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While Wolfwood gives the Mayor hell through the whole process of handing over the shootout’s cash prize, Vash wanders over to the board at the back of the tent, the rough drafting of the neater brackets out in front, designating the matchups. Pinned off to one side are all the signup papers. Vash spots his own handwriting on Wolfwood’s right away, then his own name, in what must be Wolfwood’s handwriting.
He pulls the paper off the wall, skimming it. Most of the answers are either reasonable guesses, or openly silly. Love Hunter sounds like something a little more uncouth written down than it does as part of a rambling spiel about searching for peace all across the planet.
Vash’s eyes skip back up, and land on the birthday.
The sensation that washes over him is somewhere between being jabbed in the solar plexus, being stabbed in the gut, and a stream of freezing water down the back of his neck. It makes his eyes sting, almost makes his knees buckle.
He turns around, forcing himself to stay steady on his feet, just as Wolfwood is straightening up, and Vash can’t drop his gaze or school his expression in time.
Whatever it is that Wolfood sees in his face, it can’t be good.
“Hey,” Wolfwood says, the case of cash in one hand, the easygoing grin gone from his face. “What’s with you?”
It was a joke. It must have been a joke. A light-hearted jab at Vash’s criminal record that Wolfwood never expected Vash to see, particularly funny because it was true—that was when he’d become Vash the Stampede, and the moment where his memories regained clarity, after a stretch of blurry blankness that could be months or years.
Just a joke. Not something he has any right to be upset about. Just a joke.
Wolfwood’s eyes track from Vash’s face to the paper in his hands. He blanches, his free hand darting out like he’s going to snatch the incriminating thing right out of Vash’s grip.
Vash steps backward on instinct, holding the paper to his chest. His eyes burn, but he isn’t going to cry. Not over this, not in front of Wolfwood. It’s funny. It really is funny.
Before Wolfwood can say anything, Vash crumples the paper in his hands and plasters on a smile. A wide, toothy grin. Hollow as anything, and Wolfwood will see right through it, but maybe he’ll take the hint and let it go.
Wolfwood doesn’t let it go.
He waits, at least—until they’ve delivered the money, put on their best humble acts, went through the motions of denying any sort of compensation, and ultimately sat down together with their free meal. He even waits until they’re done with that, moving on to the bar down the street, to drink to their success.
“So,” Wolfwood starts. They’re crammed into a booth in the corner of the bar, across from each other, long legs tangled up beneath the table. It’s a busy night, what with the tournament, so there aren’t any glasses left, leaving Vash and Wolfwood to pass a bottle back and forth across the table.
(Vash is trying not to think about Wolfwood’s mouth. He’s trying not to think about the paper crumpled in his pocket. He’s trying not to think of anything, other than the warm burn of liquor and acting the right amount of intoxicated. It takes a lot more than a half-share of a bottle to even touch him, but it makes everything much easier to pretend he has something resembling a human metabolism. He doesn’t like being properly drunk, anyway. It makes his whole body ache like an old wound.)
“So,” Vash echoes, handing back the bottle.
Wolfwood takes it, his face taut with an awkward smile. “You weren’t supposed to see that. I didn’t know they were going to keep them around.” He sighs, taking a sip of liquor and handing the bottle back. “But that’s not an excuse. It was a mean-spirited joke and I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Vash says, overbrightly. He pats Wolfwood’s arm, ignoring the heat prickling behind his eyes. “Don’t even worry about it. It was funny. You’re more right than you know.”
Wolfwood frowns, clearly unconvinced. It was a fascinating novelty, at first—the sudden arrival in his life of someone who knew him, saw right through him and didn’t obfuscate about in the slightest. Passing comments about his smile, catching him tossing pebbles at bullets, trusting him in a sticky predicament.
And then sometimes it’s obnoxious, having Wolfwood frown in concern and press the issue, when Vash just wants to move on and nurse a twenty-year-old hurt in peace.
“It wasn’t funny,” Wolfwood says. “I know you. I know how you are about… what you do. What people think of you. It’s not fair of me to poke at it like that. Even behind your back. Especially behind your back.”
Vash doesn’t answer. He doesn’t dare try to speak around the lump in his throat. He takes a sip from the bottle in his hand, barely tasting it.
Wolfwood, unbearably, reaches out. He takes the bottle away, setting it down on the table, and covers Vash’s hand with his own. Broad, calloused. Warm, even against Vash’s Plant-hot skin. Gentle. It hurts—a bright flare of heat up the length of Vash’s arm. “Just let me be sorry, you stubborn ass,” he says.
“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Vash shoots back, despite the way his voice wavers. “I didn’t ask you to feel sorry for me, Wolfwood.”
“It’s hard not to be, the way you looked at me,” Wolfwood tightens his grip on Vash’s hand. It should feel like a threat, that big hand squeezing so tightly. It’s not quite the opposite, not quite comforting, but it doesn’t feel threatening. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are.”
Vash pins a grin across his face. “I don’t think I’m subtle at all.”
“No, you just think you’re a good liar.”
Another sting, sharp as a slap. Wolfwood must see it land, because he drags in a sharp breath through his teeth. He withdraws his hand, which hurts more, until Wolfwood reaches back, rearranging his grip so their fingers are laced together.
“I didn’t mean that,” Wolfwood says. “It’s just that…” he gestures expansively with his free hand. “You act an awful lot like it’s your job to be fine with everything people throw at you. Literally or figuratively.”
Vash worries his bottom lip between his teeth, one fang catching sharply at the corner of his mouth. He has no way of explaining himself that doesn’t get far too deep into things he doesn’t need Wolfwood to know, or come out like something that would fall somewhere between hilarious and blasphemous to a Christian priest, so he says nothing.
“It’s not, you know,” Wolfwood says, which is the one thing Vash didn’t want to hear him say. “It wouldn’t kill you to stand up for yourself once in a while.”
It could. It almost has. It very well might. Knives is wrong about humanity across the board, but he’s right that some humans are damned prickly , lashing out against change or disagreement.
And besides. To them, he is a monster. A murderer. A horrible thing out of the desert in the night, blood-red and gunfire, devil-eyed. He may as well have been born in July—that’s all that people see, when they look at him.
“Hey,” Wolfwood is saying. “Hey, look at me, I’m sorry, okay? Please don’t—just look at me.”
Vash looks up, Wolfwood’s concerned face blurry through a haze of tears. Still holding his hand, knees still knocking against his under the table. If he thinks he’s sitting with the devil, he certainly isn’t showing it.
“You make it really hard to apologize to you, you know,” Wolfwood says, once Vash has scrubbed his sleeve over his face and and taken a few sips from the bottle, gathering his composure back up.
Vash laughs. It still aches in his chest, but it’s a real laugh—Wolfwood can obviously tell, because he smiles, almost imperceptibly.
“Sorry,” Vash says.
“Me too,” Wolfwood parries, raising an eyebrow.
Vash opens his mouth, then silently closes it again. He hands the bottle to Wolfwood.
“Good man,” Wolfwood says, in a voice like absolution.