Work Text:
It's a joke, at first. That they're not just about the same build, but almost perfectly matched underneath their individual trappings, down to the width of their shoulders and hips. Standing close enough that Vash's nose wrinkles — probably from the smell of cigarette smoke — comparing dimensions.
Putting their hands all over each other.
From there, it's not a particularly far leap to Vash suggesting they try on each other's coats, or from there to stripping down to their underwear and trading outfits entirely.
It's not like they haven't seen each other naked before.
Vash's leathers are tight, but Wolfwood understands immediately why he wears them as soon as they're buckled securely. They're probably more supportive for Vash’s specific injuries, but Wolfwood feels the effect on his back right away.
"Oof," he mutters, stretching his arms over his head. "You've got a good tailor, Spikey, these are skin-tight."
Vash snickers at him from where he's fussing with the buttons of Wolfwood's nicotine-stained shirt, the collar flipped up on one side.
He looks ridiculous. And too stupidly fucking pretty for words.
"You look ridiculous," Wolfwood tells him.
Vash snorts. "You look like a cat in a cone." He pulls a pathetic face. "Mrrrow," he vocalizes, sounding so much like an actual cat that Wolfwood has to stop himself from looking around for one. "Come here, let me do your hair."
This is a fruitless endeavor, it turns out — only Vash's hair can stand on end like that, and no matter how much gel Vash tries to work through the strands, Wolfwood's hair keeps flopping back into his eyes.
"Now you look even more like a kitty cat," Vash says, holding up two spikes of hair, stiffened with gel into flattened points.
Wolfwood's suddenly reminded, almost unbearably, of the orphanage girls playing with his hair, tying tiny little braids and pigtails into the longest bits, heating chopsticks in the sun until they were hot enough to curl the loose strands into fluffy frizz, petting at him like a cat—
You look so pretty, Nico-nii!
Aunt Mel'nie, look what we did to Nico!
Nico-nii, you can never cut your hair ever, okay, you're perfect to practice on!
Wolfwood clears his throat, ducking away from Vash's hands and his own watery-eyed reflection. "Quit tugging, it's not going to stay."
He casts his gaze over Vash, gel-less, his hair flopping in his eyes. He's buttoned the shirt up one more than Wolfwood does, but left the jacket open, so Wolfwood's holster ( sans the case of vials — he'd unbuckled it from the rest of the holster and shoved it under his pillow as he was undressing, and if Vash had noticed he hadn't said a thing) is visible, strapped across his chest.
"You look stupid," he mutters, looking away from Vash's still-gloved hand. Wolfwood's palms are broader, and the glove is as tightly custom-tailored as the suit. There’s no point in Wolfwood trying to put it on.
It does something, to Wolfwood's outfit on Vash's frame. Adds some kind of disorienting… something. Wolfwood considers that hand wrapped around the Punisher—
Vash grins at him. "Put the coat on."
Ever the sucker, Wolfwood puts the coat on. There are entirely too many little snap buttons, but he does admire how it gives him access to the gun strapped to his hip — far too big for a revolver, but it'd make him a hypocrite to say so — without looking like it has a cutout for exactly that. He needs to find out what kind of bribes work on people who don't want for anything, so he can get the tailors on Vash's flying ship home to make him something this nice.
When he turns around from the mirror, there's a look on Vash's face he doesn't quite like. "What?"
Vash touches the back of his head, where the black and the blonde meet. "Nothing, I just… it suits you." He smiles a strange, crumpled sort of smile. "I like it."
Wolfwood stands still as Vash approaches him, feeling even more like a cat subjected to medical scrutiny. He manages not to flinch when Vash reaches for his face, settling his orange shooting glasses on Wolfwood's nose.
"I'd thought they'd be a little more rose-colored, given how you act," Wolfwood says drily, obligingly handing over his own pair.
…Which he absolutely should not have done, because Vash puts them on and he sweeps his gloved hand through his hair and he's just—
It's absolutely, utterly, deeply unfair how much Wolfwood wants to rip those clothes back off him.
"Need a smoke," Wolfwood mutters, and sure he could just ask, but it's much more satisfying to stick his hand in Vash's jacket — his jacket — and yanking out a cigarette and his lighter.
Vash makes a series of noises at him, but Wolfwood ignores him, sticking the cigarette between his teeth and he sweeps out the door, Vash's coattails swirling around him. Dramatic bastard.
His stupid pounding heart settles after a few nicotine-laden breaths and some distance from Vash's stupid handsome face.
Stupid, stupid face. Stupid idea, stupid Wolfwood for agreeing to it—
Wolfwood leans back against the wall of the building next to the hotel, the paper of various advertisements crinkling under his shoulders.
He gets through most of his cigarette before someone points a gun at his face.
"What?" he asks. "I don't have any money, sorry."
That just gets him a scoffing laugh. "Dyeing your hair won't help if you're still in the outfit, Vash the Stampede. "
Wolfwood blinks at him, taking an extra page out of Vash's book and playing extra stupid while he figures out why the guy thought the man himself and not obvious dressup . The guy jerks the gun at something past Wolfwood's shoulder, and he glances back to find himself face to face with a full-color portrait of Vash, grinning out of his bounty poster.
They don't look anything alike, still, but someone's drawn in the black in Vash's hair, and updated the coat from the high-collared one he used to wear to the sleeker one that Wolfwood's currently wearing.
"Well," Wolfwood says, flicking his cigarette into the sand. "It clearly worked on you. I'm not the guy you're looking for."
The bounty hunter — or opportunist, it doesn't really matter which — scoffs at him again. Rude. "You're wearing his clothes. "
"Can't a guy dress up?" Wolfwood complains, dropping his hand casually to the slit in the side of the coat, eyes darting between the gun barrel, the guy's face, and the group of his buddies congregating around them. Five total. Perfect. "Though, I guess this is pretty distinctive—!"
He's not as quick a shot as Vash, but still quick enough that before any of the thugs can blink he's drawn the gun pulled the hammer back fired—
It would've been impressive, if the gun had been loaded.
Fuck, Wolfwood thinks, and then, as he's throwing himself into the dirt to avoid the spray of gunfire, his heart sinks into his gut. Oh, fuck. He doesn't trust me.
It shouldn't hurt. Vash shouldn't trust him. Wolfwood's an assassin, a traitor, a liar, a threat. Of course Vash would disarm him at every opportunity.
But — Wolfwood hadn't seen him doing it.
He must've pulled off one of his slight of hand tricks, around the same time Wolfwood was hiding the vials, because Vash doesn't unload his gun otherwise. He knows the life he lives better than that.
Vash had wanted Wolfwood unarmed, but thinking he was.
It shouldn't hurt.
But it does, even more than the few lucky shots that find their target on him as he runs for it, trying to imitate Vash's zig-zagging. The actual impact is lessened by the coat and the leathers underneath, but getting shot in the back still hurts like a motherfucker, throwing him forward just enough that another bullet skims his calf and a third his exposed forearm, where the fabric is pulled back to not obstruct the mechanisms of a prosthetic gun arm that Wolfwood doesn't have.
He doesn't have anything.
Just his own two feet, clumsy in Vash's ridiculous boots — they have better traction than his loafers, sure, but he's walked five steps in their clunky buckle-laded weight, and never run until sprinting for his life.
Wolfwood knows Vash better than to assume it was a setup. Half the reason Vash doesn't, will never, could never trust him is that he knows he can't just make Wolfwood leave — he'll keep turning up like a bad penny, because he has to.
Maybe he was never supposed to notice. Maybe it was just instinctive, to not put a loaded weapon in the hands of a killer. Maybe it's a warning — that Vash will always have the upper hand, will always undercut him, will always be in the way of him hurting people.
But regardless.
Vash doesn't trust him with a loaded weapon. With his weapon.
Dodging down an alleyway, trying valiantly not to limp, Wolfwood searches the coat's many pockets frantically. He never watches Vash reload. There's never time to look away from the fight, and even if there were, it always happens so fast. He doesn't know which fucking pocket Vash gets the bullets from—
Gunfire rips up the ground at his feet. Wolfwood rears back, and crashes directly into another one of the bastards, who gets big hands on his forearms and then another of them hits him in the face and he fights back but not hard enough. it's hard to move with the leathers bound so tight, hard to put force into kicks weighed down by the boots. He's already wounded. It's not enough, it's not enough—
It's never enough. He can't be Vash.
Maybe that's why Vash doesn't trust him—
Or maybe it's the fact he fights at all.
"Still not the guy you're after," Wolfwood slurs through a mouthful of blood. He doesn't think he's lost any teeth — just split his lip open, and busted his nose. The taste of iron fills his senses. Somehow, the glasses aren’t broken. They are jammed into the bridge of his nose and digging in painfully, but that’s the least of his worries. "Whoever's handin' out the bounty's gonna laugh in your face."
No one's handing out the bounty. Sixty billion double dollars is more than all the money on the planet put together.
It doesn't matter. Wolfwood's not living to see the looks on their faces when they find out. Damn shame. It'll be funny.
One of them punches him in the stomach. The same gun barrel as before presses to his forehead.
"You're wearing his clothes. You've got his gun. You run and cry like a coward, same as him."
Is he crying? He can't remember the last time he cried. It just feels like sweat and blood stinging his eyes.
"Maybe he's already dead," Wolfwood spits another mouthful of blood. "Maybe I robbed his goddamn corpse."
The man with the gun scoffs disbelievingly. "You'd be a rich man."
Wolfwood leans against the barrel of the gun. "Maybe I was just satisfied with the coat."
Whatever witty retort — or maybe bullet to the skull — he would have gotten for that never comes.
Instead, a high cackle rings out from somewhere above.
The shadow of the Punisher against the moon robs Wolfwood of his already rattled bearings. He tips dizzily out of his Vash-garbed body, watches — still through a haze of orange — a man in his clothes effortlessly wielding his gun leap down from a rooftop and send the bounty hunters scattering. One of them tries to drag Wolfwood with them, but the Punisher goes off thunderously loud, and chips of brick from the wall ricochet into the man's hands and Wolfwood is dropped, left on his back, breathing through his bloody nose, knowing he should roll onto his side but able to do nothing but watch himself struggle to breathe as the laughter goes on—
And then Vash is there, and the world starts making sense again.
"Now that's really playing the part," he says, as he gets Wolfwood onto his feet, props him against the wall next to his own gun, and starts undoing the coat-snaps. "You were gone for a minute."
Wolfwood blinks at him. "I look like you."
Vash laughs — not his mad threat-cackle, but high and nervous, as his hands jump from unbuttoning to roaming over Wolfwood’s face, fussily rubbing blood from his skin with Wolfwood’s coat sleeve, the asshole. "I didn't think the resemblance was that — you didn't have to — did you get shot?"
"You unloaded the gun," Wolfwood mumbles, something not quite like blood stuck in his throat.
"I didn't think you were going to get in a shootout in — Wolfwood." He cuts himself off, sounding more admonishing than concerned. "Don't look at me like that."
Wolfwood rolls his eyes. "Could've at least told me which damn pocket the bullets were in."
Vash sighs at him. "You ran out on me—"
"Now you know how I feel!" Wolfwood snaps. “Running off and getting into gunfights, getting shot, Christ alive, we’re both lucky this thing is bulletproof.”
The hands on his face go still. Vash’s face, when it swims back into focus past the orange lenses and the haze of pain, is pinched with hurt. “I didn’t ask for this.”
Wolfwood shrugs. “You still wear the coat, don’t you?”
Vash takes his glasses off Wolfwood’s face and hooks them onto the unbuttoned front of his shirt.
Still unfairly goddamn pretty. Even if he is the cause of the half of Wolfwood’s problems that aren’t his own fault or God’s.
After a moment of not saying anything to Wolfwood’s extremely reasonable accusation, Vash bursts into strained giggles. “I bet we started some strange rumors today,” he squeaks out, scrubbing the back of his hand across his face to scrub away the tears the laughter forces out. Or maybe he’s just crying. Wolfwood doesn’t know. He wishes he could cry that easily, turn it off just as fast.
“ Never to be substantiated,” Wolfwood says firmly, finishing Vash’s abandoned work on the buttons and peeling the damn thing off, tucking it into the crook of Vash’s arm.
Vash huffs a little noise through his laughter that sounds like agreement, pressing his hand over his face as he composes himself. He sniffles, puts his smile back on. “Can you walk?”
Wolfwood waves him off. “Just a graze. You can fuss when we’re back inside.”
“Okay, okay,” Vash concedes, but he slings his arm around Wolfwood’s back anyway, and Wolfwood lets him get away with it.
All of it, really.