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It was hot. The sort of heavy dry heat that made the sky go wild with green and cobalt auroras and made the hair on the back of their neck stand up straight. The kind of heat and friction filled sky that birthed round white ball lightening that went quaking and streaking along the horizon. It was the kind of night that it was too hot sleep. Too hot to touch. Too hot to see if they could make life into art; to try their hand at making intimate interpretive dance of that lightening that went quaking through the star drenched sky.
So they laid awake in all that heat. Wolfwood languid with it, his whole body soft butter under the slow useless spin of the ceiling fan, watching the smoke of his cigarette ascend and revolve. The thread bare sheet beneath him was holding too much of his own heat, not wicking out enough sweat. The back of Vash’s prosthetic hand was tucked cool against his ribs, and his toes touched to his ankle felt like a sunburn. But he didn’t shy away, because even in the miserable heat, Vash wanted that bit of connection. So did he.
Two flashes. He listened to Vash count under his breath to fourteen until the thunder rolled long and slow and loud.
“Do you know why it makes lightening when it gets this hot?” Wolfwood asked. Because Vash knew things. Would teach him words like tensile strength and photosynthesis. And sometimes that sort of thing was useful. And mostly he liked to listen to him talk; the soft confident way he’d rattle off ancient wisdom no one’d thought about in two generations.
“Oh-” He says like maybe he was almost asleep, “Other way around. Gets hot cause there's something wrong with the ionosphere. Gets erratic when there’s a coronal mass ejection.”
“Oh that’s what I did to you last night, my bad.”
Vash wheezed so hard Wolfwoods was certain he’d killed him. Had to give the ceiling fan a smile before he let his head loll to watch Vash try to get it back together.
“No,” Vash said when he can say anything again and put his whole hand over Wolfwood’s face. “Its a thing the sun does; A solar flare!”
“Are you telling me the sun farts?” Wolfwood asked, muffled under his hand. This earned him Vash’s other hand on his face, like this had any hope to silence his bullshit.But, Wolfwood didn’t hesitate and in sudden surge of motion licked Vash’s good hand palm to wrist and made him shriek.
“Nicholas D. Wolfwood,” he said firmly, like it had power over him. And when Vash said it maybe it did.
“You walked into all of that,” He told him, voice low and unrepentant like the thunder that followed.
Vash flopped back down and whined; “Its too hot for your bullshit~”
Wolfwood laughed, he loved his bullshit. He used one long arm to ash his cigarette in the open coke can on the bed side table. The satisfied smugness in his chest (the one he hadn't learned yet was contentment) settled in in him and made the heat seem more tolerable.
“What does the D stand for, anyway?” Vash asked, suddenly like the flash of heat lightening. Wolfwood could feel him watching him, while his own eyes stayed set on the smokey ceiling fan. He watched as the shadows of the blades flashed wrong and strange across the room with three more soundlessly white hot flashes.
“No idea, Agelito, that’s how it’s spelt on my paperwork. What about you? Your mama name you Vash?”
Vash didn't count for thunder this time, just answered; “It’s short for Vasha.”
Wolfwood turned over on to his side to face him, “You’d tell me that? What’s wrong with you?”
“I had a complicated childhood, are you going to kiss me about it?”
Wolfwood scoffed, “It's too hot.”
“You walked right into this.”
“I’m going to sweat to death,” He complained, stubbed the cigarette out on the head board, and leaned over to kiss him as the thunder rolled.