Work Text:
Nicholas D. Wolfwood believes in God.
He knows people can see through the preacher shit. They aren’t idiots, they tolerate him because they think he’s a harmless weirdo. It’s fine, because just about everything that comes out of his mouth is bullshit anyways.
Underneath all of that, and under everything the Eye of Michael made out of him, deep down in his core, Wolfwood believes in an Old God, one who punishes the wicked. The one meant for sad bastards lost in the desert.
There’s blood on his hands, he hasn’t lived a good life. When he goes, it isn’t going to be pretty. No point in repenting now, he’s beyond hope.
He doesn’t know what Vash believes in. Rem, from the sounds of it. His blessed virgin mother who died to save all the sinners, if you were willing to twist his words as you listened.
Vash doesn’t need to pray, he’s a good man. Wolfwood knows God would take him in easy. Vash might not think so, but it's true. Even if God hasn’t followed humanity to this forsaken desert planet, He’ll come to collect Vash in His loving arms for sure.
Vash believes Wolfwood can be saved, and that’s the most tragic thing of all. Vash knows he’s a sinner, he somehow knows even the worst of it, but he still thinks he can reach down into the mud and drag him kicking and screaming back up into the light, as if a few tears were nearly enough water to wash all the blood from his skin.
In the quiet dark, once, when Vash had him too soft and easy to keep his damn mouth closed, he said it all. “I kinda figured that if Knives wanted you shepherded through everything and alive, maybe I ought to just put you out of your misery.” For Vash’s sorry sake, maybe for the sake of the whole stinking pus pile that is humanity, even Wolfwood doesn’t know. But he’d pointed a gun at the back of Vash’s head more than once, in the chaos of a fight, and thought about it.
Vash had smiled, stupid and trusting and open, “You didn’t.”
He didn’t.
Their first fuck had been more of a mutual drunken dare than anything. Too many shots deep in a dirty little saloon, Wolfwood had started leaning close to whisper sweet filth every time Vash looked away to talk to anyone else. It was a joke, a game of chicken, but Vash had called his bluff all the way into his bed that night.
Hallelujah, lord have mercy, the clothes mostly stayed on but Vash let him have his ass and that was already so much more than he should have given.
It made sense to Wolfwood that Vash kept his clothes on, kept parts of him hidden away, until it didn’t. He gave everything else away so readily. There was no hiding himself in the way he kissed or moaned or cried during sex, only his body.
Wolfwood finally understood when he watched Knives rip something twisted and inhuman out of his body, and Vash had lay broken on the ground in a tangle of feathered limbs that weren’t human.
It made sense again when he met a man named Eriks, and saw what kind of body that man was working with underneath his clothes.
Wolfwood had seen a lot that Vash probably hadn’t wanted him to see, and he thought for a little while that maybe it had been too much. Too much given away without his consent, to the point where he couldn’t share anything else anymore. He was fine not asking for more from Vash, they’d had their fling, and the memory was a nice thing of warmth to have on cold nights.
Hell, maybe Vash had a lover in that nameless backwater he would be itching to get back to when their business was done.
The first inn they hit on the road again had two rooms available. Vash turned down the second, said he couldn’t afford it, reassured the innkeeper that he and his friend were good at sharing a space and he didn’t much mind that they didn’t have any rooms with two singles.
Vash dropped to the bed right away, while Wolfwood hung back, leaning against the doorframe to stare. Finally taking in the lines of him for real, after two years apart and the uncertainty of whether it was welcome.
He lit up a cigarette, waited for some sort of sign, “How do you want this to go, Needle-noggin?”
“I’m hoping you’re still interested.” His eyes flashed in the dark, and it was so much more unsettling now that Wolfwood knew for certain that it wasn’t a trick of the light.
Wolfwood arched an eyebrow, exhaled a long plume of smoke, “Nothing’s changed.”
The expression on Vash’s face was doubtful. Fair enough, most folks were scared shitless just seeing what Vash could do with a gun. Watching that angel arm in action and crawling back for more seemed a little suicidal. Maybe Vash was a little bit like nicotine, an addiction that was gonna kill him one day.
“Spikey-”
Vash scoffed.
“Blondie-”
Vash groaned.
“Beautiful.”
Vash glared, and leaned down to start untying his boots rather than look at him. Vash had never minded being barefoot in bed, nothing new here.
“You think I’m lyin’, don’t ya? Nobody can see all that and call you beautiful, right?”
“This was never about looks.” Vash unbuttoned his coat slowly, sliding it off and setting it aside. “Don’t flatter me, I know what you really think of all this. ‘Take better care of yourself. Kill them before they kill you’, right?” He smiled, thin and strained, as if it could pull the punch out of the words.
Wolfwood watched with a pretend calm as Vash twisted his prosthetic from its port. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, but new territory in the bedroom for sure.
“It doesn’t bother me that you’re some sort of Plant.”
I’m not human either, not anymore.
That wasn’t something Vash needed to worry about right now, so Wolfwood packed it tight beneath his next drag of smoke. Vash watched, intent on something besides the streaming exhale that followed.
“Did you think I was beautiful back there in Augusta?”
“I thought it was horrific. You were in pain.”
“I shot a hole in the-“
“I know what you are- I’m not afraid. You’re Spikey.” Wolfwood slid from the doorframe, using the few steps to the bed to fall to his knees at Vash’s feet with a little grace. “In the old, old days, the angels used to say ‘ be not afraid ’ when they appeared before man, because they were terrible things made of fire and the Word.”
Vash let him settle between his knees, but he still shifted nervously, nudging Wolfwood’s face back a few inches with a single finger. “Don’t. You said you wanted whatever was down there, and I was too drunk to deal with it, and you seemed so happy-“
“But?”
“I think back on earth they tried to make us so we could-“ Vash fidgeted with the material of his jumpsuit, “if Plants could make more Plants, it would be awfully convenient? So it’s. Not what you’re used to.” He laughed high and nervous, unfastening the overly complicated garment that kept his scars hidden away from the world.
“I’m fine with-“
“It’s not human , Nick.” He pushed Wolfwood’s face away and sat up to shimmy it down his hips while Wolfwood reeled from hearing his own first name. Been a while.
The thing that popped out first was probably at least sort of analogous to a dick.
“How did I miss that the other-”
“I wasn’t exactly excited to be showing it off!” Vash spread his fingers over his face, trying to hide the blush that had spread all the way to his ears. “It looks kinda normal when it isn’t, well-“ he gestured in defeat at the thing leaking and blooming shamelessly between his legs.
Wolfwood had gotten a chance to share in a pineapple one time, after convincing some couple that he was qualified to officiate their wedding. The spiraling scales of the fruit’s skin was the closest reference he had on hand to compare with what Vash was sporting. It was flushed bright red from arousal, gaps slowly unfurling to ooze a thick clear fluid obscenely down the shaft.
“So it’s like a cock. Kind of.” Wolfwood pulled the cigarette from his mouth, stumping it out on the hardwood and brushing it aside. Vash’s dick wasn’t any bigger than the human version, he figured he could get his mouth around it fine. “I can work with this.”
“That’s only part of it.”
Vash settled back down, spreading his legs wider as he held his dick up towards his belly, exposing where the scales curled neatly into a set of flushed folds leading down inside of him.
“So-“
“Plants impregnate themselves, every once in a while.”
Wolfwood didn’t really know what to do with that information.
Laughing nervously again, Vash reached down to rub his thumb over Wolfwood’s bottom lip, which he hadn’t even noticed was hanging down in dumb bafflement. “All good?”
Hopefully the darkness would hide the gentle blush crawling over his skin, “All good, Needle-noggin.”
His hand slid down to cup his chin, and then he was pulling him up to meet him with a feathersoft kiss. Wolfwood leaned in for more, but Vash smirked against his lips and gave a forceful shove, sending Wolfwood sprawling awkwardly on his ass.
Indignant, he growled and scrambled to right himself, but one of Vash’s feet intercepted to keep him at a distance. Long toes pressed right against his chest where his heart was rioting, and held him there with a force beyond reckoning.
“Isn’t one of us a little overdressed?”
Damn him. Wolfwood snarled as he pulled his clothes off with a graceless haste, chucking them aside to crumple on the floor with the butt of his cigarette.
This time, Vash went down easy as Wolfwood clambered onto the bed and pressed him into the creaky mattress. The ridiculous airhead laughed as Wolfwood pinned his wrist above his head and ground their faces together in some aggressive facsimile of the kissing he was too irritated to be doing properly. Vash was a perfect victim, wrapping long powerful legs around Wolfwood to hold him in place.
The warmth and friction of a fully nude Vash under his own fully nude body slowly brought him back down to a simmer, and they both relaxed into a proper joining of lips and tongue. They had been here before, this was familiar, Vash open and accepting of every rough edge Wolfwood gave him.
“You shouldn’t be so nice to me.” Wolfwood bit down into the soft flesh of Vash’s lower lip, savoring the way it made him arch his whole body up against him. Underneath the expected gunpowder and leather, Vash smelled like lightning storms over the desert, something wild and dangerous with the power to pull even someone like Wolfwood apart with ease.
“You should try it sometime, being nice to you has some benefits.” Vash ground their hips together, providing an enticing argument by way of the hot wet glide of his alien anatomy against the underside of Wolfwood’s dick. He looked way too smug for a guy laid out on his back on a dirty inn mattress, like everything he could ever want was currently in the palm of his hand.
There was absolutely no way Vash wasn’t going to die a martyr for his ridiculous ideals. Protecting Vash was the single stupidest idea anyone could possibly come up with, and by God Wolfwood was going to do it.
He dropped his attention lower, to Vash’s long, long throat where the moans he pulled from him vibrated right against his teeth and tongue. Anyone else and maybe Wolfwood would have sucked a few bruises in, just to tease, but the world had left so many marks on Vash. Better to ask later than hurt him now.
With a reassuring squeeze, he released Vash’s wrist and slid further down his body. It was a testament to human sin, undoubtedly, but it was Vash. It didn’t matter how brutal the scar, how slap-dash the repairs, Wolfwood fed his thanks into his mangled skin for keeping the man alive.
Apparently Vash wasn’t a being of infinite patience, because fingers tangled in Wolfwood’s hair and urged him lower, lower, until he was nosing through thick sandy hair at the base of him. He looked up through his own thick lashes to catch Vash’s flustered expression as he mouthed down his length from base to tip.
God almighty, Wolfwood didn’t know what wild, old earth honey tasted like, but he knew the manufactured stuff, and whatever was seeping thick from Vash gave it a run for its money. Moaning despite himself, he wrapped a hand around the base to hold it steady as he pulled it into his mouth. Vash’s thighs flexed beneath him like he was trying to hold off on a thrust, and Wolfwood leered up at him in an unspoken challenge to let loose.
It was entirely possible that Wolfwood was an idiot, because Vash took the challenge. The fingers tightened in his hair, and suddenly he was being pulled down as Vash thrust up, throat closing instinctively against an intrusion too slick to get a hold on. He gagged, tears forming in the corners of his eyes, but his gaze didn’t falter and he swallowed around it to convince Vash to give him what he wanted.
Maybe it was some sort of penance, maybe Wolfwood just had an oral fixation, but he wanted it hard and fast, and the humanoid typhoon was merciful enough to give it to him. There was a good sort of overwhelming, a good sort of being used, that could settle the nervous alertness that always searched for the next threat. What he wanted to write off as trust was probably just oxygen not hitting his brain, but his head spun and he relaxed. Long tracks of tears streamed down his face, flowing through the inescapable sweetness that smeared over his lips and chin and nose and neck, and it felt right. Profound. Cathartic.
Vash shuddered, and maybe the volume of slick increased a bit, but he pulled Wolfwood up by the hair and rolled him, stupid and pliant, onto his back on the bed. He was glowing with joy, which was nice, that meant Wolfwood had done a good job. Wolfwood’s eyes closed against the saturation of colors dancing in Vash’s eyes as he let the other man take his own taste of the mess that coated his lips.
“You want me to take care of you?” Vash wrapped his long, strong fingers around Wolfwood’s cock, prompting an affirmative groan.
“‘S that even a question, Angel?”
Vash laughed, and rutted his wet slit over Wolfwood’s dick a few times to slick him up. He was so warm down there, and Wolfwood finally cracked his eyes open to watch the way their colors bled together while he worked.
That wasn’t quite right, but his thoughts hadn’t come home to roost and he couldn’t figure out why.
He sank into Vash, or Vash sank onto him, but he was filling and filled, and it was good. Vash rolled like dunes in a sandstorm, and the stars hummed above them, and Wolfwood heard the constellation of angels sleeping all around them. He was crying, he was definitely crying, but so was Vash, and for once that seemed reasonable and fine and good.
“You’re close.”
“Yeah.”
“Do it.”
“Do it?”
“Let go.”
“Vash-”
“I got you, let go.”
Wolfwood was pretty sure if he let go he’d fall into a great abyss he wouldn’t be able to surface from again. They were resting on it, weren’t they? It wasn’t meant for humans, not really. But Vash was here, and he had laced the fingers of his right hand with Wolfwood’s left, and knelt low to share their breaths, and Wolfwood somehow knew that Vash understood the abyss. He rested against it every day, he knew how to call a fragile human soul back up out of it again.
He let go, and Vash did too, and the screams were as beautiful as any choir of angels.
“Hey, Wolfwood?”
The colors were still spinning, but Wolfwood recognized that the light in the room had shifted from evening to full dark. He must have passed out for a minute there, after cumming his balls dry. His head hurt like hell, like someone had tried to cram way too much information into it and some of it still hadn’t gotten knocked loose yet.
“Think I’m hungover.” He dug the heel of his palm into his eye sockets, too sensitive to look at Vash glowing neon gold in the dark room. Which, again, didn’t seem right, but he was too blasted to figure out what was wrong with it.
“You didn’t drink anything last night. Here.” A cool glass of water was pressed against his cheek, and Wolfwood took it without complaining.
He was definitely dehydrated, but he couldn’t recall anything this wild ever happening while marching out under the hot desert sun. “What the hell did you do to me, Spikey?”
“Stay calm.” Despite the propensity for that phrase to make Wolfwood do the exact opposite in most situations, he held back and let Vash drape a washcloth over his screaming miserable forehead. “I think you’re hallucinating.”
“Hallucinating.”
“You’re already a lot more coherent than you were earlier when I tried to talk to you about it, it’s probably wearing off. No need to worry about it affecting us getting out of here in the morning!” Something placating and singsongy in Vash’s voice sounded like guilt, like he wasn’t telling the full story.
“What exactly makes you so confident?”
Vash laughed, all high and nervous, and got up to pour another glass of water. “Nobody’s ever actually blown me before, and you got weird after that. It isn’t impossible-”
“Your dick made me hallucinate.”
“Probably?”
Wolfwood leaned out of bed to grope around the floor for his clothes, eventually digging a cigarette and lighter out of his pockets. He lit one up while Vash urged him to hydrate and hovered near the bed, contemplating. “Could have been worse.”
He was met with an expectant stare from Vash, like there was more he was supposed to say. Instead, Wolfwood yanked him back onto the bed by the arm, pulling him close as he worked his way through his smoke. He held him gently as he waited for his body to relax, and then tighter as Vash finally accepted that he was wanted.
“Weird, but still not a dealbreaker, Spikey.”
The angels loved Vash, and he wondered if the guy knew it. He’d been certain earlier that Vash lived in that void, where they were singing, but that seemed ridiculous now that he was coming down from it. Wolfwood knew they wouldn’t be coming to collect his soul into their loving arms whenever he went, but by God they were gonna collect Vash.