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Vash realizes, in retrospect, that he really should have seen it coming.
He had been on the road alone with Wolfwood for weeks by the time everything spiraled. Spent days glued to his side and nights surrounded by his scent in shared motel rooms. Sharing blankets under the desert stars and rickety twin beds. Pressed back-to-back in shoot outs. Bumping shoulders over whatever shared meals they could scrounge up between them. They shared air and casual touch and thoughts.
And Vash may have been shy when it came to his own vulnerability, a martyr when it came to his own needs, but god did he want.
His want for Wolfwood took the desperate shape of admiration. Fixation. Near obsession. He watched Wolfwood handle the Punisher like the dense metal weighed nothing. Hand off provisions and trinkets to children, making them laugh for the first time in days. Wolfwood handled the downtrodden of the Badlands with a gentle hand and thinly masked kindness, as if his heart wasn’t made of rare golden ore: and it all set Vash to near madness.
Vash adored Nicholas D. Wolfwood and his inability to keep his mouth shut. The way he slid Vash a shot on the nights they found a saloon to haunt. How he looked at Vash and saw him. How he saw who Vash was, what Vash was, and didn’t even flinch.
Vash spent seconds upon hours watching Wolfwood’s broad palms and nimble fingers maintain his bike with careful precision. Light a cigarette with a flick of his wrist. Uncork a stubborn spirit and pass it just clumsily enough to brush Vash’s hand over the bar top.
He marveled over the crooked angle of Wolfwood’s grin when they met eyes across a rowdy room. The flush of his dark complexion after a fight, chest heaving. He was battle-savvy and charming and a disaster all his own.
Vash wanted, and he had for a pathetically long while.
So he supposed it followed that the Plant blood running hot through his veins – not quite human, not quite creature – would fall victim to his desperate pining.
It started with a fever.
“You sure you’re alright, spikey?” Wolfwood leaned too close, blocking the sun from Vash’s view—all the better, as his vision was starting to go hazy with the heat.
They were outside a humble supply store for a quick food run. They’d been low for days, picking at scraps, Vash waving off the last of the Thomas jerky as Wolfwood glared and complained that Vash never took care of himself. The town was small and scarce, not even properly marked on the barren desert of a map, so when they spotted the supply store they knew they couldn’t look a gift Thomas in the mouth.
But now Wolfwood was being irritating.
Wolfwood tried to peer into Vash’s eyes, looking dubious as Vash shook his head.
“I’m fine,” Vash sniped. He pushed his glasses further up his nose and strode into the supply store, nudging Wolfwood aside. The other man made a disbelieving noise as he ambled in behind him. Vash tried to appear like he wasn’t counting his steps like a drunk.
Why did his head feel so fuzzy? Like it was stuffed full of cotton, too dense to think through. Were the last few nights of sleeping in the desert finally catching up with him?
His companion knew (rarely) when to leave well enough alone and had gone to busy himself perusing the nonperishables. Vash caught his own reflection in the smudged front windows: he was pink from cheeks to ears, eyes glassy even behind his orange lenses.
So, he looked a little rough. He had looked far worse many times before. And it’s not like it was impossible for him to get sick, just really really really rare. Vash couldn’t remember the last time the heat had gotten to him but just because he ran colder than the average and never even burned didn’t mean he couldn’t fall ill. Hours under the blazing suns with little-to-no food or water would make any organic being ill eventually.
For a moment Vash stood, swaying on his feet in the isle between canned corn and dried jerky. He stared dazedly at his own reflection and tried to count the moments between one wave of heat and another. He felt the trail of sweat down his spine drip towards his tailbone.
Wolfwood came to find him with provisions in hand, humming a little tune to himself.
“Ready to head out?”
“Uh,” Vash started, voice raspier than he remembered, before clearing his throat and starting again. “Yeah, yeah we can go.”
Wolfwood stared at Vash a moment too long. Vash frowned, felt his fuse shorten uncharacteristically as his temperature seemed to spike in a cresting wave and raise goosebumps down his arms.
“What?” he snapped. Wolfwood didn’t look put-off.
“Let’s get a place for the night,” the priest suggested.
Vash wanted to argue—they had so much ground to cover between here and the next city, and he didn’t need to be coddled like some little trinket made of glass—but Wolfwood looked at him so sweetly, all genuine concern and big dark eyes. So Vash shrugged like it didn’t matter to him either way, like he didn’t feel himself melting under his coat, and forced a smile.
“I could rest.”
“And you should,” Wolfwood told him as they set off. Vash groaned—he could do without the lecture when he felt near ready to hit the sand face first. “You look like you’re going to pass out. I bet you’re sick.”
“I don’t get sick,” Vash grumbled. Even to him it sounded petulant.
Wolfwood rolled his eyes and called him something under his breath in that pretty rolling language Vash could never decipher.
They found an inn further in town, a little rougher than their last one down in Warrens. Its sign was crooked and faded with age. The old wood was sun-bleached and looked as worn as Vash was starting to feel.
When the woman asked if they wanted one bed or two, Wolfwood dug through his pockets for a moment before cringing. “Make that one,” he told her sweetly before turning to Vash. “If you get me sick, needle-noggin’, I’ll kill you myself.”
Vash considered kicking his leg out from under him but didn’t want to make a scene. “I’m not sick,” he stuck his tongue out.
The old woman looked between them severely as she slid them their room keys. “I don’t want any trouble,” she pointed.
Both men snapped to attention, nodding. “Yes ma’am.”
The room was dusty and humid, but for the price Vash couldn’t complain—or maybe it was just Vash feeling humid and like he needed to peel his skin off. He wasn’t too sure at that point. The heat had settled under his coat and leathers like a second skin. He felt disgusting and sticky and damp from head to boots.
Wolfwood shed his jacket before plopping down in the only chair to begin rolling up his cuffs. Vash was careful not to stare, taking his time to undo the buttons of his trench coat to keep himself busy and his eyes averted.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood was pretty in a way that Vash often found distracting. Strong forearms and soft dark hair. A lewd silhouette Vash was sure he could shamefully identify from iles away. He had only been caught staring once or twice. The priest played oblivious for Vash’s ego’s sake, he was sure—but it was no less mortifying to realize he had been lost in a daydream of Wolfwood’s broad shoulders and too-tight shirts.
Wolfwood was completely focused on shaking the sand from his own clothing as Vash fetched a fresh set of clothes from his bag. He was desperate to escape and decompress.
“Dibs on the bathroom!”
Vash rushed to the connecting bath and slammed the door before the priest could even stand. He was sure he heard the other man call him a bastard or something of the sort through the old wood, but Vash felt like he was crumbling, and fast. He needed away – and he certainly didn’t want to embarrass himself further.
It took a despairing amount of time to peel his leather clothing from his sweat-damp skin. An ache had begun to settle behind his eyes, the cotton-stuffed feeling moving to encompass his skull and throat, the heat choking him.
He avoided his reflection as he cupped lukewarm water from the sink basin in his hands and splashed his face. Even against his flesh hand the skin of his cheeks felt almost blistering.
A bath. He just needed a bath and a nap and maybe steal some of that jerky Wolfwood bought and he’d be fine. He was just exhausted.
Vash drew a bath, the water disappointingly as lukewarm as the tap, and scrubbed the desert grit from his skin with an old cloth and rinsed his hair the best he could. After draining the tub and wiping out the dirt left behind, he sat on its edge and took a towel to his prosthetic to remove the sand caught in the intricacies of Brad’s design – a beauty and a marvel, but a pain some days.
Eventually Wolfwood lost his patience – not that he had much, anyway – and began knocking on the door. “Come on, spikey, I feel disgusting! Hurry up,” he groaned.
Vash, feeling a bit guilty, hurried to clean up his mess of towels and dripping bath water. “Well, now you match how you look, so that’s great news!”
“You’re the worst traveling partner,” Wolfwood called back. Vash could imagine him on the other side of the door, arms crossed, pouting. Or maybe grinning at Vash’s cheek. The blond didn’t know which he preferred: the priests’ stern tone when he gave Vash a talking to, or his natural charm meeting Vash’s banter halfway.
Both left Vash feeling a little stupid.
Vash stumbled into his fresh clothes, thin cottons for sleep, and made for the door. When he inched it open to peek out he found Wolfwood leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his broad chest, expression lightly amused.
Staring at Wolfwood’s raised brow and the soft quirk of his grin, Vash felt the sharp stab of arousal lightning down his core—still so foreign after so many years alone. He swore Wolfwood gave him a quick once over.
He’s a bastard and he knows it.
“Please,” Vash scoffed, “No one else could stand you long enough to travel with you.”
The priest rolled his eyes and pulled the door open wide enough to step inside. The movement sent Vash stumbling, unprepared—first almost into Wolfwood’s chest and then to the floor. He caught himself with a hand to the wall and glared over his shoulder as his partner laughed.
“Go rest,” he told the blond, shutting the door.
Vash had been planning to take a heavy nap for whatever was plaguing him but being told to do so made him want to ignore the order. Just to make Wolfwood mad. Make him look at Vash.
But a feverish rush from head to the tips of his flesh limbs told him that veering from his plans wasn’t the best choice: he nearly collapsed before he even reached the edge of the mattress, sharp waves of heat across his skin all at once as he fumbled to sit on the edge. The heat came in spikes, sharp and sudden, before disappearing and leaving him reeling.
A bath, a nap, and dinner. That was all he needed.
Mildly miserable, Vash shuffled under the thin covers. As an afterthought he detached his prosthetic from its port and set it on the floor. The weight removed was a relief and he curled up on his side, listening to the bathroom faucet run behind the door.
Wolfwood was humming something to himself just loud enough for Vash to catch—the tune he had been humming in the shop. It was soft, happy and lilting. Vash got lost trying to follow the dance of notes.
Suddenly he was waking again. He had no idea when he had drifted off or how much time had passed. The suns were setting outside. The room was pleasantly dim in the twilight.
Vash was sore all over with fresh aches and sticky with sweat. It felt like the fever had sunk its roots by two-fold. The cresting agony in his abdomen was nearly unbearable.
He didn’t realize he had groaned in pain until Wolfwood appeared in his line of sight. He kneeled at his bedside and looked terribly worried as he pressed the back of one hand to Vash’s forehead. The contact felt like heaven, a balm to his body rioting against him, and he groaned again at the sensation.
Wolfwood seemed to misunderstand. He quickly pulled back, giving Vash a wide berth, and the blond wanted to whine and throw a fit at the distance. The priest mumbled an apology and rocked back on his heels, “I think your fever is worse. We might have to stay here a few days till you’re better.”
“I—”
“If you say you’re not sick I’m gonna throw you out that window.”
“I need water. Do you have the canteen, oh kindly priest?” Vash croaked.
Wolfwood fetched it for him as Vash pushed himself upright. It was a pathetic struggle—he felt weak and exhausted in a bone-deep way he hadn’t felt in decades. Not since his first bumbling steps in a lab in the sky.
If Wolfwood noticed, he didn’t comment on it, and Vash was deeply grateful to be spared the embarrassment this once.
Vash drank almost the entire canteen before forcing himself away. He felt guilty immediately and tried to hand it back in a panic—he was sure Wolfwood was thirsty too, and necessities were harder to come by in areas like this without a Plant for iles. But Wolfwood placed his hand over Vash’s and pushed the canteen back towards him. His expression was serious, almost forlorn.
“Finish it, you need it. I can go find more. I’m sure the little lady downstairs can point me in a direction.”
Vash wanted to argue—his threshold for heat and dehydration was much higher than humans—but his entire body ached and his throat burned and the misery of it all begged him to quench it.
He finished their supply and handed it off. Something was gnawing away inside him, unsatisfied.
Wolfwood set the canteen aside without even looking at it. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a truck,” Vash admitted.
Wolfwood gave him a quirk of a smile. “Well, now you match how you look.”
Vash simply pouted and tried to ignore the way his body reacted to the priests’ teasing—as if it was reaching for him, begging. He worried that he would never feel satisfied as long as he was traveling with one Nicholas D. Wolfwood.
A quick body check-in told Vash that he wasn’t going anywhere or doing much of anything for the time being: his skull felt like it could split in two and even the thought of food made him feel ill. Sleeping was his only option.
“Stop thinking so hard,” Wolfwood flicked him on the nose. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
Vash ‘harumphed’ and twisted away, curling up on his other side away from the priest and burying his face into the pillow.
Wolfwood laughed quietly somewhere behind him and the noise made him feel hot all over again in another unbearable wave. He wanted to feel that sound against him. He wanted he wanted he wanted.
He was out within minutes, and his dreams were odd. Nonsensical and disconnected like human dreams, vague images across his vision: a sky full of suns and the rumbling of a Worm beneath his feet. He was notably alone, always looking for Wolfwood. Calling his name across dunes and stars.
The second time, Vash woke by degrees: he became conscious of the aches that dug into him with renewed vengeance, the sharp heat crawling up his spine, the tissue-deep ache low in his body behind his hips. He felt wrung out and soaked through, like moving would pull him apart. He would shred into useless little pieces and wither.
He gasped, trying to force air into his lungs, but his chest ached as it expanded—suddenly a hand was on his shoulder, dragging him to face where Wolfwood had taken the other half of the bed in the dark.
“Hey,” the dark-haired man patted at his arms and hand for his attention, “Hey, you’re alright.”
It should have been a comfort: to see Wolfwood, to feel him and hear him. But it was as if his insides had knotted themselves together and he sobbed, ramming his forehead into Wolfwood’s bare shoulder. He sunk his flesh fingers into Wolfwood’s rib cage.
He wanted he wanted he wanted.
“Hurts,” he gasped. “Why does it hurt?”
The priest took Vash’s hand from where it dug into his side and gripped it tight, like he was trying to steady him. Hold him together. It made Vash shiver.
“Have you ever been sick like this before?”
“I don’t think so,” Vash groaned.
Wolfwood rolled towards him then, touching his sweat-damp hair and cheek and the scars across his shoulders as if he could feel out his ailment by hand alone. It made Vash’s body light up like a star, like the fission of energy from a Plant, forcing him to curl in on himself—and then it struck him.
He had been sick like this, only once before.
Almost seventy years ago, when he was much younger and much less scarred, and had been deeply in love with a fellow traveler that accompanied him from one end of the dusty planet to the other. A connection so deep it triggered something in Vash’s DNA that set him alight and made him a wanting, panting thing. A wonton creature that was only satiated by his lovers’ touch till the ailment subsided days later.
He never saw them again after that and he never had another sickness since.
There had been no research or record of such a thing occurring in Plants, and as independents Vash knew that he and Knives were something wholly different, not beholden to the limitations of Plant or human genetics. Who knew what secrets lay inside their DNA? Any data that their crew, that Rem, had gathered during their journey had been lost the day of the crash.
“No,” Vash mumbled, could feel the delirium taking over as he crowded against Wolfwood’s side and leeched his heat, his racing heartbeat, his scent of gun oil and fresh ground tabaco. “No no no.”
Wolfwood reached for him and braced him against his side. The feeling was both incredible and despairing. He was perfect and overbearing and none of it was enough, Vash wedging a leg between Wolfwood’s own. The priest allowed it easily.
“What’s wrong? Hey, spikey?”
Vash pressed his forehead into the priest’s neck and shook. How could he have forgotten? How could he not have seen it? How many times has he looked at Nicholas D. Wolfwood and known: this man will destroy me?
“It’s just me,” he panted instead.
“What does that mean?”
“Not now, Wolfwood,” he gritted out, could feel his temper simmer under his aches, shortened with his fever.
“Just tell me what the hell you need,” he shot back and god didn’t that strike the flint of something primal in him.
“Can’t.”
Wolfwood pulled Vash back far enough to look into his face. Whatever he saw there made him frown but Vash couldn’t focus on his concern: his brain was stuffed full, his body desperately empty. His heart felt like it might beat out of his chest if Wolfwood didn’t restrain it.
Vash tucked himself deeper into the mattress, trying to avoid Wolfwood’s eyes. He always saw so damn much of him.
“Whatever you need, spikey, I’ll help.” He shifted, curling over Vash’s body—like he was shielding him, protecting him.
Vash nearly wept into the mattress just to hear him speak. “You,” he whispered.
“Me?”
“You.”
“I’m right here,” the priest consoled.
Another wave of heat down the knobs of his spine, another sharp ache in the knot of tissue that had become his womb. Sheer misery, and one he had not missed.
“Not like that,” he gritted out.
A pause. “Come here.”
Wolfwood reached for him again then, his large hands wrapping so easily around Vash’s arms and hauling him to lay sprawled across his lap. They laid chest to chest, legs entangled, with Vash panting into his neck. The full-body contact caught Vash off guard and he caught himself grinding against Wolfwood’s hip. The pressure between them nearly made him salivate.
The dark-haired man pet his hands through Vash’s hair again, cradling the back of his skull. Vash did begin to weep then, he thought—silently, shaking, against Wolfwood’s neck as the pain spiked again and again like the high walls of violent ocean waves he had once read about.
A tsunami: a displacement, a surge, utter destruction.
“Vash,” The priest sighed. “Vash.”
When Vash did not, could not, answer, Wolfwood took Vash’s hand and pressed his fingers to the waistband of his sleep pants: a question in itself.
“Me? You need me?” he asked. He sounded unsure, hesitant. If Vash hadn’t already been so deeply entrenched in his delirium he might have felt shame to nod so excitedly or maybe even teased the younger man for being so presumptuous, but his mouth did water at the thought then and Vash would like to think himself pragmatic when necessary.
Wolfwood knocked his hand aside to draw his own sleep pants down his legs, baring himself—and Vash, fuck, he throbbed in his core to see him without barriers, resting against his thigh.
Vash only realized he had made a noise when he recognized Wolfwood’s obnoxious, snorting laugh smothered into Vash’s hair.
“You’re awful,” Vash whined. The laughter ceased when he drew his fingers against the soft skin of Wolfwood’s lower abdomen. Vash was a little entranced by his companion’s dark complexion, the even darker hair that led from a fine trail to thick curls, the way his cock jumped ever so slightly—and then Wolfwood caught his wandering hand.
“You’re worse,” the younger man grunted.
Vash mumbled, probably something nonsensical at that point, and channeled all his focus into tucking his nose under Wolfwood’s ear to take a deep breath of that strong scent that always clung to his suit and skin: gun oil, ground tobacco, the musk of desert and sweat and man.
“Are you smelling me?”
“You smell nice,” Vash pouted. “You always smell nice,” he confessed.
Wolfwood ran one hand up and down Vash’s spine, the blond arching his back to press into the feeling—like electricity jumping from nerve to nerve.
“Aren’t you a smooth talker tonight,” Wolfwood chuckled.
Vash groaned into the other man’s neck, throwing one leg over his hip to straddle him, and the shift made him realize that he was already a mess—just Wolfwood’s proximity already had him dripping down his thighs and soaking through his sleepwear.
Shit, how was he already was so wet? Distantly, Vash knew he would never live this down in some way or another.
“Don’t wanna talk,” Vash mumbled—rather, he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Wolfwood’s neck, tasting the heat and salt of him, groaning. Wolfwood sighed sharply through his nose. It almost sounded pained.
“Hey,” the priest tried. His voice was rough, and so was the hand in his hair when Vash didn’t follow his voice—fisting in his blond hair to wrench him back to eye level, dragging an embarrassingly wanton moan out of him. It was like fire from sternum to womb, a tissue-deep ache begging for Wolfwood, for whatever the other man would give. Whatever he would take from Vash.
“Hey,” Wolfwood tried again, staring into Vash’s eyes. He wondered what Wolfwood saw: his glassy eyes, fever-red face. A desperate thing that was no small step short of begging his friend to pin him down in the motel bed they shared and fuck him till he couldn’t speak?
Whatever Wolfwood saw then, it made him soften as he gazed at Vash’s face.
“You poor thing,” he cooed. He shifted to use the hand not gripping Vash’s hair to cup his face. “Just tell me what you want me to do for you.”
A thousand and one answers flitted through his heat-melted brain. He needed the touch, the connection, the gaps between them reduced to no more than the empty space between their atoms. He would take anything, everything. He wanted he wanted he wanted.
“Kiss me,” Vash begged then. Pressed his flesh hand flat to Wolfwood’s chest and felt his heart hammering there, jackrabbit fast. When Wolfwood simply stared, eyes wide and unreadable in the gloom, he tacked on, “Please.
Wolfwood jumped back to attention, and Vash felt Wolfwood’s cock follow suit against the heat of his leg even through the cotton of his pants.
“Of course, darlin’,” he simpered, playful as he pushed Vash’s hair back away from his face. “Whatever you need.”
“If you mess with me right now I’ll kill you,” Vash promised. He was near tears but even in the throes of fire in his bones he wouldn’t admit it aloud.
“I don’t think you’re in much of a state to do any such thing, spikey,” he told Vash, hands wandering up his still-clothed hips and dipping beneath the thin shirt.
“Wolfwood,” he started, the single word a snarl—and quickly stopped as he felt the prickling behind his eyes overflow with the crest of sharp aches in his lower abdomen. He whined at the sensation, grinding down on Wolfwood’s bare skin. The tears trailing down his cheeks felt cool against his fever.
“Oh,” Wolfwood sighed. Drew him closer. Vash sobbed, he wanted he wanted—
The priest pressed their mouths together. The touch was a gentle temper to Vash’s panting and whining. Wolfwood tried to guide him to slow down and Vash tried to follow, to savor Wolfwood’s taste of tobacco against his tongue—but he couldn’t stop himself from pushing forward, further, drinking down the little noise of surprise Wolfwood made as their tongues touched and Vash traced his teeth and the kiss turned biting and wet.
“Easy,” Wolfwood panted, hands gripping Vash’s jaw and hair. The blond whined against the restraint of it. He needed it, he needed more, please–
He hadn’t realized he had been exposing his thoughts so plainly until Wolfwood wrenched him back, grip nearly punishing. “Slow down. You’re sick, needle-noggin’,” he told him, low and firm.
The tone was enough to make Vash drip.
“It’s not like that,” the blond argued. His skin felt so hot, like he might melt right through Wolfwood’s hands.
“What is it like, then?”
Wolfwood drifted one hand down to where Vash had soaked through his night clothes. He probably thought himself so sly, the callouses of his fingertips catching on the wet fabric, distracting Vash as he tried to string together his thoughts through the haze.
“I think—I’m not sure, ach,” Vash stuttered out, rutting his hips down where Wolfwood continued teasing him. His touches were light, barely there. Simply pressing the cooling fabric against the petals of Vash’s core. He pulled back his hand as Vash rocked down, avoiding giving him any fucking pressure where he wanted it most. It made Vash feel like he could peel his skin from his body.
“Please, it’s so hot,” he hung his head, averting his eyes. Wolfwood must think I’m pathetic. Somehow the thought only made him run hotter.
Wolfwood hummed and continued downward, drawing shapes along the inside of Vash’s thighs. Straying further from where Vash needed him most. “I think you should use your words.”
Vash pressed his hand to the sheets by Wolfwood’s head and lifted himself just enough to hover above the priest. His arm shook, fingers clenching in the cheap fabric, but did his best to meet Wolfwood’s eyes. He looked a little dazed as he watched Vash pant just inches from his face.
“I think you’re a bastard—but a bastard that I’m drawn to, that I care about, and my body wants you so badly that I’m in heat like a fucking animal.” Vash shifted his hips, spreading his legs to press the centre of his overheated body against Wolfwood’s bare lap. “So either fill me up and make it stop, or leave so I can be miserable in peace,” he sobbed.
The priest immediately reached for him, cradling his head like something precious. “I’ve got you,” he soothed. “I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you.”
He shifted up the bed to sit against the wall and drag Vash’s shorts down his sweat-sticky legs as he went. Wolfwood flicked his wrist and they disappeared among the rucked sheets. The sweat-soaked shirt he peeled from Vash’s upper half was tossed into the night-dark room just as quickly.
He pulled Vash further into his lap, settling him right over his cock where it curved, already hard between them even with their frustratingly minimal touch. Wolfwood reached forward like he was thinking of going to the effort of preparing Vash properly like a lover. Like a gentleman.
But Vash didn’t need that: he needed to be filled till he could feel it in his throat, he needed something to drown out the rushing in his ears and how he could feel his pulse in every cell of his body.
So he took Wolfwood’s cock in hand, ignoring the way the younger man choked above him, and dropped his weight to take him in one agonizing go.
It punched the air from his lungs. He could feel the press of it against every wall and ridge inside him, shaping him around Wolfwood’s body like he was made for it.
He curled in on himself, over Wolfwood, savoring the heat of Wolfwood sitting so deeply inside him. He had to press his hand to the small curve of his lower abdomen in wonder that it wasn’t visible.
Wolfwood groaned like he had been injured and knocked his head back against the wall.
“Fuck, slow down, spikey,” he gripped Vash’s hips and sunk his fingers into him as if that would quell the violent heat driving Vash forward—but all Vash could focus on was how complete he felt just then in the priests’ arms. As if he had spent a hundred and seventy years trudging through time just for this moment.
“Perfect,” Vash moaned and wrapped his arm around Wolfwood’s shoulders, burrowing into his neck—the scent of his smoke and aftershave and stubble. “You’re perfect.”
Wolfwood squeezed the thin curve of Vash’s hip. “Well, you’re good for a man’s ego, I’ll tell you that,” he sounded terribly strained. He shifted his hips then, just a miniscule tick of a motion, but it pressed Wolfwood more tightly against Vash’s inner walls, fit his hips more perfectly to Vash—it knocked a shiver of a moan out the blond, high and shaky.
“Poor baby,” the priest cooed, almost mocking. He pet through Vash’s sweat-damp hair. “You’re in a hell of a state.”
Vash could hear him speaking, knew they were words he should understand, but his world narrowed down to the salty skin of Wolfwood’s neck against his mouth, the heat of him on Vash’s tongue, the pulse rabbiting against the strong line of a tendon. Vash burrowed his teeth in, perhaps a little too hard too fast, trying to drink in the sensation of finally being held. Being full.
The fingers in his hair tightened. Another point on the endless, miserable void of his body where his nerves were set alight.
“Thought you wanted me to take care of you?” Wolfwood reminded him. “Or do you just want to warm my cock all night? I can’t complain too much either way.”
Vash hummed against the skin of Wolfwood’s neck where the pink of a new mark now sat. “And yet here you are, complaining.” He was too content to properly snipe back. Even he could hear how dreamy he sounded.
In that split second after, Vash was reminded of Nicholas D. Wolfwood’s strength—the crack of his open palm against Vash’s ass, shifting him against Wolfwood’s hips and rocking him ever so slightly on the length inside him.
The sound Vash made was pathetic, even to Vash’s own ears.
“And here you are, still running your mouth,” Wolfwood told him, soft as anything. He pressed his lips to Vash’s chin and Vash could feel his grin. “Don’t worry. I said I’d take care of you. Even if you’re an absolute brat.”
Wolfwood settled one broad, hot hand back against Vash’s hip, digging his fingers into Vash’s overheated skin and dragging him forward, rolling Vash’s hips forward and fucking Vash on his cock by pure force alone. Vash sighed, high and whining, as Wolfwood pushed him in an easy motion, again and again in a steady rhythm, lifting just enough to bounce Vash in his lap.
“Oh,” Vash sighed. He began to meet Wolfwood halfway, lifting himself so that the priests’ strong jaw twitched just so when their hips met. He let Wolfwood continue to move him as he liked. He thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of being used, moved like a doll as the other man wanted, at his mercy.
“There we go,” Wolfwood cooed as Vash let his head lull back. “There you go, sweetheart.”
Vash choked. Swore he could taste Wolfwood on the back of his throat. “Call me that again,” he pleaded.
“Sweetheart,” Wolfwood panted. Ran one hand up Vash’s chest to rest lightly against his neck. Vash fumbled to grab his forearm, keep his hand against his pulse.
Their rocking kept Wolfwood’s cock pressed snuggly against the spot inside Vash that made his knees tremble and his spine curl, and Vash heard himself whimper as he chased the feeling.
“What’s gotten into you?” Wolfwood asked, voice trembling as Vash rode him a little harder.
“You,” Vash tells him, all cheek, grinning down at Wolfwood.
“Brat,” the other offered back, before wrapping both arms around Vash’s overheated body and throwing him to the side.
On his back, Vash stared dazedly at the ceiling as Wolfwood situated himself between Vash’s legs. With all the space between their bodies Vash felt like he would implode, or wither, or something. He whined and whimpered and pouted as Wolfwood felt up the lean line of Vash’s legs, tracing the delicate bones of his knees and ankles.
“You need to learn some patience.”
“You need to fuck me like you mean it,” Vash snapped. He felt like he was spiraling. Crumbling. Burning alive.
Wolfwood nudged Vash’s legs wider and leaned back on his knees to stare. Vash felt his calloused fingers trace feather-light over the unfurled petals of his body that surrounded the place where he ran hottest and dripped onto the bed beneath him. At the priests’ careful touch Vash pressed his head back into the pillow and groaned. He felt him trace the tight bundle of nerves just above his entrance, smear the clear slick from his cunt in nonsensical shapes.
Unhurried, unrushed, watching Vash like a well-prepared meal.
Vash reached down to his right leg, pressing it back to his chest to leave himself on display for Wolfwood’s dark eyes—they traced the movement, looking starved, throat clicking on a swallow.
“Wolfwood please,” he sobbed. Felt the tears come a second time. Wolfwood teased the tips of two fingers into him, tracing his hole and watching in awe as the flowered petals reached back desperately, gently pulling him in. “Nicholas.”
Wolfwood’s gaze snapped back to him. Vash was sure he had never seen that expression before outside of a fight: dark, stormy, focused in a way that made him shiver and gush down Wolfwood’s palm.
When the priest entered him a second time it was quick and sharp, fucking into the heat of him so hard it shifted Vash up the bed and made him cry out. Wolfwood kept to the pace: hard and slow, the strength of each thrust making up for the seconds between and forcing Vash’s body to make space.
Vash slapped his hand to the wall to keep his head from smacking into the adobe, eyes rolling back. He simply let his free leg fall to the side, baring himself, to lay there and take what Wolfwood would give.
“Nic-Nico,” Vash stuttered out—earning a particularly punishing thrust from Wolfwood that made him clench down on the cock inside him and writhe. Every muscle in his body tensed, desperate for release so quickly, and he did his best to thrust against Wolfwood to meet him halfway.
When Vash finally looked back up to Wolfwood’s face the other man was still intently focused on where they joined, watching the way Vash’s cunt took every thrust and made a home for him so easily.
As if possessed, the priest reached between them and slotted his fingers against where they met, mapping out his cunt with calloused fingers, teasingly pressing them as if he might fit them in alongside his cock—then finding the tight bundle of nerves just above, now on full display as his petals bloomed under the attention. The wet noises of his body were so obscene Vash felt himself flush even then.
“Ah-h-h, Nico, yes yes right there, you’re fucking perfect—”
Wolfwood focused on that little spot that lit all of Vash’s nerve endings on fire, keeping a tense pressure and grinding against it as he fucked Vash a little faster. Vash was sure he was babbling nonsense, pleading and begging for Wolfwood’s touch and mouth and cock as if he could never have enough of the other man.
His entire body tensed, that sharp ache of arousal shooting through him so quickly his brain went offline as he arched and came for the first time, wet and messy, while Wolfwood fucked him hard and fast through it. The noise torn from him, more creature than human, was shameless and keening.
“Oh you sweet, pretty thing,” Wolfwood groaned—his voice was strained, tight as he panted and curled over Vash, rutting into him like an animal.
The oversensitivity, the heat and electricity where their skin touched, Wolfwood’s cock so deep inside him he could taste it on his tongue—somehow it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.
Vash called to him, using that sweet little nickname that made his thrusts stutter, and reached out blindly for the hand Wolfwood had pressed to Vash’s cunt where it now held on tightly, sticky, against the curve of Vash’s hip. Taking it in his own, Vash drew it to his mouth and pressed Wolfwood’s fingers to his tongue, stuffing his mouth as full as he was able, almost as full as Wolfwood fucking so hard into his cunt he was sure he would bruise.
Vash ran his tongue over Wolfwood’s fingers where they twitched on his tongue, laving over the callouses and knuckles, drinking down his own slick as he dripped onto the bed between them, smeared along the priests’ hot skin.
“Feel full, sweetheart?” Wolfwood asked. Vash could only nod, body clenched and pulsing around Wolfwood’s cock. His eyes slipped closed and he hummed thoughtlessly as the sensations overtook the heat burning under his skin.
Wolfwood swore. “I’m gonna come, sweetheart. I gotta move,” he panted into his ear. He began to pull away and Vash felt the panic settle in, the fear and need and you can’t leave don’t leave me please. Before he was aware of it he had wrapped both legs around Wolfwood’s hips, the sweat-slick skin like a balm as he dragged Wolfwood back down to him.
“Fuck, Vash,” the priest choked out, moaning, eyes and jaw clenched—yet he didn’t fight it, falling back into Vash like a like a shooting star careening towards the horizon. Vash felt his cunt clench down as Wolfwood ground against him, fucking him deep and pressing to the nerves and slick of his petals. “Vash, I’m gonna come,” he tried to warn again. He sounded out of breath. Desperate.
“Please,” Vash moaned around the fingers still stretching his mouth full. He didn’t know how to form the words, how to make Wolfwood understand how he was burning. He tightened his legs and crossed his ankles behind Wolfwood’s broad back. Couldn’t stop the pleading little sounds Wolfwood was still fucking out of him even then.
Wolfwood pressed open mouthed kisses to Vash’s neck. “You’re so perfect, darlin’,” he groaned. “Take me so perfect. Like you were made for me.”
“Just for you,” Vash promises deliriously.
Vash felt it a moment before the tension in Wolfwood’s body snapped: the way every muscle went rigid, almost as if he was fighting it—and when he finally let go it was lovely. The younger man sobbed against Vash’s throat, pressing his teeth to the soft skin there, as his cock pulsed inside Vash as deep as their bodies would allow and he came, white hot and perfect inside Vash.
It was enough to tip Vash over beyond sensitivity into a second body-aching orgasm, full and satiated with the man in his arms and the cum filling him up, hot and thick and full. And this time he didn’t simply spill, he gushed, hearing the sound of it between their bodies and on the bed as it was wrenched from his body in overwhelming pulses.
“Thank you, thank you,” Vash found himself babbling, pressing trembling kisses to Wolfwood’s neck where they were pressed together, nuzzled into one another.
Wolfwood pressed his mouth to Vash’s sweaty head. “Good?”
“So good,” Vash moaned, burrowing closer, still so tense and twitching. He didn’t think he could ever be close enough.
When the priest began to pull away Vash latched on even closer, fingernails into his shoulder blades and legs so tight around his hips Vash was sure he wouldn’t be the only one bruising within the hour.
“I gotta move eventually,” Wolfwood told him, voice gravelly.
“No.”
“C’mon, spikey—”
“No.”
Wolfwood laughed against him then, the sound reaching down into Vash’s chest and warming him up—a gentle sensation compared to the pyre he had been suffering under. “You weirdo. When can I move then?”
“Never,” Vash told him. Perhaps more sincere than Wolfwood recognized just then. The priest busied himself pressing small pecks of kisses against Vash’s hair, his cheek, his temple. When he reached Vash’s forehead he paused, pulling away slowly.
“Feels like your fever broke,” he said, mildly amazed.
Vash sighed, nestling back under Wolfwood’s chin. He was wrung out, pleasantly numbed to the needs of his body, and he wanted to bask in the haze of that comfort. “Won’t last.”
“What, need me to fuck you again?” The priest snorted.
“And again,” Vash nuzzled against the pink shell of Wolfwood’s ear, twining their fingers together on the pillow by their heads.
“Mm,” Wolfwood hummed—but it sounded distant, as equally dreamy as Vash felt. “And again after that?”
“Well, you’ll have to go get us water at some point.”
Wolfwood groaned. Vash couldn’t see his eyes but felt his pleased smile pressed against his shoulder. “You’re gonna be the death of me, spikey.”
“Better than a gunshot,” Vash argued.
“Better than a gunshot,” Wolfwood agreed, pressing a sweet, laughing kiss to Vash’s warm cheek.