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Of course Vash had known. Probably all along.
Wolfwood isn’t sure if he can pinpoint exactly when it stopped being him guiding them to Knives and started being Vash dragging them all along behind him on his self-sacrificial road to Calvary but the change had happened, fully and probably inevitably if Vash knew. If he could smell the desperation on him from the moment they met.
Just look at his eyes. Like a predator to prey, eyes on the side of his head and Vash always looking straight forward. He’d been foolish not to see it; maybe he hadn’t wanted to.
And now all he can see is what’s in front of him, Vash’s body unbroken despite the evidence of what looks like dozens of tries on it, strong despite all the world’s attempts to take it from him. The bullet wound, throbbing and new, the direct outcome of trying to save Jeneora Rock and the miserable lowlifes that had felt the ripples and attributed them to the wrong fallen star.
Wolfwood is good with blood, after losing and resynthesizing so much of it, but this is different — this isn’t his own, this is the blood of someone who matters, wasted when it isn’t keeping his heart beating. The hole is red and slick, ringed out like echoes with the faint reminiscence of the markings he’d seen on Vash in the plant room on the ship, poetry in an ancient language.
Vash is watching Wolfwood watch him, and he winces like his attention is more painful than the gunshot he took moments ago. “Right,” he says, misery all covered in a smile that will never reach those baby blues, “get patched up.”
Something seems off. Wolfwood isn’t blind, though more and more these days he’s feeling pretty fucking unobservant. “Something wrong, Blondie?” Besides everything, all those permanent scars demarcating the cruelty of a species not even meant to be on this planet, who’d endured the crash like a virus, sapping resources, making scarcity seem like surviving.
“It’s nothing.” More of that grin that makes Wolfwood feel sick to his stomach. “The prosthetic is cold. And the other one shakes.”
Figure it out, is probably what Knives would want him to say. It’s not what Knives would say himself — Wolfwood isn’t disconnected enough to think it’s hatred that sent him on his mission, much as he might want him to think it is, or think him incapable of understanding the complexities of everything between him and Vash — and Wolfwood knows now it’s not what he’ll say either, grip already loosening around the straps of the Punisher. “My hands aren’t particularly clean,” he cautions, gesturing around them. “But I can’t say this is the dirtiest sewer I’ve ever been in.” This is underplaying the luxury of JuLai; the tunnel around them is tidier than half of the roadside motels they’ve slept in, certainly more hygienic than the nicotine residue car they’ve spent even more time in. Minimal sand, no thomas shit that he can see or smell.
“It’s okay.” Of course it is. Nothing’s killed him yet. Knives won’t either, though Wolfwood doesn’t like thinking about what he might do instead. Vash might like it, though, suffering without an expiration date, or at least think he deserves it which he seems to treat like the same thing. “It’s nice of you to help.”
Wolfwood hasn’t really said he will, but as with everything else Vash seems to see right through him on this. The sigh that leaves him as he props the Punisher against the wall behind him feels especially empty. Vash smiles, like he doesn’t have a chunk of metal in him heavy with the strength of ill will. Like Wolfwood isn’t the latest — and maybe the worst — in a long line of men looking to hurt Vash for their own benefit.
Wolfwood gets on his knees, tries to level himself with where Vash is propped up on a box, remnants of materials from some forgotten maintenance trip. All that conditioning, all the threats and torture and the chemicals in him that make him feel farther from humanity than the alien in front of him, and Wolfwood can’t just treat this as a job, an assignment from the Eye of Michael anymore. It’s fitting in some strange way, he thinks, glancing at Vash for approval before reaching for the hole where that bullet rests, that the cult that made him what he is had worshipped a plant, the darkened mirror image of Vash. Wolfwood was going to do his duty to them, to the children at the orphanage, and then he was going to regret it for the rest of his life.
Before all that, though, there’s someone else Wolfwood has a duty to. “Sorry, Spikey,” he offers in advance. With one hand he spreads the skin taut around the bullet hole, with the other he sizes his fingers against the opening. “You sure you don’t just want me to warm up the prosthetic for you?”
He actually laughs at that, a full-on giggle that floats through the space around them and sinks down into the water flowing past. Wolfwood supposes he should be grateful they’re in a part of the treatment process that appears to be beyond the worst of the smells, but mostly what he’s grateful for is that stupid little laugh. “Gonna hold my hand, Wolfwood?” Vash is teasing him but his voice is soft; eyes too, like something dead and rotting.
“You’re laughing about it now,” warns Wolfwood. The bullet isn’t deep, he can see it shining in there among all the other metal littering the stretch of Vash’s body, but it’s not shallow either. “You’ll be begging to hold my hand when I’m all done here.”
Vash doesn’t say anything, moves slow like he’s trying not to scare an animal, reaches his prosthetic hand down to press over Wolfwood’s where it’s still stretching his skin. Wolfwood struggles to hold still, not to twitch away from suddenly having everything he knows how to want anymore at this proximity.
“Hold on tight, Blondie,” Wolfwood says, and then he’s inside Vash.
He really shouldn’t be thinking about it, shouldn’t be thinking about anything but meeting metal at the end of his fingertips as soon as possible, but it’s like he can’t help it, like his mind is hijacked by some deeper, darker evolutionary need. Vash is hot and wet inside, his stomach flexes in opposition to Wolfwood’s intrusion, squeezing his fingers while the cool contrasting metal of his prosthetic more consciously does the same to his other hand. It’s a maddening set of sensations, a hit of nicotine and a shot of alcohol wiring his system all at once. Gets him wondering about other places he could have been let in to Vash if the idiot hadn’t been in such a rush to throw his life away.
The bullet, Wolfwood thinks, seizing his own attention and wrestling it back to the task at hand, the fucking bullet.
“Wolfwood,” Vash whines, maybe five seconds into Wolfwood digging around in him, trying to get a grip on the butt of the lead buried in Vash’s stomach while simultaneously trying to get a grip on the slow feed of blood running to his cock. He’s hurting Vash, he thinks, willing his arousal to settle back down again, but stronger than that is a little voice murmuring you’re helping him, he trusts you, he wanted you to do this and that strength only grows when Wolfwood catches sight of Vash’s expression, the perfect companion to the breath in his voice, warning Wolfwood with his name.
Vash’s mouth is open, lips wrapped around heavy breathing that makes Wolfwood’s head spin when it hits his face at his new angle. His pupils are… “Spikey,” Wolfwood says, slow and careful, pinning something down so it doesn’t ricochet right back into his face, “you enjoying this?”
Vash’s face is almost always just a little touched by the sun, like a peach a hint past ripening, but now he’s flushing fully. It should maybe be concerning rather than endearing considering the blood slugging slowly out of Vash’s stomach, slicking up Wolfwood’s fingers. “Ah,” says Vash, and for some reason the next action he thinks to take is easing his grip on Wolfwood’s hand, under his against his stomach. Like Wolfwood is the one in pain here. Like Vash is the one hurting him. Wolfwood gives him a look. “I… it’s just a lot.”
“Sure is. Would be less if I could get the damn thing out.” Wolfwood’s about to make employee of the century with the Gung-Ho Guns and the Eye of Michael all at once, and with that weight sure to chase him around slowly for the rest of his miserable life, he allows himself a brief experiment. Just a little harder than necessary, maybe, Wolfwood tweaks the tips of his fingers around the bullet. If it hurts, he promises himself, promises Vash unspoken, I’ll stop fucking around.
Wolfwood expects some kind of yelp, maybe a bitten-off scream into the back of Vash’s shaking organic hand. He expects the sound of teeth gritting, the twitch of Vash’s body away from him. Maybe that prosthetic snapping Wolfwood’s metacarpals — and maybe he’d deserve it. What he doesn’t expect is a moan, full-throated before Vash can choke it off.
“Ouch,” Vash stammers. Wolfwood would bet money that’s him trying to cover his ass. Fat chance; like a bulldog, Wolfwood bites down.
“It’s really in there.” He pushes just a little further in, just against the soft, squishy space around the bullet. Doesn’t dig the metal any deeper; the thought of having a part in one of the marks on Vash’s body, not a painful memory but one that might keep those pupils dilated, is arresting. “Sorry, Spikey, hold on a minute.”
“Take your time,” Vash forces out, like he’s got a layer of tarp in his throat. Is now the time, in a literal sewer and with their friends somewhere above them in a dubious situation, to say the least? Unequivocally no. But it isn’t like Wolfwood will get another shot. And some part of him has wanted this for so long. Probably since the damn sandworm. Maybe he’d been curious since he’d been sent to fetch him, fascinated by the idea of someone occupying someone like Knives’ thoughts enough to make it worth sending some of his most dangerous dogs after him. “Are you… maybe I should get in there too.”
Vash’s fingers right alongside his in this tight, slick divot no one else will ever touch inside of Vash… it’s tempting. But Wolfwood really is trying to help, even if his cock is doing its level best to get in his way. “Nah, I got it,” he manages, almost a grunt in an effort to force himself to behave, and with one last pull the bullet is out. It hadn’t taken much force, after all; Wolfwood maintains his balance just fine. It helps that Vash still has his left hand pinned to his stomach with that metal, still cool though warmed up a little from proximity to Wolfwood’s skin.
“Easy,” Wolfwood murmurs, unnecessarily, like he’s talking down a skittish horse; it’s window dressing. Vash is calm as anything. “You got anything to stop it up with?”
There’s not much blood oozing anymore, but not much isn’t none which is the goalpost Wolfwood is trying to hit. Vash shakes his head in Wolfwood’s peripheral vision. “It’ll stop on its own, eventually.”
Maybe Wolfwood is hungry for trouble, a never-ending void of pulling the rug out from under himself, ruining a good thing just because it’s been offered to him. It could be any number of personal problems that makes him say, “If you want it to, you mean.”
“Huh?” Vash actually looks confused, not the cover up from a second ago. “No, it sort of happens. It can take longer when I have a lot going on.”
“I meant like… about earlier.” Already the backfiring, the kickback. Potent but Wolfwood is stubborn too, which means no backing down. “When you were acting like having my fingers in your bullet hole was better than them being inside you other ways.”
“Wolfwood!” Vash sputters for a moment before his name gets out like a gunshot, hits like one too. Vash is reproachful and scarlet. He still has Wolfwood pinned to him, though, which is interesting. “You’re so… aren’t you supposed to be some kind of holy man?”
“Not a very good one, you might have noticed,” mutters Wolfwood. “Anyway, don’t change the subject.”
“There is no subject!” Vash waves his organic hand in the air, almost topples over backwards with it but Wolfwood doesn’t mind one bit what with all the new angles the flurry of motion gives him of Vash’s body, so new to him and so naked right down to that trim waist, those boyish hips. Wolfwood wants so badly, doesn’t even know how to understand. It’s like after all this time searching this is what religion is for him, this is what deserves that priestly dedication he’s burning up under the weight of with nowhere to put it. “I’m not… I don’t even know what you’re accusing me of.”
“Not accusing, Spikey. Lots of guys get off on pain.” Wolfwood shrugs. “I don’t mind it myself once in a while.”
Vash’s eyes do that impossible thing, go soft and liquid, reflecting those dim lines in his sclera even more strongly, making him look more alien and more human all at once. “Wolfwood,” Vash says again, sweet as honey this time, precious like spun gold, “it’s not the pain.”
He still looks sympathetic enough Wolfwood’s not sure he totally buys it. “Well, whatever it was—”
“It’s you.” Vash’s tone brings him up short, stops the flow of put-on annoyance right in its tracks. Wolfwood stares, blankly, slow devastation in the form of a lump of guilt crawling up his throat. “Don’t say anything if you don’t want to. Just thought you ought to know.”
“And now was the damn time to tell me?” Wolfwood winces at the harshness of his own voice, but Vash seems to read that it isn’t intended for him. “Spikey, we’ve been on the road for—”
“I know.” Vash shrinks a little, still under Wolfwood’s hand. He fantasizes them glued together at their point of intersection, going down together when the time comes. “I… it’s selfish.”
Not like Vash at all; Wolfwood wonders how truly self-serving whatever his reasoning is. “Out with it.”
“I… I know we’ll probably go our separate ways after all this.” Wolfwood doubts this too; somehow he can’t picture Knives letting Vash go any way at all once he has him, though he somehow thinks that if Vash could bring himself to want to he could break his way out. He’s immolating in the furnace of emotion swirling in him, guilt and anger and a resigned kind of confusion and under it all, over it all, the warm life of Vash against his palm, maddening and soothing all at once, a medicine that nearly kills you before it cures you. “I guess I thought if I told you now, you might want to… come find me again someday. Maybe just to sock me, I guess.”
Wolfwood sighs. He pictures that contract he’s been promised up in Conrad’s office, pictures the old geezer signing on a dotted line and giving Wolfwood what he should have already had all along, pictures himself giving up everything and getting nothing in return. Maybe he’s being selfish right back; maybe he’d like to get just one thing for himself out of this by giving Vash something on his own terms, something he wants. Something he’ll admit to being damn selfish about, which feels like a triumph of its own. “I’m not gonna sock you, Blondie. Not about this.”
“Everything else is fair game, though?” Vash’s smile is soft, warm, a sweater Livio pulled over Wolfwood’s head during their brief, bright stretch of happiness at the orphanage. “It’s still a risk if I eat the last donut? Or use too much hot water? Or tell Roberto you’re stealing his cigarettes again? Or remind Meryl—”
“Hey Spikey,” Wolfwood says, and the thread he’s felt pulling between them, winding up tight on its spool as Vash enumerates just a fraction of his annoying behaviors, makes him sure he’s about to make a huge mistake, an inevitable mistake, a mistake that will break at least one heart between them, “pipe down for once.”
Just like in a fight, and yet so different that Wolfwood feels a tremor of fear along his spine, his body moves without him having to think about it. They’re already close, Vash’s prosthetic equalized now against Wolfwood’s hand, neither of them warmer than the other any longer against the backdrop of Vash’s stomach. Wolfwood sets his mouth against Vash’s with every intention of pulling back quickly, or at the very least not letting things intensify, but almost the second they touch Vash gasps, and his lips are a bolt of lightning striking Wolfwood’s brainstem, and he can’t even dream of holding back from letting his tongue dip into Vash’s welcoming mouth. Vash sags back at the new connection point, pulling Wolfwood with him, finally finally getting that organic hand on Wolfwood too, hauling him closer, forcing Wolfwood to scramble to brace himself. That bullet wound is still down there, taunting him, the second worst thing that will happen to Vash today. Maybe the third depending on how deep everything running unspoken between them goes. Wolfwood knows it feels like he’s peeling off his own skin every time he takes a hand off Vash, even when it’s just to get some other part of him under it.
“Wolfwood,” Vash pants, when he gets a second to himself to speak, while Wolfwood pecks Vash’s cheek, licks at it like he’s hungry, cleaning a plate that will never empty, “you should maybe — ah — know I lied a little earlier.”
“Gonna need honesty, Spikey.” Even in his own ears he sounds like a territorial dog, growling against the skin of Vash’s jaw; he already feels the tug to get back to Vash’s mouth, like his tongue is trying to get home.
“It was kind of the pain.” Vash fumbles this out fast, like Wolfwood might be in any way shocked or surprised. Ha fucking ha. Wolfwood isn’t exactly getting laid on the regular but he can read a man’s reactions regardless of the situation. “I meant what I said about you but it was… I mean the pain wasn’t bad.”
“What, you want me to fuck you up before everything coming up next?” Wolfwood’s as vague as he dares, doesn’t want to drop the bomb of Knives’ name on this, one more good thing torn to shreds in his hands. Vash had as good as said he wanted this, wanted for once and spoke it into existence, and the devil itself couldn’t pull Wolfwood from giving him that. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Vash laughs, the ugly kind. Wolfwood really doesn’t like that shit, used to the sweet stuff, sliding around in his brain like molten honey. He bites at Vash’s lip over it, turns that nasty giggle to a tiny exclamation — it’s a little better, spark of want in Wolfwood’s spine. “Enough,” Vash says, answering his question, and Wolfwood’s already upset, already so deep into this that he doesn’t know how he’s going to get out, but Vash keeps going. “Enough even you’ll figure it out someday.”
It’s too much. Wolfwood’s deliberate the way he is with bandits he sizes up ahead of a gunfight, catching weaknesses to work with later, when he goes for that still-healing bullet hole and presses down on it, hard. Vash arches beautifully, mathematically in a numeric language Wolfwood’s never seen before, his undead instincts pulling him away, his proclivities reeling him in. “That one’s for you, Spikey,” he mutters. This is risky to be doing without a conversation but it’s not like they have time, and it’s not like he could hurt Vash enough to matter. Not physically, anyway, and not any other way at this point without tearing himself apart in the process. He’d already committed his original sin, way back at their first meeting when he’d set them on the path Vash’s self-sacrificial complex would probably have taken one way or the other eventually. Wolfwood had been the signpost on that road to perdition — or maybe salvation, depending on your perspective. “Feel it, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Anyone lucky enough to happen on Vash like this might think him weak, torn apart by time and put back together by people who were maybe well-meaning, maybe not; his eyes are glossy already, still dilated, markings shining. He seems happy to be mostly under Wolfwood like this, happy to let him take the lead and have his way. From this angle it looks like power, like the blessing of something divine. Wolfwood isn’t going to take it for granted. “Again, Wolfwood.”
Wolfwood presses in again, obedient to the commandment, on the edge this time so he can smear his fingers around what can at least barely be called a wound now. Vash’s body must be working against his desires, patching him up and healing those nerves, but he still moans at the drag, the small and unyielding force Wolfwood exerts on him. “That enough to get you going?” he asks, but then he’s always been an I’ll believe it when I see it kind of guy and simultaneously wedges a leg between Vash’s thighs.
He’s hot enough to feel through both layers of their clothes, grits his teeth around a keening sound at the pressure. Wolfwood is so fucked. How could he let this go, leave this be. They’ve done little more than kiss and he’s already feeling something more than arousal, something lethal with the kind of lives they live. They’re floors below the end of it all.
But it’s like Vash said, it’s always like Vash says. Wolfwood will find him, he’ll settle the orphanage and then he’ll find him.
“Then I wanna be nice to you now,” he mutters, expects Vash to make a meal of it, smug and preening. What he somehow doesn’t expect is that quicksilvering in his eyes, the way they go molten in a flash too fast for his eyes to catch.
“Wolfwood,” Vash breathes, out on an exhale that sounds like it’s hiding something. Wolfwood’s so fond it’s humiliating; he hides his face in the nipple Vash has left, licking over it like the last drop of water spilled down the lip of a canteen.
“You don’t have to be so formal, Spikey.” You know me well enough by now, everything I wanted to keep to myself. Wolfwood sucks that nipple into his mouth and Vash is clenching his teeth again, pushing the sacred cradle of his hips against the meat of his thigh.
“Ni—Nick,” he tries; it shoots to Wolfwood’s cock like a laser. “You’re—”
“Can it, Blondie, just enjoy the moment,” Wolfwood mouths around his nipple, and he glances up to see Vash frowning. “What?”
“You said you wanted to be nice.” Vash is making an admirable, adorable effort to pout while Wolfwood is doing whatever he can with his tongue where he’s at. It makes him want to bow down until it’s wiped from his face, glowing faintly with those plant inscriptions, the language of a people Wolfwood will never understand — and never want to. He’s never liked things to be too easy.
“Mmhmm.” He presses his mouth, open, to the divot of Vash’s sternum, sucks until a bruise blooms between his lips. “You don’t think this is nice?”
“It is,” Vash gasps, reassuring, desperate, like Wolfwood’s holding the edge of a rug that could be swept out from under him at any time, with the right or wrong provocation. “It is, it’s good, just—”
“All right, I’ll talk sweet too.” It’s more likely he won’t talk at all, every available sensible effort going to blunt the rough edge running all around Wolfwood, but Vash can ask if he wants more. All he has to do, all Wolfwood wants him to do, is ask. He doesn’t know when it got like this.
“And,” Vash says, shy though Wolfwood’s been watching him half-naked for every second since he took his shirt off, piecing together all that metal, all those scars, “maybe… you could use my name?”
Doesn’t seem so hard. That’s all the guy could think to request. Wolfwood tongues between two of his ribs, runs his hands up Vash’s thighs, strong and straining around those unconscious movements of his pelvis. It’s almost painful how hard Wolfwood is at this point, all this offered to him without caveat, the honor to be the bearer of Vash’s pain — if only a little, that bullet hole faded now to only a smear of flesh — and his pleasure. “Yeah? Vash, that’s what you want?”
He doesn’t respond, not verbally, just nods. Wolfwood can spare a moment, straightens to strip his coat before he cups the back of Vash’s neck with enough tenderness to earn a gasp. “Get this under you,” Wolfwood murmurs, passing him the fabric, “and take your pants off.”
Vash is obedient as anything, nods into the kiss Wolfwood presses to his mouth before he backs off just enough to watch him squirm free of his waistband. The boots stay on; Wolfwood supposes it’s not like they have a wealth of time for a full striptease.
It doesn’t matter anyway when Vash is back on the crate, palms flat to Wolfwood’s coat, thighs pressed together like he’s embarrassed.
“Don’t get shy on me now,” cautions Wolfwood. He almost wishes he had a cigarette, could sit here smoking it and watching Vash naked in front of him like the sun coming over the horizon. “Spread your legs, sweetheart.”
Vash’s mouth drops open a little at the pet name, and the muscles in his thighs slacken just slightly too. It could be so easy, Wolfwood thinks, if only he was a different man altogether lugging around a different burden, a different past. “You can’t laugh,” says Vash, and Wolfwood frowns up at him from where he’s sitting back on his heels.
“Now why the hell would I—”
Vash lets his knees fall apart, and all the breath in Wolfwood’s lungs vacates the premises. Between those golden thighs is the prettiest cunt Wolfwood could have dreamed — he’s seen some good ones but he’s never seen anything like what’s blooming and dripping at Vash’s core. He’s seen pictures before of plants on the old earth, the kind that could almost have survived a world like Noman’s Land, thick wet-looking green leaves in dizzying circular patterns; Vash’s cunt looks like that, bioluminescent with those ancient markings, same fruit-sweet color as his cheeks and flushing pink. Succulent, they were called. Fitting. Wolfwood’s head is spinning, his mouth is watering, and before he knows it he’s rising to his knees.
“Wolfwood…?” Vash’s voice is tentative; where did ‘Nick’ go, huh, some still-cogent part of Wolfwood’s brain coughs up. It doesn’t matter. He’ll pull it back out of him.
“You’re a fuckin’ miracle, Vash.” Maybe it’s rude but Wolfwood’s eyes are locked on that mesmerizing cunt, even as he shuffles forward, hands finding Vash’s thighs and sliding slowly up them, smooth skin between stretched scars and soft hair. How could anyone want to hurt this. How could Wolfwood have brought this here, to let this happen. Atonement — for himself, for the whole human race — begins with Wolfwood’s thumbs settled in the creases of Vash’s pelvis, angling him gently where he wants him. He starts nose first, brushing the tip along one of the petals of Vash’s cunt, breathes in and absorbs Vash’s scent and his bitten off moan all at once. He smells bitter and sweet, wicked and divine, and Wolfwood is so deeply fucked he doesn’t even know where to start getting out from under it. Doesn’t remember how to want to, either.
Each curved little leaf is just as sensitive, like Vash is all clit on the outside when he’s like this; Wolfwood made him like this, slick and open, heady like liquor. There’s no time but Wolfwood takes it, strokes his tongue along each individual petal, rubs his nose along for the ride, new directions or amounts of pressure or speeds to keep Vash gasping and moaning on the crate, on his coat, and that too is potent. He’s wet enough it’ll drip, run down Vash’s thighs and the cleave of his ass, soak into Wolfwood’s coat to leave his scent lingering, like Wolfwood could use some hound dog sense of smell to track Vash down again with it someday. The thought has him spiraling, sucking gently at each leaf fluttering around that tempting hole at the center where Vash is wet as anything Wolfwood could have imagined.
“Nick,” pants Vash, and Wolfwood’s not sure how long he’s been saying his name but it finally breaks through to him. He won’t tear his mouth from Vash’s cunt, not until his face is shining with him, but he does look up, treated to the sight of Vash’s eyes glossed over and staring right back at him, lip pockmarked from being held between his teeth, flush deep and high over his cheekbones. “More.”
Wolfwood nods, slowly, knows it brushes his mouth over those petalling folds, slides one hand down to stroke his thumb along the edge of Vash’s cunt. That whips Vash up; Wolfwood can feel it in the way his thigh tightens under his palm, in the way the smell around him intensifies further, sharp as a knife, warm as the sun. He can hear it, too, Vash whining above him. Some selfish part of Wolfwood wants for another sense to absorb, for Vash to put his hands on him and telegraph by touch everything Wolfwood is doing to him, but his fingers — prosthetic and organic — are tangled tight in the folds of his coat and maybe the wrinkles they leave behind will suffice. A substitute, a punishment.
Wolfwood strokes the pads of his index and middle fingers over the hole at the core of Vash’s cunt, just out of pace with the movement of his tongue, just to keep Vash on the edge and canting his hips against him. It makes it easier, how wet he is, how badly Vash somehow wants to pick up trash on the ground in front of him and make it into gold; two of Wolfwood’s fingers slide in to the third knuckle without meeting resistance.
“Aahhh.” Vash moans and his body echoes it, the muscles of his cunt tight around Wolfwood. He growls, near-animal, sucks one of Vash’s curling leaves into his mouth to rub the tip of his tongue against it, spitshine rough. Just having his fingers inside Vash is a treat, a dream, a wonder — even before he moves them, Vash is wet like he’s lubricated, warm sheath wrapping the cool gel of his arousal. The push-pull of sensations when he does start thrusting, probing and deep, into him has Wolfwood feeling high, drunk, lost in a vision he doesn’t ever want to leave. “Nick, Nick, mmm—”
He can’t help himself, adds a third finger to a throated groan from Vash and crooks them. Maybe this part is like other cunts Wolfwood has been in, because Vash’s noise turns high pitched before he can stop it, his pelvis jerks under Wolfwood’s hand, pressing against his face.
Smothered by pussy, Wolfwood thinks, as Vash writhes against him, panting rising in intensity, not the worst way to go.
“Enough, enough, I’m gonna— Nick, gonna—”
It’s this, finally, that drives Wolfwood to detach himself, momentarily, from sucking gently on yet another pretty petal around Vash’s swollen cunt, looks up at him and slides his fingers home with every word, brushes his lips against him with every sound, watches tears build in those blue, blue eyes. “Gonna be a good boy and come for me? Gonna give me water in the desert, sweetheart?”
He almost can’t move fast enough to catch him; Vash’s pupils roll back, his hips twitch one more time, and he comes. His thighs tighten around Wolfwood’s ears, muffling the noises he makes, his cunt feels like it’s sucking Wolfwood’s fingers down, his mouth… well, he’d said it. He pushes Vash past orgasm, slips his fingers free just to replace them with his tongue and eat him out in earnest, drinking every drop of him. If there are gods out there, steadfastly ignoring Wolfwood’s prayers and supplications in favor of bigger things, this is their nectar, dripping from Vash’s cunt.
Vash whimpers before long, sweet and high, and Wolfwood finally gives him a break, eases back onto his knees, wiping his mouth with his hand. “Damn, Blondie, that was—”
“Nicholas.” Vash’s voice is desperate, and when Wolfwood meets his eyes they’re full of light and something else, something he likes a little less. Vash reaches for him, catches handfuls of his shirtfront and pulls Wolfwood in for a kiss deep enough to empty his mouth. “Nick, I need you inside me.”
Wolfwood’s cock, already well on its way through the wringer, throbs. He hadn’t expected this kind of intensity so soon after what had seemed like a perfectly good orgasm, hand-delivered, hadn’t expected Vash to kiss him again immediately, tongue digging into his mouth like it’s the only place with oxygen. “Hey, hey, sweetheart, all right. But my knees are killing me like this.” Wolfwood wraps a hand around Vash’s wrist where the skin is hot and thin, pulls gently. “Come on down with the sewer rats. In my lap, baby.”
Too tender, too real, but Vash always responds best to that anyway, all that pain talk earlier at least a little bit just that — talk. A means to an end, an excuse to open the door they’d both been holding shut til now. He’s sure a guy as old and complicated as Vash contains multitudes but for now he looks content, near-frantic, to worm his way into the seat of Wolfwood’s thighs where they’re folded, to unbutton what’s still done of his shirt and push it off his shoulders, to touch his chest hungrily. Wolfwood catches a glint of light on that solitary earring, traps it between his teeth and pulls, reels Vash into him with wide palms at the small of his back, the trim of his waist. He’s amazing, wet still between his legs where his cunt brushes against Wolfwood, smearing his torso.
“Nick,” Vash breathes, Wolfwood’s face between his hands, guiding him where he’s mouthing down his outstretched, vulnerable neck, “now.”
There it is again, that urgency. It’s not bad — far from it, to be somehow so desirable to a being beyond Wolfwood’s comprehension — but it’s not part of the patterns Wolfwood is starting to remember about Vash the Stampede. He presses another kiss, too soft, to Vash’s pulse and holds for a moment they still don’t have. “What’s the hurry all of a sudden?”
Being that close means Wolfwood can feel Vash’s skin heat under him at the question; so it had been something. Wolfwood tries not to be smug about it but he can’t quite stifle the smirk he hides in Vash’s neck. “We… we don’t have time,” Vash stammers, snakes a hand around to tangle fingers in Wolfwood’s hair and pin him down where he can’t see his face. He’s not wrong but he is lying. Wolfwood knows one when he sees one.
“Come on, sweetheart, tell me why you’re beggin’ for my dick.” The combination of pet name and filth and open-mouthed kiss to a spot above Vash’s collarbone gets him to whine again, that hot sound, buck his hips up against Wolfwood wherever he can for friction on those shining petals. “Wanna make sure I do it all right.”
Vash turns his movement slower, deliberate, rocking now against Wolfwood’s stomach, slicking the trail of dark hair leading down to his waistband, marking him with his pheromones. No more competitors, no more predators; Wolfwood could drown in it. “I just thought,” he says, quiet, dropping words into the crown of Wolfwood’s head, “I wanted something from you with me. In all this.”
Wolfwood feels something inside him crack, big and booming like an earthquake, something cascading in a landslide worse than the sandstorms he’s been caught in out in the desert and not aware enough; just like then, so now does it overwhelm him. “Vash,” he says, like it’s punched out of him, and the hand in his hair loosens just a little, just enough to let him turn his eyes up, mouth parting in supplication. Vash smiles, small and authentic; it’s a bullet to the head, it’s the first spoonful of hot soup on a cold night. “After all I’ve done… anything you want.”
“Doesn’t matter what you’ve done,” Vash murmurs, and then his hands drop to Wolfwood’s waistband, undoing his pants with the same dexterity as he reloads, as he juggles for kids in any town square that will have him, as he finesses an extra bite or two of dinner onto Meryl’s plate from his own. Like he thinks Wolfwood won’t notice, won’t love him more for it.
Yeah, might as well put a stamp on it.
“Matters what you’re doing now.” While Wolfwood’s been drinking him in with eyes and hands, Vash has gotten his pants open, pushing at them impatiently. Wolfwood tries to shift, to make it easier, lets Vash tug it all down under his own legs where he holds his own weight up on his knees for a moment. It’s harder this way than if they both just stood up, but there’s no way in hell Wolfwood is letting this unfathomable gift out of his grasp for the fleeting moments he’s in it. “You know, most people get upset and leave when they find out what I am. Even just sticking around you’re doing more than most people. Not to mention this.” Vash rubs himself against Wolfwood again as he settles back in his lap, this time just above his hard, hot cock; Wolfwood responds, the refrain in a psalm back to the cantor, heels up so the head of him brushes along Vash’s cunt and in unison they groan with it. He’s so wet, so wanting, and Wolfwood is just as starving as when they started, tasting the ghost of Vash throughout his mouth.
“But…”
“No but, Nick.” Vash is serious now, a little of that frenetic edge taken off just by explaining it, Wolfwood supposes. His gaze, fat pupils ringed in blue and laced with those fearful and wonderful markings, is unshakeable. “Give me what I want.”
It’s Wolfwood’s turn to be good; he knows it though it’s unspoken, nods and leaves one more fleeting, sorry kiss for the skin at his eyeline beneath Vash’s collarbones before turning his attention lower.
With one hand he steadies Vash’s body at his hip, drops for a moment to squeeze his ass just to hear him yelp over it; with the other he takes his cock in hand, firm at the base for the moment. He starts maddening, running the head along Vash’s cunt, brushing over the petals around that hole, lets himself catch the ridge on his rim. Vash sighs, angel, sinks a little in an effort to snag Wolfwood but he just repeats the motion, feels himself getting wetter with everything dripping out of Vash. His mouth waters again; just as he can see Vash’s lips opening around what’s sure to be something bratty and bossy, like he’s got any kind of right, Wolfwood sinks into him.
Feeling Vash’s cunt around him like this is heaven, it’s hell, it’s purgatory and it’s all of them at once, eternal reward and eternal punishment. The petals ringing his hole furl as Vash moans, finally full, like they’re pulling him deeper, feeding his cock in further, and with Vash fully seated in his lap Wolfwood has to pause, to pant and feel every sensation Vash is delivering him in high definition. With no room left for his hand, with every inch of his cock inside Vash, hot and wet and tight, Wolfwood sets the other palm on Vash’s thigh, rubs him there — comfort or encouragement or just more of that misguided and fruitless tenderness.
“Sweetheart,” Wolfwood says, intending some kind of praise, but Vash moves all at once, collapsing his face into Wolfwood’s neck, draping his arms over his shoulders, lifting his hips and dropping again. It’s bliss, his slick cunt gripping Wolfwood’s cock on each stroke up like even the individual parts of Vash don’t want them to separate, his hot breath fogging the dip of Wolfwood’s collarbone with sweat; words aren’t enough but after a minute he tries again. “Vash, you—”
“You’re so good, Nick.” Vash near wails with the earnestness of it, sinks to meet Wolfwood’s thighs again; Wolfwood thinks he might feel more than just carbon dioxide dampening his skin where Vash’s face is hidden, curls his arm tighter around Vash’s back and pushes up harder into him. “I wanted this so much, since I saw you…”
“Wanted you too, sugar, bad as anything. Knew you’d be a wonder like this. Knew you were special.” Knew anyone with half a brain in your position would rather kill me than have me like this. “Wanna see you when you come this time, Vash, pretty little thing, perfect little body, perfect little cunt between those perfect legs, fuckin’ hell.”
Vash moans, picks up the pace and meets Wolfwood’s movements with his own. Vash’s smell is in the air around him, the sound of his voice pinging around Wolfwood’s brain, the feel of his skin sending chills directly up and down his spine. The way his cunt molds around Wolfwood’s cock feels divinely ordained, meant to be if anything that ridiculous could survive under the twin suns slowly roasting them, ants below a magnifying glass. “You’d better come too,” he gasps between heaving breaths, thighs shaking with the effort against Wolfwood’s waist. “Inside, like you mean it.”
“Anything,” Wolfwood responds, wild with the thrill of chasing his pleasure, fucking uneven up into Vash, sliding the hand on his thigh around to thumb at as many of those tumid petals as he can reach at once. “Get you pregnant if that’s a thing. Fill you up so you’ll never forget me.”
He’s babbling but Vash is full-on crying into the crook of his neck now, riding Wolfwood like his life depends on it; he lets Wolfwood tongue his earlobe, thread the needle of the hoop there, lets him suck at his intact nipple, lets him take his pleasure and give Vash his own back over again.
Wolfwood can tell he’s getting close; the fleshy leaves under the insistent pad of his thumb are twitching and curling in, sucking his cock further and further like it is an evolutionary urge after all, like Vash’s body knows he needs to be in deep to leave a mark that matters. “Come on, sweetheart,” he murmurs, right in Vash’s ear, quiet, doesn’t rush him. He even slows the pace of his hips, deliberate strokes that leave him buried in Vash, don’t take him far.
It’s just as good, better even with Vash’s warm body more consistently against him, with his tear-streaked face finally lifting from Wolfwood’s shoulder. He props himself up, spine mostly straight, with his hands on Wolfwood’s chest — metal over his heart, skin grazing his collarbone at the fingertips. “Watch me, Nick,” Vash manages, so close to the edge that it only takes the press of Wolfwood’s thumb, buried between the curling petals of his cunt, to send him gasping, clenching around Wolfwood’s cock and dragging him deeper inside.
Vash’s face is a painting in motion, smeared with color like the rays of the sunset stretching out into the yellow heat of the desert, mouth split in a sort of silent stigmata. His eyes meet Wolfwood’s, just for a second, just to make sure he’s obeying Vash’s order before they roll back and shut, before his hips seek downwards like he could take Wolfwood further.
It’s more than enough; Wolfwood doesn’t know where Vash’s orgasm ends and his begins, doesn’t know whether Vash’s ends at all or merely crests into another, moaning and wailing on his cock while Wolfwood shoots his come inside him, drains himself dry with his face buried in Vash’s chest, cheek brushing the grate over his heart, teeth biting back anything too honest to face in the afterglow.
For a moment they’re pressed together like that, Wolfwood still inside him, chests meeting in unison with the heft of their panting. When Wolfwood does slip out, small ah under his breath, it really does feel like he’s leaving something behind. Vash looks every inch an angel, lit up from the inside with those glowing lines slowly fading, written meaning Wolfwood doesn’t need to understand to know he’s been granted a privilege beyond human imagination, eyes hazed but coming quickly back to reality.
And what a reality it is; the platform next to the somewhat-treated water running near them is cold and hard against Wolfwood’s ass. Something clangs above them, a bitter and all-too-relevant reminder of what’s coming up next, no matter how Wolfwood had tried to make them drag their feet while Vash hurried them along to his own fate. Destiny could be cruel, Wolfwood thinks, reaches back for his cast off shirt without disturbing Vash much.
“Better get dressed, sweetheart,” he says, gently, doesn't think too much about why the pet name trips so easily off his tongue when it’s something meant for sex only, not outside that fallible space where all rules and all bets are off. But Vash listens, crawls around for his clothes and gives Wolfwood a mouthwatering view of his hole, shining and thick with Wolfwood’s come; none drips out, not even onto his thighs which Wolfwood had felt slick with Vash himself, a carnivorous plant savoring its prey. Even with everything ahead of them it’s almost enough to get Wolfwood’s cock stirring again, but he does up his pants over it and tells his libido, wordlessly, to put a fucking lid on it.
They’re dressed in short order, some small measure of guilt at wasting time they could have spent rescuing the reporters creeping into both of them at the same time, though surely not at the same pace. There’s only so much room inside Wolfwood for contrition over anything else, after all, especially now that Vash is smiling at him, sliding his glasses back onto his face. Wolfwood takes his chin in sticky fingers and presses his lips to that beauty mark, feels the shape of his zygomatic arch and understands, fully and finally, what he’s luring to death.
“Wolfwood,” Vash says, voice soft and a little rough around the edges from all the noises wrung from him in the last thirty minutes. Wolfwood looks; of course he does, powerless to resist Vash’s eyes on him, holds his chin steady too since there’s no sense letting go if they’re not going anywhere just yet. “You know I forgive you.”
Wolfwood knows. That’s the hard part, that unrelenting forgiveness pouring out of Vash trained on him — he’d left no visible scars and yet had done worse by Vash than any of the humans before who’d torn him up without remorse. He’d betrayed him with a kiss, not even thirty pieces of silver to show for it. But he’s never thought Vash would hold a grudge for it, never even believed he could once he’d gotten a sense for who he was. There’s no way to make up for something that isn’t held against you; Wolfwood knows it well enough, knows just as well that there isn’t an easy path forward against it. “Course you do,” he says. It’s the only thing he can think of, the only safe thing anyway.
“You’ll have to come find me again when you can forgive yourself.” Vash says it simply, like a continuation of his earlier point, like Wolfwood hadn’t said anything at all. He buckles his holster, the last thing to be collected from their scatted possessions, to his thigh; it’s a practiced motion, and for one ludicrous second Wolfwood wishes for a peaceful world, where he might never have been born, where Vash might not know the weight of a gun in his hand.