Title: a virtue in a vice
Fandom: Trigun
Pairing: Vash the Stampede/Nicholas D. Wolfwood
Rating: PG/Teen
Length: 580 words
Content notes: a relationship built on the inherently shaky ground of a fundamental disagreement, religious language, and allusions to canon-typical weird biology, violence, and self-destructive behavior.
Author notes: anime-canon, so spoilers for that, and tangential spoilers for any parts of the manga the anime covers. late-ish in the series, but i couldn't tell you exactly where.

Summary: A cold night, warm bodies, an oft-retread path.




“I don’t think I’m ever going to understand you.”

Vash makes a noise, a sleepy little hm? as if to indicate that he wasn’t paying enough attention to process what Wolfwood said, which he might’ve actually gotten away with, if Wolfwood didn’t have his head on Vash’s chest, and consequently heard Vash’s heartbeat ratchet up instantly.

Could’ve been from being startled out of near sleep, but Wolfwood doubted it.

It was usually much too hot to sleep this close to each other, but it’s a cold night on Gunsmoke, and they’re too far from any towns to find shelter anywhere but underneath a jut of rock, a banked fire and each other’s bodies their only refuge against the chill.

Not that there’s any danger of freezing—Vash runs hot. Hotter than any human being, constantly burning energy.

And, well… it’s not like Wolfwood needed proof, but he has it now.

“Wolfwood,” Vash says. His voice is clear, now, but he’s wearing that disarming, whiny affectation. “What did you say?”

Bitter, barely-founded irritation curls through Wolfwood’s chest. Vash can play stupid with his voice, but his body won’t follow suit, and the tension of him under Wolfwood’s weight is a dead giveaway that he knows exactly the conversation they’re on the verge of.

And yet, Vash is giving Wolfwood an out. It’s a warning, loud and clear—don’t start this, not again, not right now.

“Usually,” Wolfwood says. “People learn pretty quickly that if you keep your heart unguarded, you’re going to get a knife in it.”

Vash laughs. Near-silently, but his body moves with it, the heat of him rippling beneath Wolfwood like he’s just another patch of sun-soaked sand. “Better that it’s my heart than anyone else’s.”

Nicholas D. Wolfwood is a lot of things. Priest, gunman, liar. A lengthy accumulation of mistakes, in a body older than he ever thought he’d live.

But he’s not cruel. He tries not to be, at least.

So he doesn’t tell Vash that for everyone who gives a single solitary flying fuck about him, watching him contort himself in self-punishing knots to take the full weight of suffering for everything that so much as tangentially involves him is probably nearly as torturous for them as it is for Vash himself.

Vash would just break himself to pieces over that, and that’s not what Wolfwood wants him to do. He wants him to stop trying to be Jesus.

Then again, if Vash ever decided to stop fucking around, decided to get down off his fucking cross and live the only way it’s ever going to be sustainable to live, by sacrificing the few to save the many, Wolfwood would be the first on the chopping block.

It’s a pointless hypothetical, regardless. Vash will die before he compromises, Wolfwood knows that right at his core.

So he says nothing. He curls himself a little closer to Vash, soaking in the Plant-warmth of him, and squeezes his eyes shut. Almost without thinking about it, his hand slides up, brushing over metal grafts and vivid scar tissue, and comes to rest over Vash’s heart, nearly tucked under Wolfwood’s own cheek. A last line of defense against the battered thing, to belabor the metaphor.

Vash doesn’t say anything either. He inhales like he’s going to, but all he does is exhale, quiet and a little wavery, then settles into that, breath trembling under Wolfwood’s touch.

Wolfwood waits to hear Vash’s breathing even out, but he’s asleep before it does.