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The three of them are equilateral, Vanta thinks. There's no particular pairing within Krisis that are particularly closer than the others in any particular way. He thought that might be the case when learning that Zali and Wilson had known each other for months before Vanta was recruited, and they shared a language on top of that. It was a fear quickly assuaged. Sometimes, Vanta genuinely can't believe how well he gets along with them. It feels almost miraculous.
That's probably why he finds himself at a loss for words when Wilson says, "Zali isn't… like us, right?"
It's a statement made entirely unprompted. At first, Vanta thinks he might've hallucinated it: it's late, there's a storm on the horizon, and all his old scars are aching something fierce. He's stripped down to a wifebeater and his briefs, and he's grimacing through the dull throb of pain in his back—a pain that has less to do with the weather and more to do with his poor posture during yesterday's workout—as he attempts to pull a compression sleeve up his leg and onto his thigh.
Wilson has been alternating between quietly watching Vanta's routine and watching the storm on the horizon. He's been quiet all day, actually, not rising to Vanta's bait the way he normally would, not even complaining when Vanta stopped mid-spar to strip down and start his pain management routine. His normally bright blue eyes almost seemed muted and gray like the cloudy skies overhead. Vanta chalked it up to a byproduct of the weather, maybe a slight despondency from Zali's prolonged absence. He too was missing their medic, who was all the way on the other side of the world collaborating with their Japanese brethren.
When his question doesn't receive an answer, Wilson adds, "I hope he's not like us, at least," with a soft, self-derisive laugh.
Vanta blinks and looks up at Wilson. Wilson is still looking out the window at the flashes of lightning in the distance. "Dude, what the hell are you talking about?"
He tries to figure out the things that are contained within the overlap between him and Wilson in the Krisis triangle. Being lightweights? Having zero game? Not being able to speak Japanese?
Wilson looks back. His eyes soften a little. "A killer." His voice is soft. Vanta's mouth runs dry.
He doesn't think about his mercenary days anymore, but it's not as dramatic as it sounds. Vanta just doesn't really have the need to. His life now is rich and exciting, vibrant in a way that leaves little room for brooding. Frankly, the only moments when his pre-A.S.H. days come to mind are moments like this one: before the storm, when old wounds start to ache.
The worst offender is the scar on his thigh, the one that Vanta is pulling the compression sleeve over. The thick, leathery scar tissue wraps around the circumference of the muscle, a crescent moon that hugs the inside of his thigh. It's one of the oldest scars that he has. He's familiar with its pain, with the sickening dread that curdles in his stomach when the ache settles in, with the ghosts of memories that he'd like more than anything to forget. Violent hands, wretched screams, a body that hadn't yet been marred and hadn't yet known pain.
Unfortunately, Vanta remembers more than he'd like to.
"Do you also get these on stormy days?" he asks. It's only when Wilson frowns at him that he realizes that he presented an incomplete thought, an inquiry that Wilson has no way of answering.
Then, Vanta realizes that at some point, Wilson knelt in front of him and helped him pull the compression sleeve on the rest of the way. There's no way of telling how much time he lost. The sun is obscured behind thick clouds. Rain rhythmically patters against the glass of the training room window. They could've been sitting together on the floor of the training room for an eternity, Wilson's careful hands moving the compression band up Vanta's leg inch by inch. It could've been mere moments—Wilson's hand is still on Vanta's thigh, fingers brushing the seam where nylon meets skin.
Vanta swallows and elaborates, "Your scars. Do they ache on stormy days?"
Wilson blinks, cat-like and slow. "I don't have scars."
It's not a boast or even a sheepish admission. Wilson's expression is… empty, in a way. Smoothed over and calm. His brow is not knitting with irritation, his teeth are not flashing with laughter, his nose is not wrinkling with outrage. "Hitmen don't get hit. I picked 'em off from a distance."
As a hero, Yu Q. Wilson is most known for close-quarters combat, for his dexterous mastery of his sword and his array of gadgets and devices that allow him to go toe-to-toe with superpowered villains. In his gauntlet alone, he has a shield, a grappling mechanism, and a variety of grenades and concoctions. Wilson is flippant and showy about many things, but he's diligent about his tools.
He gets hit a fair bit as a hero. Not a lot, certainly not as much as Vanta does: Wilson's a quick little bastard who's always darting out of harm's way. But it happens enough for Wilson to have a few scars of his own. Vanta has seen them as fresh wounds and as healed tissue, from blades and bullets and the beasts that wreak havoc on their streets.
Vanta sometimes looks in the mirror and is unable to tell which version of himself earned which scar. They layer over each other in certain places, stitched together in mottled patches across his body, in the places that he should probably know how to protect by now. The left side of his stomach, right above his hip. The space between his shoulder blades. The back of his calves between the buckles of his greaves.
His knuckles, though that's more self-inflicted. It doesn't matter how reinforced his gauntlets are. His knuckles always get fucked up by the end of a fight, old scars splitting open and blood staining the webbing between his fingers. They're stiff now, creaky and sore. Vanta likes to make himself tea, usually. Not to drink, but just to hold, the warmth of the mug seeping into his bones.
"Did you ever have any close-quarter kills?" Vanta hears himself ask, even though he doesn't want an answer. Wilson doesn't reply for a moment, focusing instead on taking a glove from Vanta's pain management bag and reaching for Vanta's hand. Amused, Vanta offers it, allowing Wilson to adorn him in more compression wear.
Eventually, Wilson says, "A few." His voice is barely a whisper. "I avoided them when I could."
Wilson makes a show out of having a ninety-five percent success rate that's actually a five percent success rate. Vanta's always thought it was bullshit, has always known that such a percentage made no sense in the face of Wilson's combat skills. But for the first time, he wonders if ninety-five percent is low balling the actual number.
"I'm not sure how many people I've killed," Vanta admits, letting Wilson take his other, ungloved hand. "I just never held back, and I knew that not everyone would make it."
The ghost of Wilson's breathy laugh raises the hair on Vanta's arm. "That sounds nice. I was taught to wait until the life left their eyes. To kill them again for good measure."
Wilson's hands twitch and then still around Vanta's wrist. "It fucks me up, to be honest," Wilson laughs again, a weary sound that makes Vanta's chest clench. "Not just the blood on my hands but… the fact that I only really started caring about it now."
He looks up at Vanta, his mouth smiling but his eyes tight with anguish. "Isn't that stupid?"
Vanta decides that he hates the way that this laugh sounds in Wilson's mouth. "No," he returns. He wants it to be fierce and firm, to leave no room for doubt. But Vanta's bones are so tired, and the thunder is rumbling overhead, and he can only muster enough energy for a murmur. He tips his head closer, resting his forehead against Wilson's cheek.
"It's not stupid. I don't even think about how many people I've killed." Wilson flinches, a movement so sudden in the sleepy quiet of the storm that it's almost violent, but at the same time his grip tightens around Vanta's wrist. It hurts in a good way. "I'm serious. Honestly, I don't give a fuck about it. That's stupid."
"We're different. I was hired to kill people. You might've killed people that stood in your way," Wilson retorts which… is mostly true, Vanta concedes. "My hands– they're a killer's hands." He doesn't sound upset. Just tired, just resigned.
Vanta looks at Wilson's hands. Slender dexterous fingers, short nails with unmanicured beds, and calloused palms that are always bigger than Vanta expects them to be. "Better than my hands," he says, and he means it. "My hands hurt all the fucking time."
Wilson squeezes Vanta's wrist again. "I think the scars on your hands are dope."
"Yeah?" Vanta laughs. "Don't feel very dope now."
Wilson shifts his hold, bringing his thumbs to the base of Vanta's knuckles, kneading at the joints and the tender flesh right below. It's a familiar technique, though not as refined in Wilson's hands. Still, his shoulders unwind, and an exhale leaves his lungs at the relief.
"Has Zali given you any medicine for the pain? Or has he just done the massages."
"Regular tylenol helps, and I don't need Zali for that," Vanta explains. Wilson hums his response, moving to the next digit. "But mostly it's about waiting out the storm and the barometric pressure."
Wilson hums again. They're both sitting cross-legged, shins pressed flush together. Vanta thinks of the kids he sees on the playground weaving daisy-chains and playing patty-cake. He thinks about the cold, white lights of the Fortress where he was raised and how they're honestly not that different to the lights in the training room and the rest of A.S.H.'s facilities.
But the Fortress didn't have Wilson and his kind hands.
"Did Zali teach you how to do this?" Vanta drops his head to Wilson's shoulder. The fabric of Wilson's suit is nylon like the compression bands.
"He did. He said it'd be good to know in case he wasn't there to help you." Wilson's thumbs press into the center of Vanta's palms and dig towards the base of his thumb.
Through a shaking sigh of relief, Vanta breathes, "I don't give a fuck if it's a hitman or a healer doing this to me. It helps either way, got that? It helps so much. Before, when a storm came in–"
Vanta forces himself to stop talking. He doesn't have the words to describe it. Pain, yes, and technically just pain, not even the worst pain that he had ever experienced. If he tried to quantify that pain in words, he'd just talk himself into circles, and it would go nowhere, and it wouldn't really help Wilson at all.
The storms just had a way of settling into his cartilage and tendons. He felt each crack of lightning in his joints. He felt each drop of rain in his marrow. The wind rattled a chill through his bones. He was so cold, and so tired, and he had to put himself back together by himself.
Wilson's motions don't stop, nor do they falter, but Wilson is quiet for a very long time. Eventually, when he's moved onto Vanta's other hand, the silence gets too much and Vanta blurts, "But let's be real here, Zali has absolutely killed a man before. Probably stabbed them in the head with his fuckin' heels."
Wilson still doesn't reply. But he laughs, and then he gasps, "Oh, Vanta, look…!"
Vanta lifts his head and turns to the window. There's a break in the clouds, golden light spilling through the gray and refracting through the droplets that cling to the glass. There's a flash of lightning in the distance, but it's engulfed by the sunlight, a barely noticeable blip on the horizon.
"It broke…" Wilson whispers.
"That was fast." Vanta looks down at his hands and his thigh, at the bag full of compression gear that he's been lugging around since he checked the forecast that morning. He feels vaguely embarrassed. "Well. Guess I didn't need any of this."
He goes to take off a glove. Wilson stops him. "You should keep it on if it helps," he says, something oddly firm in his voice. It doesn't leave Vanta with much room to argue.
Of course, Vanta still tries, because who is he if he's not arguing with Wilson? But when he opens his mouth, instead of a retort what he says is, "Do you want to go get some tea with me?"
Wilson's eyes crinkle with a smile. "Sure," he says, and he already sounds so much lighter. "But you should probably put some pants on first."
Ah. Vanta had forgotten about that. "Kinda gay of you to be holding my hand while I'm down to my undies, Willy," he teases entirely on instinct.
Without missing a beat, Wilson fires back, "You were wearing gloves, we've got nothing to worry about."
When Vanta cackles, Wilson's face shines brighter than the rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds.