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Wolfwood had once heard Jessica talking about the way this place had been, back when she’d been sent to find Vash to save Home from Leonof’s invasion.
Heard, because he hadn’t asked her himself, of course. Meryl had, and Jessica had launched into a story of how dark and sad the place had seemed. That, of course, Vash had seemed well cared for enough physically, but there was a heaviness there that she’d had a hard time ignoring, even with the stress she was already under knowing what was happening on Ship 3.
Maybe not exactly her words, but Wolfwood had inferred enough, listening to the back and forth between her and Meryl, the prompting questions opening up more answers he didn’t think any of them could really stomach hearing. He’d ground out the butt of his cigarette and left the girls to their reporting and story-gathering. He hadn’t needed the nitty-gritty details on the depths of depression Vash had been wallowing in while he was squirrelled away, being ‘cared for’ by Hoppered. Back then, on that afternoon when he’d overheard the story, the more pressing thing had been keeping Vash from falling into that hole again. It had been a task that was taking up a lot of his time.
Now, things were a little easier, and the house seemed, maybe, like it was brighter than it would have been then. Maybe, with the windows open, and the constant coming and going of the gaggle of them that cared about him, the heaviness hadn’t been able to creep in entirely and pull Vash down into whatever pit seemed like it was always waiting for him to fall in.
“Hey, needle-noggin.”
The nickname wasn’t quite so fitting, right now, but his fallback of ‘blondie’ fit even less, so it would have to do. Four and a half months after everything that had happened over Octovern, Vash’s hair was already longer, worn down, strands falling around his face, slipping out from where they’d been tucked behind his ear when he looked up at Wolfwood from where he was curled on his side in the bed. There was a book on the sheets beside him, something that had come from the fleet ships, Wolfwood thought. They were always bringing him things like that, the others. Something to keep his mind occupied. All Wolfwood brought was...
“Wolfwood.”
It didn’t matter how many times he heard his name said in that soft, warm way. It kept hitting him in that spot that had opened up in the valley under the orphanage and never quite closed. He suspected, from the way Vash smiled, he knew.
Bastard.
“You didn’t bring the Punisher today.”
Closing the book, Vash rolled away, towards the edge of the bed, setting it aside, before rolling back and patting the mattress in invitation.
“No point in lugging that thing around just to come see you. Besides, Livio’s more than happy to keep an eye on it for me.” Sitting at the edge of the bed, Wolfwood twisted, propping his knee next to himself so he could look down at Vash while he spoke. “Think it makes him happy to have a responsibility. You been out of bed today?”
It was a dumb question. Vash was grieving, sure, he was coming to terms with how things had ended with his brother, and the revelations that had come along with that, but he was doing all right. All things considered, really, he was doing better than should’ve been expected. Luida probably would have checked in on him this morning, and if not her, Brad, and if not him, Meryl, Milly, or Jessica. They were all doing their part to make sure he wasn’t left alone to fall into his grief and drown.
“Yes,” Vash answered, and there was a fake note of long-suffering in his voice that had nothing to do with his actual suffering, and everything to do with the fact that no one would let him wallow destructively, and he didn’t want to say exactly that, but he was grateful for it. “The girls were here earlier, making sure I ate, dropping off that book, telling me it was supposed to rain today.”
He smiled, shifting on the bed until he could rest his head on one of the pillows. The blackened strands against the stark white pillowcase were something Wolfwood was still getting used to, even now.
“I’d hoped it would be you.”
There he went, again, sending direct hits to that gaping open wound Wolfwood still hadn’t figured out how to close. Never mind that he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Not with the way every hit like that filled him with warmth.
“Sorry. You managed without me here to protect you, though. Still in one piece.”
“Barely.”
Vash reached out, his normal hand curling around Wolfwood’s sleeve and tugging. It was as clear of a request as anything, and Wolfwood didn’t need to be told twice. Standing, he tossed his sunglasses onto the banged up little side table, and toed off his shoes, leaving them at the side of the bed before he climbed onto it properly, laying down with his head on the other pillow, facing Vash.
The bed wasn’t really big enough for this, and they’d found that out on mornings and afternoons and late nights plenty before today, but that hadn’t stopped them yet. Their knees bumped, and there wasn’t anywhere to put their arms where their hands didn’t brush.
They’d long since gotten past that, though. Vash’s fingers brushed his, and Wolfwood flipped his palm over, letting Vash trace one fingertip, slow, over the curve of one of the lines there. It was quiet, between them, for a few minutes, the only sounds each of their slow, calm breaths, and the rustle of the sheets when Wolfwood moved, ankle hooking over Vash’s.
All this, and yet...
“I’ve been thinking.”
Vash’s eyes, big and blue, looked up at him, unspoken question asking him to go on. His hand stilled, fingers laying against Wolfwood’s palm, little finger pressed to his pulse point.
Wolfwood swallowed.
“About that day. I know, all you do is hang out here, day in and day out, and you think about it, too. And you’re carrying a hell of a lot more than I am, and before you interrupt me...”
Vash pressed his lips together. They’d parted, a second ago, and he’d taken a breath. They’d both known what argument was coming. How Wolfwood had nearly died that day.
How Wolfwood had nearly died that day, as well as Vash.
They’d been over it. They’d laid in this bed, and they’d paced in this room, and they’d talked and they’d yelled and Wolfwood had left in a huff just to come back in five minutes later and pick up where they’d left off, albeit in a more measured tone, barely keeping himself from raising his voice again. They had shared whole days and nights going over and over all of it. Everything from the wreck site, from the moment Legato had shown up, from the moment they’d been put into that situation, from the moment everything had gone black for Wolfwood for a few awful, terrible, horrifying moments.
He hadn’t been gone, not entirely. He’d understood that. Vash had understood that, even if it had taken him a lot longer to get up off the ground and continue on, knowing that.
But it had happened. They had gone through it.
Wolfwood knew now that the noise he’d heard, the loud crack in what had become tormenting silence, had been the sound of Vash putting his ideals aside for him. For his life. He’d gotten so accustomed to the sound of Vash’s gun firing, and when he’d heard it, when he’d dimly understood why it had gone off, consciousness a liquid thing slipping through his fingers, he hadn’t quite believed it.
For him, in the end, Vash had chosen to pull that trigger and end Legato’s life. Maybe the bullet hadn’t hit its target, but Vash could hardly be blamed for the decisions his brother made, or the way he’d chosen to intervene at that moment.
It didn’t change that Vash had done it. They’d been over and over that, things getting heated, Wolfwood knowing he was playing with fire when it came to the yawning abyss of Vash’s self-torment, just waiting to swallow him the second he was pushed too far. He thought Vash understood that he got it. That it had struck home. He hadn’t expected Vash to compromise his ideals for him, but he had, and that had changed things.
He’d never once said exactly that, because the idea of dragging those words kicking and screaming out of his chest of his own accord was daunting, to say the least, but he was sure he’d gotten the point across. By now.
“Thing is…”
This was somehow the hard part.
Wolfwood could spend hours here with Vash, fighting about things. Fighting about hesitation, and choices, and ideals, and self-hatred, and blame, and, hell, what Vash was going to eat, and whether or not Wolfwood was staying the night. That was never hard. They had an easy dialogue, a pattern that they had stepped into. They knew the rhythm of the arguments, and the way, eventually, they would compromise. They just needed to go through the motions first.
But, this. A conversation like this one was always hard.
It wasn’t the first he’d tried to start. It might not be the last. There was no promise that today the words would work, that he could coax them out without locking up, and just say it.
“Thing is?”
Vash’s voice was quiet, prompting Wolfwood out of his own head and back into the moment. The light was shifting outside the windows, throwing shadows over the two of them.
Wolfwood had made Livio promise to keep everyone away, today. He needed to make the words work, this time. He couldn’t ask Livio to do it again, it would get suspicious. People – by which he meant Meryl and Milly, mostly – would ask questions. Get nosy. Get in his business. It had to be today.
Even if only to stop Livio from asking ‘well?’ in that too eager, too hopeful puppy dog way of his. He thought this would all just go over no problem. Like Wolfwood wasn’t baring his heart and asking someone who loved so much, who gave all of himself to everyone he knew, if he, Nicholas D Wolfwood, could be more. If he was completely off if he was thinking, maybe, he was already edging towards that.
He’d not even worded it to Livio like that, but Livio got it. When Wolfwood had said ‘I really need to talk to Vash’, he’d just nodded, barely giving Wolfwood a glance before saying, ‘yeah, Nico. You do.’
So, he needed to.
Today.
“Thing is… uh.”
Should he try sitting up for this?
Almost like Vash read his mind, the hand resting on his shifted, pressing in, Vash’s thumb sliding between two of Wolfwood’s fingers. Keeping him where he was.
“We’ve talked about it,” Wolfwood said, finally. His own voice sounded weird in his ears. Lower than normal. More careful. This close, there was no looking away from Vash’s eyes, no missing the focus there while he listened. All of his attention, undivided, on Wolfwood. “That day. Over and over. What you did, what I did. What happened.”
The corner of Vash’s mouth twitched, and Wolfwood frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing!” Vash answered, quick. “I’m just listening.”
Wolfwood rolled his eyes, instinctively squeezing back when Vash squeezed his hand in prompting. Go on. Stop stalling.
“So, right, the thing is, everything could have gone wrong that day, and I never would have told you…”
There it was. Not so much a lump in his throat as an entire brick. A blockade stopping the words, because what was he supposed to say? How did he put the full weight of all of this into easy words? It seemed easy, if terrifying, when he’d laid awake last night, spinning the lines over and over in his head, tweaking them. Now, laying here with Vash actually listening to him? Maybe he would have rather taken on Midvalley blind again.
Wolfwood cleared his throat.
“You mean something. And I know, I know, we’ve all been telling you that. You hear it constantly, and I don’t know if you’re actually hearing it but you mean something.” Just get it out. How the hell was this harder than talking about taking metaphorical bullets for each other? “To me.”
Vash’s mouth twitched again, but this time he didn’t try to mask it, to school his face back into something that was purely listening to the words and not reacting to them. He inhaled, a little sharper, his eyes searching Wolfwood’s face like he was looking for a sign this was something else.
Keep going.
“And I guess I’ve known it for a while. Years, actually, but I didn’t really know, you know? Because I wasn’t thinking about it, I was just thinking about finding you, and being with you. Staying with you, I guess, fighting for that, and it didn’t really make sense until it did. Until I almost died.”
“The first time.”
The light outside had changed enough that there was only scant sunlight coming in, now. The girls must have been right that rain was coming. The slim sun there was, though, was coming through the dusty glass, hitting the right side of Vash’s face just right, lighting up the blue of his eye like fire when Wolfwood met it.
Wolfwood hadn’t been focusing, facing Vash but not really seeing him, and he’d started rambling, but now he was looking properly. Taking in the way those eyes were watching him, the slight curve of Vash’s mouth.
Vash knew.
“We didn’t talk about it, at the orphanage, did we?” He asked, hand adjusting in Wolfwood’s again. Tightening his grip, like he was worried Wolfwood might try to run off.
It was an understandable concern.
“No.”
Wolfwood wanted to say that there hadn’t been time. They’d been too preoccupied by their next moves, and maybe that was true, but he’d known what he’d been feeling, every night. Every moment that he’d woken up to find Vash next to him, awake himself, or half-dozing, one hand always reached out, touching his side.
“There was too much else to focus on,” Vash filled in. “And then at the wreck site…”
Wolfwood took a breath.
“I hadn’t said anything. I couldn’t put that on you, when things were the way they were. And, you know what, needle-noggin, maybe it’s not fair, and I shouldn’t be saying it now, but if I don’t, I think I’m going to actually lose it. I can’t be near you without thinking about how close we got to not having the chance. It was always ‘tomorrow’, and we almost didn’t have a tomorrow to fall back on.”
He took a breath. It felt like he needed it, like he wouldn’t be able to get steady without it.
“So… you mean something to me, and I can’t… I won’t ask you to say anything, or to tell me…”
The hand that had been holding his let go, Vash’s fingers pressing to his lips, his mouth forming a little ‘ssh’.
For once, Wolfwood was obedient and listened to that.
“It’s not like you to ramble,” Vash said, finally, and there was something in his tone that sounded lighter. “Man of carefully chosen words, my Wolfwood.”
That gaping, damning wound warmed.
“I know. How couldn’t I know? You were there for me, you came after me. You looked for me for years, and you’re still here now. You don’t have to be. None of you do, but you, after everything - I’m going to tell you no interrupting, now.”
Vash’s fingers had pressed firmer, pinching Wolfwood’s lips shut. No arguments. No interjections. He’d said his piece, now Vash got his turn.
Fair enough.
“You know, I think even Legato knew.”
It was jarring, to actually hear that name right now, in this moment, from Vash’s mouth, but Wolfwood couldn’t talk with those shushing fingers to his lips, so he kept his thoughts to himself.
“That’s why he did what he did. He could have forced me any way he liked, but it was you. He knew that, for you, I would…”
The unsaid hung between them. It didn’t need to be spoken. They’d already done that song and dance without getting nearly this close to the crux of it. It felt good to be arriving here, finally. Maybe it had been where they’d been trying to get to, all along.
Vash’s fingers slipped from his face, and he reached up. Softly, his fingers carded through Wolfwood’s hair. White now, rather than the black it had been when this had all started, a perfect opposite to Vash’s. Gently, those fingers drifted down, curling in the hair at the base of Wolfwood’s neck. Guiding him forward, while Vash leaned in.
His lips pressed, soft and sweet, to Wolfwood’s forehead. Then his cheek. Vash’s nose brushed his, and, easy, like breathing, Wolfwood tilted his chin up, catching Vash’s lips in something slow, and quiet, and theirs.
When he pulled away, that wound inside him - was it really a wound, or was it more a mark, something showing him as loved? - felt the best it had, yet. Better, maybe, when Vash shifted in, nudging his head under Wolfwood’s chin, hand pressing at his shoulder until he was laying on his back with Vash curled around him, head pillowed on his chest.
Outside the window, the raindrops finally hit, quiet and soothing. It felt right, like the sky was opening up, the same as he had. Solidarity. If he looked into that too much, he might start to get worked up.
“You mean something to me, too,” Vash said, his voice rumbling against Wolfwood’s heart. “You know. Something.”
There was a meaningful, teasing tone to the word. Neither of them needed to say what it was a placeholder for. They could feel it. Those words could get tried out later, when Wolfwood hadn’t already exhausted himself with the particulars of pronouncing ‘something’ like it had significant weight.
“Yeah,” Wolfwood replied, closing his eyes. Might as well exercise it a little more. “Think we’re really something, aren’t we?”
Vash’s answer was a quiet laugh, something that wrapped itself around Wolfwood’s heart like armour.
“Think so.” His fingers tapped on Wolfwood’s chest, and then he added, “You should stay the night.”
Wolfwood drifted his fingers through the soft, long strands of Vash’s hair, letting the feeling of Vash curled against him sink in, something like peace settling into his bones with every breath he felt against his own ribs. They’d laid side by side in this bed before, and maybe that was why this talk had felt so long coming, but it had never felt like this.
They’d fought hard enough to be here. He had fought hard enough to stay. This was where he belonged.
“Sure, Vash. Whatever you want.”