Na-t0 - 【な-と】

𝘛𝘰 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵

Vash the Stampede x reader (no pronouns used)

The piece below contains the bleak words from a remitter that considered not deserving a response from its addressee. A mere confession from a worn out soul to another.

A farewell letter dedicated to the man with a geranium colored spirit.

A farewell letter dedicated to the man that will be loved until the five moons that adorn the sky, fall before the eyes of this desolate heart.

The reason why I am writing this letter to you is somewhat difficult to explain. It's something much bigger than me, a greater power beyond my comprehension that unfortunately, is slowly consuming everything around me. I’ve come to find myself plunged into deep despair, and at the same time, I learnt to accept the cowardice that has been invading me for not being able to muster the necessary strength to look at you in the eyes and tell you what you will read here in a few moments.

Pretty easy right? To hide between words, ink and paper. I'm sorry about that.

I will start by saying that, when I first met you, I came to realize that everything I knew and defined as my world would transform into something entirely different. You were the strike of lightning in the pouring rain, a hit that came with enough force to demolish an entire city. Your presence was all over the place, making it hard to ignore you. Every step you took resonated loudly in my head. And despite of what your name represents and what people often acknowledges you as, I have realized that it only covers a small part of what you truly are.

I think you are incredible, Vash. You are kind, you are a gentle being. You are the most wonderful coincidence that I have met in my life. You are an imperfect creation, but so am I. And so is everything else. And no matter how hard I try, I'll never be able to fully comprehend your greatness. But that's okay, because I already came to create my own conclusions. Just like you don't need to fully understand why I feel the way I feel when I notice you are near me. Or how the blood flows violently in each and every of my veins when I hear you breathing softly while you are sleeping on my chest. Even when, I suppose that you too have already come to create your own conclusions about it.

My love for you has grown so unbridled that I fear of losing my mind. So, that's why I decided to get away from you, from the room we shared, from the city where we used to travel together. Having you by my side hurt, because despite the suffocating closeness, you were still miles away from me.

And it hurt, it hurt immensely because my heart is exposed. Open the palm of your hand and there you will find it, bleeding and throbbing with emotion and life. While yours, is hiding behind an iron barrier attached to the left side of your chest. A barrier I could never cross no matter how hard I tried.

And because of that, I wish your gaze had never met mine. I wish you had never saved my life. I wish our lips had never touched. I wish you had never felt embarrassed to undress yourself in front of me. I wish I never had to see you cry while nightmares tormented you at midnight. I wish your pain would just go away. I wish you never had to suffer. I wish you had never deprived me of the right to love you.

I wish for so many things.

And I also foolishly wish that you loved me as much as I do, despite everything, despite all of this.

I love the scars in your body that form together a map I have traveled so many times with my lips, a map vividly embodied in my memory. I love your eyes and the color of your hair. I love the little mole that adorns the highest part of your left cheekbone. The aroma of your skin and the contrast of temperatures that your hands emit when you embrace me. I love when you laugh and I also love that you are easily moved to tears. I love the sound of your voice at any time of the day. I love listening to you hum that song you like so much and I love dancing with you that waltz we drunkenly invented one night out in the dark alley of a bar, and therefore, only you and I know. I love all the versions I've met of you.

I have even come to hate that word, ‘love’, because I consider that is too vague to describe what arises within my being when I lift my stare from the floor and see you standing in front of me. But I've learned to settle for it, so yes, I love you. I absolutely love everything about you, your worst and your best. I love you, Vash. And I am a slave to my own body because it refuses to feel otherwise, to think otherwise.

I will be devoted to you until eternity comes to an end, even though I don't really have a clue of how long that will be.

Knowing you, that idea does not please you at all.

So, forgive me.

Forgive me for stumbling upon your way that rainy day, and for trying to love you the days that came next.

Forgive me for that, and for all the other things, so I can leave without wanting to look back.

                   -Yours entirely. Yours forever.

What followed after was the image of Vash going through the door, running after those faint footsteps of your boots imprint in the unforgiving sand of May City. Holding against his chest the crumpled piece of paper that had the last bit of your essence. The trace that a weak, broken heart left behind as an old souvenir. Pieces slowly intermingling with the ground, waiting to be picked up by the hands that undid them in the first place. And as he ran, it wasn't just the scorching sun of a summer afternoon the only thing that burned. The love you felt for that mysterious man with the empty smile and tender eyes was consumed in ashes. The sun was burning, but your heart and your soul, were burning even stronger. And Vash ran, he ran for hours until his legs sank in the dryness. Ran until your trail was lost. And he cried too, cried until exhaustion did not allow a single more sob to come out of his throat. But he managed to stand up, just like he always has, and kept searching. Praying silently to the heavens for another coincidence, another way to find you once again.

I think of cutting Vash's hair. Intertwine your fingers and subtly untangle it, he will nestle in your hands and start to hum in delight. When his hair begins to grow and lose its spiky shape, he will come to you as a symbol of pure affection and full trust.

Such a simple act becomes very intimate and domestic. Cutting his hair shows that he allows you to handle something so characteristic of him, something that people he appreciated deeply have only done.

And don't forget that he enjoys finishing off with a kiss after you show him the result.~

Imagine Helping Vash Get Cleaned Up After the Incident in July

Vash the Stampede X FemReader

Rating: T

Warnings: Suggestive themes, mentions of nudity, angst, mentions of deaths, and steam

Word Count: 1k

(A/N:) I am drowning in Trigun Stampede feels. I needed to write something to make me feel better (it helped a little bit). I want Vash to be happy, somebody please stop writing bad things happening to him!! He deserves good things and I just have all the Vash feels. So I have SEVERAL ideas in my drafts for both him and Nicholas so my fellow Trigun fangirls be on the lookout as I keep working and hopefully get around to posting more often! Until next time happy reading! ~Countess

Seguir leyendo

A New Religion

Pairing: Wolfwood x Fem Reader

Rating: 19+ MDNI

Song Inspo: Soweto by Victony, Rema

Summary: You're reunited with Wolfwood after all this time. You thought you were catching up with an old friend, but he tells you that you’re everything but that.

Word Ct: 4.1k

“Come onnn preacher man, you’re gonna let a woman like me walk all by herself?” 

“You came here by yourself, didn’t you?”

You pouted and batted your eyes. “What if something happened to me? Here in Mecca city with a man with a 300 million double dollar bounty on his head, don’t you think it’s a little unsafe for me?”

Wolfwood flicked his eyes down to you hanging off of his arm. Your hands were warm enough for him to feel it through the sleeves of his suit, and you weren't letting up your grip. He tried to look into your eyes to see if it was the beers that you had that were talking instead of your true self, but you only had one glass that you nursed the entire time he had been in the bar. His eyes followed the way you licked your lips and pulled them back to smile again. Wolfwood quickly looked away, but you didn’t want that so you cupped his face with one hand and plucked the bent cigarette out of his mouth to smoke. 

“I feel like priests shouldn’t be able to smoke,” you said after a long drag. “Ain’t it in the Bible somewhere?”

“God cares more about my heart than my lungs.”

“I’m sure your heart is struggling to keep pumping your dying lungs,” you said, and to Wolfwood’s surprise you placed your ear right on his naked chest. You pulled back to move your hair out of the way and your face was pressed up against his chest again. You took another drag of the smoke and tapped his sternum. 

“It’s beating so fast, the poor thing. Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of the pack for you. Your body’s a temple and I’m willing to keep it that way,” you winked up at him. 

“I don’t need you to finish anything for me,” he reached into his breast pocket to pull out his stash of cigarettes. He tapped out a new one, and before he could get his lighter you stopped him.

“Lucky you, I have one last match,” you opened your matchbox and showed him the stick. You stood like a flamingo, holding onto Wolfwood’s shoulder for stability and struck the match against the heel of your boot. A bright flame erupted before sizzling down to where you could bring it up to his face safely. The cigarette hung loosely from Wolfwood’s lips, and he made the mistake of looking directly in your dark eyes instead of the butt of the smoke. The fire danced in your eyes with delight, like a pyromaniac finally finding their passion. When he was able to hold a flame you blew the match out, and before he could stop what you were doing you switched out the cigarettes, putting the bent one back into his parted mouth and taking the fresh one for yourself. 

“Hey!”

“It’s the least you could do for me, Wolfy. I got a long walk back to the motel. This’ll keep me warm,” you tipped your hat to him and turned on your heel. 

“And what about me?”

“What about you, Nathan?” You yelled, but you never stopped to face him. Your hair bounced and your hips swayed as you walked down the street, and he could hear you smirking as you got his name wrong.

“That’s not my name,” he grumbled to himself, and he readjusted the Punisher hanging on his shoulder. He was about to leave the opposite direction himself, and the cigarette smoke filled his lungs enough for him to puff it out, but it tasted different. He held the smoke between his fingers and saw the light pink tinge of your lipgloss on the mouthpiece. It was barely there but suddenly cherries were the only thing he could think about. His head whipped around to find you and he could barely see the top of your cowboy hat poking through the crowd of people who were also leaving for the night. Then he saw your hat jerk violently to the side and into an alleyway. 

Wolfwood parted through the ocean of bounty hunters, his blood rushing in his ears. The seconds stretched for miles and he pushed aggressively through the crowd as he got closer to where he saw you disappear, and when he finally rounded the corner he was moments away from unlatching the Punisher. He saw a dying cigarette and your white hat flipped upside down on the floor. Equal parts fear and anger surged through him. Before he could make any hasty moves a motion caught his eyes in the corner of the alley. You stood there hunched over and trying to catch your breath, your hair flopped over and filled with debris. A large man laid flat on his back, groaning and mumbling incoherent thoughts out loud. His fingers twitched to reach his gun on the floor but Wolfwood crushed his fingers with his foot. 

“You okay?”

“Nevel!” You said, genuinely surprised to see him again so soon. “Me? Oh, I’m just peachy. Never been better,” you shook your hair out and put on a sweet smile. 

“Do you need to…” he started, but you shook your head.

“Don’t let my breathing fool you. He’s so drunk he couldn’t tell his dick from his gun. I’m just a little out of shape, but I can still protect myself.”

“Your shape is fine,” he said, dusting off your hat and handing it to her. 

“And what about my shape do you like?” You asked playfully, and snorted when he turned away to hide his flaming face. “Is it because I shared a holy cigarette with you? Is that why you can’t let go of me yet?”

“Let’s get you back to your room.”

“Now you want to walk with me,” you rolled your eyes. 

“I just want to make sure you get to bed and then I’ll leave. I’ll carry you if I have to,” he warned.

“Carry me and that death machine at the same time? I don’t even think you could do that. I’m not that tiny—“

But you were hauled over Wolfwood’s shoulder before you could finish your sentence. You caught your hat before it could fall again and he adjusted both you and the Punisher to sit comfortably to leave the alley. 

“Oh I’m going to tell the church about this, just you wait. A priest , manhandling an innocent bystander ! Is this because I haven’t paid my tithes? That doesn’t make me a sinner!”

“No, but killing people does,” Wolfwood jerked his shoulder up and you grumbled. 

“You’re no better than me.”

“I just do my job.” 

“Tell me, Father, do you ever do anything outside of your job,” you twisted and whispered in his ear. Your lips grazed the shell of his ear and a shiver went down his spine. “Caring for everybody else seems tiring. What do you like to do to unwind?”

“I’ll tell you if you can be quiet until we get to the motel.”

You pinched his butt in frustration, but surprised him once again by keeping your mouth closed. Wolfwood didn’t understand why you wanted to know, and he couldn’t tell if this was all a game to her. The only other time you talked was when he begged you for your room information so he could walk you right to it, but you were convinced he was trying to make you lose. When he reached the destination, he gently placed you back on your feet and fixed your tilting hat. 

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“I kept track of all of your transgressions,” you tapped your temple. “See you in the morning paper, you corrupted church man.” 

Wolfwood chuckled as you turned around and unlocked the door to your room. He scoped behind him to ensure that nobody was watching you get inside. Before you stepped foot inside you asked him the same question. 

“I don’t ‘unwind’. I’m given a job, I do my job, and another one is given to me. There’s no time for anything else.” 

“Sounds… boring. Lonely,” you brushed the lapels of his suit and peered up at him. Wolfwood wished you would stop looking at him like that. It moved something in his chest he couldn’t identify. “You really don’t have time for anything else? Not even for a friend?”

“We’re friends?” He asked incredulously. 

You slapped his chest and frowned. “Of course we are! Why else would you come back running to me? We always find each other no matter how long it’s been.” 

Your eyes softened and you wrapped your arms around his waist. “I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on you. Thank you, Nicholas, for helping me tonight.” You kissed his cheek and let him go. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again but it wouldn’t kill you to write a letter.”

“I can’t be friends with you,” Wolfwood said lowly, and your eyes clouded over.

“What?” 

He hooked his free hand around your waist and drew you in close. your eyes widened and you splayed your hands on his chest to stop from crashing into it. You looked up in confusion but you could see Wolfwood trying to gather his thoughts. 

“What I’m feeling for you isn’t friendly ,” he said carefully. His grip tightened around your body like a vice and your eyebrows sprung up. You ran your fingers over his bare skin, almost able to hear his heart thumping behind his ribs. 

“And what is it… what are you feeling, Wolfwood?”

He could try to explain it to you, tell you how you’re one of the first people he thinks of whenever he brushes death, or how he prays that the time you spend apart would shorten from months to day or hours, but the words couldn’t make it out of his throat because it is impossible to accurately describe just how much space you take up in his mind. You hide in every crevice of his being, taking up residence in his heart, stealing every smoke filled breath and making it your own because in reality it was never his, and each breath he takes carries him closer to the next time he’ll meet you again.

He could try to explain that to you, but it’s much easier to close the gap between them and capture your lips with his. It’s much easier to guide you into the motel and kick the door close behind him. It is so much easier to gently lay your on the bed after shrugging off the Punisher and swallow your moans as you clawed his back to hold him closer. In a frenzied mix of tongue and lips Wolfwood tastes you fully, doing what he has dreamed of doing a thousand times before but could never bring himself to. Despite spending your whole life out on this godforsaken desert planet, every part of you is soft, his fingers sinking into the exposed skin of your stomach. Your fingers scrape his scalp and his eyes roll further back into his head, and the only times he unlatches his lips from yours is to rip off articles of his clothing and you do the same. 

Your teeth bump each other when you meld your mouths together again, and it’s like touching a live wire. 

Every nerve of his sings for you and it’s like you’re jump starting his heart. He gives you a moment to breathe, instead kissing the corner of your mouth, your jaw, the veins in your neck and the hollow in your throat. Wolfwood runs his tongue over your collarbone, licking the sweat that sat on your skin. His previous suspicions were confirmed. He could never be friends with you. Not when he’s on the verge of devouring you. His tongue skated down your body until he reached one of your breasts. Your chest rose and fell rapidly, inviting him in and he listened. He sucked and flicked your hardening bud until you were gasping his name, crooning praises at him and begging him for more. He had to lavish the other nipple with the same amount of affection, and came back up to kiss your lips once again. 

“Do you understand why we can’t be friends,” he mumbled into your mouth. You nodded fiercely, snaking your arm around his neck to deepen this kiss. Wolfwood’s hand trailed in between your legs, gathering your wetness and stroking your clit. You mewled again, spreading your legs wider, grinding into his palm. You tugged his bottom lip between your teeth and urged him. 

“I need more, Nicholas.”

“Can I—“

“Yes, yes, go ahead,” you rushed out, holding onto the last bit of restraint you had before you were dragged down to the depths of depravity with him. Wolfwood leaned away from you, which was the last thing you wanted him to do, but when he did you were finally able to take in his body the same way he was doing to yours. Red welts were already forming around his neck and creeping over his shoulders, marks that you made on him. He pushed strands of his hair up and out of his forehead and gazed down at you in your entirety. You were almost too bright to look at, like he had to avert your eyes lest he hurt himself. He wanted to kiss every inch of your skin, murmur praises into your ear, send you to heaven above over and over again. So much desire coursed through his veins he was unsure as to where he wanted to start. 

You saw his eyes filled with awe and it was like a spotlight on your body. You were still on your back while he rested on his knees between your legs, his pants still on but unzipped and unbuttoned. Although he wasn’t as close to you as you would like, his hands never left your body, and he caressed your calves as he canvassed your body. You could see his erection straining through his slacks and you bit your lip. 

“It’s not fair that I’m the only one naked here, Wolfwood.” 

You weren't even sure how he managed to undress you completely when you were sure that you had on more layers than him. His stares only heightened your sensitivity, but before you could say anything else he grabbed your ankles and dragged you to the edge of the bed, sinking to his knees on the floor in front of you. You propped yourself up on elbows and looked down at him. He knelt down, kissing the inside of your thighs before hooking his hands underneath them and resting them on his shoulder. 

“Forgive me,” he said, alternating which thigh he kissed, creeping closer to your heated sex that fluttered with anticipation. “I want to do this first.”

The sight of Wolfwood’s tongue flattening and licking a stripe from the seam of your sex to your clit was almost too erotic for you to watch. Your breathing trembled as Wolfwood wasted no time to open you up with his mouth and drive you to the edge. He lapped at your folds, moaning into your sex and his nose rubbed on your clit in a way that forced you to lay back down and silently cry into the sheets around you. You reached down and gathered his hair in your hands, pushing him deeper into your heat and he surged forward. He loved the way your nails scratched his head, and with that he showed his silent approval.

Pleasure filled every corner of your body. You arched your back, your hips lifting off the edge of the bed but Wolfwood was quick to follow and tightened his hold on your thighs. You jerked when his lips pulled back and he bared his teeth around your sensitive bud, and you snapped your head down to look at him again. His eyes were closed, but it did nothing to hide the sex drunkenness he was experiencing. 

Wolfwood did the same thing again, mixing pain in with pleasure, and you rolled your hips into it, taking anything he gave you. Choked sobs tumbled out of your mouth, and they fell on deaf ears as Wolfwood was lost in his own pleasure. The mixture of your come and his saliva made it even easier for his face to glide against you, and he was getting addicted to the feeling. The sacrament he had consumed could never satisfy him the way you did. Your thighs started to shake around his head and he finally opened his eyes to look at you. Tears stained your face and with parted lips you whispered his name. You had this disbelieving look on your face, unsure of how he had gone this long without gasping for air. The sheets were clenched in between your fingers and your orgasm was dangerously close from breaking you. Wolfwood stretched his hand over to pinch your nipple, his fingers mimicking the movements of his tongue and you rode his tongue to oblivion.

With his tongue pressed on your clit, Wolfwood allows you to fuck his face, only slowing your down so he can ease his fingers into your dripping entrance to find your spot inside of you. With that you were both panting, and you felt the coil in your stomach tighten unbearably. 

“Nicho las ,” you moan, your breath catching at the end as you finally crests over and you’re falling helplessly back down to earth. Wolfwood doesn’t stop moving his fingers inside of you, making you curl up and you try to push him away. You’re blubbering, and the tremors in your legs are crushing Wolfwood’s head between your thighs but he had no intention to stop. He thought maybe if he kept going it would dawn on you how he would completely devote himself to you. 

“Nicholas, baby, please,” you groaned. “Please that’s enough.” He lifts his head up, a string of your arousal still hanging from his lips, and the bottom half of his face was shiny with your come. He licks his mouth clean and pressed one last kiss to your clit, and you release a weary groan from the sensation. He then kisses up your navel, your ribs, your sternum, your lips meeting each other when he crawls on top of you and you move back as well until you feel your head hit a pillow.

With all the strength you can muster up, you wrap your legs around his waist and flip him on his back. With him below her, you grind into his erection and his hands are firm around your waist. You attack his neck, sucking and biting all the skin you can see, and Wolfwood melts into the bed. His fingers find your sex again, stretching his fingers to prepare you. You whined into his neck and licked at his skin. 

“You make me feel so good,” you said, rolling your hips on him. “Nicholas, I need you right now. ”

Your words only made his cock ache and strain in his pants. He couldn’t believe that you were begging for him, needing him almost as much as he needed you. He wondered if he ever kept you up with thoughts of “what if” like he did you, but he didn’t have time to dwell on that when your hands feverishly shook while pushing down his pants. They would be ruined if you didn’t pull them down off of him completely, but neither of you couldn’t find it in themselves to care. 

You pulled him out of his pants and stroked him gently. He was the perfect size for you, and you wanted to use your mouth on him, but the pained look on Wolfwood’s face showed that it would have to wait at a later time. It didn’t stop you from teasing him.

“Can you have sex? You know, as a man of God?”

Wolfwood’s jaw tightened. He watched your hand wrap around him and pump him leisurely, and it was almost enough to make him come. “I thought it goes against the religion.” you were pushing his limits, you knew it, but the way he swallowed and his eyes fluttered close only spurred you on. You thumb his slit, collecting the pre-come that beaded at tip and he drew a harsh gasp. 

“I’ll throw it all away for you,” he promised. “I’d do whatever you want.”

“That’s a really big promise, Nicholas,” you whispered. you lined him up to your entrance, rubbing the tip of his cock up and down your sex and he was begging for release. “What if I abused that?”

Wolfwood couldn’t take it anymore and thrusted his hips up to seat himself inside of you. You silently cried out, your hand flying to his throat to steady himself but he welcomed it. The way you squeezed around his cock left him with no cognizant thought other than to get you to come again. His hips piston up, hitting the spot deep inside you until your moans turned to hymns. It made your toes curl and your hand tighten around his throat. He then realized in that moment, looking up at you with your name dancing on his tongue, that you are his religion. He only lived for you and it took him so long to finally accept it. 

“Use me,” he panted. “Any way you want. I want to be yours,” he grounded your hips down on his and you traveled your hand up his throat to put two fingers in his mouth. You pinched his tongue with your thumb and finger before spitting in his mouth, which you sealed off with a kiss. Your hand went back to his throat and squeezed the sides just enough for him to whine into your mouth and switch positions. 

With your back laid flat on the bed he pounded into you, and the bed threatened to give out. The sound of the coupling was enough to wake up other guests in the motel with the creaking of the bed and your wailing. Wolfwood was too enraptured in every emotion that flitted across your face, every change in pitch in your moans, the pressure of your hands on his body to be considerate of anyone else. The only thing that mattered was you . 

“Tell me how you feel,” he prodded, kissing away your tears that he couldn’t truly feel sorry for. “Tell me you want me.”

“God, Wolfwood, I’m about to—“

“Say Nicholas. Say my name, please,” he reached down between you and found your clit. He circled his thumb around it at a much slower pace than what he was fucking your with, and he reveled in the way your eyes rolled back into your head.

“ Nicholasohmygod !” You tried to keep your orgasm at bay but Wolfwood was on a mission to break your consciousness. You tried to clear your mind for one last time, your hand resting on the back of his neck and feebly pulling his hair. 

“Can you come for me, baby? Please, I want us to come together, Nicholas.” 

Your wish was his undoing, and with a few harsh thrusts Wolfwood came right when you reached the peak the second time. You spiraled down together, and Wolfwood rolled his hips into yours until he had nothing left to give. You locked him in with your legs, breathing heavily as you finally stilled but you still couldn’t let go. He pulled out of you carefully but you still sighed from his absence. He quickly got up to go find a washcloth in the bathroom and came back with it damp to wipe your down. You would still have to take a shower, but you convinced him to hold you in his chest while your legs regained function.

“And if I asked you to run away with me?” 

The question took wolfwood off guard. He wasn't sure he heard you correctly, but the way you looked up at him with wide eyes proved that you meant what you said. 

“Where would we go?”

“Anywhere. We could visit everywhere. You can’t leave me, not again.” 

Wolfwood kissed the crown of your head. You were right, he couldn’t leave. He wouldn’t be able to live the way he had before now that you took this step. It would be too much for the both of you. 

“Let’s leave before the sun rises.”

You squeal, jumping up on the bed and covering his face in butterfly kisses. 

“I’m not tired enough to sleep, and sunrise is only a couple hours away…” you wiggled your eyebrows, and Wolfwood kissed you for the first time to mark forever.

And I know it's hard enough to love me (But I woke up in a safe house)

pairing: vash the stampede x fem!reader warnings/tags: babygirl vash, Depressing Pillow Talk, slighty nsfw towards the end, sharing one bed trope, title taken from let's get married (MITSKI VERS) word count: ~4.2k

“My husband and I would like a room,” you say with a smile as you wrap your arms around Vash’s and lean into him. You feel his body startle at your touch, his gaze on top of your head as you play the part of the excited bride. You think he might pass out on you if you don’t get him to room, and fast. “We’re on our honeymoon.”

“In this shithole of a town?” The innkeeper asks with a raised eyebrow, looking from you to Vash, who only lets out a sheepish chuckle as he scratches the back of his head. Despite his sluggish breaths, his slow blinking gaze, and the red slowly staining his shirt.

You shrug, trying hard not to be impatient. “There are worse places.”

There are. You’ve survived them. Compared to the slums of December or September, this shabby, worn inn is paradise.

“Yer right ‘bout that,” he laughs, acquiescing, as he tosses a ring of keys into your hand and takes your pouch of money. Vash is slumped into you now, and you can tell he’s trying his hardest not to place the full weight of his body on you. To anyone else, it would look as if he was clinging to you, the picture of a loving couple.

“Cheers to the happy couple!” the man calls out, tipping his hat down as the two of you move to the stairs in front of you. 

Vash grins brightly, and manages a cheery, polite, “Thank you!” as the two of you pass.

You can’t resist the huff of a laugh that escapes your lips as you make your way up the stairs, and then into the small, modest dust lined room.

Vash collapses on the bed with a sharp exhale, and you immediately move to take off his shirt but his hand stops you by the wrist before you can.

“Sleep,” he murmurs, eyelashes fluttering. His fingers tightens, just imperceptibly, (even on the brink of sleep, he’s overly conscious about his strength, you think). In a way, it feels like he’s wordlessly imploring you to stay. “Jus’ need sleep. Not gonn’ take long.”

You blink. His fingers loosen, and in a few seconds his breathing has evened out into steady breaths. You’re relieved. He’s already stopped bleeding. From the months you’ve traveled with him, known him, he’s healed quickly enough that any other person wouldn’t understand. You still don’t. Not fully. But you’ve never asked questions. And as long as he never asked you any questions, that was fine with you. 

You stay on the bed, by his side for a few minutes, watching him. You take off his sunglasses and put them on the nightstand after wiping the blood off them. He’s an unusually pretty man. Too pretty for No Man’s Land. You trace his face with your eyes. The beauty mark right under his right eye to his parted pink lips. Then down to the rise and fall of his chest to the plates of the cybernetic prosthesis of his left arm. 

Lost technology. Not many people had access to that kind of technology. Or the knowledge to build that arm, let alone repair it.  

Standing, you give him one last glance, reload your revolver and tuck it into the holster at your side, before you leave in search of medical supplies to patch him up when he wakes. You scope out the town while at it. It’s small; a handful of residents armed to the teeth with guns, and even less children. There are pipes that run through the town that you assume are fed fresh water by a nearby plant. You locate a medical shop at the center of town. 

You buy antiseptic, gauze, and a few other things, before making your way back to the inn. The innkeeper gives you a wink.

When you open the door to the room, Vash is awake.

The sound of his harsh breathing fills the air. His metal hand fisted into the sheets so tightly you think it might tear. You meet his frantic gaze, and almost immediately, he slumps in relief, eyes dropping to his lap. 

You quietly shut the door. “Nightmare?”

Sometimes, in his sleep, you hear him call out for a woman named Rem.

He lets out a loud laugh. You pretend not to notice the shaky undertone of it. “I slept for longer than I thought!” His metallic hand curls and unfurls, catching on the dull light of the room. “I thought you…” he trails off, suddenly embarrassed. He looks away. 

“I brought supplies.” You place the bag on the table, next to Vash’s nickel revolver. You turn back to him: “Strip.”

His arms immediately make a cross on his chest, as if he’s already stripped, face bright red.

“I can do it myself—!”

Vash the Stampede. The humanoid Typhoon. The Sixty Billion Double Dollar Man. The man you originally only followed after to collect the criminals who swarmed to him, like flies to corpses. The man who leaves a trail of calamity and disaster in his wake. The man who continuously, everyday, without fail, begged you to leave the criminals you captured alive. A constant enigma and a headache. A walking contradiction. 

“I’ll leave the room,” you say. “Don’t take too long.”

You leave the room, leaning against the wall, and wait two minutes.

You open the door, and Vash jumps with a yelp, stripped to the waist, arms covering whatever he can manage.

Scars cover his entire torso, running all the way down his flesh arm to his hand. Deep scars, shallow scars, scars that have never entirely healed, leaving the skin dark pink and the flesh caved in. There are more scars than there is unblemished skin, missing chunks of skin replaced with metal plates and seams.

It's not a pretty sight, but you’ve never much cared for pretty. 

His face is flushed. “I thought—”

“I lied.”

“!?”

You shut the door with your heel, and then grab the gauze and antiseptic. “Turn around.”

Wordlessly, he turns, ears reddening. You direct him to sit on the bed, and then you begin to apply the antiseptic. The two of you sit in silence. You, disinfecting his fresh wounds and wrapping his back, while you also ignore the way his body tenses at your touch, his pointedly straight gaze, the constant bob of his throat, as if he’s looking for the right words to say.

He reluctantly speaks up. “You’re…not hurt, are you?”

“I’m fine,” you reply. Just a few scrapes and a bruised arm from where you had landed wrong after trying to dodge multiple rounds of bullets from the latest batch of criminals that had schemed to capture the humanoid typhoon. After hauling them to the police, Vash hiding away, you had gained yourself a hefty paycheck before being run out of the city, a bleeding Vash in tow.

You’re nearly done. The wounds aren’t nearly as severe as they had been only a couple of hours ago. The skin has healed enough that it’s already forming a scar. You don’t know much about Vash the Stampede, but you know enough to understand that he isn’t human. Not completely.

But he smiles. He laughs. He detests the very violence that nurtured you. He likes pizza and donuts. He’s moved to tears almost as easily as he seems to get hurt. He’s good with children. They trust him. Children love him in a way they don’t you: pulling him down to their height, climbing him, leading him and all his long limbs along. The way he takes their words seriously, nodding with all the gravity of a legal proceeding as they talk about the weather, their favorite foods, the silly argument they got into with a sibling. He smiles, and when he turns that smile onto you, it makes you think of everything warm and how you had forgotten what it meant to be happy.

He may not be human, but he is. Everything good about humanity that had been lost and forsaken when mankind crashed onto this unforgiving, harsh planet. 

You pull away, resisting the urge to press your fingers down on his skin, to trace the map of his scars and feel him shudder underneath you. He’s as warm as a furnace. The heat of his body stays with you. “How do you feel?”

He beams at you, one hand on his upper arm as he swings his arm around. “Perfect!”

You sigh. “Don’t push yourself now. Let me finish wrapping you.”

He retreats back to his original position, still smiling, all reservations about his partial nudity forgotten as he waits for you to finish.

Vash speaks. “You didn’t kill them.”

You glance up. You can only partially see his expression from your position behind him, but the pull of his lips is unmistakable. He’s smiling. And you don’t need to look at him to see it. That sweet smile of his that pulls at his eyes and softens his entire face. 

Your hands still. You hadn’t killed them. The Archie Brothers, the two brothers infamous for targeting banks and other commercial properties, who had gotten wind of Vash being in the city and emptied hundreds of rounds into the bar the two of you had momentarily settled in for a quick drink. It’s not as if you could’ve killed them in the first place. Vash was nothing if not easygoing, but keeping the criminals you turned in for a paycheck alive was the one thing he firmly enforced. Going as far to shield their bodies with his own.

He’s so troublesome sometimes.

You want to ask if he would’ve let you in the first place. If you had a choice. 

You force yourself to wind the bandage over his arm. “You must be rubbing off on me.”

Vash turns, faster than you anticipate, eyes wide. You can see the pale irises of his eyes. He’s delighted. “Really!?”

You blink, staring at him in silence. He goes red, jerking back, scuttling backwards with his hands like a crab until he reaches the end of the bed and then air. He falls back first, legs raised up in the air. 

He sits up with a sheepish chuckle, rubbing the back of his head. “I…I guess I got a little ahead of myself…”

“...pffft.”

He straightens just as you dissolve into full blown laughter. And when your laughter dies down he’s looking at you, eyes wide, like he’s seeing you for the first time. You clear your throat and look away, embarrassed. You don’t think you’ve ever laughed in front of him.

“...Something on my face?”

He jumps, frantically waving. “No, no. I just thought,” he hesitates. “You should laugh more.”

Something in your chest gives. You can’t stand it. Not when he looks at you like that. Eyes shining, lips curved softly, face animated like you’re the only thing that’s ever mattered.

People like him aren’t supposed to survive No Man’s Land. They aren’t built to. But you’ve seen with your own eyes how capable Vash is. It didn’t take much to kill a man in these lawless lands, but you had never seen him miss his target. Your didn't need to take pride in your aim to know it was excellent. You just didn’t have the same consideration for criminals Vash did. A life or two wasn’t something you lost sleep over. Casualties happened. And if it was a criminal, then it was simply divine judgment.

You stand from the bed and walk towards the desk. You take a doughnut out of a brown paper bag and throw it to him.

“For me?” He exclaims, easily catching it, even though you had thrown it to him.

You don’t respond. He enthusiastically tears it in half, and offers you the bigger piece.

You shake your head, the quirk of your lips, fond. “I don’t like sweet things.”

“I see…” he says thoughtfully, as if he’s digesting the information. “That makes sense. You don’t normally eat…”

It strikes you that this is the most you’ve ever talked about yourself. You’re unusually talkative today, and he notices. You find that you don’t mind. It’s alarmingly easy to talk to him now.

In the handful of months you’ve been traveling together, you’ve learned that all the crimes attributed to him had been the work of his twin, a man called Million Knives. A man you had managed to steal a glimpse of only once before Vash had locked you in a closet before rushing away. You were still sore over that. Even though he retrieved you soon after, apologizing profusely, accepting your cold shoulder with grace. Until you couldn’t bear the way he trailed after you with a pathetically sad expression on his face, and told him to stop. 

You never asked him for details. Of why his brother was terrorizing towns and cities, stealing plants and lives along the way. You’ve never pushed. You weren’t following the man to learn his life story. You were in it for the money.

Until one day, you realized he knew your exact bar order by heart. The kinds of alcohol you’d drink, and the kinds you wouldn’t touch. It was a small thing. But he looked so pleased when he placed the glass down, as he waited for you to drink it.

You knew his fear of you becoming potential collateral damage, but somewhere along the way you think you had grown on him. Somewhere along the nights listening to him cry out in his sleep for a woman named Rem, somewhere along watching the sliver of light heralding sunrise on the horizon together, somewhere in the silence in the dark of nights shared. 

You think he’s grown on you too.

“Have you eaten?” He asks. 

“Not hungry,” you reply, glancing out the window. Pitch black other than the glow of a single lone street lamp nearly a block down. “I’m going to sleep.” It wasn’t often you got to sleep on a bed, and you planned to make full use of it.

You go to the bathroom to wash up. When you walk out, Vash enters the room with a load of blankets. You look at him curiously.

“I asked the innkeeper for some blankets.” He laughs, recalling the conversation. “I said that my…” he trails off. “My…ah…wife…” Red paints his cheeks, and he looks away, raising the mound in his arms a bit higher to cover his face.

“...”

“...”

You watch as he makes his way to the other side of the room, keeping his gaze pointedly straight, and places the pile down. 

“You’re sleeping on the floor?”

“That’s right!” Vash pats the floor a little too vigorously for your liking. “Just like usual!”

You look at the bed. It’s big enough for the two of you so you had assumed you’d be sharing it… You’ve never shared a bed together before, but you had no problems with it, not with Vash.

He darts into the bathroom quickly enough that you don’t have time to say anything else. You hear the water run, turn off the lights, and get underneath the covers.

Then you wait.

When he leaves the bathroom, he gingerly folds his red jacket and sets it down on the chair. You wait until he passes the bed to strike, grabbing him by the shirt, and hauling him down onto the bed.

He yelps, a surprised, high pitched, noise that tears out of his throat. 

“We can share,” you say to him, his face inches apart from you. You can see his wide eyes, the bob of his throat working, pink lips parted as he stares at you, but your gaze is resolute.

And that’s that.

You figure that it might be easier for him to sleep if you aren’t facing him, so you turn to face the wall. You stare at the wall for ten minutes, waiting for him to settle into his side of the bed. Not even a faint rustle of the sheets. You wait a little longer. You can’t even hear him breathing.

You turn back around to face him and immediately he draws back even farther from his original position, on the tip of the bed where he’s precariously close to falling off.

A nervous chuckle. “I…”

“Sleep. I won’t say it again.” You study him, his slightly panicked expression, the grip of his metal hand fisted into the sheets. Oh. “Is it me?”

“N-nothing like that—!” He inches forward, just a little bit (still keeping his distance), puts his hand underneath the pillow, and squeezes his eyes tight. You watch him for a few seconds longer, specifically at the bead of sweat forming on the side of his temples. Your gaze drifts down, from the delicate slope of his nose to his lips.

You turn back around. 

Silence settles in the room like a muffled blanket. You still can’t tell if he’s breathing or not, and for some reason, sleep doesn’t come to you as easily as it usually does. The bed is too soft. 

You don’t know why you say it. Maybe it’s because you’re awake. Maybe it’s because you know Vash isn’t asleep. 

“When I was a child, a plant saved me.”

A few heartbeats pass.

Vash’s voice is softly hesitant. It feels like something gentle and your stomach coils tight, as if in preparation for the inevitable recoil that always follows. “Were you sick?” 

“I was.” The darkness reveals patterns in the wall, and your eyes go blurry with them. “The entire town was sick. Children were dying.” Religious fervor had taken ahold. Daily ritual acts of praying and calling out for salvation.

Taking you to your town’s plant when you were on the brink of death had been your mother’s first and final act of love. Afterwards, your mother often recounted in a drunken stupor that she was sure you were going to die. That it may have even been a mercy if you had. The plant cured you. Your mother was sure of it, the plant worshiping denizens of the town were sure of it. Nobody knew how. Nothing except for the fact that shortly after—

“The plant died the day after. I’ve never forgotten it.” You killed it. It was the first life you took.

It changed you. On a fundamental level. Something had happened to you on that day you can’t even remember. But that’s something you don’t think you can share. How sometimes, you don’t even need to dodge bullets.

That plant died, and now you are here, sharing a bed with a self proclaimed pacifist who refused to kill under any circumstances. A man who defied all logic and reasoning. A good man anyone would call misguided. A fool. An idealist.

In the end, lives would always demand sacrifice. It was either you, or them. It was kill, or be killed.

You don’t know what face he’s making behind you. Is he horrified to know that your life had ended before it started? That you were responsible for taking away the source of life for hundreds of people? That your existence was predicated on sacrifice and death before you even learned how to walk? You were at inherent odds with the idealism of pacifism. With him. Not out of choice, but because of circumstances out of your control.

Maybe a part of you wants him to hate you. Maybe a part of you is looking to be understood. But you thought that part of you had died long ago.

You shut your eyes, prepared to go to sleep.

Vash exhales. “I don’t…”

You open your eyes.

There’s a conviction in his voice you don’t understand. “You didn’t kill it.” You wonder how he can be so confident. “The plant saved you.” I know it did. 

You face him once more. He’s closer than he was before, close enough to easily touch. “Sometimes,” you start, hating the way he’s smiling at you in a way that touches his eyes, framed in the pale moonlight. “You really make me mad.”

His jaw comically drops open. You watch as panic instantly overtakes his face until he realizes the lack of heat in your words. His lips push back together to form a pout. He says your name.

“Why is your brother stealing plants?”

Money. Power. Recognition. Those would seem to be the most likely answers, but you’ve seen the wreckage that Million Knives leaves in the wake of his destruction. It’s cruelty. It’s too calculated to be careless. It’s pure hatred. You can’t fathom a man like as Vash's brother. Twin brother. 

But then that voice inside you speaks. Are you really any different?

Vash blinks, and then his face falls, gaze downcast. It feels odd to see him like this. You rarely catch him without a big, sheepish smile on his face nowadays, especially when he catches you looking at him, but you had seen him with a forlorn expression, shoulders slumped, in your early days of traveling together. When there were no children to demand a ride on his back, when the two of you momentarily passed an overcast shadow, in the darkness of the night when he thought nobody was looking.

You almost regret asking him in the first place. But he’s so close you can count his pale eyelashes, and you lose your train of thought.

“You could say it’s…” his mouth twists, “revenge.”

Revenge.

He’s not the first misanthrope in these lands. You think the occasional mass murderous thought, and you resist acting on it more often than you didn’t, the days before you met a blonde pacifist gunman. There’s only so much a human being can take.

You think of the kaleidoscope of scars that line his body. You only saw the ones on his upper body, but you don’t doubt the existence of countless others everywhere else.

It must’ve hurt. It must’ve been other people. People intent on capturing him. People who wanted to hurt him. You hate them all. Every single person that has permanently marked him a way that wasn’t theirs to do in the first place. You hate whoever severed his arm, whoever had repaid his kindness with violence.

Desire strikes you, hot and sudden. You want to count them all, trail your fingers over the heat of his body, the uneven layers of skin, and feel his breaths underneath you. You look at him, as his gaze lifts, remeeting your eyes, pleading for your understanding. Ball and chain to his brother. Shouldering the sins of family. You don’t understand it. Why he’s looking to you for acceptance, as if it’d even make a difference.

He is the only good thing in this harsh world, and you’ve found him.

“Maybe,” you tell him, as he hangs onto your every word. “We deserve it.”

You see the split second sadness weighing in his eyes, at your words, right before you curl your fingers into his shirt and pull him to your lips.

His eyes go wide, and something that sounds like a mixture of an exhale and gasp leaves his lips. You separate, your lips a hairbreadth away from his, as he stares at you.

“Is this okay?” You ask. If it wasn’t, you’d go back to sleep, and forget it ever happened in the first place. You made your move. It wasn’t reciprocated.

But then he nods, so vigorously that his blonde hair flops into his eyes.

You smile, and Vash lights up.

You kiss him again, drawing his face closer with your hand on his cheek. He complies with his entire body, closing the distance immediately, like if he can’t help himself. His lips are clumsy against yours, too eager, too desperate, wet and messy, as he pants into your mouth. Heat pools in your stomach, and you want more. You run your tongue over the seam of his lips, and he lets out a sigh of something that sounds reverently like your name against your mouth.

Then your tongue is in his mouth, and his flesh hand jumps. There’s a breathless, throaty whimper, the entire weight of his body pressing tight against you. So you can feel every part of him. How he’s willing to give you everything in the name of desire, of love. And when you pull away, his lips follow yours, spit slicked and swollen.

You easily lay him flat on his back as you move to straddle him. You kiss him again briefly, tenderly. Then you sit up and pull up his shirt, just enough to expose his torso. His metal fingers fist into the sheets when your finger goes to a scar of pink skin right about his hips, lightly following it to right below his chest.

He chokes with a shudder that wracks his body. You can feel him, heavy and hard pressing against you. The slight jump of his hips, barely restraining himself from rutting into you.

“It’s not…” Vash struggles with the words with heaving breaths, face bright red, embarrassment splayed out. He looks to the side. “A pretty sight.”

You think of heated irons and blistering pain. Thousands of blades slicing you open, needles penetrating flesh, blind white heat enveloping your body, and the mindless oblivion that would follow.

You realize you’ve been silent a beat too long when Vash looks like he’s preparing for your inevitable rejection.

“I’ve got scars too,” you say, finally. Quietly. You take his mechanical hand in yours and slowly slide him up underneath your shirt. “You want to see?”

pairing: vash the stampede x fem!reader warnings/tags: jealous insecure vash, you get hit on twice, vash's pov gets kinda depressing, takes place before and after and I know it’s hard enough to love me, stampede coded vash word count: ~4.3k

Vash the Stampede is a complete enigma to you.

In the span of the four hours you’ve been following after the blonde, you’ve witnessed him get bullied and dragged around by a group of children who had unanimously decided to tie him up for fun, help a distressed woman find her poisonous pet gecko, and frantically try to explain his startling similarities to the humanoid typhoon to a threatening group of individuals who had cornered him on the street, loaded guns in their possession. 

You watched him nervously laugh off their claims until they had left, one by one. Then he breathed a large sigh of relief, before meeting your eyes with a grin and two thumbs up.

He just can’t say no.

You’re still thinking about this troubling tendency of his when you slide off the rooftop, and twist through the alleys to the bar you had seen when you and Vash had first entered the town yesterday.

This time, he’s following you. He must have run out of people to help. All the way to the bar. And when you enter through the swinging entrance, you don’t need to turn around to hear the doors swing open again, not even seconds later.

Shouts ring throughout the bar, as several patrons happily greet him with a raised mug of beer and smiles. Already, he’s grown on people.

You slide onto a barstool. “I’ll have a drink,” you say, giving the idling bartender your order. The aged man proceeds to pull several bottles from the rack hanging behind him. You look over your shoulder to see Vash sitting down at a round table behind you. When he catches your gaze, he smiles, hand already lifting in an eager half wave as his fingers curl into air. 

You don’t understand how he can look so happy to see you, as if you're an old friend he’s seeing for the first time in years, every time you meet his eyes. As if you haven’t been traveling together for the last few months. You've never stayed with an individual for longer than a week or two, other than your mother, but you know for sure Vash is strange. An outlier. You don’t understand how he constantly stays happy, upbeat and optimistic. No man is that happy, upbeat and optimistic. It’s suspicious.

The acrid scent of smoke and alcohol enters your nose before anything else, and then a hulking man with a bulbous nose is sidling up close to your side, despite the empty seats next to you. You ignore him as he gives you a long look up and down. The man in front of you mixing your drink gives him a distasteful glance. 

A wide, crass grin stretches his face as he licks his lips. 

“Yer a pretty thing, ain’t ya?”

You stare ahead. He’s not even worth brandishing your gun for.

He frowns when you don’t respond, trying again. “Whatcha doin’ in here, in this part of town? A lil’ lady like you is going to get eaten by the wolves.” He leans in close, and his breath fans against your cheek. You don’t bother to hide your distaste when he indiscreetly adjusts his pants. “I’ve got a place downtown…”

You’re going to shoot him, you decide.

Your hand goes to your side, but before you can remove your revolver, a blur of red rushes into the sliver of space between the two of you, forcibly separating the man from you. With his back to you, Vash lifts his hands in an act of surrender. The man tries to no avail to move towards you in either direction, but Vash swiftly meets him every time before he can step towards you.

“We—”

“What’s yer deal!?” The man asks angrily, drawing Vash close, hands fisted into his shirt, teeth gritted. Vash is taller than the man, so to see him tuck his knees inwards to be level with the man would be almost comical if you weren’t so annoyed.

A high pitched laugh escapes through his teeth. “Ahaha! About that—”

“She yours or somethin’!?”

Your already short patience stretches thin.

Panic floods his face as he glances at you from the corner of his eye. “Of course n—”

“Then it’s none of yer business anyhow,” he grouses, leaning in close. “Why dontcha butt out, and that way nobody gets hurt.”

“No,” Vash says firmly, unusually solemn, all pretenses of distress fading in a blink. He grabs the man’s arm with a steady hand of his own. “I can’t.”

You step to the side, and point your gun right at the man’s temple, already cocked. The bar quiets, eyes on your standoff. In your peripheral you can see multiple hands on belts, ready for a shootout. Vash’s eyes go wide, mouth agape as he looks at you. Then your gun. Then at you. 

“Put him down,” you say plainly. “I’m not going to ask again.”

“Yeah, put him down Eli!” A voice exclaims. 

Others voice their agreement. 

The man blinks. Then he throws his head back and uproariously laughs, fist loosening on Vash’s shirt, letting him down with a slump. “Playing with guns, little girl? Why don’t you come on over, I’ll teach you the right way—”

You aim down, and pull the trigger.

A single shot rings through the bar. The man shrieks in agony as the bullet goes through his foot, clean. You watch him jump around on one foot, holding his other foot in his hands, crying out for help as blood gets everywhere. What a mess. The bartender only shakes his head as people begin to surround the hollering man. You think he might as well kill himself now. Not a single survival instinct. The last thing he should be doing after a bullet wound is moving around like a headless lizard.

You throw a sack of coins on the bar. The drink you hadn’t even gotten and damages to the floor. You grab Vash by the hood of his red coat and drag him out the bar as he gawks at you. You drop him outside and start towards the town’s caravan stop. In a few seconds, Vash has caught up with you, side by side.

He looks troubled. Lost in thought. 

“I didn’t kill him,” you say. Although you probably would have not even three months ago. That would have ensured you wouldn’t be bothered in the town again by a handsy drunk.

You don’t know why you feel the need to explain yourself. You figure you can’t keep silent when he’s looking at you like that , waiting for some kind of explanation that you would usually never entertain.

“Should I have let him all over me?” You ask tonelessly.

The snaps him back to attention. “No! It’s just…” he sounds unsure, almost uneasy. “You were just…protecting yourself.”

You wonder what kind of life he’s led. To be able to be the way he is. A pacifist, in this world. Someone who refuses to pull the trigger on his .45 long colt unless absolutely necessary.

“Not everybody gets to choose to not kill,” you reply, not as curt as you could be. “Some people don’t have a choice.” Not everybody has the strength to protect themselves without violence. Sometimes, it’s just survival. The choice between you or them. Sometimes, it wasn’t anything more than that. No hard feelings. The second your hands had touched your revolver, you had gained your footing in the world. The gun, the great equalizer. And in your hands, death. 

You never had a choice. And then you did.

Vash’s face falls. “I…I see.”

You find yourself searching for words, anything at all to wipe the miserable expression on his face away. “I didn’t kill him,” you say slowly. “But I could have.”

He lifts his head, blinking. “You… could have,” he repeats.

You don’t say that had the man come any closer, if he had touched you, you would’ve put a bullet in his head, right through his brain. And then you would’ve let the animals have him.

Vash slowly regains his smile, eyes crinkling at the corners. “But you didn’t.”

Although the smile on his lips often seems more trained than instinctual, a defense tactic, you can’t deny that in the end, a smile suits his face much more. 

“I can take care of myself,” you say, fixing your gaze straight ahead.

He hums. “I know.”

You sigh.

-

-

-

“Over here!” Tony exclaims, wildly waving at Vash for a pass.

Vash kicks the ball over, watching as the other children surround the freckled short boy, eager to steal the ball back to their side. They had divided the teams seven to three, the children citing that the team with Vash on their side had the upper hand, therefore it was only fair for the teams to be unevenly divided. Vash had no qualms with it, neither did Tony or Sonya, who had grabbed Vash by the arm (shorter frame pulling him down to her level) and declared that the next victory would be theirs.

He can’t help himself. He looks towards where you’ve been sitting by the benches in front of the town square’s fountain, watching him kick around a ball for the better half of the hour with the town kids, unmoving, except for the small curve of your lips. Vash can tell when your gaze is on him. Some eighth sense that also has him gravitating towards your orbit, unconsciously and consciously. His feet take him to you, wherever you are. Lucky for him, nowadays, he doesn’t need to walk more than a couple steps to reach you.

Usually you’d be gone, taking care of your own business while he explored the town or city, and its inhabitants, before the inevitable bounty hunter or criminal looked a bit too closely to his face, his red jacket, and made the connection. Maybe you’d stop by the sheriff’s office, flashing your identification badge, and then flip through recent wanted posters. Maybe you’d get a bite to eat. Then you’d just follow the bullets and the trail of destruction to easily meet up with him.

He never knew definitively. You had never really answered his curiosity with more than a noncommittal comment or two. It doesn’t matter now though, because now you stay with him.

The sun looks good on you. He doesn’t realize he’s staring at you until a ball hits him smack in the face and drops to the ground, leaving him with a sore, red face and a bruised nose. The kids startle to a stop, gawking at him with wide mouths. There’s silence, and then raucous laughter.

“Vash!”

“Is he okay?”

“C’mon Vash, you lost the ball!”

“It hit him in the face, did you see that?”

“That’s a foul! You did that on purpose Lock!”

“Nu-uh!”

He sees you shake your head, amused, and knows that the warmth he feels isn’t entirely from the sun.

Tony runs towards him, ball held against his chest, breathless. The blue cap he wears is askew. Vash fixes it for straight. “You alright, Vash?”

Vash runs a hand through his hair and laughs. “No harm done,” he says cheerfully. “Guess I wasn’t paying attention, sorry about that!”

Sonya looks concerned. “Don’t worry about that! It’s all Lock’s fault anyway!” She turns around, sticks a finger under her eye, pulling it down, and blows a raspberry. “You’re horrible Lock!”

The older boy returns it with a raspberry of his own, and then crosses his arms. “He should’ve been looking in the first place, instead of at his girlllllfriend!”

Sonya’s eyes are wide as he feels his face go red. He nervously tugs at the collar of his shirt. The kids gathered around him erupt into laughter again. A quick glance in your direction, and he sees the raise of your eyebrow, lips tight in suppressed laughter he wishes he was there to hear.

“Is it true?” She asks him, brown doe eyes wide. “Is she your—” her voice drops conspiratorially “— girlfriend?”

He sticks a hand in the girl’s hair and gives her a good natured ruffle as she giggles. “Something like that,” he says, despite the elation that fills his stomach, to avoid fully answering the question, as if speaking whatever fragile thing the two of you have into existence might permanently alter it. 

Girlfriend.

What a mundane word for something as all consuming as the love he feels for you. He feels as if his chest might just burst with it all. But he can say that now, call you his in some way that makes him both terrified of overstepping his bounds and even more terrified of you leaving.  

“Hey Vash,” Tony says, insistently tugging on the sleeve of his coat. “There’s a guy chattin’ up your girl!”

You aren’t happy. That he can see clearly. Your expression has shuttered as a man closes into you with a wide smirk, overtaking his view of you. The last thing Vash can see is your thoroughly unamused expression.

He’s not aware of his feet taking him towards you. He doesn’t think. All he sees is how the man rests a hand on the holster of the gun attached to his hip, as if flourishing it, and he’s moving.

“A good ole’ romp in the bed is what you need,” he hears the man remark vulgarly. “Promise, it’ll fix you right up.”

“No,” you reply bluntly.

His cocksure grin fades with a scowl. “Now, don’t be like that. Nobody likes stubborn broads. I’ll be sure to show you a good time.”

An arm reaches out to roughly grab you, but Vash reaches him first, the metal of his left hand wrapping around the man’s wrist, tightening. The man yelps.

Vash blinks at the noise. You stare, looking at him with your head slightly tilted to the side.

He tears his arm back so quickly it gives him whiplash. His hands are automatically raised in a show of harmlessness as he nervously laughs.  

He hadn’t meant to grip him that tightly .

Unless… he had.

The man’s face is bright red in anger, looking at his left arm as if it’s the devil. “Who do you think you are!?”

Vash shifts ever so slightly to keep his arm out of view. It’s been a while since he’s been so self conscious. People asked questions, and sometimes they looked at him funny. It used to hurt his feelings, the way he was looked at as an outsider, even though he was. The rest of No Man’s Land wasn’t like the inhabitants of ship No. 3, who knew his origins. His identity as a plant.

Now it’s a constant reminder of it. Of Nai. Of their first of many confrontations a hundred years ago.

He’s not human, not like the man in front of him. Not like you. 

You stand, asserting yourself into the space between him and the man. You give him a dismissive look, before grabbing him by the left hand, and turning on your heels, pulling him along. Your fingers squeeze his metallic fingers in a way that shoots sparks up his arm, right to his heart. As you drag him along the kids holler their goodbyes, and all he can do is smile, wave back, and follow. He’d follow you anywhere, he thinks, easily keeping up with your pace. To the ends of No Man’s Lands to space and back.

He wonders if you’re angry. If you’re annoyed at his intervention. He hadn’t meant to be so…forward. His body had moved before he could think. 

But…you’re…you’re his now, aren’t you? You kissed him, held his face between your hands, and smiled. You don’t smile a lot, but you smile for him. He thinks that if anything, that means the most. When he told you he wasn’t human you readily accepted it, as if you had been expecting it. Then you asked him if it hurt when Nai had cut off his arm, and when he told you he hadn’t felt much of anything, really, from the shock, because he was a plant, you had frowned and told him to stop lying. 

Now, the two of you sleep together. You let Vash hold you in his arms, and he tucks you into the crook of his neck, and you don’t even complain when he locks you in his embrace, even though you could. Even if you could leave. And on nights he can’t fall asleep, terrified that in the morning you’ll have been nothing but a fantasy, he counts your soft slow breaths in his neck until the sun rises, the seconds until you wake up and give him that sleepy smile he likes to think is reserved just for him. 

So now Vash stands closer to you than he had ever previously dared. In larger cities with crowds, he’s right at your side in the bustle taking the brunt of the jostling as you lead the way. And when there are no locals to make conversation with, no children to entertain, he trails after you, wherever your whims take you. You like heights. Rooftops. High vantage points from where you can look down. He thinks it makes you feel safer. You’ve always been aware of his presence, even though you never used to acknowledge him. Now you do. Now you let him hold your hand, and he doesn’t feel like Vash the Stampede, whose sins stare back at him every time he catches his face in a reflection, but a man hopelessly in love.

You push him up against a wall in an abandoned alley, and he relishes in the close proximity, smiling dumbly when you lean into him. He’s not expecting you to kiss him, but it sure would be nice—

Until he remembers that you might be mad. That he had accidentally hurt that man. The yelp that had been twisted out of him. The smile promptly falls from his face.

“I—uh—”

“Are you okay?” You ask.

“Of course I am,” he says cheerily, but all he can think about is that man reaching for you, the gleam of desire in his eyes (directed towards you ), and his two whole arms (one more arm to hold you with), and there’s a sinking feeling in his stomach, a wretched miserable thing that hovers a bit too close to the surface of his face. “Just fine!”

Your eyes narrow, just imperceptibly, while you scrutinize him in silence. His gaze momentarily darts away, fleeing, and then back, to see that you’re still staring at him, eyebrows furrowed as if you’re trying your best to think of something to say. Words don’t really come easy to you. Vash thinks it’s cute, that thinking silence of yours, where he can almost see the gears in your head turning as you struggle for an empathetic response after years of curt silences and dry one worded responses.

You purse your lips, bottom lip jutting out ever slightly.

Cute.

“Liar.” You glance down at his left arm, and Vash resists the urge to hide the prosthesis behind him.

A shadow falls on your face as you look down. “Is it me?”

“No!” He blurts out. Guilt churns in his gut, and he’s not sure if it’s because he hurt that man or because he isn’t sorry. He wants to say that he didn’t mean to, but that would be another lie. He hadn’t wanted to hurt him badly. Just… enough that he’d leave you alone. That he’d stop looking at you like that as if he wasn’t there. There was already someone by your side.

“I shouldn’t have hurt him,” he says finally. He can’t help himself when he adds, a touch defensively, “But he shouldn’t have been…” Vash feels a rush of heat reach his ears from your discerning gaze. “He…” almost touched you. He would’ve yanked you up, been rough with you, and just because you’re used to it doesn’t mean that it’s okay. Sometimes, he thinks you’re too used to it. Every night he counts the scars on your body with the same tenderness you’ve afforded him, that he doesn’t deserve, and he feels his heart weigh heavier.

Vash would never forgive himself if you got harmed on his watch. 

You look up at him. “He…?”

He isn’t…getting ahead of himself is he?

He loves you, and not a night goes by where he doesn’t think it. He’s loved you since the night you pulled him close and kissed him. He’s loved you since the moment he realized that the silence wasn’t so bad, so lonely, when he had someone to share it with.

He had assumed he meant as much to you as you do to him—

Your lips twitch into a small smile, and the sight stops his thoughts. You step closer and bury your face into his neck. His arms automatically wrap around you as he relaxes into your body, smiling at the ground.

“I love you,” you murmur, so soft that even his ears strain to hear it. He doesn’t even have the time to feel giddy before you pull back, reach for his neck, and bring his lips to yours.

He’s eager to reciprocate. The worry that maybe he’s holding you tightly around the waist doesn’t even strike him until a second later, but by then you’re happily exhaling into his mouth, and raking your fingernails down the back of his neck until he’s shuddering into you. 

You back him against the wall without a missed beat and he happily follows. One of your hands snakes down to his prosthetic, entwining your fingers together. He gives your hand a squeeze back and when you smile against his lips, he knows that it’s the most lovely sight he’s ever seen. The first time he had ever seen you smile, it had invoked the same amazement and wonder in him as seeing Rem’s red geraniums for the first time. 

But you aren’t a flower to be gazed at and plucked by curious onlookers. This smile is just for him. And Vash thinks, once again, for the fifth time in a day that hasn’t ended, that as much as he loves you, he also doesn’t deserve you.

He’ll tell you again tonight. This time, while you’re awake. Not…everything. Not enough that it could scare you away. Just enough, like how he likes gazing at you when the sun hits your bare frame in the scarce mornings the two of you have a bed, or the way your eyes light when they meet his, after a few hours apart. How it makes him feel…

Like a child again. Happy. The world at his fingertips. In the bed he and Nai would share, watching clips of some old earth movie underneath the covers. In Rem’s hugs, his arms wrapped around her neck, clinging to her tightly, as if she might disappear if he opened his eyes. The sound of her laughter in his ears. Lovely and fleeting.

Pressed against him, all the warmth of your body and lips, a breathy moan builds up in his throat as you have your way with him. As selfish as it seems, he wants more. As much as you’re willing to give. As much as he dares to take. He likes the way you say his name, especially when you’re in the throes of pleasure, when you’re looking down at him with so much love that he’s choking on his words, and his chest aches with it.

Someone giggles.

You separate, your lips enticingly spit slicked and swollen, your thumb tracing the underneath of his right eye. You like his beauty mark, have remarked on it more than once, the color of his eyes, and every other part of him that makes him flush from head to toe. He knows he’s not much to look at, but every part of him, except his burdens, belong to you. And if you can find something worthwhile to look at when you look at him other than disgust and horror, then that’s more than enough.

He lets his arms fall from your waist as you step away, and he already misses your closeness.

“Children shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” you say coolly, but not coldly. There’s a glint in your eyes as heads pop up from the crates towards the back of the alley. 

“We were just making sure everything was okay!” Tony exclaims, running up to you. He grins knowingly at Vash and attempts a wink.

You raise an eyebrow.

Sonya approaches, dragging Lock with her. “ And Lock wanted apologize for hittin’ Vash in the face!”

“Wha—!?” Lock sputters, looking at the girl in betrayal. “Sonya!” He squints at the ground. “...Sorry.”

Vash kneels down. “Apology accepted,” he says softly, a smile on his lips. He’s a good kid. So are all the kids in this town. Sonya with her ever present glowing smile. Tony and his mischievous wit. The blue cap he doesn’t go without. Lock and his grudges which hide a large, genuine heart. Billy and Mary and Kirk and everyone else.

Vash is almost tempted to stay a couple more nights, but he knows he can’t. Not with Nai having been spotted to the South. Another plant stolen, more fatal casualties. He has to leave before there are more. If he were a better person, he’d leave you behind. He stares at the ground.

He briefly feels the weight of your gaze. You gather the kids’ attention.

“You kids hungry?”

Tony and Sonya and Lock perk up.

“I am!” Tony says.

“You’re always hungry!” Sonya scowls.

“Are you the one with the money?” Lock asks. “Cuz’ Vash is broke.”

That draws a huff of laughter from you as Vash smiles sheepishly, pushing the worries plaguing his mind away for now. Until night falls upon No Man’s Land, and you’re peacefully sleeping in his arms. That’s when he’ll worry about whether or not he deserves to be happy with you.

Sonya reaches up to grab your hand with a big smile. You glance at him.

“Any good pizza places around here?”