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Vash floated on cloud nine.
His body ached in the best of ways; when he stretched like a big feline, feet sliding over the cool sheets he felt his joints pop and he groaned. He buried his face in the pillow which was pleasantly cool for once and hummed happily.
He could feel the warm beam of sunlight hitting him in the back just right, almost making him purr like the cat Wolfwood always called him.
Speaking of Wolfwood.
Vash frowned, eyes still closed as he felt with his human hand around the bed, but instead of encountering another warm body it was all cool sheets.
Then he heard a chuckle and a soft click of a lighter and that familiar Tabacco smell hit his nose, making it scrunch.
He relaxed immediately, when it dawned on him that Wolfwood didn’t leave. He knew he wouldn’t, instinctively. Wolfwood wasn’t that kind of guy to have one-night stands with someone not to mention one-night stands that he also regretted later.
But some small, stupid voice always made Vash anxious and on alert whenever the possibility of something like this loomed in the distance.
“Morning,” he mumbled, still nuzzling his pillow and inhaling that cigarette smoke.
A heavy hand dropped on top of his head and ruffled his hair - a bird’s nest at this point.
“Morning Spikeyhead.”
Vash huffed as if offended but he angled his head so Wolfwood’s hand slid along his skull and card through his hair just the way he liked.
“Nn, are you smoking already?”
“Yup.”
Vash hummed.
“That can’t be good for your health.”
There was a pause punctuated by a soft breathing sound of Wolfwood exhaling smoke from his lungs.
“It’s fine.”
Vash didn’t say anything, simply enjoyed the gentle petting. He could fall right back asleep like this; it wouldn’t be hard. But they had places to be and he didn’t really have the luxury to just lounge in bed all morning.
With a hum he rubbed at his eye and hid a yawn in his fist. Slowly and with some effort he managed to get his eyes open.
He needed to blink a few times, his gaze slowly focusing and the blurry blobs of color coming more into focus.
A pause.
Mouth dropping open and eyes widened he sat up abruptly. The blanket, he was wrapped in flew to the floor.
“Wolfwood!”
“Jesus what?” Wolfwood jerked back, almost falling off the bed but he managed to catch himself in time. “Don’t scare me like that!”
Vash ignored his protest, as his hands hovered anxiously in the air.
“What happened?”
Wolfwood gave him an odd look, eyebrow raised.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“What happened to your back?” Vash grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around.
Wolfwood’s back was covered in deep welts and scratches. Some of them were still healing, there was blood (although it wasn’t as dramatic as Vash’s brain made it out to be in this moment) and purple and yellow bruises, that looked suspiciously finger shaped.
Vash hesitated but finally brushed the tips of his fingers along one of them. He tried to be gentle but Wolfwood still jumped and hissed, moving away from his touch.
“Ouch! Don’t poke me, will you?”
“What happened?” He repeated the question, taking his hand away and curling it to his chest.
“What do you mean what happened? You happened.”
“Me?”
Wolfwood turned to look at him with a frown.
“Yeah you, who else? I don’t remember fucking someone else last night.”
Vash blushes at that shameless way Wolfwood says it. He ignores his sarcastic quips, his eyes dropping to the mess of welts on his exposed back.
“I did that-,” Vash whispers to himself, feeling horrified.
“Oh Christ it’s just a few scratches.”
Vash tears his eyes away from Wolfwood’s ruined back and meets his gaze with his own disbelieving one.
“Few scratches?” He glances back at the tapestry of his own making. “It looks like you go mauled.”
Wolfwood huffs.
“Not denying that.” He takes a drag of his forgotten cigarette. You’re a little um-”
Vash raises an eyebrow.
“I’m what?”
“Rowdy.” He finally settles on a word and turns his head away from Vash, who doesn’t miss the red tint of his ears.
He stands up with a sigh.
“Wait here,” he instructs and after clothing himself in his own underwear, rummages in his travel bag.
“Oh, come on,” Wolfwood groans when he sees Vash open the old metal box that serves as his first aid kit. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” Vash ignores him as he does a recount of supplies, setting the most needed ones on the bed in front of him. “I’m going to patch you up, whenever you like it or not-, is that a bite mark?”
Wolfwood grunts and rolls his eyes when Vash puts his hands on his shoulder, twisting him so he can examine the wound that looks way too close to actually important veins of his neck keeping Wolfwood alive.
He…he completely doesn’t remember doing something like that last night.
“Yep,” he says and takes a slow drag when Vash looks at him with wide eyes.
“Is it bleeding?”
“It’s not bleeding anymore. You have crazy sharp teeth, Spikey.”
Vash takes his hands away and buries his face in them with an embarrassed and frustrated groan.
Wolfwood just shrugs, completely not taking any pity at Vash’s distress.
“Say something!” Vash whines and punches him in the shoulder. Wolfwood looks contemplative for a moment.
“Can I get dressed finally?”
“No!”
“Alright.” Wolfwood sighs and lets himself be maneuvered with his back to Vash. He grabs his pack of cigs and lights another one while Vash quietly gets to work, wetting a piece of cotton pad with an antiseptic.
He touches one of the welts at the top. Despite being gentle and careful Wolfwood still hisses.
“You know this hurts more than you just clawing at my back like a cat in heat.”
Vash presses the cotton pad a little harder, on purpose and Wolfwood grunts.
“Be quiet,” he chides and Wolfwood obliges.
He smokes in silence interspersed by quiet hisses and grunts as Vash works in patching him up. He doesn’t have enough gauze or band aids so he focuses on the worst of the welts.
Wolfwood might have said it was fine but he did relax and breathed a little sigh of relief when Vash applied the rest of the bruise salve he had on him to some of the more purplish marks.
“There,” he says when he’s done. He quietly puts the tweezers and scissors back into the box and makes a mental note to refill his first aid kit at a nearest pitstop.
“I’m sorry.” He stares at the box in his lap.
There’s a rustle of sheets when Wolfwood turns back to face him.
“For what?” Vash snaps his head up and frowns.
“For hurting you.” Wolfwood snorts and leans towards the bedside table that holds the ashtray to kill his cigarette.
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“You said it hurt.”
“Okay fine it hurt but you didn’t hurt me. You understand?”
Vash ignores him.
“And you don’t even have your serum.”
“So?”
“It’s going to scar.”
“Yeah. Good.”
“What?”
Wolfwood sighs.
“Spikey, do you not understand that you gave me scars that are from something else than violence?”
Vash blinks in utter confusion.
“I don’t-”
“I think it’s awesome.”
Vash frowns.
“Wolfwood.”
“Look.” Wolfwood folds one of his legs under him, getting more comfortable. “I never got any. Scars I mean,” he clarifies.
“The serum heals everything,” he pauses and then huffs out softly. “Everything, except this.”
He taps the side of his head and holds Vash’s gaze so the meaning sinks in.
Wolfwood bites his lip.
“I hope you don’t get this the wrong way but…I envy your scars.”
Vash looks taken aback.
“Wolf-”
“I know. Okay. I know you hate them and you think they’re ugly and you think you deserve them as punishment and all.”
Nick pauses, his brows pulling downwards.
“But it just…it sucks not seeing any evidence of your life at all you know? It doesn’t matter what that life is.” He pauses, looking at his hands. Vash resists the urge to grab them and tell Wolfwood that he’s more than the life that was forced on him. Instead, he sits and listens.
“It’s like you’re just a plain canvas. No past, no present,” he shrugs “No future either. Because everything gets erased by some mad scientists’ magic potion.”
He runs both hands through his hair.
“Thats what I am…was.” He looks at Vash and he has to swallow the sudden lump in his throat.
“They even healed the scars I got as a kid. Did you know I broke my leg open when I was six and had a nasty scar on my leg? Right about here.” He runs a finger over the smooth and unblemished expanse of his calf. “The stich job was shit and it didn’t heal well.”
Vash looks at him in silence.
“Of course you don’t.” Wolfwood shakes his head. “I might as well be making shit up for all you know. And the thing is…I remember that happening. Vividly. But what if that never happened? What if I dreamed it or something? After all I don’t have proof of that anymore.”
It’s like I wasn’t even alive. I was a ghost. Is what he doesn’t say out loud but Vash hears him anyway.
“So, this,” he turns to show a bit of his scarred back, now neatly cleaned up and patched. “Is proof.”
Vash opens his mouth and nothing comes out for a moment. He has to clear his throat to get the words out.
“There are other things that could work as proof.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Wolfwood shrugs. “But I dunno. It’s like you marked me for keeps,” he mumbles and Vash feels his ears turn red. “I love it.”
“Nick-”
“Don’t say sorry. Or I’ll kick your ass.” Vash huffs.
“Okay. I wanted to say um-” he fidgets, suddenly embarrassed for a different reason.
“What?”
“You can do that to me, too.”
“Do what?”
Vash looks at Wolfwood but he can’t say it while looking at him so he averts his eyes quickly.
“Mark me.”
There a very poignant silence after that.
“Spikey.” Wolfwood rubs the bridge of his nose. “I think you have enough of those. You don’t need me adding any there.”
“Well, it’s like you said it yourself? A mark not made by violence.” He smiles slowly and Wolfwood’s eyes widen.
“But by-”
“No.”
“-love and peace,” he finishes with a giggle.
Wolfwood makes a face.
“Dork.”
Vash sneaks a poke to his scared back and he yelps in pain.
“Jesus okay. If you want it so much.”
Vash grins and sets the first aid kit aside and then throws his arms around Wolfowood’s neck and brings him close into a hug.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Nick grumbles, pretending he only returns the embrace because he’s annoyed. “Masochist.”
Vash yelps when he pinches his thigh.
“Hey now! You know I don’t like pain.”
Nick pulls away and appraised Vash’s pout.
“And yet you are asking for it. Kind of hypocritical of you don’t you think.”
“I didn’t ask for pain, I asked for a mark. So we’re even.” Vash tugs at the back of Wolfwood’s hair. His head tilts back, exposing his neck and Vash’s eyes fall on the bitemark. He blushes and feels sudden heat fill his insides but he shakes it off. No time for that now.
Maybe later.
“Oh, shut up,” Nick grumbles, shaking his head and knocking Vahs’s hands away from his hair. He pushes at Vash’s chest so he lands flat on his back on the bed with a squeak that comes both from him and the old bedsprings.
“What are you doing?” he looks up at Wolfwood who looks back critically.
“I changed my mind. I’m gonna bite you now and it’s gonna be full of violence.”
Vash’s eyes widen when Nick dives in but instead of actually biting him he starts tickling his sides.
“NO!” Vash yells at the top of his lungs before breathless giggles are forced out of his throat. “Stop that!” He tries kicking and pushing Nick off him but the man forces all of his bulk on top of him, trapping him successfully.
Vash almost accepts his fate - that he’s going to die like this - when Wolfwood scrapes his teeth over Vash’s collarbone and then bites.
Vash jerks and yelps and finally pushes Wolfwood off him his self-preservation instincts kicking in and trying to save himself from a predator.
Nick loses his balance, yells, grabs whatever he can- which turns to be the sheets Vash got tangled into- and pulls.
They both tumble onto the dirty floor of their motel room.
Nick groans when his bruised back hits the wooden boards, which probably add some extra bruises to his new collection.
“Off.” He groans weakly.
Vash scrambles and then yelps when he hits his forehead against the metal frame of the bed.
Wolfwood sorts and then starts laughing in earnest, his breath wheezy from how much he still hurts.
“Idiot. Get off me.”
Vash whines and finally manages to stand up and he almost trips again over the sheet. Nick snorts as he grabs it and bunches it up in his arms before throwing it onto the bed.
“We need to get dressed.” He glares at the offending cloth like it came alive and wanted to spite him.
Nick shakes his head and without waiting, grabs his toiletries and clothes and locks himself in the bathroom.
He’s packing his things sometime later when Vash comes out of the bathroom.
“What now?” He sighs when Vash scrunches his brows.
“Just-” he takes two steps and then puts his hand on Wolfwood’s collar. He bites his lip, looking at the bitemark.
“Stop that.” Nick slaps his hands away when he pulls at his shirt and starts buttoning it up. “What are you a prude or something?” he grumbles, fixing it so it’s slightly open, his chest peeking from inside its confines.
“People will see.” Vash pouts his cheeks red.
“Good. Let them see.” He fixes his collar. “I ain’t ashamed.”
Vash feels his whole face melt at that. Nick’s brow twitches and he looks away.
“Stop getting all sappy on me.”
“I’m not-” A knock interrupts him, making them both turn their heads in attention.
“Are you guys ready?” Mery asks. “We heard a noise?”
“Yeah,” Nick yells back. “Spikey tripped and fell on his face!”
“Hey!” Vash sputters.
Nick doesn’t bother hiding his grin.
“Okay,” Meryl doesn’t sound the least bit surprised at Wolfwood’s words. “We’ll be in the lobby with Milly and Livio!”
“Sure,” he yells back and then they both hear her shoes thud when she runs down the stairs.
“Chin up needles,” Nick says when Vash is still pouting at him. “You ready?”
“Yes,” Vash sighs and then raises his hand and wiggles his fingers. Nick rolls his eyes but grabs that offered hand in his and laces their fingers together.
“Then let’s go.”