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“Hold still.”
“I’m trying, but it stings!”
“Try harder, or you’ll send us both plungin’ off the deep end.”
Vash makes a pathetic sound, something equal parts whimper and whine, and somehow more annoying than either. Wolfwood tightens his fingers around Vash’s wrist, as if the slight admonishing sting will do anything, while his other hand fumbles for the bullet lodged in the many feathered layers coating Vash’s arm. It’s hard to see by the light of the three crescent moons, but he thinks he can manage.
It’s happened before: the transformations, Vash momentarily becoming something more, a creature that’s fearsome and powerful and distinctly beyond human. The difference this time is that it hasn’t gone away. There was no bursting display of power before he retreated back into his ordinary form; the yellow glint of his eyes and the strangely elongated teeth are stubbornly hanging on.
“I’m sorry,” Vash laments. “It doesn’t usually get stuck like this.”
“Yeah, well, maybe absorbin’ a bomb before it hits a city’ll do that to a guy.”
Always the same old story with him. In the process of averting a much greater disaster, Vash caused a minor one, entirely by accident. His body took the brunt of the bomb’s destructive force, but the explosion still packed enough punch to blow out windows, bring down weak walls, and ignite a whole town’s fury at Vash the Stampede.
Vash and Wolfwood took advantage of the commotion after the impact to escape into the night, scrambling up this abandoned watchtower: a rickety wooden platform that has seen far better days. If the whole structure gives out on them and decides to collapse to the ground, well … one of them has superhuman healing abilities and the other is covered in freakin’ wings. Their odds are good. Probably.
Wolfwood’s grip slips, and his knuckles catch the edge of Vash’s wound, too roughly.
“Fuck—didn’t mean to.”
Vash makes a mournful sound at the back of his throat. The eyeballs along his humerus swivel to stare at Wolfwood. Wolfwood ignores the shudder down his spine, returning to his task so he won’t feel their gaze on him.
“Wish I had some fuckin’ booze,” he mumbles.
“You’re thinking about partying right now?”
“For disinfectant, dumbass.” Can Vash’s skin get infected? Would it be enough to kill him if it did? “’Sides, are you sayin’ you wouldn’t kill for a pint?”
“I wouldn’t,” Vash says, too solemn, then yelps when Wolfwood digs his fingers in a little harder than he needs to. Wolfwood recognizes jabs when they’re aimed at him, and he’s not in the mood for it. “Ow! But, uh, I’m so fine with you buying me a drink after?”
“The way this is goin’, you should be the one treatin’ me.”
“Stingy,” Vash mopes. “Speaking of, do we have any money?”
“Well, you’ve got yer charms, dontcha?”
That elicits a theatrical gasp.
“My virtue, Wolfwood! For shame!” Addressing the open air, Vash announces, “A priest! Can you believe?”
As a familiar grin tugs at Wolfwood’s lips, despite his best efforts, it occurs to him that Vash’s mindless chatter might be for his benefit. As long as Vash keeps talking, Wolfwood might not think as hard about the eyeballs, or the strange crawling beneath Vash’s skin, like something is moving around under the surface of him, waiting to burst free.
Wolfwood swallows, doing his best to ignore the throbbing at his temples. He’s seen worse.
Vash’s babbling trails off as Wolfwood works, leaving only the sound of desert wind. Vash’s feathers are rough against Wolfwood’s palm, their spines digging painfully into his flesh where he grasps them at an off angle. The hide beneath is grayer and rougher than Vash’s ordinary skin: tough and twisted, formed quickly for defense.
“I’m sorry,” Vash says finally, without meeting Wolfwood’s eyes. “That you have to deal with … all this.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Wolfwood grumbles. “Since you’re bitchin’ more than usual. Layin’ yourself all flat and apologetic—skeeves me the hell out.”
Vash blinks, the eyes on his arms blinking with him, and his silence turns a little chagrined. Good. Wolfwood can’t stand the self-deprecating bullshit.
“You’re not scared?” Vash asks softly.
That does startle Wolfwood. If nothing else because, for once, it’s to the point.
Of course he’s scared. There’s not a second spent around Vash the Stampede where he isn’t, at least in part, suppressing the urge to turn tail and bolt into the desert. He assumes a deadpan expression, but on his way there, he senses the split second when the truth flickers across his face.
Vash notices. Of course he does. Vash, who never enters an establishment without counting the guns and exit routes, who estimates the number of bullets on every wannabe desperado in the joint, who blows into a town and uses dopey charm to find out everything worth knowing within the first five minutes. There’s no way he wouldn’t notice hesitation or wary twitching on a mug as familiar as Wolfwood’s.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wolfwood says. “I’m here, ain’t I? I’m gettin’ this done.”
He finds his grip on the bullet, extracting it with a sharp yank. Vash hisses with pain, face contorting, exposing a hint of his fangs.
“There. See? Did the trick.”
It’s true—like an infection slowly soothing, or swelling gradually going down, the feathers covering Vash’s arm seem to be shrinking. Wolfwood doesn’t want to think about what happens to the eyes. Lidless orbs collapsing in on themselves, dissolving, melting back into Vash’s skin …
Wolfwood sets the bullet down beside him. It leaves smears of gore on the planks, but nobody with a constitution fragile enough for that to upset them would be up here in the first place.
Then Wolfwood looks back at Vash.
Vash’s upper body is bare, covered in scars where he’s been hurt, metal where he’s been put back together. Wolfwood’s eyes flicker down Vash’s torso. Muscle, sinew, skin. His heart is in his throat.
By the time his gaze returns to Vash’s face, Vash’s solemn green eyes are staring into his.
Human again. For now.
What does he think I’m thinking?
All the bashfulness Wolfwood saw in Vash while bandaging his arm has dissolved, now that Vash’s body is back to normal. He doesn’t flaunt his scars, but he’s not ashamed of them, either.
Wolfwood recalls a conversation with Milly—dark bar, huge beers, her drinking faster than he did. She told him about the time she and Meryl walked in on Vash shirtless. He’d responded with one of those chagrined laughs and apologized, said he knew his body was rough for others to see. Milly sounded sad when she recounted it, as if it was a shame those things had happened to poor Mr. Vash, but Wolfwood wasn’t convinced. He has seen the easy grace with which Vash moves, seen him heal himself the few times he’s been unable to dodge blows that would have killed a lesser creature. Vash can push bullets out of his skin with no ramifications. If the damage stays, it’s because he wants it to. He has chosen his scars.
Sometimes that makes the back of Wolfwood’s throat burn. Vash doesn’t look a day over twenty-five, while Wolfwood’s own age has started to elude him. When he looks in the mirror, he can barely remember how old he’s supposed to be. He knows he’s aging faster than he should be, though—all for the privilege of surviving the same hits Vash throws himself in the path of time and time again.
Does Vash look at his scars to remember? Does he contemplate them to atone for some nebulous sin, blown up in his mind to unforgivable proportions? Wolfwood doesn’t have that option. If he hadn’t healed the wounds he’s suffered, letting the serum wipe every trace of them from his body, they’d have put him in the ground a long time ago.
“It’s ugly,” Vash says, “I know.”
“Ain’t nobody sayin’ that,” Wolfwood rasps.
“Well … I suppose.”
Wolfwood tries to hold his gaze, but Vash avoids Wolfwood’s eyes like they’re two more bullets headed for his heart. Anger flares in the pit of Wolfwood’s stomach.
“God, you piss me off, you know that?”
“Sorry.”
Fuck that apologetic half-smile. Who the hell does he think he is?
Wolfwood’s already got Vash by the arm, so yanking him in is easy. It’s met by an indignant hey, what the hell, but he lets the objection fall between the slats of the wooden platform and tumble to the ground.
Wolfwood glares at Vash, wondering what he could say to get his grievances through Vash’s thick skull. Insults? Flattery? What would work on Vash the Stampede?
He comes up blank, so he kisses Vash instead.
Vash makes a noise—obnoxious, like every sound of his, yelping like an indignant puppy. It sounds a little bit pained, and maybe that’s fair; Wolfwood is leaning on him in a way that is probably uncomfortable.
It’s not the first time this happens. There have been deserted inn hallways, dark back alleys, washrooms at dingy bars. But every time, Wolfwood wonders if it will be the last. If guilt or circumstance or his own fucking cowardice will finally catch up with him.
But Vash kisses back this time too. Surely he can taste the complicated truth of Wolfwood’s feelings for him, trembling at the tip of Wolfwood’s tongue—and still, wordless and tender, Vash kisses back. His lips are warm and a little dry, softer and more pliant than expected. Wolfwood never gets used to it.
Beneath his tongue, Vash’s teeth are still sharp and long.
When Wolfwood opens his eyes, he is met with the view of Vash’s face up close: golden eyelashes, beauty mark high on his cheekbone, skin so clear Wolfwood can barely see the pores. Vash’s lips are wet and slightly parted, a little swollen from the kiss. They look so easy to bruise. Almost as easy as Wolfwood’s heart.
He stares, perhaps for a beat too long. The corner of those lips pulls up into a smile.
“You really know how to kiss it better, huh?”
Wolfwood’s cheeks start to burn, comebacks withering on his tongue.
“Stay better this time, wontcha. Spare a guy a heart attack.”
“I’ll do my best,” Vash sighs, in the tone of a man who has no intention of doing as he’s told, and starts dressing himself in the pile of clothes at his side. “We should get down from here.”
“Think they’re missin’ us?” The only thing that stresses Meryl out worse than having Vash around is losing sight of him altogether.
“Maybe, but I’m missing a soft bed and a very greasy meal.”
“Don’t forget the drink you owe me.”
“Hey! I never agreed to that.”
They argue over technicalities until Vash screws up his face and sticks out his tongue—as good a concession as any. Just like that, they’re back to normal—except for that faint reflective gleam in Vash’s eyes that Wolfwood still hasn’t convinced himself is just his imagination.
“You head down first,” Wolfwood finally mumbles. And Vash goes, his lean, strong body shimmying confidently down the ladder. In front of a crowd, he’d have made a spectacle of it: the harmless, clumsy clown, half falling out of the tower. But when it’s just Wolfwood, he doesn’t have to pretend.
There’s a faint thud as his boots hit the ground. “Come on, Wolfwood!” Vash calls from below. “Getting chilly down here.”
Wolfwood starts making his way down. As he takes his first step onto an alarmingly unstable rung, his back turns to Vash the Stampede.
Cold fear twists in Wolfwood’s belly. It’s not because of the height.
He is making himself vulnerable to a creature whose body swallows bullets and spits them back out, a creature that can shed its human skin to become a shield made of wings and eyes and dread.
He pauses on the rung, waiting for his head to stop spinning. He reminds himself that that same creature was hurt protecting others, and then leaned on Wolfwood as they ran. That same creature trusted him to remove the bullets that would not come unstuck on their own, and kissed him with lips as soft as sin.
Wolfwood takes a deep breath. He glances over his shoulder. Vash is standing at the bottom, nudging a rock with the toe of his boot. He senses Wolfwood looking, turns his face up, and smiles like the sun.
The chill inside Wolfwood does not dissolve entirely, but the beam of Vash’s smile helps melt most of it away.
Wolfwood’s back turns to Vash again as he continues his descent. Fear is learned and persistent, but the part of Wolfwood that goes warm and liquid from kissing Vash whispers a different, sweeter truth.
He doesn’t want to hurt me.
He knows that, doesn’t he? The part of him that’s unaffected by Chapel, by Knives, by his own demons—that part has always known. In fact, if Wolfwood lost his grip and plunged toward the earth, he’s certain there would be hands—or wings; powerful, breathtaking, protective wings—waiting, unflinchingly, to catch him.