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Ten minutes ago, he'd thought counting the bits of gravel as he picked them out of his bloodied skin would be a useful occupation. Keep his mind sharp, or whatever. It would also distract him from much the entire process of cleaning up a road rash fucking sucked.
The resolve hadn't lasted long. Wolfwood had lost count somewhere in the fifties and, worse yet, he still had a long way to go. The wound on his side was barely half-cleaned and for some reason his fingers weren't working right. Whatever short-circuiting had been done to his healing processes at the Eye to try and speed them up hadn't been an exact science. Something had misfired somewhere in the last few days and the fingers on his right hand were numb and clumsy.
He drops the tweezers, again, right as the knob on the bathroom door handle rattles for real. He'd thought he'd heard it faintly before, like someone who'd touched it just enough to find it was locked and let go, but now it's real, and unmistakably impatient. And it isn't Vash's idiotic voice that calls through the door, or Milly's sweet one, but—“Are you going to be in there much longer?”
Because it's Meryl, who is possessed of the lowest patience threshold of anyone he's ever met in however many years he's been breathing on this planet, Wolfwood gets up and yanks the door open for her. The bathroom is cramped enough he hardly has to take a few steps to reach the door. “Do whatever ya need and be quick about it, 'cause I ain't gettin’ out of your way.” He stalks back to the bathtub to sit, flinging an arm wide to gesture to the sink and toilet both.
When he looks back up after finding the damn tweezers, Meryl is standing at the doorway with a makeup tin in hand and a distinctly wrinkled nose. “First of all, gross.” She rolls her eyes and steps into the bathroom, shutting the door with her foot as she sets the tin down on the counter. “Second of all, do you want help with that?”
She's pointing to his wound, visible with his shirt unbuttoned and him picking at it so much. “I got it, 's fine,” he grumbles, a statement undercut by him dropping the tweezers again and swearing.
“Doesn't look like you've got it.” Her tone isn't mocking, just matter of fact.
“Listen, pipsqueak, I didn't ask for a peanut gallery—”
“And you never ask for help, either, so sue me if I thought maybe I should offer so you didn't have to!” Meryl throws her hands up in irritation. “I've got steady hands and small fingers. My guns are small. They're a pain to clean if you're not good at detail work, which I am. That's what, gravel? No problem. I could do it all day. Unless you want to sit here for another hour and a half, let me.”
His only answer is shoving the tweezers away from himself and gesturing roughly to the unoccupied space next to him on the rim of the tub. Meryl takes a towel from the bar with several hanging and, though she squints with distaste at the slightly yellowed whiteness of it, folds it primly for some cushioning and sits.
He has to admit she's better suited to the task than he was. She certainly makes quick work of it, plucking carefully and clinically, like she'd promised. The pile of grit in the tub steadily grows.
“Pretty good at that.” He can give her something.
“Milly's nieces and nephews get a lot of scrapes, when we visit. Roughhousing, exploring, you know how kids are. Not like this is any different.”
He's seen Meryl talk to children they meet on the road, now and then. She doesn't have the same cheerful ease with them Milly has, but she treats them like little adults, owed the same respect as real ones, and it seems like they like that. If he reaches back into his memories of the orphanage—and it isn't like his childhood is as far back in his memories as he'd like; his stomach swims sickly at the thought—he can recall appreciating the adults who didn't bullshit him.
“Yeah, well.” He should probably bristle at being compared to roughhousing children, but he's too tired. “Thanks.”
“Whatever. I'm only helping because I wanted to take my makeup off and get to bed.” Meryl sighs to herself and flicks her eyes briefly, longingly, to the tin on the counter before turning back to his wound. “I don't even know how Vash and Milly have the energy for a late dinner.”
Vash is the reason he's sitting here in the first place, since his weight had thrown the bike off balance and pitched them both over on some back road. Vash's long coat had spared him from the same fate, and while he had apologized profusely on the road itself, his growling stomach had won out at the inn and he'd taken off with Milly for dinner.
He should probably still feel irritated at Vash, but whatever frustration remains is faint. The truth is, he's damn tired. Tired of tending his own wounds and his body being fucked up and barely remembering his own age or where he comes from.
“—want something?” Meryl is saying, when his thoughts drift back to her. “I’m too tired to want to eat much but Milly'd worry if I didn't so I thought about asking the innkeeper if they've got anything… if you… wanted…”
The thought of owing her anything more than he already does sets him on edge. It'll be easier to go to bed hungry and let sleep—even sleep broken by nightmares, which seems to be the only kind he gets lately—distract him from the hours that need to pass until breakfast. He grunts a no.
Meryl doesn't look like she wants to accept it, but she keeps her focus on the tweezers and doesn't argue. The irritable tension that had been bunched in her shoulders before seems to have faded, and he can't help but remark on it. “Ya look like you're enjoying this.”
“I kind of am. The tedious stuff, the stuff nobody else wants to do… I love it.” Faintly, she shrugs. “It's fine if you think that's stupid. Pretty much everyone else does.”
“Different strokes, I guess.” For some reason he can't agree with her it's stupid, even if he can't imagine liking this kind of work. It feels too practiced, her playing off something she enjoys as strange, worth dismissing. “Big girl probably doesn't think so.”
“Yeah. She doesn't. She likes the big picture, so she's happy leaving all this to me. That's why we're a good team.”
They lapse into silence as Meryl keeps at it. He’d slump down with exhaustion if he could, but since he can’t, he closes his eyes and puts his energy into staying upright. A day on the bike hadn’t been great for his already-shitty posture.
Normally, he hates being so exhausted his thoughts start to drift. Distraction is never the kind of thing he can afford. Distraction was the sort of thing that could get him killed, not that he’s sure a body as fucked-with as his can even die in the first place. Normally, he’d snap himself back into awareness somehow. But there’s no need for him to do that, because—
“Shit!” he bursts out, as the tweezers pinch particularly hard, as Meryl yanks her hand away in surprise and pulls some skin with it. “Watch it, would ya?!”
“I’m sorry!” Meryl snaps, setting the tweezers down hard on the porcelain. “We’re nearly done! That one was just lodged in a bit further and I thought—”
“Save it.” He’s sick of this anyway. “Get the last shit out and be quick about it.”
“Look, if it hurts—” He can tell, from the sound of her voice, Meryl is actually concerned. It’s not something he’s used to, from her. Milly shows that kind of thing, overtly and often, but when it comes to him and Vash, Meryl’s annoyed, more often than not. It’s not like he thinks she’s incapable of caring about him, but it was a hell of a lot easier when he could convince himself she didn’t.
“‘m not a weakling, pipsqueak. Get on with it.” Before she can protest, he bites the inside of his cheek to brace himself.
If he tastes blood by the time she pulls the last piece of grit out, all he really has to do is swallow it back and move on.
He’s about to do just that, pressing both hands down against the porcelain to start hauling himself up, but Meryl drops the tweezers and says, unexpectedly steely, “Sit. Sit back down,” she repeats, louder, when he tries to ignore her. “You can’t just shrug it off and get out of here. That needs washing and cleaning, and ointment—”
“Can do it myself.” With the tedious part over with, the easy shit isn’t a problem, if he can just get her to leave him alone. For all he knows, this is the sort of thing his body will have shaken off by tomorrow, and he won’t need to do a thing. His healing doesn’t always require a vial; he can brush off more minor annoyances he’s sometimes even grateful not to have to deal with anymore.
Grateful as long as he doesn’t spare a thought to the reasons why.
Meryl leans past him to turn one of the knobs, releasing water into the tub to wash away the grit. That done, she twists it firmly back off and crosses her arms, her own posture as perfect as his isn’t.
“You know, I used to do the same kind of thing you do. It drove Milly crazy. You know her, she’s not the type to start a fight, but eventually she couldn’t deal with it anymore. Asked me why I could never just let anyone help if I got hurt. It wasn’t like I knew the answer. I’d just gotten used to it, a long time ago. Maybe you have the same problem. I don’t know. If you shove me off again, I’m not going to argue with you. But I’m probably going to enjoy saying I told you so when you have to admit you need help, somewhere down the line.”
It's the thought of the absolute glee she would take in that that makes him sit back down.
“Stubborner than anybody I ever met, if ya didn't know,” he grumbles, as Meryl comes back into the room later with a first aid kit in hand.
“I'll take the compliment.”
He sits by as she washes, cleans, and dresses the wound, watching her hands—and they're soft hands, a contrast to Milly's, callused from farm work—gradually become dirtied. Someone who walks around the desert in a pristine white outfit isn't the person he'd expect to be willing to get her hands dirty to help, but there's a certain determination to her now, like she'd started a job and she'd be damned if she didn't see it through and finish it. She looks pleased with herself once she's done, as she stands back up and rolls her neck in a stretch.
“Now that you won't die of a preventable infection, and you're welcome, by the way… I'm going to take off my makeup.” She steps over to the counter and scrubs her hands thoroughly clean for a few minutes, as he stands with a faint groan and the feel of one of his knees popping.
“Thanked ya earlier,” he points out, because he shouldn't have to again.
“I'll cherish the memory.” It's mocking, to be sure, but there's something like kindness in it. And in how she'd fished two painkillers out of the first aid kit and set them on the counter for him.
He leans over to grab them on his way out, and this close to her, he catches the scent of whatever's in the tin she'd brought in with her, whatever she's putting on her face to remove her makeup. The scent of it freezes him in his tracks, so close to her she takes a half-step away, and he'd hear her indignant protest about her personal space if his ears weren't crowded with—
“Nicholaaaaasss!” A soft, teasing lilt to the voice he's most accustomed to on the whole planet. Gentle fingers prying his apart, to remove a shiny metal tube from them, tempting and gold and patterned with red flowers. “That's Mommy's. You know that's not for playing!”
He hadn't had the words to respond back then, merely burbled happily as he was taken in her arms and cradled close moments later, close to that same scent, clean, faintly flowery, like—
—Meryl. “Nicholas?” she's saying softly, worriedly. A hand is on his arm he doesn't have it in him to shake off. Her face is clean now; there's a dirtied washcloth laid on the counter next to the tin.
“Are you… okay?” she tries again, when he doesn't respond. He fumbles for the tin, but his numbed fingers can't quite get a grasp on it, and besides that it tells him nothing; there's no words on it, no brand name, just a floral design and solid colors.
“What's this?” he asks hoarsely, his throat tighter, fuller, than he'd expected when he tries to speak. “This stuff, what is it?”
“It's just cold cream. It's how I take off my makeup.” The worry from before has turned to confusion. “What's that got—”
But he can't give her an answer, not yet. Finally he grasps the tin, and stumbles backwards, sitting heavily down on the closed lid of the toilet. He can't get a full breath in, which feels so stupid. He'd thought this would be a relief, not a punch to the gut, a resurfacing of memories he barely knew he still had.
He's been after the scent for years, like the world's most determined and least successful hunting dog. As a child, entrusted with money for errands by Miss Melanie, he'd ducked into perfume sections of general stores, when he'd been sure the other kids wouldn't find him and mocked him. He'd only ever ended up with headaches and skin itching from too much fragrance. Even as an adult, or some freakish approximation of one, he'd sometimes given in to the urge to check yet again, even as he'd fought the thought that as the years passed without any luck, finding that one scent—one of the only things he could recall with any clarity about the parents who'd birthed him—would be increasingly unlikely.
He's crying. That registers when he realizes Meryl has dragged the folded towel from earlier over to the other side of the tub and she's sitting so close their knees are knocking together. She's reached out and is awkwardly patting his leg, gradually raising her hand as if to squeeze his shoulder, before clearly thinking better of it and dropping her hand back down. “I'm sorry,” she says after a moment, sighing to herself. “I'm really not any good at this…”
“'s fine.” He swipes roughly at his eyes, hears her wince at him using his always-dirtied sleeve for that. He tries to shove the tin back in her direction, but she awkwardly closes her hand around his and lowers it back to his lap, his fingers fidgeting around it.
“It… it smells like someone you knew once, doesn't it?” she asks tentatively. When he doesn't answer her she says, more quietly, “Your mother, probably? … Did—did she die?”
Wolfwood isn't sure what sound he makes that she takes as a yes, just that she nods distantly and sits on her hands. It's a strangely anxious gesture from her, but then, she'd been right; she was clearly ill at ease with offering comfort.
“That orphanage you raise money for… is it where you grew up?”
He nods roughly, just once. Meryl breathes out and rocks back a bit, though not far enough to tip back and fall into the tub.
“Milly should really be here.” A faint laugh that sounds almost bitter. “She's a lot better than me at family things. Mom things.”
“Don't got one?” It's a shitty way to ask, but he'd rather pick at someone else's wound than his own.
“Oh, I've got one. We're… estranged is the right word, I guess, but sometimes I think it's more… like we're incompatible. She'd probably be a good mom to the right kind of daughter. And I'm not that, so…”
When he looks over, briefly, he sees her shoulders have slumped, that she's staring down at her bare feet on the faded old bathroom rug. From where he sits he can see her toes are neatly polished, every inch of her as neatly maintained as he'd always figured. But that doesn't seem to have done anything for the defeated slump to her shoulders that had snuck in the moment she'd mentioned her mother.
“Shitty luck,” he offers quietly, and she smiles. It's feeble.
“You, too.”
The tin is still resting in his lap. He can't bring himself to try and hand it back to her again; he really hadn't wanted to let go of it in the first place.
“Don't have many memories.” He's not sure he's ever said that out loud. At the orphanage, he'd either tried to avoid the topic or, in his worst moments, swung in the other direction and boasted he had plenty. “Wasn't much older'n a year when they…”
“You lived in December?” Meryl asks. He gives her another nod, short and sharp.
“Was it… the fever outbreaks a while back?” Meryl's hands are in her lap now, fidgeting a bit. “My parents sent aid back then… my mom because that was the done thing, in her circles… but my dad, he had friends there. … I'm… I'm sorry. Losing one's bad enough, but both…” She shifts her weight, her knees brushing into his once more. “I'm not saying anything you haven't already heard, am I.”
“You'd be surprised.” He means that. Plenty of folks passing through the orphanage had offered empty platitudes of it all being such a shame, even as they'd consistently brushed off the children old enough to understand those words. It was the babies most of them wanted, not the older children, with personalities of their own and bad dreams and loneliness to spare.
“Been lookin’ a while for that scent.” He forces out the words. “Didn't realize it was somethin’... regular. … Didn't mean to—”
“It's fine,” Meryl cuts in, before he can finish. “I'm glad you know now.”
He is, too. He doesn't want to say it feels like some of the hollow core of him has been filled back in now, because who knows if that feeling will last. Maybe she won't even get it if he does put words to it, with how she feels about her own mother. So he stays silent.
For want of something to do he dry swallows the painkillers he'd forgotten about. And Meryl sits with him, a few minutes longer. They both know Vash and Milly will probably be back sooner rather than later, that they'd be confused to see the two of them sitting together in the bathroom connecting the two rooms they'd rented for the night, one for the girls and one for him and Vash. Still, she doesn't move. She doesn't try to touch him again, doesn't offer anything so tangible. But she doesn't move.
When she rises, finally, she says something quiet, something about maybe asking after that food she'd mentioned earlier, if he's changed his mind. His head is still spinning with the upheaval of the last few hours, so he doesn't think she minds that he doesn't give her an answer either way, this time.
Now, at least, his fingers cooperate slightly better. She's halfway to the door when he gets a grip on the tin and calls, finally, “Short Stuff. Forgot your—”
Meryl turns back, her gaze softer than he's ever seen, but not pitying. He'd never have been able to stomach that. She looks tired, to be sure, but sympathetic. Kind.
“You keep it.” The smile she gives him is faint, like it's all she has to offer, and they both know it isn't. “I can get more, whichever general store we pass through next. … Good night, Wolfwood. We’ll see you in the morning.”
His throat is tight, like before, but somehow, his heavy heart is the slightest bit lighter.
“Yeah. G'night.”