolfwood grimaces with it. “Rem and Nai used to read me things. Earth books. Long lost ones.”
At the mention of Knives, the priest stiffs slightly. He wonders if Vash notices. If he does, he doesn’t say anything – he never does. Or chooses not to.
He lets out some smoke. Vash is still staring at him, eyes shining in that unsettling way they always seem to do. Wolfwood wonders if other people notice. If they shine like that for someone else.
“What’s it about?”, he asks, diverging attention back to the book in Vash’s hands, to the present, to this stained moldy motel room and the creaky bed a 60,000,000 dollar man sits on, squeaking with every single one of his movements and creating a symphony alongside Wolfwood’s thundering heart.
“It’s a collection of Earth’s love poems”, Vash says, chuckling in a self-conscious way. Wolfwood knows that one too well. “I know it sounds silly.”
The priest doesn’t have an answer to that – what’s sillier, believing in such frivolous words or dedicating your life to them? He glances at the Punisher, that giant cross, propped up against the door as usual. Both of them are guilty of wasting time like that.
He doesn't ask where Vash even found a book around here, if he had been taking it with him all this time – not likely, since they often had to leave belongings behind as they scrambled through empty towns and dirty alleys. He doesn't ask when did he started to pick up this habit again, or if he had ever stopped. He doesn't ask why exactly he was reading love poems out of all things. Doesn't really care right now - doesn't really want to know. Sitting across from him, the old bed keening in protest, he takes another drag of the already half-burned cigarette.
“Read one for me.”
Vash’s eyes go big at him, blue irises searching his face like they were trying to find some trace of mockery or irony there. Wolfwood just keeps inhaling that ashy taste, tilting his head slightly to let out some smoke behind him. They stare at each other for some time, Wolfwood couldn’t tell if long of short. His fingers start to get restless, twisting the cigarette stick a little in his mouth. Vash’s eyes wander, and he swallows. There’s that smile again.
“Okay.”
He goes back to his book. Hesitates. Exhales heavily, like he was holding his breath and only realized just now. Flips through some pages and pauses. Wolfwood blows another cloud of smoke, watching.
“Okay”, Vash repeats, sitting up straighter and holding the book closer, clearing his throat like he was about to give a serious speech. Like it mattered. “Okay. This one’s from a poet called James Baldwin”, he pauses and glances at Wolfwood, like waiting for him to recognize the name, before reminding himself and quickly looking back at the words. “The title is Amen.”
Wolfwood lets out a chuckle at that. Vash follows, even if it sounds more nervous than anything else. He does not take his eyes away from the words before him. It’s silent for a moment, Wolfwood waiting for him to continue, swallowing heavily around the cigarette.
Vash closes his eyes for a second. Opens them again. And starts, voice solemn. A prayer.
“No, I don’t feel death coming. I feel death going: having thrown up his hands, for the moment”, he reads. “I feel like I know him better than I did. Those arms held me, for a while, and, when we meet again, there will be that secret knowledge”, he pauses, and Wolfwood hears him exhaling again – only then, he realizes he had been holding his breath too, “between us”.
They let the words linger around them for a moment. Vash still doesn’t look up from the book, eyes roaming around the page as if searching for something else hidden there. Wolfwood just now notices that his cigarette has already died.
He scoffs and reaches to the bedside table to throw the stick on the ashtray there, the motion making him hover over Vash’s crossed legs for a second, bringing them closer. He pretends not to hear Vash’s low yelp.
“Doesn’t sound like a love poem to me”, he says around a smirk, resting back on the headboard of the bed. He doesn’t know if it’s an actual opinion he has – as if he was allowed one, as if he had read anything other than the Bible or children’s books back at the orphanage, as if he could be worthy of sharing something with Vash - or it he just wants to make fun and clear the air a little.
“Well,”, Vash laughs, shrugging stiffly, “depends on your point of view, I guess.”
Wolfwood hums. He stands up and walks over to the wooden table on the corner, taking another cigarette out of the box he left there. His fingers ache with the craving.
He lights it, heads to the window. As he turns, he realizes Vash is staring. What the fuck is wrong with him?, his brain provides immediately, as if embarrassed of something. Ask him if I’ve got something on my face. Make him laugh. Stop this.
“What’s yours?”, he asks instead, sitting on the windowsill and letting the ashes float away outside. Then, as if regretting himself, regretting thinking that he could actually talk about this, he adds in a mocking tone, “Point of view."
Vash makes a contemplation noise, looking out the window as if he can see the ashes dancing with the wind with how dark it is outside. It’s the middle of a desert night. Past the window, there’s only pitch black, crickets and wind.
“I guess I feel like it could have been about Jesus, God, religion,”, he replies, his tone suddenly serious again. “about salvation. About, I don’t know, love as well. Like I said,”, he continues, “it depends.” He turns back to Wolfwood, an earnest look in his blue piercing eyes. “What do you think it’s about?”
Why do you care?, Wolfwood’s mind instantly offers again, always ready, always awake. Can’t you see I’ll never understand any of it?
“Dunno. Beats me”, he says instead, sucking on the cigarette and exhaling, staring at the two big moons in the sky. It burns on his throat. He likes it. “Not really a fan of this stuff.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
It’s such a quiet question, Wolfwood almost doesn’t hear it. He pretends he doesn’t. Doesn’t turn back either, almost carving another hole in the moon with his gaze. Beats me, he thinks of saying again, then reminds himself not to. He didn’t hear it.
The moons shine brightly in the night sky. They always seem to be laughing at him somehow.
The cigarette isn’t done, but Wolfwoods stubs it out anyway. He stands up and heads towards the door in what he hopes isn’t a rushed manner.
“It’s late”, he offers, grabbing the Punisher and stepping outside. Vash always asks him – why do you bring this thing here? It’s just a room away if you don’t. Wolfwood never answers. He doesn’t turn back around to give Vash the opportunity to ask again or, worse, to see his face right now. “Get yer ass under the covers and get some sleep. We wake up early tomorrow and get the fuck outta here.”
He drags the Punisher more than holds it out, closing the door behind him. His eyes are cast on the floor the entire time.
Wolfwood didn’t get to see Vash reading again after that one night.
He knows it’s his fault. It usually is. The twisting feeling on his chest is always there to remind him too, whenever he goes to Vash’s room to – he doesn’t know why, actually – in the middle of the night and hears him quietly placing something on the bedside table before opening the door, just for Wolfwood to step in and see the book there, closed. Like he had to stop reading in front of him.
Like he didn’t trust him with that anymore.
No, Wolfwood knew better than that. It wasn’t shame that Vash felt – Wolfwood was aware, more than anyone, of how the humanoid typhoon considered himself way past being acquainted with that kind of feeling. No, it was something deeper.
When they finally found another rusty saloon-slash-motel to spend the night after one day and a half of uninterruptedly dragging their asses across scrappy sand and dodging flying bullets from yet more bounty hunters, and Wolfwood got to finally ask for the jar of whiskey he’d been aching for during their retreat, he realized what it was. What Vash felt.
Because when he raised his cup for a toast, hoping to meet a leather-covered hand in the middle and hear the clink of cups being submerged by a high-pitched well-known giggle, he had to stop himself in his tracks and see that there was no one there.
He looked back at Vash by his side, raised eyebrow in confusion. The man, the unattainable prize, just laughed in answer. A laugh Wolfwood knew too well too, but one he didn’t think could drown any other sound.
“’M tired”, Vash said, raising the keys they had picked up earlier at the entrance for good measure, a sound of clinking Wolfwood didn’t want to hear. “You get to have all the fun this time.”
As Wolfwood watched a red coat lazily drag itself up creaky stairs, leather boots thumping soundly against old wood, he realized.
Making his name count for something and punishing himself, he only let himself down the cup that had been poured in one go after Vash had already disappeared from his view.
It was rejection.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood was sure of a lot of things. He was sure he was going to die someday, like most – deserving – people. He was sure he was never going to be able to return to the orphanage again, lest he tainted the children’s eyes with the image of blood running down from his fingers and face continuously, hands always dirty and busy with bruises and the broken neck of someone else. He was sure that, when he did die, despite his best efforts and his ironic mimicry of a man made (man-made?) for Heaven, that was another place he wasn’t allowed into.
And he was sure that Vash the Stampede was the closest he’d ever get to a ticket there, eyes shining with never-ending hope and cherub-like blonde hair, real laugh like the sound of church bells at canonical hours. He was sure that, as a priest – as a weapon, and as Wolfwood – his duty was to follow him everywhere, to the ends of this forgotten planet if needed be, to wherever Vash asked him to, even if it was just a motel room falling apart in yet another small town, even if it was just to clink together two glass cups and down a dose of whiskey that burned his throat with all the unsaid and said things between them.
So there he was again, blowing out smoke into the cold night air and sitting on the windowsill, Vash a few meters away from him, a safe distance, sitting on a small table and downing another cup of whiskey, hiccup leaving his pink lips and making him giggle to himself.
Some nights they were too tired to even deal with the ruckus of a downstairs bar, the imminent attack of sinners who wanted to crucify Vash and his misguided naiveness always following them whenever they were around other people. Or they just wanted to avoid the noise only drunk lonely cowboys knew how to make, retreating to a somewhat quiet place and preparing themselves for a ruckus of their own.
Wolfwood glanced at the hardcover that laughed at his face and sparked that familiar guilty feeling in his chest laying on the bedside table yet again. Untouched – for his eyes. He exhaled. The smoke traveled in front of his face and clouded his already dirty vision.
He was going to have to ask after all, wasn’t he?
“So,”, he started, and Vash immediately turned to him, empty cup on hands and half-lidded eyes, with a hum of acknowledgment, “where did ya find it?”
Another hum, this time a confused one. Wolfwood sighed and waved in the general direction of yet another piece of old literature that served as proof of his sins.
“The book.”
Vash’s eyes widened and he sat upright, staring at where Wolfwood gestured as if he had forgotten about the object. Impossible, the priest thought. Wolfwood didn’t know many things, but he, of all people, should know the importance a fucking bundle of words can have.
“Ah,”, Vash said after a while, like the words were late to come to him, “yeah. A woman gave it to me some time ago after we saved that last city that had a dying Plant”, he swallowed heavily, like the memory was just now dawning, and then let out a moist chuckle, “Said that it had been on her family for generations. She was really grateful, I guess. I don’t really remember well”, he went on, clearly lying, if the way he was scraping the back of his neck nervously like Wolfwood knew – he knew too many things, uh? – he did when he was trying to change the subject was anything to go by.
Well, tough for him. One of Wolfwood’s many flaws was that he didn’t know how to stop once he started. He wouldn’t know how to begin again if he did.
So, he sighed and stood up, stubbing out the smoked cigarette right there on the windowsill and making his way to the bedside table. He felt Vash’s piercing eyes following him lazily as he moved, not noticing the finality of his action. When he moved to grab the book, however, there it was – Vash’s breath hitching, a stillness suddenly on the air like electricity. Everything around Vash moved to the beat of his heart, which, right now, seemed to be on Wolfwood’s tainted hands.
His fingers twitched with the thought, and he clenched his free hand. He felt like he needed to ask for it.
“Can I?”
He heard Vash’s swallow before the quiet answer, almost like it wasn’t meant to be heard.
“Sure.”
Wolfwood took a cautious look at the worn-out letters on the cover as he grabbed the book. They shone against the moonlight as he turned it on his hands, analyzing it like an ancient artefact – which, well, wasn’t really far from the truth.
“A collection of the best of Earth’s poets, uh”, he quoted. “Sure is a relic."
“Yeah”, Vash breathed, like the air was punched out of him as Wolfwood read. “Like I said, it was very nice of her.”
“Shoulda sold this, uh?”, Wolfwood smirked, opening it with more care than he ever had put to a sacred text. The pages were yellowed and fragile, like they could become dust at any point. “Must be worth somethin'. Buy our next breakfast and lunch, even.”
Vash didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. Of course he would never sell it. Wolfwood mentally chastised himself for the comment. Can’t ever keep ya goddamn mouth shut.
He flips the pages mindlessly, not knowing what he’s looking for yet – something that catches his eye, something that stands out, that speaks to him somehow. Something he knows about for once, like that one poem Vash had read for him – God, religion. Certainly not love.
Another beat, static buzzing through the air, silence growing inside that small motel room. Then, a creak and a step. Wolfwood gazes back to Vash, and finds he’s standing now, closing the distance between them. The priest's hands are sweaty and dizziness strikes him at once – ah, so the alcohol is finally getting to him.
Vash’s hair lays soft on his head, having just showered. A step closer, and the moonlight on the window reflected on his eyes for a second, vivid blue like the purest ocean, waves making Wolfwood’s head spin. Whiskey heating up his body.
Those eyes were not staring back at Wolfwood, though. Vash’s gaze was fixed on the book, and, as he stood next to him, he pointed at the page Wolfwood had stopped flipping at. The priest averted his fixed gaze to look – Vash’s long finger was under the title, prompting Wolfwood to read it.
He was a priest. He could never deny an angel anything.
“Intimate verses”, he recites drowsily, his husky voice sounding momentarily strange to him. The name of the author was right above it, a language he wasn’t familiar with, “by Au... Augus...”
“Augusto dos Anjos”, Vash offered, an easy – true - smile on his slightly inebriated voice. “I like this one.”
A pause. Wolfwood still didn’t know if he could cast his eyes upon Vash’s treasured gift, still laughed at the thought of being able to appreciate it like he does. Poetry was a fine art, and Wolfwood was everything but a fine man.
A nudge on his shoulder. Vash seemed to understand what Wolfwood was looking for – permission. His blonde hair tickled Wolfwood’s ear with how close they were now, and still Vash leaned forward the tiniest bit more, like if he spoke louder the moment would be shattered.
“Go on”, he whispered. “Read it.”
Again, Wolfwood was a priest. It was his duty to indulge Heaven’s sons.
He cast his eyes on the first line and a scoff found its way out of his mouth. Not at the poetry itself, but at the thought he was actually doing this – indulging in something like that. Vash nudged his shoulder again, as if asking more of him. Wolfwood rolled his eyes, clearing his throat.
“Alright”, he acquiesced. “Alright". He was really doing this.
Then, even if stumbling over some of the words and slurring sentences, he began.
“Behold, no one watched the formidable burial of his last chimera. Only ingratitude – this panther – was his inseparable companion”. Something twisted inside his guts, and he had to swallow the ashy taste on his tongue, even if his starting cigarette of the night was long gone, before continuing. “Get wont to the mud that awaits thou. O man, whom, in this base land, lives among beasts, feels in advance the want to also be a beast”. And he didn’t think he could continue, not with how his voice had begun to strangely shake with the words, but he did, Vash’s shoulder touching his a grounding reminder. “Take a match, light thy cigarette. The kiss, mine friend, is the eve of the sputum, the hand that caresses is the like that stones. If someone takes pity of thy wound, stone that vile hand that caresses thou,”, and, with a last sigh, a last tremble, “spit in that mouth that kisses thou.”
Everything was silent for a couple of seconds – minutes, hours, Wolfwood couldn’t tell. His breath was ragged, like he had just run a marathon. Those last sentences swam around in his mind, even if the voice reading them sounded like someone else’s, someone who was capable of understanding them on their complexity. But, somehow, something in his gut – a twisted feeling, a burning fire, a beast living among him, on this wretched land – told him that, somehow, he did.
He didn’t know how much time had passed until Vash exhaled, breaking the quiet symphony of crickets and wind outside that had trapped them on that unique moment, and then Wolfwood realized he was still staring at the book unblinkingly, words beginning to slur in front of him. He blinked and looked back at Vash, and the expression on his face could put all the paintings of archangels he had ever seen to shame.
“So?”, his soft voice prompted, and it took all of Wolfwood not to stare directly at the way his lips crafted the word.
Suddenly, the book felt too heavy on Wolfwood’s hands. He took a last glance at the title, suddenly feeling way too raw and exposed, and closed it, putting it back in the place it was before. Like it had never been touched that night. His fingers twitched, looking for a cigarette.
“Lotta big words”, he laughed humourlessly, but it sounded like a fake answer even to himself. “Didn’t sound like a love poem to little ol’ me, either”. His voice curls around the words, as unknowable as the ones he was reciting just now.
Vash hummed. He was still so close, pinning Wolfwood under his gaze like he searched for something within him. Wolfwood was a man sure of many things. One of them was that Vash would never find it in him.
“Most of them aren’t”, Vash finally replied, walking back to the table and pouring himself another glass of whiskey. Suddenly, Wolfwood felt cold without his presence so near. He grabbed a cigarette from his box, surprising himself with his hasty movements. “But I like to think that every one of them is.”
The lighter almost escapes Wolfwood’s skilled fingers. It takes him one more try to succed at bringing his crappy cigarette to life, the orange of its lit end lightning up his stubble and the rough edges of his face.
He turns back to Vash, taking a drag. Vash is looking right at him, a cup of whiskey swirling in one hand, the other casually draped over his crossed leg. O man, whom, in this base land, lives among beasts, feels in advance the want to also be a beast. Wolfwood blows a heavy cloud of smoke.
“How so?”, he finds himself saying. The whiskey has toned down his defenses, and, most of all, he finds he’s tired – something about the reading, Vash’s closeness, the whisper that tickled his ear, Augusto’s words – he can’t find himself to care about being or not being worth of it anymore, not tonight. He wants to understand. To be able to share something with Vash. To feel the ghost of his shoulder knocking into his like that again.
Vash hums, puts the cup of whiskey to his lips and downs it. Wolfwood’s suddenly thirsty for one too, but, before he can even say anything, Vash is pouring another and handing it in his direction. Blue eyes catch brown ones, and Wolfwood suddenly wishes the smoke and the whiskey weren’t clouding his vision so much.
“Because everything is really about love, isn't it?”, he says just as Wolfwood grabs the cup, an invitation to something. Take a match, light thy cigarette. Vash lets out a cackled laugh at his own words, and Wolfwood feels the corners of his mouth turning up on their own accord. “All about love and peace.”
The priest swirls the whiskey in his cup, looking at the way it drifts like a disturbed pond, something mysterious lurking in its waters. He tries to remember the last verses of the poem – it didn’t even rhyme, for God’s sake – and fails miserably. Something about a kiss and spit. Romantic.
As he lifts his head up to down his cup and his gaze catches Vash’s, a flash of something, maybe the burning end of his dying cigarette, makes his alcohol-filled gut catch fire. It’s about death, his mind, once again, offers, always keeping his thoughts occupied, something always lurking underneath troubled waters. It’s about betrayal.
Suddenly, the whiskey feels too heavy on his tongue, the cigarette too ashy, the lights too bright. But Vash, fucking Vash – he still looks like the walking billion-dollar prize he is, long legs crossed, eyes closed and lips painting a lazy smirk on his face as he hums a song. And Wolfwood understands.
He glances at the clock on the wall above the table. It’s late already. They don’t have much time left – never seem to.
The kiss, mine friend, is the eve of the sputum.
With a sigh, he finishes off his cigarette, moving closer to the table to put it out on the ashtray there. The motion makes Vash open one of his eyes, sleepiness written all across his features. Unguarded. Trusting.
Wolfwood swallows dry. And smiles. A plastic one.
“I think I get it”, he says. Vash smiles back.
It seems real this time.