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“You’re limping, Undertaker.”
Wolfwood stops walking. He doesn’t look back at Meryl, but he shifts his weight uncertainly, like he’s testing the fortitude of one leg and then the other.
Meryl considers touching his shoulder, but the tension in his spine gives her pause. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Wolfwood says, just slightly too cheerfully. “Sand in my shoe.”
He starts walking again. Not limping, this time, moving with a deliberation that makes the tickle of concern starting to build in Meryl’s chest flare into outright worry.
“Yeah, I bet you have sand in your shoes,” Meryl jogs a few steps to catch up with him, and almost misses the look Vash shoots her, his mouth tense with the same worry Meryl’s feeling, but his eyebrows drawn down in something more like… warning.
Touchy subject. Got it.
Meryl stops short of finishing her sentence — something about the many failings of Wolfwood’s shitty loafers — and just falls into step beside him, glancing furtively up at his face.
Wolfwood’s face is almost fully masked in one way or another — his mouth wrapped around a cigarette, his eyes covered by those big sunglasses, the messy spill of his hair getting in the way of seeing his expression in full from any angle.
Not that it really helps. He’s achingly easy to read, and Meryl isn’t even as good at it as Vash is.
Maybe that means she should heed that warning look Vash gave her and not pry, but—
She doesn’t like the set of Wolfwood’s jaw, the way sweat pricks his forehead. It’s already starting to cool off as the suns set, so he shouldn’t be sweating like that anymore.
“You know, I get a travel salary,” Meryl says, ignoring the breath Vash takes like he wants to interrupt her. “We could get you some new shoes at this town we’re coming up on, if they have a cobbler.”
Vash’s face does… something — him, Meryl has a much harder time reading reliably — then resets into a smile. “There is, as far as I know.”
Wolfwood turns and glares at Vash, like he’s just gone back on some agreement Meryl wasn’t privy to, and huffs in annoyance. “Don’t waste your salary on stupid shit like that, little miss.”
Meryl scoffs. “Proper travelwear is included in what I’m expected to spend it on, actually.”
“Proper travelwear for you and me look like different things,” Wolfwood argues.
Vash takes another one of those tentative breaths, but Meryl doesn’t give him the chance to give Wolfwood an out.
“You’re limping, ” she repeats.
Wolfwood breathes out slowly through his nose. The tension in his jaw is worse now, lips pulled back from his teeth, shoulders up like a cat with its fur on end, but under the sunset-glare catching his sunglasses, his eyes are soft and liquid, the way he always looks when Meryl or Vash extend a hand he isn’t expecting to be allowed to take.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Meryl says. “When we find a hotel for tonight, if you just had sand in your shoes, I’ll drop the issue. But if I can tell at a glance you’re hurting yourself with those things, you can’t tell me what to do with my salary.”
Vash’s lips press together. “Meryl—” he starts.
Wolfwood’s breath is getting uneven.
Meryl feels guilty, but not enough to stop. “What if we have to run from something?”
The silence is so complete it makes Meryl’s ears ring.
“Can we have this conversation after we find something to eat and somewhere to rest?” Vash suggests.
Meryl nods, glancing at Wolfwood, but he’s already striding ahead, silhouetted by the suns, hidden from her entirely.
For now.
*
It ends up being Vash who coaxes Wolfwood out of shoes, late that night in a cramped hotel room.
As bad as Meryl thought it would be, it’s even worse. The smell alone turns her stomach.
“How long has it been like this?” Vash asks, holding Wolfwood by one blistered heel.
Wolfwood is staring at the ceiling, like that does anything to hide the tears clinging to his eyelashes. His voice is toneless and dry, feigning disdain. “Just got bad the last couple days. It’ll heal next time I take a vial.”
“So, it’s always like this,” Meryl says, and knows she’s right when Wolfwood flinches. “It just heals with the rest of you?”
He doesn’t answer.
Vash looks like he wants to cry too, but of course he doesn’t. “I’m going to bandage these up,” he says, his voice dropping low and stern, brooking no argument. “Tomorrow—”
“No.” Wolfwood says, flatly. “You’re not taking my fucking shoes.”
“Undertaker,” Meryl tries. “They’re hurting you.”
Wolfwood pins her with a glare so withering it stings, even though Meryl knows — even without the tears in his eyes — he’s more hurt than angry. “No shit, little miss.”
Vash doesn’t say a word, unpacking the first aid kit onto the floor — gauze, antiseptic wipes, medical tape, antibiotic ointment. He doesn’t look up at Wolfwood, and Wolfwood doesn’t look down.
“Why?” Meryl asks, so soft it’s almost a whisper. Like she might break something if she speaks too loudly.
Wolfwood pulls a familiar face — the scrunch of concentration that means he’s trying to come up with a lie.
Then Vash does something to Wolfwood’s foot that makes him flinch, and his shoulders slump in defeat.
“Because it means I’m still — I don’t know.” Wolfwood’s voice cracks. “Alive?”
Meryl rises from the rickety chair she’d been perched in and settles herself on the bed next to Wolfwood, taking his hand in both of hers, tracing over the lines of his palm. He shivers, glancing at her and then away again.
He doesn’t know — though he probably suspects — that Meryl knows more about him than he’s told her. She doesn’t really want him to know.
“So it’s like when… when we’re getting shot at, and running, or trying to fight back, and everything that should feel absolutely terrifying is just for a second… some kind of a thrill? That I’m alive to experience my whole body waking up and working together to keep me safe?”
Briefly, she thinks of Roberto, shooting down Elendira’s nails with the cold precision of a sniper. She pulls Wolfwood’s hand closer and presses a kiss to his knuckles.
“Yeah,” Wolfwood says, voice thick with tears. “It’s like that.”
Vash starts to speak, but Wolfwood cuts him with a loud tsst! through his teeth, like he’s calling a dog to heel.
“You can’t say shit,” Wolfwood scowls, real anger in his voice. “You’re the same fucking way, you can’t—” the tears in his eyes start to fall. “You can’t say shit.”
Meryl can’t even argue with that. They’re both just as bad as each other.
Vash drops his chin to his chest. He finishes bandaging up Wolfwood’s feet, packs up the first aid kit.
“You going?” Wolfwood asks, low and raw.
“Do you want me to?”
Wolfwood glances at Meryl, so brief she doesn’t have time to even raise an eyebrow at him. “No,” he mumbles.
Vash sighs like an old dog and nods. He rises to his feet — just as much like an old dog in that, too — and strides over to the adjoining bathroom, leaving the door open behind him as he scrubs the blood and god-knows-what from his hands and forearms.
Meryl kisses Wolfwood’s hand again. He sniffles, shooting her a glare from under wet lashes. When she does it again, he whines in the back of his throat, slumping toward her and burying his face in her lap.
The bed jostles slightly as Vash joins them, crossing his legs to fit into the available space. When he rests a hand on Wolfwood’s back and rubs gently, Wolfwood’s breath hitches from shaky to outright broken into sobs.
Vash makes a soft, sympathetic noise. It only seems to make Wolfwood cry harder, or maybe that’s because of Meryl petting his hair.
“It’s hard to see you hurting,” Meryl says. “I don’t like it. I never do. Even when you can make it go away with a vial… I’ve seen you lose so much blood. It doesn’t get easier.”
Wolfwood whines again. “I know.”
Vash clears his throat. “It’s easier to feel alive if you’re not hurting all the time.”
“You think?” Wolfwood snaps, turning his head just enough out of the cradle of Meryl’s thigh to scowl at Vash. “You gonna fix me, then?”
Vash doesn’t miss a beat. “Any hurt I can heal, I will,” he says. “And I know you’d do the same.”
“Let me buy you a pair of boots, Wolfwood?” Meryl asks. “We can fix that one thing, if you let us.”
Wolfwood draws in a sharp breath. For a moment he’s entirely still.
Then he nods once, short and jerky, and bursts into hysterical sobs, curling into Meryl’s lap, clutching her around the waist like she can hold him steady.
She’ll try.
God damn it, she’ll try.