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As soon as they roll into September, Vash disappears.
Wolfwood would have been happy to just let him wander around on his own if that’s what he wanted to too.
But Knive’s voice echoes in his head and Meryl’s yapping in his ear has him out on the streets, tracking him down instead.
And sure, maybe he’s a little worried about him too. He’s got a bad feeling, growing like a rock in his stomach, the longer it takes to find him. Asking around, mostly talking to street vendors, hasn’t gotten him anywhere.
Wolfwood is almost ready to call it quits. If Vash didn’t want to be found, then he wasn’t going to be found. Until he hears a scream.
He stomach drops to his feet, knowing that he’s going to find Vash wherever that scream came from. So he runs in that direction.
And he was right. He rounds the corner to find Vash surrounded by three men beating on him, as he falls to the ground, a well aimed kick to his head making him collapse limp on the ground.
Fuck.
“Hey!” Wolfwood yells, running towards the commotion. “Leave him alone!” He pulls his side gun from his jacket, aims it up to the sky and fires off a warning shot. That gets everyone’s attention.
“Fuck off, or the next shot is gonna go somewhere that hurts.”
The assholes get the message thankfully, not too keen on putting up a fight when firearms are involved, and all three of them run off with their tails tucked between their legs. Nick runs over to Vash, tucking the gun back into its holster. He half expects him to get up by the time he’s made it to him, but he’s still down.
“Needle-noggin, it’s time to get up.” Wolfwood nudges Vash with the toe of his shoe. “Come on.”
Vash just groans, the sound catching in his throat as he shifts, turning into a whimper that cuts through the quiet of the alley.
“Stop bein’ a baby.” Wolfwood says, squatting down. “I’ve seen you take bigger beatings, you’re fine.”
Vash moves slowly, rolling himself over and falling heavily onto his back, trying and failing to hold back a groan. Wolfwood watches in slow motion as Vash reaches for something with a shaking hand, his fingers wrapping around the handle of a blade, sticking out from his stomach
“Wait, just leave it!” Wolfwood tries to stop him, but as soon as the words leave his lips, Vash has already pulled the knife from his body. It falls to the ground with a sharp metallic cling and blood gushes from the now open stab wound.
“God fucking damn it!” Wolfwood yells, his panic from earlier rearing its ugly head again. He presses his hands over the wound, only for blood to leak up between his fingers. “Why the fuck didn’t you just leave it?”
“It hurt…” Vash mutters
“Yeah well, now you’re bleeding!” Wolfwood shrugs out of his jacket, balling it up and pressing it to Vash’s side. He knows one thing, that he needs to get Vash back to the hotel. He takes Vash’s hand, guiding it to his jacket and pressing it down, hard enough that Vash gasps out. “Hold this, press down hard. I don’t care how much it hurts.”
Vash nods.
“Come on, on your feet,” Wolfwood says, pulling Vash upright, slinging his other arm around his shoulder. “Walk, we’re not too far from the hotel.”
“Okay,” Vash says, his voice already weak in a way Wolfwood doesn’t like at all. He likes even less that Vash is flagging already, just a few steps out of the alley, his feet dragging and head hanging forward.
“Stay awake, Blondie,” Wolfwood says, easily ducking to scoop Vash into his arms. “Keep the pressure on that wound.”
Vash’s head lolls on to his shoulder, and Wolfwood can feel Vash’s blood soaking into his own shirt where Vash is held against him.
“I am… got it…” Vash mutters, his words starting to slur together.
Wolfwood nearly breaks down the door of the inn with the force that he kicks it open. By the time he gets them there, Vash is limp in his arms, blood covering his entire front.
Vash’s blood.
“The hell happened to him?” Roberto asks.
“What the hell do you think?” Wolfwood snaps, he strides through the small lobby, ignoring the other patrons' stares. “He stuck his nose where it wasn’t wanted. Shorty, get the medkit, now!”
Meryl comes in with their medical kit from the truck, placing it at the foot of the bed, watching as Wolfwood wrestles Vash out of his coat, shirt pulled over his head. It’d be so much easier to cut him out of it, but they don’t have much extra in the way of clothes between them.
Wolfwood glares at Meryl where she stands with her hands clasped in front of her, looking worried.
“What are you lookin’ at?”
“What happened?” “He got stabbed.” Wolfwood says, shoving a towel under Vash’s side, not caring if it’ll get stained. “I can take care of this.”
“I can help… I can, I don't know…” She trails off, looking at the blood as it slowly drips down Vash’s scarred side. He looks pale, small and frail. “I'll hold his hand.”
“I’ve got it, little lady,” Wolfwood says, motioning towards the door. “I'm just going to sew up the wound, I don’t need ya here for that.”
“What do you even know about that, about stitching up a person?” Meryl asks, looking over her shoulder at the door. “Maybe I should go and see if this place even has a doctor, just in case?”
“If you want but, I know a lot more than you think I do,” Wolfwood says, pushing Meryl out the door, and slamming it once she’s out for good measure. He tells himself he can feel bad about it later. He knows how self conscious Vash is of his body, and he doesn’t want him to wake up with Meryl hovering over him and freak out.
“You’re a damn fool, you know that, Spikey?” Wolfwood says to no one but an unconscious Vash as he digs out what supplies he needs. He’s never been more thankful that the reporters actually keep a well stocked kit. Especially since he never needed to keep this kind of shit around.
He drags the lone chair in the room to the side of the bed. He tries to make quick work of cleaning around the wound, Vash brow furrows from the sting of alcohol, but he doesn’t wake.
“What if I hadn’t been there to save your ass, huh?” Wolfwood asks, feeling the need to fill in the silence. He snaps the thread with his teeth, and it only takes three tries to thread the needle. His hands are only trembling a little bit. But that’s because he needs a smoke, or at least that’s what he tells himself.
Wolfwood takes a deep breath, laying his hand over Vash’s hip. A quick glance to Vash’s face confirms that he’s still passed out before he pushes the needle through his skin. Wolfwood closes the wound with neat stitches, a skill he learned acting as an undertaker. And a skill he rarely gets to practice on the living, but really it isn’t much different.
He ties off the last stitch, tapes a bandage over the wound and tucks Vash into bed.
Wolfwood is still in the adjoining bathroom an hour later, scrubbing Vash’s blood from beneath his fingernails when he hears the rustling of sheets in the next room.
When he pokes his head out of the bathroom, he finds Vash sitting up, with an arm wrapped protectively around his middle.
“The fuck are you doing?” Wolfwood barks, drying his hands on his pants. Vash eyes widen when he sees the blood on his shirt.
“Wolfwood? Are you ok?”
“Me?” Wolfwood asks, before he looks down, remembering that he’s still wearing the same shirt. He turns away and unbuttons it, letting it fall to the floor. “This is your blood. Lay the fuck back down before you pop your stitches.”
Wolfwood’s pulling a mostly clean shirt from his bag when Vash finally says something.
“You stitched me up?”
“Yeah, it’s not gonna scar as bad as the rest of them, probably.”
“Thank you.” Vash says, his voice soft as he finally eases himself back down. He doesn’t pull the blanket back up, leaving his chest exposed.
Wolfwood can’t tear his eyes away from him. Every scar is a reminder that Vash will always put himself in harm's way to protect everyone else. It’s his job to make sure that Vash gets to July in one piece. But it’s become way more than that.
Wolfwood wants to keep Vash safe from everything that wants to cause him harm on this god forsaken planet. Watching Vash let himself be hurt, hurts Wolfwood too and it pisses him off.
“You know your help everyone schtick is gonna get you killed one day.” Wolfwood says, his voice flat as he buttons up his shirt.
“I’ve managed it for a long time, and I'm still here.”
“No, you don’t get it, blondie.” Wolfwood says, still trying to keep his voice monotone, but it starts to warble against his will. “That luck’s gonna have to run out sometime, you don’t have much room left for new scars.”
“So they’ll overlap.”
“Jesus Christ, Vash.” Wolfwood says, scrubbing a hand down his face. “If you just… never mind, I can’t with you right now.”
“I can take care of myself, Wolfwood,” Vash says, not looking at Wolfwood, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I’m not a child.”
“Yeah, well, you could’ve fooled me!” Wolfwood yells, grabbing his cigarettes and lighter before leaving the room. If he’s around Vash for another second he is going to end up saying something he regrets.
The slamming of the door makes Vash flinch, and he has to take a deep breath as he blinks back tears, to keep them from falling. He knows that Wolfwood’s heart is in the right place, even if he can’t really talk about it.
He lays there, for a while, until the guilt he feels is too much and he feels like he’s given Wolfwood enough time to calm down a little bit. He drags himself out of bed, the stitches in his side pulling uncomfortably when he tries to stand up straight, so he hunches over, his flesh arm braced around his belly.
Looking around, he doesn’t immediately see his coat, and he’s worried for a moment, until he finds it hanging in the bathroom, draped over the door. He runs his fingertips over the fabric, a dark wet spot, on the same side he was stabbed. He knows that he’s bled on it, but there’s no trace of it now.
“Nick…” Vash whispers to the empty room. An overwhelming feeling of warmth floods him, imagining Wolfwood at the sink, cleaning the blood from his coat. That Wolfwood would do that for him, knowing how much it means to Vash.
The tears he’d been holding back do fall then, slipping down his cheeks. He wipes them away with a sniffle, smiling as he slips his coat on. The comforting weight of it soothes him like a security blanket.
Vash pads out of the room and down the stairs, barefoot.
“Vash? Should you be up?” Meryl asks, she and Roberto look up from where they sit around a janky looking computer. She gets up to meet him.
“I’m alright,” Vash says, despite the fact that he has to stop once he reaches the bottom of the stairs, white knuckling the railing as he nearly folds in half, grimacing in pain.
“Come over here, you should sit.” Meryl says, placing her hand on the small of Vash’s back. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m okay,” Vash pants, waving off Meryl's hands and forcing himself to stand up straight to prove that he’s fine. The sheen of sweat on his forehead does little to convince her that’s the case though. “Have you seen Wolfwood?”
“Yeah.” Meryl quirks her eyebrow, knowing better than to try and force Vash into resting if he doesn't want to. But that doesn’t mean she likes it. “He stormed out earlier, went out the back way. Did you guys fight?”
“Maybe a little bit,” Vash admits shyly. “It was my fault though.”
“He shouldn’t be arguing with you when you're hurt like this.”
“He means well, Meryl, trust me, it’s alright.” Vash understands more than most how it feels to have emotions you don’t know how to deal with.
Vash makes his way outside. He’s not expecting to find Wolfwood right away, but here’s there, sitting on the ground leaning back against the building.
“Nick?”
Wolfwood sighs as soon as he sees Vash. “Do I need to tie you down to the bed, Needle-noggin?”
“No, you don’t, i’ll go back up, but you just seemed so angry and…” vash slides down the wall until he’s sitting next to Wolfwood.
“And you couldn’t stand me being mad at you.”
“Well, no…” Vash starts, then stops, pursing his lips together. “I guess yes, that’s part of it. I just wanted to say that I am sorry for making you worry, but you have to understand that I can’t just stop what I do.”
“I know that, I do.” Wolfwood sighs again, stubbing out the cigarette he’d been smoking on the ground. “But you can be less reckless about it. I’m not always gonna be there to save your ass.”
“I don’t expect you to be.”
“Yeah well, for some reason I’m compelled to care about your dumb ass.” Wolfwood mutters, looking away as he slips his hand into Vash’s, squeezing. “If you want to do something dumb, at least tell me, so that I can tag along.”
“I guess I can do that.” Vash laughs, but it quickly turns into a pained groan. “Damn that hurts.”
“You really ought to be laying down.”
“Help me up?”
Wolfwood stands and offers Vash a hand, pulling him gently to his feet. The movement is a little too quick for him anyway, and it pulls his stitches. He leans forward with his head resting on Wolfwood’s shoulder as he breathes through it.
“My stomach really hurts.”
“You think your little guy act is gonna get you carried back upstairs, huh?” Wolfwood says, but even though Vash can’t see his face, he can tell he’s smiling.
“Maybe,” Vash whines. “Is it working?”
Vash feels a huff of breath against his neck, and with little warning, he finds himself swept off of his feet again, smoothly settled into Wolfwood’s arms. And it’s a lot nicer for the both of them when Vash isn’t at risk of bleeding out in his arms.
“My knight in shining armor.” Vash says as Wolfwood settles him back into bed, slipping the coat from Vash’s shoulders again, this time hanging it over the lone chair in the room.
Wolfwood just rolls his eyes, he’s no knight, and he certainly doesn’t have any armor. But he can play along for Vash’s sake.
“I’m a regular hero.”
“I guess.”
“Oh, you just guess, huh? “ Wolfwood snorts, sitting on the edge of the mattress. “Changed your tune real quick, I see.”
“If you were really my hero, you’d lay down with me.” Vash sighs, a little bit too dramatically for Wolfwood to take him too seriously. And besides, the little smile he’s trying so hard to hold back gives him away.
Vash knew he’d won before he’d even muttered the words.
“I’ll do it,” Wolfwood says, acting as if it was a chore to even agree to it. In reality, he’s just happy that Vash is asking for something that he actually wants. He leans over Vash, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, and in that moment, in the peace of the room, it almost feels too intimate. “but only because it means you’ll stay in bed.”
“Aw, that was almost romantic.”
Wolfwood makes a face, like he’s disgusted by the concept, while unbuttoning his shirt, letting it fall to the ground.
“You don’t want romance?” Vash pouts.
“I was joking, never said I didn’t want it.” Wolfwood says. In truth, romance wasn’t something he was super familiar with, but it’s something he’s willing to indulge in for Vash. He crawls into bed, pressing himself up to Vash’s uninjured side, skin to skin, and Vash visibly relaxes. “Speaking of, this wasn’t how I had imagined finally getting you into a real bed.”
Vash blushes, remembering Wolfwood’s promise.
“I know, Sorry. Next time we get the chance, it’ll be my treat.”
“I’m gonna hold you to that, Spikes.”