Title: Reverberations
Fandom: Trigun ('98)
Characters: Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Vash
Rating: pg-13
Length: 2650 words
Content notes: Cannon typical violence
Summary: Vash just wants to go dancing. Wolfwood knows it won't be that easy.



"Hey, do you hear that?"

Wolfwood takes the cigarette from his lips and taps the ash off into the bowl. Boarding house this cheap doesn't think the patrons would have the double dollars to burn smoking.

He looks towards Vash. The man had stood up and stuck his head out the window and is practically vibrating with excitement.

"No? Unless you mean the traffic?"

"No! The music! Someone's having a party!"

He looks back with those big green eyes and Wolfwood puts on a small scowl.

"We are supposed to be laying low here, you know?" he says, snuffing out his cigarette and getting up to stand by him.

Out the window all he can see and hear is the night time woosh of cars and thud of Thomas feet. It has been a while since he's been in a city and subjected to the cacophony of people who work and play through the night.

"Yeah, but staying holed up in here for days on end is gonna look suspicious too! I'm going, it's only half a mile northwest of here."

He’s already halfway into his boots, a 5th- or 6th-hand dark brown jacket over top of his standard disguise: a graying shirt, 3 days of stubble, and limp hair. He looks like a hick.

"Damn, just give me a second! I didn't say I didn't want to go!"

He scrambles into his own shoes, watching the toe of Vash’s boot tap in time to music he can’t hear.

Wolfwood locks the door behind them while Vash clatters down the steep and narrow stairs. The yellowing walls are papered in newspapers from 10 years ago and steeped in the smell of greasy, spicy food from the restaurant on the first floor. As he makes the hairpin turn at the bottom of the stairs he can hear the sizzle of food in pans as the owner of the building cooks and jokes with Vash.

“Hey Mr. D!”

“Ohh? Headed out at last? I thought I was going to have to drag your dead bodies out of that room if you spent anymore time locked up in there!”

“Ahaha! Now we wouldn't do that to you! Our ghosts at least would check out properly! Say, have you heard anything about a dance nearby?”

“There’s always something happening in this town. You two don’t stay out too late! I have to close the shop and go to bed sometime!”

“No promises!”

Wolfwood shrugs his cross onto his shoulder and makes his way over to Vash who is already moving into the night. Mr. D waves his spatula at them as they leave.

On the street, he pauses to light another cigarette while Vash takes off down an alley.

They zigzag through the city, down streets where they’re ignored as they rush past and up alleys where they pick their way around black cats and garbage heaps. Even the late night donut and coffee stand with the light up sign doesn't slow them down much (“Just two of the cinnamon to go, please!” “Say, I thought you were broke? Where was this money last week??” “I’m definitely lend-money-to-you-to-lose-a-game-of-chess-with broke, but not two donuts broke! These are very different situations. Oh, thanks, Ma’am!!” “Oh, I see how it is!”)

They’re both quickly stuffing their faces when Vash comes to a sudden stop and Wolfwood nearly runs into him.

“Did you hear that?”

His smile is gone.

Wolfwood’s brows draw in as he listens intently.

Nothin-NO WAIT.

“A scream!” He whips around and starts to run, choking down his donut. Vash is right beside him. The lights of the city flash as they pass. Around a car and up a fire escape and a jump across an alley and down a slanted roof and scrambling over a fence and he nearly comes down wrong on his ankle but keeps running, heavy cross thudding against his shoulders. Then, Vash, who is ahead by now, skitters to a halt.

They exchange glances in front of the building the scream came from: thick gray stone mottled with bits of old tech: a bank. Silently they head around the building in opposite directions, looking for trouble.

Wolfwood finds it first. There's a basement window, covered with thick bars that looks down into the room before the vault. Inside, a few men and women stand around holding guns, but two stand out. A man in a bank guard's uniform lays on the floor bleeding from a leg wound and a woman stands over him with a gun pointed at his head.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, this doesn’t look good. There’s another window on the other side of the building.” Vash crouches down beside him, gun already drawn.

“What’s the plan?” Wolfwood’s fingers hover over the buckles on his cross.

“Shit, I don’t know? Something subtle?”

“Not exactly our strong suit, but I agree.”

“No, wait, I got it! Hold this.”

He shrugs out of his jacket, passing it to Wolfwood.

Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt.

“Uh, not exactly sure how adding public indecency charges to trespassing on bank property ones is going to help, but why not?”

“No! I!” He rolls his eyes and rips his shirt in two.

“Well then, what is the plan, genius?”

“Gotta make some decoy ghosts! Or well, I dunno if they'll believe they are ghosts but when we shoot through the windows to disable the vault door and disarm the leader I want them shooting back at this rather than my actual head.”

He grabs sticks and bundles the half-a-shirts onto the ends, making two reasonable facsimiles of a head, at least when seen from a brightly lit room looking out into the night. Vash holds them up on either side of his own head and smiles. He looks like a moron.

“You know I have a shirt too? You didn’t have to destroy yours.”

His smile fades a bit. “Well, uh, shit…. We’re here now! Just take this and you aim for her gun, I’ll mess up the vault door. Then we run? The police will be here soon if they hear gunshots.” He hands over a head on a stick and grabs his jacket back, covering his scarred torso and then heads around the bank.

“God damn moron.” Wolfwood grumbles under his breath but undoes just a bit of the covering on his cross, pulling out a gun and shoving it into his belt before redoing the fabric, setting it aside to be picked up quickly. He gets down on his belly in the dirt, with the decoy next to him, ready to duck aside, and lets out a long breath as he aims.

She’s gesturing with her gun, waving it around a bit, but he’s got this. And if it just so happens that one of the other goons gets shot in the foot from the ricochet, well that’s not such a terrible outcome.

He glances up at the window opposite and sees Vash’s face. He does look rather ghostly in the reflected light of the room. He makes eye contact and holds up three fingers.

Two.

One.

Simultaneous gunshots ring out in the night and then a scream as one of the goons falls down, clutching her foot.

Then, muffled by the building, gunfire from the remaining two goons as they shoot at the balls of cloth held up by the two ducking men.

Wolfwood can see the leader swearing and the thoroughly fucked up vault door keypad. He shoves his gun back into his belt, picks up his cross and gets running.

He looks behind, and-

“God damn it!”

-Vash is still at the window taking aim again, even as sirens ring out.

One more shot and he can hear the leader screaming and swearing this time through the broken windows.

He doubles back to collect his moron and sees the leader clutching her knee on the floor. He grabs Vash by the scruff of his neck.

“Come on!”

“Sorry! Sorry! She was going for the gun again!”

“We need to get out of here!”

Vash scrambles to his feet and Wolfwood turns back to run when he hears one last gunshot.

He turns around.

Vash stumbles and there's a flash of red that looks so good on him.

“Shit!”

But he’s still on his feet.

This time he doubles back and pushes Vash in front of him, muttering a litany of curses as he weaves his fingers together and gives the other a step up over the fence.

Vash lands hard on the other side of the fence, but keeps up as they run and dodge between buildings, putting some distance between them and the bank. Finally, out of breath, they duck behind a dumpster.

Vash sinks into a crouch, wincing as he does.

Wolfwood stows his gun away while evaluating Vash.

“How bad is it?”

He gets a closed off smile in return.

“Not bad! Just grazed my back. Long, but not deep.”

Wolfwood takes a look for himself and scowls. Anyone else and they’d need stitches and weeks of downtime. But this lucky idiot? He’s gonna be up and bothering him in a day or two.

“So it’s gonna bleed everywhere.” He holds a hand out to Vash. “Come on. Let’s get back to our rooms. I’ll stitch you up.”

“Aw, no, come on, Wolfwood. I still want to go to the party!”

“You look like shit. They aren’t going to let us in. And passing out from blood loss in public is the opposite of laying low.”

Vash pouts. He flashes big green eyes at Wolfwood. Wolfwood is pretty sure Vash thinks he looks cute like this. Wolfwood is pretty sure he thinks Vash looks like a fully grown man making a fool of himself.

(But only pretty sure.)

Wolfwood sighs and thinks. He thinks about how late it is and how they’ll have to wake up Mr. D. He thinks about the red on Vash’s back and the way people’s faces close up when they think you've been up to trouble and are bringing it with you. He thinks about how they really don’t have the money to check in anywhere else. He thinks about how when there’s no home behind you you have to make one in front of you. He looks over at the lights a few blocks away where now even he can hear the music from. He shakes his head. There’s no way in hell they’re getting in. But…

---

Ten minutes later, Vash bounds up to the gate of the huge pavilion where the party is. There’s a buff looking man, unintimidated by Vash’s height.

“Hi! We wanted to go to the dance?”

The bouncer looks at the two of them and Wolfwood can see the mental arithmetic going down in his head. Wolfwood is either a religious fanatic (bad news at parties) or pretending to be one (potentially worse news), and Vash, well, Vash is currently shirtless under his jacket and covered with dirt and blood and half his hair is sticking up while the other half’s in his face, not quite covering the puppy dog eyes he’s trying to sway the bouncer with.

There’s no way in hell they’re getting in.

Wolfwood lights a cigarette while the bouncer focuses on making up an excuse to give to Vash.

“There’s, uh, only half an hour before we close, no more admission for the night.”

Vash turns up the hopeful pitifullness. Wolfwood can see the lights of the party sparkle off of the tears that threaten to break free of his eyes.

The bouncer looks awkward.

“Sorry.”

They stand there for about a minute more before Wolfwood takes pity on the guy. He blows out a long breath of smoke and then drops his cigarette and grinds it out with his foot.

“Come on, let’s find some place else.”

The puppy dog eyes are turned on him in full force.

Luckily he’s immune.

(Mostly.)

“I know a place.”

Vash brightens up and Wolfwood leads him back up the way they came and then down an alleyway. They double back until they’re at the back side of the pavilion. This side is closed off from the street by a wall. Wolfwood looks around, and yep, there’s the maintenance ladder, just above their heads. He leans his cross against the building and gestures to Vash to climb.

“Kinda sacrilegious, don’t you think?” Vash’s head is tilted watching him.

“Oh just get up there!”

Standing on the crossbeam, Vash can just reach the ladder. It has to hurt his back to pull himself up but there’s no hesitation. Wolfwood follows, dragging his cross behind him as they climb the two stories to the roof.

Ahead of him he hears Vash gasp as he sees over the edge.

“Oh wow!”

Wolfwood hides a brief smile in the dark while he finishes climbing. He was pretty sure this was the same place he’d read about in last week’s paper. And while loitering on the roof wasn’t exactly the same as joining a party the view should begin to make up for it.

He pulls himself over the eaves and in front of him Vash has dropped to his knees and is just looking.

The whole of the pavilion’s roof is glass, held together and supported with black ironwork, the contrast of its impossible weight emphasizing the light, delicate nature of this feat of architecture. Through the glass the sound and light of the party below reflect up, illuminating them from beneath. The people look tiny, just blocks of color moving in time to the music, twirling and gliding across the dance floor.

They stay like that for a while, Vash watching the people, Wolfwood watching Vash.

Finally Vash stands up and turns around.

Wolfwood finds himself looking off to the side. Vash is doing that thing again, where he looks at him and he sees him.

“Not quite the dance floor I know you wanted, but I hope it’ll do.”

Vash breaks into a grin.

“Are you kidding? This is amazing! We should trespass on roofs more often!” He goes mock serious for a moment. “Mr. Wolfwood, may I have this dance?”

In spite of himself he feels a smile growing. He lets it, there’s no one here to see.

“Why, Mr. The Stampede, I thought you'd never ask!”

Wolfwood smiles and takes his outstretched hand. They can crawl back in the morning. Tonight, here and now, he can finally hear the music.