#I will learn | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

corvidrogue · 1 year ago

Text

PROXIMITY: wherein vash avoids touch as much as possible, until he can't. a vashwood character study loosely settled somewhere within the Stampede timeline.

Ao3 link

Full fic below.

The first time is an accident.

“Stop fidgeting,” Nicholas snaps, hands chasing after the elusive ball of fluff that is the bleeding head of Vash the Stampede. “Let me look at you – can you even see straight right now?”

“I told you, I’m okay,” the blonde insists, the thin veneer of cheerfulness quickly wearing away to expose irritation – real, genuine irritation, and the cranky note is an almost welcome reprieve from Vash’s constant fucking benevolence . From the constant softness of his face, of his empty smile; like a martyr painted in stained glass and gold, too willing to get his skull caved in if it means preventing anyone else from taking a hit meant for him.

“If you’re okay, then stop bobbing and weaving and prove it.” There’s a hard edge to Nicholas’s voice as he gives up and grabs for what he can reach: fistfuls of crimson jacket, the fabric rough with grit against his calloused palms and knuckles pressed into stark collarbones. It takes everything in him not to slam Vash against the wall of the grungy back alley where they’ve taken cover, but Vash settles abruptly.

Good. Maybe he’s finally gotten through that thick skull.

“I can see straight. Well. I mean, the blood’s making things a little blurry.”

Vash’s tone is light, expression carefully trained into reassuring cheer once more even as his left eye waters in an attempt to clear itself of the running redness. He’d removed his glasses when the lens got too smeared to see through and now he levels naked crystalline blue at Nick, underscored with dark circles and streaked with blood and still he acts like everything is fine .

Nicholas could hit him. Instead he reaches, catches that thick skull in the pads of his fingers–

“Don’t fucking move–” he bites, when Vash flinches again. It doesn’t seem like he’s struggling to keep his balance, coordinated enough to squirm and dodge all over the place the way he is. His eyes seem clear – aside from the blood, at least – and focused enough, searching Nicholas’s face. Something shuttered moves behind them, a silent question perhaps but Nicholas is too busy parting the unruly blonde mess above Vash’s temple to analyze it, let alone answer.

The wound isn’t deep but it’s ragged. The falling steel beam split Vash open when it glanced off his head, leaving an ugly tear in his scalp that crosses his hairline and rips the fair skin of his forehead. Nicholas tugs his cuff down to messily blot the area clean(ish, enough), then skates his thumbs along the edge of the lurid bruising. There’s a bump. There will no doubt be an even bigger bump in an hour, but the bleeding is already slowing to a sluggish ooze.

“Okay,” he finally admits. “Looks like you’re gonna live, needle-noggin. Beats the fuck outta me how, though.”

Nicholas doesn’t realize that Vash is leaning on him until he starts to let go. His hands lighten their pressure, only for Vash’s forehead to sink forward – and Nicholas realizes that his eyes are closed.

“Hey,” Nicholas hisses, suddenly doubting the clarity he saw in those summer-blue eyes just a minute ago. Vash’s head lolls, one cheek warm against his palm as Nicholas pats the other briskly and smudges more sticky blood across his cheek. “ Hey. ”

The effect is instantaneous, startling; Vash jerks upright, eyes flying open, and he nearly clocks the back of his head against the wall in his apparent haste to get away from Nicholas’s hands. He doesn’t look disoriented – if anything, he looks… embarrassed? As if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“S-sorry–” Vash stammers, and yeah, he’s definitely blushing. Nicholas’s palms, his fingertips, feel cold with the sudden absence of warm skin beneath them. His charge is already edging away, getting out from between Nicholas and the building to head for the mouth of the alley. “See? I told you, I’m okay. I’m sturdy.”

There’s an undercurrent of nerves when he laughs, though, that sticks with Nicholas for the rest of the day.

—

The second time is hardly more intentional than the first.

They’re arguing – it seems like they’re always arguing. Either that, or getting shot at, which Nicholas is just starting to think would be less aggravating than trying to convince the Human Fucking Typhoon to commit one single sensible act of self-preservation – when he sees the glint of a gun barrel shine from an upper window across the street.

Nicholas doesn’t think; muscle memory and training kick in before his higher mind, and he swings. He hooks Vash around the waist and snatches Meryl up by the scruff of her oversized jacket, hurling the three of them toward the front door of the inn on whose porch they’d been squabbling. Gunfire rings out as Meryl crashes across the threshold like a tossed kitten; Vash stumbles in step with Nicholas. Roberto brings up the rear but, well, Nicholas only has two arms.

Of course, Vash grabs for Roberto, shoving him and Meryl ahead of them even as Nicholas plants his hands on that slender back and herds him toward the kitchen. The front windows blow out and Nicholas hears Vash screaming for the downstairs bar’s patrons to take cover, feels him fighting to turn back toward the source and draw the fire away like the magnet that he is.

The Punisher thuds against Nicholas’s back, shielding them both from the smattering of shots that might have hit their target. Nicholas feels one catch his calf, doing more damage to his pants than his skin, but the graze burns almost immediately. When Vash tries to twist free Nicholas hooks him again and drags; through the kitchens, out the back door – it’s too predictable, they’ll expect it, but no one seems to have circled around yet and Roberto’s split to the left, dragging Meryl around someone’s thomas pen toward a basement hatch–

So of course Vash splits right, away from the journalists; he’s still focused on drawing whatever fire will come their way next, as if Meryl won’t come scrambling after him like the infuriating little firecracker that she is.

Someone should teach her to handle a gun. Maybe she’d shoot better than she drives.

Vash is fast, but Nicholas is determined, and before he can blow their cover Nicholas spots a supply truck with its rear door ajar. He grabs hold of Vash again, body-checking him toward the vehicle and all but tossing him through the narrow gap before diving in behind him.

“Ow, watch where you stick that thing-” Vash complains, as the Punisher rams his shoulder. It drives him further into the truck, though, so Nicholas won’t apologize. Instead he just heaves the crossgun behind some crates and firmly obstructs Vash’s path out of the vehicle.

“This is exactly what I was talking about,” Nicholas growls. “Sticking your nose into people’s business gets you shot at.”

Vash opens his mouth to argue, only to let out a muffled mrrp when Nicholas’s hand slaps over it – there’s a voice outside, at the rear of the truck. His hand drifts toward the Punisher, but Vash’s prosthetic flashes out to grab his wrist.

“Next town is seventeen iles north.” It’s a quiet voice, familiar – the owner of the inn where they were supposed to stay the night, supposed to be comped fully in exchange for clearing her son with that loan shark. Through a gap in the crates Nicholas sees her work-worn hands close around the rear door, pushing it shut. He barely hears her over the groan of old, rusty metal on older, rustier metal. “We’ll send your friends along after ya... Thanks, Stampede.”

The door slams, but there’s a grate between the cab and the cargo hold and it lets just enough light in for Nicholas to catch Vash’s expression. He’s frozen, eyes round over the edge of Nicholas’s hand and, interestingly, the hand that doesn’t have a deathgrip on Nicholas’s wrist is fisted in the front of his jacket. Slender fingers tangle in the fabric, a minute tugging sensation carrying through to the seams. They’re very close, Nicholas realizes. He’s practically straddling one of those long, skinny legs, and he can hear Vash’s quick breath, feel that soft face getting warmer under his hand. Vash's jaw clenches against Nicholas's fingers when he swallows.

“...I don’t wanna hear it,” Nicholas grumbles preemptively, petty in the knowledge that the exact thing he was scolding Vash for not even five minutes ago is the thing that’s saving his ass now. He drops his hand, twists free of the prosthetic grip with a deliberately nonthreatening motion, and pushes away to land heavily on his ass next to Vash.

The truck rumbles into motion, turns, and they lose some of their meager light in the changing angle. Nicholas digs around in his jacket, pulling out his lighter and a slightly wilted cigarette. Surprisingly, Vash doesn’t say anything, doesn’t defend himself or even complain about the smoke. When Nicholas steals a glance at him, he can see just enough to fill in the details of that blank, faraway look Vash gets sometimes.

He can also see that Vash’s fingertips are resting against his own lips in the near-darkness.

—

The third time it’s on purpose.

Ever since that day in the back of the supply truck, ever since the image of Vash’s long fingers pressed to the impossibly soft skin of his lips burned itself into Nicholas’s brain, he’s been paying much closer attention to the Humanoid Typhoon.

To the way that he moves, effortlessly swaying out of proximity of anyone around him, never in danger of bumping an elbow or stepping on a toe. To the way he’ll fall into a group of strangers like an old drinking buddy, but any friendly arm slung over his shoulder slides off after a moment as easily and harmlessly as sand off a tin roof. Human contact seems to put Vash on edge, seems to be something he’s unnaturally adept at avoiding – except.

Except for the time that Roberto absently ruffled his hair and Vash nearly tripped over his feet, an entire array of emotions washing over his pale, pretty face before he managed to clamp down on them. What was left was one of the most genuine little smiles Nicholas had seen from him – and he realized, with a sour taste in his mouth, that Vash had turned several of those smiles onto Nicholas himself.

Except for once when Meryl had too much to drink and threw her arms around Vash’s waist, wailing into his (deceptively muscular, Nicholas now knows) chest that he’s just so nice, and she doesn’t understand why everyone is so mean to him.

Nicholas was about to clue Meryl in to some very unkind knowledge about very kind people, but he stopped when he saw Vash get a look like all of the air had gone from his lungs. Instead he stayed quiet, watching mismatched hands settle on Meryl’s petite shoulders. Hesitate. Grip briefly, tight for just a moment like they never wanted to let go – and then Vash was gently shushing her, shooing her, extricating himself from her clinging grip.

Vash ended up on Nicholas’s side of the booth somehow, sitting close on the worn-out bench, and Nicholas tested. He just…tested; just leaned forward, elbows on the table to mimic Vash’s posture as he reached for his glass, and his arm and leg brushed against Vash’s. Nicholas didn’t look but he listened, heard the soft intake of breath, felt the moment of hesitation before Vash somehow moved away without moving at all.

Except – the next time their legs brushed, Vash didn't pull away. By then he had a few drinks in him, and Nicholas could tell that he was distracted by the contact.

After that night, Nicholas kept testing, formulating the theory in his head, both hungry for confirmation and loath to question why. It’s suddenly far too important to him that Vash accept Nicholas’s touch, his closeness, that he stop constantly slipping away like a mirage. It’s a nudge of knee to knee here, a leading arm around the elbow there, a gradual press until he’s in Vash’s space more often than he’s out of it.

And Vash… well, for the most part, he takes it. He tries not to show how much it ruffles him, but Nicholas is pretty good at picking people apart and he can see the pieces that shiver apart in Vash’s expression, in his body language. The more Nicholas puts himself in Vash’s space, the longer it seems to take for Vash to react and pull back enough to give himself a buffer, until two weeks later he’s actually allowing himself to slump into the corner of another booth, at another bar, gangly legs thrown over Nicholas’s lap and arms crossed in his oversized coat.

This is the fourth time Nicholas has touched him and Vash hasn’t immediately swerved and deflected it.

"Feels sprained to me,” Nicholas says quietly, gently palpating the swollen, bruised mess that is Vash the Stampede’s bare foot. His normally scrawny ankle is thick with fluid, vivid purples already painting his heel and the side of his foot. “Saw a lot of these at the orphanage, one wrong roll and it’d keep a kid off his feet for six weeks.”

Vash doesn’t respond, but judging by how quickly the vicious gash on his forehead knitted itself into a thin silver line, he won’t need six weeks – hell, he might not even need two.

“We can splint it,” he continues, glancing over to assess Vash’s face. “I know you’re not going to stop running around on it like a maniac.”

One palm is still levered against the arch of the gunslinger’s foot, keeping it bent at a 90-degree angle, but the other hand is easing gentle pressure up the back of Vash’s calf, fingertips pressing into overwrought muscles. He knows it’s sore, even if Vash hasn’t complained once; he saw the wince at the corner of those blue-green-blue eyes when Vash put weight on it earlier.

Those eyes look especially green today, pitched against the redness surrounding them from lack of sleep, and they’re glued to Nicholas’s hands, the expression around them vacant and slack. He’s in his own world again, one that seems to center around the contact of calloused fingers and bare skin as Nicholas’s middle finger finds the edge of a scar trailing up into the cuff of his pants. His cheeks are pinker than their usual sunburned tint, Nicholas can’t help but notice.

“Needle-noggin.” Nicholas squeezes the wiry muscle under his hand, careful not to jostle the ankle. It’s uncharacteristically gentle, but then, hasn’t he been uncharacteristically gentle all morning? Is it so wrong to be gentle with Vash, who doesn’t seem to know what to do with it?

Shouldn’t someone be gentle with him, if he won’t do it himself? With everything he's been through and everything coming his way?

No. This isn't a line of thought that Nicholas can afford to follow.

“Hey. Vash.” Another squeeze and this time he gets through; Vash blinks, the mesmer broken, and seems to pull himself up from somewhere very deep and realize that he’s not where he’d like to be. “I’m gonna splint your ankle.”

“You don’t have to–” Vash starts, predictably, infuriatingly, trying to swing his legs out of Nicholas’s lap. He falters when the hands on his calf and foot don’t budge at all. “I’ll go easy on it, it’ll heal up fine.”

“Like the rest of you?” Nicholas retorts sharply, then immediately feels a wash of unsettling guilt when Vash droops like a kicked puppy. He shoves at the feeling, distancing himself from it, because he’s right and he knows it: he’s seen the gunslinger shirtless, seen the tapestry of scars and patchwork modifications that hold Vash’s body together. He’s seen the price that this man pays for his pacifism and his pathological inability to ask for help.

Vash doesn’t seem to have any fight left in him. Nicholas wonders how much of it is their sleepless night, and how much of it is related to the way he can’t seem to keep his eyes off of Nicholas’s hands.

“...Okay,” Vash murmurs, crystalline turquoise eyes raking over Nicholas’s face for an answer that Nicholas isn’t sure he wants found. “You can splint it.”

—

The fifth time, there isn’t really a choice. There are so many ways in which it’s simply the only option.

“Come on, don’t be silly.”

Nicholas is shucking off his jacket, kicking out of his suit to change into softer clothes for sleeping. It’s not technically his turn on the floor, but Vash went through the windshield of a truck today and he needs the bed more than Nicholas does.

“Don’t you ever accuse me of being silly again,” Nicholas scolds, wagging a mock-threatening finger at the puppy-eyed heap in the double bed. Vash is stripped to a pair of worn sweatpants, shirt discarded in favor of a haphazard array of gauze pads and bandages across his back. The wounds will be scattered pink flecks by this time tomorrow, but there’s no sense in leaving them exposed in the meantime to collect dirt and discomfort.

“I won’t if you’ll quit giving me reason, ” Vash huffs, sitting up and throwing his arms – well, arm, as his prosthetic is laid carefully next to his gun on the bedside table – wide. “You said it yourself, I could sleep in a milk crate. There’s plenty of room for you on the bed.”

He’s no longer self-conscious of his scars, not after Nicholas has reinforced several times that he could not give less of a fuck. What Vash doesn’t realize is that Nicholas always ends up distracted by how soft his hair looks, flopping over his forehead and ears after a shower, damp and free of product; or how long and soft his fingers are when stripped of the shooting glove.

“There’s even more room for me on the floor, and I’m perfectly okay with that.” He’s already shaking out the spare blankets, kicking his shoes aside to make a bit more room where he wants the pillow. There’s a long pause, and Nicholas is about ready to consider the subject closed when Vash’s voice breaks through the quiet.

“Nicholas, please. It’s… it’s gonna be freezing tonight.”

It’s the way he says it. It’s the care, the way Vash’s perfect, soft mouth wraps around each syllable of his name, making the simplicity of Ni-cho-las sound like something valuable. He doesn’t use it much, seems cognizant of the fact that it does something to Nicholas, but perhaps that makes it worse: there’s no forced exposure, no way to acclimatize.

There’s just Nicholas, somehow stripped bare by the simplicity of Vash’s full attention.

“...Okay.”

Even Vash seems surprised at how easily Nicholas caves. Nicholas doesn’t dwell on it, chooses not to dwell on it, stooping to snatch the pillow back up and toss it onto the mattress before dropping down after it.

Vash is right. Rather, he’s quoting Nicholas having been completely correct, as usual. Vash the Stampede, the Humanoid Typhoon, the six billion double-dollar man, smiles and curls up like a kitten on his side of the bed. In a matter of seconds all of that length, all that broad-shouldered lank, folds into a compact ball of limbs tucked around the empty socket of his stump.

“Only because you’re a fuckin’ furnace, ” Nicholas grumbles, punching his pillow a few times before settling into it. There’s still space on the mattress for him to sprawl comfortably but he can feel the radiating heat of Vash’s bare back against his arm, even without touching him.

He can’t help but look at the body curled next to him, eyes traveling along the sharp slope from tiny waist to curved shoulder, cataloging the map of textures and tones composing the fretwork of Vash’s scars beneath the bandages that decorate his body; can’t help watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, relaxed, somehow at ease with showing his back to Nicholas of all people, comfortable with the idea of taking his fucking arm off. Leaving himself vulnerable.

Nicholas can’t help but wonder if that would even make a difference, if he were to pull a gun. If he were to try right now to put a bullet through the back of that fluffy head.

“Don’t kick me,” Nicholas mumbles, wrenching his gaze back to the ceiling and pulling the bedsheets up over both of them. They’re not very thick, but they trap the warmth nicely.

“I don’t kick,” Vash murmurs. Nicholas can hear the laughter nipping at the edge of the words.

Turns out, Vash does kick. He kicks hard, actually, and it has Nicholas snapping awake in the middle of the night, reaching for the pistol on the bedside table and looking for the fight, looking for the problem, looking for the threat–

There’s nothing in the room. The moons cast their shadows across the floor, the window is still securely shut, the bathroom door still wide open. For a moment, fingertips pressed to the cold metal of his gun, Nicholas is confused about what woke him.

There’s a whimper from somewhere near his hip.

Vash.

The gunslinger has rolled over, still curled small but facing Nicholas now. Instead of a comfortable crumple, there’s an electric sort of tension winding through his curled form, from the way his face grinds into the pillow to the hand gripping at his stumped shoulder…to the long leg jutted out across the bed.

“Son of a bitch, you do kick,” Nicholas hisses, the understanding dawning that he’s just been roused by one of the sharpest knees on Noman’s Land. The ire fades as quickly as it rose when Vash lets out another pathetic little noise and twitches like he’s touched a live wire.

“Hey, blondie, hey. ” Nicholas drops back onto one elbow, reaching for Vash – trying to slip his fingers in between the thin hand and the skin it seems to be trying to pull up – but he gets no response, just another harsh twitch. Like a hypnic jerk, except it doesn’t wake Vash up.

He’s muttering something, strained and under his breath. Nicholas tips closer, listens as he works to dig the gunslinger’s nails out of his own shoulder, and his gut shakes when he recognizes a slurred string of sorry, sorry I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“Vash!”

The hand comes free, clamping tight around Nicholas’s own, and Nicholas’s other hand buries itself in that flyaway blonde – this wasn’t how he wanted to feel Vash’s hair clean, wasn’t how he wanted to discover that it’s light and thick and soft like something unbelievably expensive, but Nicholas doesn’t know what else to do. This isn’t the first time he’s been roused by Vash mumbling or moving in his sleep, not the first hint that the guy’s baggage comes out to bite him in the form of nightmares, but this is the first time Nicholas has seen him try to claw himself open. It’s the first time the mumbling has sounded so helpless – the words of an apology, but the desperate cadence of a plea.

“Vash, wake up. Vash. ”

Several things happen at once.

One: Nicholas once had his hand run over by a larger kid on a bicycle and fractured several of the bones. What Vash does to his hand now feels like that did then.

Two: Vash’s body jerks hard away from him, feet planted in the mattress, but the crushing pressure on Nicholas’s hand drags him along and he narrowly avoids collapsing right onto the panicked gunslinger.

Three: Those blazing blue eyes snap open and dart around the room. They glow with the shimmering filigree of Plant bioluminescence, fixing on Nicholas for only a moment before sliding away.

Four: Vash begins to hyperventilate.

“Easy, easy,” Nicholas shushes hastily, overcoming the initial shock of he’s glowing, Stampede is GLOWING again to hurriedly press his palm to Vash’s cheek. He’s sweating now, shaking and wheezing. “You’re okay, blondie. Look at me, you had a nightmare. You’re okay. You tried to rip your goddamn stump off, but you’re okay now.”

He’s expecting Vash to realize how close he is at any second, to shimmy away and hastily slap those sunny, reassuring walls back up. He’s expecting embarrassment, maybe, though there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. He’s expecting Vash to rubber-band snap back to the shallow, cheerful normalcy that he clings to like he’s trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.

What Nicholas is not expecting is for Vash to yank on his hand, somehow managing to cling to Nicholas’s whole forearm with just one of his own. The stump of his severed arm moves in a heartbreaking attempt to reach, to grasp, with no hand attached to help it.

Nicholas doesn’t see another option. Carefully, gingerly, he maneuvers his captive arm and pulls Vash up into a bear hug, pressing him close.

“Breathe, blondie, listen to me and breathe,” he murmurs, and God in Heaven it’s been way too long since Nicholas tried to offer someone real comfort. He’s stretching way back into the depths of his own brain, to toddlers and scraped knees and Livio clinging to his shirt; trying to apply that to an inhuman, incomprehensible creature suffering from a pain that Nicholas can’t place and probably isn’t able to soothe.

But the creature – Vash – squirms and shakes and sobs against him just like a child, clings just like one. He only has one arm to squeeze with and Nicholas still feels like he might cough up a lung from the constriction.

Both hands free now, Nicholas puts one between Vash’s jagged shoulder blades and one back into the incredible softness of his hair. He’s still talking, just nonsense really, anything to keep Vash’s attention and give him some sort of hook to ground him. It feels so important to ground him, to get him to look up and no longer be wearing that shattered, vacant look. Nicholas lets his hands wander, soothing over ruined skin and through silky, cowlicked hair, blunt nails scritching through the close-shorn fuzz at the nape of Vash’s neck.

There’s no clock in the room. No way to tell how long they stay like that, wrapped up in each other in the middle of the bed. Somehow, Nicholas doesn’t care. He only cares that the wretched little noises slow, quieting into a gentle, sparse hiccuping. The wet spot on his sleep shirt stops growing. Vash’s arm loosens to leave a sweat-damp band of overheated skin in its wake – but from the feel of it, remains caught loosely in the back of Nicholas’s shirt.

Vash takes a deep breath, starting to speak. Nicholas knows what’s coming and pushes that stupid, pretty face into his chest, but all it does is muffle the words. He can’t stop them.

“I’m sorry,” Vash murmurs thickly. Because of course he is. Because of fucking course he is.

“Don’t,” Nicholas warns, gripping tight.

“Woke you–” Vash starts, but the rest of the sentence comes out on a stiff wheeze because Nicholas has squeezed his arms hard enough around Vash’s ribcage – just for a moment – to force the air out of him.

“I don’t care,” he growls, cutting off any attempt to continue. “I don’t care, I’d rather be awake than leave you to deal with that alone.”

Vash draws in a sharp breath then, but he doesn’t respond. And… he doesn’t pull back, either. He hangs there, heavy and warm in Nicholas’s arms, for a few more minutes before he starts visibly piecing himself back together. When he finally does pull away – slowly, gently enough that Nicholas’s hands are left to drop into the tangle of their legs – the bone-deep weariness that he usually masks so well is naked on his face and in the heavy slump of his shoulders. His eyes are no longer glowing, but they’re wet and red-rimmed against the lingering clammy paleness of him.

Nicholas can’t help but be reminded that this gangling slip of a thing is far older than he is. Older than any human.

“Why are you doing this?” Vash asks quietly, voice shaking and thick in his throat. He’s scanning over Nicholas’s face with those bleary, tired eyes, like he’s struggling with a puzzle and starting to suspect that he’s missing some of the pieces.

At first Nicholas isn’t sure how to respond. He doesn’t have to be doing this. He could get up now, should get up now, go have a smoke and leave Vash to collect himself. Maybe slink back to the floor, get some space between them and write it off as begrudging the gunslinger for having said I don’t kick and then knocked a dent in his leg.

He should put the correct distance between a guard dog and its charge.

He doesn’t do any of those things. He picks up his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, slowly reaches out to push back the hair sticking to Vash’s sweat-damp forehead. Vash sees it coming, watches it, doesn’t move. Nicholas’s palm presses against his forehead and Vash’s eyes fall shut; it slides to his temple, down to his cheek, and Vash turns his nose into Nicholas’s wrist. He leans into the contact like he’s starved for it, like he’ll die if Nicholas pulls away, barely breathing.

“You’d do the same for me.” It’s a cop-out answer, murmured on a slow exhale, but it’s true. Vash blinks at him blankly but there’s no way he can refute it: he’d do it for anyone. Any stranger on the street.

Nicholas, on the other hand, wouldn’t.

“...C’mon,” he murmurs, breaking contact only for long enough to tug his cuffs down and start wiping the sweat and tears from Vash’s face. There’s some snot too, Nicholas is pretty sure. He ignores it while Vash blinks at him in something that looks uncomfortably like awe, lets himself be mopped up and then nudged back down onto the mattress.

This time, though, Wolfwood shuffles down right behind him and when he pulls the blanket up, he slips his arm beneath Vash’s head as well. He can feel the solid structure of Vash’s spine, the tense sweep of his ribs, drawn against Nicholas’s side by the slight sag of the old mattress. Despite the palpable nervous tension thrumming through Vash’s body, he's been shockingly compliant.

“This better?” Nicholas murmurs, and when he tips his head Vash’s hair is right there under his nose. He can smell the faint synthetic floral scent of the shampoo they pocketed three motels ago and under that, a gentle tangy sweetness that's distinctly Vash. They’re so unbelievably close. It’s not exactly cuddling, but there isn’t another word that quite describes the way their bodies have slotted together so neatly, the way Vash's back fits against his side. Nicholas folds his arm over his own stomach, knuckles brushing Vash’s bare skin, and smooths the pad of his thumb down that ridged line of vertebrae; feels Vash sink in on himself like a deflating balloon at the slow touch.

“...Yeah,” Vash breathes, barely audible. Nicholas feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth uninvited.

“Thought so."

#trigun #trigun stampede #trigun fanfiction #my writing #vashwood #ao3 link #ao3 fic #sorry idk how to fics on tumblr anymore #i will learn

31 notes · View notes