Work Text:
Vash hadn’t done it on purpose. He’d been chatting with one of his sisters at a textile facility when the bandits had snuck in and fired a harpoon of all things without even bothering to introduce themselves. Wolfwood had tackled him (ah, so rough!) before Vash could close the hivemind link properly. It wasn’t until they were zooming away on Angelina that Vash noticed something off.
“You doing okay?” Vash had asked, because Wolfwood was swerving a bit more than usual.
“Dizzy,” Wolfwood had called back over the wind. Then, “Dizzy. Dizzy! I’m trying to say I’m—dizzy—oh god damn it.”
So! Vash may have accidentally hit him with a smidge of mindmeld transference and punctured Wolfwood’s truth filter—temporarily, he estimated it’d be haywire for a day at most. In the meantime, even though it was important to suss out the extent of his newly imposed honesty, Wolfwood was being difficult.
“What’s you’re favorite color?”
“Purple, and we agreed no invasive questions.”
“What’s so invasive about a favorite color? We need to figure out how direct a question has to be, if you can lie by omission, if you can answer in partial truths, if—”
“Tongari, zip it.”
“Well, what, do you want me to just stop talking entirely?” Vash asks. He turns to face Wolfwood from the sidecar. He’s sore, physically, from Wolfwood’s tackling and sore, emotionally, from Wolfwood’s attitude. He’s only trying to help.
“Obviously not, I love when you ramble,” Wolfwood answers flatly.
“Now I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”
“It’s cute, dummy.”
Oh. Vash faces forward, sand pinging his glasses. The next town hovers closer on the horizon. “Oh. Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Making you say that. Truth stuff.” Gosh it’s warm today. Vash never bothered with sunblock but the back of his neck must be getting a bit burnt.
“You didn’t make me say that,” Wolfwood’s voice pitches loud to carry over Angelina but he sounds overly nonchalant, too easy for how his words make Vash strangely shy.
“How is your favorite color invasive but that isnt?!”
“Can we just—” Wolfwood shifts gears, Angelina slowing to a putter. “First of all, being cute is objective while favorite color is a personal opinion.” Wrong, but okay, apparently what Wolfwood believed. “Second, can we figure it out in town? Can your insatiable curiosity to know which underwear I’m wearing and how many times I wet the bed as a kid and if I’m scared of beetles wait until then?”
Vash couldn’t get a handle on what would or wouldn't annoy Wolfwood right now so there was nothing for it but to hunker down into the cramped sidecar, cross his arms and say, “Fine. But you better answer all of those when we get there.”
Wolfwood doesn’t answer any of those questions even after they settle at a saloon for lunch. He’s acting totally normal and like Vash doesn’t have the key to unlock an indeterminate amount of uncomfortable truths from Wolfwood’s handsome throat. Vash would never—he would never abuse it, they both know that, and yet just having the ability makes him unsettled. As well as they know each other he’s used to being responsible for Wolfwood’s privacy, his pride when it counted, so it’s something else he can’t put his finger on. Unsettled and also like he wants to transgress, wants to push Wolfwood, but he doesn’t know how. It’s shiny. He wants to peck at it.
“Hey,” Wolfwood says, “You’re being loud.” He hooks a finger in between the bones of Vash’s prosthetic arm to tug Vash’s hand away from where he’d been tapping against his water glass. Heat blooms in his stomach so sudden and intimate it almost feels like he has to pee.
He crosses legs and blurts out, “So, your underwear.”
Wolfwood rolls his eyes and slips his finger out from between Vash’s bones. “Why d’you need to know?”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he offers instead of answering.
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” Wolfwood snorts. He flips his menu closed.
Rude. “Why aren’t you curious about my underwear? I promise I won’t lie, we can be two entirely truthful, mature adults figuring out the parameters of this very unique issue.”
“I don’t need you to tell me because I already know you’re wearin’ the blue ones with the small hole on the left cheek. You should really patch it, especially for the cheap blended knits you get and the way you like to do pretzel stretches every morning when you think I’m still asleep.”
Vash stares at him, then gasps belatedly, “Mister Wolfwood!" playing at scandalized to hide how he actually is scandalized in a thrilled, flustered way as Wolfwood flags down their waitress. Wolfwood still has an air of casualness about him and it strikes Vash suddenly that it’s unfair Wolfwood is the one who’s been afflicted with the truth and yet Vash has been thrown off balance twice by Wolfwood’s honesty.
He’s in a bit of a daze until he hears the waitress say, “Sesame sauce okay with your noodles?”
He’s about to speak up for Wolfwood because Vash knows both that Wolfwood doesn’t really like sesame (Vash is sad for him), and, Wolfwood is overly polite about ordering from restaurants. It’s not often but not unusual for Vash to intervene when Wolfwood—usually so adept at speaking his mind when he wants to—gets tripped up asking for extra onions or dressing on the side.
Before he can, Wolfwood gives a charming, apologetic smile. “Any chance you’ve got something else? It’s fine, just not my favorite.”
“Sure, we can swap it for peanut instead.”
Wolfwood keeps up the smile and thanks the waitress. All Vash can say for himself is, “Sandwich, no tomatoes,” because he went from riled up at Wolfwood messing with his arm and knowing about his underwear to a different kind of riled up at Wolfwood…what, ordering for himself? It was only a benign truth but it felt like one Vash owned part of, too. Maybe it was just alarming how easy it had been to get Wolfwood to say something he usually wouldn’t.
“What is wrong with you,” Wolfwood hisses at him when they’re alone again. “Why were you glaring boot daggers at the waitress?”
“I think you should leave the talking to me until you’re,” Vash waves his hand, “all better.”
Wolfwood squints at him, assessing. Vash is profusely grateful he’s not the one affected by a ragged truth filter until Wolfwood points a fingergun at him and crooks his thumb.
“Jealous.”
“I’m worried, for your—our —safety. What starts at sesame dressing can end in a shoot out. We’ve already had one of those today, I don’t need another. Plus, I’m not the only guy with a dangerous identity, Wolfwood!”
“Danger is my middle name.”
“It is not.”
“I cannot tell a lie,” Wolfwood says, hand over his heart, and winks.
Vash can’t believe he’s finding out Wolfwood’s stupidly cool middle name like this, out in the open on a Tuesday where anyone else could also find out. And Wolfwood offered it without struggle or reprimand.
“You’re jealous, blondie, it’s fine. Happens to the best of us.”
What was even the POINT of not being the one affected by a ragged truth filter if the person you were with was going to see right through you anyway!
“Jealousy is an ugly word and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Vash says, prim, and goes back to tapping at his water glass to see if he can get Wolfwood to mess with his arm bone again. At least that had been distracting, if distressing in a vaguely confusing and arousing way.
Wolfwood doesn’t, just sits there looking smug as he fishes out a deck of cards to start building a modest house as they wait for their food. The saloon starts to fill up, not a lot, but enough that background chatter rises, a game of pool starts, someone comes by to ask Wolfwood if he wants to play a round of poker. Vash tenses. Usually Wolfwood would stay with him if there wasn’t a clear hustle, but what if he really did want to play a round, just for fun? What if he got asked questions he couldn’t deflect, about himself or Vash? It’s a pointless concern because their food arrives as Wolfwood waves off their company but it gnaws at Vash. Anyone could come up to Wolfwood to ask him anything. The saloon is littered with landmines. A man at the bar tips his hat in Wolfwood’s general direction. A woman gets the jukebox going and looks like she might sway their way. Vash eats quickly, downs the rest of his water, then his beer, then Wolfwood’s water, then shoves his mess of dishes to the side.
“Ready to go?”
“...No?” Wolfwood says and it’s funny to Vash that he says it like a question. Wolfwood’s only halfway through his noodle bowl so he’s clearly not done but he answers like he could be, if Vash needed him to. Vash carefully steps around that train of thought.
“Well. Don’t dawdle.” Dawdle, Vash watches Wolfwood silently mimic at a spear of radish. He ignores it. “It’s getting late so we should try to get a room somewhere while we can. I think it’s best if we stay put until this wears off.”
Wolfwood crunches into the piece of radish. There’s a fleck of peanut sauce on the soft indent of his lower lip. “It’s 3pm,” he points out unhelpfully.
Vash grinds his molars together and kicks Wolfwood’s shin. Wolfwood nabs Vash’s ankle between his calves and squeezes, not letting Vash properly vent his annoyance. To make matters worse, Wolfwood laughs, genuine, his pretty amusement truthful in a way that rouses butterflies in Vash's everything.
“Alright hold your thoma, you want me outta here, I get it. Can I finish in peace or are you going to keep kicking me?”
“I don’t know, we’ll just have to see what the future holds.”
Wolfwood hums and slurps his noodles. He apparently decides he doesn’t like those odds because he keeps Vash’s foot trapped between his legs. Joke’s on him because Vash wanted to be there anyway. He slumps down in his chair and waits for Wolfwood to finish, eyes flicking from person to person, doing his best to menace without drawing attention.
Outside the child sun is setting and Vash goes through the ordeal he struggles with every late afternoon: Wolfwood bathed in first-sunset light, baby pinks and blues gone gently golden, the whole of him softened. The motel is a few blocks away so they leave Angelina and Punisher locked up in the saloon’s motor stable and decide to walk. A breeze kicks up and ruffles Wolfwood’s hair. Even though he feels better outside and away from the threat of the saloon, Vash’s chest aches. There are many times he wishes he could cup Wolfwood in his hands like a glowworm, keep him suspended in quiet cozy dark, in the cloister of his palms and the arch of his fingers, peeking in only for a moment, basking, then closing tight to be held and safe again. Vash would have to carry him around everywhere because history has shown they’re both lousy at staying where the other puts them. He doesn’t know if Wolfwood would like that. He feels bad most times for even thinking it.
“It’s nice out,” Wolfwood comments idly, bumping Vash’s shoulder. Ugh, Wolfwood means it because even though he’s deflected questions throughout the day, he really hasn’t been able to lie. “Come on tongari, what’s the problem? I didn’t really mean you were jealous, I know you’re just worried. Thought I was supposed to be the one fussin’ today, what with all the,” he swirls a hand around his head, “you know.”
Vash looks at the sky, kicks at a rock as they walk. Wolfwood kicks it back.
“How are you doing it? I thought it was only direct questions, but you’ve snuck around those, so I thought maybe only important stuff or only dumb stuff but so far the only thing I’ve gotten out of you is purple. I thought you’d be more….” he searches for the right word.
“Freaked out?”
“Spilling your deepest darkest most embarrassing sauciest hottest gossip secrets,” Vash corrects. “And freaked out about it.”
Wolfwood barks a laugh and Vash lets his shoulders droop so they bump into each other again.
“Direct questions are harder,” Wolfwood admits. “Not my first rodeo with this truth filter bullshit. The Eye trained us pretty good for evasion, catching something and twisting it around before it slipped through.” Wolfwood’s face does something that sinks Vash’s heart. Bitter, a bad taste, guilt. He hates seeing Wolfwood defeated. He regrets asking even though he didn’t intend to stir this up. But then Wolfwood elbows Vash with a sideways grin, a real one. “You aren’t very direct most of the time, though.”
Huh. “Can I be?” Vash asks.
“Yes,” Wolfwood answers immediately. “No. Yes. Hm.” He scrunches his nose and kicks away the rock they’d been passing. “I don’t know,” he lands on.
Vash finds himself surprised, stunned a little, that unfiltered honesty can sit at a threshold like that. Liminal. As if it could be enticed one direction or another. It’s a comfort, that Wolfwood is allowed the latitude if he needs it.
“What are you thinking right now,” he asks, figuring it’s direct but open-ended enough that Wolfwood could pick from ten different things to answer truthfully.
“It’d be nice to hold your hand because you’ve been weird all day—not bad weird, just weird weird—even though it’d feel goofy as hell, too. Glad we’re not being shot at and that they didn’t charge extra for the fried shallots on my noodles. This breeze is heaven and I like talking with you.”
Vash nods, because he agrees with it all, then freezes.
“Ah, damn,” Wolfwood mumbles. It’s hard to tell but Vash thinks Wolfwood might be blushing. “Too invasive, tongari, chalk that one up with purple, ask me something else. Shake a leg, motel’s another two blocks. Still wanna know about my underwear?”
Wolfwood’s a step ahead of him when Vash lunges to clumsily grab his hand. It’s impulsive. Compulsive, even, his self preservation overridden by desire and possessiveness toyed with through the day at the mere potential of Wolfwood’s openness. Wolfwood is definitely blushing now. Vash swings their hands playfully, as if they were children, fitting their palms together better.
“Nothing embarrassing about a grown man enjoying a cool breeze and a calm afternoon,” Vash tries.
“Your hand is really sweaty,” Wolfwood rasps, sucking too deep on his cigarette.
“I think that’s your hand,” Vash lies.
“It’s not,” Wolfwood says, merciless, and Vash cringes but figures he deserved that harsh honesty since it’s all his fault to begin with.
They have to stop holding hands at the motel since it did feel goofy as hell to walk in and book a room like that but Vash was nearing his limit of something anyway. He’s bereft and relieved when Wolfwood makes a beeline for the shower.
“I’m gonna get laundry tokens, anything you want?” Vash calls through the bathroom door even though Wolfwood always leaves it cracked a few inches.
“Pudding!” Wolfwood answers back. Then, “Damn it!!”
Vash laughs into his fist. He’s back to riled up, delighting in whatever small thing he can collect from Wolfwood. “Sure thing, one pudding for Nico!” and Vash is out the room before he has to deal with a wet and angry Wolfwood.
When he comes back Wolfwood is showered, hair tousled and shiny without sand to dull it, dressed down to his suit pants and what Vash knows is his last clean undershirt. It’s a bit loose, even on his broad frame, worn, comfortable. Domestic. There’s sweetness on the tip of Vash’s tongue. He sets the pudding on the table.
“They only had the two-pack, which flavor do you want?” he asks even though he already knows the answer. Wolfwood always goes for strawberry, leaving Vash with chocoswirl. He only asks because, for all the scant discoveries he’s had today, he wants some grounding in what he already knows about Wolfwood.
“Chocoswirl,” Wolfwood says, but picks up the strawberry like usual and sits on the bed to eat it.
What. “What?”
“What?”
“You—stop eating that, you said you wanted chocoswirl.”
Wolfwood scoops a spoonful of strawberry pudding and shoves it in his mouth. “I know but I want strawberry,” he says around the spoon.
“No, no,” Vash feels a little crazy now. He was so positive, moments ago, what Wolfwood would choose, and he’s not wrong but he wasn’t right either and there’s an escalation rising in him he’s rapidly losing control over. “You said you wanted chocoswirl. Like two seconds ago. I asked you, directly, and you said chocoswirl.”
Wolfwood licks the spoon clean. Vash uses every ounce of willpower to not get distracted. “Yeah, I mean, both are good but I like chocoswirl better…” he trails off as Vash starts pacing. Wolfwood’s eyes follow him like a novelty cat clock.
“But you always eat strawberry. The two-packs are value packs, they always put strawberry and chocoswirl together, we get them all the time, we’ve been getting them since we met, you split a two-pack with me on the bus and, and, you always take the strawberry! What do you mean you like chocoswirl better!” He should not keep pushing this. He shouldn’t and he can’t shut up.
“I mean, I want chocoswirl because I like it better, but I want strawberry because you like chocoswirl best,” Wolfwood eats another spoonful as if a part of Vash isn’t shaking loose.
Vash stops pacing. He points accusingly at Wolfwood. “You can’t say that.”
Wolfwood swallows, frowns, endearingly confused. “You asked me?”
Vash stalks to the bed. Of all the things he could have asked, of all the answers he could have gotten. He had been trying to be so careful.
“You can’t do that to me,” Vash clambers onto the bed.
“Do what?” Wolfwood says warily, clutching the half eaten pudding to his chest. He tries to scoot back against the headboard but Vash cages him in, looms over him.
“Why do you pick strawberry?”
“Because I want to,” Wolfwood answers quickly. His earlobes go red. Vash could bite them.
“You want to,” Vash repeats. It’s not a question. It’s nothing Wolfwood has to answer.
He sees the moment understanding dawns on Wolfwood, a mix of determination and resignation flitting through his eyes. Vash knows that expression. Wolfwood, despite knowing better, is going to hold his ground. “I want to, because I want you to have what you want, too.”
They stare at each other. Want. Want. Vash is flooded and floored by the simplicity of Wolfwood saying I want. This is the shiny, irresistible thing Vash has been pecking at, digging for. He needs to hear it again immediately. He needs to stop this before it gets more out of hand.
“You’ll spoil me,” Vash manages and it really is good he’s not the one with a lousy truth filter right now or else he would have said, I’ll get used to it, I’m already used to it and I didn’t even notice, I’m scared I don’t know how to go without anymore, I have to travel light, I can’t take anything with me, I won't be able to leave this behind.
He worries Wolfwood is going to insist when Vash tugs the pudding and spoon out of his hands and sets it on the nightstand, is going to say something stupid and gutting and romantic like ‘I want to spoil you’ but instead Wolfwood lets himself get caged again and what he says is so much more stupid and romantic and gutting. It comes at the price of Wolfwood’s clear, open, needy panic that tells Vash that Wolfwood couldn’t stop himself even with all the cult-assassin-fake-priest-truth-resistance training in the world:
“I want to share. I want to share it with you.”
Vash has never been so turned on while simultaneously so close to bursting into big ugly tears in his entire life. He drops his head to dig his forehead against Wolfwood’s collarbone. Vash isn’t above hiding.
“Not just. I mean, the pudding, yeah—”
“Stop,” Vash says, even though he doesn’t mean it because one of them should still be lying. Right?
“I don’t want to, I do, but I don’t, I don’t know, shit, Vash, I don’t want to stop, that’s the whole problem, it’d be nice actually to split the chocoswirl sometimes but I don’t just mean the pudding, it’s everything else I wanna share, there, I’m done, sorry.”
Vash chokes a laugh. Wolfwood’s heart is beating so fast beneath him. Of course this is how it happens, after so long and such intricate barriers they wove and wove between. Over pudding. He’s so happy it borders on misery. “For what? S’my fault.”
“For spilling truth stuff. My deepest darkest most embarrassing sauciest hottest gossip secret,” Wolfwood threads a hand through Vash’s hair. “I’m sorry,” he says again, quieter. It catches, barely, at the back of Wolfwood’s throat. That’s the final straw for Vash apparently. He lets his whole weight drop down.
“It wasn’t really a secret. It was just supposed to look like one. I don’t know if it even counts if ours match. I think it’s too late to backtrack, anyway; has been for awhile.”
“Yeah,” Wolfwood gusts out a sigh, the rest of him giving in, too. He pets at Vash’s undercut. “Guess so.” There’s a lull in which everything and nothing is wildly different. His life rearranges. It still looks the same: Wolfwood, Wolfwood, more Wolfwood as far as the eye can see.
Vash lets himself drift until Wolfwood says, “I do want to finish the pudding.”
Vash snorts and rubs his cheek against the swell of Wolfwood’s pec. “Yeah, what else?”
“Your fingers in my mouth.”
Vash’s head shoots up. Wolfwood looks nearly as shocked.
“Sex stuff?” Vash whispers. Okay, he didn’t think they’d get here so fast. At least another couple hours of wallowing in years worth of compacted emotional tension cut loose.
Wolfwood stares up at the ceiling. “I thought that was gonna be the first thing you bothered me about.” Wolfwood says. Oh. Ohhhh. Vash can work with this.
“That’s crass, I’m classier than that.”
“Wouldn’t have minded,” Wolfwood admits. Then, “I think the whole pudding thing knocked the filter a bit too loose, so be careful what you—”
“What else?” Vash demands. Wolfwood’s still not looking at him so Vash raises himself back up to try to catch his gaze. “Wolfwood, what else?”
“Lots of things, there’s too many, they’re all crowding together. Lemme finish the pudding before it gets gross.”
Lots of things. Too many! It’s an honest answer but not nearly as specific as Vash needs. He remembers Wolfwood slipping into the gap between his prosthetic ulna and radius, how it felt to have him tug at the bone. No one’s ever touched him like that before.
“Which fingers? I mean, which hand?” This does get Wolfwood to look at him, only for a moment before he’s back to staring at the ceiling.
“Both. Either. You could put ‘em in me wherever.”
Wow, heat absolutely blazes through Vash. He feels feverish, electrified.
“What if I didn’t let you come?”
Wolfwood’s eyes slam closed and he goes bright red, nods. Oh, this is bad. This is bad and very, very good.
“What if I made you come again and again? On just my fingers? Do you want that?”
“Fuck,” Wolfwood swears and starts to squirm half-heartedly, like he’s trying to get away while burrowing further into the bed. “Y-yeah, that too. I want that too.”
There it is again. I want. Vash gives in and bites at Wolfwood’s earlobe once since it’s teasing him then noses at his cheek, nudging his head to the side. Wolfwood isn’t the only one with a list too long. Now that he’s started Vash can’t seem to stop.
He traces down Wolfwood’s arms to bring his hands over his head and push them into the pillows, lacing their fingers together so Wolfwood has to stay stretched out beneath him. Vash ruts down in a slow, dirty grind, fabric dragging hot friction between them as he desperately hangs on to the tatters of his composure.
“What if I kept you like this? Didn’t even let you take your pants off, kept you like this for me until you came, until you made a mess?”
“I want it, all of it, what the hell happened to bein’ classy?” Wolfwood is panting now as Vash presses open, damp kisses to his neck. God, Wolfwood’s honest need is heady.
“I lied, I’m not that classy. What about my mouth?” he asks to Wolfwood’s jaw, ravenous for more of Wolfwood’s desire. “If I had you ride my face, flipped you over and ate you out, cleaned you up?” Vash leans back to admire him.
Wolfwood finally looks at him. He’s flushed and mussed and still has a nervous, panicky edge to him but his eyes are bright and his smile more indulgent than Vash deserves. He playfully strains against the hold Vash has on his hands, then rolls his hips up, igniting more sparks of coarse pleasure.
“I’d want it, I’d let you, but when are you gonna kiss me because I want that first and you might not be classy but I’m—"
Vash whines out a pathetic noise from high in his throat and crushes their mouths together. Wolfwood arches into him, opens his mouth wider when Vash shoves his tongue in overeager and frantic, pulls a hand free from Vash’s grip to wrap his arm around Vash’s waist. It’s the nicest thing to happen to Vash in possibly his whole life. When he breaks away he presses their foreheads together and feels Wolfwood’s warm breath puff over his chin, his lips.
“I want it too,” Vash says. “The pudding and the sharing and the sex stuff and lots of things, so many things, Wolfwood, it’s ridiculous.”
Wolfwood bumps their noses together, giving Vash another kiss, small, lingering. “We better get started.”