#poly vashwood

[heich0e]

begin - nicholas wolfwood/f!reader (trigun) prequel to the poly!au, bounty hunters!au, wild west-ish, tw BLOOD/INJURIES, reader is patching up a bullet wound so warning for all the expected nastiness that entails, tw mentions of attemped assault (not reader and not in detail), mentions of sex work, gratuitous mentions of nico's stubble

BOUND - poly!au masterlist

You live in a nothing town, in the dead middle of nowhere, called The Bend.

It’s called that because a long time ago—long before your days, or your daddy’s days, or even your granddaddy’s days—there used to be a wide, rushing freshwater river snaking through the valley, and right where the town centre now sits is where it used to turn east to the far-away sea. 

But the river’s dried up now, and it took the green grass with it.

The sea is farther than you could ever hope to travel. 

And the B on the sign that marks the border into your dusty little nothing-nowhere town has rusted off and decayed away with the years, which means the only warning that any misguided traveller has to tell them where they’re heading is an ominous old sign, half-rotted, that reads:

Welcome to The  end.

It’s fitting, you think. An omen to give anyone who wanders within spitting distance of the border a final caution that they have one last chance to turn around. A choice to get out while they still can.

It’s a choice you never had.

You were born and raised in The Bend. Your blood runs thick with the dust that coats the decrepit old town. It’s all you’ve ever known, and all you ever will know; your beginning, your middle, and your miserable, inexorable end.

Because that’s the thing about The Bend: few people ever show up here and those who do aren’t stupid enough to stay. And the unfortunate few that are born from the dusty earth and dried up riverbeds, like you? Well, those ones never leave.

There’s some comfort to be taken from that, you suppose; a kind of stability that comes from monotony. From certain inevitability. Every day the same, unchanging. A familiarity to the nothingness of your little town, your little house, your little life.

But then, on a night just like any other, something changes.

One night, you meet him.

Nicholas isn’t quite sure how he ended up here, but he isn’t all that surprised either. 

There’s something kind of undeniably fitting about bleeding out in the middle of fucking nowhere, supported on either side by two of the finest prostitutes The Bend has to offer—and flanked by a handful more as the group guides him through the dark, dusty night.

The Bend isn’t the first hellhole town Nicholas has ever stumbled into. His line of work has brought him to more than his fair share of seedy dumps just like this one. Towns like this are the perfect place for someone to hide from the law after all, because not many people would bother to come looking for you in places that might as well not exist. Most bounty hunters don’t even know about this particular town, and they don’t care to learn, especially since half the maps on the market don’t even bother marking its sorry half-existence down.

But Nicholas isn’t like most bounty hunters.

That’s what brought him to The Bend.

There’s a vicious flash of lightning that suddenly forks through the sky overhead, lighting up the dim, depressing town and the dusty valley beyond it as brightly as the midday sun for just a blink. It’s followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder that makes the packed earth under his unsteady feet tremble, and Nicholas knows that means the lightning’s closer than he cares for it to be.

“’s it gonna rain?” he slurs, tearing his eyes away from the sky and looking over to the woman supporting him on his right (or is that his left?)

He wracks his hazy, addled brain as he tries to remember her name. Starts with a V, he’s pretty sure. Victoria? Viola?

She snorts, her ruby rouged lips lifting at one painted corner. “Honey, it’s been almost five months since we’ve seen a drop of rain around here, and even then it was nothin’ to write home about. You just focus on puttin’ one boot in front of the other, and don’t go gettin’ your hopes up.” 

All at once, Nicholas is reminded of the burning pain in his arm; the searing, radiating agony of a bullet nestled deep into flesh. 

Oh. Right.

He got shot.

It’s not the first time he’s suffered a similar wound, nor will it likely be the last if he makes it through the night—God, or whatever all-knowing bastard’s out there, willing. That doesn’t make it any less of a miserable bitch to deal with, though.

How the hell did he get shot, again?

He ponders this question for a moment, reflecting on it through alcohol sodden introspection, and the answer comes back to him in bits and pieces as he keeps aimlessly shuffling along through the night.

The sound of heels clicking overhead at the town saloon—that’s the first thing he remembers. The clacking metronome of Big Annie’s working girls crossing the wooden floorboards of the brothel that operates above the only place in this awful little town to get a half-decent drink.

A drink. 

Yes, it was something bitter and dark—completely nauseating to presently even think about. It burned on the way down, and now it sloshes unpleasantly in his stomach as he walks. The girls had made him down the better part of a bottle after he’d been shot—to help with the pain, they’d said, and he’d been anything but reluctant to heed their advice—and he’d already had fair a few glasses earlier in the evening as he’d occupied his table in the corner of the bar on top of that. Panic had palpably sizzled between the women while they watched the tattered cloth Nicholas held to his arm ink steadily darker with scarlet in the lamplight of the old bar following the shooting—the tension building amongst them like the perspiration beading at his temple. They were bickering about something then.

No, not something.

Someone.

“We gotta take him to see Mama!” 

It was Charity who said that, he recalls—the pretty little thing with full lips and a mane of thick, curly hair that Nicholas had complimented the first time he ever saw her traipsing through the saloon. She can’t be a whole lot older than 20, and her voice is still high and childlike; even more so that particular evening as she stomped her foot petulantly, looking over at him with worry-filled eyes as she made her plea to the other girls watching him bleed out in the musty wooden booth.

“Mama won't want anything to do with this one.”

That was Violetta who’d replied to Charity’s fractious appeal. She’s one of the older girls who works for Big Annie at the brothel. She’s got a sort of seasoned air to her, with a husky rasp in her voice—like the sand that blows through the empty streets in town has roughened it. She’s still undeniably pretty, but she comes across a little tougher than the rest of them. Doing the job she does in a town like this one, Nicholas doesn’t blame her for it.

Violetta’s the one currently supporting his right side, leading him through the night towards the woman who’s supposed to be his saving grace.

Towards Mama.

But who the hell is that?

He’s sure he’s heard the name in passing while he’s been kicking around the town saloon between his work, nursing half-noxious drinks and flirting harmlessly here and there with Big Annie’s working girls—who seem to have taken a liking to lingering around his table between visits from johns. 

Nicholas wasn’t even supposed to be staying in The Bend long, only for a day or two to follow up on a bounty lead he’d caught wind of three towns over—but the lead went cold, and a few days turned into almost a week. Nevertheless, while his stay may have been extended, he just he never thought to ask any more questions about this mysterious matriarch all the working girls seemed to know so well and speak so highly of. But now, as those very same girls are dragging his half-conscious ass to the other side of town in search of this Mama, he wishes that maybe he’d dug a little deeper.

“Mama’s gonna get you all fixed up, handsome,” little Charity appears on Violetta’s other side, her eyes wide enough as she stares at him that they reflect the next flash of lightning as it rips through the dark of night. She looks worried, in spite of her words—even in his present state of drunkenness and blood loss fuelled delirium, he can tell that much. 

They all do. Even the toughest, Violetta—though she seems reluctant to let on as she stands stoically at his side and shoulders his flagging, stumbling weight. 

Charity nods, but it’s a gesture that seems more to reassure herself than anyone else. “Mama always takes care of us; she’ll have you good as new by morning.” 

Ah, so this woman must be a doctor of sorts—or as close to it as a shithole little town like this can offer.

It’s Nicholas’ turn to nod, a bobble of his cotton-filled head the only recognition he can muster to her words, as he just keeps staggering on under their guidance. He’s lucky that The Bend even has some kind of doctor to look after him, even if it’s just some old lady who looks after the saloon girls.

The unlikely group soon arrives at the doorstep of a little house at the edge of town—as slummy and dilapidated as all the rest of them—and Queenie, the girl who’d moments before been supporting Nicholas’s injured left side, raps sharply on the door.

“She’s not gonna answer,” Violetta mutters dourly under her breath, still at Nicholas’ right side.

“She will,” Charity counters with her arms crossed over her chest, punctuating the assertion with an indignant little huff for good measure. “Mama always answers when we come knockin’.”

But Nicholas worries for a moment—a long moment as the door stays firmly shut—that Violetta might just have a point. It’s the middle of the night after all, and this ‘Mama’ could very well be sleeping like any other reasonable person would be at this hour. 

Queenie knocks on the wooden door for a second time, this time with an open palm. This series of raps is a little louder. A little more insistent.

“Mama? It’s us! Open up!” she calls, casting a worried glance over her shoulder at Nicholas—who’s got his entire weight slumped over onto poor Violetta, now.

Nicholas is bleeding out on the front porch, and part of him still almost feels bad for waking up some poor, unsuspecting old—

The door flies open.

“What the hell do you want?”

Oh.

Nicholas knows that his eyes travel up your frame in a way that can only be considered wholly impolite. But he’s not really in his right mind, after all—or at least that’s what he tells himself as he justifies his immodest stare. He starts at the uneven cuffs of your paper-thin trousers, before climbing up, up, up your body to the tight white undershirt your wear—appreciating the way it clings to the curve of your waist and sits snug around your chest, and he particularly admires the pretty little edge of lace that frills around the neckline at your breasts. Finally, his gaze makes it to your face, and you look irritated to say the absolute least on the matter.

He’s not all that sure what he was expecting to find on the other side of the chipped paint of this shabby front door, but he can say with a steady hand to his foolhardy heart that it certainly wasn’t you.

For a moment, Nicholas is convinced they’ve got the wrong house—as improbable as that might be in a town as small as this one. At the very least, he waits for someone else to come to the door—a mother, or grandmother even—because surely you can’t be the one that these women have been calling—

“Mama! You gotta help us,” Queenie exclaims. She’s luckily perceptive enough to stick out her foot once she sees you fully process just what’s waiting for you outside, keeping the door jammed open with her heeled boot as you rush to slam it shut.

“I haven’t gotta do anything,” you counter sharply from around the edge of the door, your face pinching in a blatantly vexed expression at the way the woman is keeping it ajar.

Your eyes flicker over to Nicholas through the gap between the door and its frame, surveying him with a look of disdain that might just have been enough to offend him if he were a little more himself.

“Mama, he got shot!” Charity suddenly bursts into what can only be described as a spectacular display of tears—blubbering noisily between each word as she elbows her way through the group towards your door. She reaches across the threshold and desperately clutches at the front of your shirt with both hands as she pleads to you. “P-please let us in, y-you’re the only one who can h-he-help him.”

“Bertie, what in God’s merciful name is wrong with you?” you sigh aggrievedly, roughly batting her hands away from their grip on your clothes. In the next breath, you wrench open the front door to your home, stepping back to allow your unexpected visitors the space to cross through the doorway. “And cut the waterworks or you’re gonna wake up half The Bend and get us all shot.”

As the girls help Nicholas inside and across the gnarled, warped floorboards of your little house, you slip wordlessly away into another room out of sight. When you return moments later, you’ve pulled on a creased button-down over that pretty little undershirt of yours. 

Nicholas can’t help but notice that you’re dressed practically like a man, especially in comparison to the painted faces and petticoats of the other women in the room. But it strangely suits you, for reasons he can’t quite place.

“He got shot fightin’ some bozo tryin’ to rough up Ada on her way home,” Violetta explains when you look to her with an expression that demands context. She’s the most level-headed of the five woman gathered in your tiny home, so no one can blame you for turning to her first. 

Nicholas feels dizzy, the modest lamp-lit room around him reeling like a child’s toy spinning top gaining speed. 

Did he do that?

He remembers hearing something out back in the alley that runs behind the saloon and the inn when he went out to take a piss late into to the evening, well after it had dropped dark. He was already sufficiently drunk by that point, but there was no mistaking the sound of a woman putting up a fight the moment that he heard it. He followed the racket and found the pair quickly—on instinct more than anything—grabbing the drunken man by the scruff of the neck and hauling him off the poor girl he was trying to force himself on. In the ensuing scuffle, the man pulled a gun that Nicholas wasn’t expecting. With his senses drink-dulled, he didn’t react quickly enough to miss the shot entirely and caught it in his arm—but he’s lucky the guy had such terrible aim to begin with, or the night could have turned out a whole lot worse.

But who’s this Ada? He thought the girl he’d helped’s name was Priscilla—having met her a few times in the saloon. She was always quieter than the rest of them, a little more reserved. She didn’t say much to anyone from what Nicholas had witnessed in his time spent in The Bend. But Ada’s not the first name he’s heard since showing up at your door that’s unfamiliar to him.

“You've got a lot of nerve dragging some no-good, half-cocked brute to my door like this in the middle of the damn night, Sarah Jane,” you hiss through your teeth, your eyes flickering from Violetta over to Nicholas once more.

Violetta snorts, but offers no argument.

“Please, Mama,” Priscilla (or is it Ada? Nicholas can’t keep track anymore) says quietly, though her tone is unmistakably earnest. It’s the first time she’s said anything since the girls came stumbling through your door with the injured man propped between them. First time he remembers her saying anything at all—at least other than when he heard her screaming and chased off the scum that was hassling her.

Your attention suddenly turns to where Priscilla stands just off near the corner of the little room, with Theodosia (another one of Big Annie’s working girls) at her side with a comforting arm looped around her waist. It’s not hard to see the way the woman trembles as she holds her shawl around her shoulders. She’s got a bad scrape across her cheek, and her lip is split—evidence of the ordeal she’d gone through earlier in the evening. Her skin still looks clammy and sallow from the shock. 

Your expression softens as you contemplate her.

“C’mere, Adaline,” you beckon to her, reaching out a hand. “Step into the light and let me take a look at you.”

She approaches you without any reservation, and you carefully inspect her wounds after taking her face gently in your hands. A long, resigned sigh slips from your lips once a moment has passed, having turned her face this way and that to fully scrutinize her condition. You look around at the women gathered in your home, and the man slumping between them, then your head hangs in defeat. Your hand lifts to pinch the bridge of your nose.

“Bertie, go grab my bag from my room. Georgie, fetch some clean water from the basin in the kitchen.”

Charity and Theodosia move briskly once you’ve issued the order—like they don’t want to give you the opportunity to change your mind.

Nicholas finds it a little funny how easily these women yield to you, though most seem to be your seniors—you’re just a scrappy young thing, only a few years into your adulthood if he had to guess. As he watches you, he sees that you carry yourself with a  certain quality that’s beyond your years—every action and word steeped with a sort of weary assuredness that you haven’t even lived long enough to properly earn. 

He watches you move with the grace of a woman, and listens to you speak with the authority of a man—and It could be the blood loss talking, but Nicholas thinks you might just be the most interesting thing he’s stumbled upon in this god-forsaken little town.

“You’re a doctor?”

You freeze, your head snapping in his direction when you finally hear him speak.

Your lip curls and you bare your teeth to him, and Nicholas is suddenly reminded of those city cats that wander the back alleys in Julai, hissing with their hackles raised when you happen across their path.

“Do I look like a doctor to you?” you sneer at him derisively.

For some unplaceable reason, Nicholas almost wants to laugh—the sensation bubbling up in his stomach in the wake of your harsh words.

(Though, that might just be the liquor.)

“Her daddy was a doctor,” Queenie whispers to him quietly as she and Violetta help Nicholas up onto the wooden table at the centre of the room at your instruction, leaning him back until he’s laid flat across it with a grunt. “Only one The Bend’s seen in the last 80 years."

“Prudence, you better shut your damn mouth if you want me to do anything about this mess,” you snap without looking up, busy rifling through the ancient leather medicine bag that Charity just dragged in from the other room.

You tend to Priscilla first, fixing her up with a compress on her cheek and a salve for the cut on her lip. She’s not the most desperate case in the room, but no one tries to turn your attention to the man on the table until you’re good and ready to do so of your own accord—a unanimous, though entirely unspoken, pact of silence lest your precarious agreement to help be withdrawn. Once you’re satisfied that the woman’s been sufficiently looked after, leaving her once more in the dutiful care of Theodosia, you finally turn to Nicholas.

The lamplight is fairly dim, even though you’ve moved it closer to the table to help illuminate your work—and there’s very little oil in the grimy reservoir of the glass lamp to keep it burning.

You approach him slowly.

“You a lefty?” you ask him, plunking yourself down in the wooden chair nearest to his injured left arm.

“Luckily not,” he slurs, his head lolling over to look at you as you sit beside him at the table.

“Luckily?” You huff, and Nicholas thinks that maybe it’s as close to a laugh as someone as mirthless as you ever gets. “You must not’ve heard: luck left The Bend years ago, and it’s not coming back.”

Nicholas really does find himself laughing then in the face of your plain, bur distinctly dour expression—and he immediately winces as a sharp pain shoots through him from the strain of trying to hold it back.

Your eyes survey the sopping, blood-soaked handkerchief he’s holding to his injury, then you lean over towards the medicine bag and begin digging through it again. He watches as you pull out an inhumanely large needle and some thread.

“Clear out, ladies,” you remark flatly to the group of onlookers without glancing up from the contents of the bag before you. “None of you are gonna wanna see this.”

The girls delay momentarily even after you bark out the order, as though worried that once they leave the room your willingness to help may exit with them.

You lift your face in their direction, some gauze and a corked flask of an indistinguishable transparent liquid in hand. Your lips pull down noticeably at the corners when you see the way the women are hesitating. “Go on, then. I’m making this exception for you once, and never again. Get Ada back home safe, and then the rest of you oughta do the same.”

Still, no one seems keen to heed your words.

You and Violetta share a pointed look, and it’s clear your patience—hardly-there to begin with—has worn dangerously thin.

“Alright, whores—clear out!” the older woman says, turning on her heel and corralling Queenie, Charity, Priscilla, and Theodosia towards the door with her arms outstretched. “Unless one of y’all are keen to be the next one who needs stitchin'!”

It takes a moment to get everyone moving—Charity in particular putting up more of a fight than the rest of them—but eventually Violetta succeeds in ushering them out. She casts one final glance back from the doorway, and Nicholas catches the exchange of almost imperceptible nods of thanks between you.

It’s unbearably quiet once they’re gone.

You move swiftly but silently, and set to work without a single word exchanged between you and the man stretched across your table. Without hesitating, you drag a thin blade in two strokes up the front of Nicholas’s bloodstained shirt—one cut along the torso and then another up the sleeve—and then pull off whatever’s in your way. You don’t so much as bat an eye as the tanned skin of his chest and abdomen is suddenly bared; there’s no distinguishable emotion or thought on your face that Nicholas can make out, but he’s also fairly distracted as he bites back the groans of pain that threaten to slip out each time you jostle his injured arm too roughly. 

Next, you begin cleaning the surface of the wound—as best you can given that it’s still unstitched—in preparation to fish out and remove the bullet still stuck inside. That little flask from earlier has some sort of antiseptic in it, which Nicholas discerns by the acrid smell and unbearable burning that rips through him as you let it trickle over the open gouge in his skin. He cries out as it happens, and the sound even takes him by surprise—guttural and completely instinctive.

“Don’t be a baby,” you sniff, dabbing away at the blood and antiseptic around his wound with some clean gauze.

“Sorry,” Nicholas mumbles through his panting breaths, pressing his opposite hand over his mouth in an attempt to keep himself quiet.

Your eyes flicker up to his briefly in the wake of his apology, and your gazes meet. You’re the first to look away after the momentary hold.

Next, you tip the flask into your hands, coating your palms in the stinging, astringent antiseptic. The lamplight catches in the little droplets as you shake them from your fingertips.

“My daddy told me once that doctors have to tell lies to keep their patients calm,” you say quietly, your lips pursing forward as you wrap one cool hand underneath his bicep. “Said that it’s just part of the job.”

You suck in a little breath, meeting his gaze briefly once more.

He can’t help but think your eyes look pretty when the light reflects in them like this. 

“But I’m no doctor—and this is gonna hurt like fresh hell.”

Outside your rickety little house on the edge of this forgotten, nowhere town, another peal of thunder roars.

You don’t often patch up bullet holes.

In fact, you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve tried.

But you’re not a professional, and you’ve never claimed to be; you’re just a doctor’s daughter who used to follow her father on his rounds through town, helping out whenever and wherever it was needed. Unavoidably, you learned some things along the way—like treatments, and time-honoured remedies, and how to sew a stitch so it won’t pucker when it scars—but you’re about as far as anyone could be from trained. You’ve got no education beyond your reading, writing, and basic arithmetic—what little education the school house in town could offer you until you just stopped going altogether—and your experience is limited only to the care you offer to Big Annie’s girls: whether it’s cleaning up the messes left by their particularly nasty customers or treating them as best you can when they fall ill. 

You don’t bother telling any of this to the man bleeding all over your table, though. You doubt it would do him much good.

Daddy used to deal with gunshot wounds all the time. They’re about a dime a dozen in a town like The Bend, after all, where tempers are high and spirits are low—not to mention where the men outnumber the women by about ten-to-one. 

And if there’s one thing you know about men, it’s that they all love slinging guns but less than half of them ought to be allowed to—because it always leads to injuries like this. It’s rarely ever women who walk around town getting themselves shot.

But in spite of all that, and your lack of experience, you watched your father go through the motions frequently enough that the movements come to you now like second nature: disinfect, remove, keep pressure, suture, bandage. You know the order of things, and you find your mind clear and your hands steady as you set to work—starting by cleaning him up as best you can to prepare to extract the bullet. 

You can see the very butt of it in peeking out from inside his ugly wound; a pesky little thing, slick with blood that catches in the light when his arm twitches towards the lamp. It’s not nestled too deep in there, thankfully, and he’ll probably be fine if he lets it heal properly—but it’ll still hurt like a bitch to pull out. 

But that’s his problem, not yours.

Unfortunately, you don’t have a pair of tweezers you trust to pluck the bullet out—at least not a pair that isn’t rusty—so your god-given tools will have to be what you use for the undertaking. You disinfect your hands as best you can before you begin.

“Would you stop squirming?” you mutter under your breath as the man on your table flinches the first time your fingers graze his open wound.

“Sorry,” he mumbles back, and your eyes flicker up to his face again briefly. 

This man keeps apologizing to you. 

It’s unsettling.

His dark eyes are heavy lidded, but you can still sense them tracing along the lines of your face as you work. There’s visible sweat beading at his temple as he lies flat on his back atop the wooden table in the centre of your home, and his bare chest rises and falls with heavy, laboured breaths that shake every so often on the exhale—the lamplight at your side catches in the perspiration glistening there too, near the little smattering of hair that sits at the highest point of his sternum.

This guy—this stranger who’s bleeding all over the table you eat your meals on—really pisses you off.

He’s got an awful lot of nerve to show up here in the middle of the night, looking for your help after he went and got himself shot. A small part of you knows that’s not entirely fair to think, because he got shot helping Adaline and it was the girls who’d brought him to you in the first place, but you still can’t help but be resentful. 

You feel yourself frown.

Your fingertips dip inside the wet heat of his wound for the first time, and he lets out a gasping, wretched groan from deep in the centre of his chest—so loud it almost makes you flinch.

“Don’t pass out,” you warn him flatly, pinning his injured arm more firmly to the table and prodding further in as you try to get a grip on the evasive little bullet with the very tips of your fingers. “You’re dead weight if you’re unconscious, and I’ll drag you outta this house in parts if I have to.”

“Noted,” the dark-haired man says through clenched teeth, his eyes squeezing shut as he attempts to stomach the pain.

You don’t have anything to offer him to dull the sensation—though you’re not sure you’d waste something so precious on him even if you did. After a while, and a bit more poking and prodding, he seems to acclimatize to the agony anyway. 

Or at the very least he gets better at masking it.

“I’m Nicholas, by the way,” he grits out after a while of you unsuccessfully trying to remove the bullet—frequently having to pause and wipe away the blood that’s continued to seep from the wound, slicking you down to your wrist. It stains the cuff of your shirtsleeve now, and you regret ever pulling it on to begin with, because you know it will be a nightmare to pound out in the wash.

“Didn’t ask.”

“I know,”—miraculously, he manages to laugh a bit, even as you’ve got two fingers digging around inside his arm—“just thought I’d tell ya anyway.”

You don’t bother replying, your eyes honed in solely on the task at bloody hand.

“‘M grateful for your help, y’know. Even if it’s just an exception,” the man—Nicholas—slurs next, his head tipping to the side on your kitchen table. You can tell that he’s talking, if nothing else, to distract himself. A lonely bead of sweat drips down his throat as he looks at you. “It’s awfully nice of ya to take pity on a no-good brute like me, Mama.”

You feel a crick of irritation tighten in your jaw then, as he parrots your earlier words back to you. Your fingers, still poking around to retrieve the bullet in his shoulder, twitch—and you aren’t sure the gesture is entirely involuntary. The man on the table before you yelps, flinching away from the pain, and you lean closer with your eyes still fixed on the wound piercing his skin.

“Don’t call me that,” you hiss through the dull scrape of your teeth grinding tightly together.

Nicholas lifts his right hand to his mouth, curled into a fist, and his pearly teeth bite down hard into the flesh at the base of his thumb as he pants through the pain. You finally, mercifully, manage to get a grip on that damned bullet, plucking it out and tossing it into the waiting dish atop the table with a delicate, terribly anticlimactic clink. You swiftly press a pad of clean gauze to the wound to staunch the bleeding while you reach for the stitching needle you left set off to the side.

“Hold this,” you order him, and the man lets his hand slip from the bite of his jaw to do as he’s told while you rifle through the bag at your feet. You can see the marks his teeth left in his skin as he takes the gauze from your hand into his own and begins to apply pressure.

You stand and wash your hands off as best you can in the basin of water Georgie brought in for you earlier, poised at the end of the table. The liquid tints pink as you first dip them in, and then slowly it turns an even darker, uglier colour as you properly scrub his blood from your skin. You shake as much of the water off your hands as you can, and then use the front of your shirt to sop up the rest—faintly rust-tinged handprints left in the cotton.

You take your seat once more, and Nicholas watches you through mostly-closed eyes as you set about sterilizing the needle.

“How come I can’t call you that?” 

You light a candle using the lamp at your side. Then you swish the needle around in antiseptic before running it through the flickering flame until it sparks—careful not to let it lick too close to your fingertips. Your eyes slide over to Nicholas as you pluck it from the fire.

With his face tilted towards you, another little drop of sweat has tracked down his cheek towards his prominent nose, and it glistens against his flushing skin in the warm light of your oil lamp. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, too—from what you don’t doubt is the combination of pain and whatever booze he’s been guzzling to numb it—and lips part on a shuddering exhalation as you survey his face.

“Call me what?” you mutter, averting your eyes and turning again to search through your medicine bag for a clean roll of bandage.

“Ma—” A sudden, harsh glare cuts him off before he even has the chance to say it. He smiles a little, the expression half-delirious, and you can’t help but think that if he weren’t so weakened from the pain that wracks him, he might have even managed another laugh.

You kiss your teeth quietly. “Only the girls call me that.”

The man bleeding out in the middle of your table clearly knows your tone of voice means not to push it, because he doesn’t. Instead, he turns his head until he’s staring up at your dingy ceiling once more, though you can tell from the faraway look in his eyes he’s not seeing much at all. 

“The girls,” Nicholas remarks quietly, speaking more to himself than anything. “You don’t call ‘em by their names.”

That’s right: he’d only know the girls by their working names. You’re surprised he even caught that.

“The hell I don’t,” you mutter, turning back to face him in your seat once more with your last roll of bandage clutched tightly in your hand. You set it down atop the table as you set your supplies up just how you like them. “I call them by the names their mothers gave them.”

Nicholas hums thoughtfully. “Sarah Jane, that’s Violetta?”

You grunt out an affirmative, threading the freshly cleaned needle with nimble, dextrous accuracy. 

“And Charity, her real name’s Bertie?”

“Bertha May,” you correct him, snipping away the excess thread with a little pair of mostly-dull scissors—careful not to take more than you’ll need, but still giving yourself sufficient supply to work with.

“Priscilla’s name’s Adaline,” Nicholas continues, his eyes still tracing the cracks in your ceiling. “And what about Theodosia and Queenie?” 

“Georgina and Prudence,” you supply flatly as you secure a tight knot in the end of the stitching thread.

Nicholas sighs before slurring, “’s a lot to keep track of.”

You snort. “Wait until you find out Big Annie’s real name.”

He looks over at you with wider eyes than you’ve seen on him since he came staggering through your door. He catches the expression on your face and his own softens, clearly sensing that you’d said it only in jest. 

Annie’s just short for Annabelle, after all. Madam’s rarely need to take up new personas—why would they need to be someone they’re not if they aren’t the ones doing the dirty work?

Nicholas watches as you tug on the stitching thread one last time to test its strength—eying the glinting needle warily. You set the threaded implement carefully off to the side once you’re confident it’s ready.

“So you learned all this stuff from your daddy, huh?” he asks you next.

You swallow over the unpleasant lump you suddenly feel in the back of your throat and reach up, nudging his hand away from where he’s holding the gauze to his wound. He’s become a real chatterbox now, and part of you wonders why you’re even tolerating it.

You clean the area with antiseptic again—and Nicholas is just as dramatic as he was the first time as a low moan of pain tears through him. For a moment you worry he really might be on the brink of passing out, the whites of his eyes taking over as they begin to roll back, so you know you need to keep him focused.

“He used to take me with him on his rounds,” you mumble a reply to his earlier question. 

Nicholas’s eyes open a bit wider when he hears your voice, a little more focused now than they had been.

“My daddy, I mean,” your tone is dismissive and flippant, but it seems to be an effective distraction. “I just picked things up here and there while I watched him work.”

“You’re a natural.”

You snort mirthlessly in the wake of his reply. “Don’t know about all that.”

“You just pulled a bullet outta my arm with your bare hands, that’s gotta count for something.” Nicholas hisses as you press the antiseptic-soaked gauze to his wound one last time, then he sucks in a sharp breath. “And the girls trust you a lot, so you must be good at it.”

“Somebody’s gotta take care of them.” 

Lord knows no one else around here does.

You set the scarlet saturated gauze aside in the dish with the discarded bullet, then pick up your needle.

You make neat, even sutures through his skin, and you take your time to do it right. You’ve always been good at this kind of thing, even when you were young. You were born with a keen eye for detailed work like this, and your daddy used to get you to finish up the smaller wounds he was called to treat that needed finer stitching—said your little hands were just better at it than his own big, life-roughened ones. He always used to tell you that you got your steady hands from him, but your nimble fingers from your mother.

Not that you’d know anything about that.

Nicholas has stopped flinching now, a little more relaxed than he’d previously been, and you can’t help but look up at him every so often as you work—wondering if that steady, even rise and fall of his chest means that he’s finally knocked out. Especially since he’s suddenly gone so quiet. 

But each time you check, you find his eyes are still open—though only just barely—and are peering up towards the ceiling. Sometimes you catch him glancing at you too.

Once the wound has been fully closed in a tidy little line of stitches, you wrap the roll of bandages around it with some gauze tucked underneath, just in case.

“You’re all done,” you say quietly, slumping back in your chair once you’re finally finished.

All at once, you feel exhausted—the adrenaline you didn’t even know had been rushing through you disappearing in a blink. It reminds you of how the wind dies in the valley in the wake of a bad storm, like it took the breeze with it. You’re all too conscious of the fact that it’s the middle of the night now, and that you ought to long be asleep.

“Thank you,” Nicholas says as he pushes himself up onto the elbow of his uninjured arm, though he still winces at the movement. You don’t make any attempt to help him.

His shirt is in pieces, and he discards it since it’s of so little use to him now, shaking his right arm to free it from the only sleeve that remains in tact on the garment. You watch as he pushes himself fully upright, throwing his long legs over the side of the table to stand. When he does, he dips slightly—like the sudden movement makes him woozy, and his knees are weak—and his right hand shoots out to balance himself on the edge of the tabletop on instinct. You suppose it’s not unexpected given the amount of blood he lost.

You watch his toned, tanned back as he stretches himself out as much as his injury will allow; observing how his skin pulls taught over the defined musculature that surrounds his spine. He’s littered with scars—a map of wounds that weren’t stitched as neatly as the new one on his upper arm—and part of you can’t help but wonder how he got them all. Can’t help but wonder what stories those marks tell, written in a language you don’t know how to read.

You look away, feeling an inexplicable heat flood rapidly to your cheeks.

You stand and quickly slip off your own overshirt—just some old button-up left behind from your father, though you have no memories of him ever wearing it. You clutch it in your fist and stick it out for him to take.

He eyes it in surprise for a moment before accepting it.

“Those blood stains are yours, anyway. You might as well have it,” you say, eyeing the red mark at the cuff on the right-hand sleeve as the garment passes from your hold into his, “in any case it’s in better shape than the one you came here with.” 

It saves having to clean it, too. So it’s all the same to you.

“I’ll pay you,” he slurs, still unsteady on his feet as he begins rifling awkwardly through his pockets with his only useable hand. He almost tips right over in his haste, but you quickly slip beside him and steady his frame.

“Yeah, you will,” you agree, holding tight to his right arm to keep him standing. “Worry about it tomorrow.”

Nicholas’ bare skin radiates warmth with only your thin, lace-trimmed undershirt left separating you as you stand pressed into his side. He peers down at you curiously, blinking slowly like he’s being called to sleep. From this close, with him standing properly upright for the first time, you realize just how big this man is—tall, with a broad chest and defined muscles, and stubble dusted along his sharp jawline that you hadn’t noticed before. You take a sudden step away to put much needed distance between the two of you, these realizations making something stir in the pit of your stomach that makes you feel squeamish. 

“Do you know your way back to the inn?” you ask him, your arms crossing over your front.

Nicholas bobs his head in a completely unconvincing nod. It’s not like the town is big enough to get lost in in the first place—and he very well might know his way if it were daylight, or he weren’t half delirious—but sending him out into The Bend in his current state would be as much of a death sentence as it would have been to turn him away when he first showed up at your door. 

You sigh in resignation.

“Just sleep on the floor here for tonight. I’ll check your stitches again tomorrow morning before you leave.”

The man looks taken aback, but he nods quickly—as though he doesn’t want to give you time to rescind the unexpected offer.

You fish around in the depths of your father’s old medicine bag, eventually pulling out a bottle of murky liquid as Nicholas gets settled with an old cushion and a threadbare quilt near the unlit hearth of the fireplace. You use the edge of your nail to uncork it, take a quick whiff to make sure it’s the right one, and then tread towards the man on the other side of the room.

He peers up at you from his makeshift bed on the floor, resting with his knees apart and his long legs sprawled out in front of him. You pass the little glass bottle to him, your fingers brushing as it passes from your grip into his. “Drink this, it helps to fight off infection.”

He eyes it warily. The outside of the bottle is suspiciously grimy, and the putrid colour of the liquid inside is no less reassuring. “What is it?”

“Hog Fennel.”

He grimaces, peeking into the opening of the bottle with one eye closed. “Sounds foul.”

You snort. “It is."

Nicholas doesn’t draw it out any longer, tipping the vial back an draining it all in one shot. He winces once he swallows it down, his pink tongue peeking out a little as he pants through the taste—which you’re sure is bitter and disgusting.

“How was it?” you ask him wryly.

“I’ve had worse, honestly,” he says, shooting you a little grin you can’t believe he’s able to manage not only in the wake of such a disgusting concoction but considering what he’s been through that night.

You blink, your brow furrowing, and then eventually nod dismissively before turning and shuffling off towards the other side of the room where the door to your bedroom is found.

“Thank you.” 

Nicholas speaks again as you’re just shy of crossing the threshold into your room, you consider pausing in your shock but then think better of it.

“You already said that,” you reply, your tone annoyed, and shut the door behind you.

You open it again a second later to poke your head back out towards him.

“I’ve got a gun in here, by the way, and I won’t miss. Just in case you were thinking of trying anything funny.”

Across the room, Nicholas is already laying down on his pitiful excuse of a resting place, looking strangely content.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says with a smile, though his eyes stay closed.

Part of you is annoyed at how comfortable he seems. How easily he talks to you. How normal his presence feels in your home.

Another part of you—one that’s deeper, locked away and hidden out of sight in a place where you think you’ve lost they key—isn’t.

You slip back into your room and close the door behind you with a soft click. 

And in the silent stillness of your little bedroom with your shoulder blades pressed back into your bedroom door, you realize that the thunder outside has stopped but you can hear the softest, faintest pitter patter of raindrops through cracked glass of your window.

Rain came back to The Bend.

Maybe luck would follow.

[awkwardchick87]

Modern AU poly Vashwood in which Wolfwood comes home and finds you and Vash dancing around the kitchen, making dinner. The closes the door a little louder then usual to alert you to his presence, that lopsided grin on his face when you grab his hands and pull him into the kitchen to dance along with you, knowing full well he does NOT want to, but he will because its you.

[bimillythompson]

[sleepyminty]

Behind every disaster gay couples there’s always a short level-headed,angry, 100% tired girlboss (or a girlfail in disguise) who keeps everything in check whenever their divorce made it into everyone’s problem. And behind every girlboss is their emotional support bimbo who make sure their partner didnt explode for dealing with that said gay couple shit. This is my favorite ot4

[genderbendqueen]

Trigun polygang going through a haunted house

Vash & wolfwood are terrified holding onto each other for dear life

Milly is slightly scared but having fun

Meryl is just walking through. Nothing is making her jump or scream

[aziuuu]

I didn't expect Meryl to be so fff hard to draw??? The style I chose was hard too- I'm really not a shading person 😅

[fangirlglue]

Belong 🍎🍏

[aimfor-theheart]

guys i finished my heart your song yesterday isn’t that great

[angel-bitch-boy]

Mashwood realness

✊✋✌️!

based on the fanfic Feeling of Desire When You're Left With the Taste by @mydetheturk

[beelzebby666]

Pls hcs for Vash? 🥺👉👈💕

Sexuality Headcanon: bi/pan? demi? poly? sometimes he's a lesbian? it's pretty fluid other than "human norms need not apply" no matter what.

Gender Headcanon: he/him but pretty fluid as far as gender. love trans dude Vash, love genderfuckery Vash, love butch sapphic Vash. I love playing with his gender tbh.

A ship I have with said character: Vashwood/Vashmeryl/Mashwood/Polygun.

A BROTP I have with said character: Vash and Razlo besties is my favorite thing tbh. Let them bond.

A NOTP I have with said character: I'm pretty meh about most ships I don't outright love. Indifference serves me well.

A random headcanon: Tristamp Vash craves salt like some sort of weird humanoid herbivore (hc that Plants in that setting are sea creatures and he really needs more exposure to salt water than he could possibly get).

General Opinion over said character: He's so stupid re: accepting he is worthy of love and happiness and I'm shaking him violently in my hands.

[heich0e]

bright - vash/f!reader/wolfwood (trigun stampede) 2k, part 3 of poly!au, wild west!au, bounty hunters, wolfwood calls reader 'kid' as a petname, this is just sweet n fluffy and nothing is bad (for now...), alexa play home on the range BOUND - poly!au masterlist

it’s been two days since nicholas and vash returned.

well, two nights and one day, technically, but it all seems to bleed together—the seconds since the two crept through the door at midnight passing slow and sticky-sweet like honey. half the day following their homecoming was spent asleep, just a pile of tangled limbs and warm skin together in your shared bed, and the remaining hours had been spent in that same place as well—though your activities had been far from restful. your body is left tender and heavy and tired as you make up for the day’s work you’d neglected, but those aches are sweet too in their own way; a reminder as sure and tangible as any that your boys are home. 

the day is hot, like most days are on the little homestead where you dwell, and the sun beats down on you oppressively from overhead. at the clothesline, you find some reprieve hiding in the shadows cast by the sheets you’re hanging out to dry, catching in the warm breeze and fluttering as it passes. you’ve got a few more pieces of bedlinen to hang waiting in the basket at your feet, freshly washed and then wrung out until they were a manageable degree of sopping, and you wipe the sweat from your brow before you stoop down to reach for the next one in the pile.

on the front porch, nicholas watches your every move from his favourite rocking chair. you feel his eyes on you even when your back is turned to him.

“hey,” you call back to him dryly, turning and squinting against the brightness as you peer across the yard in his direction. he perks up when you acknowledge him, a brow drawn up in question. “you gonna help me with this? or at the very least pay for the show?”

nicholas stands, laughing a little at your lip, and hops off the edge of the raised porch to saunter over to you at the clothesline.

“pay for the show?” he asks, dipping down so he’s near to you under the brim of your sunhat. his nose is almost brushing yours, so close you think he might even kiss you, but suddenly he snags the next blanket from the wash basket and slinks back again. he shoots you a pointed look as he unfurls the sheet, something akin to a scowl though not quite as severe. “with what money?”

you pucker your lips slightly. he’s not wrong—the purse you keep tucked safely away in the back of your chest of drawers has gotten dangerously light these days—but he doesn’t need to say it like that.

“i can’t believe he blew another fucking job for us,” nicholas mutters with a derisive tch as the two of you work to fasten the wide cotton bed sheet to the line; stretching it out between your bodies until the full width separates you. you struggle to keep it secure as the damp edges flap in the wind. 

you clip your side of the linen down with a clothespin, and then hand him another from the edge of your apron so that he can do the same. he takes the pin without comment, his rough fingers brushing yours as they close around it and pluck it from your grasp.

“you know how he is, nico,” you say quietly, as you have many times in the past. “vash sees the best in people. he just wants to help them.”

“you can’t help wanted criminals,” nicholas bites sharply, pinning his side of the sheet down with an undue amount of force—the rest of the line bouncing lightly from how he’d jostled the length of cord.

you pause.

“we did.”

he huffs, shooting you a resentful look—half-guilty and half-frustrated, all because he knows you’re right.

“that’s different,” he murmurs.

“it’s not,” you counter, the wind lifting the edge of your skirt as it blows past, your eyes remaining unwaveringly fixed to his.

nicholas lets out a weary sigh to be caught and swept away by the breeze, rubbing at the back of his tanned neck as his body slackens in defeat. he stoops down and reaches for the next sheet in the basket.

the two of you work side by side in silence for a while, emptying the basket and filling up the clothesline. there’s nothing around you but the sound of the midday wind whistling through the valley, just the silence you’ve grown used to now after so long. vash went into town that morning to run some errands, so as it stands you and nicholas are the only people around for miles. 

“i’ll look for some more jobs in town to help make ends meet,” you say as you reach up with another clothespin in hand and secure the hem of one of your nightdresses down against the twine of the line. you reach over and do the same to the other side, angling into nicholas’ space as he holds the garment safely in place. “not like there’s any shortage of bullet wounds to patch up around here.”

nicholas catches the brim of your hat between his fingers, tilting it back so he can stare you clearly in the face.

“you’re not going around stitching up strange men,” he says firmly, something possessive and protective in his staunch, unswayable tone. “that’s the rule.”

you huff, your nose scrunching in a weak glare. it’s a rule you'd set for yourself years ago, long before nicholas stumbled into your life: you only tend to the medical needs of the town’s women, no exceptions. this guiding principle is as much for your own sake as it is for theirs, but the local women aren’t the ones running around getting shot in the first place, so while the rule is one that you’ve operated under for as long as you’ve been taking on odd doctoring jobs, lately it’s been holding you back—money’s never been this tight, so there’s never been a reason to change it, but things are different now.

“the girls don’t need me much these days,” you mumble softly, and it’s true: since you started helping more and more of the women in town (beyond just big annie’s working girls,) their overall wellness has improved significantly, which consequently means they don't need to see you nearly as much. “i’ve been taking good care of them.”

nicholas smiles then, a crooked, fond expression—as proud as it is warm. “yeah, you have.”

he lets his grip on your hat fall and leans away, and you do the same—stepping back around to the other side of the basket where you’d started. nicholas snags a cigarette from the holder he keeps on him at all times and pinches it between his lips, then starts fumbling around his pockets for a match.

you look out at the property around you; your little house on one side of the yard, the stable on the other, with the old well pump poised halfway in-between. you’re insulated from the worst of the heat and the elements in this little valley just outside of town, craggy rock formations stretching in a ring around your little homestead, protected on every side. you’ve even got a few meagre patches of green down here, beyond all the brush and bramble. 

it’s not much but it’s something; it’s yours and it’s home.

you turn to your husband, still digging around in his pockets for a match, and you pluck his sad little cigarette from his lips unceremoniously. nicholas looks down at you in surprise, finding you suddenly toe-to-toe with him again. this time you’re softer. this time you’re gentler as you intrude upon his space.

“we’ll make it work, nico,” you say to him with fluttering lashes and a tender gaze, tilting your face up towards his. you fiddle with the cigarette idly, watching the way the gold band on your finger glints in the sunlight. his eyes never stray from your face. “just like we always do.”

“hey!”

both you and the dark-haired man before you’s eyes snap to the other side of the valley at the loud, excited greeting that echoes through the yard. at the top of the beaten dirt path that leads in the direction of town, vash is approaching on horseback. he’s waving his arms overhead, moving at a quick canter like he’s eager to get to you. 

nicholas laughs under his breath at the sight. he steals his cigarette back from your still outstretched hand, tucking it quickly behind his ear, and his hand finds the small of your back. the two of you make your way towards the edge of the property to meet vash upon his arrival, watching as his mare paws at the ground when her rider pulls the reins to a stop.

“what’s all this?” you ask, your eyes tracing curiously over the array of goods that vash has hanging from his saddle. there’s food—you see some local vegetables and jars of pickles and jam—and a bolt of cloth that you can make out right away. he’s hours later returning home than you expected him to be when he departed that morning, and clearly he’d been busy.

vash hops down from his saddle, pressing a quick kiss to your cheek and then another to nicholas’s. 

“what the hell have you been up to?” nicholas asks warily, his lips pulled into a thin line as he scrubs at the spot on his cheek vash had kissed—as though you aren't all perfectly aware of the pleased flush staining the tips of his ears. nicholas has every reason to be wary: vash hadn’t taken much money into town with him, just enough for the few errands he had to run, certainly not enough to explain the splendours he’d returned with.

“you know all the old ladies who sit outside the general store playing bridge?” the blonde asks, his eyes bright behind the lenses of his glasses as he ruffles his untidy hair. “well, one of them stopped me when i was leaving town and asked if i could help put one of her shutters back on since it blew off in that storm last week! once that was done, another one asked if i could look at her well pump because it’s been squeaking so much lately and too hard to turn. i helped out a couple other people while i was in town too! i told them they didn’t have to, but they kept giving me stuff when i was done.”

you feel a smile tug at your lips, peeking over at nicholas beside you to gauge his own reaction. his expression is flat, but you can tell he’s just as amused as you are.

“oh!” vash perks up, his eyes wide. he reaches into the saddle bag and pulls out the bolt of blue fabric you’d been appreciating a moment prior. “this isn’t from them though, it’s from that young couple who live above the post office.”

you know the couple he’s referring to well. they’d just had a baby a few months before, and you’d helped the young wife through her pregnancy and caught the baby when labour finally came. it was a little boy, no bigger than a loaf of bread the first time you’d held him, that they’d named samuel. 

“sammy’s getting big”—vash grins, squishing his own cheeks a little bit with his hands—“super cute and chubby too. they wanted you to have this to say thank you.”

he passes the fabric to you, and you cradle the tightly-wound bundle into the crook of your arm like it’s precious—because it is.

the things vash brought home aren’t enough to live off of indefinitely, but it’s something to help you get by for another little while—at least until another bounty comes through for the boys, or until another mother needs your hand to hold through the quickening of labour. 

it’s something. 

it’s enough for now.

you shoot nicholas a little smirk and he rolls his eyes at your blatant self-satisfaction, at your smugness that you’d been right about finding a way to get by. he looks over at vash who’s watching you both with expectant eyes, waiting eagerly (though perhaps unconsciously) for praise.

after a moment, nicholas plops a hand down into vash’s hair, ruffling it affectionately.

“good job,” he murmurs wryly, removing his hand and pressing a fleeting kiss to the crown he’d just been mussing. vash’s cheeks go pink and pretty at the gesture, teeming with pride. nicholas looks over at you next. “you too, kid.”

you smile, not as brilliant or beaming as vash’s, but with a happiness that’s every bit as sincere.

[awkwardchick87]

Poly Vashwood moment - NSFW

afab reader. - established poly relationship

Trigun coded playboy Vash, but can be any version really.

Nicholas was leaning back against the heavy wooden headboard, your hands clawing at his bare chest. Vash hadn't really given either of you time to fully undress before he was shoving you down on top of Nicolas, angling your body in a way that he could watch what Vash was doing in the full length mirror which was so strategically placed at the end of the bed.

It had been about an hour since Nicholas had leaned across the small bar table, "Yeah, but in your *lifetime*, Spikey, how much have you really learned about the human body? Hmm?" muttered between the three of you, before he grabbed the small glass of whiskey off the table drinking it in one gulp.

"I could teach you a few things." Vash narrowed his eyes, "If you're up for it?" He glanced at you as your cheeks reddened.

That was how you ended up in your shared hotel room, spread out on top of Nicholas, your bare chest pressing into his with your ass in the air towards the mirror as Vash had his prosthetic hand squeezing your ass, spreading you open, while the other hand had 2 fingers buried up to his knuckles in your cunt, his thumb tracing circles on your clit.

Nuzzling your face into Nicholas' chest, you were panting hard, your fingers digging into his arms as he sat, legs spread with you nestled in between them. You could feel his cock hardening against your stomach. He hissed through his teeth, his eyes never leaving the mirror, while you tried your best to push yourself up on your hands. Nicholas' hands wrapping around your back, pressing you further into him while his hips bucked upwards, praying for some relief on his aching cock.

Your back arched, Vash hitting a sensitive spot along your walls as your body shuddered. You could feel your release building low in your stomach, "I'm.. so close.. please, Vash.. fuck"

Nicholas groaned under you, sweat beading on his forehead as he watched Vash's hands work your pussy. His hips rocking his cock between the two of you, precum leaking from the tip, helping his cock slide easier between your bodies.

"Go ahead baby, let go for us." Vash whispered, bending down to place kisses along your spine.

He angled his fingers just right to have you keening into Nicholas' chest, your back in a deep arch as you felt your release crash over you. You could feel Nicholas panting against your head as his hips rocked into you, before his own release coated between your bodies, adding to the slick slide of his softening cock against your stomach.

You rode out your release on Vash's fingers, before they slowed and eventually stopped. Pulling his fingers from your core, he brought them to his mouth, moaning as he sucked and licked them clean

Sticky strings of cum stretched and snapped as you were pulled off of Nicholas and into Vash's lap. He peppered your face with kisses, his fingers sliding against the puddle of cum on Nicholas' stomach before scooping some up and bringing it to your lips, which you opened eagerly.

Nicholas panted, trying to catch his breath, "Shi Spikey, that was fuckin hot." He leaned back on the headboard, his head tipping back against the wall as he fished a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, bringing it to his lips and lighting it, inhaling before blowing the smoke up, away from you and Vash. "Next time, why don't I try that, and you can be on the bottom?"

[vash-the-trans-catboy]

Trigun fic requests

I am taking requests now for Trigun fics! If you have an idea you want me to write please read my guidelines then send me an ask!

What I will write

Ships (I mostly write vashwood but I’m open to any ship romantic or platonic including poly)

Either fluff or angst (I like writing both) this can include romance, gore, mental health, hurt/comfort etc

I’m pretty much open to write anything besides for a few things (see below)

What I won’t write

Anything explicitly nsfw (I’m fine with implied stuff but I don’t write smut)

OCs (Trigun characters only pls)

Underage, noncon, or incest (*for noncon stuff I’m fine with it either being implied or referenced but not writing noncon between the ship. Like for example a request about noncon recovery is totally fine)

Please send me an ask if you have a request!

[hellsingmongrel]

Also, ok, I've been thinking on this a bit, and in Stampede, we've obviously been given things to feed the Vashwood shippers, but also there's just SO MUCH GOOD CHEMISTRY between Vash and Meryl, too! It's even more romantically-charged than it was in the manga, where I saw it as a more paternal relationship. I never really saw the romantic chemistry between them in the 98 anime AT ALL, so Millywood was just the ship I thought was canon and assumed everything else was fandom headcanon. (l o l Oh boy was that different than the manga)

Which has been kind of making me go "???" because yeah, fandom can be like "MASHWOOD GO!" and it's great, but I don't know that poly relationships are accepted enough to be shown in media just yet. We would love it, but studios are still wary of it.

But like...what if they're setting the Mashwood up to be...Vash loves them both but doesn't act on it. Then [VOLUME 10] happens. And the trauma finally makes him step up and admit the way he feels. He can't hold it back anymore. He can't stop letting himself be loved, anymore! Even if it scares him, he can't go on denying it anymore, because it could turn out the same way, and he can't go through that twice!

[Spoilers Here] Though I can see why that could come across as burying the gays to reinforce the compulsive heteronormativity if it was done poorly. Maybe they could show in some way how they both continued to honor and remember Nicholas after he was gone, he's still a part of their lives and they both still love him so much. He's not shunted to the side and forgotten about and Vash isn't treated like a heterosexual man who was going through "a phase," he still has those feelings and they're still valid and treasured and they won't ever forget him.

Maybe after the end of the series, it's implied that Vash using up the last of his plant power means his lifespan has been greatly shortened, so he also doesn't have to be afraid of opening up to letting himself love someone fully for fear of watching them grow old and die while he never ages another day. He gets to have a happy life, he knows he can love and be loved, it's ok to let someone in, and they can grow old together and his life will have hope for himself, now, too. He doesn't have to be alone anymore.

[trigunrareshipweek]

There has been some confusion about what exactly counts as a rareship!

The simple answer is: anything that is NOT VashWood or VashMeryl, as these are lovely ships, but also get most of the representation in the fandom.

Do 'canon' ships like MillyWood count? Yes!

Do 'main ships for a particular character', but ones that are still underrepresented, like KnivesLegato count? Yes!

Do poly ships including VashMeryl and/or VashWood, like Polygun, count? Also yes, as long as the focus is on all characters involved in the poly ship, and not just the more popular ones!

Hopefully this helps clearing some things up 🥰

[rush-the-stars]

i very distantly remember you asking for Idiosyncratic Ship-names for Trigun (not in those words, but thats what TV Tropes calls them. the ships where theyre labeled after words, instead of blending their names together (which the name-blending kind of ship-names TV Tropes says is called Portmanteau Ship-names)). im PRETTY SURE that Ask came from you but i cant find the Ask anymore, but, again, im?? pretty sure???? it was you?

anyway, if i recall correctly, you wanted an idea for Meryl × Vash × Wolfwood ship-name (that was idiosyncratic; as opposed to the Mashwood ship-name that is Portmanteau), and ive been wrestling with sharing mine for a while bc its a ship-name ive been using for my un-posted OC × those three, but it can be repurposed for your needs too. i should add that, for poly ships, i personally like to incorporate the number of people involved in the name. but the number 3 (as opposed to the original: 4) works in the ship-name i have. you can also ditch the number, if you want, im not your boss. or you can ditch this whole ship-name if you dont like it

but for Meryl × Vash × Wolfwood (× my OC) ive been using (DE4LOWERED) D3FLOWERED, or i guess just DEFLOWERED if you prefer no numbers

i guess you could keep the original number if you wanted to use Reader inside it tho

but yeah. that Ask has been on my brain for months now, re-popping up as i go "nah" and re-popping up again until i decided i could at least share what ive been using in private. again, you certainly dont have to use it. im not even wholly sure it was you since i cant find the Ask (but tumblr's search feature has always been garbage so im unsurprised i cannot find it)

if you were curious about some of my other idiosyncratic ship names for Trigun (to use or not use, im good either way) (tho, please note i dont use numbers for two-person ship names. so taking a triad (with my OC) into a duo (no OC) will not have a number like the above example of a quartet to trio does. you can feel free to incorporate Reader or your own OC to give the ship its triad-poly status again, i dont mind. regardless, im babbling)

My OC × Vashwood : BULL3T BOUQUET, or BULLET BOUQUET

My OC × Knives × Wolfwood: RINGING B3LL-FLOWER, or RINGING BELL-FLOWER (it's a pun on the media property, Ringing Bell, most famous for its 1978 movie by the same name)

i have a ship-name for every combo, but the duo ones (of OC × Canon) i dont feel like sharing at this moment because half the ship *is* my OC lol but my plot-notes feature my OC having a rose motif very often (for reasons that have plot relevance about her interests, i swear lol), which i leaned into heavily for the idiosyncratic ship-names overall theme since Trigun has that whole Plant element and whatnot anyway lmao rip (subtly is dead) but i hope (ASSUMING I AM REMEMBERING ACCURATELY THAT IT WAS YOU WHO ASKED FOR THIS LOL) this satiated your months-ago craving for Trigun Idiosyncratic Ship-names?? yeah. ill go excuse my multi-shipper ass now, have a lovely day lmao rip

-- Demx's 💗 Anon, or Heartfelt Anon, from way back (you dont gotta reserve the emoji for me here; id be shocked if you did, i just wanted to confirm i was me this time before someone potentially recognized me.. again lol)

first i want to say i am sorry for getting back to this so late! i have been very busy recently!!

it absolutely was me who was looking for idiosyncratic ship names!! i was from the age of fandom (or maybe the particular fandom??) that had quite a lot of them! specifically young justice in the mid 2010s? we had spitfire, museum heist, chalant, i think red cat? we had a ton! and i feel like i saw it in other fandoms for a bit too but it slowly died off!

i just loved how clever they were! i think i also remember at one point people also were rather poetic about ot3 names? i think i remember someone who used to tag their rey, finn, and poe ot3 content with “ot3: mosaics are just broken pieces” and that stuck with me too.

but i LOVE that you’ve shared your own poly ship names with your OC and so generously offered them up for what we know as mashwood right now!! i love the inclusion of the number too!! i feel like back in the day, id tag it like this “ot3: d3flowered” WHICH IS FUN!

i tried thinking of one for them along the same lines of the “museum heist” ot3 which was robin x wally x artemis from young justice…..which if you shortened their names would get robwallart…which then became museum heist! because of the play on the words their name formed, which looked and sounded like “robbing wall art”

so i was kinda trying to play with mashwood like that because their names together currently invoke like….a forest? marshy forest? couldn’t figure out something i liked but i did like the forest imagery, since their planet no longer has them and in ways, they represent a beacon of hope for the planet.

d3flowered is lovely though!!

also obsessed with your oc and other ship names too….thats SO fun. ringing bell-flower is really evocative. i love the thought you’ve put into this.

makes me want to come up with ship names for my reader ocs and these characters…..i feel like with wolfwood i at least have this reoccurring “hellcat” reader….

i do have one more closely tied to nai too…i so badly want to find the time to finish that fic.

but anyways thank you so much for all of this 💗 anon!!! it’s given me much to think about and honestly is so creative and fun!

i hope you’re doing well!! again, sorry for the late response to this!!