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In a motel room that's scarcely bigger than his old cell, Wolfwood sponges Vash's wounds.
Red drips sluggishly from the crown of his head, behind his left ear, just below his lower right eyelid, as Wolfwood plucks out the grit, as tiny and wayward as breadcrumbs, and splashes all the red he can see from the bottle a thankful mayor had pushed into Vash's hands only a week earlier.
He runs the damp cloth over another cut, Vash hissing lightly at the sting of alcohol.
"I don't understand, tongari, how you don't even raise your arms to shield yourself." He stops to pick out more grit. "You'll get hit in wrong spot in the head one of these days, and then where will we be? Hmm?"
"I'm all right," Vash whispers, as Wolfwood adds more alcohol to the cloth, presses it firmly on one of the larger gashes.
"One day you won't be. If they come at you and tie you to a pyre, will you light it yourself?"
Vash gives an unconvincing laugh. "It's hard to kill me."
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't welcome attempts." Wolfwood sighs, skirting another constellation of bruises, blooming like ink, sweeping towards his shoulder blades. Even with the coat, the gauntlets, the leather guards, they managed to leave their own marks. "Tongari, you scare me."
Vash closes his eyes. "I don't mean to, Wolfwood."
"But you do." Wolfwood sets aside the bottle, capping it with a short click. "You scare Meryl and Milly, and if Brad and Luida knew, they'd be scared, too. You have people who love you. Don't let anyone hurt you like this."
Vash doesn't answer. But the refrain I deserve it is palpable, and Wolfwood doesn't want to hear it. How many times does Vash feel will make things even again? Wolfwood knows the estimated toll of the Big Fall and JuLai, can only guess at the in betweens and now. Will the stones thrown eventually outnumber the stars?
He looks at Vash, bared to the waist, sheets strewn over his calves. He'd long pulled Vash's boots off, the complicated tangle of belts. His soles of his feet are almost as dark as the bruises, at odds with the rest of his body, painstakingly wiped clean, and Wolfwood reaches forward with the damp rag to complete his task.
Vash sighs underneath him, as Wolfwood's hands work over the calluses, the the heels, the tops of his feet, skittering sand across the sheets, cloth turning into a rag of dingy gray and pink. His eyes slip closed, in a reverie of sensuality, as he slowly reclines onto the mattress, hands bringing Wolfwood's mouth to his left clavicle, scar tissue scraping his lips, holding him as tenderly as if nursing an infant.
Sometimes Wolfwood calls Vash, repeating it several times to erase the harshness from it, the history. But tonight, all he can do is murmur tongari, tongari, the first nickname he'd given Vash, who he knows, as he mouths at every inch of Vash's skin, tracing over the wood and metal with his tongue. The wood scrapes and the metal grate is bumpy under his tongue, but he drinks them in. There are the scars that are carved into his skin like a canyon, bumpy as the roads stopped up with stones, jagged like a lightning strike.
He kisses those too, and he loves and loves and loves.
"Nicholas," Vash sighs in his ear, "Nicholas."
"Tongari," he murmurs, "look after yourself." I might not always be there. No, I can't even manage a half-promise. I will not be there, and you will pay the price.