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Star-shaped. That’s what he is.
Vash turns, something like lightning striking at the curl of his lips, the ice of his irises. Only now does Wolfwood realize the truth, behind all the nicknames. As world-shattering as a typhoon, three barrels tilted skywards, a thousand footsteps rocking the ground. A stampede.
He’s dangerous, though he doesn’t look it. Though his body’s grown thin, and his hair falls oily and longer than Wolfwood remembers, no longer gravity-defying tufts of spikes. He doesn’t wear glasses. Can’t hide his eyes. His jacket’s gone too. The only thing they’ve let him keep is the black undersuit that forms the final barrier between his skin and the harsh air.
“Hey.” Vash shakes. And he does not stop trembling. The restraints around his arms and legs are cold and make his muscles jump at the touch. He dangles his legs from the bed, maneuvering the chains around so he can give himself a comfortable amount of slack.
“Blondie.” Wolfwood breathes something hazy. “Are you an idiot or what?”
“You came to see me?” Vash begins, his eyes tracing Wolfwood’s form. Almost eager. The dark-haired man wonders how long he’s been confined to these four walls. How long it’s been since he’s had human interaction.
“Well, I’m already out six-billion double-dollars.” He slumps against the doorframe, sucking the smoke out a cigarette that’s almost burnt to its end. “Since you decided to stop running.”
It’s been months since the last sign of him, besides yellowing posters tacked to the sides of buildings. They could never do him justice, anyways. Vash’s face is softer in the flesh. He’s just as soft as he left him.
Vash’s days here are numbered. Just above them, The Sinners are negotiating where to cart him off. The current consensus is that he’ll be forced into an energy-creating state. A kind of power purge, one that will drain his body of its life force. The procedure will extract enough energy to power a city the size July once was for a century.
The biggest debate in all this is how the harvested power will be distributed. Not of Vash’s comfort before or during. Not of how ethically the situation can be handled. Their subject is currently chained to a bed.
It was a miracle alone that they allowed Wolfwood to see him, stripped of all weapons of course. They thought maybe he could calm him, as high stress levels were an early indicator of low-success energy transfers. There were tranquilizers on hand, as well as a team of Plant engineers and researchers. But those were a last resort. Medication tends to decrease plant productivity.
Though the timeline is not straightforward, Wolfwood was told Vash would have a little over a week left if negotiations were progressing as desired. A week.
Wolfwood sighs. A number of emotions race through him, the strongest of them is pissed off. But Vash doesn’t look strong enough to take the brunt of him. Vash, the bleeding-heart gun-slinger. Who has steel melded to his flesh, yet he still shows restraint. His arm is heavy at his side, sinking uselessly into the sheets, still metal and fixed to him. Wolfwood would have snapped if he’d been relieved of the limb as a safety measure.
“What was I supposed to do?” Vash shrugs, full body roll forwards. Everything hurts. A small groan follows his movement. Wolfwood twitches at the sound.
“Why didn’t you look for me?” Wolfwood turns his head full center, dares to look the stampede right in the eyes. He remembers the brightness blooming, pink and sickly, painting the skyline and then the shock of impact, of the rolling bursts of pure energy. All of it was Vash. It was all him, dark wing emerging from the arm he no longer had. He had done this. Could do it again, against his will, unknowingly. Because Vash doesn’t know, doesn’t like the feel of such power. Wolfwood’s eyebrows furrow. “We could have run together.”
“Yeah.” Vash scoffs, his throat sounds raw, “So you could catch me alone? And swing your cross over my nape when I’m not suspecting it?”
Wolfwood’s hand tightens into a fist besides him. “Don’t feed me that canned crap.”
He remembers dark nights, nearly flailing off his toma, fistful of feathers, only moonlight to guide them. He remembers the desperation, bodies slipping in the sand, finding purchase in one another. And they’d just hold each-other to keep from falling off the face of the planet. To even suggest that he’d forsaken the trust between them, for money or for honor, it makes his blood run molten.
“You listening?!” He rasps, face reddened.
Before him, Vash clings, with both his flesh and metal hands, to the sheets for dear life. He’s wrecked, outwards curl of his lip, moisture glistening at the rims of his eyes. He nods, throat bobbing with a heavy gulp.
“I’ll kick the shit out of you, needle noggin.” Wolfwood moves upright, bringing his back off the wall. “If you spin such stupid shit ever again.”
His heart dances under the cross he’s strung around his neck. He started wearing it after Vash’s disappearance, after the July incident. Something to cloak the darkness. He knows it grows inside of him, inside both of them.
Vash sucks in a breath, lungs fluttering. “You know what I am.” Tears form at the corners of his eyes.
“And what exactly do you think that is?”
“A monster.” His lower lip curls.
Wolfwood’s pulse quakes. His own words, come back to bite him in the ass. If only he’d known better. If only he’d seen the devastation in Vash’s eyes, far more costly than the toll taken on his body. Vash’s skin can sew itself shut. Can push bullets out without thought. But something about the way Wolfwood spoke to him, when he was brave enough to bare the darkest, most painful parts of him, must have dug deeper than any physical wound he’s taken.
“No.” Wolfwood breathes, daring to come closer. He places one hand on either side of him, just besides where Vash’s hips dig into the bed, and glares down. “That’s not what you are.”
His body's closing in on Vash’s, and the blonde curls away from him, hard line of a frown cutting the fear in his eyes. He’s either defensive or terrified.
“Then what am I?” Vash whispers, something soft. Wolfwood wouldn’t have been able to hear it if he wasn’t so damn close.
He fiddles with the stub of cigarette in his mouth, and glosses over what he could say that would do the least damage.
Terrifying, beautiful, selfless. Doomed.
He narrows his eye, closing some distance between them, and Vash allows it, doesn’t recoil.
He knows what Vash must think, that he’s an endless chasm of destruction, lifetime drawn out into a series of killings, of fleeing the scene. Vash is unfathomable and bright. A deep star. One that’s ravaged the meat of his left arm. That had to be severed at the source.
There’s the prick of feathers, the staunching of blood and a bullet, clipping his radius, pulling shards of bone into his ulna. The swell of particle matter, purple, pulling the skyline along with it; where the rusk of the atmosphere thins out into space.
Deeper than deep, something that pulls so hard, strips the skin from his brother’s body, lights his musculature aflame.
The snapping of a chord through his gut, and the vibrations pushing through, shell of his body collapsing back into the planet, the aftershock rippling and rippling, past the crater he’s left. Past the far reaches of no-man’s land, where Wolfwood cowers, dips away like he’s never met the meteorite before, like he wasn’t feeding hate into the system that’s finally collapsed into a supernova.
“Misunderstood,” Wolfwood responds, “the world never knew what to do with you. An angel who was fashioned a body geared for killing, and he ran from it a few lifetimes over.”
Vash’s eyes widen at that. He tilts his head forwards, so Wolfwood’s lips are just brushing the shell of his ear. So that he can feel some heat other than that of his own body.
“July wasn’t the first world I’ve destroyed.” He chokes out his confession, his whole jaw so tight he has to form every syllable in painfully controlled bursts.
“It was barely a city.” Wolfwood fishes a new cigarette out his jacket pocket. “Don’t flatter yourself.” He replaces the spent one, fitting it between his lips, and leans up, setting fire to its end. He does his best to look unphased, blows an apathetic plume of smoke opposite Vash’s direction. He notices the strain on Vash’s face. The way he flinches every time his gaze rolls over him.
“Hey.” He takes the tip of Vash’s jaw in his thumb and forefinger, forcing his head forwards. “I mean it. Cut it out with the self-loathing bullshit.” And he brings his face closer, so Vash has no choice but to look him in the eyes. “If only you had known some of the things I’ve done, then you wouldn’t be sitting on your ass feeling sorry for yourself.” His voice heats up into a growl. “You think I’ve spared the innocent? Women and children?”
Vash’s gaze flutters off, into the corner of the room.
“Hey, blondie. Listen to me!” Wolfwood curls his whole hand around Vash’s jaw and snarls, “There’s only one monster in this room.”
He tugs, a bit too rough for his liking, but he’s so tense, so damn angry, that he can’t gauge how his muscles will react.
“And it’s not you.”
He dangles the cigarette between his teeth and drops his other hand to enclose Vash’s- the metal one. His fingers are cold, and when Vash flips his palm up to curl his fingers back around Wolfwood’s, the undertaker withholds a startled flinch.
This hand is strong, could easily pulverize Wolfwood’s muscle and bone with so much as a hard squeeze. His fingers, Vash’s fingers, the ones who do the killing, are gentle against his.
Wolfwood’s more familiar with them in action; they flick bullets into the circle of chambers. The movement is so fluid, like the batting of his lashes. And by the time it’s over, by the time Vash shoots all six twenty-calibers into his brother, Knives’ swung a chained blade into his back.
He’s not sure which pain is more surprising; the sharp stab of his brother’s namesake, or the dark matter- not bone or flesh or human – that emerges from where his brother’s relived him of the vortex that had opened up inside him. It looks like a wing. Knives has the other half. Angel-like, white-feathered. Biblical.
Vash has something darker. Tar-like, The shade of bon-dry cold of the desert nights, of the widening of Wolfwood’s pupils, two dark moons slicking over his irises.
“Nick-” Vash’s voice is harsh. Must have been crying at night. Must have been screaming.
Wolfwood drops his forehead down to press against Vash’s, so close he has no choice but to feel him.
“I’m here.” He breathes through his cigarette. “I’m listening.”
Vash’s hand guides Wolfwood’s towards him, and experimentally settles the undertaker’s palm on the flat of his abdomen.
“Please.” Is all he says, and Wolfwood knows immediately, grasping at him, taking fistfuls of skin and metal.
“This okay?” He whispers into the blonde’s neck.
Vash can’t bring himself to respond with anything more articulate than a breathy moan.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Wolfwood mutters into his skin, then drops the cigarette and flattens his tongue at a particularly sensitive patch just under his ear. His lips close around the wetness he’s left, and the sounds Vash makes are satisfying enough.
If they could stretch this moment out- the gentle ministrations of his mouth against his neck- for eternity, it would be enough. It would be as close to paradise Wolfwood would get. Between the violence, the gratuitous desecration of the crucifix, and the faithlessness, he’d end up in a hell akin to the desert he roams. Some angry, bubbling heat at his back, high sun that never sets.
Wolfwood sucks, pulling red up to the surface of Vash’s skin.
This must be the taste of his body, he thinks. The body of Christ. The true taste, not some thin sheet of hardened water and grain. Not flavorless, chalky, and hard to swallow down. Vash’s skin is soft where it hasn’t been burnt or scarred or excised and replaced by metal. Sweetness coats Wolfwood’s tongue. He groans.
Beneath him, Vash tugs at his shirt, hitching it up as far up as his restraints will allow. Wolfwood mentally curses whoever chained him to the bed, to the pits of hellfire, to the worst imaginings of the underworld he can conjure up.
Vash jams the black fabric of his shirt end between his teeth and tugs his chin up, freeing his hands so they can guide Wolfwood; one at his nape, nudging his head lower into the unexplored sweeps of his clavicles, and the other pulling the hand at his abdomen further up, advancing towards the littered stretch of his chest.
“Fuck.” Wolfwood whispers, into some metal node that starts just below Vash’s collarbone. He follows its gleaming buttress as it trails to his sternum. His thumb brushes just above his heart, obstructed by a metal grate.
“You’re beautiful.” He presses a kiss onto it, gentle and sweet, as if his teeth aren’t clattering against metal when his lips part. “Like the messiah.” He rasps, “He endured steel through his palms. You bear it all over your body.”
“I-uh,” Vash stutters, fisting the end of his shirt as it falls from his open mouth, “I thought you were d-disgusted.”
Wolfwood responds harshly, dragging his teeth past the center of Vash’s test, down towards his navel. His hands run down his sides soothingly, a start contrast in sensation. A sob escapes from Vash, and he braces against Wolfwood’s shoulders, thighs quivering beneath the two of them.
“Never.” Wolfwood whispers, and presses another kiss just above Vash’s bellybutton, against a rough score of scar tissue.
“You can have it then.” Vash gasps, tears spilling down his cheeks. His head tilts back, panting. “Please. Have all of me.” His grip tightens around Wolfwood. “The..heh…the only one whose seen me as…ah”
“An angel,” Wolfwood mutters as he lodges his head between Vash’s thighs, at the eye of the storm. He nuzzles at the musculature, rolling Vash’s leg out to give him access, canines peeking from a slight snarl.
Feeling no resistance from the blonde, he moves forwards, places his lips at the crux of him, through the layers of fabric and all, and inhales harshly. Like he's breathing in new life force. Like he's been stumbling through the sand and the heat and the rain of bullets just for this.
Vash's breath hitches, then a sob escapes him, throat closing as he swallows roughly. He takes a fistful of Wolfwood's hair, with his hand of flesh, and tugs up, prying his face from him, all-the-while groaning at the loss. Like he's at war with himself.
"Hey," Wolfwood coos, noticing Vash’s confliction. "It's alright. I'll go slower. Didn’t mean to rush anything."
"I can't have this." Vash mutters, arching away from his touch.
"The hell do you mean you can’t?" Wolfwood glares up at him. His anger is misdirected. Vash can be such a pain of the ass with all his self-sacrificing bullshit. That's typical for him, shouldn't send Wolfwood’s pulse soaring like it is. But something about how dire the situation is, something about how much Vash needs this, how much they both need this. How starved their bodies both are.
And Vash can’t allow himself to feel a touch other than that which has left its mark on his chest and back, which must have been why his left leg is steel below the knee. Vash refuses all contact except that of a bullet, of a torch, the wicked blade of a combat knife. Anything to make him a martyr.
"Are you afraid they're watching us?" Wolford strokes just above Vash’s knee, where the skin puckers into the steel ball that forms the joint of his prosthetic. "Do you want this to be more private?"
Vash shakes his head. "I just can't."
"Did I push you too much?" Wolfwood's head is spinning, guilt slowly creeping in. He slips a thumb over the cross he wears and rubs circles. "I'm sorry."
Vash sighs and looks away. “It’s not you.” His cheeks glisten where the tears have rolled down his face. They now dribble off his chin in drops.
Wolfwood brings himself up. “I understand.”
Vash’s been like this before. Knees against his chest, huddled besides the fire, worm shank untouched before him, losing the heat that makes it palatable. And Wolfwood’s learned when to force-feed and when to let him whittle himself to bone. Most of it, Wolfwood chalked down to run-of-the-mill sulking. Vash was the moodiest of the four of them, with his refusal to cry, to allow himself to feel anything but the physical toll this path has taken on his body.
But this time, Vash is acting different. His behavior is un-characteristic. He’s allowing the tears to flow, allowing his chest to spasm. Like some thousand-year-old sorrow finally released from its vessel. What else was his body but a vessel? Not for some holy message but for servitude. Wolfwood’s breath hitches at the realization. That was Vash’s purpose the entire time; to find a cross to string himself upon. Cursed with a body that refuses to die, not until Vash allows himself to withstand lethal damage – which is something soul-sucking for a creature like him. Something truly infernal – for whatever cause he’s landed on.
“What can I do?” Wolfwood finally breaks the silence. The question puts Vash’s mind into disarray. The one who bears the cross, offered some relief.
He doesn’t refuse it. Only stares up at the undertaker with something like apprehension behind his gemstone eyes. He looks so innocent. So pure. Like the smoldering remains of July could be pinned on any living creature but him. Like he couldn’t have possibly done what he did.
Vash’s chest hurts, his lungs inflate with nothing, he feels it under his shoulder blades, in his upper back. The air smells like toluene and napalm. Like awakening covered in ash, curling around scar tissue he’s forced into the planet.
Wolfwood can see the pain on his expression. His flushed cheeks, the slight part of his lips, gasping up for air that will never be enough.
“I can offer some relief.” He says, gently. “If you’ll allow it.”
Vash nods, and Wolfwood comes closer, slipping a seed-like object into his palm.
Vash looks down, and then back at him, chest expanding and collapsing uncomfortable.
“Medicine will affect my energy output.” He winces. “During harvest.”
“I don’t give a damn about your productivity,” Wolfwood spits, “They can all go to hell and back. This won’t cost you more than a few joules. Shit, it’s all static electricity they’re losing. Small sparks.”
Vash clutches his chest and leans forwards. Wolfwood catches him by the shoulders, one hand snaking to his back to rub soothing circles.
“Can you crush it for me?” He grunts between sobs. “I need it to work now.”
“Anything,” Wolfwood mutters, ruffling tufts of blonde as he stands straight, moving towards the nearest hard surface. A wooden side-table equipped with a glowing lamp-like device. He scoops the pill back from Vash’s grip and deposits it onto the counter. He slams the butt of the lamp over it, pulverizing the medication into a fine powder.
He remembers the chemist at the apothecary cautioning against crushing, mentioning a higher-than-desired level of drug released into the bloodstream at once. But, looking over at Vash, as he struggles to breath, he decides just what he needs right now. Something weighty enough to ground him.
Wolfwood collects the powder into his palm and returns to Vash, urging him further into the bed. The blonde obliges, sliding his legs up and onto the mattress, pulling his body back to make room so they can both fit facing each other.
Wolfwood climbs into the bed, bracketing Vash’s abdomen with his thighs. He rests his free palm under Vash’s nape, catching the vibrations that run through his body.
“Fuck, you’re trembling,” he grunts, pulling Vash closer to him, so his upper body is flush against his.
Vash’s teeth clatter against each other. “I-” His eyes are glazed over, once-molten core icing over. Cold. “I didn’t-” His jaw trembles. “I couldn’t- I’m not like him.”
“You’re not.” Wolfwood soothes.
“I d-didn’t want to.” Vash sobs, “If I h-had k-known.”
“None of us knew.” Wolfwood assures. “It wasn’t your fault.” And he balls up the fist with the medication, gliding his knuckles over Vash’s jawline and to his lips. “Now open.”
Vash does his best to obey. He fights the stiff muscles of his jaw as he pries his mouth open, tongue peeking out.
Wolfwood opens his hand and Vash leans forwards, flattening his tongue against Wolfwood’s upturned palm. His tongue recedes back into his mouth as he swallows what he’s collected. Wolfwood groans, savoring the wet heat. Then, Vash’s tongue is on him again, lapping up what remains of the powder.
The medication doesn’t work instantly, but the promise of eventual relief has Vash looking calmer. He slumps down, into Wolfwood’s chest, and sighs. Wolfwood wipes the wetness from his hand and onto the sheets, then circles his arm around Vash’s midsection. He holds him, tight enough to feel Vash’s heartbeat on the empty side of his chest. Vash clutches him back, like a lifeline. Like he’s the last thing grounding him to the planet.
“Hey,” Wolfwood breathes into Vash’s shoulder.
Vash responds by using the last of his strength to flip them both onto their sides, still pressed against each other. The chain around his left arm falls over Wolfwood, and he doesn’t say anything. They pretend the restraints aren’t there. That they don’t need to be there. Vash swivels his leg over Wolfwood’s hip and more chains clatter against him.
They settle with their foreheads pressed together, Wolfwood’s palm closing around Vash’s cheek. His cybernetic arm finds some fleshy piece to knead into. It’s soothing, being so close. It’s enough to slow Vash’s respiration rate down to acceptable.
They don’t move for a while.
At one point, Wolfwood glances around the room in search of some clue of what time it is, and settles on a conclusion that it’s a little past midnight. Vash isn’t asleep yet. Wolfwood knows because he steals the occasional glance. Maybe to make sure he doesn’t scram at the first signs of unconsciousness, or maybe because he has something he’s been building up the courage to finally say. Wolfwood figures it’s the latter.
"Are you scared of me?" Vash finally asks.
"You’re just tired, spikey." Wolfwood yawns.
Vash, who doesn’t seem convinced, trembles again, in a way that leads Wolfwood to believe he’s dangerously close to starting the waterworks again. Who could blame him, though? An angel overpowered by those he swore to protect. Who’s closer to his execution with every passing minute, and he chooses to spend what little time he has left in the circle of Wolfwood’s arms.
"I take back what I said earlier,” Wolfwood starts, rubbing into the plush of Vash’s cheek, “about you being a monster. I was just trying to light some kind of flame under you."
"I know." Vash smiles. There’s something sad in his expression, something pained. "It was a matter of survival. I needed to feel something. Even if it was eating me up inside."
"No." Wolfwood just about snaps. "I should have kissed those scars earlier."
“I wouldn’t have let you.” Is all Vash says.
“Dipshit.” Wolfwood mutters, and he dips his head down, hovering his lips over Vash’s. He can’t be sure he will accept this offering. He’s been wary of where Wolfwood’s tried to place his lips up until now, though It’s not obvious how he’ll respond.
Vash’s eyelashes flutter. He breathes out softly, and moves his metal hand to cover Wolfwood’s cheek. Their lips brush against each-other, hovering in a kind of purgatory that pulls an annoyed groan from the dark-haired man.
“I’m sorry.” Vash breathes into his mouth, stifling any last trace of impatience. Wolfwood tightens his grip around Vash’s jaw to the point of pain and braces for impact.
Vash kisses roughly, like he’s finally found a hunger within him. He makes pained noises, lips pressing against Wolfwood with bruising pressure. And Wolfwood laps him right up, takes everything he has to give, and offers him more. When tears stream down Vash’s face, they finally release each-other.
Vash retreats to the burrow of Wolfwood’s chest, a sigh devolving into a sob within him while the undertaker recovers. Wolfwood cards his hand through blonde hair, whispering surviving remnants of any prayer he can dig up from his memory. It doesn’t annoy Vash. In fact, it seems to be lulling him back to a more stable condition.
Wolfwood traces at the ridge of his jaw with his other hand, down past his chin and to the beginnings of his throat. He works into a rhythm, one that nearly puts him to sleep as well when suddenly, he notices a blue glow from the underside of his thumb. He lifts his hand off Vash’s face, and watches the light bloom, like vessels beginning at the further ends then reconnecting at midline.
It looks like some kind of pattern is forming on Vash’s face. Like ancient runes, or alien script. Whatever it is, It’s beautiful.
Wolfwood only stares on, not daring to wake him. He looks too peaceful like this, like he’s shed enough of his pain, of his burden, to show his true form.
He might be an angel, or some celestial body, torn from its true form. Something deep. Deep enough to hold all the love and the hate he’s endured. Wolfwood knows he must be pure light, that gives and does not take. He must be a star. Dangerous but life-giving, endless and unfathomable, that’s visible from all reaches.
A deep star.