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Like any sinful man, Wolfwood craved selfish pleasures. The usual—liquor, sex, and cigarettes—and the rare: hurt, humiliation, oblivion. He couldn’t say why he wanted the latter, though he’d put money on some EoM fuckery crossing his wires. And, God help him, sometimes he wanted his outsides to match the inside. Inside was ugly, twisted, broken: it couldn’t be fair, could it, for his skin to go unmarked? Most of the Eye’s lab rats contorted as they mutated; Nicholas Damn Wolfwood came out just looking like a guy.
So he went looking for trouble. It’s not like it did anyone any harm. Whether he set out into the desert with shoes full of sand and too little water or picked a fight with the biggest most shit-faced bastard in the bar, everything would be set right in the end. He hated that it would be set right, longing for the day when his life could be his own to ruin as he pleased—but it’d scratch the itch. The worse he fucked himself up, the longer that itch would keep.
It had never caused him a problem until he took up traveling with Vash the Stampede. Vash the bleeding heart, Vash the busybody, Vash the goddamn king of chewing on Wolfwood’s nerves.
“Are you okay? Are you drinking enough water? Are you sure you should have another round so soon?” was the least of it.
Vash inserted himself into conflicts, taking worse hits as he intervened than anybody would have doled out without his ass in the middle. He’d gotten between Wolfwood and a dozen increasingly desperate scenarios, playing savior so earnestly, Wolfwood figured Vash must get something out of it. Maybe Vash wanted to rescue people the same way Wolfwood wanted to fall beyond rescue, or maybe Vash wanted a little pain for himself.
Well, he could go get it for his goddamn self and leave Wolfwood to his evening plans.
It wasn’t Wolfwood’s first choice, the closed-door rendezvous with a stranger. Inevitably they disagreed over how much clothing Wolfwood should wear, and inevitably the strangers fell into one of two groups—too soft and cautious to ruin him, or too cruel to stop.
He’d take the cruelty any day, and he’d been taking it often lately—because behind closed doors was the only way to keep Vash’s nose out of it. Vash thought he understood, so he minded his business with the flustered prudishness of a nun. Wolfwood let him think what he wanted.
Vash didn’t know that Wolfwood downed serum as a nightcap for every night spent in a stranger’s room. Even if the end result was disappointingly minor, Wolfwood found himself wasting doses just to keep Vash off his case—but Wolfwood worried he might be catching on.
He’d stagger back to the room they split to save money, expression blissed with catharsis and the glaze of fresh regeneration, and more often than not Vash’s creepy night eyes glowed back at him as Wolfwood stumbled through the door. The gleam froze him every time, awakening some primal fear before he mustered his nerves and stepped purposefully toward the bathroom.
“You alright?” Vash sometimes asked.
“I’m fine.”
And Vash would give a quiet hmm that read as disapproval or confusion or concern depending on Wolfwood’s mood. It was fine, it was all fine—until Wolfwood forgot to tuck a fresh stash of ampoules into his jacket pocket.
“Out! Get out! Had enough outta you.”
Wolfwood wheezed a laugh as the stranger pushed him into the hallway. Not his first time getting kicked out of a room. The kind of freaks he shacked up with, sometimes he was the wrong kind of freak for them. He fought back too much, or he liked what they were doing too much: he could never get it right.
There were only six rooms in this inn. How lucky for him that his room was #1 and his hookup was in #6. The walk of shame was more fraught than usual, staggering with one hand dragging the wall and one hand pressed against the heaviest bleed. His vision fuzzed at the edges as every heartbeat forced a pulse of agony through him, lighting up the burning sharp crush of his throat. Probably something broken there.
Sloppy, damned sloppy, to have forgotten to restock his serum pocket. If his whole supply wasn’t tucked into his bag, he’d skip Vash’s scrutiny and tough it out in the sand—because there was no way he could sneak this one by the Typhoon, not a chance.
He fumbled with the key, blundering through the door with the grace of a mash-drunk toma. Ignoring the Vash-shaped lump in the bed, he refused to meet those lampbright predator’s eyes as he stumbled. He gritted his teeth, pawing through his bag, nerves sizzling with growing irritation as the feathery devil himself audibly approached—and Wolfwood knew Vash could be silent, and therefore he must be making noise on purpose. Wolfwood hated to be babied; he hated it.
“WHAT,” he said, aiming for a bark and landing on a soggy, whispering cough.
Vash turned on the lamp and dropped to his knees at Wolfwood’s side. They both knew that Vash could see without the damn lamp: turning it on only stripped away the thin fantasy that he wouldn’t notice the bruising. Wolfwood tried to turn his head to glower, gave up on that immediately as multiple somethings in his neck screamed at him to stop. He busied himself digging clumsy fingers through the bag instead, scowling at the disorganized contents failing to yield his target.
“Wolfwood,” Vash whispered in that godawful simpering lilt that turned his stomach upside down.
Vash scooted himself into Wolfwood’s line of sight, hesitant fingers reaching out toward the full throat of bruises wrapping chin to collarbone like an angry turtleneck of fingerprints. Wolfwood flinched away, biting off a strangled whimper; the movement startled the hurt sound out of him before he could control it. Vash dropped his hand, expression morphing from horrified concern to unbridled wrath.
And for a giddy, dizzying moment Wolfwood thought that wrath was pointed at him. He’d been trying for months to goad the Stampede into a trampling rage, through any means he could think of—and sure he’d pissed the guy off, but never the way he was trying for. Was this all it took? If so, Wolfwood ought to show off the aftermath more often.
“He can’t get away with this,” Vash hissed, and Wolfwood scoffed incredulously.
He’d gotten his hopes up for nothing. And Lord, he’d rather die than air this filthy laundry, but he would if it stopped the Humanoid Typhoon from collapsing the building in a humiliating attempt at white knighting.
“Fuck off, Spikey, he ain’t done nothing I didn’t ask for.”
Which wasn’t exactly true. The man had done a number of things Wolfwood hadn’t asked for, including a handful that left Wolfwood aggressively spitting at him to knock it off—and of course the guy hadn’t listened. But hey, what Vash didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Unfortunately, the implications left Vash knowing too much of a different kind. His wet eyes flicked between Wolfwood’s face and neck and where his bloody hands had resorted to removing everything from the bag.
“You do this every time, don’t you? What, did you forget your healing potion tonight?”
“Did you forget how to fuck off,” Wolfwood muttered.
Vash breathed deep, chest rising and falling as he stuttered out a trembling sigh that was worse than anything he could’ve said. Disappointment radiated like desert sun, stripping Wolfwood’s defenses to expose his ugly bones.
“I won’t stop. Y’ can’t stop me.”
Wolfwood’s fingertips found the satchel of ampoules. He stood up to carry the whole pouch to the bathroom; Vash had seen enough weakness out of him tonight. He stole a glance and curled his lip at Vash’s soggy pitying face.
“Don’t need you makin’ those faces at me. Don’t need your pity.”
“It’s not like that. I’m sorry, I just— I’m worried about you. I don’t like to see you hurting.”
Wolfwood grinned, bloody and sardonic and closer to a declaration of violence than a smile.
“Hurtin’? I feel like a million double-dollars. I feel better right now than I feel most days.”
Vash’s face got more unbearable the longer he looked. Wolfwood shut the bathroom door.