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The noise of the salon outside, muffled behind thin walls. Between the two of them, silence. They walk from one to another, from the yelling and banging (and probably a bunch of guys gambling their savings away), and they walk into the musty silence of the salon’s toilet.
A woman walks out, and Vash gives an attempt at a friendly little wave (only to get the quirk of an eyebrow back). They keep walking, past some guy letting loose at a urinal (not very quietly, Wolfwood may add) and into the stall all the way at the back of the dingy little washroom.
There’s rustling from the only other stall, beside them – a fellow patron, assumingly. For once, there’s no waiting for a stall to free up (which can take quite long considering just what goes on in these stalls most of the time; drugs, sex, whatever). Wolfwood enters, and Vash troops in, following without any sense of subtlety.
The door shuts behind him, and Wolfwood turns to hiss at him. “Christ, blondie, they’re gonna think we’re fucking in here.”
Vash winces, letting out a nervous laugh.
Well, that’s just a shot in the foot, isn’t it. With the way they have done that, not in this salon, but in one all the way in the outskirts of November City. The door broke that day. They never turned up again. Wolfwood grumbles to himself, looking away.
“Well, I mean, I can’t exactly just sit outside, someone’s gonna try and target me…”
That’s bullshit, really. God knows he’d sober up in two seconds to save the entire salon if a bounty hunter did really show up. There’s definitely an underlying reason for this, but whatever it is, Wolfeood can’t pick it out, and so he just lets sleeping dogs lie.
Vash chuckles, again with that nervous undertone, because if anything, this is what the blondie is, apologetic for everything — Wolfwood looks back to take him in again, the red-and-green tie still wrapped around his forehead, the faint blush of drunkenness still visible on his face.
He’s still coherent, surprisingly, Wolfwood notes, pulling out the little pouch from his inside pocket.
Maybe it’s the Eye’s symbol that Vash sees on the pouch that makes him grow silent again, watching nervously. As if Wolfwood’s gonna crack a vial open right now. Or a mini-Legato would pop out and start doing his whole anti-human spiel.
(On second thoughts, Wolfwood himself would hate to see that happen.)
He snaps out of his daze, Vash staring back at him, strained in his position. Fuck. He can’t do this, not right now. In the back of his mind, something itches for a smoke, and he abandons the pouch on his lap for the pack of Skulls and the lighter in his back pocket.
It’s like second nature, the way he takes one out, flips the lighter, and sets the cig alight – Vash still watches, a slight sadness on his face, one difficult to pick apart as to why.
It’s about Livio, isn’t it, especially when that lighter flip comes into the equation. With Livio, Wolfwood’s thoughts drift back to the Eye, no matter how hard he tries to avoid that. He thinks, and he thinks about the tape constricting the sides of his chest, and Conrad’s refusal to operate on him in that way, not until he finishes this mission, and… it all comes full circle, back to him and Vash in this dingy little toilet stall, heavy silence hanging above them, blood leaking out from between his legs, threatening to stain.
Cursing softly under his breath, with the cig bouncing against his bottom lip, Wolfwood finally pulls out something from the black pouch. Vash’s eyes widen.
“Why, needle-noggin, never seen a pad before?”
“Well, yes, but, no, not really…” Vash sputters, and as much as that’s offensive, Wolfwood gets it. Even if he had seen a pad, a damn blood catcher even, the ones that the girls around town use or whatever, he wouldn’t have seen this.
Sounds corny, but it’s not the average blood catcher – it’s a pristine white, reminiscent of Conrad’s lab. No average person would have this on hand. No sane person should have this on hand.
“Surgical grade too.” Vash somewhat snaps him out of his fugue, peering cautiously at the white thing, a foreign cleanliness in such a dirty place.
“Surprising, ain’t it,” Wolfwood agrees, looking disdainfully at it. He hates them, hates the feeling of having to carry them everywhere he goes (like Dominique does with ease), the feeling of having to watch out and be extra careful when it’s that specific week. Hell, he hates having to keep track of the weeks themselves.
A little more silence, and Wolfwood looks at the offensive white thing once more.
He doesn’t wanna. ‘Cause that would be like admitting defeat, against something impossible to fight against. And Vash knows, well, he’s assuming he can tell anyway (when can he not?), and he gives him a little smile. Useless, but he smiles anyway.
And then he kicks his foot into the corner between the wall and the door of the little stall they’re enclosed in.
Vash yowls, a cry of pain that’s very obviously fake to Wolfwood’s ears, the kind he lets out after some no-name bandit body-slams him into the floor and he doesn’t retaliate (all in the name of love and peace).
“Ow ow ow ow…” he screeches, his eyes shooting back to Wolfwood and the goddamned pussy diaper. Hurry up and open it, he’s screeching at him wordlessly.
It takes a while, before Wolfwood’s laughing at all this and Vash is starting to scream The door, God bless the door, may it have a bountiful harvest — and Wolfwood finally rips the stupid thing open, the plant-produced plastic crinkling noisily so much so it threatens to be heard over all that screaming about a fucking door.
Vash’s voice cracks, and now Wolfwood’s laughing even harder, and no, the pad’s definitely being silenced over their voices. And while sticking the damn thing on, he seems to get why now Vash’s really here, why he’s smiling at him through everything, busy fake-stubbing his toes and screeching about all this.
The things he does. Wolfwood rolls his eyes, but all the same, he can’t help but smile at all this, and Vash smiles back, a wordless reply to him.