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The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
So they touch.
Three times in less than thirty seconds, no less. Vash claps his flesh hand over the mouth of the bastard shouting his ill-gotten name into a bus full of strangers; the skin of his three uncovered fingertips burns on contact and Vash holds it until he’s sure this kid won’t get him shot through with his weight in bullets in the next five minutes.
“Why haven’t they figured it out yet—the hair? The coat?” the kid asks after Vash releases him. He holds Vash’s chin between forefinger and thumb, and Vash’s eyes squeeze shut as a shudder rushes through him. His face itches with the need to molt. He might sprout feathers any second. “Everyone here’s goddamn dumb.”
Vash swats him away. It isn’t as strange as it seems—no one wants to meet the devil, wants to believe in the devil, not on a planet already made a living hell. They let him walk among them in hopes their faith will be rewarded.
The kid grins as he takes in Vash’s glare, the slouch of his shoulders. “Lemme guess. Life’s nothing but trouble for someone like you. Wolfwood, at your service.” He holds out his hand to Vash the Stampede, Vash the Ghost, Vash the Curse.
Vash the Martyr, Vash the Motherless, Vash the Brotherless, takes his hand. Wolfwood’s grip is tight, his smile sharp-toothed, and Vash sucks in a breath as the edges of Wolfwood’s reality bleed through every place their skin touches. The markings beneath Vash’s coat flare and pulse, the way they do for his sisters. For Nai. For Plants.
And Vash knows right then, Wolfwood’s sun-warmed skin beneath his fingers, his brown eyes gleaming: whatever this man is, he’ll be the end of Vash someday.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
When he opens his eyes, the night sky spills out above him in blues and purples the colour of wolfsbane. One moon sits low on the horizon, still rising, heavy and glowing gold, so close he could reach out and pluck it from the fabric of space like a ripened fruit. He imagines sinking his fangs into it—the juice running down his chin and neck like blood, like serum, ultramarine blue on brown skin—
Vash takes a deep breath. There’s no oxygen here, but his chest rises and falls, heedless, human. He looks for the Hanged Man in the stars above, brow furrowing, before realizing: he knows none of these constellations.
Wherever he is, it isn’t home.
“Well,” Wolfwood says, one hand on his hip and the other propping the Punisher up in the entrance to their hotel room, “ain’t this a fun and exciting twist.”
“Fun,” Vash echoes, sighing at the sight of the single full bed. Meryl and Milly have their own beds in their room, he knows. “You like having to cuddle up with a complete stranger?”
Wolfwood’s grin is sleazy, but Vash knows from the lilt in his voice he’s only teasing. It still pisses him off, just a little. “If they’re pretty enough, sure,” he drawls, giving Vash a long once-over.
“Charming as always,” Vash says, but he can’t hide the quirk of his lips.
“Besides,” Wolfwood barrels on, setting the Punisher down to bar the doorway, “we ain’t really strangers. A week on the road’s a long time to get to know somebody.”
“Oh, really,” Vash says, stripping out of his overcoat. He crosses the room to open the window, shaking the sand out of the coat through it. “And what have you learned about me, Wolfwood?”
“You’re a fucking liar,” Wolfwood says, his voice softer, the lilt lower. “Lying to everyone all the time, but mostly yourself.”
Vash’s head snaps to look over his shoulder where he’s still leaning on his elbows on the windowsill. “You don’t know shit.”
Wolfwood’s smile is a small thing, unreadable. Vash almost marches over to grab his wrist, just to know what he’s really thinking. “Want me to take the floor?”
Vash turns back to the window, giving his coat a last shake. It will never be completely free of sand—even after a shower and fresh clothes, they’ll both shed grains in the bed, too. He imagines the grit from two bodies, the way Wolfwood is so broad, the fact that they’ll end up touching no matter how much Vash will try to curl away.
“It’s fine,” he decides, eyes on a pair of bantam thomas pecking the road below. “We can share the bed.”
“You sure? I don’t want you to be—”
“Wolfwood,” Vash laughs, tossing his coat over the nearest chair and leaning back against the window, “don’t start being a gentleman now.”
That grin comes back, million-watt, Wolfwood’s eyes crinkling at the corners. He’ll have crow’s feet by the time he’s thirty. “I’ll take the shower first, then,” he says, beelining towards the bath.
“Hey—” Vash shoots forward, but Wolfwood is already shutting the door behind him. “Don’t use all the hot water again, asshole.”
The door cracks open, Wolfwood’s big hand curled around the wood. “We could always share. Shower’s big enough for two.”
Vash pauses. Looks at the size of Wolfwood’s fingers. Thinks about how they’d feel inside him, slick from the water. How they’d taste afterward in his mouth.
“Maybe some other time,” he says. There’s a waver to it, almost imperceptible, the tremolo of a song. He wonders if Wolfwood can hear it.
“Suit yourself,” Wolfwood says, and the door closes.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
Beneath the unfamiliar sky, Vash tries to rise. Something holds his body in his place, curling over his limbs, his neck—panic bubbles in his chest.
Relax, a voice says from everywhere, from nowhere, from the back of his skull. You’ll only make it worse like that.
He knows that voice, like an old break, like a scar. But here in this strange atmosphere, in this land of dreaming, the name eludes him, dancing just outside of his grasp.
The voice laughs, teasing, taunting. Vash the Stampede, he says, and Vash can feel wind in the shape of a body above him. Brought down by his own vines.
Vash pushes up against the roots. “Help me out of them, then,” he snaps, trying to find a face in the wind. “Would you just leave me here like this?”
The wind parts on a smile, and through the hole, Vash sees a mouthful of stars. I would, he says, and the wind drifts away.
“Blondie,” Wolfwood says, voice groggy with sleep behind him, “what’re you doing up?”
Vash hums, sitting propped up against a rock on an outcropping overlooking the campsite. It’s too cold up here, too far from the bonfire everyone else is sleeping around below, and the desert chill sinks its teeth through the layers of his clothes. Both moons are new tonight, a rare convergence, and the darkness coils around the horizon like a wurm, thick and viscous, threatening to consume them all in its hold.
Once upon a time, he sat beneath the same sky, Nai’s head in his lap, young immortals looking up at the stars they were born from. They named the constellations above this planet, gave them stories—the twin rabbits, leaping about each other. The heron with a fish in its claws. The pitcher spilling the milk of a nebula. The great tree and the man hanging from it. Sometimes, he thinks of telling Nai how the humans repeat the same stories he weaved over a hundred years ago. How the stars look the same for them all. He thinks Nai would rip those stars from the sky with his bare hands if he could—would’ve done it, once, if it meant chaining Vash to him.
“Just keeping watch,” Vash says in the quiet, tilting his head up as Wolfwood’s heavy footsteps approach.
Wolfwood’s hand settles on his head, and Vash stills. For the barest of moments, his fingers curl in Vash’s hair, brushing the strands between callused fingers, and something old and wicked claws its way from Vash’s gut all the way up to his throat, something he’s swallowed down a dozen times over the past century, something that now coats his tongue and slips between his fangs. Then Wolfwood shoves his head down, ruffling his hair, and Vash smacks him away as Wolfwood squats beside him.
“Don’t sleep much, huh?” Wolfwood says, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. Vash watches the flicker of his lighter as Wolfwood lights up and takes a drag. Wolfwood exhales, his smoke drifting slowly between them in the windless night. “Only seen you sleep when we’re in a hotel.”
Vash shrugs one shoulder. Wolfwood doesn’t need to know how little sleep Vash can live off of. “I’m used to it. Might as well let the civilians get a peaceful rest instead.”
Wolfwood sighs as he lays down, pressed shoulder and thigh to Vash’s body. “You should at least sit by the fire. It’s cold as a witch’s tit up here.”
Vash lets out a shaky laugh, relaxing his body inch by inch against the urge to flee, heart thundering like a hare’s. Wolfwood radiates an unnatural heat, the kind Vash has come to expect when tucked beneath the insulating wing of a thoma. His trigger finger twitches. “Then go back down. No one asked you to come up here.”
“Fuck off,” Wolfwood says, slapping a hand against Vash’s thigh hand enough to sting. He leaves it there, too, curled just above Vash’s knee. “You don’t gotta say nothing for me to see you need a little company.”
Vash’s focus narrows completely to the weight of Wolfwood’s hand, how it’s just big enough to wrap around his thigh. It would be so easy to strip the glove from his flesh hand and slip it into Wolfwood’s—let it all wash over him, Wolfwood’s thoughts, his memories, the strange thing that makes him tuck to Vash like a puppy instead of fleeing Vash’s alien, predatory core. It would be so easy to know Wolfwood down to his marrow, to eat up his fear and his desire in one bite—impossible, then, to remain near him, when Wolfwood will know the same.
“If I wanted company,” Vash says, the airiness of his words a comfortable veneer, “I’d just wake up Milly.”
Wolfwood’s fingers squeeze down until Vash’s thigh aches, his bared teeth gleaming white in the firelight, and Vash can’t help the way his body jolts, the slick that wets his briefs. Wolfwood’s nostrils flare, and he shouldn’t be able to smell Vash, not beneath the acrid woodfire, but Vash barely has time to watch his pupils swallow the brown of his irises like a hunting cat before Wolfwood is swinging a leg over his lap and sitting down.
Vash goes rigid, breath stuck in his throat as he looks up at Wolfwood. Backlit by starlight and fire, Wolfwood’s edges glow gold and red, only his too-sharp teeth and the whites of his eyes visible. An angel in the night, something biblical, something Vash can only comprehend when looking away.
“The night’s young,” Wolfwood says, low, a coyote’s growl. He shifts forward, hands on Vash’s shoulders, the soft line of his cock pressed to Vash’s navel where their hips touch. “There’s ways we could pass the time.”
“You’re a menace,” Vash says, but it comes out choked instead of teasing. His hands find Wolfwood’s waist, protected by the threadbare fabric of his shirt, and he digs his thumbs into the fat and muscle of Wolfwood’s stomach. His cunt throbs when he sees Wolfwood’s eyes flutter at the pain. “How do you expect me to keep watch if you’re fucking me?”
Wolfwood’s grin widens. His eyeteeth are far too long for a human, hooked back like a beast’s, like Vash’s. Heaven, Vash thinks, to have them buried in his throat. “Who said anything about me doing the fucking?”
Vash hisses through his teeth, body catching light. He hauls himself and Wolfwood upright against the boulder, ignoring Wolfwood’s grunt of protest to slip his thigh between Wolfwood’s legs. “You can’t touch me,” he says softly, pulling Wolfwood flush. “Not tonight. But we can do this much”
“Where’s the fun in—” Wolfwood starts, but it breaks on a gasp when Vash rocks his thigh forward, into Wolfwood’s cock. “Oh, fuck.”
“If you don’t know how to have fun with your clothes on,” Vash says, half a smile, his hands sliding to Wolfwood’s ass, “then you’ve got some things to learn tonight.”
Wolfwood groans as Vash rolls their hips together, then again, and again. He can feel Wolfwood’s cock harden with every pass, his own dick twitching as Wolfwood’s thick thigh rubs against it. Wolfwood scrabbles at his shoulders, humping Vash like an uncoordinated teenager, and Vash can’t help his laugh, a little mean.
“You’ve never done this before, have you?” Vash asks, eyes locked on Wolfwood’s mouth, wet and shining with spit, like he’s been kissed senseless, like Vash was the one who kissed him, like he broke all his rules tonight for a man he’s known for days. He licks his own lips, his fangs dripping venom. “Has a man ever made you come, Wolfwood?”
“Shut up,” Wolfwood grits out, squeezing Vash’s thigh between his legs in his desperation to get closer.
It’s all the answer Vash needs. He doesn’t know what he’s done for this gift, for someone young and beautiful and not yet jaded by the dirty hands of men who care naught for the pleasure of others, who knows what Vash did in July and still gasps and whines against him. He drags his left hand from Wolfwood’s ass all the way around to his mouth, pressing hard enough to leave bruises in his wake, and slips his fingers inside when Wolfwood parts his lips.
“Good boy,” Vash murmurs when Wolfwood sucks on his fingers, and Wolfwood lets out a noise so close to a whimper it sets Vash’s gut on fire. Wolfwood’s eyes flutter shut and Vash clicks his tongue. “Look at me, Wolfwood.”
Wolfwood’s eyes peel open, no brown left to them, black holes in the dark of night, and Vash almost does it. Almost leans forward to kiss him—fuck the rules, fuck the consequences, fuck the unbearable ache of humanity and mortality that breaks him every time he gets that close. Plants and humans were never meant to merge, but Vash has never learned his lesson.
He pulls his fingers free from Wolfwood’s mouth and trails them down until they’re caging his throat, no pressure, only a threat. Wolfwood gasps, shoving forward into Vash’s grasp, and Vash carefully squeezes down until Wolfwood’s chest is heaving for breath, his hips erratic against Vash’s thigh, rutting like a wild thing.
“Are you going to keep being good?” Vash whispers, drawing close enough to whisper in Wolfwood’s ear. “Are you going to come for me?”
Wolfwood’s throat clicks and rumbles beneath his hand, fingers clawing at Vash’s prosthetic arm, and Vash releases him. Wolfwood’s inhale is huge and shuddering, his body shaking as Vash indgules just enough to nose behind his ear, and he feels the sticky warmth in Wolfwood’s sleep pants as he comes against Vash’s thigh.
Vash makes a pleased noise, stroking down Wolfwood’s neck, over the hollow between his collarbones, the hair on his chest. Wolfwood sags down until he’s on knees, and Vash doesn’t realize his intent until Wolfwood’s face is pressed into his clothed pussy.
He grabs Wolfwood’s hair with his prosthetic, trying to pull him back. “Don’t,” he says, a little frantic when Wolfwood’s dazed, teary eyes look up at him. “That’s not what this is about.”
“But I want to,” Wolfwood says, bottom lip pouting, and Vash’s heart seizes in his chest.
“My clothes stay on.” He expects Wolfwood to huff, to get up and walk away, but instead he buries his face in the clutch of Vash’s legs with a groan. Vash keeps his fingers wrapped tight enough in Wolfwood’s hair to sting as Wolfwood sucks his dick through the leather of his pants, as he rubs two fingers along the folds of Vash’s cunt.
It doesn’t take long, not after their frenetic grinding, not with the way Wolfwood’s teeth graze over the shape of his clit like he might bite down. Vash shoves him even closer, moaning when Wolfwood yelps at the burn in his scalp, and he comes when he sees tears spill over Wolfwood’s big brown eyes.
The night is silent except for their panting as they come down, Vash slumping down until he’s sitting beside Wolfwood. Wolfwood collapses down onto his side, forehead resting against Vash’s thigh, and Vash cards his prosthetic fingers through Wolfwood’s hair.
Wolfwood’s sigh is heavy and satisfied. “We probably woke up half the camp, y’know.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“Why? You embarrassed over a little fucking?” Wolfwood asks, snorting.
Vash grabs Wolfwood’s chin in an iron grip, Wolfwood wincing as he turns his head to look up at him. He grins down at Wolfwood, fangs bared. “Because,” he says, light, quiet enough that only Wolfwood would hear, “no one else in this world needs to know what you look like when you come.”
The noise Wolfwood makes in his throat haunts his dreams for years.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
Vash thrashes against the vines, teeth snapping on empty air. The bark scrapes at his skin, leaves bruises on the soft line of his neck. If he had Nai, this would be easy—a single blade and they’d both be free.
But he doesn’t have Nai. Not anymore. Vash handed his brother a world where they no longer had to fight, where they could spend the rest of their mortal lives in each other’s company, in peace, and his stupid, beautiful brother decided death was easier than being forgiven. Some men, Vash knows, cannot live with themselves. And it’s always the men he loves the most.
Vash lets out a breathless sigh, relaxing back into the cool earth, and one by one the vines curl away, back into his skin. He closes his eyes as he frees himself, flexing his forearms, rolling his neck.
Well? the voice says, years away, so familiar it makes Vash want to tear his own heart out and eat it. Are you ready to meet me?
Vash stands.
“So you can smile,” Wolfwood says. “I wasn’t sure you could.”
Vash punches him on the shoulder, grinning even wider, and treats them both to eggs and pancakes. He doesn’t tell Wolfwood that the smile hurts after years unused. Twelve hours later, standing on the apex of Jeneora’s Rock, it doesn’t matter, anyway.
Nai wraps himself beneath Vash’s outstretched arm, back to chest, and it’s agony. It’s fucking euphoria. Nai grips his throat and Vash’s eyes roll back as their edges bleed together, as their shared memories merge, as every hurt and every scar throbs. Years since they’ve been this close—since they’ve been one.
The thing about Nai is that the rage doesn’t even touch the hurt, and the hurt is just a shadow to the love. The thing about Nai is that he does everything for love. The thing about Nai is that he loves nothing more than Vash. The thing about Nai is that he never learned that love isn’t supposed to hurt.
Vash can’t scream, can’t make a sound, can’t even draw breath as his arm tears apart, Nai’s consciousness holding him in place and unweaving the human form Vash hides in. Eyes rolled back in his skull, Vash can only feel it as his arm reshapes into something awful, something apocalyptic. The well of energy locked deep within in his ribcage bursts open, unable to hold against Nai’s ecstasy, and their joined power threatens to immolate them both.
Don’t fight it, Nai says, his silent whisper a balm in Vash’s aching mind. This is how we win. This is how we can be together again. Don’t you remember how we once were?
And Vash—Vash remembers. What it felt like to sleep curled up beside his brother, even though Rem told them big boys slept in their own beds, their foreheads pressed together to share their dreams. What it felt like to touch earth for the first time with only Nai beside him, a world to themselves. What it felt like to spend all those decades trailing Nai, begging for his attention like a dog whining for scraps, and the sheer joy when Nai indulged him every time.
Feathers burst from Vash’s body, bloodied as they tear through skin, and he wails into Nai’s mind when bone rips through his back in the shape of a single wing. Shh, Nai coos, nuzzling Vash’s neck, his body ice-cold against Vash’s. You look beautiful like this, Vash. Angelic.
Not a goddamn angel, Vash says, and reality bleeds out around him, an endless spider web of universes, a hundred thousand possibilities in the next moment. A demon. A murderer.
Nai’s hand tightens on his throat. You are perfect, he says, a hint of steel in his words now. What human calls themself a sinner for eliminating an anthill? This is our planet. Not theirs.
Vash looks into the multiverse laid out before him, the glittering stars of thousands and thousands of lives. There is no heaven here. No redemption—not for the humans, not for Nai, and certainly not for the creature called Vash the Stampede. There is only softening the loss.
Nai presses a kiss to his temple, and Vash closes his unseeing eyes against the unbearable, wicked gentleness of his affection. That’s right, Nai murmurs, and Vash doesn’t fight it as Nai raises their arm towards the city. You’ve always known how this ends.
Vash feels the pressure of Nai’s fangs in his neck first. The pain is breathtaking—then the soothe of venom, the numbness in Vash’s limbs, all thought disappearing from Vash’s mind.
They fire as one.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
He feels every inch his century and a half in years as he pulls himself upright. All the wounds on his body, every scar, every stitch, tears open as he moves. Pure darkness spills out of him, the black hole of his Gate consuming him from the inside out.
Uh oh, the voice sing-songs, and Vash doesn’t know who the fuck he is, but he remembers hating him at moments like this. Looks like you better hurry, Vash.
Vash looks north over the horizon, at a hill rolling with tall grass. The figure made of wind sits there at the summit, beneath a great willow tree, the likes of which Vash has only seen in movies back on the SEEDS ship with Rem and Nai.
Vash holds the edge of his body together and heads north.
“I don’t know if I believe in the power of God,” Wolfwood says, sprawled across Sheryl’s attic windowsill with a cigarette dangling in his mouth, “but it sure is a fucking miracle I found you here.”
Vash laughs when Wolfwood presses his hands together in prayer. “Thought you were a priest. What would the kids think if they heard you doubting your deity?”
Wolfwood lolls his head on the window frame to grin at Vash. “Oh, he’s real enough. Just don’t think the fucker cares. Why else would we be on this shitty planet?”
Vash purses his lips. The reason is simple enough—because two little boys got scared, and never stopped being scared. He wonders what the humans would do if they knew a pair of orphaned children were the source of all their misery.
“Stop it,” Wolfwood says, jabbing a finger in Vash’s direction. “I know what that look means.”
Vash rolls his eyes. “You’ve known me for a couple weeks out of the past two years. Don’t pretend like you know me.”
Wolfwood stands, crossing the attic in three big steps until he’s standing between Vash’s knees where he’s lounged on his bed. He cocks a brow at Vash, tilting his chin up with a finger. “You’re not as mysterious as you try to be, Vash. Can practically see the smoke coming outta your ears when you overthink.”
Vash ignores the way his stomach flutters at Wolfwood’s touch to reach up and snag the cigarette from him. Wolfwood’s eyes fall to his mouth as he wraps his lips around the cigarette, tasting the sticky sweetness of the hard candy Wolfwood was chewing on earlier. Wolfwood doesn’t flinch when he blows the smoke out in his face.
“If you’re so smart,” Vash says, lounging back on his elbows, “what were you doing spending all this time tracking me down?”
“Maybe I got a death wish,” Wolfwood says, eyes raking down the length of Vash’s body, lingering on his cunt. “Or maybe I just got a vested interest in the future of this world.”
Wolfwood’s filled out over the last two years, taller than Vash, broader. There’s a heavy scruff on his face that makes Vash wonder what it would feel like on the skin of his inner thighs. He spreads his legs a little further just to see the way Wolfwood’s pupils dilate.
“Future of the world,” he echoes. “That’s a big dream for someone who can’t even stop staring at my pussy.”
Wolfwood is on him in an instant, one knee on the bed, one hand behind Vash’s head. He smells like gunpowder and his back-alley skunk cigarettes this close, like caramel candy, like sunwarmed skin. “What can I say?” he murmurs, and oh, his voice has dropped the last two years, too. “I’ve been dreaming about what you taste like all this time.”
Vash shivers. Something like static electricity clings to the slim space between them, raising the hairs on Vash’s arm, but he knows better these days, after Jeneora Rock. It’s the same thing he feels around Nai—the energy of another Plant. His whole body thrums with the need to get closer, to feel, to touch. The wanting stretches between them like thin strands of silk.
And then he thinks of Nai, of the hole in the moon he looks up at every night, the sin that can only come from two Independents merging, and he draws his leg up between them to push Wolfwood away.
“What did I tell you last time?” he says softly, chest panging when Wolfwood’s pretty face falls. “No touching.”
Wolfwood sinks to his knees between the spread of Vash’s legs, laying his cheek against Vash’s clothed knee. “You gotta feel it, Vash,” he implores, his doe eyes pleading. “Being near you—I feel like I’m gonna burn up, fuck.”
Vash sighs and sits up, stubbing out the cigarette. “Wolfwood,” he says, with the gentleness he usually reserves for Lina. “You saw what happened when Knives touched me.”
“So?” Wolfwood’s hands creep up to knead at Vash’s hips, toying with the hem of his shirt. “He’s fucking crazy. It don’t have to be like that with everybody.”
“Why chance it?”
“Because you deserve good things!” Wolfwood snaps, exasperation clear. “You think it’s healthy to go your whole goddamn life without being touched? Your brother wants you as a weapon. Not everyone else wants that.”
The static swells, the air crackling, and Vash struggles in the riptide. “And what do you want?”
“I just want a chance to get to know you,” Wolfwood says, and a human wouldn’t hear it, but Vash feels it—the way his chest cracks open. The way Vash could rip his heart out right now and eat it. “Not the Humanoid Typhoon, not Vash the Stampede. Just Vash, whoever the fuck that is.”
And Vash has never claimed to be good—has never been more than a betrayer of his own flesh and blood. He holds Wolfwood’s beating heart in his hands. “I can’t promise you’ll like what you find.”
Wolfwood’s eyes light up, his mouth set. “I ain’t asking for that. I just want a little honesty. If we’re gonna do this thing—if I’m gonna travel with you—I need to be able to handle whatever’s happening when I’m near you.”
Vash bites down.
“Strip,” he decides, standing up and around Wolfwood to head for his nightstand. “Lay on the bed when you’re done.”
He busies himself in the drawer as Wolfwood strips behind him tossing his clothes on the floor. By the time he’s fished out the last of his lube, Wolfwood is laying on the bed, cheeks flushed in arousal, embarrassment, thick cock laying over his hip.
Vash keeps his clothes on, climbing onto the bed to straddle Wolfwood. He pulls Wolfwood’s cock forward to sit his covered cunt down on it, and Wolfwood lets out a dreamy sigh. “Plants,” Vash starts, carefully resting his flesh hand on Wolfwood’s bare chest, “don’t speak. They communicate telepathically, and the shorter the distance, the easier it is.”
Wolfwood nods, staring down at Vash’s hand. “Alright. You talking to that shitty brother of yours right now?”
Vash’s inhale is sharp. “Knives is—unreachable, currently. When things are better, we still only communicate at this distance in moments of distress. If we touch, though, we can merge.”
“Fucking weird, but okay.”
Vash huffs, his smile crooked. “I connect with my sisters when they’re sick, mainly, but I connect with humans too. When I dream, I can see into the minds of the people I’ve melded with before. Helps me keep track of them when I’m gone. But when they—” Vash pauses, glancing out the window, where the sun is setting on the horizon in an ocean of red—“when they die, I don’t dream of them anymore.”
Wolfwood hums, just barely rolling his hips up into Vash before settling again. “Must be busy dreams,” he mumbles, fisting the sheets.
Vash licks over his teeth. “Well, it’s only Nai these days, really.”
Wolfwood’s eyes shoot up. “Vash,” he says, more exhale than word. “No wonder you don’t sleep.”
Vash plasters on a grin, putting more weight down onto his hand. Sparks flicker between them, and beneath that, he can feel the thundering of Wolfwood’s heart. “It’s worth it, though. The connection. When you share everything with someone you trust.”
Wolfwood’s eyes go hooded, his hands slipping up Vash’s thighs, the denim barely enough to protect Vash from the shock. “Seems awfully dangerous, trusting someone like me.”
Vash rocks back and forth, just a few times, sighing at the feel of Wolfwood’s cock against him. “I’ve trusted worse people for less.”
Wolfwood’s smile twists, a little wounded, a little hunted. “You ain’t even seen how bad I can be.”
“Is that so,” Vash says, sliding down Wolfwood’s body until he’s laying between his legs. “I remember you being a good little pup last time.”
“Shit,” Wolfwood whispers, eyes squeezing shut. “You always make this a sex thing?”
“No,” Vash says, snatching the lube from the nightstand and settling back down. “Just makes things easier sometimes.” Only sometimes, he thinks, because most people don’t want me like you do.
“Guess I’m just lucky,” Wolfwood says breathlessly, watching as Vash coats his flesh hand in lube.
Lucky—he almost laughs. Vash the Stampede only brings misfortune to the humans trapped to his side. Wolfwood will be no different, in the end, no matter how sweet Vash is now. All he can do is make the start of it worth the pain.
He gives one long stroke down Wolfwood’s cock, feeling it twitch in his hand. Wolfwood’s thoughts bleed through his skin, electrical impulses and overheated skin—oh fuck, Vash hears, even though Wolfwood’s mouth is clamped shut. Oh shit, oh fuck.
It’s easy to get Wolfwood hard—fast down and slow back up, thumb digging into his frenulum that hurts enough Vash can feel it on his own clit. Little noises fall out of Wolfwood’s mouth, out of his mind, a song only Vash can hear.
Vash switches hands, holding the base of Wolfwood’s with his mechanical fingers. Wolfwood jolts at the cold, eyes flickering down to Vash, and Vash holds his gaze as he wraps his lips around the head and sinks down.
Wolfwood gasps, jerking up into Vash’s mouth. Vash presses his thighs together as Wolfwood’s pleasure washes through him, his cunt leaking. He can feel his own mouth, hot and wet, like it’s his dick getting sucked.
Vash trails his slick right hand down, between Wolfwood’s asscheeks. His own hole throbs in time with Wolfwood’s when he pushes at the entrance, yesyesyes looping in his mind in Wolfwood’s desperate voice. He slips one finger inside and Wolfwood’s moan rattles both of their rib cages.
“More,” Wolfwood grits out when Vash finds his prostate the same moment he hollows his cheeks. Pleasure coils tight in both of their stomachs as Vash presses another finger inside of him. “Vash, fucking christ—”
Vash bobs his head faster, fingers curling, eyes falling shut at the waves of Wolfwood’s need. He groans around his cock, cunt clenching. There’s no way to help the way the tendrils of his mind sink deeper into Wolfwood’s head, the flashes of memories, the wounds, the gunfire, the laughter of children, the dark of a cell—the way Wolfwood reaches back.
“What is—” Wolfwood sucks in a heaving breath, the first bitter tinge of fear flowing between them. “I can see your—Vash, what is that—”
Vash opens his eyes to pulsing blue. For a moment, he thinks it’s himself, his markings alight in the face of connection. Then he chokes.
The light is coming from Wolfwood’s stomach.
Vash reaches up slowly, so slowly, like he’s afraid to spook a wild animal. Wolfwood’s eyes are wide, scared, the high of his pleasure unbearable. Vash runs his fingers over the markings on Wolfwood’s stomach, Wolfwood’s confusion muddling his own thoughts.
Plant, he thinks, meant for himself, but he feels the moment understanding clicks for Wolfwood. You’re part Plant.
No, Wolfwood says, except they both know it’s useless to argue when the evidence is flashing between them in time with their heartbeats. That can’t be right.
Vash can’t stop the joy that bubbles in his chest. An Independent, a hybrid—it doesn’t matter what Wolfwood is. All that matters is that he isn’t alone. He sinks further onto Wolfwood’s cock, nose pressed to the hair on his stomach, and pumps his fingers faster.
“Oh god,” Wolfwood gasps, trailing his fingers over the markings on his stomach, then the ones on Vash’s face. He presses down, rubbing the inside of Vash’s cheek into his cock, and Vash makes a noise in his throat at the pain of his teeth cutting into his own skin. The fire in Wolfwood’s stomach curls higher, desire so white-hot it burns them both, and Vash pulls off to watch, stroking Wolfwood’s slick cock with his left hand.
There’s something familiar about the markings on Wolfwood’s stomach, something that buzzes under Vash’s skin, makes him want to sink his teeth into Wolfwood’s hip. There’s no pleasure that compares to blood and flesh and venom, not even the heat of Wolfwood’s hole around him—just as there’s no coming back when they fall from that precipice.
Vash bites his own lips until it bleeds, instead, his own venom prickling into his system. Wolfwood’s whole body jerks as the venom hits Vash, the effects dulled for him through their connection, through Vash’s own resistance. White pricks at the edges of Vash’s vision, oblivion calling.
The markings, he realizes, and he hopes Wolfwood doesn’t hear. They’re the same as Nai’s.
Then Wolfwood’s orgasm rips through both of them, and Vash thinks no more.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
He crawls on hands and knees to the peak of the hill. Dark matter curls out of him like smoke, like every second in this dream strips the atoms from his body. He’s gasping on nothing when he collapses at the top beside the figure.
Good job, the figure says, and a hand as soft and warm as sunlight lands in Vash’s hair. Vash closes his eyes. He doesn’t know why he’s crying. There’s only one man who played with his hair like this—only one man who touched him like this—
Vash shoots upright onto his knees, gaping at the figure. The man laughs as stars fall from the sky into his body, melting into solid form. Do you remember now, Vash? Do you know who I am?
Vash takes a deep breath.
“Blondie,” Wolfwood says, voice hoarse from smoke and ash, “couldn’t you have picked a nicer place to die?”
Vash’s eyes adjust slowly to the dark of the room that’s caved in around them. The explosion still rings in his ears, the crash of falling rubble. “We’re not going to die here,” he says, even as he feels blood wetting his coat.
Wolfwood’s laugh is pained. “Speak for yourself.”
Vash can see him, now, sitting up against a shattered piece of wall. There’s a dark patch staining the white of his shirt, just above his right hip, and Vash crawls to him, eyes stinging from more than the chemical smoke.
“Where’s your serum?” he asks, frantically patting at Wolfwood’s suit jacket. His hands stutter when he feels wet, and he rips the jacket open, only to see Wolfwood’s vials all shattered in his pocket. “Fuck, Wolfwood.”
Wolfwood chuckles, cupping a hand around Vash’s nape. “Guess it was a good run.”
“That can’t be all of them,” Vash whispers furiously, flinging the broken glass across the room piece by piece. “What even hit you?”
“Shrapnel,” Wolfwood says, and his chest wheezes as he reaches down to feel at the wound. “Piece’s stuck in there.”
Vash scrambles upright and stands as tall as he can in the rubble of the building they’re trapped in, hands shaking as he fumbles off his boots and pants. “I’m not gonna let you die. That shrapnel’s coming out, one way or another.”
“Uh huh,” Wolfwood says, a little faint. “And how does getting half-naked help that plan? Not that I’m complaining, ‘course, prettiest pussy on the whole planet, would love to have my mouth on it, my dying wish, even—”
“Wolfwood,” Vash says, falling to his knees to unbuckle Wolfwood’s ripped and ashen pants, “shut the fuck up.”
Wolfwood raises his hands in surrender, head knocking back against the wall as Vash fishes his cock out. “A handjob’s not a bad way to go, all things considered.”
“I can heal Plants,” Vash says, settling on his knees over Wolfwood’s lap, stroking his cock with quick, clinical movements. “Which means I can heal you, if we’re close enough.”
“Not a Plant,” Wolfwood retorts. It’s an old argument after months on the road together, a dozen times that Vash has made him come, their markings pulsing in tandem. “But if you want to try, sure. How’s this going to—oh my fucking god.”
The last words come out as a wheeze as Vash sinks down onto Wolfwood’s cock. The connection is instant, overwhelming, a system shock—the agony of both their wounds, Wolfwood’s ragged breathing, the pleasure of feeling both cock and cunt at once.
“First time inside you,” Wolfwood manages, “and it’s ‘cause you think your magic pussy can heal me. I despise you sometimes.”
“No, you don’t,” Vash says, because it’s true. Wolfwood’s cock inside him, his hands braced on Wolfwood’s broad chest, Vash can feel everything. The way Wolfwood fears him, the times he’s held a gun to Vash’s sleeping head, his fury when Vash lets another awful motherfucker live. The comfort when they awake wrapped in each other’s arms, the joy of getting drunk and sloppy together, the euphoria of Vash’s mouth on him. The trust when they fight back-to-back, unbreachable, devoted. Not love, not yet, but the shape of it. Something that can bloom, given care, given time.
Not that they have much of the latter, at this rate. Vash grinds his hips on Wolfwood’s lap, breath hiccuping at the size, how deep he reaches. He steadies himself with a long inhale, and then reaches down, digging his fingers into Wolfwood’s wound.
Wolfwood howls. The pain is nauseating, threatening to make them both pass out, but Vash grits his teeth and presses deeper. “I can’t—can’t heal you with this in you,” he grits out, teeth chattering, rolling his hips to ease the hurt.
It works. Wolfwood’s cock twitches in him and Vash’s cunt drips, seizes around him. Funny, he thinks, how our wires are crossed the exact same way. Like we were made for this.
You got a strange sense of humor, Wolfwood says, hands gripping Vash’s bare ass so hard he’ll leave bruises.
Vash’s fingers hit metal, and he pinches it, slipping once, twice, before pulling it out Wolfwood’s stomach. The blood is instant, and Vash presses his flesh hand to the hole, eyes squeezing shut as he concentrates.
It’s been years—maybe decades—since he healed a wound this big, this fast. He’s so used to letting his own heal naturally that it takes all his focus to funnel the energy into a fine point, both of their bodies itching as Wolfwood’s skin and muscle slowly stitches back together.
“Kiss me,” Wolfwood says, and he sounds drunk, blood loss, pleasure. Kiss me. Just this once. If this is going to be the end, let me have this.
It isn’t going to be the end, not yet, not for either of them. It doesn’t stop Vash from closing the distance and kissing Wolfwood for the first time in years.
The breath they take is shared, a gasp as one. Vash’s ears ring, energy surging from his hand around them in an explosion of blue, as Wolfwood grabs the back of his head and desperately slips his tongue in Vash’s mouth. It feels like agony—like cauterization, like revelation, like looking upon the face of God. This time, when the wing unfurls from Vash’s back, he does not scream.
Wolfwood’s skin tightens beneath his hand until it’s perfectly smooth, not even a scar left, and Wolfwood rolls his cock up into Vash’s pussy. Vash sucks on his tongue as Wolfwood fucks into him, hands scrabbling at Vash’s hips, running over the bone of his wing beneath his shoulderblade. The room glows blue around them, an aurora at high noon.
Wolfwood slides his fingers over the gashes through Vash’s coat, the tears where shrapnel ripped through but did not sink in, and Vash sighs into his mouth as they heal over. He feels Wolfwood’s cock in him, feels his pussy around Wolfwood’s cock, an ouroboros of pleasure, sinking them both down. There are no words between them, not anymore—only the bite of fresh wounds and the warmth of cunt.
They both feel when Vash’s fangs drop, a viper in human form, venom dripping over his tongue. Wolfwood licks it from his mouth until Vash pulls back, pupils nothing but slits; he doesn’t have to say anything for Wolfwood to bare his neck. Vash leans down, kissing the join of his shoulder for just a moment, and then bites down.
Wolfwood comes with a strangled curse as the venom courses into him, cock kicking inside Vash, his cum spilling down between them. Vash shakes through it, rocking down onto Wolfwood when he stills. He needs more, just a little more, something sharp, something cruel—
He gets it when Wolfwood shoves a thick, dry finger inside him beside his cock. The stretch burns, aches, and Vash pulses around Wolfwood as he comes, the venom fading out the world around him.
When he comes to again, he’s laying on his side, curled into Wolfwood. Vash hums at the feeling of Wolfwood’s fingers playing with his hair, his soft cock still inside him. Wolfwood’s blood is sticky on his chin, cum and slick drying between their thighs.
“Your hair,” Wolfwood starts, and the connection is weaker now, but Vash feels something foreign—hesitance.
He peels his eyes open, running a thumb over Wolfwood’s furrowed brow. “What about it?”
“It’s darker now,” Wolfwood says, plucking at a strand high above Vash’s temple. “A new streak.”
Vash takes a deep breath, eyes fluttering closed again. “Don’t worry about it. It happens.”
“Vash.” There’s more strength to Wolfwood’s voice now as he pulls at Vash’s hair hard enough to sting. “I know what it means. I saw it in you.”
“Then you’ll know I don’t care.”
“What happens when it’s all black?” Wolfwood pushes on, throwing a thigh over Vash’s hip when he tries to pull away. “What happens when you run out? Do you even know?”
Vash sighs, rolling his head to look up at the ceiling. They’ll have to dig their way out of here soon. His hands already ache. “We’ll figure it out when it happens.”
“Together?” Wolfwood asks, and beneath the gruffness in his tone lies something small.
Vash turns back and kisses him.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
It can’t be, Vash says, eyes wide on the figure, except this time he only thinks it. Except this time he doesn’t need to speak words to be heard. It’s impossible. I buried you myself.
The man grins with his fangs of stars. The nebulas across his skin flash in the pattern of Nai’s markings, except this isn’t Nai. It’s—it’s—
Say it. I know you can.
Vash reaches out his hand, touching warm, living skin, and whispers: Wolfwood.
“I want to touch you,” Vash says, light as the wind around them. “Fuck, I want to kiss you.”
On the other end of the battered couch, Wolfwood laughs, clinking his shot glass against the arm. “Can’t believe this is what it takes to get you to finally admit that.”
Vash doesn’t look at him, leaning his elbows on his knees to look out over the orphanage. “You know how I am,” he says around the wound of his throat. “Always a little late.”
Wolfwood holds out his glass and Vash pours another shot in it. He takes his own swig straight from the bottle as Wolfwood drinks. Wolfwood smacks his lips when he’s done, tilting his head back on the couch.
“Would be kinda fun to go out eating your pussy,” Wolfwood says, sighing wistfully. “‘Cept I think it might kill you, too.”
Vash knows it would. Even if he survived their connection through Wolfwood’s death, his mind would never recover. He thinks about it anyway—dying here, curled up on the couch with Wolfwood in his arms. Let someone else tend to their bodies. Let someone else tend to the world.
But Nai’s ark is on the horizon, drawing closer every second, and Vash knows no one else in this godforsaken universe could handle Nai’s grief. The lot of brothers—to be each other’s keepers, to the bitter end, even if it means putting a bullet in each other’s chests to put them out of their fucking misery. Wolfwood has always been destined to die on his own terms. Vash has always been destined to die at Nai’s side.
“Shit,” Wolfwood says, and in the vast silence of the desert, Vash hears his tears as they hit the fabric of the couch. “Shit.”
I love you, Vash says into the aether between them, fangs digging into his lips where his mouth is hidden behind his clasped hands. I need you, I want you, I fucking love you. I can’t do this without you. How could you fucking do this to me? Wolfwood, how could you?
Wolfwood, slumped back against the couch, says nothing back.
The first spring after the end of the world, Vash dreams.
And then he wakes up.