Pairing: Vash The Stampede X Fem!readerwarnings/tags: Jealous Insecure Vash, You Get Hit On Twice, Vash's

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?”

Before your mind could process what was happening, you were trapped beneath two strong arms caging you in, a vine of sharp wire began wrapping its way around you, metal thorns digging the delicate flesh of your skin. You cried out in pain, feeling the wire tighten, your body now flushed against the intruder. 

“Nai don’t!” Vash yelled, running toward you. But his twin’s reflexes were much faster, immediately shooting a wire toward him. 

“Vash!” you cried instinctually lunging forward, but the wire wrapped around you grew even tighter to prevent you from moving at all. You grew lightheaded from the constriction and within a few seconds you were unconscious. Knives sneered feeling your body become limp in his arms. 

“You humans are so weak.” He scoffed. Vash used the side of his gun’s barrel to block each strike of Knives’ blades. With one wrong step, a single wire wrapped around his ankle, tossing him across the lab effortlessly. Vash quickly recovered, rolling out of his fallen position. 

“This one is pretty Vash, I actually might feel bad this time.” Knives held your head in his hand, his hand at your mouth, clenching harshly at your cheeks to hold your head up in front of Vash, as if it was his trophy. Knives knew he had won, he found Vash’s weakness, someone he could use as bait to further the success of his plan.

“Please Nai! Let them go!” Vash plead desperately, he couldn’t watch someone else die because of him. Not you.

oh it’s NOTHING, just thinking about personal bodyguards vash and nico

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.

warnings : gn reader, semi-smut / very suggestive (mdni), established relationship (?), inexperienced vash, mentions of possible injuries, grinding / dry humping, lots of kissing, also very soft

word count : 1.2k

There are not many things Vash dislikes in the world. 

But his greatest nightmare is you getting hurt. 

Warm, shaky hands cup your cheeks, tilting your face until Vash can slot his mouth over yours, kissing you with a distraught yet gentle desperation. You open for him, allowing him to dip his tongue into your mouth and yours into his, and Vash feels his heart swell and thud in his throat. 

He’s hardly pulling away– something that’s wholly unlike his usually shy and hesitant demeanor, but also so like him in the deep sense of passion and care he pours into every touch, every action. He makes sure to keep you close, barely paying attention when you stumble around the cheap room rented for the short night, instinctively searching for the bed that will surely be stiff and as uncomfortable as a wooden board.  

“You…” he mumbles against your lips, losing the words in the haze that’s clouded his mind. He feels you tug at him again, hands pulling insistently at the clothes on his hips, and he feels something he’s painfully inexperienced with spark to life in his chest: arousal. 

“Vash,” you merely reply, and he knows he’s not mistaken when he hears similar want in your tone. You waste no time as you lean forward to kiss him again, capturing his lips and happily sighing when you pull his bottom lip into your mouth to suck. 

Vash’s hands still shake as he holds you close, not even noticing how he’s made it to the bed. He sits on the edge, still cupping your cheeks as you stand between his spread legs, urging you closer and reveling in the exhilarating feeling of anticipation and inexperience that tugs in his stomach. 

But then you make a sound, and Vash is painfully reminded of what led you to this passionate embrace in the first place. 

Pulling away, Vash looks you over with an intense air of concern, not missing but choosing to return to the wide-eyed, wanting look you give him. 

“You almost got hurt,” Vash grasps your hips as if afraid to let you go.  

You merely tilt your head forward until it rests against his, and Vash allows himself to let go of the fear and anxieties that have plagued him since that moment. That terrifying moment in which he thought you almost got hurt by yet another person after the ‘Humanoid Typhoon.’ 

“Almost,” you soothe, brushing your hand over the coarse softness of his hair. Your touch is gentle, and Vash can’t help but hold you close to his body, needing to feel you close as a way to quell the fear that’s only just now beginning to dissipate. “But I didn't. I’m here. I’m okay.”

He almost retorts with a but you almost weren’t– but then Vash looks at you and the pure, unadulterated love and fondness that you often him, softening your features as you smile at him, makes him speechless. 

So, instead, Vash chokes down any of his qualms. Instead, he pulls you closer, choosing to ignore his mind and focus on what you both need. 

"Can I please try something?" he asks, almost unsure of himself.

But then you nod, smiling at him and still holding his cheeks as if he's your entire world.

He hopes he is. You're his, too.

He easily gathers you in his arms, pulling you onto his lap until you’re yet again face-to-face. Vash likes the slight sound of surprise you let out at his bold actions, but your hands only move to cup his face, accommodating yourself on top of him so that your thighs are spread and your center is pressing down on him. 

His hands twitch as they hold your hips and something thick wells inside his throat at your proximity. Wetting his lips, Vash’s gaze never strays from your face, even though the complicated flurry of emotions barraging him is all-consuming and entirely distracting. 

“Don’t do that again,” he nearly pleads, eyes wide behind his frames that have been steadily slipping down the bridge of his nose. To reiterate his point, Vash squeezes your hips, gaining a bit of bravery to touch you more. 

“Same to you,” you frown. “You can’t worry me like that either, you know. I can’t handle it.”

Vash understands your unspoken words. I can’t handle it if you get hurt.

There are too many things that could be said, yet not enough to explain the complicated emotions you both feel. Instead, Vash dips his head down defeatedly, resting it in the crook of your neck and taking in the inherent, palpable feeling of comfort he feels. 

“I know,” he murmurs against you, and he doesn’t miss how you shiver against him when his lips brush against your skin. 

Suddenly, he’s all too aware of the compromising position you’re in. Vash knows he’s breathing hard, but it’s as if his body is having reactions on its own– he’s not used to this, to any of this. But you seem to understand because you pull on his hands, guiding them to rest against your sides. 

“Vash…” you whisper, filling the air with so much tension that it makes Vash’s eyes fall shut. 

He presses his weight against you when he kisses you again, moving his lips against yours slowly and in such an inexperienced manner that it’s endearing. He kisses hesitantly at first, sloppy and a bit shyly, before you’re encouraging him by moaning into his mouth, cupping his cheeks and whispering his name over and over and over again. 

Sucking in a shaky breath, Vash refuses to part from you, even though the nerves are bundling and coiling and tightening in his chest, tugging his heart in your direction. He doesn’t want to stop whatever this is; he doesn’t want to halt the feeling because he’s almost certain that the feeling is love. 

Vash is in love with you. 

So, his hands tentatively fall to your hips, clumsily and almost timidly pulling your hips towards him and over him. You don’t seem to understand what he wants at first, and Vash is filled with insecurities about just talking to you about it– but then your eyes go wide in understanding, and you carefully begin moving with him. 

Soon, Vash is panting into your mouth, kissing you slow and wet, no longer holding the same inhibitions he did previously. He pulls and tugs on you, cheeks becoming more and more stained with red the longer you rock over the hardening bulge in his pants. He’s thoroughly enamored, unable to think about anything other than how your body feels so soft against his own, how the desire for you burns through his body, and how you sound sighing his name whenever he gives you another squeeze to pull you closer to him. His mind might as well be melting with every warm, thick roll of your hips over his lap, igniting a tingling pleasure between his thighs that he’s thoroughly unused to. 

He doesn’t know how long you stay like that– simply enjoying each other’s mouth and bodies and touch, fully clothed and relishing in the comfort you bring each other. It could have been minutes or hours, and all throughout, Vash feels the same sort of insistent neediness that he did in the beginning. He can’t help but look you over with hazy eyes, a constant smile tugging at his lips, and nothing but pure love filling his heart. 

There are many things Vash likes in the world, but it is undeniable that he loves you the most. 

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.~