Chapter Text
At first, Wolfwood thinks it’s a nightmare. He jolts awake, heart banging in his ears and adrenaline already pumping through his veins. Only to realize upon second assessment, that he is safe in his room and the banging is coming from his door, not his head.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood lies still for a moment longer. He tries to will the knocking away and himself back to sleep, but it doesn’t work. Whoever is at his door is very persistent for – he squints at his bedside clock – four twenty-three in the fucking morning. He wants to let it pass. It’s not like his house is particularly inviting, or that he can offer any particularly useful services at this hour. But it just doesn’t stop, and with each second the frantic knocks continue, the more pressing the incessant itch behind his elbows and knees becomes, urging him to move.
None of it stops, and the banging is fucking annoying, so he gets up. Allows himself an irritated scowl before kicking off his sheets and committing to getting out of bed. He pulls on a pair of boxers in a single concession to decency – it’s too fucking late and too fucking hot for anything more than the bare minimum.
Then he sets out to get involved.
He doesn’t bother turning on the lights as he makes his way through the house. He doesn’t need to; the moon is bright, and the house is well-worn and familiar – cluttered with half-finished carvings and functional pieces either too shoddy or too sentimental to sell. He knows it well – the kind of knowing that only comes from building something with your own two hands. So, he walks in the dark, the familiar soft padding of bare feet on wood floors drowned out by the non-stop knocking. It still hasn’t stopped. Wolfwood pauses just once on his steady trek towards trouble. Three-quarters to the door, he side-steps to shoulder open a closet in the hallway. There’s a baseball bat buried deep inside. Heavy, solid wood and fit for swingin’. He takes it with him.
The front door is in view now. It stands proud, straight ahead as the red runner carpet guides him in, its usual russet color interrupted in patches by the moonlight filtering through the high windows. Wolfwood takes another step along his path, and the banging still doesn’t stop. It’s louder here, and seems to get faster as he approaches, like the source of the racket senses he’s comin’ closer.
That gives him pause. He’s a little more awake now, has a few more critical thinking skills booted up; and just why the fuck is someone banging on his door without screaming or crying or anything else? This is most certainly the kind of thing they warn you about when you build a house out in the hills. And it just keeps going. It hasn’t let up one bit in nearly five minutes. It’s inhuman.
His footsteps have slowed, but he can’t bring himself to stop. There’s something in the grit of his joints forcing him to follow through. It’s deep-set behind his breast bone like needing a nicotine fix, but all this craving asks is for him to open the door. It’s so subtle that Wolfwood can hardly recognize it enough to second guess it. He walks the last few feet to the door on this inexplicable impulse; all his previous skeptic irritation lost in the thrall of the uncanny premonition stuck right behind his eyelids.
He stops.
The knocking doesn’t.
It falters – just a touch – when Wolfwood extends his hand to the door, but when he turns the first lock, it speeds up, double time. He can almost convince himself he hears something else beneath the din. Something like rustling, like whimpers, like whatever’s out there wants in.
He undoes the deadbolt.
The knocking doesn’t stop.
He turns the handle, shifts his grip on the bat, and pulls the door in. The knocking goes quiet.
When Wolfwood first sees the figure in his doorway, he thinks it’s a nightmare all over again. Because what else would be so red? So dripping and bloody?
The shock of it all – the rapid heartbeat pulsing in his fingertips, the absolute, icy silence that now submerges the night, the bloody, near-dead monster in front of him – has him careening back into himself and stumbling away from the threshold. He screams. Lets loose every curse and blasphemy he knows in a shocked bellow and nearly throws the baseball bat . Suddenly, all those old wives tales seem a bit too real, and he swears he can hear the echoes of "I told you so, city boy" through the crash of his thundering heart.
Whatever’s at his doorstep, Wolfwood can’t tell if it was once a man, or if it’s always been like this. If it was always half flayed open and half overstuffed and bulging. There’s a head – at least he thinks there is. It’s where a head should be, and it’s most definitely looking at him. It's got one reflective blue eye peeking through a mop of blood-red maybe-hair, but it feels dangerous to even look at: parts of it look wilted down like leaves, heavy with dripping red gore, and other bits stick up like shards of bone or reed stalks. It’s unfathomably disorienting. Not least of all because Wolfwood just can’t seem to make out its shape.
Some places he sees arms, maybe fingers or an entire hand, but other times the whole mess of it all is one cloaked, tattered red mass, frayed and feathered at the edges. It doesn’t fit. The outline doesn’t make any sense – none of it makes any sense. He thinks maybe it would if he gave it more time, but he’s already held his breath for too long, his body unconsciously frozen still. The seconds tick by with Wolfwood and the monster struck still, the only sound in the whole balmy summer night being the heavy drip drip drip coming from the bloody ooze slipping down the monster’s back. Even the cicadas are quiet for this standoff.
Then it moves. Wolfwood sees a flash of bone-white from the approximate mouth and approximate hands of the creature, and his trance is broken once again. He doesn’t wait to find out what happens next; he already fucked up by opening his door. Just what the fuck had he been thinking, acting like a fool trying to die. He jolts away from the monster and out of whatever eerie feedback loop had made the past ten seconds feel like an eternity. With both hands on the door handle, Wolfwood goes to slam the door shut. He has every intention to close the door, lock it tight, throw a few heavy items in front of it for good measure, and maybe sprinkling some salt at the base of it – or whatever the fuck you’re supposed to do when shit like this happens – then drink himself promptly back to sleep.
He almost does it. The door is nearly closed, the lock is an instant from sliding into place, and Wolfwood’s eyes are screwed shut unconsciously. He is seconds away from washing this whole evening away like bloodstains and bad dreams. But he doesn’t.
At the very last instant, the monster speaks, “No! Wait!,” and it sounds… human. Human, and scared, and hurt, by the way it peels off into a whimper at the end. “Please,” the voice says. This time, it only sounds pitiful, and more human than just a second ago.
Wolfwood holds the door where it is. There’s something trapping him in this moment – again – rendering him unable to shove this all behind him and inching him towards this once again. It’s the same persistent tug that led him to open the door in the first place. He just –
“What d’you want?” Wolfwood asks through the barely-there gap in the door.
“I need help. Just let me in,” the voice begs. “I don’t want to do this either, I just… fuck,” there’s a desperation in the voice, and anger too. It sounds far too human. Wolfwood should know better, does know better, but this person just sounds so desperate – and Wolfwood never could leave well enough alone.
“Lettin’ ya in’s a good way to get myself killed,” Wolfwood says, but even as he does, he opens the door back up – just an inch or two – just enough to get another look at what – at who – is outside. “So you better have a damn good reason why I should.”
He gets another look at the monster, and this time… he isn’t so sure. The mess of red and blood has collapsed on his front stoop, and now looks significantly more like a man than a monster. He still looks rough. The hair is still soaked through with blood and matted in strange tufts, and he’s still fucking drenched in red. Now that Wolfwood thinks about it, he can smell the blood. A distinct tang of iron and wet earth clings to the man. It permeates the whole space, instinctively raising Wolfwood’s alarms, but before adrenaline takes over again, he meets the man’s eyes – both of them this time. And they are so goddamn blue.
That, more than anything, takes his breath away. He swears they’re glowing, swears they’re reflecting light back at him like a cat’s eyes would, like something unnatural, even. But that doesn’t seem to matter. All that matters is how goddamn human they look. Those eyes find something deep inside Wolfwood and crack it open, leaving it just waiting to spill out.
“Please,” the man chokes out, “I need help,” the pain and fear in his voice is obvious, but what sticks in Wolfwood is the bitten-back fury of a man who’s been cornered into a last resort. As he speaks, he tilts his head up to more comfortably meet Wolfwood’s gaze – he hasn’t broken eye contact for a second, Wolfwood doesn’t even think he’s blinked – and the soft movement seems to solidify him, settle him.
Where Wolfwood previously saw disjointed, disconnected limbs and amorphous feathery shapes, he now sees a man; one who’s certainly been through the fucking wringer, but definitely a human-looking man. Wolfwood doesn’t think he’s lying about being injured. He is holding himself like he has several badly broken bones, and every time he breathes, it comes out wet and ragged. Not to mention the long, tattered coat he’s wearing. Wolfwood can’t even begin to imagine what it used to look like. He can’t even be sure it was always red.
“What happened to you?” Wolfwood breathes. He pulls the door open wider – but still not all the way – and crouches down for a better look.
“I can’t –” the man starts, and he looks even more distraught to say it, “I just – please, I’m really fucking hurt, and I don’t know why, but I knew I had to come here.”
“The fuck does that mean. I’m not a doctor. Jesus, you need a doctor!” Wolfwood exclaims. He reaches for his phone, only to remember that he’s only in boxers and his phone is in his bedroom – not to mention, but by the time an ambulance arrives, it’d probably be too late. “Shit! Lemme get my keys,” he starts to push himself up, but the man on the porch gasps in alarm and reaches toward him, even as Wolfwood continues up and into the house. “If I speed, I can probably get you there in 40 minutes, maybe 45.”
“No!” the man screams, and there’s something… something not quite right about it. Something multilayered and subvocal that settles uneasy and wrong with a twitch beneath Wolfwood’s skin, but he’s already stopped in his tracks, turning back around. Like he didn’t even decide to do it.
“What… the fuck?” Wolfwood says. The man at the stoop has lurched forward, seemingly like he made an attempt to grab at Wolfwood and keep him close. He’s still outside, his hands are still firmly planted outside of his threshold, and it doesn’t look like he’s coming in, but Wolfwood is still uncomfortable. The sort of uncomfortable that makes him take mental note of where the baseball bat still lays next to his right foot.
“Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just can’t go to the doctor.” the man says. He sounds frantic, desperate. He’s fully begging. “I just can’t. Please.”
“‘S it an insurance thing?” Wolfwood asks, “‘Cause you can figure that out when you’re not fuckin’ dying.”
“No, no, no. It’s just,” the man pauses and shakes his head in frustration, “I don’t know why, but this is my best chance. You’re my best chance.”
“Best chance at fucking what!” Wolfwood exclaims. “What the fuck can I do?”
“Let me in,” he argues. “I’ll die out here, but it’s safe inside. I don’t want to be asking you this, but I’m out of fucking options!”
“No way!” Wolfwood yells. They’re both getting riled up, volume rising and emotions churning. “That sounds like something a serial killer would say to get into my house without, like, a fucking struggle – or something!”
“Would a serial killer do this?” the man raises his right hand. He moves so fast that blood splatters across his face and along the outside of the doorframe. And his hand – fuck. Wolfwood almost gags. The whole thing is twisted backward and around. It’s not just broken, it’s hardly fucking staying in place. There’s visible bone through his wrist and fingers. Wolfwood’s surprised he can move it at all. He’s surprised the man is even conscious.
“What the fuck!” Wolfwood screams.
“I’m dying!” the man yells. There’s a single beat of silence in which those bright blue eyes grow wide and shocked then break away from Wolfwood’s to stare at his mangled in a gobsmacked sort of panic. “Shit,” he swears, with a violence that implies the man himself just realized what he said is true. Wolfwood is so deeply out of his fucking depth. He did not anticipate waking up to watch a man grapple with his own imminent death when he went to bed a few hours ago.
“This really is the end of the line,” the man says. He says it so completely to himself that Wolfwood momentarily feels like he’s the one intruding on something. Then he raises his head and when he meets his eyes, Wolfwood feels like he exists again. “Fuck, I really am sorry,” the man says, and the sudden shift in tone from panicked desperation to utter resignation shocks Wolfwood more than anything else.
“Gee, I don’t know what came over me,” he admits, nearly ashamed in how he says it, “I just felt something dragging me this way, and I guess I let it take over.” He winces and Wolfwood can’t tell if it’s from pain or embarrassment, “I’m sorry for waking you up.”
“I –” Wolfwood starts. He’s shocked by the man’s sudden change in disposition and still queasy from the sight of his demolished wrist. He doesn’t know what to think. This is above his pay grade, he’s in over his head, bitten off more than he can chew, whatever metaphor you want, he’s in it now. What even are his options? Take this guy into his home and hope he doesn’t kill him? Leave him out here to die on his front porch and dispose of the body in the morning? Just go back to bed and pretend it didn’t happen?
If he’s being honest, he was convinced the second he saw those big, blue eyes. If he’s making excuses, he has no good options and dammit, Nicholas D. Wolfwood isn’t going to leave someone to die at his doorstep, no matter how much he tells himself he maybe should.
He throws his head back and growls in frustration. “Listen here, you soggy piece of shit,” he points directly in the man’s face and glowers. The bastard has the gall to look surprised. “I dunno know what your deal is, who you are, or even, to be honest, if you’re fully human, but,” he gestures broadly in irritation and defeat, “you’re scared shitless and halfway burried already, so, I guess,” he takes a big steadying breath before continuing, “if I’m your best shot – fuck it. Let’s get your sorry ass inside.”
Neither of them were really expecting the offer, so it hangs in the air, heavy and charged, for several over-long beats. The ragged man moves first, expression slipping into slack-jawed disbelief then hardening into mild irritation. “Soggy? I’m not soggy,” he complains.
“That,” Wolfwood growls, “is what you’re stuck on?”
“No one’s ever called me soggy before, I just – ”
“I can still leave you here to die, you fuck,” Wolfwood points out. “You’re damn suspicious at baseline, do not give me more reasons to regret this,” he holds out his hand, “do you want inside or not?”
The man yelps in offense and alarm and reaches out his un-mangled hand to take Wolfwood’s, only to wince and pull back before he gets more than a few inches out. “I don’t think I can get up on my own,” he admits with a sheepish grin.
“Okay, fine,” Wolfwood grumbles. He isn’t actually annoyed at this particular fact; it makes sense. It would be stranger if he could move just fine, it’s just… Every new detail that requires Wolfwood to actively engage in the situation makes him more and more aware that he’s probably doing the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his life. But he does it anyway. He bends down and gathers the man up. One arm around his waist and the other securing his arm draped over his shoulder. He tries very hard not to think about the blood he’s about to get all over himself and his house.
The guy tries to apologize constantly as Wolfwood hoists him up and drags him towards the door. Babbles nonsense that Wolfwood tries his best to ignore; he’s too busy forcing himself not to care about the warm, tacky blood that is currently pressing against his side and dripping down onto his chest to parse what the man is talking about. He drowns it out for the drawn-out and unsteady seconds it takes to get the man up and over his threshold, so it surprises him when he so immediately notices the man drift into silence the moment he steps foot into Wolfwood’s house proper.
“Why’d you stop?” Wolfwood asks.
The man huffs, “I thought you were ignoring me.”
“Well, yeah,” Wolfwood grumbles, embarrassed to be caught out, “but you got real quiet real quick. Thought you’d maybe passed out.”
The man tries to laugh, but it ends up much closer to a hiss, the movement clearly aggravating some of his injuries. “No, still with you,” he pauses, seems to deflate a little in his arms, “just tired. Sorry ‘bout the blood, by the way. I can clean it later, if you want.” Wolfwood can feel the way he turns his head to face him, but he keeps his own eyes carefully ahead. He’s not ready to deal with the unnatural force of those eyes while fighting to keep them both upright.
They stumble through Wolfwood’s house, and while Wolfwood is able to carefully steer them clear of anything they could bump into or break, he is very aware that, beneath their heavy breaths and scuffling steps, he can hear a persistent drip drip of blood falling onto the floor. The events of the night seem set on leaving a mark on both him and his house – providing this is real, that any of this will still be here in the morning. Wolfwood hasn’t ruled out that possibility, no matter how real the body next to him feels.
“What do you even need?” Wolfwood wheezes. He’s stalled in his hallway, shifting his weight to better support the man he’s brought into his house. He has no fucking idea what to do now that they’re both actually inside.
“I, uh,” the man starts, his voice sounds thinner than before, “just somewhere to rest, maybe a way to get clean? Do you have a shower?”
“Yeah, I – that’d be smart,” Wolfwood replies. “You’re a fuckin’ mess,” he leads them towards the bathroom then groans, “I’m a mess. Fuck, guess I’ll hose off out back. Ugh.”
“Sorry,” the man says sheepishly.
“It’s fine.”
His house isn’t large, it doesn’t take long to get to the bathroom. There’s nothing special there. It’s just the same bathroom Wolfwood has used for the past seven years, but now it has someone else in it. Which wouldn’t be the strangest thing, except… Now he shares it with a walking bad decision.
Wolfwood flicks on the lights and underneath the fluorescents and finds he has to turn away from the man as he slinks over to the bathtub. His injuries are too clear in direct light; it’s too broken, too bloody, too unbelievable. Instead, he focuses on the traces, the changes, left in his wake. He listens to the shuffling, syncopated footsteps and watches the light smear of blood as it appears along the wall behind the path of the man’s fingers.
His eyes snap down to the man at the sound of him collapsing into the bathtub. At the end of the trail of blood, lies this one man – looking smaller and more haggard than Wolfwood has yet seen him – crumpled in Wolfwood’s only shower. He meets Wolfwood’s eyes, and he’s forced to take a step back. The contrast between his broken body and his gleaming eyes, his now clearly too-sharp smile, is too much to bear.
“You’re not gonna make it, are you?” Wolfwood breaths.
“Oh, no, I’ll be fine,” he responds with a small laugh and dismissive wave of his hand.
“How?”
All of the laughter drains out of him in the space of a single exhale. He draws himself together; his knees up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, and chin resting on his wrists with a slight tilt so he can still keep Wolfwood in his line of sight. His blue eyes are no longer bright, but tired and burdened in a way that Wolfwood, for all his hardness and strife, cannot fathom. What he sees moves past ordinary empathy and settles deep in the pit of his stomach.
“I never did get your name,” the man in Wolfwood’s bathtub says, quietly, and with a seriousness he hasn’t displayed a capacity for yet, “rude way to treat my kind savior.”
Wolfwood scowls and knocks his head against the wall, casting his eyes to the heavens.“‘M not a savior,” he scoffs, “jus’ fuckin’ stupid.” He wants a cigarette. “Name’s Nicholas Wolfwood. Usually just Wolfwood.”
“Wolfwood,” he says with a smile in his voice. “I like it. You can call me Vash. And, really, I’ll be fine.”
Wolfwood looks in the mirror. He’s tired.
“I just need somewhere to stay, I’m not sure for how long,” Vash continues.
He’s tired, and still mostly naked. Jesus. He’s in his boxers, his dark hair is a mess of bedhead, he has dark circles under his eyes the likes of which he hasn’t had since he was much younger, and then there’s the blood. All across his right side, down from his hip and up to his jawbone.
“And I hope it’s not too much to ask for some privacy. This isn’t my finest moment, I’m sure you can guess.”
One errant, upside down red hand print adorns his chest from where Vash had dangled his arm over his shoulder. It looks intentional, almost ritualistic; and the ghosts of high-school English class whisper reminders of Mrs. Macbeth and the damned red spot she couldn’t shake off.
“I need'a go back to bed,” Wolfwood interrupts.
“Yeah, day’s a bit of a wash, I’d say,” Vash agrees with a broken-off laugh.
“I’d say.” Wolfwood claps his hands together loud enough that he sees Vash startle at the edge of his vision. “You better not take too long in here, Spikey, a hose shower can tide me over for a day, but not much longer.”
“Sp –”
“You didn’t like ‘soggy’ so I’m tryin’ somethin’ else,” Wolfwood interrupts. Vash humphs, but doesn’t push it further. “Yeah, that’s right,” Wolfwood settles with a nod.
There’s a beat of awkward silence. There’s nothing more to say that won’t end in Wolfwood feeling worse in every way he already feels bad. He might as well leave this all be for now and deal with the consequences after a few more hours of sleep, several cups of coffee, and enough cigarettes to put a dent in next week’s budget.
“Thank you,” Wolfwood almost misses it, for how quiet Vash says it. “I don’t think I said so yet. I mean it, too.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Wolfwood looks at Vash one last time before he leaves. “If you leave while I’m asleep, lock the door, will ya? Don’t need anything else weird comin’ through my front door.”
“Will do, Wolfwood.”
He shuts the door behind him.
He fights not to slide down to the floor and spiral. Forces his hands to unclench and his shoulders to stop shaking. He’s dealing with this later. Later.