Chapter Text
Vash has been in the bathroom for ten minutes too many, because Wolfwood walks in with his shirt hanging open and points at one of the sweaters he’s been agonizing over. “You like this one more,” he says, handing the green sweater over. It has little embroidered flowers around the sleeves, a birthday gift from Luida. He’s right, but it doesn’t feel fancy enough. Not that the restaurant they’re going to is all that fancy, but years ago Meryl instituted that they have to dress up when they’re celebrating Big Life Events, which is what tonight is about.
“Are you sure?” Vash says. The other sweater is plain black, so it at least is classy. Next to him in the mirror, Wolfwood finishes buttoning his shirt, leaving the top three undone as always. He pulls off fancy clothes well, despite not having any more reasons for wearing them than Vash.
“I’m sure,” Wolfwood says. He finishes with his buttons and then drapes his arms around Vash’s shoulders, pulling him in close. “Tonight is about you, darlin’. If you wanted to wear that stupid crop top, then wear it.”
“It’s not stupid,” Vash pouts, and then adds, “and I’m not going to wear that! Meryl would tear into me.”
Wolfwood laughs, pressing a kiss to Vash’s cheek. He doesn’t seem at all inclined to move away from Vash so he can finish getting ready, so Vash lets himself melt into the embrace. It’s been a good day on top of a good week, and Vash feels like tonight can go a lot of different ways. Especially with the figure Wolfwood makes in the mirror, his dark dress shirt complimenting the breadth of his shoulders. Since he basically lives in high-vis and jeans nowadays, Wolfwood loves to take any opportunity he can to dress up. Vash certainly appreciates it.
“We could stand here all night,” Wolfwood says, his breath hot against Vash’s cheek, “just you and me and that bottle of wine you’ve been saving.”
Vash shivers but he shakes his head. “Nope, we’re gonna go out,” he declares. “We haven’t seen the girls in weeks, Nick.”
Their little group tries to meet up once a week, for drinks or a meal or some activity Vash or Milly picked, but it’s been a few weeks since the last time. Milly’s been on babysitting duty for her staggering amount of cousins thanks to flu season, and Meryl has been chasing some high-profile story that she’s still tying up. Vash likes staying in with Wolfwood, but he likes getting together with his friends even more.
“Besides, it’s my party,” Vash adds which has Wolfwood laughing.
“It is,” he agrees, finally untangling from Vash’s shoulders. “C’mon, hurry up, if we’re late Meryl’s gonna get a head start on the drinks.”
Vash gets dressed, the green sweater over simple slacks, and he doesn’t look too casual even with Wolfwood in a blazer next to him. With the cool autumn air, he’s grateful for the thick fabric, grateful for the warmth Wolfwood radiates as Vash swings their hands between them. He likes living downtown, so close to the noise of everything, but he especially likes getting to walk everywhere instead of driving.
The girls have settled into a corner booth, and once the initial round of hugs has passed, Wolfwood slides into the corner so Vash can have the outside seat. He does it without prompting, long used to all of Vash’s idiosyncrasies. Still, it makes something in Vash’s chest flutter, like he’s a teenager with his first crush instead of a man in his thirties.
Meryl got a headstart on the drinks, judging from the half-empty cocktail in front of her. It’s not long until a waitress comes by and takes the rest of their orders, and then they’re catching each other up on the past few weeks. Meryl’s story is going well, though she gripes about a recalcitrant senior editor she’s been saddled with. Likewise, Milly’s been having fun on the sports circuit and she’s especially excited about hockey season kicking into gear. Vash and Wolfwood doesn’t have such exciting lives, but then their drinks are set in front of them and Meryl raises hers with the toast of, “To Vash’s new job!”
He flushes, heat crawling up his face, but raises his glass to toast it against the others. Wolfwood’s smile is proud, the same expression mirrored on the other two, but Vash mainly feels embarrassed. He finally got a job at an elementary school, after months of sending out his resume. He likes his job at the preschool, likes caring for the little kids, but it’s nice to be able to put his degree to good use, even if it won’t be until the spring term that he takes over for a retiring teacher.
A midyear job transfer. Not ideal, but it’s better than letting the opportunity pass him by. He’s grateful for it, really.
“Thanks, guys,” Vash says, talking a sip from his drink. “It’s still just a trial period, though.”
Meryl scoffs, waving her hand. “You’re going to crush it. Um, you’re going to teach those kids so good. Is that any better?” It has the group laughing. She may be fierce despite her small stature, but her small stature doesn’t exactly give her the edge over drinks.
“They’d be dumb not to keep you on,” Wolfwood says, something he’s said for days now ever since Vash got the phonecall and promptly panicked over it. He lays an arm around Vash’s shoulder, so the sides of their bodies line up. It’s comfortable, and Vash relaxes into him. “You’re going to teach those kids so good,” he adds, pitching his voice to mock Meryl, and then curses when she kicks his shin under the table.
“Guys,” Vash whines, but he’s grinning, feeling the warmth from Wolfwood suffuse into him. It’s not enough to keep his insecurities as bay, as he says, “It just feels like… Like I’m so late, y’know?”
“Late for what?” Meryl asks.
“Getting this job,” he says. “I’m in my thirties and I just got my first acceptance for an actual teaching job. You guys have been at the newspaper for years! And this is my fifth job.”
He likes what he does. He likes the preschool, likes helping mold little kids into who they want to be! But sometimes he opens up Facebook and sees the posts from all his college friends, who all got jobs teaching right out of school, while Vash bounced around daycares and preschools. The closest he got was spending a few weeks as a substitute teacher, but the pay wasn’t worth the irregular hours. And after years of trying to find a position, he’s got one, but everyone else has already found one and settled down.
“That’s not a bad thing,” Milly says. “I don’t think there’s a set timeline to be, like, established or whatever. One of my aunties, she graduated college at forty! And Wolfie is still in school!”
Immediately, Vash feels like a total dick. He turns to Wolfwood, apology written over his face, and says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that!”
“It’s fine, Blondie,” Wolfwood says, squeezing his shoulder. “I think everyone knows I’m a bit of a special case.” The silver chain of his necklace glints around his neck.
“But I don’t want you to feel bad,” Vash insists.
“I won’t feel bad if you won’t,” Wolfwood replies simply. “Everyone gets where they’re going when they mean to, at their own pace.” His jaw tenses, and Vash knows those are words he’s said to himself more than he’s said them to anyone else. And for a moment, his voice dipped back into what Meryl likes to call his sermon voice, but then he’s taking another sip of his drink, his throat bobbing, and Vash forgets about it.
He tunes back into a conversation with Milly, who’s ecstatic to give him the lowdown on the school’s gossip. With all her cousins and nieces and nephews, Milly knows everything about every school in town. It’s nice to get the gossip ahead of time, instead of having to wade his way through interactions with new coworkers. Still, Milly’s stories are basically a game of telephone, but there’s enough good in there that has Vash excited about it.
Once she runs out of steam, Wolfwood tries to needle Meryl into giving them a sneak peek of her big story, which Meryl refuses no matter what insane rewards he offers. There’s a break in the conversation long enough to order their food, and the conversation flows from there. Wolfwood lets Vash steal from his plate, going so far as dumping his fried pickles onto Vash’s plate, but in return he steals the fries from the basket.
It’s nice, meeting up like this, their little corner of the bar dissolving into laughter and almost-too-loud conversations. Vash loves every week they manage it, even when they’re doing nothing but settling onto the couch of one of their houses to watch Great British Bake Off, or in Meryl’s case, Mindhunter. But this is special, because it’s the first time it’s a Big Life Event celebration about him, besides the joint one when he and Wolfwood moved in together.
Sometimes he doesn’t know how he got on before meeting Meryl, and Milly, and then Wolfwood. He had Luida and a few friends from university, but none of them were around to celebrate Vash’s new job, or commiserate when he opened another rejection letter. When he thinks about his twenties, he felt like he just floated around the world, tied down to nothing or no one. Now, he has this little group. A new job. A house filled with his own stuff.
Just five years ago, Vash couldn’t have imagined this. He was staring down his thirties with no shortage of trepidation and no wealth of close friends, and he eventually lost the former and gained the latter. Sometimes he thinks—he knows there’s something missing, someone missing, like he could open his phone and find Knives’ contact, but he’s never been able to do that. Vash has never been able to call up his brother and chat about their days, and that knowledge sits in his stomach like a heavy stone.
Wolfwood’s hand drops to his thigh and Vash’s gaze darts up to meet his eyes. “You with us?” Wolfwood asks in an undertone. His hand is warm through the fabric of Vash’s slacks. It’s grounding, the little circles he’s rubbing right above his knee and Vash lets out a long breath.
“I am,” he says, and tunes back into the conversation where Meryl is trying to convince Milly to let her shark someone at pool in the corner. Milly is only putting up a token protest; Meryl gets her way, she always does.
She’s too drunk to be good at it, but it’s just as fun watching her sink the eight and pout about it until Milly kisses the expression away. Wolfwood trounces them all at darts, like he does every time they go to this bar, even though Milly is slowly getting better. Vash sits and watches them, his best friends, his boyfriend, and lets the warmth blossom in his chest.
Vash can’t change the past. But he can look at the people that he loves, that he knows love him, and the present looks pretty good. He’s happy with that.
On the walk home, once Wolfwood has safely seen Meryl and Milly into a cab, Vash tangles their hands and arms together. They’re like a three-legged creature as they walk down the sidewalk, bodies pressed to closely together. It’s been a good week and Vash wants. He knows Wolfwood picks up on it, by the way Wolfwood’s grip on his hand is tight and his pace is hurried. And that’s like a feedback loop, knowing that Wolfwood wants him just as much, the heat in him rising up and up.
Here’s the thing. Vash and his body, they aren’t on the same terms more often than not. He’s long used to missing an arm, to the minor aches and pains that come and go from that crash all those years ago, but when it really counts, Vash’s body shuts down. The first time he tries to have sex with Wolfwood, he felt the man’s hand dip below his waistband and promptly blanked. He came to minutes later with Wolfwood on the opposite side of the room, and Vash apologized and left and thought that was that until Meryl dragged him out to meet Milly’s best friend.
They learned. They adapted. Vash knows the calluses on Wolfwood’s hand intimately, the same way he knows all the soft noises that fall out of him with just the softest kisses to the man’s neck. And tonight, when Wolfwood pulls Vash down onto the bed with him, Vash sends his body the stern message of I want this. Sometimes, that’s not enough and his mind slips away from him, lets him curl back up inside where it’s safe and nothing can hurt him. But sometimes, his mind and his body are on the same page, and they let Wolfwood take him apart.
Wolfwood kisses him softly, tenderly, gently fanning the flames in Vash’s stomach until he’s whining into the man’s mouth, wanting more. Wolfwood laughs into the kiss, pulling back long enough to ask, “Where can I touch?”
Vash pulls back, considers the question. Sometimes when Wolfwood asks him that, Vash just wants to say everywhere even if he doesn’t really mean it. He has, enough times and suffered through the blanks enough times that now he tries to pull an actual answer out of himself. Wolfwood deserves that much, he knows, and then somewhere deeper in his mind, Vash knows that he also deserves that much. “My hair,” he says first, because that’s almost always neutral enough. “Not my chest. Everywhere else is fine, I think.”
“Thank you,” Wolfwood murmurs and then anchors one hand in Vash’s hair to pull him into another searing kiss. Vash pants into it, grinding down on the thigh Wolfwood slots between his legs, too much and too little all at one. He whines when Wolfwood pulls away, pulling in a deep breath to ask, “Do you want to keep your shirt on?”
Instead of answering, Vash leans back enough to pull the sweater off. Wolfwood’s hands find their way to his hips, the touch grounding, and his eyes don’t stray from Vash’s face. That’s the best part of sex with Wolfwood. Vash gives his answer, and Wolfwood always follows it.
“I want to eat you out,” Wolfwood says, and Vash can’t help himself from grinding down on his thigh.
“Yes, please,” Vash says, voice barely more than a whisper. It’s a flurry of movement, as Vash lays back down on the bed while Wolfwood moves to the foot of it. He unbuttons his shirt and tosses it to the side, landing somewhere near his sweater, and then Wolfwood is undoing the buttons on Vash’s slacks, slowly pulling the fabric down. The places where his knuckles brush against Vash’s skin leave trails of fire down his thighs and he wants more.
Wolfwood gives it to him. His hands are gentle on Vash’s thighs, the rough skin of his calluses grounding as he hitches Vash’s thighs over his shoulders. Vash digs his heels into the meat of Wolfwood’s back, his prosthetic thrown over his head and his other hand getting a loose hold of Wolfwood’s hair. He hasn’t even done anything yet, breath warm against Vash’s cunt. Wolfwood likes teasing him, likes drawing this part out as long as possible. He keeps one hand on Vash’s thigh, the other on the outside of his hip, and Vash is about to start cursing at him when Wolfwood finally gets his mouth on Vash’s cock.
The contact makes him twitch, hand tightening in Wolfwood’s hair. It makes the man hum, vibrations that rock into Vash’s very core, and he lets the little gasps and moans fall out of him. Wolfwood sucks on his cock, runs his tongue up and down Vash’s folds and around his hole, just this side of teasing, just this side of enough. He won’t use his fingers until Vash says he can, but he can take Vash apart with just his mouth with no problem.
Vash is grinding down the best he can, desperate for more and Wolfwood gives it to him. “Ah, please, Nick,” he babbles, as that tongue licks the underside of his cock and sends white-hot heat up his spine. “Your fingers, please.”
He feels Wolfwood’s smile more than he can see it, the curve of his mouth against his cunt. Wolfwood pulls back just enough to stick his own fingers in his mouth, getting them wet before pressing them against Vash’s entrance. “Good?” he asks, pressing just at his hole.
“Yes, fuck,” Vash says, but he tenses all the same. He hates this part, that first intrusion that always feels bad before the good takes over. Wolfwood is slow about it, his fingers wet with spit, as he slowly thrusts them inside of Vash. It takes a long time to get him wet, long enough that lube is the best option, but his cunt is wet and sloppy from Wolfwood’s mouth and that makes the stretch easier.
Wolfwood keeps his mouth on his cock as he fucks into Vash with his fingers. Vash whines, grinding down into the sensation, his hand spasming in Wolfwood’s hair. Wolfwood crooks his fingers at just the right spot and Vash gasps. “Right there,” he says, and Wolfwood obeys, making the same motion as he sucks around Vash’s cock.
Between the pressure on his cock and the sensation inside of him, it doesn’t take long for Vash to cum. He’s silent when it happens, all his little noises cutting out as pleasure runs up and down his spine, his thighs spasming up around Wolfwood’s head, and the man keeps the movements of his fingers and mouth steady through it all. When it turns to overstimulation he whines, the quietest little noise, and Wolfwood pulls off immediately.
“You good, darlin’?” he asks, his voice rough. His face is wet with his own spit and some of Vash’s slick, and he wipes it away with the back of his wrist. Vash makes another noise and Wolfwood’s expression softens. “Talk to me.”
“I’m good,” Vash says after a moment. He still feels hot, like maybe he could go for another orgasm, but then the tiredness settles in quickly. “What about you? You could still—”
Wolfwood removes Vash’s legs from around his shoulders, setting them on either side as he moves into a sitting position. Vash can see the way his cock is tenting his pants, but Wolfwood keeps his hands light on the skin of Vash’s thigh. “Do you want to? Because I can get myself off just like this, with how handsome you’re lookin’. Or I could go to the bathroom.”
Vash swallows. Wolfwood’s eyes are on him, his gaze hot, but he doesn’t move his hands from where they’re rubbing circles on the soft skin of his inner thigh. He feels too tired to move his arms, much less help Wolfwood get off. They’ve done it like this before, more than once, Wolfwood stroking himself to completion while Vash watches, while Wolfwood just looks at him. It’s pleasing, to know that all Wolfwood needs is the sight of him, but sometimes that knowledge curdles in his stomach.
He knows if he says the word, Wolfwood will go to the bathroom. They’ve done it before. But tonight, Vash wants to see the way Wolfwood comes apart. “This is fine,” he says and weakly flaps his hand until Wolfwood takes hold of it. Wolfwood presses a kiss to his knuckles, holding tight as he unbuttons his pants and gets his cock out. Vash sees the movement of his arm but instead he focuses on Wolfwood’s face, the way his mouth slackens as he strokes himself.
Wolfwood doesn’t make noises, not in the same way that Vash does, but he groans once he cums, his grip tightening on Vash’s hand. He presses another kiss to the back of it before placing it back on the bed. His eyes are a little glazed as he lays next to Vash, leaning up to press a kiss to his forehead. Vash presses into the touch, humming a little, the noise picking up when Wolfwood puts a hand in his hair and scratches softly.
It doesn’t take long until he comes back to himself, unaware of slipping away. When he opens his eyes, Wolfwood is smiling down at him, and Vash is more than aware of the sticky nature of his crotch, and pushes up into a sitting position.
“Shower,” he announces, sliding off the bed. He feels a little unsteady on his knees, and he’s not surprised when Wolfwood reaches out to steady him with a soft touch to his back. He grins down at the man. “I want you to wash my hair.”
It’s the closest he can get to saying I don’t want to leave your side without having to explain all the sticky bits that come with that sentence. Wolfwood’s smile widens as he gets up to follow Vash into the bathroom. He helps unlatch the prosthetic, massaging the tender tissue of his stump as the water warms.
It’s a good end to a good day at the end of a good week, Vash thinks to himself, as he tilts his head to Wolfwood can lather the shampoo in his hair. He still feels foggy, but he can return the favor, suds running down Wolfwood’s shoulder. Later, as he curls around Wolfwood with his head tucked into the man’s neck, he says, “I love you,” and relishes in the thrill of happiness that runs through him when Wolfwood replies, “Love you, too, darlin’.”