Work Text:
Vash had never seen anything like it.
It seemed like the entire town was gathered together around a cross not unlike the Punisher, but larger. In front of it stood three people, dressed in some of the finest clothing he had ever seen. He plucked a warm doughnut out of the small bag in his arms as he watched on from afar. This little gathering would explain why he and the Insurance Girls were struggling to find an open business to stay in for the night.
Meryl hadn’t noticed she and Millie had lost their little escortee. The two of them continued to look through the windows of business after business, unaware of the event going on in the middle of the square. “This place looks like a ghost town,” She sighed after knocking on what felt like the hundredth inn to be met with nothing.
“I don’t think there’s any spooks here, Meryl. The sun isn't all the way down yet!” Her companion remarked thoughtfully.
Meryl turned to see if she was serious. She always was.
She kicked the door in frustration. “Surely there has to be someone left in this town with an open room?” She crossed her arms, looking defeated.
Millie watched as a couple rushed by them. “Maybe we should ask them.”
Meryl had already turned on her heels to follow. “Good thinking. Come on, Vash.” It occurred to her then that he had disappeared off the face of No Man’s Land. “Vash?”
He was mesmerized by it all. By the soft sound of the piano, of the beautifully delicate lights hung up all around the square, of the rows and rows of free food sat up for anybody to just walk by and take.
It would be dark soon. He wondered why they had shut down their businesses to gather in front of the cross like this. In his century and a half of living amongst people and their belief in God, he had never seen a church gathering quite like this.
“Vash!” He heard Meryl shout nearby. It startled him enough to drop his bag of doughnuts. He didn’t waste time bending down to save those he could.
“If it isn’t the Insurance Girls!” He masked how upset he was about the doughnut incident with a smile. “Any luck finding a room?”
Meryl crossed her arms over her chest and loomed down at him. “No, but I see you’ve found a doughnut stand while you were supposed to be helping.”
He chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his head. “Hey, now. Don’t blame a guy for getting distracted with decorations like this! Especially if it comes with free doughnuts!” He managed to save three of the four. He picked up the fallen soldier from out of the sand forlornly. He cradled it in both of his hands. “Si seulement. . .”
Meryl smacked the back of his head. He dropped the doughnut again. His bottom lip popped out in a pout.
The town erupted then into cheers, catching the attention of all three. People threw confetti and uncooked rice up into the air to settle undisturbed on top of the sand. Vash watched on curiously. “What are they doing?”
“Oh, the wedding?” She asks. She scoffed with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a wedding.”
“A what?”
Cheers and music blended in the air. A tall young man tapped Millie on the shoulder. She quickly turned her head to the side to see who had done it. “Excuse me,” he mumbled nervously and couldn’t meet her eye. “Would you care to dance?”
Millie took him quickly by the hand. “Okay!” She agreed at once. “I love dancing!” She used his hand to spin herself with a happy giggle. Blushing up a storm, he led her away to join the other dancers who had turned the square into a dance floor.
“Millie!” Meryl shouted after her. “Millie, be careful! You don’t know-” she stopped as soon as she got lost in the crowd. There was no use in wasting her breath and she knew it. Her shoulders slumped as she looked upon the crowd, annoyed at her partner. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother.”
Vash returned to his full height. Meryl looked furious, but he had been around humans quite the long time. He could tell when someone was hurting like crazy. He felt his own face fall as he followed her line of vision. Perhaps she wanted to dance too. Maybe that’s what had her so upset that Millie went to dance with that man.
Vash followed the man’s lead and tapped her shoulder. She spun around immediately, ready to rip out the throat of whoever dared. She startled him enough to take a step back. He held his hands up in surrender. “Would you care to dance?” He asked, just as the man had before.
Her face changed in an instant from defensive to blood red. “You. . ?” she asked. She shook her head and tried not to appear so flustered. “What I mean to say is, I suppose. Seeing as everyone else is.” She said confidently, placing her hands on her hips. “Plus it’ll help me keep an eye on you.”
Vash felt a smile grow on his face. He held his arm out to her. She blushed red again and refused to look in his direction as she softly laid her hand in his.
He led her along to where everyone else had been spinning and laughing and pulling one another close. The two of them fell in line with the other dancers, his hand on her hip and hers on his shoulder. Neither of them were seasoned in the art of choreography. Meryl would accidentally step on his foot, and Vash would bump into another dancer every few minutes. Between Meryl’s embarrassed apologies and Vash’s full of laughter, the two quickly learned to stop trying to dance well and focus instead on staying upright.
It didn’t take long for Meryl’s demeanor to crack. When Vash finally walked directly into a woman’s elbow hard enough to knock himself to the ground, she couldn’t hold back her laughter. He lifted his head, rubbed his reddening cheek, and saw her doubled over in front of him. It elated him to see her so happy. It was about time she learned to let loose and enjoy herself.
He rose back to his feet and held his hands back out to her. “I guess I should watch where I’m walking.” He chuckled.
“You think?” She took his hands. This time she yanked him back to the dance floor, almost making him lose his balance again. “You’re hopeless.”
He laughed again. The band began to play a slower song. Meryl moved her hands up to his shoulders. Vash was too preoccupied looking around at the venue to notice.
The lights began to sparkle brighter as the night grew darker. Fairy lights dotted all along the square, turning the place into a galaxy all its own. “So, this is a wedding?” He asked her.
“Well,” she shrugged softly, realizing that he really hadn’t known. “This isn’t really a wedding. This is more like the afterparty.”
“The afterparty?”
“The reception.” She corrected herself. “It’s where the newlyweds and their guests eat, and drink, and dance, and celebrate.”
He raised an eyebrow curiously. “Celebrate what?”
She tried to think about how to explain it to him. “The two who got married. Do you know why people get married?”
He shook his head. He made a sound that mimicked a “nuh uh.”
“You really don’t know a thing do you?” She asks. He smiled bashfully in response. “People get married when they love each other and know they want to be together for as long as they live. It’s a union that says ‘I don’t want to be with anybody else but you.’” She looked quickly through the crowd until her eyes landed on a woman in a white dress and a man in a suit dancing with her. “They’re over there. When a woman gets married, she is called the bride, and a man is called a groom. A bride will typically wear white and a groom will wear the best he can afford.”
Vash followed her line of vision to the two from earlier. He recognized their clothing as the two stunning ones at the altar. “So that’s why they were standing alone and dressed so nicely.” He thought out loud. He glanced back down to Meryl. “But why do they do this publicly? And who was the third person up there with them?”
“There’s a lot of reasons people do it publicly. Some people want the party, others want to show people how devoted they are to their partners. I knew a woman from the insurance society who only got married to her husband to invite her ex-wife and show her she didn’t love her anymore.” Meryl began to laugh to herself and shook her head. “Everyone has their reasons.”
“And the third person?” He reminded her.
“Oh, that would be the preacher.”
At the word “preacher” he felt his interest pique again. A certain man of the cloth took over his thoughts once more, something that was not too out of the ordinary. It had been almost two months since they parted ways, and Vash caught himself thinking about him nearly every moment his mind wasn’t occupied with other affairs. “Lovesick,” Millie had called it. “A waste of headspace,” Meryl had disagreed. Whichever the case, he had Vash’s subconscious captivated, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to break himself loose of his revieres.
“What does a preacher have to do with a wedding?” He asked. “Are they religious?”
“Some people see it as a religious practice. For others, it’s just a tradition. Only people certified to officiate a wedding can marry two people together, and it’s a part of a priest’s training to learn, so most people hire priests or preachers because they know they’re a safe bet.”
The song came to a close. The crowd clapped on the band, embellished with a few whistles. Meryl released her hands from him and returned them to her side. Vash was too busy mulling over everything she had just taught him about weddings to notice much of anything else. He pictured Wolfwood standing up between the couple, his dusty suit replaced with pristinely tailored fabric that looked untouched. His hair brushed back out of his eyes, no, slicked back. He could just picture it, though he had never seen Wolfwood cleaned up before. He didn’t need to. He could imagine it as if he were standing right before him.
Slowly, the image morphed. Instead of being the officiant, he stood in front of the town preacher. His buttoned up shirt topped off with a small black bowtie and his face adorned with a smile brighter than any light in the town. Nicholas D. Wolfwood was the groom. Vash felt his face start to heat up brightly at the thought, and a smile just like the one he pictured on Wolfwood grew into place on his own face.
He could have pictured it forever. He could have framed that smile and kept it close for all his life. If only he could have.
He turned his attention back to Meryl, cheeks still rosy from his daydream. There was one more thing he was curious about. “If that’s the case, can I ask you something?”
“No, no!” She threw out her arms. Her face turned red as blood rushed to her face. “ Absolutely not!”
Vash’s blush vanished at once. He quirked an eyebrow at the exasperated, sudden reaction Meryl had in response.
The next song started up. Dancers found their partners and the festivities began once again. Vash realized pretty quickly that he had offended her by asking, but he thought it was a bit harsh of her to yell at him like that, even for her.
He found a bench by a street lamp and decided to take a seat. His eyes glanced over the crowd of happy couples spinning around in sync, as if they had all practiced day in and day out. He wondered how he and Meryl must have looked thrown into the bunch.
Then he wondered again about Wolfwood. He wondered if he could dance. Had he picked it up in his travels? Did preachers learn to dance in their training too? Did he even like to dance?
He felt dumb even thinking about it. Wolfwood wasn’t there, and that was that. But still, he found himself wishing he were.
Meryl took a seat beside him. At first, she said nothing. She rubbed her arm, looked at him, looked away, then looked back again. Her hand found the back of her hair. Of all the things she wanted to ask, what finally left her mouth were the words, “don’t feel like dancing anymore?”
“Nah,” he said truthfully. “Not really.” He propped his chin up on his hand and watched the crowd longingly. He didn’t want to dance with anybody if they didn’t have the laugh that echoed through his dreams.
“Look,” she swallowed her pride, “if I upset you earlier, I’m sorry. I guess I got ahead of myself and let my assumptions run wild.” She laughed nervously. “You can’t just say that to a lady after asking her so much about weddings, you know!” She felt her face heat up again.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “And you’re not what I’m upset about. You don’t need to apologize to me.”
She moved her hand from behind her head. “Oh. In that case, what’s raining on your parade?”
Vash’s eyes met the newly married couple. The groom spun his wife happily before catching her again in both of his arms. She smiled, like the world knew nothing but love and peace. Like everything had fallen directly into place and she knew nothing could ever take him away from her.
Vash’s heart ached longingly. When he brought himself to speak, he could hardly manage more than a whisper. “I wish Wolfwood was here.”
She didn’t want to say what she was thinking out loud. He didn’t need a lecture on getting over him and moving on like she had given him in the past. She could see it in his eyes that all that would accomplish is breaking what was left of his heartstrings. Instead, she placed a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. “You know,” she tried to take his mind off it. “You never did ask me what it was you wanted to know.”
His eyes rested on the preacher standing off to the side, drinking something out of a glass. “What about when a priest gets married then?” He asks her. “If a priest has to marry two people, then who marries the priest?”
The sparkle in his eye made her heart sink. She knew exactly what he was thinking, and she wasn’t sure how to tell him. “Vash,” she saw his other hand on the bench between them. His real one. The one he would feel when she placed her hand over top of his.
It caught his attention when her skin touched his. He looked away from the crowd and back to her. Her sad smile said it before she could speak the words he dreaded. “Priests aren’t supposed to get married.”
All at once, everything he had been dreaming of was dashed. He didn't realize at first why the news had affected him so deeply. It shot true from the barrel and deeply into his heart. The possibility that Wolfwood wouldn't be allowed to love him had not even crossed his mind.
She then nodded to the preacher, who had finished his glass and grabbed another. “However, there’s lots of things a pastor isn’t supposed to do.”
Everything Vash could say got trapped in his throat, so he didn’t even try. He watched all the happy couples dance under the fairy lights and knew he would never be among them.
A loud “weeeeeee!!!” caught both of their attentions. Meryl and Vash followed the sound to see Millie spinning by the hand of the man who asked her to dance. He spun her over, and over, and over again until she tripped and almost face planted, but one quick arm caught her before she fell. She started to laugh, and his jovial chuckle chimed in a moment later.
Meryl’s face began to heat up again as she gripped her pant leg. She had to look away. Similar thoughts to Vash’s began to run through her own mind.
Vash could sense it. She always hated that about him, how he could always tell what she was feeling. Even if he hadn’t a clue what thoughts ran through her head, he could sleuth out what ran across her heart and figure her out like an ace detective. “You should ask her.”
Meryl was so lost in thought that his speaking startled her. Her face went red once more. “Ask who what?” She feigned ignorance and blushed redder at the idea that he was watching her reaction to seeing Millie dance with the stranger.
The smirk slowly grew on his face. Wolfwood may not have been there to dance with him, but there was no reason why love had to stop with him. “You should ask your partner to dance with you.” He watched as she went a little darker in the face. His smirk grew. “Come on. You’ve got some important business stuff to talk about right? Like policies and insurance fraud. She’s getting so distracted from her job, and you need to remind her of it, yeah?” He began to tease her. Making it about business was the only way he knew to convince her.
It didn’t take her long to see right through him. “I see what you’re doing, Stampede. You can’t get rid of me that easily! I’ve got my eye on you and you won’t be slipping away again.” She crossed her arms.
The smirk on his face grew wider. He grabbed her arm and stood quickly, pulling her with him. “Then why don’t we dance again then?”
“Hey!” She shouted as she was jerked from the seat, only to sigh and mumble, “why do I even bother?”
Vash dragged her back over to the dance floor. Hand in hand, they followed the same song and dance they had mere moments before. Vash’s eyes skimmed the crowd for a familiar face framed with beautiful brown hair. It was her laughing sweeter than honey that caught his ears before her features could catch his eye. He may not have been able to dance like he should have, but if there was one thing he could do right, it was make his way through a crowd.
He danced with big steps, nearly taking a barely on balance Meryl out on several occasions. “I swear, you’re the only person in the world who dances worse the longer you try.” She tried to be mad, but her laugh broke out as she nearly fell to the side and his arms held her up again.
He just grinned, chuckled, and continued on his quest. When he was finally right beside Millie and her dance partner, Vash reached his hand out to tap her on the shoulder. “Hello!” He chimed.
“Hello!” She repeated happily back to him.
“Care to dance?” He asked her.
He could feel Meryl begin to seeth. So his suspicions were correct after all.
“That sounds fun!” She beamed and looked at her dance partner. He thanked her very much for the fun evening before placing her hand in her new dance partner's and offering Meryl a dance. She rolled her eyes and took his hand, but her eyes never broke from Vash and Millie.
Unlike her dance partner, Millie moved with practiced ease. She was so fluid in her motions that she almost made up for Vash’s two left feet. Almost.
The first time he stepped on the hem of her dress, he caught her long before she hit the ground. Her laughter split through the air again, as warm and inviting as a batch of fresh donuts. He had looked up to see Meryl dancing with the same man and glaring in his direction. The second time, Vash accidentally caught her skillfully, making it look like he meant to dip her. As he placed her back on her feet, Meryl watched nearby with the very same scowl.
She was making it so painfully obvious. That’s how Vash knew she was trying hard to hide it. She wanted to dance with Millie so badly she could hardly stand it.
The next time Vash crossed paths with Meryl, she was dancing with a lady who looked to be about her age. He tapped the shoulder of the blonde beauty. As she turned to face him, she readied her fists like she was ready to punch him. “Wait, wait!” He said in his own defense. “I just wanted to ask to dance!”
Meryl finally caught on to what he had really been planning. If she was pissed off before, now she was furious.
She wanted to tell him off, but before she could get a word in, Vash nudged Millie towards Meryl. “You two girls have fun!” He watched as Millie grabbed Meryl by the hands and all but made her spin. All of the anger on her face melted in an instant as she grew from skeptical to a giggly mess.
Vash smirked at Meryl’s former dance partner. “I’ll have some of my own, with any luck.”
That earned him nothing but a swift smack across the face. He rubbed his cheek and watched as she started to walk off. He didn’t bother trying to convince her to stay. She wasn’t the one he wanted to dance with anyways. He just wanted any sort of substitution he could find to dull the pain.
A flute of champagne being shoved in his face shocked him back to reality. The flute hung in front of his face seemingly out of midair. He wondered for a moment if he was going insane before a familiar voice rang behind him. “You look like you could use this after crashing and burning that hard.”
He had never spun on his heels faster. Nicholas D. Wolfwood had both a smirk and a cigarette on his lips. Vash wondered if he had been dreaming him up. He wanted to grab him up in his arms and dance with him as if it were their wedding, but he showed self restraint. He took the glass instead.
“What are you doing here?” Vash asked in disbelief.
Wolfwood downed the whole flute and sat the glass on a tray as a man walked by collecting them. He took a long drag on his cigarette with one hand and held the other out to Vash. He looked at it, wondering if he was implying what he thought he was. “Well?” Wolfwood finally asked.
Vash placed his flute on the tray of the next person to walk by. He didn’t want to drink. He didn’t want anything at all to take his focus away from Wolfwood. He placed his hand firmly in his and placed his other hand on his shoulder. Wolfwood placed his on his hip. Vash felt his touch electrify him, but he would never admit it. “Why are you here?” He asked him again.
Wolfwood held his cigarette expertly in his teeth as he spoke. “The preacher had never officiated before. The town’s priest died a few months back of whatever illness they had goin’ ‘round at the time, and the new guy didn’t have the experience. I was in town, he spotted me at the bar, and asked me to show him how it’s done.”
Wolfwood led Vash in their dance. Despite not knowing a thing about dancing before, he had not bumped into anybody. Maybe Wolfwood was just that good of a teacher.
So Wolfwood could officiate. So he could dance. Vash wondered what else he would learn about him before the song ended. A part of him hoped it never would and he could continue to learn every aspect of him until the world finally came to an end with the music.
Wolfwood let go of Vash’s hip and held him at arm’s length. Vash looked at him like a thomas in headlights, unsure what he was expecting from him. Wolfwood chuckled, taking the cigarette from his mouth just long enough to blow out a cloud of smoke. “You’re s’posed to let me spin you, Spikey.”
Vash felt his cheeks heat up a bit. While he was certain he didn’t know what he was doing, he tried for Wolfwood. He spun him, his red jacket spinning out all around him. Vash felt it catch in the wind and couldn’t stop the little giggle that escaped his throat, making him feel more embarrassed.
The smile on Wolfwood’s face started slowly, then spread up to his eyes before he knew it. Seeing Vash so happy with no strings attached warmed his heart. He had seen him smile a million and half times, but he could count the times on one hand he’d seen a real, genuine smile on his face. He’d need both hands now.
As he spun amidst the stars and the fairylights lights, he shone brighter than all of them. Wolfwood found himself wanting nothing more than to make that smile last forever.
He pulled Vash towards him, making him spin directly into his arms. As soon as Vash’s back smacked against Wolfwood’s chest, he stopped laughing, worried that he had messed something up. Wolfwood began to sway them both softly, but Vash couldn’t tell if it was purposeful or to cover his mistake. He turned his head to see the same soft smile on Wolfwood’s face that the bride used to look upon her husband. The softness in his eyes reflected everything Vash could have ever dreamed of. They reflected the same dreams he had been wishing for mere moments before.
Vash didn’t know that Wolfwood had felt the same. Wolfwood didn’t either until that moment. But there they stood, arms and eyes locked together as the world passed by around them. There they stood, with a hundred words lost between them yet nothing to say.
It was no mistake. Vash felt that very same smile start to turn up on his lips. His voice came out hardly more than a whisper. He would have been surprised if Wolfwood heard it over the sound of the crowd. “Where did you learn to dance like this?”
Someone crashed into Wolfwood from behind. The sudden lurch almost made Vash fall, but strong, steady arms caught him in a dip before that could happen. “I picked it up along the way.” He answered as soon as he was sure Vash wouldn’t hit the ground. His lip upturned into a small smirk, his almost expended cigarette hanging between his teeth. “Just like I did you.”
Vash felt his face heat up again. He wondered how many times Wolfwood would make his heart beat out of his chest in one evening.
“So you’ve been to one of these before?” He asked as Wolfwood returned him to his feet.
“Oh, yeah.” Wolfwood chuckled under his breath. “More than my fair share, I’d say.” He took Vash’s hand back in his again, not yet ready to let him go. “How’d you manage to avoid them in all those years of life you’ve got under your belt?”
Vash wasn’t sure how to answer that. He always felt out of place in human celebrations like this. He never stuck around long enough to be invited, and he never wanted to wander in and impose. He finally settled on the answer. “I just don’t have the friends, I guess.”
He didn’t need to say more. Wolfwood could infer what he meant. With disaster following him like a faithful dog, he wasn’t surprised he had never been invited. “Have you enjoyed yourself?” He asked to change the subject from the past to the present. He hoped that would bring that smile back.
Vash seemed to have forgotten in an instant. His bright blue eyes sparkled with joy. “I am now.”
Wolfwood rolled his eyes, but felt his ears grow warm. He took his hand from Vash’s hip to smoke the last drag from his cigarette. He hoped it would provide enough cover so nobody would see his blush.
Seeing him recoil the moment he mentioned being happy to see him struck Vash through the heart. Meryl’s warning of priests being unable to love began to replay in his mind. “Wolfwood?” He blurted out before he could really think about what he was saying. His hand dropped off his shoulder and fell to his side just as the other had. “Meryl told me priests aren’t allowed to love. Is that true?”
The dancing continued around them. Once again, the world continued around them as the both of them remained frozen in place.
The cigarette burned up to the filter. Wolfwood dropped it to the ground and crushed it beneath his shoe. Vash’s heart hung from a thread as he waited for him to speak again.
“Well,” Wolfwood weighed his words. He shrugged softly. “I guess they’re not really supposed to.” He told him as he pulled another cigarette from his pocket and deposited it between his lips. “But a priest ain’t s’posed to do a lotta things.” He took a wooden match from his pants pocket and struck it on the side of the box. He held the fire to his smoke. “Drinking, Smoking, cursing, killing, for Christ’s sake.” As soon as it lit, he shook the match to extinguish the flame. “And besides, I’m not a priest. I’m a preacher. It’s splittin’ hairs, but there’s a difference.” He eyed Vash knowingly. “But why does that matter to you?”
Vash was caught off guard. He wasn’t expecting to have to explain himself. “Oh, you know,” he tried to come up with something quick. “Just thought it would be nice to know. In case I stumble across a cute preacher on my travels.”
Wolfwood’s laugh rang through the air clearer than the wedding bells. It made Vash’s smile return in an instant. He felt his eyes soften as he looked upon the priest, no, preacher and saw such happiness so blatant on his features. His crow’s feet scrunched up with his smile. “Yeah, don’t count on that. You don’t get luck like that twice in a lifetime, doncha know?”
Before Vash could say anything else, Wolfwood took him by the hands and spun him again. He pulled him back to him and dipped him low to the ground, but this time purposefully. “But I’ve never met such an unlucky man in my life. Maybe you should bank on finding him again.”
Him. So he had caught on to that.
Vash looked up at Wolfwood’s dark eyes shining so brightly in the lights. The cat was out of the bag now, and Vash was one to push his luck. He leaned upwards and pressed his lips firmly against Wolfwood’s.
His freshly lit cigarette fell from his lips and onto the sand below. The end of it smoked for a few seconds before being snuffed out by the sand around it. Wolfwood leaned down into the kiss, his heart racing as fast as the one below him.
Vash slowly, gingerly pulled away as if too fast a movement could shatter everything. He glanced up to Wolfwood’s eyes to see them flutter slowly back open to meet his once more. “Meeting you again has made me luckier than I’ve been in a century and a half.”
Wolfwood felt his eyes start to get teary. He was happy he wasn’t a real priest.
He leaned down to press their lips together for the second time in a lifetime.