#trigun sky au. because i can.

[checkadii]

mfs do anything but finish their wips . like startign another, for example

[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.

[neddea]

My fellow Trigun enjoyers, assemble 🙌🏻

If you had to guess, which planet/moon do you think would most likely be Noman’s Land/Gunsmoke?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while (because my latest obsession is astronomy, although it’s also a long running one). In both animes and manga there are two suns, but I’ve been generally looking at exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) within the habitable zone of their stars, thinking it would be complicated to find a two-star (binary) system that could have any kind of habitability. Yesterday though I found THIS OFFICIAL ART FROM NASA:

(Look at this, it’s so pretty!)

Turns out, NASA has a whole site that is… kind of an AU in which space travel is viable, and they explain how these planets would look like and what events would be cool to see in them and whatnot. They even have some 3D rendering from the surface of those planets so that you can see how it would look like! When I say this website is cool, I’m underselling it:

ANYWAY, back to Trigun shenanigans! When I saw the poster for Kepler-16b, I realized that yes, you could actually live on a planet of a binary system! These are called circumbinary planets, and a funny detail when you read the Wikipedia page:

A quick note on nomenclature: from what I’ve gathered, the name of the star system is followed by a letter or two. If it’s in caps, it’s a star, with A being the primary one and B the secondary; if it’s in lower case, it’s a planet. The planet counter always (?) starts at b, so if there are seven planets in the system called TRAPPIST-1 they would be TRAPPIST-1b, TRAPPIST-1c, TRAPPIST-1d…

Another important note is that there are two types of planetary configuration: If the planet only orbits one star, it’s called S-Type (or non-circumbinary planet); if it orbits both stars, it’s called P-Type (or circumbinary). Hope this didn’t get too confusing!

So I’ve made a list of binary systems that could potentially host human life. Which one do you think would be the best choice?

Kepler-16: the NASA poster one, its planet unofficially called “Tatooine” amongst scientists (good for them). 16b (the planet) is, however, a gas giant like Saturn, so it would be impossible to live there. If it has a moon with an atmosphere though, that could host life! And we’d get to see in the sky two stars and one bigass planet covering a good chunk of it. Pretty neat 🪐

Kepler-35: The planet discovered here is not within the habitable zone, but there is a high chance there might be other rocky planets in it. We can just make it up however we want it to be ✨

Kepler-38: Same as 35, but also the mass of the planet is unknown (I think? Wikipedia says one thing and NASA another, so idk)

Kepler-47: It has 3 planets, which is very cool 🪐🪐🪐 The second one, 47c, is within the habitable zone, but it would be the same case as 16b (living on a moon). The other two planets would also be perfectly visible, I think.

PH1/Kepler-64: First circumbinary planet found in a quadruple (FOUR STARTS ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️) system, and the discovery was made by citizens! How cool is that!? The planet orbits two of them, but the other system is fairly near and probably influences the planet?. They’re probably perfectly visible from the surface.

ROXs 42: Not much known about the planet, but it orbits the secondary star and has an atmosphere💫 That’s because it’s a gas giant, so it’s not habitable and we’d have to use a moon. Would be cool to see the stars wandering the sky on different paths though, since it’s the only S-Type system in this list!

Kepler-453: I’ve gotten confusing info about the habitability zone on this system, but we know that there’s a gas giant half the size of Jupiter 🤔

Kepler-1647: Same as Kepler-16 and 47. Apparently the system would be capable of sustaining an Earth-sized moon! 🌑

A quick sketch of how each of them would look like:

[coconox]

certified delulu post about nocti

a.n. this'll be a compilation of thoughts from my initial reactions to sands of wrath to his voicelines to literally everything about him. THIS WILL HEAVILY BE A NOCTI X SKK!READER KIND OF THING because i'm all in for a lil self insert to feed my delulu visions. also as a heads up i did read the story using google translate so if i quote anything it's basically what google translate told me but i edited it to make some grammatical sense. and yes there will be spoilers

a lot of context will be left out so if you don't wanna be confused by names check out this lore doc that gives a summary of er-5 or pgr lore in general, this post just talks about er-5 lol

EXHIBIT A: TRIGUN AU

have you seen trigun (ESPECIALLY trimax) cause if you have this makes so much more sense

noctis is vash and nigel is knives

both are brothers and have almost opposite ideologies

i did think of wolfwood and livio as another option but nigel does fit a bit closer to resembling knives

VASHWOOD (where nocti is vash and skk is ww (or the other way round, honestly either still works)

nocti: but you must promise me that you won’t die before i come back! no…. you’re not allowed to die even after i come back! i will definitely find a way to save you!

skk: of course, partner…..

this had me in TEARS I WAS NOT READY

nocti fist bumping you just made me think of this scene with vash and meryl

HE ALSO CALLS YOU PARTNER AS HE FIST BUMPS YOU the way i had this realization so late into writing all this

sands of wrath setting literally looks like a place you’d find in no man’s land

nocti’s voiceline telling you to smile more, similar to ww telling vash to smile more (and i mean their genuine smile, not the fake one they use in front of people)

EXHIBIT B: NOCTI AND SKK ARE MARRIED

they are married and own a bar together hear me out—

you two enter a town in which neither of you are welcome because you’re both from babylonia, the mayor decides to put you two in a hotel room till the harvest festival is over

you two are in separate beds, but neither of you can sleep, so you two do what any pair of roommates would do—

—have a 6 hr "light conversation" :D

first actual convo with nocti, you both take turns to ask questions about why they’re here, what’s going on, etc

nocti asks why you trust him so easily, you respond with “it’s intuition” which is a response nocti seemed to like

you also state how you hope he returns to cerberus and fall asleep. nocti in a way states he also wishes to go back to cerberus and sleeps as well

at some point nocti leaves the hotel room to find demont, who is the reason you two ended up working together in the first place, but there was an attack by hetero creatures and nocti swiftly got rid of them

after talking to the mayor, max, about wanting to be just a resident in town, he takes you to a bar, in which that’s where you find nocti

ya know he could’ve talked about ANYTHING and his drunk ass decided to talk about HOW HE PROTECTED YOU??? COINCIDENCE??? I THINK NOT

you find nocti and he offers his hand out to you to dance with him, you reluctantly agreed and you two end up break dancing together

this was him proposing to you i’m just sayin—

the night passes and you two begin living your lives as residents of new oakley

when he first calls you partner, it was originally solely because temporarily they’re no longer considered members of babylonia, and so to fit in with the whole wild west type style, nocti refers to you as “partner” and you agree to do the same to him

first time it’s used outside your interaction with him was when nocti has small talk with vann

vann: you’ll only obey orders from that commandant, right? these are the rules of the sky garden

nocti: i don’t listen to anyone’s orders, but if it’s a request from my partner, that’s a different matter

NOCTI WHY ARE YOU SAYING THAT LIKE WE’RE ROMANTICALLY PARTNERS?????

this isn’t the first time he does something like that he’s very consistent about it

truly a devoted man

also “MY partner” ????? he also pretty much refers to you as his partner throughout the whole story i got whiplashed when we were back to being called skk in his affection story

after you and nocti find demont there’s a small good cop bad cop scene (which i found hilarious), but at the end demont couldn’t reveal much vital information due to dying from poison

nocti realizes this poison is something only nigel can control, and stormed out into the center of town in a fit of rage trying to find nigel

calming him down and telling him to retreat to not make a big scene was practically impossible, that is till you shout “trust me— partner!!” and nocti finally calms down and retreats

HELLO??? CALLING HIS NAME HE DIDN'T BAT AN EYE BUT BEING CALLED PARTNER MADE HIM ACTUALLY LISTEN??

i'm absolutely speechless

you two cook up a plan to find out what’s really going on +bonus hand holding at the end

your part was to just do your job as a bartender while nocti handles the investigating, and eventually nigel shows up

nigel asks what’s the difference between a human and a construct, you respond in a way a bartender would explain it, but nigel wants an answer from you as a commandant rather than a bartender

he ends up poisoning you and leaves, nocti arrives a little while later after discovering what the plan is for this town in the next few days

i remembered that before we split up i told him not to be reckless, but in the end i was the one that was careless and ended up in this miserable condition. i no longer had the strength to stand, so i could only slide down to the edge of the bar. at the beginning, i said big words that would make nocti return to cerberus in an honored manner… i didn’t expect to be the one to make him sad for his companions

skk: i'm sorry…. nocti….

nocti: HEY! don’t say such depressing things to me so quickly

nocti then enters a panicked state of not knowing what to do cause skk is poisoned and there's no known cure for it

nocti gritted his teeth. he didn't even know how to give first aid. he regretted not learning more about first aid from vera before

GOT ME SOBBING, EMOTIONALLY DAMAGED, SHATTERED INTO PIECES

you tell nocti to go help the mayor cause if the mayor dies the town will fall

nocti is in pure disbelief that at a time like this you're more worried about someone else and he refused to leave you here

after some reassuring nocti goes ahead and takes care of what's going on in town and immediately after checks if you’re still ok

he hears a painful scream in his communication device and he SPRINTS back to where you are and finds both vera and 21 there attempting to take care of you

21 comments on how nocti is a lot more powerful ITS BECAUSE HIS LOVER IS DYING RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM AND HE WANTS TO SAVE THEM BUT DOESN'T KNOW HOW

there’s an encounter with the purifying force, wanting nocti dead since they believe he’s the cause of their aircraft crashing

you tell them that it isn’t his fault and after essentially a stare down between the purifying force and cerberus, the purifying force leaves you all alone since they trust you (thank the overlords for you working with them before and gaining a good work relationship)

you, cerberus, max, and vann think of a plan on what to do next now that you all know where nigel might be located

nocti will go and fight nigel alone since it’s the reason he even came here in the first place while the rest defend the town

you establish a m.i.n.d. connection with nocti, which in turn gives him the poison as well since you’re basically almost a walking corpse at this point

the fact that nocti, with NO hesitation, established a connection with you makes it LOUD AND CLEAR that he will stick with you no matter what even if it leads to his death

cue another hand holding scene, and nocti leaves

vera and 21 get very VERY concerned over your health, yet you’re still adamant about keeping the connection with nocti

21: they want to keep a deep m.i.n.d connection w nocti

vera: DO YOU WANT TO DIE?! if you're deeply connected, your consciousness will be completely bound to him…. if he dies, you also die

skk: he… needs….. me…..

this is LITERALLY a moment where one cares more about their partner THAN THEIR OWN WELL-BEING ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

transitioning over to nocti’s side, he finally confronts nigel

nigel mentions that in order to cure the commandant he needs to be killed, but just HEARING that name come out of his mouth made nocti more full of rage than he’s ever had

this part alone SCREAMED nocti being like "you do NOT have the right to say my partner's name after what you did to them, i am no longer doing this for myself, i'm doing this FOR THEM"

so anyways nocti gets his ass beat 💀💀, nigel lecturing him that he’s still confused and is only driven by anger

the cutscene if you wanna watch it

"commandant… you must be disappointed with me…. damn it… are you mad at me? haha.. me too…. leave everything to me from now on. let’s make that bastard taste our true wrath, partner..."

“i can’t die here yet…. my partner is still waiting for me to come back.”

similar to 21's comment earlier, nigel notices how nocti's steps aren't noisy and chaotic anymore, but steady, firm, and powerful now BECAUSE HIS PARTNER IS ROOTING FOR HIM TO WIN AND HE NEEDED THAT BOOST OF ENCOURAGEMENT... THAT'S WHY YOU WERE SO ADAMANT WITH KEEPING A M.I.N.D. CONNECTION WITH NOCTI

this whole fight scene had me SCREAMING

“my partner and i will use all our strength… to beat you to pieces”

if you still haven’t gotten it DO YOU SEE IT NOW??? HIS MAN IS FULLY DRIVEN TO HIS FULL POTENTIAL BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU AND WANTS TO.. NO... NEEDS TO COME BACK TO YOU

nocti wins and nigel essentially retreats but with a new found respect for his brother

but before he retreats he asks nocti the same question he asked you: what’s the difference between humans and constructs

he gives his own answer and guesses yours (since he was rather confident enough with knowing a lot on how you think) and it boils down to them having the same answer but different font

the place nocti and nigel were fighting in collapses, forcing nocti to leave and never see nigel again

you and nocti are back in the hotel room recovering, and a few locals come in to beg nocti to stay and not go back to babylonia

“but i made a promise with my partner, i want to return to cerberus in a dignified manner…”

after more silly banter everyone leaves you and nocti alone to rest, but neither of you can sleep

nocti brings up the question nigel asked him, and you gave him your actual answer, which is pretty close to what he guessed

nocti: haha… just as i thought, i know you better

skk: but maybe i know you better. for example, what you look like when you’re drunk

nocti: WHAT?! DID I DO ANYTHING WEIRD WHEN I WAS DRUNK???

skk: forget it, stop talking, i’m sleepy

nocti: HEY!! TELL ME NOW!!!!

he’s a literal blushing mess after you told him you saw him drunk

your honor this is literally a newly wed couple

gotta of course mention his affection story so read here for a summary of that as well

the way he ONLY uses the best quality and probably most expensive ingredients to make your food

nocti giving a damn about this whole pancake thing only because YOU care

LIKE HE'S PUTTING HIS PREFERENCES ASIDE TO MAKE YOU HAPPY

MORE HAND HOLDINGGG this time in the form of you helping him mold the pancake shape +bonus nocti blushing

both literally wanting to do the whole working at a bar thing together again in the future that is like PEAK ENDGAME for their marriage

+bonus boss being supportive and naming the new drink and dish that was made after you and nocti

the whole affection story just very clearly and vividly plays out nocti and skk working together flawlessly at the bar like their chemistry was SO GOOD !!!!

very sorry for any grammar errors i'm very hyperfixated on him rn and i needed to scream about it somewhere

anyways thank you for coming to my ted talk i will now think of nocti in a wedding dress /hj

[chris-continues]

Carnival?

College AU Trigun- Carnival HC’S!

In which you and the gang go to a carnival :)

Vash/reader elements <3

TAGS: @h4venpha @lune010 @vashfantasy @macncherries

And thank you @cowboylivio for the help on this one!

This isn’t in school or anything but I figured because it’s modern au and they’re college student age and probably going to college it fit lol

-Vash loves funnel cakes. Probably prefers the OG plain powdered sugar

-Wolfwood likes chocolate syrup and powdered sugar

-Milly swears by the overly sugary strawberry jam and whipped cream

-in a rare moment of agreement, Meryl and Knives agree that they are way too sugary but Vash will insist they have a bite (they cave) (it’s still too sugary)

-Vash will do ridiculous poses on the merry go round/carousel and would love it if anyone posed with him. What do you mean there’s only one person per horse? :( it makes for a bunch of cute photos tho!!

-Vash gets a large frozen iced lemonade and Wolfwood and Nai separately warn him to not chug it all just because it’s hot out because he will get a brain freeze (guess who got a brain freeze) (him.)

-Nai kinda lags behind everyone else. He was dragged along by Vash in hopes for him to have fun, but this truly isn’t his scene.

-For the carnival games, Vash is good at the shooting but with his luck he ends up with a faulty gun. Nai bargains with the vendor to give Vash his prize

-Wolfwood and Vash have a bit of a friendly competition on who can win the most

-Milly gets lost and they find her in the livestock barns somehow inside the goat pens because she made a new friend

-Meryl berated her immediately- she was so worried! Ugh! >:( (she’s worried for her girlfriend- I mean roommate)

-Knives is the only one who can tear them away from the animal barns and it takes so so long

-Meryl has a messenger bag and she’s kinda sorta prepared? To be fair, nobody got much beforehand notice before they were just on the road and at the carnival itself lol. She has sunscreen that has to be repeatedly borrowed

-Oo also firm believer that whenever someone wants to break a 20 or smth she’s the person they go to

-you know that one carnival ride? Where you’re locked in a cage whatever and get tossed around for a good minute? Yeah Wolfwood and Vash in one of those. It’s the funniest shit ever

-Vash gets super dizzy LMAO

-he almost vomits up all the sugary shit he’s eaten 😭

-pat his back and ask him if he’s ok pls

-he’ll look up at you with weary eyes and give a thumbs up, “yeah! Fine..” (and then proceed to almost bump into Wolfwood while walking LMAO)

-Milly insists on trying a bunch of carnival food, some of her taste is really questionable (who wants deep fried lard??) but she’s just curious and if you indulge her in trying some of the greasiest oiliest food you’ve ever seen she’ll be very happy

-Nah but fr if Milly ran a food acc/food vlog she’d get so much hype bro <33

-Imagine going on the carousel with Vash OMG

-mutual pining goes crazy here like you’re laughing and taking photos (like earlier)

-Milly, Meryl and Wolfwood went to go try more food and Knives excused himself for some fresh air away from the noise and lights (it was getting overwhelming for him)

-he helps you onto the pony, hand brushing yours as you both grab onto the pole and chuckle. The music starts to play, harmonious and oddly nostalgic, lights beautiful amidst the darkening sky

-you peek at him, his orange lenses oddly fitting into the bright lights around you both. He’s got this small smile that blooms into a gushy, dorky grin that makes you almost freeze- his sandy blonde hair sways with the movement of the pony as he chuckles, almost falling off as he’s caught staring at you too

-but of course the ride ends, and your good friend Vash + yourself make it back to the rest of the gang and eventually go home

-You both think about that moment more than you’d like to admit.

[tomatoswup]

New Horizons Hospital

___🕯️a decision based trigun horror adventure 🕯️__

summary: welcome to new horizons hospital, an abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town. Maybe you should denied that favor...

Play the game, Observe the story, Indulge yourself to the characters but converse with peers. Choose wisely, Every decision is dire.

caution: this game will contain : disturbing themes, horror themes, violence, the paranormal, blood, suggestive content, drug references(hospital), hospitals, insects, body horror,,, warnings will be applied to every entry this game will post.

🕯️If you can not handle any of horror or violent-like subjects, I would advise you not to play.

🕯️the way this story is written will be based on the consensus voting that the audience will be doing. You, the reader, are the main character.

A/N: hI YALLL!!! Welcome to the 100 follower special!🎉 :D It took a bit for me to make this work more easier so I thought this was the best way! I also been wanting to write a horror-centric trigun fic au bc of the lil cosmic horror that happens in the Trimax manga also fatal frame ;P ...and phasmophobia. And honestly this is gonna be a fun one!

Join and play the game! And careful, with every step you take, it may be your last. Have fun! :D

You've done plenty of things in your life... Actually rephrasing that, probably not the amount of things other people have done like party or adventure, but you've done enough that you were just...content!

Like visiting cafes, or visiting your local library! Those were most things you would've liked to been doing at the moment, and not..

This.

The loud cracks of thunder striked through the night sky and the drowning rain didn't stop for just one second as you tightly wrapped your jacket closer to your chest, taking a step to the side and closer to the white van doors you were standing infront of.

Wow! Look at that bright sun! Such mood-lifting weather huh?

'Fuck' You thought to yourself, staring up at the large ominous hospital that gloomed over you as the van stayed parked in place. With various vines crawling up its brick walls and the metallic debris scattered about the yard, you were kinda worried that you might catch tetanus in a run-down place like this.

Or maybe tetanus was the least of your problems...

"Hey, I thought you guys said it was a small clinic?" You nervously laughed, the palms of your hands feeling a tad bit more sweatier than before.

"Well, they did say it was pretty big hahah!" Your friend, Meryl, sweat-dropped, shooting you a sorry smile as she unpacked wires and cameras from the various boxes around the van.

You quickly whipped your head back to the abandoned place.

Clinic?

Whoever told Meryl about this absolutely lied to her because this damned place was not a fucking clinic. You didn't think there was any clinic that was this big around here.

"I don't think we should have anything to worry about though!"

Spinning around in her chair, Meryl shot you a small smile “Folks said it wasn’t anything too crazy like last time, just the normal nightly poltergeist!”

Normal. Poltergeist.

And too crazy like last time? WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME FOR THEM TO SAY THAT-

Goddamn it, you really should’ve said no to doing this favor for her. 

“Pretty please? Oh cmon! You said a psychic told you that you had a really high energy no? Maybe you could help us get some ghosts while Nai is out sick! Please?” She had begged you while you were working your morning shift at the coffeehouse last week. You knew Meryl's done some odd jobs before but this one was the oddest. Ghost hunting really?

Thinking back onto it, it wasn’t even a real psychic it was really just some random ass dude wasted out of his mind from the club next door!

At least he was nice enough to not throw up on the floors the part-timer had just mopped.

But you couldn’t go back on your word could you?

You sighed, wiping the rain drops away from your forehead “So who’s going in with me-”

Your shoulders jumped up in surprise as a loud bang sounded through the van as her partner, Milly, slammed a large box from the van and right in front of you, just making sure it was still under the van’s roof.

“I-Im not going in alone right??” You worridly continued as Milly brightly laughed out “Of course you’re not silly!” Cracking the top of the box open, you couldn’t help but peek into the weird trinkets inside, spotting different kinds of tech and… Was that a fucking cross?

“The others should be in here in just a bit. The rain kinda set us back just an hour but- Hey and there comes one of our crew now!” Milly cheered, waving behind you as the smell of nicotine had started to get stronger and stronger.

“Sorry, had a late service at the church.”

Wait.

You whipped your body around at the very familiar rugged voice, your shoes making a dent in the wet mud as you watched the local priest walking up behind you, a lit cigarette in his mouth and the beaded blue and black rosary swinging from his neck back and forth. 

It wasn’t until he was right beside you that he looked you up and down with a raised eyebrow.

“The coffee house barista?” “THE FUCKING PRIEST?"

Dude no fucking way was the priest who wed your aunt and uncle just a few months ago was gonna help ghost hunt.

You were taken aback as Wolfwood let out a “Hmph”, crossing his arms around his chest.

“Now I should be the one asking why you’re here. Didn’t you just make my drink a few days ago?"

“Yeah I did and I hope you know that’s the worst flavor on the menu. And I’m here as a favor for a friend that's all."

Wolfwood ignored your remark, turning to Milly who held out small ear pieces for the both of you to put on “Hey is blondie here yet or do we gotta start without him?” He lazily asked, taking the ear piece and putting it on as you followed suit.

“You guys can start,” Meryl called out from inside the van, before popping out and placing something bulky in your hands. With golden rims and odd scriptures alongside those rims, the old-

Actually really old antique camera fit well in your hands “Vash texted me he was gonna be a bit late so we’ll start off slow and steady, okay guys?”

Achieved! "Camera Obscura"

You couldn't help but scrunch your face up in confusion, motioning to the camera she had randomly just handed you. "Oh right! That's the Camera Obscura, it was given to us by our boss Roberto. You remember? The one I brought the other day?"

Oh! The tired man who really liked black coffee! "Apparently it exorcises spirits if you get them in the pictures you take but we haven't tried it out yet. Maybe you'll be the right person for this? Our medium isn't here yet but this is a good head start!"

You looked back down at the camera and moved it around in your hands, getting use to the weight as you looked at the dents and cuts on the surface of it t as Wolfwood blew out another small cloud of smoke.

“So who are we dealing with now?”

Meryl tinkered around with a tablet in her hands “Our main ghost is nicknamed “Four Legged Sherry”, apparently she appears more when people are alone…” At every word she spoke, you couldn’t help but play with the hem of your jacket in nervousness at the thought of what you were getting into.

Just your luck wasn’t it?

You put the camera strap over your neck, it's home for the time being before you felt the wind get caught in your throat as Milly slapped both hands down on your shoulders, a small “Eep!” slipping out of you as she gave you a thumbs up “I know you’ll do well with this being your first time and all! Good luck!” 

Achieved! Teammate Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Exorcist

And before you knew it, you were making your way inside the desolate place alongside Wolfwood as the radio crackled through your ear piece.

“Check, check, check! If you can hear me, please click the button on the earpiece and respond.” Meryl’s voice rung out, earning a response from the both of you before you guys continued and thus, began the hunt. 

“Do you guys do this often?” You asked curiously, closely following Wolfwood through the dimly lit hallways, each bang of the nearby animals making you turn in paranoia as every empty room was filled with darkness, the flashlights y’all held illuminating the peeled rotten walls around.

Each step the both of you took through the puddles on the floor echoed like music from the depths of hell.

Fuck, you were never doing this ever again. 

Woflwood lifted up the small cross at the end of his rosary and used it to scratch the top of his head, cigarette kept lit in his mouth “Too often than I’d like to really.”

He suddenly stopped in place before whispering to himself, turning towards you as he made a taunting scary face “Scared already? You’ll get use to it, this is nothing!”

You couldn’t help but laugh at the small statement “You act like I’m gonna be doing this again.” You brought the camera up to your face and snapped a picture of the hallway before the polaroid slowly popped out from the top.

He went quiet again, staring down the dark hallway with a stern look, before taking the cig from his mouth and throwing it to the floor, crushing it clean under his shoes as he muttered under his breath, the final cloud of smoke leaving him.

"You will."

You didn't get to respond before a small breeze of wind gaze your cheek, making you turn your head and your light into one of the desolate rooms, rusted with olden beds and papers scattered around the floor.

Obtained this chapter:

-Camera Obscura

-Teammate Nicholas D. Wolfwood

UNLOCKED:

Entry 1 NOTEBOOK

description: photographic findings, files, and personal character entries will be posted in the notebook.

[hashtagcaneven]

Thirty Pieces of Silver (3588 words) by hashtag_caneven Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Trigun Stampede (Anime 2023), Trigun (Anime & Manga 1995-2008) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Meryl Stryfe/Vash the Stampede/Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Meryl Stryfe/Vash the Stampede, Meryl Stryfe/Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Vash the Stampede/Nicholas D. Wolfwood Characters: Meryl Stryfe, Vash the Stampede (Trigun), Nicholas D. Wolfwood Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Historical, Slow Burn, Getting Together, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mashwood, Mashwood Week 2023, POV Alternating, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, because duh its trigun, No Beta We Die Like Rem

Summary

Finding another soul in the forest took Meryl by complete surprise. Yet this man also happened to be tied up, dangling upside down from a tree branch. His smile was a sun in and of itself, matched with piercing blue eyes that looked like falling into the sky. Meryl had never seen a more beautiful man, even in her dreams.

Historical AU for Mashwood Week, with a pinch of Princess Bride/Stardust level adventure thrown in for good measure.

Quick, post fics while AO3 is back online!

The brainrot is real, friends. Maybe if I spread the Mashwood agenda, I can finally focus on other things for the first time since January (probably not but I have to try for what’s left of my sanity).

[koispam]

Trigun Stampede x Reader Lake Day AU Headcanons/ramble

Don’t mind me I just really wanted an excuse to write Knives being a fishing nerd ^^

(Also sorry the knives one is a bit mundane, I just think that if you strip away the genocide tendency’s he’s actually a pretty boring guy)

Vash:

Vash spends most of his time running around and slashing people with water. You’d better believe he brought water guns. He’ll find you anywhere you try to hide. It’s fun for a while but it gets tiring being squirted with water from every corner. While Vash is refilling his gun you decide to make your move. You quietly sneak up behind him on the dock planning to pick him into the lake. Your breath hitches and you freeze when you accidentally step on a creaky board. Luckily Vash is humming too loudly to himself tk hear you. You continue to tiptoe forward, quickly closing the remaining distance between you two. Reaching him with a one, two, three! You shove him forward off the dock and into the cold water below. He lets out a girlish shriek and falls in with no grace whatsoever. You burst out laughing and he looks up at you with a pout on his face. Once you stop laughing you offer him a hand and he accepts. However, as you lift him out of the water, his other hand shoots up and aims the water gun at you. Before you can react he shoots, point blank. You immediately drop him back in the lake. Now it’s his turn to laugh. You two spent the rest of the day shooting each other with water guns and pushing each other off the dock.

Wolfwood

The complete and utter contrast between him and Vash is astounding. Yet of course you expected this. It’s just so different after goofing off with Vash to be stuck lounging around with Wolfwood. Not to say it’s unpleasant, no it’s not unpleasant at all. It’s rather relaxing. You look over at Wolfwood who’s got his sunglasses on over his eyes and seems to be sleeping. You reach for his glasses so he doesn’t get a weird tan line when he calming grabs your hand to stop you. You stop moving for a second and when he doesn’t say anything you start to push back, once again vying for the glasses. He in turn increases the resistance on you arm and it’s like a small battle to glasses. Unfortunately for Wolfwood, an untimely sneeze drains him of his capacity to push back and you take the opportunity to snack his sunglasses. His now uncovered eyes glare at you in defeat. They seems to say “that’s not fair cheater.” You smirk back at him sending a message of “since when you you play fair?” He sighs and turns his head back to the sky. You lay back down, content with you small victory. Yes, relaxing indeed.

Knives

You’d never expect it, but Knives turns out to be quite a fan of fishing. You suspect it’s because he prides himself on being a “Hunter” of sorts. So it makes sense that he would enjoy an activity like fishing. When you ask if you can join him he was hesitant at first. However, when you reassured him you wont let yourself get bored he gave in. He doesn’t normally share his hobbies with anyone except the occasional piano session with Vash, however you seem to be the exception lately. When you see the boat you were surprised. It was definitely not the cheap kind. Knives must really love fishing, you think to yourself. You get to the middle of the lake and Knives starts to prepare his equipment. You watch with fascination as he effortlessly strings each piece onto his line. He must have done this a lot to be this efficient. When he notices you watching he starts explaining what he’s doing, probably trying not to let you get bored. You understand little of what he’s talking about but you nod your head anyways. He seems happy that you’re taking an interest in one of his hobbies. He casts the line and then you two sit and wait. Knives isn’t much of a conversationalist so he doesn’t say anything, and neither do you. You two just sit in simple silence and enjoy each other’s company. Knives catches a few fish while you two are out and you decide to bring one home to eat. All in all, a successful trip. You hope to join him again someday.

[2dboisloyal-devotee]

Nav rules

╔══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╗

Fandom

❗ = Excluded characters because either i dislike them or don't know how to write for them

➸ 1bitheart/1beatheart

➸ Assassination Classroom/Ansatsu Kyoushitsu❗Takaoka, side assassins, those four minor characters from the Big Five but I can group them to be one not separately in request ❗

➸ Alice in the Country of Hearts/Heart no Kuni no Alice

➸ Arcana Famiglia

➸ BLEACH

➸ BUSTAFELLOWS

➸ Brutal: Satsujin Kansatsukan no Kokuhaku/Confessions of a Homicide Investigator ❗The criminals❗

➸ Balance: Unlimited

➸ Cookie Run: Ovenbreak

➸ Danganronpa, only the big four franchise❗Hifumi Yamada, Haiji Towa, Monaca Towa ❗

➸ DDLC

➸ D.Gray-man❗Chaozii Han i hate this man 😂, Alma Karma, Cross Marian ❗

➸ Dandelion: Wishes Brought to You

➸ DSP/okegom (The Gray Garden, Wadanohara and The Great Blue Sea, and Ice Scream only) ❗Sal/Syakesan❗

➸ END ROLL RPG

➸ Hustle Cat

➸ ib

➸ Mekakucity Actors/Kagerou Project

➸ Mystic Messenger (except Saeran because I haven't played his route)

➸ Natsume Yuujinchou/Book of Friends

➸ Nightshade/Hyakka Hyakurou Sengoku

➸ Nurarihyon no Mago/Nura: Rise of The Yokai Clan

➸ Obey me!

➸ OMORI ^platonic only^

➸ OZMAFIA!

➸ Persona 3

➸ Princess Tutu ^platonic only^

➸ Trails in The Sky ❗Joshua, Estelle, Schera, Olivier and any other characters who already have their own canon spouse sob but platonics of them are allowed❗

➸ Saiki Kusuo no Psy-nan/The Disastrous Life of Saiki K (only season 1 for now)

➸ Steam Prison

➸ Undertale & Deltarune, ONLY the original, not from AUs or anything similar, I'm not too well versed in them

➸ VOCALOID

➸ Witch's Heart

➸ Your Turn to Die

➸ Yuppie Psycho ❗the Sintra family ❗

These are the ones I feel like I can work on it. But I do know many others already, just say the name and I'll think about it.

Masterlist

⭑*•̩̩͙⊱••••✩•••••̩̩͙⊰•*⭑

彡 Alice in The Country of Hearts/Heart no Kuni no Alice

Yandere Roleholders HCs x GN Reader Part 1 & Part 2

Nightmare Gottschalk

x Overworking GN Reader & side story

彡 Arcana Famiglia

Yandere Tarot Headcanons (Liberta, Pace, Debito, Nova, Jolly)

彡 BLEACH

Shinji Hirako

x GN Reader - Platonic Yandere HCs

Toshiro Hitsugaya

x GN Reader - This Wish I Hold

彡 Natsume Yuujinchou/Book of Friends

Natsume Takashi

x GN Reader - Platonic Headcanons & Scenarios

彡 The Disastrous Life of Saiki K/Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan

Saiki Kusuo

x GN Reader - Basic Yandere HCs

x GN Reader - Vs Teruhashi

x Disinterested Reader

x Ghost Reader

x Reader - Proposal

Teruhashi Kokomi

x GN Reader - Vs Saiki

彡 Trigun

Vash the Stampede

x GN Reader - Never Could Have Been Worse

彡 Yuppie Psycho

Brian Pasternack x GN Reader - A Solving Decade

彡 Miscellanious

Seto Kaiba as a Dad HCs

╚══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╝

[wander-wren]

ao3 wrapped: 2023

it’s january 5th but it’s still the first week of the new year so it counts! [it is now january 16th because i got distracted and forgot, oops]. some of you might remember when i did this last year; for some reason i didn’t just screenshot the “all years” tab, even though i should have because ao3’s year stats are wonky (if you update a fic, regardless of how much of it was posted in previous years, all the stats get dumped in the most recent year).

regardless, adding these together gets our starting stats for 2023!!

142 user subscriptions

6,213 kudos

439 comment threads

1,505 bookmarks

514 subscriptions

464,453 words

60,289 hits

so the stats breakdown for this year, across 36 completed works and…like 3 wips that were being updated in other years as well.

131 user subscriptions

16,490 kudos (excuse???)

810 comment threads

4,480 bookmarks

1,156 subscriptions (that’s a lot of emails)

438,885 words

200,866 hits

and i forgot to order those fics by kudos, so it’s kind of biased toward my longfics in that chart there. my top kudos’d fics are:

wrong place, right time- quirkless!izuku, all might bashy au where aizawa finds him on the roof in episode 2

what’s a god to a non-believer?- direct continuation of the first, lol

hear my name in your silence- fic in the same series except it’s examining hitoshi’s (adopted by erasermic) backstory. of note, these were all posted within a week, so the series spent a lot of time on front pages, filtering wise, and a lot of people were reading the whole series at once, hence similar stats

all systems red- todoroki & dadzawa sickfic and adoption combo meal. this was my first fic to really shoot up there in numbers, really interesting time for me

for you i would cross the line (i would lose my mind)- long bkdk bdsm au, they’re pro heroes dealing with trauma and a scandal. part of my larger FLFverse series

i dont think you can extrapolate much from such a small selection of stats except that getting into a big, active fandom did very big things to my numbers even if most individual fics didn’t get super popular. i think part if it is also just me being more prolific (doubled my works count from the previous two [three] years) and, potentially, Better At Writing.

also the top three are part of the same series and the 5th is a longfic, so they wouldve had more chances to come up on the front page. also, they’re all popular tropes/characters/relationships. go figure!

so what are MY favorite fics from this year, or the ones i think deserve more recognition? well! in no particular order:

march (little!hawks)- is it cheating to list a whole series? a late entry, but i’m having a lot of fun with it. hawks + dabi + age regression, starting out with a secret relationship and quickly taking a hard right into angst through the war arc. i also am just a big fan of all my agere fics but i cant say only those ones! so i’ll leave it at this

and we’ll be alright (revolution lover)- first in a series about trans!izuku and katsuki helping him heal from a shitty ex. one of my first real attempts at smut but also just a really fun cool fic to write.

taxidermy fingerprints, taxonomize your differences- T4T bodyswap ronan/adam fic, like the only non-BNHA this i wrote this year. one track mind, hello. but it’s kind if experimental and very, very weird and i love it a lot. definitely an ode to being trans.

burning through the sky- it’s come to my attention that i write a lot of series, and i’m trying not to just rec my same series over and over. i also do like this one! shinbaku a/b/o au, torturing them by playing with heats and consent. maybe i should write more omegaverse sometime 😳

take off your fragile armor- little 5+1 vashwood thing about vash being clingy and self-sacrificial. i had fun with it and i totally need to write more trigun stuff.

so hopefully at least some people find those stats interesting! feel free to shoot me questions about fics or stats, as per always!

[askaniritual]

other fic

Naruto

to sate a hunger or to stoke it (to trace its edges like teeth)

Sasuke returns

this is genuinely the best thing i've ever written

Trigun

words too small for any hope or promise

He can tell by Wolfwood’s hungry gaze that he wants more, and can tell by the tremor in his hands when his glance darts away that he’s afraid of what will happen if he asks.

vashwood get-together

how can there be more when this is done (in progress)

The man shrugs. “I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I can’t remember a single thing in my life that happened before. It’s like I fell out of the sky.”

“Not a single thing?” asks Vash.

“Nothing except my name,” says the man. “Nicholas D. Wolfwood.”

post-trimax AU

Tiger and Bunny

names of heat and names of light, names of collision in the dark

Kotetsu was only human, and not the kind of idiot who was going to turn down incredible sex on the regular just because the other person happened to hate him. He was, however, exactly the kind of idiot who would get involved with a coworker. Even if that coworker was somebody he could barely hold a civil conversation with on a good day.

I would describe this as "Tiger and Bunny series 1 but what if they'd been hooking up for like most of it"

Chainsaw Man

satisfied body (and a hungry soul)

This feels like dying, but almost everything does.

end of public service arc missing scenes

The Untamed/MZDS

here is my hand, my heart, my throat, my wrist. here are the illuminated cities at the center of me, and here is the center of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we can drink from.

Wei Wuxian tried to push him away, but Lan Wangji is still standing here. The only thing left to do is invite him in.

my initial pitch to my beta for this was "five sex scenes in a trench coat pretending to be a fic"

[somereaderinblue]

I agree with this 110% because so far, I've written:

How To Train Your Dragon AU

Greek Mythology Hades & Persephone AU

Castle in the Sky AU

Teen Titans AU

And after seeing this amazing art by @funshinebf, I've got an Aristocats AU WIP in mind (not on paper tho bcz god knew I'd be too powerful if I could actually jot down every brainworm I had).

In conclusion: Trigun is indeed very AU-able & anything can be turned into an AU.

idk what abt trigun is so au-able but it just is. ive made like five already

i think i had uhh... hold on let me count here

werewolf au

ice planet au

cowboy au

centaur au

untitled plane au

space exploration au

cryptid/moth vash au

monster hunter au

pirate au

orcawood au

10 aus.. wow i didnt realize i had this many BUT YEAH TRIGUN IS VERY AU-ABLE. AS PRESENTED HERE

[several-spoons]

Vash/Wolfwood Fanfic Recommendations

Top 2 Written by an Author I don’t Know Personally:

Vash and Wolf by Scaryliterary [Multi-Chapter]: Yes, I’m recommending a college AU. But the characters are dead on, the found family vibe is amazing, the dramatic scenes are gripping, and the major plot elements are reproduced in a surprising way. Rated M, mainly for disturbingly self-destructive moments, I think.  Handmade Artisanal AU #1.

How to Sleep Above the Sky by hibem. This AU is just a hair’s breadth away from canon; it takes place among the Gung Ho Guns on a satellite above a Gunsmoke where the Fall never happened. It’s one of the most poetic and sensory things I’ve ever read, so I’ve read it at least 6 times. Vash is adorable. Beware of sad ending. Handmade Artisanal AU #2.

Tied for Third:

For Good by Celesma. Set in mangaverse after Wolfwood rescues Vash from the ark. What if Vash had gone to the Orphanage with him? The dialogue is amazing. This is where I get the headcanon that Wolfwood’s self-hating inner voice calls him “Nicky.” [Has NSFW moments].

The Only Nice Thing That Follows, by hellogaywatson [Multi-Chapter; in progress]: I recently realized how much my sense of Vash and Wolfwood’s interactions was inspired by this fic. Especially the wonderful quote that Wolfwood’s smoking is doing the world a public service. Probably the funniest, weirdest set of tags I’ve seen in Trigun fandom. Rated explicit, but nothing explicit actually happens in the first 8 chapters; I’d rate it T.

SFW

The Gospel According to Wolfwood by DWatson: from Wolfwood’s point of view–and in his voice. Absolutely nailed the voice. Rated T, manga-based.

Reflections of a Person who Smells Like Nicotine by Medokre: Deep dive into Wolfwood’s character featuring orphanage memories, symbolism, and sadness.

Scars, Cigarettes, and Scripture. Fun Vash & Wolfwood interaction between episodes 21 and 22. If you like both religious references and imagining what sort of dogs the Gung Ho Guns would be, you’ll enjoy it. Rated T, mostly for some gore and references to Wolfwood’s traumatic past.

Contrition by Perivale: Deep dive into Wolfwood’s character focusing on his conscience and religious beliefs, with more than a dash of poetry e e cummings style.

Not a Question of Morals by Sugar Pill: Vash is depressed about leaving Ericks behind. Wolfwood encourages Vash to be himself with an…unusual story.  Teen.

Eden by Shinatobe [Multi-Chapter]: Roaring 20′s jazz club AU. When faced with the choice between death row or serving under the infamous Million Knives, Wolfwood’s choice is clear. Wolfwood is a little too weepy, but it’s still interesting. Rated T. Unfinished, unfortunately.

Varilien brings the fluff. 

Also, I’ve been known to write Vash/Wolfwood fic from time to time. So does @caps4dayz (10KThunderingTyphoons) right here on Tumblr! 

NSFW

The Difference in Years by Katilara:  Deals with the implications of Wolfwood being so young, and to a lesser extent, Vash enduring so many years on Gunsmoke. “Do you ever feel like you don’t belong in your skin?“  “It must be hard,” Vash said quietly, “to realize that you are not the things you’ve used to define yourself for your whole life.” M.

Walking Day by GreenElphaba. There’s this one ridiculously long paragraph that’s a thoughtful meta/character analysis, from Wolfwood’s point of view. “You love him in part because someone has to and you do believe that no one else really does, because real love requires real sight and you are maybe the only one who has ever really seen him. …you love him in part because you have appointed yourself the emissary of humanity and it is therefore yours to close the terrible gap between his love for humanity and their hatred of him. …But mostly you just love him because he’s lovable, because you cannot help yourself any more than an animal can help savaging itself when caught in a trap. He smiles a certain way and your heart spills out like water and your throat aches…you are trying, racing against time to try and unpick the knots inside his head, help him understand there are other ways to live, help him bend before his brother breaks him.” M.

Genesis by emungere: Wolfwood has imagined angels many times during his life, but never expected to meet one…Rated T and up.

Just Straight Up Smut

Self-Inflicted by Angsty_McGoth (Doctor_Cyance): Are you into mutual pining and sexual tension? This is for you.

The Confessional Experience: OK, not so much a confessional, more like one of those free-standing wardrobes. Part banter, part ridiculous situation, part smut, with a funny ending.

Life on Gunsmoke by JojoLightningFingers. Involves: Weird plant biology, telepathy, scars, religious musings, and Livio.

Paradise (chapter 1). What if Wolfwood survived in Paradise, and ended up telepathically connected with Vash? Basically just well-written telepathy-PWP; the whole resurrection bit doesn’t make much sense.

Tiggy Malvern writes good smut. My favorite is Balance. It’s been an inspiration for me and one of my writing buddies.

Untitled by Black-Quadrant. Mutual pining and sexual tension in a very different way. Vivid in every sense, not just vision. Black-Quadrant may be my favorite Trigun smut writer. 

Untitled by Black-Quadrant. I think the dynamic makes sense.

Hallefuckinglujah, by lactoria, includes the whole angel/wings aspect of Vash.