Archive of Our Own ^beta

Wolfwood never finds out who pulled him from the church, who cradled or else dragged his broken, dying body to safety. He only remembers what they told him, in a mind addled by his overdose and preparing itself for death. They’re not through with you yet.

He wakes up a whole week later feeling as though he’s been dragged to hell and back, every muscle on fire and the coppery taste of blood upon his tongue.

“Ah,” someone says at his bedside, voice gruff, and Wolfwood stiffens. He blinks over and over trying to clear the film from his eyes and eventually they focus on a haggard older man, moustache drooping. “Welcome back to the world of the living.”

“Vash?” is the first thing he manages, in a voice barely stronger than a whisper. Roberto huffs around the cigarette.

“Of course you’d decide to wake up only when I’d sent him off for a sleep and shower. He’s barely left your side since he returned from whatever happened with Millions Knives.”

“Whatever happened?” Wolfwood repeats, rasping the syllables. The man before him shrugs, inhaling deeply then tapping the ash into a mug on his bedside table.

“He won’t talk about it. All we know is that Knives is gone. Dead, disappeared - who knows. Vash says he won’t be back, him and his followers.” Roberto shrugs again, clearly unbothered by his absence or end. “That was a week ago. We were starting to think you wouldn’t be back, ‘specially since the doctor we got out here wasn’t too hopeful you’d wake up again.”

Here, Wolfwood realises, is Hopeland Orphanage. He can only lift his head to examine his surroundings for a few seconds before it feels like a cinderblock upon his neck, and he drops it back to the pillow with a moan. “Why here?”

“Easiest place to move you.” Roberto seems more interested in the cigarette than him. “Plus, it was somewhere that would definitely take you. Not everywhere’s hospitable to a guy who’s riddled with bullets and blue from an overdose.”

He stares at the ceiling, spreadeagled and every muscle aching. Trying to think about and figure out what happened proves too difficult, so he chooses not to. Roberto doesn’t seem much in the mood to talk either, but the silence isn’t tense as he smokes and Wolfwood examines the spidery cracks in the plaster above him. “Why are you still here?” he says at last. “Haven’t you got your story?”

“Suppose so.” The man shifts, and Wolfwood feels something pressing against his hand. Looking down, he sees that it’s a bottle of water. “Meryl didn’t exactly want to leave Vash with how he’s been, so we’ve been helping out around here in the meantime. The nuns appreciated the extra hands.”

His brows pull together at his words. Though pain shoots through his body at every movement, he forcibly heaves himself into a sitting position and cracks open the bottle, hands trembling so badly that the water slops over the edges and drips over his chest. At this angle, he can see that swathes upon swathes of bandages are wrapped around it, clinically white against his skin. “What do you mean? How’s Vash been?”

“Bad,” Roberto says flatly. “Not eating. Not sleeping. He perks up a little when the kids force him to play with them, but the second they leave him alone his face goes blank. Like I said, he’s mostly been in here with you.” He pauses. “What did happen with you?”

There’s a chill to his hands, a sour taste in his mouth. Wolfwood replaces the bottle cap and lets it rest against his shoulder, staring sightlessly at the opposite wall. He doesn’t want to imagine what Vash has been doing at his bedside, not when the man’s so damn tender hearted and has enough empathy for two dozen people. He swallows hard and Roberto stands up, wincing at the crack of his knees.

“I’ll let you rest and call the doctor: he’s in the closest village. We’d be best letting Vash sleep, but I’ll send him in when he’s up.” He’s gone before Wolfwood can contemplate thanking him, leaving him to lie back and try to wrap his head around the fact he’s alive.

He shouldn’t be. He was dying, indisputably dying - contract fulfilled, orphanage protected, the venom of the regenerative drug coursing through his veins as his blood soaked through the floorboards of the church. He wasn’t meant to pull it all off and live. Things like that didn’t happen to men like him, who double-crossed whoever he aligned himself with if the other party was offering him a better deal, better protection for the only thing he truly cared about. 

But then there was Vash, who indisputably blurred the line between both those things. His thumb digs into the ridges of the bottle cap, trying to physically ground himself while his mind tries to drift. He got the orphanage, but it doesn’t mean he gets Vash, too.

Wolfwood doesn’t know how long he lies there, contemplating things, heart heavy and every particle of himself aching, but he hears Vash a long time before he sees him. There’s no one else it could be, not with the sound of those clumping footsteps racing down the corridor, skidding over tiles and bodily hitting the wall before the door’s thrown open. The light from the doorway almost blinds Wolfwood, broken only by the man panting within its frame, holding onto it for support as if afraid his knees are about to give in at what’s waiting for him. The first thing he notices is that Vash’s ridiculous hair is limp and lifeless, held back by the huge sunglasses pushed into it like a hairband. They expose his pale, thin face, the shadows beneath his eyes hanging like dark crescent moons, his lips parting at the sight of him -

And then Vash’s face crumples, breath hitching in a sob as he crosses the room to fall to his knees at Wolfwood’s bedside, hands reaching out to cup his face. “Nick,” he gasps and Wolfwood feels frozen in place, rooted to the spot at Vash’s touch upon him. “Nick - you - ”

“Think I was dead, did you?” he rasps, and the tears spill down Vash’s cheeks.

“Don’t - ” He sinks until his forehead is pressed to Wolfwood’s bicep, hands trailing down to splay over the bandages. “Don’t. Please.” A great tremor goes through him, and Wolfwood feels something wet drip over his skin.

“Stop crying, Spikey,” he tells him, instead of well, I should be dead. It takes a huge effort to work his aching muscles as he reaches out, turning to settle his hand over Vash’s shoulder - and, almost imperceptibly, feels Vash stiffen beneath his touch. 

He withdraws at once as if burned. Vash lifts his head, eyes huge, but he doesn’t say anything - and Wolfwood, chest tight, can only focus on the way Vash’s hands are sliding back, coming to clutch in the bedsheets. The only thing to focus on is that his touch seems to have made Vash realise that he doesn’t want his hands on him; that, in the week of his coma and deception being uncovered, Vash has realised he doesn’t want this.

The silence stretches out between them and Wolfwood’s skin itches as Vash takes in a shuddering breath, hands coming to settle on his knees. “Do you think you can eat something? You must be starving. There should be broth in the kitchen - that’ll be easy enough on your stomach, won’t it? Let me get you a bowl - I won’t be long.” He’s gone before Wolfwood can so much as open his mouth, the sound of his clumping footsteps fading by the second.

There’s a numbness to his extremities, hands and feet cold as he forces himself into a sitting position despite the pain the reverbs through his bones. Hunched over himself and breathing hard, he’ll feed himself even if it takes an hour to either lift the broth with shaking hands to his mouth or spill it over himself. Anything, if it means that Vash doesn’t have to throw himself forwards and offer help, just as he always, automatically does. 

It’s one part frustrating to have to recover naturally from his injuries and another part humiliating to be restricted to a slow shuffle along the hallways whenever he has to move, teeth gritted at the pain. Anything faster than that has him doubling over in agony, afraid he’s about to vomit from the intensity of his wounds. The constant supply of drugs that kept him going throughout the years mean that he’s forgotten just how long the healing process is, trying to run before he can walk.

It’s the smallest of miracles that the kids already know him and thus don’t judge the haggard man slumped over at the kitchen table or panting from exertion as he leans against the closest wall. More often than not he’ll be offered a glass of water or a blanket, the child sympathetic rather than scared. Once, four-year-old Marina insisted she could help him back to his room after going to the kitchen proved too strenuous, and he didn’t have the heart to say no. He almost bit his tongue off from holding back the wheezes of pain as he dragged himself back to his room, a little hand in his all the while.

If there aren't kids helping him, then there’s Vash. He clings to his side like there’s a magnetic force between them, always ready to scoop him up, or help him along, or fetch him whatever he needs. Wolfwood avoids accepting the assistance as much as he can, out of both pride and the fact things have changed between them; the fact that, once Vash has helped him, his hands don’t linger upon Wolfwood’s skin. 

He’s not sure what he’d call it, the thing they had. How can he define something they never gave a name to themselves, where his task to get close to Vash had ended up turning into something real? Having tried to convince himself otherwise for as long as he could - telling himself it was just sex, just companionship, just a way to pass the lonely nights in the desert - he came to the horrifying realisation that it was real, right around the time they split up and each went in their opposite directions, Wolfwood after Chapel, Vash after Knives. The same time Vash realised Knives had sent Wolfwood to him in the first place. He hadn’t lied, when he’d told Vash he was an undertaker. If he’d fulfilled his role properly, Vash would probably be dead.

He understands Vash keeping a distance from him, friendly rather than intimate, though he isn’t quite sure why. Was it the betrayal that did him in, that soured Vash’s feelings towards him? The knowledge that there was an agenda behind Wolfwood seeking him out, their first meeting not serendipitous but instead calculated? Except Vash is the most goddamn forgiving person he’s ever met, even to his own detriment, and he still trips over himself to help him. It’s something Wolfwood can’t work out in his mind, that there’s not quite an impenetrable wall between them but a barrier nonetheless - though he forces himself to stop the moment his mind starts to wander, keeps himself rooted to the spot whenever the urge to seek Vash out and speak to him tries to take over his rational thoughts.

It should have been just sex and companionship for Vash. It should have been a way for him to take his mind off of things, to relax, to stop being so damn self-sacrificing for once in his life without getting caught up in the emotions of it. It’s a hard ask when Vash is the most emotional person he knows, but Wolfwood tries to tell himself that the reason he’s still here must surely be because emotions were removed from it entirely. It’s what he tells himself when he’s still awake in the early hours of the morning, staring at the thin line of light splitting through his curtains in the tiny room he’s taken for his own, contemplating, deliberating.

The other topic that isn’t discussed is Knives and his band of followers. Vash, who Wolfwood often found impossible to shut up, simply refuses to speak about it, and he and the journalists know better than to ask. It doesn’t stop him from wondering about them during those sleepless nights, occasionally shooting out of bed to check the Punisher is still propped up at the side of his wardrobe and ready to be hoisted over his shoulder if needed.

They’re not the type of people you just forget. Knives made sure of that with his planet-wide campaign of terror, which makes Wolfwood even more suspicious over whatever happened between him and Vash when he himself was comatose. The fact Knives hasn’t decapitated him for sleeping with his brother leaves him with more questions than answers. He supposes that Legato will be crawling behind Knives if he’s still alive, fanatically devoted as always. It hurts too much to think of Livio, so he tries not to. His thoughts whirr on regardless and by morning his mind’s almost as exhausted as his body, dragging himself up for a new day of what’s become his new reality: looking after the children of the orphanage, and stopping Vash from feeding them candy all day long.

“You ate a bug the first time I met you,” Vash once pointed out, only for Wolfwood to scoff in his face.

“It was nutritious, and we thought we were gonna die in the stomach of a giant worm.” Vash rolled his eyes and he couldn’t help his smug smile. “Not the gotcha moment you thought it was, huh?”

The kids like Wolfwood and listen to him more than they’ll listen to the nuns, but he’s old news to them by now. He’s absolutely nothing compared to Vash, the playful oddity, new and exciting and definitely alien. It turns out that they love Vash for his plant parts just as much as his human, begging and clamouring to see the pretty lights illuminate his skin. All Vash does is laugh and indulge them, flicking off the lights and rolling up his sleeves so they can see the faint swirls and geometric lines in his skin. This morning he’s crouched down and surrounded by a throng of them, shades pushed back into his hair to let them peer at the markings in his irises and sclera, when he looks over at Wolfwood with a smile. It’s an easy grin, wide and natural, baby blues creasing at the corners and delight in every line of his face at being celebrated for his inhuman parts, for them to be seen as less monstrous and more wondrous.

Wolfwood feels his heart constricting at the sight of it, as if Vash has reached into his chest and seized a tight grip upon it. He can only stare back, breathing shallow, as Vash turns away and resumes chatting to the children, as kind and patient as always.

The journalists stick around, too. Meryl doesn’t trust him, while Roberto doesn’t do much else than smoke. It can’t really be called companionship but he knows he can go to the man in search of a lighter and stand silently with him, smoke curling before them, without the spoken barbs of judgement he gets from the woman. He doesn’t even blame her. They knew Vash before he did; were open and honest with their intentions for him, merely pursuing his story instead of his destruction. It’s too much to ask that they immediately forgive and forget because, unlike Vash, they have common sense and a healthy level of scepticism. 

There doesn’t seem much of a plan for the future, and it’s difficult for Wolfwood to live in the now. When his whole life’s been spent preparing for whatever awful thing’s next coming his way, it’s jarring for things to be mild and mundane. He’s gone from spilling blood to mopping it up, soothing crying children in a way that comes much more naturally to him than shooting. He does the occasional job in town for money, but it’s more fixing what’s broken and escorting people than killing them. He works alone in contrast to all the months where he and Vash went off into the desert together without the journalists, staying in shitty inns and helping wherever they could, drinking too much beer and having too much sex.

He wonders if Vash thinks about it, even sometimes: if he remembers the time they both squashed into a bathtub together so that he could wash Vash’s hair for him, his prosthetic arm left discarded on the countertop as he tilted his head back, eyes closed, letting Wolfwood comb back his wet hair and preventing the suds from trickling down his face. That night they’d ended up in bed together as they always did, trying to fit into a space so small that half his body was hanging off the bed even with Vash squashed against the wall and moaning that he was suffocating.

You’re a plant, Wolfwood told him, staying put even as Vash dug an elbow into the small of his back and tried to roll him over. Can’t you just photosynthesise or something?

Grumbling, Vash gave up and flopped over him, nosing against his jaw until Wolfwood turned his head and let him press a kiss to the side of his mouth. Photosynthesis uses the sun to oxygen - how’s that going to help my lungs in a dark room, idiot?

You’re the idiot, he’d retorted, only for Vash to laugh and kiss him like they had all the time in the world; like guilt wasn’t settled in the pit of Wolfwood’s stomach at just how deep the deception had gotten. 

It’s by pure chance that he catches Vash in the act of leaving in the early hours of the morning, silently treading through the corridors with a full bag slung over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Vash jumps at his hiss, wheeling around to stare at him through wide eyes. Wolfwood tucks his cigarettes and lighter back into his pocket, advancing towards the man illuminated by moonlight. Vash hasn’t got a reply for him, merely swallowing as his mechanical hand tightens around the strap of his bag, and his heart plummets. It’s hardly a supply run to the nearest town at this time of night, and he doubts very much that he’s being quiet out of consideration for others. Vash is annoying loud without realising it, so for him to make a concentrated effort to head towards the entrance’s double doors without detection - 

“You’re just leaving without saying anything, then?” There’s a flatness to his tone, hands clenching into fists within his pockets. “Sneaking out without saying goodbye to the kids? I expected better, Spikey.”

Vash’s cheeks and neck are scarlet, and there’s a defiance to his mouth and jaw that Wolfwood thinks is forced. “I didn’t want to upset them,” he says, voice tight. “I thought it was better this way.”

“Yeah,” Wolfwood says, frustration and fear mingling within him. “Disappearing without an explanation like so many people have done to them already. Real good of you, that.”

It’s a low blow and he regrets it the second Vash flinches, but he digs his nails into the palms of his hands and waits. There’s something like shame in Vash’s expression now, prosthetic fingers flexing around the bag strap, and his gaze drops to the floor and settles there as the silence stretches out between them.

“I’ve been here long enough,” Vash murmurs at last, still staring between his feet. “I should’ve moved on long before now.”

Long to Vash is a lifetime to Wolfwood, and nowhere near enough. His lip curls. “To do what? Help people who turn on you the second they realise you aren’t human? Who treat you like shit no matter how kind you are to them, somehow think you’re lesser than them?” With a jolt he realises he sounds too uncomfortably like Vash’s twin, and changes tact at once. “The kids adore you. Why not stay somewhere where you’re wanted and appreciated, with people who love you?”

It was a slip of the tongue. Wolfwood tells himself that he meant the children, and doesn’t know if he wants Vash to believe the same.

“I know I’ve got no right to ask you to stay.” Vash lifts his head, and Wolfwood stares him in the eye despite the shame settling over his shoulders like a blanket. “But you’re all about doing good and helping people, and I think you’d do good here.”

Vash’s eyebrows pull together, mouth tightening. Wolfwood knows him well enough to know it’s out of confusion, not obstinance, once again failing to see the good in himself that shines as clearly as the luminescence of his skin. “They have you, and Meryl, and Roberto,” he says, voice measured. “They don’t need me, too.”

Yes, but I need you, Wolfwood thinks, and his selfish desire for Vash swells within him. I need you more than I’ve needed anything else before, and it terrifies me. 

He swallows it back and speaks in a gruff voice, as flippantly as he can. “You think they’re going to stick around forever, when they’ve eventually got to go back home with a good story to tell? You’re really gonna leave me here to the mercy of a few dozen kids and a few nuns already overworked to hell? You help people, Blondie, and why not help kids who look at you like you hung the moon? I think you’d make a difference if you stayed and settled down in one place for once. Hell, you’re already doing it for them.”

Wolfwood hates the way Vash is looking at him, disbelief mixed with hope. He doesn’t deserve to have Vash gazing at him at all, not after what he’s done, and has to stare at his own belt as the other man audibly swallows. “You really think that?” Vash whispers, and he equally hates the fact he’d ever believe otherwise. “I’m helping make a difference?”

He forces himself to meet Vash’s eyes again, keeping his voice as measured as he can. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?” he says, and there’s a hoarseness to it. “It’s what you always do.”

The tension of the wait is like nothing he’s ever felt before, watching Vash blink hard and fight to retain his composure. Turning the cigarette over and over in his pocket, Wolfwood’s shoulders don’t relax until Vash’s grip on his bag does, and he slowly lowers it to his side. “Okay.” It’s small, but not resentful. Vash’s throat bobs with his swallow, moonlight reflecting off his glasses when he looks at Wolfwood so that all he can see are the lenses shining back at him. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

He trails past him in the direction of his room, shoulders briefly brushing and earning him a murmured apology. Wolfwood watches him go until the door closes behind him, not daring to follow. There’s a growing sense within him that he’s merely won the battle and not the war itself.

Much to his relief, Vash makes no mention or indication of leaving in the next few months. Things carry on as they are, and there’s no tension between them, not exactly - but they aren’t as they were before, their relationship cooler and a thousand times less intimate. It isn’t intimate, full stop. As much as he hates to admit it to himself, he misses Vash’s casual touch so much more than the sex; the hand cupping his cheek or slipping into his as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Being alone isn’t new to him but he feels a new need to seek it out when the noise of a full orphanage gets too much, too many people around him to be comfortable. When the irritation scratches at his head Wolfwood heads out, sometimes on the bike, sometimes to the edge of one of the caverns, legs hanging over the edge and staring out at the desert. It’s mindless, watching the sand swirl in the wind and the bugs on the horizon. He’ll take empty thoughts over the ones that plague him when he’s trying to sleep, questioning over and over again how and why he’s alive.

He’s not even living on borrowed time: his time was up, the last grains of sand trickling into the hourglass upon those cold flagstones of the church’s altar. It wasn’t meant to be flipped, letting him start over inexplicably new and whole. As whole as he could be, anyway, which isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. If he looks closely he can still see the scars laid upon the dark skin of his chest from the bullet wounds, silver in the light. They don’t stop his habit of only ever doing up the first few buttons of his shirt, but he wonders if they’re as obvious to other people as they are to him.

The zealots in Eye of Michael would say there’s a purpose in it, a reason for his miraculous resurrection. There always was, wasn’t there? He wasn’t given life anew for no reason, but he’s pretty sure he’s not about to gain a Messiah complex over it. He isn’t deserving of one, not with the blood he’s shed and bodies he’s created and stepped over. The deaths were a conundrum always boxed up and shoved to the back of his mind, but now the lid’s been lifted and allowed to spew the contents within.

He debates over whether or not to discuss it with someone and quickly comes to the realisation that the only person he’s close enough to, here or anywhere, is Vash. He just as quickly realises that it wouldn’t work, seeing as how he and Vash don’t have the same closeness that they once did. Sure, Vash would listen to him and cry at the most inopportune times, swearing on his soul to help him, but he wouldn’t touch him like he used to; settle his cheek against his chest, arms tight around his waist as he tried to work things out together.

Together.

Cursing and lighting up a new cigarette, he decides it’s a terrible idea. Outside of whatever the hell they’ve turned into, they’re simply too different. Vash is more virtuous than him when he’s not even human and Wolfwood is supposed to be a priest, lacking all the vices he himself shrugged off for so many years. He thought nothing of ignoring his holy vows to kill while Vash, the all-loving, all-peaceful pacifist would rather die himself than inflict it upon another. Killing was always a part of life, a way to protect others, and it frustrated him to no end that Vash couldn’t accept that. Vash was the Peace Bringer, and he the Punisher. That’s how it’d always been. His days and nights were meant for the Eye of Michael.

But the Eye of Michael is gone, and every day is spent cooking, cleaning, putting kids to bed, mopping up bloody knees and tears, watching Vash lie on his back and laugh like an idiot as he’s swarmed by half a dozen kids declaring that they’d defeated him -

He’s not so sure killing is a part of this life, now.

Boiling with frustration and desperation he dusts the Punisher off and takes it out into the desert, swinging its huge mass over his head and across his back before peppering the hull of the first abandoned ship he finds with a hail of bullets. It doesn’t do much other than horrify him when he realises that he’s not as strong as he was at how his muscles ache with the effort of hoisting the Punisher over himself, and unsettle him, when he sees face in the rust stains upon the metal. Wolfwood returns to Hopeland with his tail between his legs, dragging the cross behind him, and runs into Meryl in the entrance hall.

“Where were you?” She eyes the Punisher and the sand in his hair with obvious distaste, brows knitted together. “You missed dinner.”

“Wasn’t hungry anyway.” Irritation and half a pack of cigarettes were enough for his stomach, and he chooses to ignore Meryl’s unimpressed expression instead of throwing a barbed comment her way. He can hear raised voices from the rec room, the loud, exuberant sound of Vash’s laughter, and turns away from it to slowly trail back to his room.

A game of football between the kids grows too excitable one afternoon - Vash’s fault, obviously - and Wolfwood’s the one tasked with fixing the broken window. Towel laid out below him as he kneels before the frame, his grip on the trowel slips when he pushes out the shards. The pain is as immediate as his hiss and he yanks his hand back to see a deep cut across his palm, blood welling and trickling down his wrist to drip to the towel and bloom red Rorschach blotches across the blue fabric.

His supply of drugs is long gone. Even if there were some vials squirrelled away somewhere, he reckons his body was pushed to its limits and then some with his overdose to risk even a mere mouthful of them. It’s been a very long time since he’s injured himself without the assurance of his wounds closing upon the sting of the medicine on his tongue. Wolfwood stares at the cut, at the steady stream of blood it produces. It aches, the pain travelling right down to his wrist, and he blithely wonders how deep it goes. The remnants of the window glitter behind him, that particularly sharp shard dappled red.

It’s Vash who finds him, however long he kneels there with his wound. “Nick?” He glances up at the strangled gasp, seeing wide eyes and parted lips, before Vash joins him on his knees. “Oh, shit - here, let me help you - there’s dressings in the kitchen from where Ambrose burnt himself on the oven - ”

Wolfwood lets himself be eased to his feet and hurried to the kitchen, where Vash parks him at the table and sets about gathering his supplies. He wraps his fingers around the wrist of the injured hand as Vash fusses around him, flexing his fingers and feeling them twinge with pain at the motion. Vash is kneeling in front of him seconds later, gently cupping the hand in his and armed with a cloth in the other. “The antiseptic will sting,” he tells him, fingers brushing his knuckles, “but I don’t think you’ll need stitches. Well.” He huffs, gaze flickering up to meet his through his tinted shades. “Let me clean you up first before I make any promises.”

It turns out that it is deep enough to need a few stitches, and Wolfwood grits his teeth and refuses to let cries of pain escape past them as Vash carefully sews the wound up, apologies and pleas for forgiveness tumbling from him all the while. He wraps it in gauze when he’s finished, winding it around and around Wolfwood’s hand until he can fix it in place, fingers trailing over his as he sits back to examine his handiwork. “You’ll have to take it easy for a few days,” he advises, trying his best to sound stern as Wolfwood stares down at the bandages, blindingly white atop brown skin and hiding the unpleasant wound beneath. “I mean it! The last thing you need is to do the dishes or washing and get it all soggy… though getting it dirty with oil would probably be worse… do you reckon you can stay away from your motorbike for a few days?”

Wolfwood nods without really listening, flexing his hand back and forth. Vash smiles gently up at him, rising to his feet then ruffling his hair. He disappears to sort the window out himself, leaving Wolfwood alone with an aching hand and busy mind.

He’s not invincible. He never truly was even with the drugs, relying on them to restore his body to some semblance of health despite the vessel itself being warped and twisted beyond what was natural. But for such a simple task to be what reminded him of his remaining wisps of humanity; for the pain of a mere cut to still be throbbing in time to his heartbeat, reminding him of his fallibility… 

Wolfwood finds himself idly examining his palm in the weeks and months that follow, long after it’s healed then scarred over, silver against brown. He carries the reminder of his vulnerability with him in the memory of Vash’s hands tending to his, and the visible symbol of the stigmata upon him.

He hadn’t woken up that morning with the intention of going into Vash’s room.

Given the choice, he wouldn’t be in here at all. The man himself had left his door open a crack while he joined Meryl on a supply run, and a particularly enthusiastic kick from Ray had sent a football rolling into it. Wolfwood’s the one resigned to retrieving it, all while telling himself he’ll ban all future ball games for the sake of his own health. It’s only when he’s found it, resting against a leg of the bed and illuminated in a patch of sunlight, that he straightens and realises where exactly he is. 

His immediate thought (shit) dissipates into unreasonable curiosity, the kind that always ends up infecting Vash and getting him into trouble as a result. Mouth dry, Wolfwood glances about the room, pushing his sunglasses into his hair so as to get a better look. It’s the first time he’s been here, somewhere he’d automatically assumed he was exiled from either by Vash himself or through his own guilt. Now he’s inside, his traitorous feet remain firmly planted into the floorboards, unwilling to facilitate his escape.

It’s a lot more personable than his own room, which he doesn’t consider anywhere more important than a cupboard to collapse into and sleep off a full day’s work. There’s a few things he recognises from Vash’s room aboard Ship Three, though he doesn’t know when they were retrieved: a wobbly, crocheted blanket the man probably made himself, a little radio on the dresser, slippers tucked underneath the bed. Wolfwood crouches down for a better look at them, mystified as to how he’s never seen Vash slop around with them first thing in the morning or last thing at night, yawning hugely. He’s already a fashion disaster, wearing whatever clashing clothing items he can whenever he’s not in a black turtleneck, so it would be typical of him to pair worn out slippers with an oversized, neon sweater and shorts.

“Did you find it?” one of the kids shouts, and Wolfwood rolls it back out the door to them without looking away from the slippers.

He feels his lips curve in the semblance of a smile when he stands again and sees the drawings from the children Vash has pinned up here and there. Who’d have thought that the clumsy hands of a child would’ve been able to perfectly replicate Vash’s ridiculous hair better than the finest artist? The cheer fades when he sees that one of the pictures depicts him and Vash together, heads larger than their bodies and Vash’s smile wobbly while his own line of a mouth is downturned. It doesn’t stop him from lingering over it, fingers reverently tracing the lines of crayon as if they were a holy fresco.

The photo wall brings him to a pause. He’d gotten a glimpse of it on Ship Three but hadn’t been able to take a good look at it, not when Vash was perched on the end of his bed and grinning sheepishly at him as his prosthetic arm was repaired. Stepping forwards, Wolfwood leans in and examines them, frowning. Most of the people he doesn’t recognise: the consequence of Vash living an unnaturally long life, decades more than his own. He’s in one of them, but not by choice. He’d turned his back the moment he saw the lens pointed at him, meaning that just the side of his elbow and back of his head is in frame behind Vash’s grinning face. There’s a few with Roberto in them, more with Meryl, numerous ones of Vash playing with or else getting bullied by the kids, and -

The breath catches in his throat when he realises who’s in the centremost photo. Blocking out the squeals and shouts of laughter from the courtyard, Wolfwood leans in and stares at a young Vash, wide eyed and sweet-faced. The lush, vibrant fauna behind him can’t be No Man's Land, but it isn’t what Wolfwood is focused on. His gaze passes over the smiling, raven haired woman behind them and onto the other boy in the photo, face blank in comparison to Vash’s cheer, eyes already colder and harder.

It’s disconcerting to see that Vash and Knives were identical as children, save for the hairstyles and beauty mark. Wasn’t he just Nai back then? It feels inappropriate to call him that, a name only used by Vash, and Wolfwood swallows it back. They’re anything but identical now, Knives bulky and well-built while Vash is leaner, messier, scarred to hell and back in comparison to Knives’ smooth, perfect visage. He can’t imagine Knives grinning out of innocent joy, eyes creasing in the same way Vash’s do. He doesn’t want to imagine what it would take to make Knives smile, wherever he is now.

The raised voices of the kids and what sounds like an argument snap him back to reality. Straightening, Wolfwood turns his back on the picture wall and strides away to the courtyard to oversee the peace process, guilt lining his stomach all the while.

When Meryl complains about her first grey hair, attributing it to Vash and Vash alone, it comes as a startling realisation to Wolfwood that his hair’s still as black as the night sky.

He checks himself out in the mirror in his bathroom immediately after dinner, twisting his head this way and that to examine his hair, his face, searching for grey hairs or new lines to dispute the thoughts welling up within him - but there’s none. There’s not a single sign of visible ageing upon his visage, no matter how hard he searches for it. It’s a new thing to keep him awake at night, lying in tangled sheets and staring at the ceiling, ruminating over the idea of it until he falls into a restless sleep.

Maybe it was the experiments, or the drugs, or the overdose itself, overriding any natural ageing process in his body and ridding him of yet another part of his humanity. He’s blessed more than most men are, and more than he should be, and yet Wolfwood can’t rid himself of the idea that it’s a curse; a punishment; a judgement upon his soul.

He sneaks into Vash’s room again and spends what might be an entire afternoon staring at the photo where he’s holding the infant Rollo, beaming at the camera. Wolfwood only encountered Rollo as a beast in his mid twenties, who targeted a Vash who was as smooth-skinned and youthful as he was in the old photo. Visibly, he hasn’t aged another day since that scuffle, face devoid of lines other than those that crease around his eyes when he breaks into a smile.

It’s only been a few months, he tells himself. Not even a year. Just give it time. The thought of it brings him comfort, at least.

Vash is deftly sewing a few items of ripped clothing at the table one afternoon while he’s got Lyra and Kace balanced on either knee and against his chest, dutifully reading to them. That’s until Lyra wrinkles her nose, and Wolfwood stops mid-sentence to frown at her. “What?”

“You stink,” she says bluntly, and his jaw drops while Kace gasps and Vash splutters with laughter in front of them.

“I do not,” he says, affronted. Meryl certainly would’ve told him long before now if he did. “I showered an hour ago, you little shit.”

“You smell,” Lyra insists, a stubborn set to her mouth, “from your cigarettes.”

Vash is grinning like a fool and Wolfwood refuses to meet his gaze in the knowledge it would only make his smile stretch wider. “You don’t have to sit with me and listen,” he tells her, and rolls his eyes when she huffs and remains where she is. 

He could care less about the opinions other people have on his smoking, though Vash had surprised him when he’d first asked for one a lifetime ago. His main concern, and what’s been causing unease to well up in Wolfwood’s stomach for weeks now, is the realisation that his supply of cigarettes is growing low. It’s an unfortunate combination of Meryl being the one to do the shopping - and point blank refusing to bring back packs for him and Roberto - and the damned things being in high demand and low supply, on the few occasions where he’s taken his motorcycle out to the nearest town to search for them himself, that have left him in this sorry state.

Eventually, with only a single packet remaining, he’s forced to confront the inevitable: he needs to preserve them. Going cold turkey is the very last thing he wants to do, but it seems the only option at this point - and of course it’s on a Sunday that he finally tosses his pack somewhere he can’t reach and gives up the forty a day. 

He’s jumpy and restless as the nicotine begins to leave his system, irritated at the smallest things and stomach clenching with longing for just one drag of a cigarette. Roberto going outside to smoke one of his own can only be in mockery of him, and Wolfwood genuinely considers breaking into his room and stealing his entire stash. Predictably, Vash is nothing but sympathetic. 

“You’re being very strong, and so good to do it for the kids,” he tells him kindly, as if abstaining from his last pack of cigs was somehow a greater challenge than taking a hail of bullets to his chest. Grinding his teeth together as if set on turning them to dust, Wolfwood huffs instead of actually responding and causes Vash to laugh out loud. “Why don’t you get out of here? Go for a ride on your motorcycle to take your mind off it?”

“Nothing’s going to take my mind off it,” Wolfwood gripes, but takes his suggestion and heads for his bike. Vash’s suggestion proves correct when roaring through sand dunes does take his mind off of the cigarettes, but at the cost of his gaze continually sliding to the sidecar, remembering Vash huddled down within it and beaming at him despite complaining about the sand in his hair.

The shakes and irritability subside after a few days but he doesn’t think his longing ever will. The slightest whiff of smoke from Roberto has him aching with the desire for a cigarette, willing himself not to drag a chair over to his wardrobe so he can clamber up to reach his last pack at the very corner of its roof. Bribing Meryl to buy him a bag of lollipops helps somewhat, the sugar a poor replacement for nicotine but something to suck on and distract himself with - right up until they, too, run out, and she’s remorseless in being unable to source any more.

“You should’ve given them to the kids in the first place,” Vash the hypocrite tells him, more than happy to ignore the amount he pilfered for himself and his sweet tooth. “Then you wouldn’t be having such bad cravings for two things, would you?”

He opens his mouth to snap back at the grinning blond, but closes it again and watches him leave without another word. Holding his tongue is the safer alternative to admitting that he’s craving for not two, but three things: that the craving for Vash is the worst of all. 

He knows from the Eye of Michael's bastardised teachings that purgatory is a place of suffering, stuck for an age atoning for your sins. He’s pretty sure he’s in it right now, living with Vash like this.

It’s at its worst the mornings when he wakes up from the wispy remnants of a dream with semen cooling on his stomach. He has to sneak into the bathroom to clean himself off then go about his day pretending like nothing’s happened, that he didn’t dream of Vash in his lap, Vash beneath him, Vash sobbing with pleasure as he lost control of all his bizarre Plant parts -

To fantasise about him is one thing, but to know that his fantasies are based in reality - the fact those things actually happened a lifetime ago, that Vash wanted him to touch him in that way and went as far as letting him - only serve to lower Wolfwood’s mood.

It’s not like he can just run from it. For a guy like him, working in Hopeland and caring for the kids is far better than he deserves. There’s a reassurance in knowing that he’ll protect them in a way he can’t rely on others for; that he’s subdued but not muzzled, able to retrieve the Punisher and gun down any threats without hesitation. Some sentimental part of Wolfwood tells him that he belongs at Hopeland in a way he’ll never belong anywhere else, and that this is the path he would’ve ended up on even if the Eye of Michael never came along.

Vash, though…

He isn’t sure why he’s so desperate to keep the wanderer chained here, despite the pain it causes him to have to live like this. He hadn’t lied to Vash when he told him he was doing good here, that he was appreciated in the way he always should’ve been. Maybe it’s because he’s seen first-hand how people treat Vash and how he allows himself to be treated, taken advantage of, abused. It makes him want to vomit, thinking of how the man lets people kick him when he’s down, quietly taking abuse that Wolfwood would kill over. Out in the wasteland, it feels like he’d be sending Vash off towards danger, towards his doom: able to defend himself but choosing, consciously choosing not to. 

Or maybe it’s because he’s greedy, wanting to keep Vash here for his own sake, his own sanity, even if he won’t spill his guts to him on how he truly feels. Maybe the real purgatory is being so weak and pathetic and goddamn selfish. What was the tenth commandment? Thou shalt not covet? Well, he broke that one a long time ago. 

He’d let him go if he wasn’t happy, he tells himself. He’d send Vash on his merry way if there was any sign that he was caged or contained, the slightest hint he didn’t want to be there any longer. Wolfwood spends an entire day watching him, trying to pick up on any unspoken signs in the knowledge that Vash abstains from eating or sleeping when he feels he doesn’t deserve it, or else isolates himself from others to dwell in his own misery.

What he sees is Vash stealing Gaius’ leftovers, teeth stained with jam as he grins; Vash offering to read to the kids, who fight to sit on his knee and force him to make them play rock-paper-scissors against each other to find a victor; Vash asleep on the rug in the middle of the rec room, a pillow under his head and blanket haphazardly tucked around him by small hands as thanks for the story.

Hands in his pockets, Wolfwood stands above him and stares down at his sleeping figure. He’s lying flat on his back, arms thrown out at either side and glasses haphazard, chest slowly rising and falling with steady breaths. Wolfwood crouches down until he can see the freckles on his nose; the cupid’s bow of his lip; all the things about Vash that make him ache. His hands are too impure, too soaked in blood to touch someone like him, so pure and good and holy.

Wolfwood settles for gently fixing his glasses, the closest he can get to feeling as though he’s touching him, before closing the door on his way out.

His list of achievements might not be too long, but Wolfwood considers only having two cigarettes in as many months a major one. They’re reserved only for the most stressful of times, when a kid vomits on him or a client tries to underpay him or when he spends too long looking at Vash, mooning and mourning like a fool over a man forced to give three kids a simultaneous piggyback. Sneaking off to a cliff’s edge west of the orphanage and lighting one up feels like he’s finally reached paradise, in those few minutes he stretches out for as long as he can.

It’s during one of his smoke breaks on a sleepless night when he arrives at his usual spot and finds Vash there, sitting down on the ledge with his legs hanging over the edge, shoulders bowed and hands loose in his lap as he stares out over the wasteland. He looks up at Wolfwood’s approach, smiling up at him but making no move to stand. “Hi.”

“Hey.” It might be the first time they’ve been alone in all this time, and Wolfwood forces his racing heart to calm. His feet feel as though they’re planted into the ground, preventing him from making a quick escape even if he wanted to. Swallowing hard, he throws caution to the winds. “Mind if I join you?”

For just a fraction of a second, Vash hesitates. Wolfwood’s heart plummets - but then Vash shakes his head, smiles up at him, and he knows at once that it’s genuine. “Of course not.”

He sits down heavily beside him, leaving his cigarette in his pocket for now. “Can’t sleep?”

Vash shakes his head. He turns away again, eyes returning to the wasteland, and Wolfwood follows his gaze over the pits and valleys of the sand, grey in the darkness and low light of the moon. As much as he fronts that he’s an excitable fool on the surface, able to relate to the kids in his outward maturity, Wolfwood knows this aspect of him - this quiet, contemplative, solemn man - is closer to the real Vash than any of them know. He doesn’t need to look at him to know that his mind is somewhere much further than the desert, and it provides a distraction from his own feelings.

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” he says quietly. “Knives.”

It’s the first time he’s brought him up, and Vash’s eyelids flutter as he sighs. His body doesn’t move, shoulders still curved inwards. “Is it that obvious?”

Yes, Wolfwood thinks, because it’s the only option. What else would have Vash so melancholic, contemplating the vast emptiness before him? Sneaking out in the early hours of the morning to simply sit and stare, unmoving? Mouth twisting, he thumbs the cigarette tucked in the deepest corner of his pocket. “You get this look in your eyes sometimes. And I know. I just know.”

They sit together in silence, watching the wind pick up and blow clouds of sand into the air. Wolfwood watches, at least; he isn’t sure if Vash is, or else thinking back on some memory, some recollection.

“What do you think happened to him?” he says at last, when curiosity itches too uncomfortably to be held back. He doesn’t ask for Vash’s part in the affair. Unable to hold back any longer, he tugs the cigarette and lighter from his pocket to clamp the stick between his teeth, cupping his hands around it as he lights the end. The nicotine filling his lungs is like a sacrament, and it’s hard not to sigh with relief. Vash’s eyes slide to the sudden spark of the lighter in the dark, then back to the desert.

“He’s not dead.” It’s not much of an explanation, the softness of his tone almost losing the words to the night. Wolfwood arches his eyebrows, and Vash’s breath escapes him in a gentle rush. “I know he isn’t. I can feel him out there, somewhere. Where exactly, I don’t know, but he’s alive. I’ve always been able to sense him, even when we were small. Decades and decades of this… this link between us.” He blinks, and suddenly Wolfwood can see just how exhausted he is. “We always find our way back to each other, no matter where we are.”

Sudden icy tendrils of fear curl around his heart at the thought of it, at the thought of him leaving to find him or else Knives reappearing from the wasteland to take him back. He can’t disregard it: he knows how obsessed Knives is with Vash, consumed by the idea of their superiority over humans and the belief Vash belonged to him and him alone. He swallows hard, voice a rasp. “Are you going to find your way back to him?”

Silence spreads out between them for longer than he’s comfortable with. At long last Vash shakes his head, heaving himself to his feet. “Not this time. I’ve made commitments here. Besides…” He offers his hand to Wolfwood and pulls him up, and he doesn’t let himself believe that Vash held on for longer than necessary before he released him. The corners of his lips upturning isn’t much of a smile, but it’s something. “I think the distance will do us good.”

He knows Knives, and he knows he’s not going to go away quietly. He’s not going to be content with the idea of Vash being with a bunch of humans, especially if he finds out that he’s here, too. For a man with all that power, the only thing Knives could focus on was having Vash. But he doesn’t know what happened between Vash and Knives, and Vash knows his twin better than anyone. Swallowing back the trepidation, Wolfwood merely nods and follows Vash back to the orphanage in silence. In the end, it’s the only time Wolfwood asks about Knives.

Roberto finds a piano on one of his trips through the wasteland, heaving it out of the truck and pushing it through the doors of the orphanage with great effort to great excitement. Carrying a snivelling Alia on his hip in an attempt to soothe her from a fall, Wolfwood’s eyes move from the throng of chattering children to the man trailing in behind them, realisation dawning on his pale face.

“Who would leave a piano in the desert?” Meryl says, eyes bright with excitement, before reality hits and the light dims. “It’s probably so full of sand it doesn’t work anymore,” she says, a sigh punctuating her words, but Wolfwood’s eyes are still on Vash. 

“Worth a try, though,” he says, staring at Vash’s parted lips and the way his mechanical fingers have fisted in the edge of his jumper. He doubts he even knows he’s doing it. “Worst comes to worst, me and Grandpa can take it outside and tip it on its side, try to get some of the sand out.”

“I nearly broke my back just getting it here,” Roberto complains, but he doubts the man’s truly serious when he went to the effort of bringing it in the first place. He aims a glare at Wolfwood for the nickname who smirks at him and turns to Vash, hovering a few metres away as if afraid to approach.

“Well, Blondie?” Vash’s gaze slides to him, and Wolfwood raises his eyebrows as he adjusts Alia on his hip, the child quiet now with her cheek laid upon his chest. “You gonna give us a tune?”

Vash opens his mouth but he doesn’t get a chance to reply before Kace looks up at him, eyes bright. “Can you play?”

Vash hesitates. His mechanical fingers tighten further still in his jumper, looking ready to bore holes in the wool. Then they relax and he nods, slowly making his way to the piano and leaning over it. “I used to be able to.” His fingers dance over the keys, leaving a stilted, disjointed melody in their wake that has embarrassed laughter bubbling from him. “Oh, jeez, I haven’t touched a piano in years. You’re gonna have to let me practise a little first.”

He’s immediately surrounded by the kids asking questions and clamouring for his attention, and Wolfwood watches Vash plaster on a grin. Alia stirs against him and he looks down at her dark curls, running a hand through them. “D’you want to get something to eat?” he says quietly, and she nods. With the weight of her in his arms and one last look at Vash crouched before the piano, Wolfwood takes his leave.

The piano ends up in the rec room and, despite the fact he only heard him play once, he quickly notices that Vash isn’t as smooth or as polished as Knives when it comes to his piano skills. The result of decades trampling around the wasteland and shooting targets instead of parking himself in front of one, he supposes. He’s still good, but he can’t quite imagine Knives swearing every few minutes at a mistake then begging the children around him to please forget they heard anything, or repeat that word in front of Meryl. 

The weeks go on. Vash improves over time, and eventually gives in to the requests for lessons. It becomes commonplace to see him with a child balanced on his lap, patiently explaining the keys to them and full of praise when they stumble through a few basic chords. Wolfwood mostly lurks when these are going on, leaning on the wall outside the room to listen in when he hasn’t got a decent excuse to actually be inside.

He gets his way one day when Vash enters the room after him, throwing a grin at him while he parks Ambrose in front of the piano. Slumped back on the sofa, he’s not having much success with repairing one of Nina’s torn dresses. He’s not as good at sewing as Vash is - a consequence of the drugs automatically healing his wounds whereas Vash had to learn to laboriously stitch his own up - but he’s getting there. 

“You don’t mind us being in here, do you?” Vash says and Wolfwood shakes his head as if it’s no big deal, as if he isn’t planning on sneaking glances at him whenever he can. Vash flashes him a grin then sits down on the bench beside Ambrose, voice dropping as he starts explaining octaves to him. There’s a companionship in them partaking in different activities but sitting in the same room regardless; a guiltless way for Wolfwood to be in his company.

Most of what Vash says goes over his head, but one sudden, offhand remark has him freezing, halfway through threading the needle through the fabric. “I used to play with my brother.” 

Wolfwood stares down at his wobbly stitches, holding his breath. Vash seems to have forgotten he’s there altogether, voice low and thoughtful. It was directed at Ambrose and yet he listens hard, teeth clamped down on the toothpick between his lips. “We learnt together. He was always better than me, though, no matter how much I practised. He just picked it up way quicker than I did.”

“Where’s your brother now?” Wolfwood risks a glance at them out of the corner of his eye to see Vash smiling down at the child, sad and melancholic.

“He’s gone,” he says softly, and doesn’t elaborate. Mechanical fingers run through Ambrose’s hair and then Vash is turning back to the piano keys, both hands settling upon them. “Will we practise some scales?”

Ambrose nods, and Wolfwood dips his head over his stitching as the slow, stilted music continues. He never dares to voice it, yet feels as though Vash has just confirmed his suspicion that the piano was a way for him to feel closer to Knives: a physical link to the brother lost in the wasteland, out of sight but not mind. 

It’s one in the morning when he skids into the dormitory, the Punisher over his shoulder and chest heaving, only to find that the wailing which woke him up was caused by a nightmare and not by someone breaking in to kill the kids. He shrugs off the Punisher and props it against the wall, making his way over to Marina’s bed with his palms raised. “Hey,” he says soothingly and she lifts her head, sniffing, to look up at him. Even as he crouches in the gloom he can see how red her eyes are, blotchy her cheeks are. “You’re okay. It was just a bad dream.”

“What’s happening?” Wolfwood looks up just in time to see Vash slide into the doorframe, head banging into it and whining at the blow. He scowls at him as Vash holds his head in his hands, some of the other children raising themselves up at the intrusion.

“I’ve got it. Go make sure everyone’s settled, will you?” He turns away from him and back to Marina, voice losing its irritated edge. “Do you want to talk about it?” She hiccups, shaking her head, and Wolfwood sighs. “That’s okay. I’m here now: let me wipe your poor eyes.”

Pulling tissues from his pocket, he sets about mopping her face up as she sniffs. Behind them he can hear Vash moving about the room, murmuring to children here and there as he tucks them in. “What do you want me to do for you?” he says to Marina once her face is dry, hand cupping the back of her head.

She rubs her face with a chubby fist. One of the plaits Meryl did for her that afternoon is unravelling. “Can you stay?” she whispers, voice small. “Until I fall asleep again.”

“Of course I will.” He rises to his feet only to perch on the edge of her bed, waiting until she’s wriggled down beneath the duvet again to stroke back her hair. Wolfwood doesn’t need to look to know Vash is lingering, watching them from the doorway. He ignores him, fingers combing through Marina’s hair until the child’s tense form relaxes and her only movement is the slow, steady breathing of sleep.

As carefully as he can Wolfwood stands, fixes the blankets around her, then tiptoes out of the dormitory. Vash is just outside the door, one shoulder braced against the wall. “Is she okay?” he whispers, and Wolfwood nods.

“Bad dream. You know how they get.” She isn’t the only one, and they both well know it. In unison, they turn and head towards their rooms again. 

“You know,” Vash says in an undertone, “when I first met you, I wouldn’t have taken you for someone who liked kids.”

He feels his mouth twist in a sneer, hands shoved in his pockets. “One of the first things we did was stop that fucking ship from flattening this place.”

“I know,” Vash says, rolling his eyes and grinning. “I mean, like, the very first day I met you. You said you were an undertaker, could barely remember the Lord’s prayer, then hit us with a massive deal for your services.” There’s a definite mocking tone to his last word, and Wolfwood wonders why he’s even bringing it up at all. “Conmen aren’t exactly the type you’d expect to read to kids and sing them to sleep when they have nightmares.”

Heat spreads from his cheeks right down to his chest at the realisation Vash has listened in to him, perhaps on more than one occasion, lurking around the edge of the door frame as he soothed the fears of the young. “You’re pretty damn presumptuous,” is all he can say and Vash laughs aloud, soft and bright.

“Okay, okay, I was too quick to judge. I’m sorry.” He smiles at him, eyes creasing at the corners in a way that’s achingly familiar. “You know, I found out that humans have a saint that looked after children and the destitute. Sounds like someone we know?”

“You’re calling me a saint now, Spikey?” Wolfwood says sarcastically, and earns himself another laugh.

“Not exactly.” He shrugs, stopping and leaning against the nearest wall. They’re only a corridor away from his room; two from Wolfwood’s. “I just think it’s funny, that the saint was called Nicholas.”

Shaking his head, Wolfwood searches his pockets for a toothpick. He’s taken to jamming it between his lips when he’s in desperate want of a cigarette but doesn’t want to touch his reserve, trying his best to replicate the feeling of one. It’s never very successful.

Vash has his head to one side and, despite the early hour, Wolfwood just knows that he’s about to start mindlessly chattering seconds before he does. “You remind me of John the Baptist a little. He didn’t exactly fit the mould of a typical religious man walking around the wilderness, did he? Kind of like you hiking through the desert, dragging the Punisher behind you. But I suppose you’re more like Saint Paul,” Vash continues, voice thoughtful. “Travelling through unknown lands trying to save people, just like how you travelled through the desert doing whatever it took to save money for the orphanage.”

Wolfwood stares at him, mouth ajar and toothpick wobbling precariously upon his lower lip. “Fucking hell, Spikey,” he manages. “Where did you learn all of this? Did you have a Bible with you, all those years moving from town to town?” He didn’t think Vash’s Biblical knowledge extended much further than half-jokingly, half-seriously telling him do not be afraid when they first had sex and Wolfwood was open-mouthed at what happened when he had an orgasm.

“No,” Vash says, smiling sheepishly, “but there’s one in the library here. I read a little of it when you were - when we were waiting for you to come round.”

At once he can picture Vash leaning over the scriptures at his bedside, searching for miracles as he lay dying, and his insides feel like lead. Wolfwood closes his eyes as if the act will wipe the image from his mind, hand coming to rub between his brows as his lips close around the toothpick again. He longs for the real thing, for the toxic potency of nicotine to fill his veins and lungs.

“Still,” Vash says, an airiness to his voice as if trying to lighten the conversation. “I’m not being too hard on you: I know you didn’t pick the path yourself, so I can’t tease you for not being very faithful when it comes to your priestly duties.”

“Yeah,” Wolfwood says, before he can stop himself, “like having sex before marriage, and with men.”

Vash’s smile disappears at once. Silence stretches out between them, and the look on the blond’s face has Wolfwood wanting to bite his tongue off. It’s the first time he’s brought up the fact they used to sleep together, with used to being the operative phrase. He hasn’t touched Vash in months other than an accidental brush of their arms, the tending of someone’s wounds. It’s a far cry from the mornings where they used to wake up with their legs tangled together and Vash’s head tucked under his chin, head pressed against his chest to listen to his heartbeat. Now, both of them are acting as though the memories of it are simply figments of their imagination.

“I didn’t mean that how it came out,” Wolfwood says at last, and it’s quieter than he expected. Vash is still staring at him, lips pressed together, and he longs to get an insight into his thoughts, the impact his words have had upon him. “I’m sorry.”

The apology tastes sour upon his tongue, and Vash clears his throat. “It’s fine,” he tells him, but Wolfwood knows by the slight lilt to his voice that he’s lying. He’s always been a terrible liar. “No big deal.”

The tense silence begins anew, and Wolfwood suppresses his longing to question him on what threads are running through his mind. Does he ever think about what they had? Does he ever lie awake in bed, unable to sleep without the comforting warmth of another person by his side, a situation that had become so easily commonplace to them both? Does he long to return to what they had together, without all the guilt that stops Wolfwood from suggesting that they do?

Vash would’ve made a far better priest, he thinks, staring at the upwards curve of the man’s nose as he bows his head and pretends to fix the sleeve of his jumper. He’s the pacifist between them, the great believer in love and peace while Wolfwood resigned himself to killing and violence being a part of life even if they weren’t part of his Bible. He thinks of how he wobbled in front of the church’s altar before he fell to his knees, the day he was meant to die, and the words he gasped out in what should’ve been his last seconds of consciousness. I’ve always chosen the right path, haven’t I?

As Vash brushes past him on the resumed journey to his room, murmuring something about sleep, Wolfwood isn’t so sure anymore.

It’s during the kids’ naptime that Wolfwood realises he hasn’t seen Vash for a few hours, and a missing Vash usually means a troublemaking Vash. Poking his head into every room, he eventually catches sight of a mass of blond hair in the kitchen and traipses in, preparing himself for disaster. 

Sitting at the table with his back to him Vash is bent over himself, arms cradling something. At the sound of Wolfwood’s footsteps, he looks up and over his shoulder at him. “Nick,” Vash whispers, and the nickname hits even harder than the smile spreading across his face, aimed squarely at him. “Look. Come see what I have.”

He treads over to him and Vash turns just slightly to face him, revealing the baby swathed in blankets and sleeping in his arms. “Jeez, Blondie. Where’d you find that?”

“She got dropped off this morning. One of the nuns took her in.” Balancing the infant in one arm, Vash’s prosthetic fingers gently ease the blankets away from her face as he smiles down at her, a fingertip tracing the curve of her cheek. “Isn’t she lovely?”

He supposes she is, considering she’s a little older than a newborn and out of the squashed, ugly phase. Crouching down beside Vash’s chair, Wolfwood peers at the baby’s pale hair and upturned nose. “Dropped off this morning?”

“Yeah.” Vash isn’t looking at him, still focused on what’s in his arms. “In a box, with an apology note.” Wolfwood watches his eyebrows pull together, the sides of his mouth creasing.

He shrugs, knowing that a story he’s heard so often that it’s normal to him is sending Vash’s empathy into overdrive. “Raising children is hard even when it isn’t in a dust bowl. I doubt the majority of the kids would be here if the wasteland provided for them.”

Vash hums. He hopes he’s thinking about Luida’s latest letter, the developing plan to spread biodiversity across the planet, and not the reason humans are here in the first place. His thighs burn at this angle but he doesn’t move, aware of the fact it’s the closest he’s been to Vash for a long time, and knows just how pathetic that makes him. Vash’s shades slide down his nose, and him shifting the baby into one arm to push them back into place gives Wolfwood a glimpse at the Plant markings on his sclera and the way the skin around them is creased.

“I can hear how loud you’re thinking,” he says as Vash wraps his prosthetic arm around the baby again. “What is it?”

Vash hesitates. His fingers curl into a gentle fist upon the blankets before he’s able to gain the confidence to speak, voice small and uncertain. “Do you - remember your life before the orphanage at all?”

“Nope.” He pops the ‘p’, readjusting his position at Vash’s feet. The blond swallows.

“So you don’t remember your parents?” Wolfwood has the impression that the question’s been playing on his mind for a while now. It’s an achievement that he’s been able to hold his tongue and not immediately blurt it out like every other thought that crosses his mind.

“Not a thing.” He’d wondered about them as a child, of course. The most likely scenario was that they were impoverished and simply couldn’t afford to raise him, but the rationalisation did little to endear them to him. He doesn’t hate them, whoever his parents are; he simply doesn’t think about them. Eyeing Vash, he waits until the other man finally meets his gaze, cheeks pink. “What’s got you so nosy, Blondie?”

Vash shrugs, then winces when the movement unsettles the baby. They both hold their breath, waiting, until her snuffling dies down and her own breath evens out again. “Close one,” Vash whispers, smile bashful, and Wolfwood huffs out a laugh. It’s not a distraction, though.

“What about your parents?” he asks Vash, who’s back to slowly rocking the baby. “Or are you going to tell me you just materialised into existence one day?” Vash stops moving, head bowed, and Wolfwood watches scarlet spread across his chest and slowly creep along his neck and face like poison ivy. His jaw drops. “You’re shitting me.”

“I don’t know how it happened, okay?” Vash mumbles, more to the baby than him. “Nobody does. The Plants on board the ship did something, I’m sure, but… I dunno.”

“Huh.” Vash’s embarrassment is palpable and his reactions so obvious that Wolfwood would know if he was lying to him, so he drops it. His eyes return to the baby, and the way Vash’s eyes light up when she curls her hand around a prosthetic finger. He raises his head, delight in every line of his face, and Wolfwood’s smiling before he realises it. “The kid sure likes you.”

“I like kids,” Vash says, glowing, “but I love babies, and this is the first time here I’ve been able to cuddle a baby. Every cloud, right?” His smile doesn’t mirror Wolfwood’s but instead eclipses it, as warm and bright as the sun. He feels his own mouth go slack at the sight and realises they’re close enough that he could reach out and cup Vash’s face, stroke a thumb along his cheekbone.

It’s too much, and yet never enough. It’s never been enough from the day he shared that last cigarette with Vash before they headed off to their respective fates, and he could no longer go along with the pretence he was good enough to lay his hands on him. His eyes flicker over the man, the baby in his arms, mouth dry and heart aching.

“What?” Vash is frowning down at him, head slightly to one side. “Why do you look like that?”

He swallows once, twice, trying and failing to steady himself. “Just thinking,” Wolfwood says hoarsely. Of another life goes unspoken, no matter how much it reverbs in his head. Another life with you.

The thing Wolfwood quickly learned about Meryl was that you could sense her need to speak to you before she even opened her mouth. She approaches him one evening when he’s chewing a toothpick outside, sitting down with his knees drawn to his chest and eyes closed behind his shades, but the trailing footsteps letting him know who it is at once. “Yeah, Shortie?” he says, keeping his eyes closed, and hears her huff. He leans himself against the Punisher behind him, his makeshift back support.

“Can we talk?” There’s a little scuffling noise, and he pictures her bumping one foot against another.

“Uh-huh.” He’d rather not, considering it’s one of the few times of the day he gets some peace and quiet, but figures he owes it to her for surreptitiously passing him a lollipop the week before. “What?”

There’s a pause. Wolfwood cracks an eye open to see her staring at him, face carefully set despite the fact her hands are clasped in front of her. Meryl swallows, then comes out with it. “You and Vash need to talk.”

His stomach clenches, and Wolfwood’s teeth close down on the toothpick. “About what?”

“You know what.” Her knuckles whiten. “It’s gone on long enough. I should’ve said something before now - Roberto said not to get involved, but you - well.” She blows out a huge breath. “You’re suffering, Nicholas.”

He slowly gets to his feet, two heads taller than her. “And what?” he says flatly. “Why do you care?”

He has to give it to her: Meryl’s spine is spun from steel. She tilts her chin up, jaw set, and holds his gaze. “Why would I want you to suffer?” she asks him, which temporarily robs him of the ability to speak until he gets over the shock.

“Because I lied to you all. Because I pretended to be on your side while leading Vash into Knives’ trap. Because I’m an asshole.” He shrugs, as carelessly as he can. “Take your pick.”

Meryl’s tongue presses against the inside of her cheek, face illuminated in the moonlight. “Yeah, you lied - but you also double-crossed Knives and went after Chapel when he tried to get you to kill Vash. You took Vash’s side, in the end.” She raises her eyebrows. “Isn’t that what matters?”

He scoffs, ruffling his hair. “It hardly makes up for it, does it? One act of repentance for so many sins?”

She scowls at him. “I hate that priest talk. Do you think your relationship with him was a sin, too?”

Caught so unawares by it, the toothpick drops out of his mouth and to the ground before he can catch it. Jaw loose, Wolfwood stares at her. “You - what?”

“It’s not like the two of you didn’t make it obvious,” Meryl says, pitying. “Always sneaking off together, going on your separate jobs away from me and Roberto, cuddled up and giggling in the back of the truck - and your neck was always covered in love bites. You were the opposite of subtle.”

Humiliation crawls up his spine at her expression, and Wolfwood shoves his hands in his pocket to hide how they’re trembling. “It wasn’t a sin,” he snaps, “other than how I treated him. And what does it matter if we were fucking?” The word tastes sour in his mouth, skin crawling at the attempt to reduce what he and Vash had to simply that. “We haven’t for a long time. Get over it.”

“So, what? You’re not over it.” Meryl stares him in the eye, the line of her mouth firm. He can only admire her tenacity even if he simultaneously loathes it. “You’ll mourn over him forever? Stare at him when you think no one’s looking? You’re so obvious, Nicholas, and you’re so obviously hurting. You need to just speak to him and sort this all out.”

“And speak about what?” He’s never longed for a cigarette so much in his life, anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach. “The idiot can’t keep his mouth shut: don’t you think he would’ve said something before now, if he was unhappy with how things were? If he wanted to go back to - wanted things to change between us?”

Meryl’s shaking her head, and he finds he hates her for it. “Vash is the most self-sacrificing, self-loathing person on this planet,” she says slowly, as if explaining it to one of the children. “If you gave him a single indication that you didn’t want him anymore, he’d pull back and take it as gospel. He just can’t see what the rest of us see in him.”

She presses her lips together. Wolfwood’s nails are digging into his palms hard enough to leave crescent moon cuts in their wake. “He stiffened,” he tells her, voice tight, “the first time I touched him. After my coma. He stiffened and pulled away from me - and even if he didn’t, I can’t. I can’t.”

“Why?” she argues, and his eyes slide closed as it feels as though his very bones are shaking. “Why can’t you?”

“You’re just as big of an idiot as he is,” Wolfwood whispers, and every word hurts. “How could I, when Vash is how he is? When he’s so pure, so good, and I have so much blood on my hands? I’ve killed so many people and I can’t even remember most of their faces. I’m not worthy of him. I’ve never been worthy of him. I’ll only taint him, and he doesn’t deserve that. He deserves so much more than that.”

There’s a pause. Wolfwood ducks his head, finding it makes things marginally easier when he turns his back to her as pain swells in his chest. He waits, silently pleading with Meryl to leave, to let him stew and suffer and regret -

“I don’t think you would’ve killed people if it wasn’t a life you were forced into,” she says quietly. “Vash thought you were worthy back then, and I think you’re worthy now.”

He rounds on her, fury spiking at once. “Don’t patronise me - ”

“I’m not,” she tells him, shaking her head in dismay as he trembles and longs to throw a punch into the wall beside them. “Have you sleepwalked through the last few months? You’ve spent every day repenting, every day looking after the vulnerable, and being here has made Vash come alive again. For the first time he’s peaceful, he’s settled, he’s happy, and that’s because of you, Nicholas.”

Breathing hard Wolfwood stares at her, at the little crease between her brows and the firmness of her shoulders as she stares right back. “It’s not because of me.”

“It is,” Meryl says. He has no clue why there’s a new note of sadness to her tone. “He was - he was awful when he returned from facing Millions Knives. He wasn’t talking, or eating, or even acknowledging people speaking to him most of the time. He just sat at your bedside, a husk of himself.” She swallows as Wolfwood fights not to imagine it. “But when you recovered, and when he started looking after the kids - it gave him a purpose. It let him be appreciated and loved in a way he hasn’t been before, a sense of belonging he’s always been looking for - and he stayed because of you.”

He stares at her, stricken, and her lips curve in a small, sad smile. “Think about it,” Meryl tells him, voice soft. “That’s all.”

She turns on her heel and makes her way back into the orphanage. Wolfwood’s left standing alone, staring after her, heart hammering - and the tension within him swells and bursts until he wants to tear his skin off, hurt himself until he’s incapable of hurting any more.

He slings the Punisher over his back and storms towards the shed on the edge of the property until he’s wrenching his bike from it, kicking it into gear and heading out to the dunes. It was what Vash always recommended he do to take his mind off things, focusing all his attention on driving as if the blond idiot hadn’t flipped the bike the one and only time he tried riding it - but now, just as so many times before, he’s fighting to think of anything but Vash, anything but the reason he’s still here, still breathing, still hurting - 

Blinded by rage, he misjudges the size of a sand bank. The motorbike becomes lodged within it and Wolfwood is thrown forwards, sent careening through the air until he hits the ground hard enough to feel it reverb through his bones. He lies there, shocked, mouth full of sand and head spinning. Then he counts to ten, lifts his head, wriggles his fingers and toes and works his jaw to discover that he’s perfectly unharmed: that the only thing wounded is his pride.

The motorcycle continues to growl in the sand until he crawls over and twists the key in the ignition, sending it into a sudden silence. Flopping back, Wolfwood stares up at the empty heavens above, unable to pick out a single star in the vast sky. He’s breathing hard in and out through his nose, hands curling in and out of fists, and his anger manifests itself in an explosion of noise, a growl that crescendos into an all out scream.

“I should’ve been dead!” He clambers to his feet, slipping in the uneven ground beneath but teeth bared. “That should’ve broken my neck, so how the fuck am I still alive? How the fuck am I not another body in the desert? What did I do to end up like this? Why me?”

There’s no response, just as he predicted, and his blood boils. “Why did you let me live? Me, of all people? When so many good people died in my place? When all I can think about is the people who died instead of me!” His throat aches and his eyes burn but he keeps storming, keeps screaming at the heavens above. “Livio - he was just a kid! Just a sweet, kind kid, and you let them turn him into that! What kind of merciful god does that? All these kids you’d be happy to let waste away on this shitty planet - what have they done to deserve it?”

The Punisher came loose in the crash, lying neglected and forgotten in the sand at his feet, and Wolfwood heaves it into his arms to launch it as far away from him as his strength lets him. It hits another sand bank and slides down, coming to rest half-buried at its base, wrappings peeling away to expose the metal beneath. Wolfwood stalks over to it and kicks it as hard as he can, relishing in the pain that bursts through his foot and ricochets right up his leg. “You should’ve struck me down the second I picked that thing up!” he bellows, aiming another kick at it despite the throbbing pain of the first. “Having a weapon disguised as a holy symbol? You’re telling me a deity would overlook something so sacrilegious? No! No!”

Wolfwood limps away from the cross, fingers fisting in his hair and feeling ready to tug great handfuls of it out. “I don’t think I ever truly believed,” he says, tightening his grip until a dull ache begins in his skull. “The Punisher is one thing, but the Eye of Michael is another. Spewing shit about holiness when they’re torturing kids and killing the ones they don’t find useful - nah, I always had my doubts. You let that shit slide for years and I’m the one who had to do something about it, yet I’m cursed to this - this purgatory, where I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing or why I’m here and forced to see him every day and be with him when I can’t be without him and I know he’s - he - I - ”

He doubles over as pain sears through him, hotter and more vicious than any storm of bullets. Gasping, choking for breath, Wolfwood falls to his knees in the sand, hands still embedded in his hair as a cry of anguish tears its way out of his chest. “He’s everything I’ve ever wanted,” he gasps, trembling, “and he thinks the world needs him, but I need him. I need him more than anything, more than the people who take his kindness and his courage and hurt him for them, and I’d trade all of my tomorrows for just one day in the past with him - but I hurt him, I betrayed his trust, and yet he - he still - ”

For the first time he can remember, Wolfwood curls into himself and starts to sob. The tears burn as they course down his cheeks. He cries until every hitch of breath is agonising, until his lungs feel as though they’re on fire and his very soul is tearing in two, a high pitched ringing in his ears like the pealing of church bells.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for the tears to run dry, until he’s lying silently in the sand instead of sobbing into it. There’s grains of it in his hair and ears and when he finally has the strength to heave himself into a seated position he shakes his head like a dog to get rid of it all, disorientating an already fragile mind in the process. Hands planted in the shifting ground he stares at the black horizon, devoid of light and warmth. The despair’s been replaced by total numbness, and it’s longer still until he can finally get to his feet and limp over to retrieve the Punisher and return to his bike, kicking it into life with a painful foot and even more painful heart.

His heels drag along the flagstones of the orphanage’s entryway as he pushes his way inside, though he has the sense to hoist the Punisher until it’s an inch above the ground so that it doesn’t scrape along and wake the whole building up. Shoulders curved inwards, he passes the kitchen then freezes in the doorway. Achingly slowly, he turns to look into the room to confirm that it wasn’t a trick of the light: that there really is a person sitting at the table, legs crossed, a mug in front of them that smoke is slowly curling from.

“Nick?” they whisper, as if he could be in any doubt as to who they are; as if everyone’s eyes glow in the dark, even behind a sepia pair of shades.

He turns to face Vash fully. Some tired voice in the back of his mind tells him that the man is the only person on this planet who would be wearing sunglasses while sitting in a dark room in the early hours of the morning. “Why are you still up?” His voice comes in a rasp, aching from the shouting. In the gloom Vash’s head tilts to one side, just slightly. Judging by the lack of a sunrise, it mustn’t be any later than three in the morning.

“Because I saw you weren’t here.” He doesn’t stand up, one leg still resting atop the other. He’s sitting upright too, Wolfwood realises, instead of curled over himself or else lounging back in his chair and in danger of toppling over altogether. Behind the lenses, the unnatural white-blue glow of his eyes are like the flames of a blowtorch, the only distinguishing feature of him other than his silhouette. “You weren’t in any of your usual spots, either, so I thought I’d wait. Just to see.”

Wolfwood stares at the outline of him in the dark, trying to make sense of it. Did Vash watch him go, or else creep into his room to check on him? Why he would even do the latter Wolfwood doesn’t know, but he pictures the blond investigating in his usual nosy, dogged way, looking for him wherever he thought he may be before resigning himself to the kitchen, waiting for him to come back. He swallows, and doesn’t offer a response.

Vash blinks again. The glow of his eyes disappear then reappear. “Do you want to talk?”

Talk? About what? He’s not sure if he’ll be able to with a mouth as dry as the desert and heart so heavy in his chest, but he nods mutely and Vash pushes himself away from the table to stand. “Let’s go outside. It’s not that cold tonight.” He says it as though Wolfwood hasn’t just slunk in from the darkness, but he nods again and Vash grabs his coat, brushing past him on his way out. Wolfwood follows, still limping, numbly letting Vash lead the way.

They go to the ledge where they once discussed Knives, where they’re far out of earshot of the orphanage and any midnight lurkers. Vash watches him as Wolfwood drops the Punisher and sinks down to sprawl over the ground, limbs sore and heavy while the blond’s cross-legged by his side. “There’s sand in your hair,” Vash tells him. “Did you know?” Wolfwood doesn’t bother to try and shake it loose, and Vash’s eyes crease. “Were you rolling around a sand dune?”

He shrugs. Vash lapses into silence, one foot knocking against the other and hands fiddling in his lap. His hair is the colour of spun silk in the moonlight, not dissimilar to his brother’s but ruffled and messed in a way Knives’ never could be. As if on cue, Vash lifts a hand to scratch at his undercut. “Do you have a cigarette? You look like you could use one.”

Digging his hands into his pockets, he’s mystified to find one in the very corner of the left one. Wolfwood pulls it free, holding the crumpled little stick up in front of him. “I haven’t got a light,” he mumbles, and starts when Vash holds one out.

“Stolen from Roberto.” There’s guilt in his voice for something only Vash would feel guilty over. Wolfwood takes it all the same, flicking it over and over again with shaking fingers until it blooms into life, igniting the end of the cigarette. Relief washes over him as his lungs fill with chemicals, screwing his eyes shut as smoke issues from his mouth.

It’s silent between them as he smokes, as Wolfwood tries to find solace in the familiarity of it and Vash shifts by his side. When he has the courage to look at him again, Vash’s eyes are on his. “Can I share it with you?” He nods to the cigarette clutched between his fingers. Blinking, Wolfwood raises his hand and offers it to him, but Vash shakes his head. “Not like that.”

He stares at him, tendrils of smoke escaping from his parted lips. Vash doesn’t break his gaze, his own steady - and Wolfwood is tired. He’s exhausted after his breakdown in the sand and he’s tired of holding back, of the self-hatred, the longing. His chest feels as though it’s a hollow husk and, with it, come his lowered inhibitions.

He takes another drag of the cigarette then leans in, hand snaking around Vash’s neck until he can press his balm to the base of his skull, pulling him closer. Vash moves with him, letting himself into Wolfwood’s space, so close their foreheads could press together. It’s a tried and tested experience between them, and months of abstaining from it haven’t dulled the memories. Fingers curling in his hair, lips only an inch apart, Wolfwood breathes the smoke into Vash’s waiting mouth and lets him inhale it in turn. He watches as Vash’s eyelashes brush his cheek as he closes his eyes, breathing out the secondhand smoke, and opening them to meet his again. 

Vash doesn’t pull away. When Wolfwood takes another drag his mouth opens at once and he exhales in the fresh round of smoke. They repeat the process until the cigarette’s burnt down to a stub that he tosses away, head spinning and gaze dragging back to Vash’s thin, pale face, the shades slipping down his nose.

“Why are you still wearing your glasses?” It’s nothing more than a mumble, but something shifts in Vash’s expression. Wolfwood stares at him, at the way the orange lenses dull down the brightness of his eyes, neutralising them.

The corners of Vash’s lips lift in a rueful attempt at a smile. “I’m used to it, I guess,” he says softly. “I know the kids don’t mind them, but I’m so used to people finding them disconcerting that it’s just - better, I wear them.”

It’s not, Wolfwood thinks, because they hide him from the world - but then the jealousy swells in his chest in his selfish desire to keep Vash to himself, to prevent the ungrateful world from having Vash despite the sins he himself has committed. “They’re not disconcerting,” he rasps, and Vash’s lips part. “They’re beautiful. Everything about you is beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

His words hang heavier than the smoke in the air between them. Vash’s eyes shine as they fill with tears. “What’s happened to us?” he whispers, and he makes it to the end of the sentence before his voice cracks.

Us, reverbs in Wolfwood’s mind as he stares at him, stricken. He’s not talking about Knives, or Legato, or Livio or the Eye of Michael or the Gung-Ho Guns or anyone else they’ve come across or fought against or lost, just them -

“Vash,” he croaks, and the effort of it feels like a physical blow to his chest. Vash’s eyelashes are spiked with a constellation of tears now. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You haven’t called me that in months.” He presses his lips together in a vain attempt to keep his composure, shoulders trembling, until his breath hitches on his sob and the veneer breaks. “You haven’t talked to me in months, not properly. Not since - since - ”

How can Vash not understand that he didn’t deserve to? How can he not see himself as Wolfwood sees him, see all his virtues and goodness and realise exactly the type of person he is? The words stick in Wolfwood’s throat and he struggles, stricken - but then Vash is reaching out to him, sliding his hands into his hair and pulling him to him until Wolfwood can bury his face in his neck, shuddering against him as he grips onto his waist. “I’ve missed you,” he tells him, broken, as if mere words could confess the agony he’s been going through all these months.

“I’ve missed you, too.” Vash’s own words are tremulous, and his hand moves from Wolfwood’s hair to cup his face, tilting it up towards him. He can’t stand the bleak slash of the mouth in his pale face, the way Vash looks as though he’s barely holding it together. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve missed you so, so much - ”

He can’t control himself any longer, can’t hold back so many months worth of longing and self-loathing anymore. Wolfwood kisses him, hand splayed against the small of his back and his waist and Vash responds in kind, kissing him back as if he’s starving, as if he’s been hungering for this all his life. Vash pulls back only to push his sunglasses into his hair, breathing hard, and Wolfwood gets a glimpse at the white patterns in his sclera and the matching markings flaring in his skin before Vash dips in to kiss him again, hands fisting in his hair and making him shudder with pleasure.

He’s missed this like he’s never missed anything before. It’s better than he’s dreamed and longed for all these months, actually feeling the heavy weight of Vash against him, nails scraping his scalp, tongue trailing his lower lip. Emotion swells within Wolfwood, flooding his veins with relief and repentance and overwhelming, all-encompassing passion -

He falls back to the hard ground and drags Vash with him, an ungraceful heap of limbs until Vash untangles himself and bears down on him, licking into his mouth and grinding against him. Fingers digging into his hips, Wolfwood rolls himself into Vash in a way he knows will make him shudder and is rewarded with a gasping cry, Vash panting into his mouth. “Please - oh, God, please - ”

He rears back only so that he can wriggle his pants down and free himself, mouth back on Wolfwood’s within seconds. Vash is already wet for him when Wolfwood reaches down and strokes his fingers over his petals, shuddering against him as his middle finger pushes past them and into his sticky heat. He breaks their kiss to press them along Vash’s jawline instead, dipping down and sucking on his neck until Vash cries out, a second finger pushing into him as the petals part and grant Wolfwood entry to the place he’s been dreaming about for what feels like his whole life. 

Vash rocks against him, over his fingers, panting and whining as Wolfwood curls them against his walls, scraping his teeth over the junction between Vash’s throat and shoulder. He’s three fingers deep when he pulls them out, dripping wet, and slaps Vash’s thigh. The other man understands his meaning at once, stumbling forwards until his knees bracket Wolfwood’s head, looming above him as Wolfwood’s fingers dig into his thighs. Vash’s coat pools around them as he sinks down onto his waiting mouth and he wails as Wolfwood licks into him, nose brushing the stamen-like clit as he presses his tongue in as deep as it can go.

“Nico,” Vash sobs as his hips roll against him, high pitched and beautiful, the endearment tumbling from his lips like a chorus of music. “Nico, Nico, please, yes, please - ”

He becomes incoherent with pleasure and, for the first time in months, Nicholas feels alive. His fingers dig into Vash’s lean thighs as he eats him out, tongue laving over him, chin soaked and rivulets of fluid dripping down his neck and chest as Vash whimpers and grinds into his mouth. He feels drunk at the hedonism, the self-gratification of tasting Vash again while the man rides his face, curled over himself and fingers tugging Nicholas’ hair until it’s painful. He licks over Vash’s hole to his clit and looks up to see his eyes are screwed shut, tears trickling down his face, lips shiny with spit and gasping out as Nicholas noses into him again, lips closing around his clit and sucking hard.

Lights explode above him as Vash cums, gushing over Nicholas’ face and sobbing brokenly while he licks him through it, tongue curling inside him and fingers numb with how hard they’re digging into his skin. Vash’s thighs are clamped down around his head and when he finally releases him he slumps back, barely propped up on his prosthetic arm. With difficulty he rises to his knees, trembling all over. His Plant markings are coursing white-hot across his skin and illuminating them both in the dark, glorious and holier than anything Nicholas has ever seen before in his life.

He expects Vash to collapse beside him, boneless, but the blond instead moves back until he’s grinding against the cock that lies hard against Nicholas’ stomach and making him hiss at the sensation. “Inside,” Vash whines, voice ragged and prosthetic hand bracing him back against his knee, “please - I want you inside me - ”

Together they fight with the buckle of Nicholas’ belt until he can wrench it out and toss it aside, pulling his trousers down only far enough that Vash can pull his cock free, aching and dripping. Lifting himself up, he lines them up and sits down on him in a single motion that has him crying out and Nicholas groaning, fingers digging into his hips again as Vash rolls his hips, face flushed and tearstained.

It’s a fight not to cum simply from being inside him again. The hot, wet heat of him flutters around Nicholas’ cock, petals dripping their thick fluid upon his stomach. He thrusts up into him and Vash’s back bends, head falling back, and Nicholas’ hands slide up to grip onto his waist instead as he begins fucking him, teeth gritted as Vash’s cries and moans fill the still air of the desert. 

Desperation clouds their movements, the furious pace of Nicholas pounding into him, the way Vash lurches forwards and sinks his nails into his pecs for support. He reaches out and slides his fingers into his mouth, an age-old gesture now. Nicholas moans around them, drooling over his chin as Vash presses down on his tongue. He would’ve given up the cigarettes long before he did if they’d been replaced by Vash’s fingers, Vash in his mouth, Vash bouncing in his lap to the wet sound of their skin slapping and Nicholas burying himself inside him.

He knows it’s coming as Vash’s second orgasm nears then hits him, crescendoing with a keening wail, but it doesn’t make the wings bursting from his back any less majestic; three pairs of trembling wings spreading out behind Vash, blindingly white against the night’s sky. The mere image of him shaking and sobbing as he tightens around him - the splendour of his glowing skin, quivering wings, burning blue eyes and the hot, wet heat of the blooming flower he’s sinking into - has Nicholas groaning and coming inside him, flooding Vash with cum until it’s dripping out of him and rolling over his petals.

Vash is panting in a high, strained way, bent double and forehead pressed to Nicholas’ sternum. He stays inside him until he’s soft, cock slipping out and causing cum to trickle down Vash’s thighs as Nicholas gently eases him forwards until he can tuck him beside him, arm around him and holding Vash close to his chest. The blond moves with him, slipping a leg between his, and Nicholas drags his gaze away from the inky sky to Vash’s eyes, glossy with tears and fixed upon his. Reaching out, Vash clasps his chin between his thumb and forefinger and drags him into a kiss, panting and licking into his mouth - and Nicholas lets him, hand cupping Vash’s jaw and cradling his face, kissing Vash until they’re gasping for breath again and sprawling back on the hard ground, unable to hold each other any closer than they are now.

It’s a long time before either of them move. Nicholas’ limbs are stiff, skin slick with sweat and their combined cum when Vash sits up, eyes heavy-lidded and hair even messier than usual. “We need to go back,” he rasps, swallowing hard then trying again. “Before anyone notices we’ve gone.”

His fingers trail along Nicholas’ ribs before his palm settles over his heart, glowing eyes fixed on his. It feels like a supplication, and Nicholas accepts. He reaches up and takes hold of Vash’s hand, thumb brushing over his knuckles, before allowing the man to pull him to his feet and beginning to gather their things. 

It’s a slow drift back to the orphanage, leaning against one another as the sun rises on the horizon. Neither of them speak until they’re pushing their way into the entry hall then pausing, uncertain now they’re back on familiar ground. They stare at each other, silent, waiting, until Nicholas can take it no longer. Now he’s felt Vash’s touch once more, he can’t keep his selfishness at bay. He stretches out a hand to him, palm up, pleading. “Stay with me tonight. Please.”

He’s already going to hell. He might as well go all in. 

Glasses pushed back into his hair, Vash’s gaze flickers from his hand to his face. The wings have gone and the markings have all but faded now, leaving only a faint luminescence at his cheekbones and down the column of his throat. He’s emitting a soft glow in the dark hallway, the one source of light within it, and once again Nicholas finds himself at a loss for why anyone would find Vash less than miraculous.

Smiling a smile meant just for him, Vash takes his hand.

It’s far too early when he first wakes, the room cast in a greyish blue light that chills everything it lands upon. Eyelids heavy, Nicholas resists opening them yet relents when he feels the pressure of someone else against him, of lips brushing his throat.

He blinks the sleep from his eyes to see Vash sprawled over him, face-down in his chest but stirring, yawning. Before Vash can lift his head Nicholas tightens his arms around his waist as if to cage him in place, intent on never letting him go again. Vash merely laughs under his breath, allowing himself to be held and pressing a kiss above his heart. 

“Possessive,” he mumbles into his skin and Nicholas lands a kiss of his own in Vash’s messy hair, unable to deny the accusation. He must have drifted off again after that, lulled into peace by the weight of the man in his arms - for when he wakes up for real, blinking blearily and stretching out weary limbs, he’s alone in bed. 

Guilt lines his stomach. The flippancy and bravado of last night is gone, the passion overwhelming all sense of reasoning. Nicholas stares at the ceiling, at the patterns the sunlight leaves through the cobwebs on the window, every part of him aching.

It’s a long time before he heaves himself out of bed, patting the floor in search of his trousers. They’d been discarded at some point the night before when Vash ran his hands down his thighs, tugging them off so he could take his cock into his mouth. Nicholas buckles his belt while fighting with the image of Vash’s hands on it, not letting himself consider where the hell the man disappeared to. It’s not something he can blame him for; if he was Vash he’d be packing his bags and leaving in an instant, putting Nicholas and everything associated with him firmly in his past.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to go far to find Vash. The noise from the kitchen crescendos as he heads towards it and Nicholas’ heart picks up speed at a familiar laugh, bouncing off the tiles and too loud to be ignored. Striding to the door, he throws it open to see Vash handing out plates to the kids, head shooting up at the bang of the door on the opposite wall. Vash stares at him, eyes wide, then blinks. “Hey.”

“Hey.” His own voice is a rasp. Perhaps it’s that, or perhaps it’s something in expression that has Vash’s shoulders curving inwards.

“I’m sorry I left this morning. I had to, uh - ” Vash gives an awkward little gesture towards the table, as if Nicholas somehow missed the dozen kids parked around it and shovelling food into their mouths. They’re staring at Nicholas like he’s grown two heads, as if he’s more alien than the man handing out slices of toast.

“You look really bad,” Kace tells him, and Nicholas can’t blame her. He leans against the wall, silent, and Vash swallows again.

“I’m nearly finished with them. Just let me make sure everyone’s got enough, and then we can - if - ”

“I’ll get them sorted,” a voice says behind him and Nicholas turns to see Meryl, eyes focused on Vash as if he isn’t even standing there. “Just leave them with me. Roberto’s just getting himself ready, so he shouldn’t be too long.”

Vash’s smile to her is one of relief as he sets the plates down, and Nicholas feels her gaze slide to him instead. There’s something knowing in her expression which makes him wonder how he really looks; if Vash was as zealous with his mouth last night as he always used to be. He doesn’t have much time to contemplate the state of his neck before Vash is brushing past him, taking hold of his arm above the elbow and tugging him along in his wake. Nicholas lets himself be led, the familiar tightness back in his chest even with Vash’s touch upon him.

Instead of last night’s ledge Vash pulls him down towards the desert, far from prying eyes. They’re back to the sand dunes but this time Vash is shining, burning in the sunlight, hair like burnished gold. When they’re a safe distance away from the orphanage he turns, arms by his sides, eyes on Nicholas’s. He expects a reprimand, or else for Vash to launch straight in, but he doesn’t. “How are you doing?” he says instead.

Jaw tightening, Nicholas stares back at him. “Huh?”

“How are you doing?” Vash repeats, slowly and carefully. “Last night - before we, well - it was a lot. You were upset. I just - ”

“This isn’t about me,” Nicholas interrupts, and age-old irritation at Vash, at his selflessness and unwillingness to put himself first, rears up inside him. “It shouldn’t matter to you how I’m doing. You shouldn’t care.” Resentment seeps into the last of his words, but it’s not directed at the man opposite him.

Vash’s eyebrows pull together, mouth downturned. “It is about you,” he says, “because we’re talking about us.” He pauses. “And I don’t think you would’ve asked me to sleep with you when we got back last night if you just wanted sex out of me.”

“I don’t - no!” Nicholas snaps, furious. “I didn’t just want sex out of you!” He thinks of Vash’s head tucked under his chin, ear pressed against his chest and over his heartbeat, and thinks the pain of it might tear him in two. He longs to reach inside his ribcage and tear his heart out, to do anything that would rid him of this agony. It’s made worse by the fact Vash is simply watching him, the calm after the storm Nicholas’s been fighting from the moment he stepped foot inside that church. “How can you just stand there, talking to me like this? How could you even bear to touch me?”

“How is touching you a burden?” Vash takes a step towards him, arm outstretched. Though he’s nowhere close to touching him Nicholas rears back, petrified, and Vash is left standing with his hand raised in the air, green metal glinting in the sunlight. “Nick, please - ”

“Why do you not hate me?” he shouts, arms outstretched and desperation crescendoing within him. “How can you be around me, after what I did? Just the sight of me should piss you off!”

“It doesn’t!” Vash cries and it pains him further to look at him, his wide-eyed, pleading expression. “I’ve never hated you, not once - ”

“You should!” he shouts, voice echoing across the sand, the vast, empty wasteland. “You should be furious! You shouldn’t want to stay beside me - shouldn’t want to be with me - not after what I did. It was unforgivable.” His arms drop to his sides, shoulders trembling, voice breaking. “How can you just forgive me so easily?”

There’s a crease between Vash’s brows. As Nicholas shudders he takes a tentative step towards him, hand still raised. “I forgave you a long time ago,” he says quietly, “but when are you going to forgive yourself?”

His next breath escapes him in a choke. “What?”

“Come on, Nicholas,” Vash says softly. Even behind the shades, his eyes burn with an intensity like he’s never seen before. “You’re a priest. You should know all about forgiveness. Confess, and you’ll be forgiven - that’s it, isn’t it?”

“I’m not - ” He shudders again, hands coming to fist in his hair. “I made my contract. I saved the orphanage, but that was it. I shouldn’t have gotten anything else besides that.” His feet sink into the sand, sun blinding his eyes and forcing him to blink hard. “I should have died that day. I was meant to die. Why didn’t I die?”

Vash stares at him, and Nicholas can’t bear to meet his gaze. “I don’t know how you survived,” Vash tells him quietly, honestly, then swallows hard. “But I wake up every day and I’m grateful that you did. I’ve lost too many people already: I can’t lose you, too.”

For the second time in as many days Nicholas feels his eyes well up with tears, spilling over his cheeks before he has a chance to wipe them away. Humiliation itches at him at displaying such open vulnerability and it only crescendos when Vash continues speaking tremulous words that he hasn’t earned and doesn’t deserve. “I’ve never - not like this - not with anyone else before - ”

Horror fills his veins the second he realises what he’s doing. “Stop,” Nicholas pleads. He steps forwards and clasps his hands tight around Vash’s wrists, fingers digging into flesh and metal. “Please, just please stop.”

“No.” Vash twists in his grip until he can clutch his hands, eyes wide and beseeching. “You have to hear it because I should’ve said it long before now, before all this tension and misery and isolation - ”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Nicholas moans and this time he fights to pull himself away from the blond who clings on, determined. “I don’t deserve - ”

“I’m going to say it as many times as I need to for it to sink into your thick skull!” At last Vash releases him only to seize his face, tilting it up, forcing Wolfwood to look into huge, glistening eyes. “Nick - Nico - ”

“Don’t - ”

“I love you,” Vash tells him, and he chokes on his sob as Vash clutches him, palms to his cheekbones. “I love you and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, I’m sorry, but I can’t pretend anymore.” Thumbs stroking beneath his eyes, Vash’s grip on him is the only thing keeping him on his feet. “I can’t pretend that it isn’t killing me to stay away from you and I’m sorry I’m being selfish, but I’m miserable without you and need you to know just how I feel - ”

He’s gripping onto Vash’s arms for support even if the touch burns him, even if he can all but see the blood on his palms smearing over Vash’s skin. “You can’t,” he gasps, fingers digging into him, “you can’t, not me, not with what I’ve done, who I am - ”

“I could say the same to you!” Vash shakes him slightly, fingers threading into his hair. Breath hitching, Nicholas stares into Vash’s eyes, bluer than the sky above and more determined than anything he’s ever seen before. “Nick, please, tell me honestly and don’t just say what I want to hear. Do you love me?”

His heart pounds like it’s about to crack his ribcage open, blood on fire. “Yes,” Nicholas wheezes, and the relief of the confession does nothing to absolve him of his pain. “I love you, I love you, I’ve loved you for so long and I’m sorry, I’m sorry - ”

Tears spill down his cheeks like oil slicks, burning as they go, each breath choking him. Nicholas’ knees buckle but Vash catches him, gently easing him to the ground as Nicholas slumps against him. Sand shifting beneath them Vash holds him, stroking back his hair and murmuring kind words he doesn’t deserve in his ear, all while Nicholas weeps into his chest until the pain feels like it’s about to tear him in two.

He’s quickly becoming tired of waking up with a thumping headache.

Rolling over with a moan, he drags his hands over his eyes to try and block out the light filtering through the curtains. “Welcome back,” says a low voice, and Nicholas tilts his head back to see Vash perched beside him on the bed, smiling down at him. Mechanical fingers comb through his hair and Nicholas leans into his touch, eyes sliding closed again. “How are you feeling?”

“Like death,” he croaks, throat feeling as though he swallowed half the contents of the desert. Vash huffs out a humourless laugh and passes him a glass of water in response. He downs all of it in one go, fingers trembling around it as Vash watches him, head slightly to one side, and he takes the empty glass back and lets him collapse into the mattress again.

In the strangest way, he does feel better. A weight seems to have lifted from him, as if sobbing into the sand with Vash’s arms around him absolved him of something. Nicholas has the vaguest memory of Vash easing him to his feet, half-supporting, half-carrying him back to the orphanage until he could settle him into his own bed. He wonders if it’s sentimentality that has him thinking Vash’s bed is more comfortable than his, holey crocheted blanket and all.

“You slept for a solid fourteen hours, you know. I’m serious!” Vash says as Nicholas’s head shoots up, mouth ajar. “I told them all to let you have the day off, since you barely take time away from here as it is.”

“Yeah, well,” Nicholas says moodily, face finding its way into the pillow again, “your work never stops when you’re looking after a pack of children and trying to keep them from killing themselves or each other.”

Vash laughs again, low and soft. Silence settles between them and his fingers resume pushing through his hair, stroking it back from his face in a way that makes him involuntarily shiver. The room’s just warm enough to be cosy, bed soft beneath his tired muscles, and simply the heavy weight of Vash beside him comes as a comfort to Nicholas.

The peaceful limbo doesn’t last forever, though. Eyes closed, Nicholas doesn’t have to look at Vash to know he’s preparing himself to speak: he can hear it in his little inhale, feel it in the way he shifts his position on the bed. “We should probably talk about yesterday,” Vash says quietly, curling a strand of hair around a prosthetic finger. “And the night before that. Properly this time, not - you know - ”

“Ignoring the fact you sat on my face?” Nicholas says bluntly, which makes Vash splutter and palm press into his cheek.

“Well,” he manages, and Nicholas peeks up at him to see he’s crimson from forehead to chest. “That. Yeah.” He presses his lips together, but Nicholas has already got the grin he’s fighting to hide. It fades the second reality kicks in and Vash seems to sense it, bending down until he’s close enough for Nicholas to see each of his pale eyelashes. “Mostly you breaking down over it. Listen to me: you need to stop agonising over the decisions you made in the past,” Vash says, soft yet firm. “Please, Nico. You can’t keep destroying yourself with guilt from the inside out.”

He swallows hard. It’s sobering, to have Vash confront what’s been plaguing him this whole lifetime. “I lied to you. From the start, I lied and lied.”

Vash sighs lowly. “I know, and I knew that even at the time - but before we could talk about it properly you decided to go completely off the rails and go after Chapel instead.” Vash’s mouth twists, smile sadder now. “And I think you’re struggling because you accepted your fate, but can’t accept that what’s happening now is maybe what fate had in store for you all along - and that you working for Knives really isn’t the huge betrayal you seem to think it is.”

“Don’t talk about fate,” Nicholas says sourly, rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling. “Next you’ll start talking about shit like a higher purpose and divinity.”

His words make Vash snort with sudden laughter, shoving him aside until Nicholas moves over and allows Vash to flop beside him, metal arm carelessly thrown over his stomach. “Nah. It drives me insane, trying to think through all that.” His grin fades and he turns his head slightly, peering up at Nicholas through his eyelashes. “I meant it, when I’d said I’d forgiven you a long time ago. All you’ve got to do now is forgive yourself.”

Nicholas closes his eyes, sighing through his nose. “You’re far too damn forgiving.”

He feels Vash’s shrug against him. “Maybe.”

“No, you are.” Cracking an eye open, he glares down at him. “You’d take a bullet for the person behind the trigger and still find a way to justify their actions, or say that it wasn’t their fault that they shot you in the chest.”

Vash smiles mirthlessly and it irks him, because he’s smiling as if it isn’t true. “You didn’t shoot me, though.”

“You - ugh.” He curves his hand into a fist and brings it down on Vash’s head with next to no force, but the man still whines and kicks his legs against him as if the blow cracked his skull in two. “You’re so deliberately obtuse sometimes.” As Vash scoffs and his hand withdraws to sprawl over his chest again, Nicholas hesitates. It’s the question he’s been resolutely avoiding asking all this time, but one he feels he can’t push aside any longer. “Why did you never say anything before now? Why didn’t you tell me that you loved me, all this time?” It feels a thrill to say it aloud, but he’d rather bite his tongue off than admit it.

Vash doesn’t answer at first. He rolls over into Nicholas’s side, cheek pressed to his bicep, prosthetic arm between them and the other reaching out to trace between the faint silver scars in Nicholas’s chest, linking up the traces left by the bullets as if they were constellations. “A few reasons,” he says, voice low. It takes him another moment to gather his thoughts, but Nicholas waits. “One was that...” He trails off, and his smile turns rueful. “I know how lonely it gets, out in the desert. When we were back with everyone else, I figured you had more important things to focus on than - well. Than me.”

It takes Nicholas a moment to understand him; a moment to comprehend the fact he really just heard Vash say that. “You didn’t tell me how you felt about me,” he says, stiff and stilted, “because you figured I was just lonely, all those months in the desert?”

Vash looks up at him, mouth twisted. “Well, yeah.” If his smile is an attempt to reassure him, it does anything but. “We had fun, didn’t we?”

“Fun?” Nicholas repeats, hollow. He thinks back to the ramshackle inns they stayed in, the ones with suspicious stains on the carpet and the one so coated in dust that Vash sneezed in his sleep and cracked his head against Nicholas’s in the process; the way they would always drag the pillows and blankets of one twin bed over onto the other, legs tangled together as they shared alcohol and cigarettes and their wrestling for space somehow always ended up as cuddling; Vash’s laughter in his sidecar, in whatever tavern they ended up in, whenever he had him pinned beneath him, sitting back on his hips and grinning down at him as Nicholas lay in tangled sheets, defeated. In the present day, with Vash quiet and still beside him, Nicholas swallows hard.

“How could you ever think it was just fun to me? That it wasn’t the most - as if you were just - ” He shakes his head, and his voice cracks. “Christ, Vash, when will you ever stop giving and just take?”

Vash gazes up at him, lips pressed together. When he speaks, Nicholas realised at once that it’s a thought which has been playing around his head for a long, long time. “But why would you want me?”

“Why would I want anyone other than you?” Incredulous, he rolls them until he’s on his hands and knees above Vash, the man’s blue eyes widening as Nicholas looms over him. “How can you get away with shutting me down when I’m pointing out all the shitty things I’ve done, but you can’t accept that I’d want you for you?”

“Because,” Vash begins, eyebrows knitted, then cowers at Nicholas’s growl of frustration.

“You,” he tells him, leaning down until their foreheads bump together, “are the most aggravating person I’ve ever met in my life. You drive me absolutely insane. Your unwillingness to accept you’re the kindest person in the world and not the monster you think you are, your idiocy, your - your - fuck, Vash, your Plant parts, whatever the hell you call them. You drive me absolutely insane.”

Vash blinks, pale lashes brushing his cheeks. They’re so close that Nicholas can see every one of the lines in his sclera and irises. “Good insane, though?”

“Always has been. I’ve never not wanted you,” Nicholas says, and tilts his face down to kiss him. Vash’s hands come to his cheeks at once, metal fingers cupping his jaw while those of flesh and blood slide into his hair, twisting down and anchoring themselves there as he shivers with the pleasure of Nicholas’ tongue in his mouth. They rock against each other but it’s unhurried, gentle, without the desperation of the night before but simply revelling in being able to do it with one another.

“Maybe I want you because you’re everything I’m not,” Nicholas says the moment they break apart, breathless. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen something lovelier than the pink flush in Vash’s cheeks, the bright eyes on his. “Because you’re the kindest person I’ve ever met, so much though that it feels wrong for me to put my hands on you.”

“Stop that.” Vash grasps his hair, pressing a kiss to the scar on his palm he stitched up. “Shut up, Nick, and help me take my arm off, would you?” He sits up and Nicholas follows, moving his hands to where he knows to press down and shift so that he can pull the prosthetic loose, setting it down at his side of the bed. 

Sighing in relief Vash settles over his chest and smiles at him, tracing the curve of his nose. He’d told him he liked it once when they were barely clothed and curled up in bed together, Vash’s body laid perpendicular to his and head in his lap. Is it called an aquiline nose? he’d mused, prosthetic hand draped over his own stomach while the other hand reached up to pet the bridge of his nose. I think that’s the word for it. 

Dunno, Wolfwood had replied, pulling away from him only so that he could blow the smoke from his cigarette to his left and not into Vash’s face. It’s just a nose. 

Maybe. Vash pressed close to him, reaching up to swipe the cigarette from his grasp and take a drag. It’s my favourite nose, though.

“I don’t know who I am,” Nicholas tells him in the present, Vash’s warm weight against him, and hates himself for the vulnerability. “Who I’m supposed to be.”

A priest. The Punisher. An undertaker creating work for himself. Big brother to a bunch of kids with no relatives of their own. When embodying so many identities and roles, he has no clue who Nicholas D. Wolfwood actually is. 

Vash hums to himself, hand curving into a gentle fist so that his knuckles rest against Nicholas’s cheekbone. “Who do you want to be?”

He swallows. It’s a feeling rather than a name, though one that takes every ounce of vulnerability in him to say aloud. “Whoever you see me as.”

Vash is quiet, contemplating, fingers brushing up and down his face. “I see you as a man who’s been forced into impossible situations,” Vash says at last. “Who did things that I wouldn’t do, but always on behalf of others. Always trying to protect the vulnerable, the lowly, every sad, suffering person he’s ever come across.” His mouth curves in a soft, sad smile. “A good man who’s doing good things for those kids.”

His eyes burn, but there’s no tears left to shed. “How can you see these things in me,” he rasps, “but refuse to see them in yourself? You just have to look at yourself to see what you’ll do to protect other people.”

Vash sighs, foot bumping his as he stretches his legs out. “Maybe you have a point.”

“Definitely,” he says, a sourness to his tone despite the emotions stoppered in his throat. “You have to allow yourself to be happy, Vash. You deserve it more than anyone.” Nicholas cups his cheek and Vash leans into his touch, eyes on his. This time, the words come easily. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” His eyes soften, smile more beautiful than anything he’s ever seen before. “Being here is the happiest I’ve been in a long time,” Vash whispers, and Nicholas at least knows a confession when he’s granted one.

“Yeah?” His hand slides from Vash’s cheek to the back of his neck until he can pull him in, until the man can settle down with his ear over his heart again. “Then let’s keep it that way.”