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“What are you waiting for?”
Wolfwood startles badly, almost dropping his cigarette onto the table. He brings it hurriedly back to his mouth and takes a drag. It hitches deep in his lungs, almost makes him cough, like he’s some kind of amateur.
He’d been going to such lengths to pretend he wasn’t watching Vash undress, busying himself with his smokes in the chair by the window, eyes probably darting like an animal’s — he’d missed the fact that Vash had turned around, pinning him under his gaze. Unshielded by his sunglasses, his eyes — those terrible, wonderful eyes, the color of the sliver of sky closest to the suns — are piercing, but still warm.
The smile Vash pairs with that stare feels… dangerous, somehow. More so than his usual smiles, disarming as they are.
“What?” Wolfwood asks, flicking the ash off his cigarette to keep his hands moving, laughing through the anxious thrill running up his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up and the pit of his stomach twist.
Vash’s smile widens. “You were staring.”
It’s hard not to stare. Vash is… Wolfwood can’t decide if pretty or handsome is the better word for it. The coat hides a lot of Vash’s silhouette in a way that’s probably intentional. Underneath it, in just that tight black turtleneck, it’s obvious how fit he is — and underneath that, he’s a patchwork of winding metal implants and scars that look nothing like human scar tissue, the few undamaged patches of skin pale from lack of sun and rosy with his permanent flush.
Now that he’s turned around, pants pulled low on his hips, Wolfwood can see the sharpness of his hip-bones, contrasted by the curve of his stomach — they’ve had a run of good luck, and Vash has been eating decently for once. Wolfwood doesn’t miss the dehydrated over-definition of his abs.
He’s still wearing his holster, and glancing at the way the leather presses into Vash’s bare skin makes Wolfwood’s stomach do a funny little flip.
“So what?” Wolfwood manages. There’s a static hum in the back of his head. He can’t place whether it’s fear or anticipation. “You have a problem with me looking?”
Vash probably wouldn’t be stripping in front of him if he did, but—
“No,” Vash says. He sits down on the edge of the bed. The bed they’re going to share. They’ve been doing that a lot, lately, ever since Meryl and Roberto worked out their whatever-it-is. Two single-bed rooms. Cheaper and easier than the haphazard arrangements they’d been making previously.
Easier, except on Wolfwood’s heart. It hurts worse than a gunshot some nights, to lie with Vash’s back to his, feeling the time they have left burn up and trickle away in the dark. Run away with me, he wants to tell Vash, sometimes. But to where? They’d never be safe, not with Knives hunting the both of them — Vash for… whatever horror it is he wants him for, Wolfwood for his treason.
Vash spreads his legs, with just the faintest scuff of boot-heels over synthetic wood, and Wolfwood’s brain shorts out like a snuffed fuse.
“I don’t have any problem with you looking,” Vash says. “But if you want something, it’s polite to use your words.”
Wolfwood swallows hard, dropping his gaze. The sunglasses hide his eyes, but he can feel a flush burning up his face, and Vash can definitely see it. His fingers feel numb. He rubs them together. “You first,” he says to his knees.
Vash — Vash clicks his fingers, like he’s calling a toma to heel. Wolfwood looks up at him, indignant, and immediately comes face to face with that smile, those piercing goddamn eyes, and Wolfwood’s retort dies in his throat.
“I’d like you to look at me,” Vash says, his voice low and smooth, like cool water over cracked hands. “Please.”
There’s a thread of caution to that addictive voice that almost makes it feel like Vash is talking to him like he’s a child, which… hurts as much as it rankles, the very knife-tip of rejection, but — no. There’s a heat there, too. An encouragement, an offering.
If Wolfwood knew how the fuck to answer , he would. Instead he just stares back, barely shielded behind the lenses of his sunglasses, frozen.
“Thank you,” Vash says. He’s not forcing eye contact, but he is staring, his eyes bright and certain and knowing.
Wolfwood entirely misses the ashtray stubbing out the remains of his cigarette, grinding it into the table. “You first,” he repeats.
Vash sighs — not disappointed or scolding, but vaguely amused. He sits back slightly, and Wolfwood very carefully keeps his eyes pointed at Vash’s face, and not at his open legs.
“Do you want to sleep with me?” Vash asks.
It — hurts? Impacts, at the very least, like being hit in the chest with something heavy. He jerks in a breath, holds it until his lungs burn sharper than if he had a lungful of smoke.
Does he want to? Of course — of course he wants to. He has eyes, for fuck’s sake, and Vash is gorgeous. Gorgeous, captivating, so incandescent it’s dizzying — he’d be the brightest thing in the room even without the hair and the coat and the bottle-green prosthetic and the glasses and those goddamn eyes, but it all helps.
It all helps. It all coalesces, works together to make Vash fucking irresistable.
That’s not just Wolfwood being a sucker, either — everyone sees it. Everyone gravitates to him, everyone wants a piece of him. Just existing in Vash’s proximity means falling in love with him a little.
Of course he wants to. The question is whether he should.
Wolfwood blinks, and finds himself looking straight up into Vash’s face. He’s grateful for the lenses of his sunglasses. It’s like staring into the suns, looking into those eyes.
Vash’s eyes. His fucking eyes. Wolfwood swallows against what feels like sand in his throat, wishing his heart could make up its mind whether it’s being impaled on a knife-tip or wrapped in a soft blanket.
Wolfwood knows he’s let the silence drag on for too long when Vash’s expression softens — not to disappointment, but to concern. There must be some unpleasant expression on his face, if Vash is looking at him like that. Vash opens his mouth to speak, and Wolfwood hurries to cut him off.
“I thought we already were,” he forces out, his mouth dry and his laugh awkward with nerves. “What else am I supposed to do, take the floor?”
“You can say no,” Vash says, so gently. So painfully gently.
Wolfwood scoffs at him. “Fuckin’ — Tongari, that wasn’t no , that was give me a second, ” he snaps. He drops his head into his hands, shoves his sunglasses up just enough to fold his hands against the bridge of his nose in a mockery of prayer.
He hasn’t prayed in years. He’s long since given up on waiting for someone to save him. But something about this makes him want to — he wants some sort of guidance, some sort of sign.
He knows he doesn’t deserve to touch Vash. Wolfwood’s stolen all the kindness Vash has given him, taken it from those more worthy of his affection. He’s Vash’s tailor-made Judas — he doesn’t deserve so much as a kiss.
But he doesn’t need to do this, either. He’s flirted with targets to gain their trust, before. Followed them to their hotel rooms or bedrooms or back alleys behind a bar, before he unwrapped the Punisher and fired.
Vash isn’t that kind of target — not yet. And he’s decided he trusts Wolfwood already. Though Wolfwood doesn’t deserve that either — and wouldn’t even if he weren’t here on a mission.
He’s damned no matter what he does, so it’s his choice — his call to make whether it’s worthwhile to let himself sink this deep, work himself under Vash’s skin, make the inevitable wound cut deeper — or if lurching towards some kind of intimacy would just be the beginning of the end. Another step towards the gallows for the both of them.
(Stupid turn of phrase. The beginning of the end was when that car pulled up outside the orphanage. This is just Revelations.)
Wolfwood turns the thought over in his head. He’s never fucked anyone before, hasn’t had the chance. It was years before the Eye finally let him loose, years after that before he could even take his clothes off with his eyes open, or let his hands linger on his own skin, much less let anyone else touch him.
Why the hell not. This job’s almost certainly going to kill him — if he has the opportunity, if he can bring it about in some way that won’t endanger the children he sold his soul to protect, he’ll die some messy, brutal death in Vash’s defense. If he can’t, well — it probably won’t be long after that.
He may as well live a little, first.
Heat curls low in his gut — he wonders if Vash’s noises of pleasure sound anything like the sounds he makes when he’s in pain.
“Why not?” Wolfwood shrugs, like nervousness isn’t burning him up inside like the Eye’s drugs hitting the pit of his stomach. He leans back in his chair, reaching into his pocket for another cigarette.
That — isn’t what Vash wanted to hear, Wolfwood can see it on his face. In the lines of his body, gone from easy and open to withdrawn again, closed and shielded despite his incomplete image — the bare chest, his hair down, sunglasses set aside. He frowns, tilts his head at Wolfwood like he’s inspecting something at a food stall. He stands up from the bed and steps into Wolfwood’s space, taking the cigarette before he can light it.
Wolfwood feels himself flush deeper. “Hey,” he mutters, his voice thick and clumsy in his mouth. Panic is clawing at his ribs — he’s done something to fuck this up, squandered his chance. “Hang on, I—”
“Say yes,” Vash says. He crouches down, settles onto one knee in front of Wolfwood, putting them face to face, Vash looking up just slightly. His body is very close to Wolfwood’s.
Wolfwood opens his mouth to say it — yes, whatever you want — and Vash puts his finger over Wolfwood’s lips. Wolfwood has to resist the urge to snap his teeth at him like a recalcitrant dog. He wants to be good. He wants to do what’ll make Vash want him.
—fuck. He wants Vash to want him.
“Say yes,” Vash repeats, his voice low, serious as a gunshot wound, for any kind of man but whatever the two of them are. “If you mean yes. And no—” his finger presses harder into Wolfwood’s cracked lips. Wolfwood kind of wants to fucking die. “If you mean no.” His eyes are deep, unnavigable wells. “This is important to me, all right?”
“Yes,” Wolfwood grits out. He reaches up and wraps his hand around Vash’s wrist to hold him still, turns his head to kiss his palm. He figures Vash would like something like that — and gets a smile in return, sweet and indulgent. His heart lurches a little in his chest.
Vash slides his hand down from Wolfwood’s mouth to his chest, across his breastbone where it’s bared by the open collar of his shirt. “I have rules,” he says, in that same steady, low-pitched voice.
Rules. Wolfwood’s shoulders relax, just slightly. There are rules to this. Guardrails. Handholds.
“Don’t touch me below the belt. Non-negotiable.” He gives Wolfwood a firm look. Wolfwood… doesn’t exactly know how that’ll work, but he nods. “Don’t give me orders. Don’t hit or kick me, don’t choke me. Don’t try to flip me or pin me down. You can grab or scratch, but if you try to hurt me, I’ll hit back.”
Wolfwood’s throat is so dry it clicks when he swallows. “What if I want you to hit me?”
Even Vash’s familiar laughter is dropped an octave — instead of just sparking an irritated burst of affection in Wolfwood’s chest, it sends a shiver down his spine, too. Unfair. He pats Wolfwood fondly on the cheek. “One thing at a time.”
“You’ve—” Wolfwood clears his throat. “You’ve done this a lot, huh?”
Vash grins. “I don’t have a bedpost to notch, or else I’d show it off.”
There’s something reassuring in that, like Vash’s rules. Wolfwood isn’t special, isn’t Vash’s first , or some shit like that. Isn’t unique. He’s a notch on Vash’s bedpost, something he wants just to have it.
“Yes,” Wolfwood repeats. It comes out strained and whispery. “Yes,” he tries again, wetting his lips.
Vash nods, and rises from Wolfwood’s side, crossing back to the bed and clearing their accumulated things off of it, tossing his clothes haphazardly onto the floor. Wolfwood misses the warmth of him immediately. “What are your rules?” Vash asks.
Wolfwood blanks entirely. “My rules?”
Vash turns back to him halfway, resting one hand on his hip, one brow cocked. “You get them too,” he says, and it should feel chiding, patronizing, but he says it like it’s a lesson he had to be taught, too.
“Uh,” Wolfwood starts. He feels himself flush, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the synthetic wood flooring. “Don’t use my first name?” He doesn’t think Vash would, he never does, always just says Wolfwood and it feels like a damn blessing every time, but he can almost imagine it — Nicholas, like everyone at the Eye calls him — it sends a panicky little shudder down his spine just to think of it.
Vash makes a low, affirmative noise, reassuring the aching thing in the pit of Wolfwood’s stomach, but doesn’t say anything else, and Wolfwood realizes he’s waiting for more. Something concrete Wolfwood can ask for or put up as a wall. “I haven’t—” Shit shit shit, don’t tell him that. “—it’s been a while.”
Vash, damn him, sees right through him. His expression softens, shuffles between a few emotions — concern, realization, something like fear, then settles on that indulgent smile again.
“We’ll just play it by ear, then,” Vash says. He’s still standing sideways from Wolfwood, almost turned toward the bed, like he doesn’t give a shit. “Take your shoes off.”
Wolfwood does. He kicks them under the chair, where he won’t trip over them like a dipshit later.
“Jacket.”
Wolfwood almost rips a shoulder-seam in his urgency.
“Come here.”
Feeling incandescent with purpose, Wolfwood goes to his side. Vash cups his chin in one hand and bends down to kiss him.
Wolfwood forgets how to breathe.
Vash’s lips unfairly soft, nowhere near as chapped as Wolfwood’s. The kiss is chaste, gentle, delicate in a way that Wolfwood hasn’t earned, doesn’t deserve, and when he pulls back, just for a moment, Wolfwood feels like he’ll die if Vash doesn’t kiss him again, but before he can do more than draw in a breath, Vash does. Again and again and again.
Wolfwood’s lips are tingling by the time Vash pulls away for more than a breath. Wolfwood chases after his mouth, and Vash laughs at him again, low and fond, and Wolfwood’s stomach swoops.
Vash’s hands slide up Wolfwood’s bare chest, and Wolfwood realizes with a jolt that Vash had unbuttoned his shirt while they were kissing, pushed it off his shoulders and halfway down his arms, without Wolfwood having a clue. He shivers, dropping his hands from where they were clutching at Vash’s sides — he’s not sure when that happened, either — and lets Vash strip it all the way off, the fabric falling with a quiet noise at their feet.
“May I?” Vash asks, his voice so heavy with affection that Wolfwood feels as tender as a fresh bruise beneath it.
He realizes, belatedly, processing on such a delay that he feels concussed, that Vash is staring down at his chest, his hands hovering over Wolfwood’s tits.
“Yeah,” Wolfwood breathes, and Vash closes his hands — one cool, smooth metal, almost the texture of glass, and the other warm and calloused, over the soft flesh, kneading gently. His thumb skims over a nipple, and a shudder runs the length of Wolfwood’s spine. Vash makes that kneading motion again, rolling Wolfwood’s tits under his palms.
Wolfwood hadn’t realized how big Vash’s hands were. They cover his whole chest, warm and solid against the sensitive flesh.
It’s not like Wolfwood’s working with much — the Eye didn’t change their drug formula based on sex, apparently, and whatever amount of testosterone they’d put in his veins had fucked any semblance of normal puberty he might’ve had.
Doesn’t bother him, regardless — he feels a little fondness for the one part of his body that hadn’t changed when he’d grown a decade in a day.
He thought he’d lost the tenderness they’d used to have. Vash’s hands pressing into them, thumbs working up the undersides, calls that into question.
“Tongari,” Wolfwood chokes out, not sure what he’s asking for, not sure what he needs. He cranes his neck upwards, trying to catch Vash’s mouth again, and Vash kisses him obligingly.
A mistake, as it turns out — When Vash runs his tongue over Wolfwood’s lower lip, in the same moment as he makes another kneading motion with his wrists, palms skimming over Wolfwood’s nipples, already sensitive and just getting more so under the attention, Wolfwood’s knees actually buckle. He stumbles against Vash’s chest, dizzy with the attention.
Quick as a flash, Vash’s prosthetic arm drops from Wolfwood’s chest and wraps around his waist, pulling him flush against him, holding him steady. “Easy,” he murmurs. There’s no derision in his tone, no mockery, just that unbearable fondness.
Wolfwood flushes, pushing himself upright — putting a bit of distance between their bodies, so the friction of Vash’s thigh between his (he probably did it on purpose, the bastard) wouldn’t make him cum in his fucking pants — but not quite out of Vash’s arms. He glares upward, trying to meet those stunning eyes.
Vash lifts his other hand from Wolfwood’s chest — he does not make a whiny sound of loss when that warmth disappears, he doesn’t — and rests his fingertips on the bridge of Wolfwood’s glasses. “May I?”
“You’d let me keep them on?” Wolfwood asks, without thinking.
That indecipherable string of emotions shutters across Vash’s face again. He cups Wolfwood’s face in his hand, smushing his cheek with his thumb in a way that should feel a lot more patronizing than it does. Mostly, Wolfwood just wants Vash’s hands on him more.
“May I?” he repeats.
Wolfwood wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, doesn’t miss how Vash’s eyes follow the motion. What are your rules? he’d asked.
He considers saying no. He’s almost certain Vash would actually listen — he’s giving Wolfwood an out, letting him keep one layer of shielding, given that he’s stripped the rest away with so little effort.
“Yeah,” he says instead, closing his eyes as Vash unmasks him.
It’s destabilizing. Even without looking, Wolfwood can feel the full weight of those eyes. He swallows hard, drops his chin to his chest. His skin prickles, oversensitive — he can feel the warmth of Vash’s body, the chill of his prosthetic around Wolfwood’s waist. The air between their faces stirred up by breath.
Vash’s breath is warm. Wolfwood can smell his toothpaste, and something faintly green he can’t place.
“Do you want them back?” Vash asks. His voice has dropped to a whisper, like he feels the weight just as much as Wolfwood does.
Wolfwood shakes his head without thinking. Vash leans away briefly, and he hears a plastic clatter as Vash sets the sunglasses down, probably on the nightstand.
Vash’s hands rise to cradle his face, angling his hips so his body takes some of Wolfwood’s unsteady weight. His thumbs brush over Wolfwood’s eyelashes, making his eyelids twitch.
“Look at me,” Vash says. It’s so gentle it could be a request or an order. His hands feel huge against Wolfwood’s cheeks, one pleasantly cool, one dizzyingly warm.
Wolfwood opens his eyes, just slightly, squinting through his lashes. It feels dangerous to look right at Vash, both of them unmasked. Like staring into the suns.
He can see Vash’s smile, the messy softness of his hair. Slivers of those bright eyes.
Vash leans in and kisses him. Wolfwood’s eyes widen instinctively at the shock, leaving him to face the full force of Vash’s light when he leans back again.
“What am I going to do with you?” Vash asks. He squeezes Wolfwood’s face slightly. “Hm? What am I going to do with you.”
It doesn’t sound as much like a question the second time around, so Wolfwood keeps his mouth shut. He misses Vash’s hands on his sides, on his tits, but at the same time he doesn’t want him to stop touching his face.
“Hm?” Vash vocalizes again, and Wolfwood realizes it was a question after all. He flushes, trying not to put the whole weight of his head on Vash’s hands. Embarrassing. All of this is fucking embarrassing. If he didn’t know Vash better, he’d assume this was all for blackmail material.
But he does know Vash well enough — he’s just like this . Overwhelming.
“Dunno,” Wolfwood answers, once he’s swallowed a few times, enough to hopefully keep his voice from cracking. “I’m not picky.”
Vash laughs — a bright, sweet little sound. “Cute,” he murmurs, then smiles sheepishly like he hadn’t quite intended to say it aloud.
Wolfwood scowls at him the best he can from the between Vash’s palms. He can feel his face flushing red — he’s probably warm to the touch at this point. The knife-sharp urge to flinch back and flee hammers his heart against his ribs.
But he can’t. He can’t. Vash is a gentleman — he won’t offer again.
Wolfwood has one chance to not fuck this up.
He goes for his belt, hands shaking as he unbuckles it. He expects Vash to interrupt him, and manages not to twitch when he does, those big hands wrapping over his and pulling the belt loose from its loops.
Vash’s thumb skims over the ragged hole Wolfwood had to punch in it with a knife, off-center and out a ways from the others. His eyes rake over Wolfwood’s waist, his pants already starting to slouch over the sharp planes of his hips.
“Shut up,” Wolfwood snaps.
Vash just looks at him with that soft expression that makes Wolfwood want to — he doesn’t know what. Pick the belt back up and ask Vash to beat him with it, maybe.
“Wolfwood,” he says, and oh, Wolfwood knows what it makes him want to do. It makes him want to fucking cry. “Come here.”
Wolfwood hadn’t even noticed he’d backed up a few steps. He goes back to Vash, knocks his forehead against his breastbone and lets go of the breath locked in his chest.
Vash’s warm hand smooths down Wolfwood’s bare back, lingering over every notch of his spine. “This stops wherever you want it to,” he says, his voice low and smooth. “Believe me, I can make you feel plenty good with just what you’ve given me.”
Given me. Like Wolfwood’s body is some kind of gift.
Imagine that.
Wolfwood stays quiet and still as Vash’s prosthetic hand slides up his side, splayed over his ribcage. He could probably throw Wolfwood across the room with just that hand.
“It’s not—” Wolfwood starts, huffing out a breath. “It’s not that. I want—” the admission sticks in his throat. “You shouldn’t have to look at me,” he says instead, pressing harder into Vash’s chest. He doesn’t shift, doesn’t sway. A solid wall, holding Wolfwood upright.
Vash’s fingers press down between his ribs.
There had been a lot of conversation at the Eye, most of it over Wolfwood’s head, while he lay flat on his back on the surgical table or curled in on himself on the training room floor, body steaming as it healed. Apparently he metabolized their drugs too well. They could make him strong — all lean, wiry muscle — but they couldn’t keep weight on him.
Chronic rhabdomyolysis, his chart said.
Wolfwood didn’t know exactly what the fuck that meant. Just that he was walking a thin line with how far he could push himself before he ended up sick — nauseous, pissing blood, his heart skipping beats in his chest, dragging the Punisher after him because he couldn’t manage to lift it. He shouldn’t have been trying — he wasn’t stupid, he could put together that swinging around a weapon twice his size did nothing to help his muscles’ tendency to rip themselves apart.
It doesn’t matter. His body always knit itself back together eventually. For better or for worse. And once the drugs failed, he wouldn’t have to worry anymore.
“Hey,” Vash’s hand is in Wolfwood’s hair now, pulling his head back, gentle but firm, forcing his gaze up. “Where’d you go, Wolfwood?”
“Stop coddling me,” Wolfwood croaks, his heart burning like a hot coal under his ribs. “If you want to fuck me you should just do it.”
Vash frowns.
Wrong answer, Wolfwood thinks, with a flash of panic. His heart lurches.
Then the smile comes back. That dizzying, unbearable smile. “What am I going to do with you?” Vash repeats, low. Almost to himself.
Wolfwood tips his chin up to look at him better, leaning his head back into Vash’s grip on his hair.
“What do you want?” Vash asks.
Damn good question. Vash would hate most of the answers.
“Make me feel good,” Wolfwood grates out, his eyes stinging at the shame. “That’s the point, right?”
Vash, finally, doesn’t stop to ask any more questions. He wraps his hands — his big, broad hands — around Wolfwood’s waist and lifts him bodily onto the bed, almost tossing him.
Wolfwood lands with a startled huff, spreading his arms to catch himself. Vash’s strength always catches him off guard. He could probably lift the Punisher easier than Wolfwood can.
He has to bury that thought, before the spike of arousal it sends through his gut can completely distract him.
“Raise your hips,” Vash says. He’s close, suddenly — kneeling over Wolfwood, knees spread wide to straddle Wolfwood’s hips.
Helpless to do anything else, Wolfwood complies.
Vash pulls Wolfwood’s pants and boxers off, throwing them somewhere behind him. His hands come to rest on Wolfwood’s chest again, kneading at his tits until he shivers from head to toe under the attention.
It occurs to Wolfwood that this should probably bother him more than it does — to be naked, spread-eagled on his back, helpless, given orders as means to an end he doesn’t understand.
But there’s no cold, sterile table. No needles, no Conrad. Just Vash, warm and solid above him, Vash’s hands on his chest. Vash’s mouth on his, teeth catching Wolfwood’s bottom lip as they kiss.
Again, Wolfwood chases him when he pulls away, back arching as Vash’s fingers leave his chest. Irritation churns under his oversensitive skin, the impatience making his thighs twitch and his heart thud beneath his ribs.
“What?” he snaps, as Vash sits back, staring down at him consideringly. Vash’s eyes are keen and knowing as his gaze lands on Wolfwood’s cunt, lingering. The drugs didn’t give him much of a dick, but it’s enough that it stands out.
Wolfwood watches the question form on Vash’s face — where’d someone like you get that kind of treatment? Then he watches him dismiss it — or maybe just decide on the answer — a moment later.
Vash’s hands come to rest on him again, on Wolfwood’s sides this time, thumbing over the sharp points of his hipbones. “Do you know what you like?”
Catching his bottom lip between his teeth, Wolfwood rolls his head back against the pillow. “Y’ asked me that already, Tongari, just — try something, and I’ll tell you if I hate it?”
Looking up the way he is, he doesn’t get any warning, besides Vash’s weight shifting on the bed and the slightest puff of air against his thigh, before Vash’s face is pressed up against his cunt, licking across the folds and over his dick.
Wolfwood yelps in shock, thighs clamping down on Vash’s head, jolting halfway upright. Vash pauses, glancing up at him.
Well? his eyes seem to ask, given that his mouth is still occupied with Wolfwood’s clit.
Groaning quietly, Wolfwood drops his head back onto the pillow. His stomach is such a tight knot of arousal it’s verging on genuinely unpleasant, thighs quivering and skin itching to be touched. “Fuck,” he breathes, thudding his heel against Vash’s back and forcing his legs to fall open again.
And Vash still doesn’t fucking move. He has his mouth right on Wolfwood’s cunt, every breath sending a ticklish pulse through his folds. His tongue pokes out of his mouth, grazing Wolfwood’s clit. It’s a fight not to clamp his thighs back together even harder, no matter that Vash’s head is still right there.
“Didn’t say stop,” Wolfwood grits out. “Quit fucking… teasing me, bastard, I’m not going to break.”
That’s a lie. He is going to break, he can feel it — churning in the pit of his stomach, scratching at the inside of his skin. Vash is going to break him, even more than he already has.
(And worse, he’ll linger afterwards, and help Wolfwood gather up the pieces, as little as he deserves any of Vash’s kindness.)
He feels Vash smile, another ticklish brush of sensation, and then—
— then —
Vash runs warm, he always has, and the inside of his mouth is no exception, his tongue dizzyingly hot against Wolfwood’s cunt. Wolfwood can’t even pick out the individual sensations, just the wet heat and the spikes of pleasure every time Vash’s tongue hits his clit.
“Fuck,” Wolfwood spits, reaching up to grab at the bedframe. He bangs his knuckles against the metal and swears again before he manages to anchor himself, gripping so tightly he nearly loses feeling in his fingers. “Fuck, Tongari — ah —”
Vash does something with his tongue, and Wolfwood feels it all the way from his dick to his fucking teeth . He hears himself make a noise, harsh and pathetic, ripped out of the back of his throat. His back arches as he shudders through his orgasm, and Vash doesn’t stop, so the shaking doesn’t stop, and Wolfwood can’t breathe, can’t think. The metal bedframe creaks as he clutches it for purchase, his free hand scrabbling at the sheets. His face burns, a hot flush across his cheeks, a prickle in his sinuses.
By the time Vash lifts his head from between Wolfwood’s thighs, chin slick and eyes bright with satisfaction, Wolfwood’s just barely managed to start breathing again. He’s shaking all over, feeling every heartbeat in his cunt. The little death, they call it. Bullshit — he hasn’t felt this alive since… he doesn’t know how long.
“How was that?” Vash asks, like the cat that got the goddamn cream.
Wolfwood can feel the sting of tears in his eyes, and he desperately blinks them back. “Good,” he manages. “Really, uh, really good. Do you, do you want me to—?” he gestures vaguely.
Vash grins at him. “You just lie back, Wolfwood,” he murmurs, and his voice around Wolfwood’s name is almost as good as his mouth on Wolfwood’s dick. Almost. “Let me take care of you.”
“You want more of me?” Wolfwood asks, obligingly dropping his head back against the pillow. His sinuses haven’t stopped burning — he can feel the tears threatening at the corners of his eyes, which is stupid.
Even without looking, he can hear the smile in Vash’s voice. Gentle, earnest. “I want as much as you’ll give me,” he says, and oh God, Wolfwood’s really going to fucking cry. Vash’s fingers touch his cunt and he doesn’t flinch this time, just lets his legs fall open wider, as Vash strokes over his folds, thumbs at his clit. “I’ve been alive a long time. I’ve learned a lot of ways to make someone feel good.” One finger presses into Wolfwood’s cunt, and Wolfwood twitches, a moan shuddering out of him before he can stop it. “And I want to make you feel so good, Wolfwood.”
Wolfwood lets himself cry out the next time Vash’s thumb strokes over his dick, because otherwise he’s afraid the knot in the back of his throat will come out as a sob, and Vash will stop.
“You’re so sweet,” Vash says, and Wolfwood would die before he admits that the hot spike of arousal that starts in his gut and shivers through his whole body is much more to do with that than the second finger Vash pushes into his cunt.
Sweet. “Sweet?” Wolfwood rasps, lifting his head to look at Vash. “Never, nhh, heard that one before.” It’s a very Vash thing to say, in the sense that it ages him a little. It sounds like something someone’s grandmother would say, and it still manages to light Wolfwood’s every nerve on fire.
Vash is still smiling, that gentle, dangerous thing. He inclines his head at Wolfwood, pins him with the brightness of his gaze.
It sends a frisson of nervous pleasure down Wolfwood’s spine, just how competent Vash must be, to act like this — the easy confidence of long experience. There’s no hesitance in the way he moves his hands, fucking Wolfwood with two fingers, thumb working steadily at the base of his dick, his prosthetic hand resting on Wolfwood’s side, holding him steady, a spread of coolness in the dizzying heat.
“Sweet,” Vash repeats. “I could just eat you up.” His grin widens. “Like one of those little cakes, with the cream filling.”
Wolfwood lets his head fall back again, squeezing his eyes shut so Vash can’t see him — can’t see him wanting that, can’t see him remembering the way Vash’s teeth cut through the spongy give of whatever cake or pastry he’s gotten his hands on, the gush of filling as he pulls it away from his mouth, the stickiness at the corners of his lips.
Vash’s fingers press deeper. Wolfwood feels the pressure all the way through his hips, deep in his gut, up the length of his spine. He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. It’s just two fingers, two of Vash’s long, broad fingers pressing into him, reaching places inside him no one’s ever touched before. Muscles he’s never had reason to use flex as Wolfwood clenches around him, a shudder rolling through him when Vash’s fingers curl in response.
“Do you want another?” Vash asks. He traces the space between Wolfwood’s ribs with his prosthetic fingers, and Wolfwood quakes and shudders all over again, arching up into his touch. “Or should I make you cum again, first?” His fingers twist deeper, dragging a whimper from Wolfwood’s throat. “You’re so close.” There’s delight in his voice, something like awe. “So tight for me.”
Dizzy with arousal, struggling to breathe without making some other embarrassing noise, Wolfwood blinks at the ceiling. His lashes are wet, tears starting to run down the sides of his face, into his hair, and he doesn’t even know why — it’s too much but it isn’t enough, won’t ever be enough. Vash putting words to the coiling heat in his cunt, the tension in him as he clenches down, desperate with need, but he’s half-afraid he’ll shatter once he does.
Vash’s thumb flicks against Wolfwood’s clit, and Wolfwood jolts, hips jerking up, jaw falling slack as he moans raggedly. “That was a question for you, Wolfwood.”
Wolfwood’s chest heaves as he tries to take a full breath, quivering all over like he’s going to shake out of his skin. “Three,” he wheezes. “Please—” he wants to say Tongari, but even in his head it’s too many syllables, melting together in his chest and his head, like the fever when the vials burn through him. “ Please, ” he repeats, not trusting himself with Vash’s name. “More.”
“As you wish,” Vash purrs . Wolfwood shivers, trying to relax as Vash adds a third finger and presses deeper. The heel of his hand presses down just above Wolfwood’s cunt, a bolt of sensation shooting through every nerve in his thighs and his cunt, back arching against the sensation. He doesn’t even get a second to recover before Vash is grinding his palm against Wolfwood’s dick, and his vision turns shapeless and white.
Huh.
It kind of does feel like dying.
He hears himself breathing before anything else — sharp, wet gasps, like there’s something pressing down on his chest, but there’s nothing. The only pressure is in his cunt, radiating through his hips and at the small of his back. His face is wet, eyelashes sticky with salt.
“Look at me, sweet thing,” Vash says, somewhere above him.
Wolfwood drags his eyes open, and, God, it’s like staring up into the sun. Those eyes, that knowing smile, shining down on him, undeserving sinner that he is.
His face crumples entirely without his permission, eyes squeezing shut again as a sob cracks out of his chest. He can’t remember the last time he cried aloud — it’s a habit from back in the orphanage, to not let the younger kids know he was upset, because that would upset them, too. But something’s broken open in his chest, like Vash put his hands on his ribs and cracked him apart, and he doesn’t even resent him for it. It feels like being scrubbed clean.
Vash makes a soothing, sympathetic noise, the cool hand of his prosthetic nudging gently at Wolfwood’s cheek. Wolfwood cracks his eyes open. Vash is leaning over him, bent at an odd angle to keep his fingers in Wolfwood’s cunt. He drags two bottle-green fingers down Wolfwood’s cheek, then lifts them to his mouth, licking Wolfwood’s tears from his fingertips.
“So sweet,” he murmurs, with a hushed sort of awe that wrings another sob out of Wolfwood, clenching down on Vash’s fingers.
It feels like there’s electricity running under Wolfwood’s skin, from his fingers still wrapped around the bedframe to the hot pulse in his skull squeezing tears from his eyes, to the pit of his stomach and the aching static-buzz of his cunt, all the way through his trembling thighs, down to his curling toes.
Vash presses a kiss to Wolfwood’s cheek, right beneath his eye. “Had enough, Wolfwood?” he asks.
“No,” Wolfwood croaks. “C’mon, you can do better than that, Tongari.”
He almost regrets the snark, when Vash’s gentle smile widens dangerously. He leans in close again, kisses Wolfwood’s jaw, and juts out his tongue, licking upwards to the corner of his eye, following the track of the tears Wolfwood hasn’t managed to stop. “As you wish,” he repeats, and does that thing with his hand again, pressing down with his palm and in with his fingers, grinding against his clit with merciless intensity.
Wolfwood’s not sure if he cums again, but it feels like he does, his whole body tensing up and quivering, that staticky feeling in his cunt spreading through his thighs and up the length of his back. His jaw falls slack as his cunt clenches down on Vash’s fingers, desperately, before the muscles twinge with overexertion, forcing him to raise his hips and relax. He might be drooling, or it might just be the tears running into his mouth.
Vash pulls his fingers out, and Wolfwood can’t help but whine at the loss, pressing his thighs together. He’d flush at how wet he is, if his face weren’t already burning.
He rolls over on his side, pushing his face into the pillow. It’s cool against his overheated skin, wicking away the sweat on his forehead and the tears that just won’t stop.
“What’d you do to me?” Wolfwood asks, pushing himself up on one elbow and sniffing hard. “Fuckin’ broke me.”
Vash pushes him over onto his back again, dropping down on the bed beside him. He looks bigger, this close, out of the concealing drape of his coat, and he shifts and settles with an easy grace Wolfwood would never expect from him, seeing the way he usually moves. His eyes are gentle, the teasing gone from his smile.
Wolfwood braces himself. He half-closes his eyes, carefully doesn’t flinch as Vash’s prosthetic touches his cheek again, tracing through the tears pooled under his eyes. He leans his head into the touch, chasing the pleasant chill.
“Sweet thing,” Vash murmurs, trailing his fingertips down to Wolfwood’s lips, pressing down gently. Wolfwood can taste the salt of his own tears — he’s not sweet at all, no matter what Vash says.
God, it hurts. It hurts to be near him. To have his body, warm and humming with energy, laid so close, with only his prosthetic touching Wolfwood’s skin. His cunt aches, even still, even when he should by all rights be fucked out.
He is fucked out, but he still wants more. Arousal is fizzing through his veins like the Eye’s drugs, lighting up under his skin, setting his heart thrumming. He reaches out blindly, unable to tear his half-lidded, half-blurred eyes away from Vash’s sunshine face, finding Vash’s wrist and pulling it back to his cunt, hips jumping toward the contact.
He watches Vash’s soft, pretty lips part, and hears the mockery before it comes — desperate, aren’t you?
Yes, yes he is desperate — needy, pathetic, ruined for anything but this. He never wants to take up the Punisher again. He doesn’t want to go to July. He just wants to stay in bed with Vash until he dies.
(He imagines, vividly, Vash drawing that gun from the holster he’s still wearing and shooting Wolfwood in the head. He can’t think of a better way to die.)
“Oh, Wolfwood… when was the last time anyone took care of you?” Vash asks. His voice is low, somber and aching, the way he talks about the dead he couldn’t save.
What?
“What?” Wolfwood croaks. That’s a question Vash must already know the answer to. Not in years, and never like this. “I don’t—” there’s an ache blooming up in his chest, like a vice around his heart. His face is trying to crumple again. “Tongari — please, just…”
Vash takes pity. He stops peeling Wolfwood open with his smile and ducks between his thighs again.
Wolfwood can barely even feel Vash’s tongue against his cunt. Just the pressure, and hot sparks of something brighter than pain or pleasure, shooting through the numb static of overwhelm. He clenches down on nothing, heels drumming against the bed, not sure whether he wants to escape the sensation or if he never wants it to stop.
God, all he wants is to die like this.
Distantly, he can hear himself sobbing, begging please, please, hoping Vash won’t ask him what he wants because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t fucking know.
Wolfwood wants to live, if this is life. He wants to die if this is as good as it ever gets. He feels like an addict at the peak of that first high, feels like he’s just downed a vial, red blood cells multiplying in his veins, he feels like he’s already dead. He feels ruined.
He is ruined. Ruined for sex, ruined for death, ruined for anything but this. Ruined for love, ruined for the betrayal he’s already committed to, ruined for Vash. He’ll never be able to look at that mouth or those fingers again, without remembering how they felt against his cunt, against his tits.
It’s not so much bringing a lamb to the slaughter as he is — a lamb walking with a lion behind him, into the teeth of a serpent in an angel’s clothes—
Vash’s mouth eases away from his cunt and his fingers replace it, not even touching his clit, just dragging over his folds, pressing in to the second knuckle and curling until Wolfwood’s back arches and his toes curl and there’s nothing but ragged whimpers coming from his mouth.
His mouth stays close — lingering over Wolfwood’s thigh, kissing and licking and rolling the skin between his teeth, biting down just barely hard enough that a normal person would bruise. Wolfwood won’t, but it’s the thought that counts —
Vash’s teeth sink into Wolfwood’s thigh, and Wolfwood can feel the points of his canines, the sharp prick-ache as he draws blood, and the pain, the longing — devour me, consume me, I want to be sweet for you, I want to sustain you — shuts his brain down like—
Like dying.
When Wolfwood can think again, Vash is still with him. His body is warm beside Wolfwood’s, his fingers dragging slowly through Wolfwood’s sweat-damp hair. His mouth is very close to Wolfwood’s face, nuzzled up against his cheek, pressing slow, earnest kisses against his skin, right over the sticky tracks of his tears.
“Slow,” he murmurs, when Wolfwood starts to sit up.“There’s water on the nightstand.”
Wolfwood grumbles in the back of his throat. “It’s not like you shot me,” he mutters. He thinks about Vash shooting him, maybe carving him open with the Punisher’s laser to get to his insides, and a near-painful pang of arousal shoots through him, his stomach cramping tight.
Vash makes a noise, low, deep in his chest. His fingers brush over Wolfwood’s jaw, tracing down the line of his throat as Wolfwood tips back the glass and drinks.
When his mouth doesn’t feel like he’s swallowed sand anymore, Wolfwood puts the glass down and turns back to Vash, opening his mouth to say… something. Thank you, maybe, or sorry, or some confession of everything that Vash probably already knows.
Vash isn’t wearing his prosthetic, Wolfwood realizes, and he’s changed his clothes. There’s damp along his hairline, like he’s washed his face. His gun, still in its holster, rests on the other bedside table, behind Vash’s shoulder.
Wolfwood realizes, suddenly, that he doesn’t know how long it’s been.
Sudden chills disrupt the warm buzz running across his skin. It’s an old, familiar fear, from his days at the Eye — how long has it been, what did they do, what happened to me.
“Did I—” Wolfwood reaches for the glass again, tips the last few drops down his throat with unsteady hands, just for something to do. He doesn’t know where his cigarettes are — his jacket is somewhere on the floor. “Did I pass out?”
“Your eyes were open,” Vash says, which isn’t helpful.
Wolfwood scrubs a hand down his face, smearing the leftover tears on his lashes and at the corners of his eyes down his cheeks. Before he can rub the rest of the dampness away, Vash catches his wrist and pulls it away, settling his own thumb on Wolfwood’s cheek instead. The warmth of his touch feels like it reaches every nerve in Wolfwood’s body, so deep his whole body thrums with it, like an instrument finally tuned.
Vash’s smile, at the worst of times a shoddy mask and at the best of times a miracle, right now settles in warm reassurance. “I was hoping I could get you out of that head of yours, Wolfwood,” he says, bright as sunshine.
All Wolfwood can do is lean in and kiss him. He thinks he might cry again, otherwise, and he aches too much already. “Thanks,” he mumbles into Vash’s mouth.
“You’re so sweet, ” Vash insists, like Wolfwood can believe it or bear it any better now. “Thank you for letting me treat you right.”
Wolfwood stares at him. Up close, he can see the way the bedside light illuminates the Plant markings in Vash’s eyes.
I hope I get to die for you, Wolfwood thinks, kissing him again, winding desperate arms around Vash and pulling him down on top of himself. I want to. Just to put this right. Leave you with something to hate. You’d forgive me for the rest of it, but maybe not for that.
Vash’s fingers curl around the back of Wolfwood’s neck, pulling him deeper into the kiss.
Wolfwood lets himself imagine, for a moment, that he’s worthy.