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Vash is many things.
A disaster, a liar, a flirt, an occasional cheat, a runaway, a monster. But within his many roles, he’s grown skills, skills that have kept him alive and that he tries his damnedest to use to keep others alive with, too. He’s gotten good at surviving.
But he isn’t perfect.
(Despite what certain others may claim. Despite how said claims make him want to carve open his own chest to rip out his rotten heart to show it off as proof of how terrible he really is.)
Ricochets aren’t a perfect science, either.
The straight line and speed of a bullet are simple enough math, but everything else? Vash is intensely aware of his own body, how he holds it, how he uses it. He’s gotten all too used to the dull achy kind of pain that comes with using his prosthetic as a shield, but he knows how to deflect off the side in a way that directs it away where it won’t harm anyone else. Away from civilians caught up in the chaos bounty hunters bring. Away from the insurance girls, when they’re around. Away from—
Well, Wolfwood has always sought to surprise him, hasn’t he.
Vash, too busy counting bullets and checking trajectories and searching out avenues of non-lethality, doesn’t spare a look, because he knows in the very marrow of his remaining bones that Wolfwood is watching his back. That’s what he does. That’s what they do for each other. (And then Vash is useful, and Vash likes being useful very much.)
Vash doesn’t even register the thunk-thunk-thunk of bullets hitting his prosthetic anymore. There—the man with the revolver, the lead, the loudest, he’s finally out of bullets, and in a rare lucky streak, the woman beside him just paused to reload too. Vash moves his left arm to cover the remaining fire (thunk-thunk, easily ignored dull pain) as he takes aim on those two.
It’s a noise Vash would’ve made fun of Wolfwood for in other circumstances. A choked kind of gurgle, wet and sudden and embarrassing.
Vash glances back over his shoulder just in time to see the spray of blood come out the other side of Wolfwood’s neck.
Wolfwood staggers. The Punisher drops with a heavy whump at his feet when both his hands (big, calloused, dirty, stained, but so kind) wrap around his bleeding throat in a rare case of unprofessional panic.
Vash stares.
Also in a rare case of unprofessional panic, but whereas Wolfwood has always lashed out, retreated, bared his teeth, acted—well, when Vash can’t fight or flight, he freezes. (And when he can’t freeze, he fawns, which may be his biggest crime of all.)
Wolfwood fumbles one shaking hand away from his throat to pat down his suit jacket.
His leather satchel that Vash isn’t supposed to know about flashes, open and blatant, but the glass vial inside falls out from between slick fingers.
“Wolfwood—” Vash starts, too quiet and too calm and too useless as the vial plinks to the sand below. It doesn’t break. What a lucky break, what a miracle.
Wolfwood glances up at the sound of his name. His complexion is ashen, red pouring out over his fingers and staining his poor shirt, and his sunglasses fall down his nose just far enough to reveal his eyes. There’s something in those so very kind eyes that Vash cannot—will not—parse.
Vash opens his mouth again but Wolfwood’s eyes snap wide and Vash whirls around with the same instinct that has always carried him through battles as soon as Wolfwood came to his side. Vash doesn’t need any more warning than that.
So he turns around just in time to glimpse the bullet before it finds its way into his skull.
Vash wakes to the sight of a dirty ceiling and the slow circle of a dying overhead fan chugging along.
Sunlight streaks across the bed; one of his legs is far too warm. Vash lays there, and stares upward, and his body comes back to him in pieces. (His body is always in pieces.) His prosthetic has been detached, cleanly, so it wasn’t shot or cut off. That’s nice. There are bandages on him. That’s also nice. His hair is stiff beneath them and his skin feels dry from enough salt to tell him that he’s been sweaty and unconscious for far too long. Less nice to contemplate.
“Vash?”
It’s so quiet it might have been a figment of his imagination. But he twists his head anyway, and finds Wolfwood halfway out of the chair beside the bed, his eyes wide again. His sunglasses are nowhere to be seen and neither is his suit, save for the slacks. He’s in a worn-soft shirt, deep grey but clean, free of the stain Vash has imprinted on his eyelids.
“Tongari, you awake this time?” Wolfwood asks, hesitantly, like he’s afraid of the answer.
Vash blinks. His throat is as dry as the surrounding desert. “I think so,” he manages.
Wolfwood collapses against the bed. While it had looked anything but calculated, his full-body slump of exhaustion and relief and other things Vash turns a blind eye to, he can’t help but notice that no part of them are touching, despite their proximity. Wolfwood hangs on the edge of the bed and his shoulders rise and fall with a deep, deep breath.
“You been out for five days,” Wolfwood says, muffled against the bare mattress. His elbow is nearest Vash; if he stretched out his fingers, perhaps he could touch him, offer some comfort to salve whatever stress Vash had piled onto him.
His hand aches for some reason. Raising it into his line of sight, he sees the remains of a wound. Two wounds? A small but deep cut, and some sort of burn overtop it, neither of them larger than a double dime. The cut has scabbed over, but neither have healed. Are they fresh, then? Such small injuries would’ve taken care of themselves in five days.
Five days.
Vash has been in bed for five days? Vash left Wolfwood for—
“Are you alright?” Vash asks.
Wolfwood raises his head, rests it on his forearm, and fixes Vash with a very grumpy look. It’s so normal on him that Vash feels he can finally breathe again. The delicate tension remains in this small, suns-soaked room, but this is a turn to head in the right direction. A return to something more familiar. Something better for them.
There is, naturally, no mark on Wolfwood. His neck is unmarred. “Stupid question,” he grunts. He rests his cheek on his forearm, just away from Vash’s side, and his eyes slip shut. Vash wants to cross that tiny distance so badly. It yawns like an unpassable chasm between them. Wolfwood continues, in a voice forced into lightness, “Been holed up here since then, but we’ve got a run of luck, ‘cause no one came for those goons and this shack even had some old stores of water. And a bed. Lucky us, huh?”
Vash occupies the sole, small bed. He hopes Wolfwood at least partook of the water if he gave up this much.
There remain questions unanswered, but Vash doesn’t want to ask them. He’s a coward, after all. But they need to be asked, because their lives aren’t about being comfortable, so he gathers the tattered remains of his resolve and murmurs, “What happened?”
“You got shot in the head,” Wolfwood replies, matter-of-fact.
“I meant… How did you get away?” Vash, dead weight. Wolfwood, bleeding out. Seven armed bounty hunters ringing them against the cliff-side.
“I didn’t. After it was all taken care of, I scooped ya up and we lucked out—this place ain’t even an ile away. That’s why I said we were lucky that there weren’t any more goons to follow that little gang of assholes.” Wolfwood is still too easy about this. Too light, too forthcoming.
Vash doesn’t want to ask the next question, but he has to, because he’s a coward. “Did you kill them?”
He already knows what Wolfwood’s answer will be. Wolfwood tends to act too-casual when he has something to hide, something that’s gnawing at him, like he can fake his way out of his own guilt. “‘Course I killed them,” Wolfwood replies.
Vash flops his head back to look at the ceiling again instead of at his traveling partner. Only traveling partner, because they can’t be partners in any other sense. While they fight together in perfect sync, this happens time and time again: Wolfwood goes too far, refuses to extend a merciful hand, goes for the easy and permanent way out instead of any other option. That’s why this couldn’t be anything else.
(Vash is a disaster, a liar, a flirt, an occasional cheat, a runaway, a monster, and a coward, remember.)
But.
While Vash mourns those seven people who had been so desperate for money—why, did they have families, were they in debt, could that bounty money really have fixed anything for them—there is a worse issue.
Wolfwood doesn’t sound guilty about admitting to murder. This time.
So his guilt currently lies elsewhere.
But Vash stiffens when he feels the impossible: Wolfwood reaches over to run his knuckles down the length of Vash’s bare arm. Hairs rise on the skin he passes over. Wolfwood, like his trailing touch isn’t trying its best to rewire every bit of Vash’s cognitive processes into something terrible made of want and greed, quietly confesses, “I thought they killed you. Christ, tongari, I really thought you were down for the count with that one. I ain’t never seen you that bad.”
Vash hasn’t dealt with many severe head wounds before. He’s not quite sure where his healing ability would peter out and has never wanted to test it. “I’m sorry to have worried you,” Vash chokes out, throat tight, entire arm tingling despite how little Wolfwood touched it, “but that’s n-no excuse for—for killing—”
Wolfwood drags his knuckles back up the way he came. From the jut of Vash’s wristbone, over the swell of his forearm, dropping off at his elbow. He stares at Vash’s pale, scarred skin like it’s something to memorize. Vash isn’t sure when this much became enough to unravel him, to threaten to destroy him, but he supposes his brother might have been a little too good at choosing his weapon this time. They always did know each other too well, huh?
Wolfwood makes another pass, back down his arm, but this time, he stops and curls his hand.
For a brief, terrifying, wonderful, heart-stopping, gut-wrenching moment, Vash thinks Wolfwood is going to hold his hand.
But instead, he just nudges Vash’s hand, so gently, to look at the small, odd wound there.
“I don’t want you to have to apologize,” Wolfwood says.
Vash doesn’t even remember what he’d said prior. Had he apologized? (It’s so automatic for him.)
“You shouldn’t have to apologize to me,” Wolfwood adds, bitterly and sadly, and the edge of his thumb brushes the smallest bit against that red skin.
This is normally the point where Vash, having come back to his senses, would sourly prompt for an apology from Wolfwood. Wolfwood is a better person than to stoop to killing anyone who looks at them funny. Wolfwood has apologized for killing others, a handful of times, but usually doesn’t, furiously citing reason after reason that Vash ignores, because there aren’t any reasons for murder. Humans will come up with reasons for anything.
Wolfwood is a very good example of humanity.
Instead, Vash asks, “Did you at least bury them properly?”
That is one thing Wolfwood will always give him, no matter how mad they get at each other, no matter what number they’re up to in the same circling arguments. Wolfwood will bury the dead, or help Vash to do so, and usually offer a short but sincere prayer. Usually, Vash doesn’t even have to ask him to. Wolfwood has done it on his own more than once.
But today, as Wolfwood touches him so carefully, he replies, “I didn’t,” for the first time ever.
Vash turns to look at him again. Wolfwood still avoids his eye, still stares down at his hand, and his knuckles brush right back up the length of his forearm. Vash, so off guard by the casual (guilty) way Wolfwood answered, cannot repress his shudder.
It gets Wolfwood to look up at him.
They lock eyes.
“Why didn’t you bury them? You always… They deserve that much, don’t they?” Vash asks, as nicely as he can, because he realizes he’s just now gotten to the root of Wolfwood’s guilt. It isn’t for killing, not today (well, five days ago, overtaken by rage at Vash’s perceived death), but this final insult to the dead.
“There wasn’t enough to bury,” Wolfwood replies with the same light-casual-normal-fine voice that hides every ugly ounce of the guilt roiling within him.
Wolfwood thought they killed Vash.
Wolfwood, even after getting fatally wounded by Vash’s mistake, grieved violently for him. The only way he knows how to grieve, Vash would guess.
Vash tries to sit up, tries to roll out of bed, but his vision swims, and he almost falls off. Wolfwood is at his side in an instant, one broad hand spanning his shoulder blade, the other fitting against his side in the absence of his arm to brace. “Hey, be careful now,” he scolds to hide his worry. (Just as he hides his guilt, he hides his worry. Vash wonders if he will ever see a time where Wolfwood doesn’t hide who he is.)
“I just… I’m fine, I just.” It takes a few more false starts for Vash to orient himself. He sits up under his own power and the room stops spinning around him.
“Have you ever got shot in the head before?” Wolfwood asks.
“Not shot,” Vash croaks. He counts breaths through the lingering nausea.
“Nasty business,” Wolfwood says like he might have such experience. And oh, that fills Vash with enough—with enough something—something he doesn’t want to parse.
Vash can’t afford to get upset now. He needs to fix Wolfwood’s mistake, which was only because of his mistake. (His miscalculated ricochet hurt Wolfwood, which distracted Vash like some kind of lovesick amateur, which caused Wolfwood undue stress, so he acted out. Or, Vash caused the Great Fall, so he made humanity get stuck here, so how roughly they evolved since then is his fault, too.)
“Before you go off on your righteous li’l jaunt, can you drink some water for me?” Wolfwood asks in an all too tender voice. It strikes Vash that he might’ve used the same tone on sick children in his youth. Maybe even on his rare visits back to the orphanage.
So cowed by the unintentional peek into what Wolfwood could be, if taken off the leash and allowed to breathe, Vash obediently takes the canteen.
His heart aches beneath the metal caging it in.
Seven people dead.
He thought Wolfwood could’ve been one of them; Wolfwood thought Vash could’ve been one of them.
Vash refuses to name any of the feelings choking him. He can’t afford to. Wolfwood doesn’t mean it like that. He’s as codependent as Vash is, Vash is not so stupid as to deny that after everything they’ve been through together, but it’s not like that. Wolfwood wouldn’t stoop so low as to feel even an iota of the same terrible, disgusting, desperate, sick, all-consuming way that Vash feels. No human could survive that. Vash himself is hardly surviving it.
Vash takes a deep breath and steadies himself on the edge of the bed. He’s exhausted and every movement makes him dizzy, but he’s not actually in bad shape. Wolfwood took care of me, he thinks, distantly, because he can’t stand to examine the thought any more closely. But it means his body is pretty good for almost dying. “Can you help me with my prosthetic?” Vash asks, not because he truly needs the help, but because he is a weak man.
(A disaster, a liar, a flirt, an occasional cheat, a runaway, a monster, a coward, a weak man.)
Wolfwood hums in acknowledgement and picks up his arm. It hadn’t been far, no doubt for Vash’s comfort, or perhaps out of habit; they have shared rooms and space often enough that Wolfwood is aware of how Vash operates, even when vulnerable. He prefers not to have his arm too far away in case of emergency. It’s too expensive to replace all the time.
Held tense to stop himself from shivering, Vash raises the stump of his arm as an offering to Wolfwood.
Can you help me with my prosthetic?
This is a line crossed only once before.
But Wolfwood says nothing as he guides his arm into the port at his bicep at the correct angle for Vash. He says nothing as he presses the first clamps in for Vash. He says nothing as he reconnects the nerves for Vash. He says nothing as he helps to make Vash whole again, comfortable again, capable again, balanced again, ready to walk out that door to survey Wolfwood’s latest sins. Again.
For Vash.
Vash recognizes where they are almost immediately. He hadn’t been aware there’d been a dilapidated shack nestled into the canyon over here, but they’d run into the maze of cliffs just south of here in a bid to get away from those bounty hunters. Of course it hadn’t worked out.
Wolfwood doesn’t accompany him, just stands by the open door and smokes. His eyes are downcast, refusing to watch Vash leave.
His body comes back to him slowly but steadily. Having his arm reconnected helps; metal doesn’t fatigue so it’s like the rest of him is trying to catch up to that normal. His prosthetic arm says hey, look, I’m alright, so the rest of you can be alright, too, and Vash’s body believes it.
So Vash trudges on.
When he finds the first body, however, he realizes what Wolfwood had meant when he had claimed there hadn’t been enough to bury.
For five days having passed, there is not a single worm in sight. None of the bodies had been touched by anything but the suns, leaving them red and soft and nearing putrid. But that isn’t the bad part; Vash has seen bodies in every state of decay and that itself does not faze him.
What fazes him is that these humans were not killed by bullets.
These humans had melted.
Not burns, as from a rocket or a laser, oh no. Vash can’t even place it at first. It looks chemical in appearance, having eaten away the lower jaw and gaping hole that had been the chest cavity of one of the men. The muscle gleams, sickly and too red, exposed from beneath ruined skin. There is no mark around the burns, no discoloration of the skin to give any clues as to what could have caused this. It looks like acid, and a very strong one, but localized.
None of the clothing had been harmed, Vash realizes when he finds another body with its entire torso exposed, inside-out, but the shirt still buttoned overtop. Stained but whole.
Not a single one of the bodies is in one piece. Whatever had done this to them had eaten through them until they were in pieces. Heads fallen off necks, ribs and sternums liquefied, muscle and bone lying exposed for the suns to slowly roast.
After finding what he assumes is the largest part of all seven bodies, Vash notices that the legs are all… Well, he can’t say unharmed, because he sees bullet holes—two being his own—and one broken leg, but they’re not melted. Thirteen of the fourteen present legs are still attached to the pelvis, and the fourteenth is the broken one, femur jutting out from a torn thigh.
Arms, too, are mostly untouched. More other injuries—bullet holes, bruises, broken bones, a couple fingers shot off—but untouched by the acid.
Something crunches beneath Vash’s boot.
He looks down and finds broken glass.
And then, he realizes what this had all been, and he falls to his knees with a scream.
For the first time, Wolfwood is the one who has run away when Vash returns to the shack. The Punisher and his rucksack is gone. The canteen and all of the stored water remain there, along with Vash’s things.
No note, of course. When did Vash ever leave a note before fleeing?
Vash collapses onto the bare bed and sobs.
It’s a horrible, disgusting, terrifying waste of life, but he understands too much now. What Wolfwood had done, how Wolfwood had done it, and why Wolfwood had done it.
“I thought they killed you,” Wolfwood had confessed. And what a confession it was. This was his truest, deepest confession of all: that is who he was when he thought he had lost Vash.
Wolfwood had slaughtered those seven people. Wolfwood had downed them with the same nonlethal shots that Vash always implored him to use, then had used seven infinitely precious vials on them.
What saves Wolfwood’s life is poison. Even for Wolfwood it is poison, but his body metabolizes it, if barely. To someone unlucky enough to win that genetic lottery?
Vash sobs into the mattress. Wolfwood rather would have used seven—seven!—seven vials, Vash had counted all of the broken glass out in the sand, and he hadn’t even known Wolfwood had carried that much with him at a time—chances at a continued life in the name of revenge. To hurt people. To hurt the people he thought had killed Vash. This goes beyond killing them, because these would not have been quiet, painless deaths. (Oh, but they would have been quick, and there is mercy in that no matter how gruesome.) Wolfwood would have rather both turned himself into a monster who could do something like that and sacrificed his future to assuage just a little bit of the pain he felt at the prospect of losing Vash.
How is he supposed to deal with this knowledge? How can Vash bear to continue going on when he is burdened with this? He understands now why Wolfwood’s holy book says knowledge is a sin. This is too much to know.
More than the horror of it, the grief is what hurts the most.
Despite both of them coming out of this alive, despite both of them on the road to (physical, always physical, that’s the easy one) recovery, Vash feels like he lost something precious.
He lost the ability to deny that Wolfwood feels the same terrible, disgusting, desperate, sick, all-consuming way that Vash chokes down every time he looks at the other man.
Vash, already crumpled over the bed, shuffles down so his knees touch the floorboards properly. He remains folded over the bed. And then he flops his arms around so he can clasp his outstretched hands in front of him.
He’s tried praying a handful of times through the years. Not a single prayer has ever yielded fruit.
But he’s never wished so hard, either.
“You don’t have to do this for me,” Vash says to the empty air around him, “but can’t you please spare him? Just once, spare him. He’s been through enough. He deserves better than me. Make him walk away from this, and I will go to Nai and tell him that I was dutifully led. Let that protect whatever he was protecting. Let him walk away. Please. Can’t you have mercy, just once?”
No one answers him.
He hadn’t expected an answer, of course, but it would have been nice. Aren’t the meek supposed to inherit the Earth or something? That planet wouldn’t do them any good anymore. But what about a disaster, a liar, a flirt, an occasional cheat, a runaway, a monster, a coward, a weak man, and an atheist? Couldn’t one of those inherit just a little bit of this planet, just enough to eke out a minor miracle for the man he—
Vash clambers back to his feet.
He never thought he’d see the day where Wolfwood would have been the one to run away. Perhaps, in time, they could laugh about this particular irony.
But this means that Wolfwood fears Vash more than he fears the punishment of his brother.
And that’s a line Vash simply can’t bear to let be crossed.
Vash finds Wolfwood two days later, in a town called South Of Nowhere, in the local saloon. Wolfwood doesn’t bother getting up, making eye contact, or pretending like he hadn’t run. He only finishes the rest of his whiskey when Vash slides onto the stool next to him at the bar.
“What’ll ya have, mister?” the barkeep asks with a jovial tone but squinting eyes. Vash hadn’t seen any wanted posters on his way into town, but he gives it only forty-sixty odds that they’ll be able to spend the night here without a posse forming.
“I’ll have whatever my friend’s having,” Vash chirps and somehow musters up a smile to match. It’s harder to even fake a smile after the all-encompassing realization of what Wolfwood had confessed. (It’s not so bad to simply think Wolfwood has changed me permanently, which had kept Vash putting one foot in front of the other, all the way here.)
Wolfwood taps out a cigarette, but Vash seizes his lighter before he can even pick it up from the sticky bar top.
He flicks it open and offers a flame with a wobbly smile.
Wolfwood stares at him through his sunglasses, but this close, with the flickering light between them, Vash can see him clear as day.
Wolfwood leans forward precisely enough to light his cigarette, still held between his lips, and pulls back again as if afraid of being burned.
“What made you realize? That I wasn’t dead,” Vash asks. He doesn’t blame Wolfwood for not instantly running over to check his pulse or anything; after all, hadn’t he stood there dumbly when Wolfwood had gotten shot through the throat? And a bullet to the head does look pretty final to an outside view.
“Ya made a sound like a puking thomas,” Wolfwood replies around a mouthful of smoke, “and jerked a li’l. Just about shit my heart out when I realized. …Would’ve been a pretty funny sound, in other circumstances, the kind I could tease you for.”
“You made the same kind of embarrassing sound when you got hit with that ricochet, you know,” Vash says with a small, but real, so painfully real smile.
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“It was—”
Vash goes rigid when Wolfwood places a single finger against his lips. “I won’t hear another word of that if you don’t want me walkin’ out that door right now. And I’d leave you with my tab here. It wouldn’t be pretty, tongari, you might have to cash in your own bounty to cover it.”
“Mmkay,” Vash says, muffled, too cowed and too giddy with the singular touch to argue.
They lapse into silence. Vash’s drink arrives and Wolfwood orders a refill. Top of the shelf—what passes for that around here—whiskey. No wonder he’s racked up a bill. So these are the stages of Wolfwood’s grief: fury, avoidance, drinking. Vash matches him (if you skip the first one).
Vash lets his glass sweat as Wolfwood sips at his. Time passes like molasses, thick and syrupy yet somehow sweet. Just having Wolfwood near him, their shoulders almost brushing, is a relief after how they parted. Two days of searching for him with the sinking, despairing thought that it might be the last time they ever see each other. Vash couldn’t keep his brother waiting and risk his wrath on Wolfwood, after all.
“I think,” Vash starts, quietly, watching as a bead of condensation prepares to slide down the side of his glass, “that if I thought you were dead, I’d cry.”
“You cry at everything,” Wolfwood says around another mouthful of smoke.
“I’d cry, and I’d cry, and when it came time to bury you, I’d just crawl right inside, and then I’d finally stop crying.” It’s confession adjacent. A close acknowledgement to what Wolfwood implied by wasting so many vials; a close acknowledgement to how much Vash loathes suicide but can’t imagine a life without Wolfwood at his side anymore.
Wolfwood has changed him permanently, after all.
“Nine vials in a day, new record,” Wolfwood says, cracking a grin, though there’s zero humor in it. His sharp teeth clamp down on his cigarette and it wiggles around his words.
“Nine?” Vash goggles. Seven for the people, one for himself to recover from his throat—
Wolfwood takes Vash’s gloved hand in his and Vash’s brain flatlines.
He taps exactly where that odd little wound still remains. “Wasn’t sure how you’d react, considerin’ how stupidly special you are, so I tried a little on your hand before I dumped it on your open head. You didn’t start melting, but it bubbled something fierce, so I wasn’t gonna risk it. So technically, eight vials and a couple drops. That make you feel any better?” There’s a sardonic twist to his words—does this miniscule silver lining excuse the horrors of the rest of that scene?—but Vash only worries about what if, in that situation, those few missing drops are the tipping point between a miracle and dashed hope.
Wolfwood hasn’t let go of Vash’s hand.
They’ve talked around many things in the past, and today too, though today marks the closest they’ve gotten to acknowledging what hangs over their heads like a guillotine. Wolfwood doesn’t ask how Vash knew about the vials. Vash doesn’t ask where he got them.
Vash continues staring at their hands, entwined. Wolfwood’s hand is bare, as it always is, but Vash wishes his glove was gone, too.
“I’d use every vial the Eye had if it kept you from crawlin’ into that coffin with me,” Wolfwood tells him, voice lower, closer. Vash peeks up to find him leaning in. They really are closer. Wolfwood is still holding his hand and now he is closer.
Vash blinks once, slowly, in case a sudden movement might jar him out of this dream.
“I’d rather you not be in a coffin at all,” Vash replies.
Wolfwood has no quip to shoot back. There are plenty, Vash thinks, though he doesn’t reach for them, either. “Your drink’s gonna get warm,” Wolfwood says instead and leans back and away. He releases Vash’s hand with the excuse of reaching for his own glass to knock back.
Vash, bereft of the heat on his palm and the secondhand smoke drifting between their shared breaths, and apparently also newly bereft of all sense, bursts into tears.
Wolfwood startles like a gun had gone off. (More than that reaction; he’s never been gun shy.) “Wha—spikey—what’re you doin’? You okay?!” His warm, strong, calloused, broad, beautiful hands hover over him, not touching.
Vash grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes like he can forcibly stop the tears. “Sorry! I’m sorry! I just—I’m not sure why I-I—I’m sorry!”
“Stop apologizing and stop crying!” he hisses at him.
“You fellas doin’ alright over here?” the bartender asks and Vash cries even harder at the thought of witnesses to his shameful display. These tears are a rare case of not being a show.
A disaster, a liar, a flirt, an occasional cheat, a runaway, a monster, a coward, a weak man, and a crybaby. He’s sure there’s more.
“S’okay, my buddy here just can’t hold his liquor,” Wolfwood lies with a smile in his voice, though Vash can’t imagine he’s wearing it very well right now. And he can also imagine how the bartender must feel about the line with Vash’s utterly untouched glass sitting in front of him.
But to complete the picture of a man worried and mildly embarrassed about their emotionally drunk friend, Wolfwood throws an arm around Vash’s shoulders. Vash cries harder and pretends he’s not as he leans into him, pressing all his weight and might and force and heart against the heat Wolfwood offers. Wolfwood remains steady despite this burden Vash pours onto him.
“Think we’ll just take this one t’go, then, upstairs. Can you put this on my tab while I put this guy to bed?” Wolfwood says, smooth as sin, and hefts Vash up off the stool and nominally to his feet. He flops against Wolfwood as if he’s ten drinks into the evening. But it makes Wolfwood hold him tighter, fingers digging deep through the red fabric separating them.
The bartender says something else, dubious but dismissive, and Wolfwood heaves Vash across the empty saloon. Vash manages to make his feet work inasmuch as he doesn’t trip them both. But he can’t see, everything full of tears and pain, and he refuses to cede a single bit of touch that Wolfwood has gifted him.
With the same sometimes graceless skill that he manages most other things, Wolfwood wrangles them both up a half flight of stairs, down a hallway, and into a room. Vash is dumped on a bed and he only releases Wolfwood enough to see that somehow, the man managed to bring Vash’s glass with him, too, and is currently downing it in one go.
“Well, thanks for lettin’ me duck out another night of payin’ that tab. Not sure I’ll be able to escape tomorrow, but figure there’s always the chance you’ll attract trouble and we can duck out while we run from the next set of assholes chasing ya,” Wolfwood says, aimless, pointless. His gaze is everywhere but on Vash. He’s still near—the room is too small not to be close to each other—but no longer is he touching Vash. His trigger finger taps against the empty, slick glass.
“How could you do this to me?” Vash warbles amidst a fresh wave of tears.
It is telling that even that won’t get Wolfwood to look at him.
“How could you do this to yourself?!” Vash amends, because that is the more important thing here. Vash has always known he’s—defective. Prone to mistakes. But Wolfwood has sense. He has a ruthless amount of sense, practicality scarred into him, pragmatism coming before anything else. It isn’t like the Eye of Michael would’ve allowed their victims to learn how to love while being formed into walking weapons.
More telling: Wolfwood doesn’t bother dodging. “Always the martyr, aren’t you,” he mutters.
“You—You deserve better than this—”
“And you don’t think you deserve better than a murderer and a liar, huh.” Wolfwood’s mutter is even more bitter this time, but still, somehow, not directed at Vash. Somewhere next to him. Like Wolfwood can have this discussion adjacent to him and the topic of him.
Vash, who is many terrible things, allows himself the weakness to reach out and seize Wolfwood’s hand.
Wolfwood goes rigid.
Vash presses his forehead against the back of Wolfwood’s hand. He can feel his pulse where his flesh fingertips brush the inside of his wrist; his heart beats like a fluttering bird. “Nine,” Vash wetly says.
“Eight and a few drops,” Wolfwood corrects, weak and breathless, like this touch is affecting him almost as much as it is Vash.
“I never would have thought…” Vash trails off. He isn’t sure how to say his thought; he is pretty sure he shouldn’t say it. He’s not built to be outright mean. And the last thing he wants to be is be cruel to Wolfwood, even if it might save them both if either of them could pull the trigger and end this before it begins.
“Would’ve thought what, spikey?” Wolfwood prompts. He’s still a little soft, a little breathless. A little gutted.
Well, Vash feels a lot gutted, so that’s fair. “I had never considered the possibility that you would choose yourself,” he settles on, diplomatically. “Even if it was temporarily.”
“Getting a new hole in your head didn’t make that stupid mind of yours any easier to read, y’know.”
“I always assumed it was going to be me or—or whatever you’re protecting. Whatever Nai is using against you. One of us would destroy you, or you’d let it, because it meant that you could save them in that way. But… You ran. You chose yourself, Wolfwood, even if it was just for two days.” Vash peers up at him, the back of Wolfwood’s hands still pressed to the lower part of his face, and they both pretend very hard that this doesn’t mean that Vash’s lips are dangerously close to touching his skin. “And that is part of what destroys me about this. That you feel so strongly about the thought of losing me that you would throw everything else away.”
“Can you leave it there, cut it off before you get into the long speech about how you don’t deserve that kinda thing?” Wolfwood asks. One of his fingers twitches but he’s so, so still for Vash. Docile in his hold.
“You don’t deserve to go through what this would lead to. Right now, we can just… I’ll go to Nai, you can save who you’re protecting, and that can be it. It looks like a happy ending like that, doesn’t it?”
“The orphanage. Hopeland,” Wolfwood says, tonelessly.
It takes Vash a moment to place what he means. “The entire orphanage?” Vash had assumed it had something to do with Wolfwood’s past and highly visible soft spot for children, but he had naively assumed it had been select individuals within that. The most important people to Wolfwood. Not everyone.
But no.
Of course Nicholas D. Wolfwood would be so willing to sell his soul for every child he could save.
Vash buries his face against Wolfwood’s hand again to hide his crumpling expression.
“I wasn’t being noble, or choosing myself or however you chose to interpret that bit of selfishness—I was scared, you idiot. I was scared I’d lost you, then I was scared for five days that I’d still lose you even after a bit of hope that you’d pull through, and then I was scared that you’d finally get a bit of sense and hate me. Which you should, Mr. Pacifist, because I broke peoples’ jaws to pour poison down their throats. To kill them. I watched. I wanted to do worse, I wanted to drip it into their wounds, I wanted to see if it could eat through their skin before it got to their organs. I wanted to see if it would even try to mend what it was melting. I wanted to see their flesh decay and knit and regrow—” Like mine did hangs beneath his words like with a second tongue. Vash presses Wolfwood’s hand tighter against his forehead; he can still feel him trembling despite that. “And then you woke up, and it was like I woke up,” Wolfwood adds in little more than a croak. “And I got scared all over again.”
“No part of me condones your actions,” Vash tells him as calmly as he can. Still Wolfwood’s fingers tremble against his. “But I understand them. But I don’t… I don’t want to, Wolfwood—I don’t want to see what you could be if you thought I got shot one day. I don’t want to have that kind of impact on you! I shouldn’t be having any kind of impact on you, I’m not good enough—”
Wolfwood rips his hand away.
Before Vash can do more than suck in a surprised, wretched breath, Wolfwood seizes his jaw with a cruel grip and brings their faces far too close to each other. His breath reeks of smoke and whiskey when he snarls, “Drop the fucking martyr complex for five minutes, you bastard! This ain’t about what either of us think we want anymore! When I thought you died, it was the worst moment of my life, and I’ve had a lot of shitty moments to fight for that position, so congrats. But when you coughed and gagged and wheezed again, it was the most blessed moment of my life, too. And that’s what I’m after. I want more—I want more moments with you, tongari. And not ones I have to get because one of us has a bullet where they shouldn’t.”
“You deserve better,” Vash maintains.
Wolfwood headbutts him.
Vash rips free of his grasp with a squeal, clutching his forehead, eyes watery for entirely different reasons now. “You asshole! I just got shot there!”
“It was two inches to the left,” Wolfwood snaps back, rubbing his own forehead. “Are you gonna listen to sense now?”
“How about you listen to sense? Nothing good is going to come of—”
Wolfwood swipes for him again, but Vash is half-expecting it this time. He ducks, and instead of Wolfwood getting a good hold on him, Vash gets barely a tug on his hair before he’s slithering backward. He scrambles on hands and knees onto the bed, crouched like a feral thing, ready to hiss and spit if it means Wolfwood could see sense.
Wolfwood stands, arms held out, like he’s ready to cover all the exits. Vash eyes the nearest window, but that’s past the foot of the bed, and Wolfwood is as fast as he is in short bursts.
“Weren’t you glad I survived?” Wolfwood asks like it’s a taunt.
“Of course I was! Am! I told you—I don’t ever want you to die, I’d cry too much!” He again dances around the rest of his almost-confession.
“How about we do something with each other besides almost die and cry too much, then?” Wolfwood baits. (Like he didn’t just have an almost-confession of his own right there; he cried over Vash? Vash can perfectly envision Wolfwood killing violently in cold blood. He cannot envision Wolfwood crying at any point.)
“I think this needs to end. Before either of us gets hurt worse,” Vash replies.
“There is nothing to end.”
There is everything here, between us, to end. That they should end. That never should have sprung up between them, anyway. Simple friendship is risk enough for someone like Vash, but more? He can’t afford to have feelings, not for his own sake (distraction from his purpose) and not for the sake of others (everyone he loves dies). Wolfwood doesn’t deserve this.
He doesn’t deserve any part of the terrible life Vash has gotten hints of. But he deserves a terrible future even less. Wolfwood is a kind enough man that he could come out the other side of all of this, should he have something left to protect, to save. Wolfwood could be a hero instead of a monster. He could have something.
Vash has nothing to offer.
That’s not true, actually. He offers: the chance to get shot by anyone you meet, the low but constant risk of his powers going haywire and causing wanton carnage, an omnicidal brother, his uncomfortably obvious guilt complex, and the occasional bad joke.
Wolfwood makes another grab at him. Vash lunges beneath his arm, but his elbow comes down on his back, and quick as anything, Wolfwood has Vash pinned on his belly on the bed. Vash, admittedly, doesn’t try too hard to escape. Wolfwood’s weight and heat are a balm against the tears prickling at him again. He wants to shout about how hopeless this all is, people like them aren’t built for this sort of thing, and he especially can’t afford this.
But he knows that would only lead to Wolfwood shouting back. And Vash, selfish thing that he is, wants something that is not yelling.
Wolfwood rests his cheek on his fist, his elbow digging cruelly into Vash’s spine, and casually remarks, “Are we gonna go back to ignoring everything again? If we are, then you need to go down and get more booze, ‘cause I can’t handle you again sober and I ain’t risking that bar tab.”
“How much did you spend…?” Vash grumbles against the blanket.
“But if it’s all the same to you,” Wolfwood says and Vash struggles anew to free himself, not wanting to hear his next words. Wolfwood shifts so all his weight is on Vash’s back, and sure, he could throw him and run, but Vash is so weak and selfish and terrible and greedy.
He doesn’t want to run away from Wolfwood, not when he realizes that they’re the same. They both have this revolting feeling eating away at them. That threatens to undo them.
“Five days is a long time, made my peace with a few things, is all I’m saying,” Wolfwood adds, too lightly.
“Did you pray at my bedside?” Vash asks.
“Why?”
“I tried. The bedside, I wasn’t still in it, but down on my knees and everything. I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Wolfwood replies. Vash has heard him trot out that line time and time again, and this ends somewhere in the middle of his spectrum of flippancy. “But no, I wasn’t preparing to give you last rites. After I realized you weren’t dead yet, you never got as… dead-like again. Bled for a solid two days, but you were panting and sweating and moving, so anything was better than when you just… dropped.”
Vash tries to picture it.
How would he have reacted if Wolfwood, after getting shot, had dropped? Had stopped moving entirely? Stopped breathing?
He would not have killed seven people brutally and messily.
But he would not have been calm about it, either.
“What do you want, Wolfwood?” Vash asks and shifts so he can peer up at him. His cheek is smushed against the bed and it’s a sideways look, but it’s something. It’s even better that Wolfwood willingly meets his eye.
“I got what I wanted,” Wolfwood replies and leaves it at that.
“Tell me! You can’t just—say something like that!”
“Seven days ago, ‘till two days ago, all I wanted, from the bottom of whatever’s left of my soul, was for you to be alive. And here you are. Then I spent the last two days drinkin’ myself into a stupor ‘cause you’re alive, and I don’t know what to do with that anymore.”
“…It was easier, before,” Vash admits, quietly. Another confession-adjacent thing.
“Easier before we realized we loved each other?”
He says it so absolutely casually that it takes a full two seconds for Vash to process what he’d said.
And then, contrary to every desire he has to remain close to Wolfwood and cherish his touch, he is out from beneath him and halfway across the room in less than a heartbeat.
Wolfwood catches one of his coattails just as Vash throws open the door. He tries running anyway, but he hears a rip of fabric, and Wolfwood’s weight isn’t leaving him. It isn’t worth ruining his coat. (Nothing is, probably, and that is a thought Vash wants to examine even less than whatever Wolfwood is attempting to do to them right now.)
Vash stalls exactly long enough to reach back to untangle Wolfwood’s fingers from his coat.
Wolfwood lets go entirely and instead goes for his ankles, pulling his feet out from beneath him with one savage yank.
Vash yet again finds himself sprawled on his belly with Wolfwood sitting atop his back, but now halfway out the room’s door, and smarting significantly more from a knock against the door frame on his way down.
“I wish those nosy newspapers could see the mighty Humanoid Typhoon for what he really is—a stinking coward,” Wolfwood declares and digs his heel into Vash’s shoulder blade.
“Plenty of them call me a coward,” Vash retorts. “I am one.”
“A shameless one at that!”
“And shameless, yes.”
“Lord have mercy, we’re hearin’ some honesty here. Tell me, tongari, does that extend to any other part of our conversation, or just the parts where you call yourself mean things and expect me to nod along?”
“You were the one calling me mean things!” Vash can’t help but point out, petulant despite himself, despite the truth of those supposedly mean things.
“Can’t we continue with the honesty?” Wolfwood asks.
Vash quiets, staring at the far wall instead of straining to look at the man atop him. He can’t look at Wolfwood for this. He shouldn’t be any part of this, really, because Wolfwood deserves better, and none of this will end happily. It could at least end peacefully, maybe, if they continued to ignore it.
“You love me,” Wolfwood says and Vash makes a wounded noise, unable to help it in the face of his candor. Wolfwood walks his fingers up the length of Vash’s spine, and despite everything still sane screaming at him, he melts against that much touch. He craves Wolfwood above all other sense, it seems. Wolfwood continues, taking advantage of Vash’s weakness with his usual ruthlessness, “And most people would regard that as a good thing, Mr. Love And Peace.”
“Thinking kinda highly of yourself, don’t you think…?”
“Fine then. Am I allowed to say the other bit without you headin’ for the hills like a rabid coyote is on your ass?”
Vash remains silent.
“I love you. And most people would regard that as a damn stupid thing, but still, a good thing. Love is supposed to be good.”
Somehow, despite those words hanging over them, Vash does not disintegrate then and there. Some part of his heart does—but it’s some rotted, old, wounded part. A bruise left to ache forever. An infection he’s never been brave enough to lance. But the rest of him, the rest of his heart, somehow remains despite Wolfwood saying that he loves Vash.
“Love isn’t for people like us,” Wolfwood remarks.
“No, it isn’t. It’s safer not to,” Vash mumbles against the floorboards. Still, he marvels at the fact that he is still here, that he didn’t die upon hearing Wolfwood confess that.
It would’ve been easier to curl up like a dead worm and let it finish him.
Wolfwood drags his palm, flat, down Vash’s spine next. He shudders and tears prickle at his eyelids again. Vash sniffles without meaning to give himself away.
“Listen, I’m not so stupid as to think any part of this would be a good idea,” Wolfwood confesses so quietly one would think he’s sitting in a booth in a church. He runs his hand back up Vash’s back. His coat bunches between them, and Vash has never wished to be less clothed before in his life, but he finds himself wanting it now. Even if he could get only a shirt between them, it would be infinitely better.
Wolfwood has seen him naked. Wolfwood knows what his body looks like. He’s never recoiled, never regarded him with pity, but it would be something extra nerve-wracking now. Yet Vash yearned for further closeness. It closes his throat and threatens to drown him, this yearning, like something uncapped and unable to be contained again.
“But I’m also selfish, and while you aren’t, I think we both can agree that maybe an ounce of hope in our lives wouldn’t be the worst thing. Why does this have to lead to our ruin?” Wolfwood asks.
Vash hopes it’s hypothetical, because his entire brain is consumed with Wolfwood’s hand splayed against his back. He needs his coat off. He needs further heat between them. He needs to—he needs to finally—he just needs. A tear drips out of the corner of his eye and slides sideways over his nose. “Please,” he whispers and another tear drips onto the floor.
“Are you done running?” Wolfwood asks without inflection. No cruelty, but no gentleness, either. “I want to be, if you are.” And then, quietly, like it’s the most vulnerable confession of all, Wolfwood murmurs, “Vash, I want to love you.”
In spite of the weight of the man on top of him, Vash rolls onto his side, and curls up with a sob. He still feels like a dead bug, still thinks it might be the easier route out of a dangerous situation, but he’s so tired of constantly scanning for escape routes.
After catching his balance, Wolfwood shuffles off him. Vash rolls onto his other side, inadvertently already giving up his defensive position, a metaphor which is not lost on him, but Wolfwood is laying down, too. On the dirty, dusty floor, right next to Vash, facing him without his sunglasses. There’s hardly any space between them. Their knees bump into each other and Vash can smell the smoke and booze on his breath again.
Wolfwood cups his face and Vash begins crying anew.
Wolfwood brings their foreheads to touch. His hair is silky soft and he radiates heat that Vash can ignore no longer. He throws his arms around him and pulls them as flush as possible, pressing himself against every bit of this wonderful human, this man that he might dare love. He wants to pull Wolfwood inside of himself so he can cherish this shared touch always, like maybe that’ll keep him safe. Vash can’t hide himself away, but maybe he could hide Wolfwood away. Maybe he could be selfish in this one, single, infinitely precious way.
Wolfwood kisses a tear off of Vash’s cheek. Vash stills, eyes reopening.
Wolfwood’s eyes are as telling as Vash has ever seen them. And for once, not out of self-preservation or curiosity about how humans operate, Vash is willing to see exactly what is written there.
Vash clasps Wolfwood’s hands between both of his.
Please, please let this happen. Please let this be alright. For once, give me something happy. Please, give me a happy ending. Give him a happy ending. Vash can’t bring himself to give voice to any of his prayers, not in front of Wolfwood, not in this fragile bubble of warmth and gentleness between them, not when Wolfwood is staring at him with love.
Not when Vash is willing to see it.
He hopes he can return it.
Please, god, spare us from what’s coming.
Vash is many things: a disaster, a liar, a flirt, an occasional cheat, a runaway, a monster, a coward, a weak man, a crybaby, and a man in love. He hopes the last one is not the one that’s too many sins.
Wolfwood closes the distance between them and presses his chapped lips against Vash’s.
It feels like an answer.