Archive of Our Own

By noon it’s clear there’s something wrong with the kid. Meryl notices it first and starts giving Vash weird looks, which is how Roberto picks up on it. “You look sick,” she says, peering into the backseat in the mirror. 

“Huh?” 

Always playing dumb. “She said you look sick,” Roberto says to be helpful-like. “She’s right. What’s wrong with you? Eat something bad?”

He doesn’t reply. Roberto turns around in the seat to stare at him, but Vash is busy looking down at his own hands with his brows all caught up and confused. “Am I sick?” he asks them.

Roberto shakes his head and turns back. “Sick in the head.” 

“Vash, we can pull over," Meryl says, but she's giving Roberto a sharp look.

“No, it’s fine.” 

They both ignore him. 

Meryl steers to the side of an outcrop that’s a little better than open desert. They weren’t going to get to where they were going today anyway. One spot is as good as another, he figures. They pile out and start unloading what they’ll need to make camp. Vash hops out a moment later and stumbles on the landing, actually has to catch himself on his wrist and makes a sound of pain. “Ouch.” 

“God, there really is something wrong with you.”

“No, no.” He shakes it off, laughing. “I’m just sleepy.” He yawns as if this will be proof. It’s a silly look.

He helps them unload, a bit slower than usual. It’s hot out—it’s always hot out—but for a man in a jacket and a turtleneck, he usually doesn’t show it. Today he’s pouring sweat. After a half hour of watching him soak through his shirt, Roberto tells him to sit it out. The real proof is that the kid does. 

They get dinner ready in silence, the two of them keeping one eye on Vash as he seems to only sink into himself more and more. He keeps wiping his brow, yawning, closing his eyes and hunching over like he might throw up. Through it all, he doesn’t say a thing. When the sun is almost ready to set, Roberto offers him dinner and isn't surprised at all when Vash only smiles and says he isn’t hungry. 

“We can take you to a doc if you need it.” Roberto has limited breath to waste convincing Vash they care about him. It never seems to stick. 

Predictably, Vash shakes his head. “Nah,” he waves both his hands. “I’m not sick like that. It’s just something that happens sometimes. Um." He smooths a hand over his thigh. "I didn’t think it would be this soon. I must really be losing track of time.” 

“'Something that happens,'” Meryl repeats. “It’s because of what you are, isn’t it?” 

His smile goes stale. “I don’t know…” If he’s going to end that with what you’re talking about it’ll fall on deaf ears. But he seems to realize this and doesn’t say a thing after that. 

“So how do you fix it?” 

Vash is quiet for a long time. He doesn’t want to answer. And then he says, “My brother used to… help. But I don't know if that's still an option.” He scratches at the back of his neck, smile still there. 

“You’re joking, right.” 

“Wait, your brother? Your crazy brother? Millions Knives helped you?”

“He wasn’t that bad before. I guess he’s pretty bad, huh,” he offers but it sounds like he’s about to apologize for him, like it would possibly be his fault that his brother is nuts.

Meryl’s eyes bug. “Pretty bad, I guess. Yeah. If you don’t like mass murder.”

“Leave him alone,” Roberto says.

“No, she’s right.” There’s more he could say, but he doesn’t say any of it. He doesn’t look at them at all. Roberto tries to imagine what it must be like to have that much bad blood between the two of them and for it to still not run out. He noticed this before, but the only person who went toe-to-toe with Knives and got out of it in one piece was Vash. And not just in one piece. Without a single piece out of place, without a hair on his head gone missing. That couldn’t have happened by accident. Not in that situation, not even with Vash as fast as he is. So maybe it isn’t all bad blood. Maybe it’s complicated. 

Vash is quiet for a long time, and so Roberto doesn’t notice he's gotten worse until the kid hunches over like someone's punched him in the stomach.

“Hey, drink some water," Roberto tries.

“N—no." Behind his glasses, his eyes are screwed shut. "It’s fine.” 

It isn't. Meryl tries to put a hand on his shoulder, but he flinches away from the touch violently. Nothing he does around Meryl is violent. She stands there, hand still out. “Vash…”

He’s shaking slightly. “N—” he starts and cuts himself off, but it didn't sound like the start of another no. “It’s fine, it’s fine.” It’s not though. He's got his arms wrapped around himself, like that's what's holding him together and all that is.

“At least tell us what’s wrong!” 

“I can’t,” he says, and then, in a tiny voice, “Nai.” 

The word—the name?—comes out of nowhere. “Nai?” Roberto repeats, and then it clicks. Vash used it once, half by accident. Nai. A child's nickname for a monster. “Shit, kid. What'd he do to you?” 

“Y—you should go,” Vash says. 

“We’re not leaving you.” 

“I don’t want you to see me like this.” 

That’s the last coherent thing they get out of him. He slides off his seat and down to the sand, buried so far into his coat that Roberto can only make out the top of his head and a sliver of his sweaty forehead. 

“What do we do?” Meryl asks him, because only in situations where he knows fuck all is his expertise of any value to her.

Roberto shakes his head. “Exactly what he said. Nothing.” 

It's a shit option, and all they've got. A quiet settles over the camp. The wind has stopped. Roberto glances up, and where he expects to see open desert, there’s a man standing right there, right at the edge of the firelight, wrapped in grey and wearing Vash’s face. Roberto stands, pulling the derringer from his waistband and aiming it, though it’s not like it’s going to do anything. He saw this man block a dozen shots from Vash at point blank and no one is faster.

The cloak doesn’t twitch. The man is eerily still, his gaze inhuman and intent. “You let him get this ill.” He hasn’t heard Knives’ voice before. It’s surprisingly soft. “You humans are truly worthless." His gaze falls to the figure on the ground. "Vash, I had trouble finding you.”

Vash's shaking stills. He doesn’t look up. 

“When did it start?” Knives asks. 

“Why the fuck should we tell you?” Roberto says.

Knives smiles at him brightly, madly. “I wasn’t talking to you. Vash, look at me.” He takes a step towards the hunched figure and Meryl jumps in front of him, both arms stretched out wide to stop him from moving closer. Knives stares down at her. 

“Hey, are you crazy?” Roberto grabs her arm and tries to pull her back but she’s determined. 

“No. No, he’s not touching Vash. This doesn’t make sense. What can he do for Vash that we can’t? What did you do to him?”

“To him,” Knives murmurs, as if this is a question. “I see. He didn’t tell you. Are you ashamed, brother?” He turns his gaze to Meryl. His eyes are wide and pale. “Vash did this to himself. He left me. His body exacts a price for our distance. That’s all.”

“That’s bullshit.” Roberto gives up pulling Meryl away. 

“Vash,” Knives says, not listening to them anymore. “It’s time to go.” 

Meryl whips her head around. “No, like hell we’re going to let him do anything to you!”

Knives sits on one of the boxes they unloaded. “All right,” he says kindly. “I’m not interested in breaking him tonight, but the longer you push it, the closer he’ll get. Won’t you at least allow him the dignity of walking away on his own two feet?” 

“And if we say no?”

“Ants don’t get opinions. The only reason you’re still alive is that killing you in front of him, with him like this, would shatter him. And he’s already so weak,” he says as if this is a regrettable thing. 

He’s serious. Dead serious. 

Knives peers down at Vash, chin in hand. "He's mine," he says simply. "His first breaths were mine. Our hearts beat in time. And when you and all your kin are dust in the sand of this place, he will be mine still. Does that comfort you?"

"No," Roberto says. “No, it doesn’t. You think he’ll survive that?” 

“I will make him survive it.”

He would give anything for a fucking drink. “You think if you kill everyone, he'll be happy being left with you? Kid’s scared shitless of you." He’s growing bold. Nothing left to lose here except the boy who’s crouched in the sand like he’s forgotten how to be anything but afraid.

Knives’ smile turns sharp. "No. He's scared of what I'll do to you if you don't stop talking." Wistfully he murmurs, "He can't stand his self imposed exile and so he attaches himself to whoever will keep him close. You creatures. You take such liberties with his love."

Roberto doesn’t know how to reply.

"Can you deny it?" Knives asks. "You want something from him. All of your kind do."

"And you don't?"

He laughs, almost amicably. "Vash knows what I want from him, but he wants something from me, too, don't you, Vash?" 

Vash doesn’t reply. He’s still and curled in on himself, like a corpse. Catatonic. 

"Vash,” Knives repeats, softly.

"Don't listen to him. You don't have to go anywhere with him,” the girl says. Again, Vash doesn’t twitch or give any sign he’s heard.

"He's in pain. I'm the only being on this planet who can ease it. What is it you think you're protecting him from?"

Meryl is at the verge of tears. "You,” she says. “What you're going to do to him."

Knives laughs lowly. "You don't know what I'm going to do to him. I think you're misunderstanding something.” His eyes grow kind even in their madness. “He's in pain right now because he denies himself what he craves. It’s tearing him apart.”

“What does he… what does he want?”

“Me,” Knives says, as if this was obvious. There’s no ambiguity now, what he wants, what he’s going to do to the kid. 

"No he doesn't,” Meryl says, still with enough fight in her. “Look at him."

Roberto looks, and suddenly he isn’t sure. The way the kid is gripping his own elbows, the way he’s pulled himself tight, it doesn’t look like all fear. Dread, sure, but his gaze flickers behind his glasses like he wants to look at Knives and can’t let himself do it.

"He's fighting it,” Knives says the way one speaks of old loves. “He’s so hard on himself. He thinks pleasure has to be paid for in pain. It isn’t true. Vash,” he murmurs, crooning. “Sometimes it’s only pleasure. Vash, what am I going to do with you?” 

If it was unclear Vash was listening before, it's clear now. The low sound he makes isn't quite human. A needy sound. A dog's whine.

"We can go any time. You're the one making this difficult."

“Promise,” Vash’s voice comes croaking out. “Promise you won’t touch them.” 

Knives raises his hands. “The only one I'm interested in here is you, beautiful. You know that.” 

The scene shifts under their feet. Suddenly, Roberto isn’t sure what he’s looking at. It’s too familiar and too sweet, not the violence of breaking a town down into pieces and raining hell down to cause a brother pain. He’s missed something vital. They both have. And Vash is staring into the fire now.  He's going to get up. He’s going to go with his brother. And he wonders suddenly how many times he has. How many times this exact scene has played out.

“You don't have to, son,” Roberto says.

Knives stands suddenly. The smile is gone. “Are you that eager to see him writhing on the ground in pain?” He laughs. “You humans think of nothing but your own comfort. If it disgusts you to imagine him in my arms, then attempt to put it from your mind, but know that before your father's father set foot on this planet, he was already mine. He has begged for me a thousand times, and each time I have given all I have to give.” He lets this sink in. And it’s honest. There isn’t a shred of a lie in what he’s saying. A glance at Vash confirms it, the pretty blush over his cheeks. 

Knives adds in a low voice, “Your vanity has no place here.” 

What to say to that? He says nothing. “Vash,” Meryl asks helplessly.

“I can’t,” Vash says. But he isn't talking to her. “Nai," he says, "I can't walk.”

Knives sweeps forward, past the fire, past them, and kneels beside his brother. The metal shards of his cloak fall into pieces as he gathers Vash into his arms and lifts him, and then his cloak isn’t something sharp but something that looks like cloth. He couches Vash in it, and stares at the top of his head. The wide madness is gone for a moment. It’s open affection. Love.

Vash hides his face in the crook of his neck and says something there, something too quiet for the rest of them to hear, except the tail end. “Nai,” he says, and Roberto can’t figure out what he means by it. It sounds a little like thanks and a little like hate and a little like one brother calling another. It’s clear what’s going to happen. The question is gone; only the answer remains. He’s taking Vash away and there’s only one thing he can mean to do with him. Knives doesn’t look at them as he walks forward, into the open desert, his eyes fixed on Vash as if he’s staring at some natural phenomena and not a boy with his face.

“Wait!” Meryl shouts. “Wait, please—you’re his brother. How—how can you do this to him?”

“Newbie,” Roberto says softly.

Knives turns his head back to them. His grin grows vicious. "Everything I have done is for him. Even if he refuses to see that." He turns back to the desert and pauses. "You're mistaking a lovers' spat for a war.”

He looks back down at Vash. A storm of sand obscures him as he begins walking again, and when it clears he and his burden are gone.

In the open desert, he makes a blanket for Vash out of his Gate and spreads it wide across the sand, cool and soft as the fur that lined their coats when they were young—before he understood that humans had taken that, too, from someone else. The humans are far behind and far away. Whatever happens between them will be between them and the night sky and no one else. 

“You pushed it too far this time,” he admonishes. It isn’t a threat. It’s a fact. Vash is sickly and wet with sweat. It’s clear he hasn’t been eating. “Is this why you tried to hide from me? You knew this was coming.” Every few years. A way to mark the time. It took their parting for him to note it. Before, he had Vash too regularly for something like this heat to occur. And after… After their parting, the first of any length, Vash had returned to him like this. Returned and begged and hidden himself in Knives' bed for days after, insatiably, and left again just as fast. It's habitual. Whatever else exists between them, this is their ceasefire.

He strips Vash’s jacket from his shoulders, and starts on his boots, but Vash stops him. “No,” he says. 

Knives stills. 

“I won’t stand by and watch you do this to yourself,” he says after a time. And, when this elicits no reaction, “Undress yourself or I’ll cut your clothes off.” He’s done it before. Actually, it’s strange he hasn’t done it already. He’s growing soft. He’s been in withdrawal. 

Vash’s fingers shake as he works to comply. “I’ll do it,” he assures with surprising coherence. Knives sits back on his heels and watches as layer after layer comes off. His human clothes. His human skin. His way of convincing lesser beings he’s one of their number. There are new scars beneath the cloth—dozens of them, and bruises up one side of him, between the metal mesh. Vash could heal all of this in a moment if he allowed himself to use his Gate. It’s his penance, his last way of punishing them both. It’s effective in a way he doesn’t mean it to be. All it is is proof. Humans aren’t long for this world. If Knives knew it before, he knows it now, with each new mark in Vash’s perfect skin. 

He reaches out and sets his wide hand against the exposed bone of his new arm. His beautiful arm. Knives’ fingers find each groove, each point of contact. The arm lights up with its own power. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs. Vash hides his face. 

Knives repeats it. “You’re beautiful. Vash—you're perfect.” They don’t deserve you, he means. If all the humans on this sand planet did their best to worship Vash, to prove to him he were the perfect being he is, it would not redeem them. He strips the black shirt, pulls Vash’s belt free and discards it. The pants are all that’s left, the simple and loose black. But Knives knows what they hide. He works the button free and then parts the cloth around his brother’s hips and revels in the slow reveal. Vash wears nothing underneath, by habit or purpose. In a perfect world Vash would dress as Knives does: in his Gate. In a world even more ideal, he would dress in Knives’ Gate. He would keep it folded about him, a perfect defense from all harm, from the gaze and cruelty of the world they were born into. 

This is not that world. When Vash first started wearing human clothes, he might have known what it meant. Still, he’d allowed it. His only insistence had been this: nothing below. Vash had to stay available. If he wanted Vash, he would take him with nothing between. 

And Vash agreed. He agrees still.

His wet need is on full display, pink lips hiding the place Knives has been a thousand times. It’s demure. Knives finds himself charmed by it, by this display of modesty. He discards the pants and watches Vash close his legs together. No matter. He pulls Vash into him and over him as he lies back. Vash stalls, seemingly unsure of what to do with himself. In simple answer, Knives reaches down to his own waist and frees his cock from its confines. Vash watches this display with naked fear, or hunger.

Vash’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. Hunger, Knives decides. 

“If you want it, take it,” he says.

Vash balks. “I can’t,” he says. He is tired and ill, but he can still fuck himself on Knives' cock.

In answer, Knives nudges him with a knee. “Up.”

“I can’t,” he repeats, babbling, but rises to his knees. He sets himself over Knives’ thighs, straddling the wider stretch of his hips, eyes red and wet and exhausted. “Nai,” he says once more. “I can’t.” 

"You’re so needy,” he murmurs affectionately.

Maybe he is that weak now. If he could, he would bend Vash over his own arm and take him, or press Vash down and fight open his legs to press inside, put him on hands and knees and fuck him over and over—but the bruise up Vash’s back is bad. It’s worse than that. He didn't miss the way Vash's wrist smarted when he tugged his clothes off. It will cause him damage if Knives isn’t careful not to lose himself. “You can,” he says, encouraging, and sets his hands over Vash’s hips to aid him.

It takes Vash a moment to position himself there. To rise to his knees. To slur, “Nai, I can’t. Nai—” He’s so whiny like this. I can’t, more, Nai, please, and on and on. Knives indulges him. He loves indulging. 

“Yes, you can,” he repeats, and digs his fingers in to the muscle of Vash’s hips and ass. He pulls down, inexorably. Vash makes a weak sound. 

Knives ignores it, and guides him over his waiting cock. He bumps against his folds, up to the bundle of nerves at the apex of his thighs, and he never forgets this—how much he needs this. The anticipation draws him up tight. It’ll be a challenge to sustain himself, but they have time for more than one coupling tonight, if he's quick. He teases Vash, missing the mark with his cockhead, catching his rim and then popping free, sliding against that spot again that makes Vash shiver. 

“Nai,” he says, bracing himself with the prosthetic hand pressed to the center of Knives’ abs. 

“What do you want?” he asks. 

“Please just do it.” 

Just do it. Knives makes a sudden decision, a change in plans. The night will not be brief. Vash needs reminding of what he is and whose he is and why. When they first found this, when Vash first awoke at night in the desert beside him, wet in places he shouldn't have been, Knives learned everything in a night. They learned it together. Where to put his mouth and how to move his fingers and, eventually, the part of him that Vash needed most. How much he needed it. Until Vash was a babbling wreck against him, legs clinging about his waist keeping him inside long after his small body overflowed and Knives had wondered at his own body then, at his ability to do so much for his brother. 

This, he thought, was proof of his love. This was proof they belonged together. He drags again through Vash’s folds, bumping that sensitive spot, moving Vash’s hips for him in a small circle. “What do you want?”

“Inside,” Vash mumbles.

“Are you sure?” he asks. He lets his thumb find Vash’s clit, swiping over it, drawing a pathetic sound of out of him. 

“Inside, please,” Vash begs.

That he can do. He finds Vash’s entrance, holds his hips still as he pops past the rim. He’s as tight as their first night together. Always that tight. Vash makes a strangled sound. Knives pulls his cock free and pushes back in, only an inch more, and over again. Inch by inch, he feeds himself into that tight heat. Vash becomes incoherent above him. His soundless mouth opens in shock, his eyes wide, as if he’d forgotten how good Knives could make him feel. 

Well. Knives can help him with that. “See,” he says, “you need this.” And then he pulls out completely, pulls Vash off of him, bruising his hips, and brings him down hard. Vash gasps. He’s not yet crying, but his eyes are wet. He will be soon. He always does when it's been very long, and it's never been this long. “You can hate me,” he says, his own voice going rough, “but at least let me do this for you.”

Vash sobs. He sobs in earnest, in full. Knives works himself in and out in a steady rhythm, letting it build between them, until Vash goes ragdoll in his hands. It won’t take him as long as it would have once upon a time, when he was taking Vash with each sunset, when they knew each other’s bodies like a first language. “No—wait,” Vash moans, sensing he's not going to last He ignores it. “Nai, you have to pull out."

Knives doesn’t slow. He fucks up into him harder, deeper, and earns a frantic fist against his chest—but Vash is baby-bird weak. He can’t pull himself off, can’t push Knives away. “Nai, not inside—” Vash shouts at him. He’s trying to get away now, uselessly pulling at him. Knives presses up into him and deeper still. Vash chokes on his pleasure and his panic. 

“Why,” Knives asks, “do you think everything deserves life but our kind?  Where’s your compassion?” he murmurs. Vash’s sob’s wear themselves out. He was already tired. Already at the edge of himself. “Would you really—” he breaks off, moaning his pleasure as he fucks up into the tight heat, losing his rhythm, “—really hate it so much? A child? Our child?” He finds he wants an answer.

Vash breathes shakily, and swallows. “You never t—talk about it,” he says. “You never wanted to talk about it.”

Knives sighs. He never wanted to talk about it because by the time it became an option, Vash was set in his doubts. Knives can accept his absence, but to lose him and their child—he would do something regrettable. Something permanent. Something that would bind Vash to his side and see the light leave his eyes. "Because when I think of you with our child, it drives me mad."

He groans as Vash pulses around him. 

Vash mimics him without realizing it. They are, after all, two pieces of one whole. “Nai, we can't,” he says. He sniffs, weaker, as Knives buries himself inside, as deep as he can go, and comes. It’s a flood. He doesn’t fuck anyone else—it’s been that long. And Vash knows this, feels it, his eyes flickering shut as he moans Knives’ name again. His eyes are red-rimmed and teary. 

“You’re so beautiful, Vash," he says, and feels his brother come around his heat. It’s always this that gets him, feeling Knives lose himself inside his body is addictive to him, it seems. When he struggles against everything else, he falls to the feeling of Knives spilling inside him. For a being who believes he wants no offspring, his body craves it. 

Knives fucks him through his climax, roughly, and rises. He kisses Vash, possessing him, massaging the bruises his hands left in Vash’s hips as his seed spills inside his waiting body still. After a moment, Vash returns the affection. The first burn of his fever has eased. Knives palms his forehead and Vash closes his eyes. “It's better, isn't it?” He'll take affection like this, a cure for his loneliness. That's all the humans are for him: a rotating replacement for what he denies himself at Knives’ side. Vash pulls back, licks his lips, eyes focused on Knives' mouth. Oh, he wants more. Something to suck, something to kiss. 

Knives presses his thumb into the corner of Vash's mouth, against his teeth. Vash's eyes grow hazy. He feels himself getting hard again, still inside. Vash does too. His lids flutter.  

“Off,” Knives orders. 

Vash blinks down at him, confused. 

“Off,” he repeats in a sharp tone. Vash complies, rising with a wince, balancing himself on Knives’ shoulder, and comes free of Knives cock with a slick sound. Knives' seed spills from him, slips down to his thighs, but he hates to be messy, Knives knows. 

“What are you—oh,” he sighs, as Knives pushes him back gently and buries his face in the wet of Vash’s slick and his own come. “Sensitive,” Vash hisses. “Nai—come on—” His knee knocks the side of Knives’ head, trying to get him to ease up. Like Knives isn’t starving for it. Like he didn’t once live off this, off the taste of himself inside his brother’s body. He’s been nothing but patient.

Vash sighs and submits himself to the lathing of his tongue. He knows nothing else will work. Knives has gotten in the habit of ignoring him like this, his useless pleas. Vash bites his arm instead, taking what Knives forces him to as he holds Vash’s thighs and halts the reflexive motion of his brother’s body attempting to escape his mouth and tongue. The taste is addictive. Nothing in any world is so good as this. His own spend and Vash’s sweat and Vash’s need beginning to spill over his tongue. He’s hot. Knives could eat at this table for the rest of his life but it's particularly special when it's been so long. 

“It feels weird,” Vash says after a time, in a small voice.

Knives laughs and presses his mouth to the center of him. Above him, he knows Vash is bright red embarrassed even without looking. It only makes it better.

Vash arches. “Ah, N—Nai, something isn’t right.”

It’s almost enough to get him to stop, but he knows what’s wrong. Vash has forgotten how his body works, that Knives could ring this out of him if he needed it enough. It really has been too long. He slips two fingers inside and forms his lips around Vash’s clit, working him, circling, keeping him on edge. 

Vash tugs at his hair, trying to pull him off. He’s so weak in this way. It makes Knives more intent, more demanding. He fastens his mouth tighter, taps his fingers into the specific spot he found once upon a century ago at Vash’s center, and works him like he's creating a work of art. A frantic rhythm builds. Vash is making small sounds, odd grunting as if in pain, as if he’s fighting even this, even now. 

“It—Nai—it feels really weird—" he babbles and then, " —oh."

It isn't much warning. He comes, squeezing Knives fingers inside him, squeezes his knees around Knives head to hold him there, soaking them both. It’s so much, so sweet. It wets Knives’ face and drips down his neck and the tips of his bangs. The taste of it. Vash shakes, body convulsing as Knives swallows it, tries to work more of it out of him, tries to force himself to stop before it brings the kind of pain that will cause Vash to pass out. But—you aren’t human, he wants to say. This pain isn’t yours. You could come this way for a day, for a week, and I would be swallow every drop of it. They would make it through, the two of them. They will make it through. 

In those first years, he could come to Vash at any time and spread his legs with a knee, drop to the floor between them and bring him to this end in minutes with his fingers and tongue. In those first years, he fucked Vash in this state only, using his own mess to ease the coupling. Vash was smaller then. He needed it. Now, it’s only because he wants to taste it. And he misses the days when he could have Vash like this once before sunrise, twice more in the heat of the sun, again as it set, and on and on into the spanning of the stars over their head and Vash’s need the only piece of him left. 

Vash comes down by degrees. He hides his face. "I didn't mean to," he whines. "I'm sorry, Nai."

"I meant to," Knives says. "Has anyone else ever done that for you?"

"No."

"But still you run from me."

Knives leans back and looks over his work, sucking the slick from his fingers. It’s good. But he isn’t done. And he wants Vash to remember this. 

He pulls Vash in by the knees. Knives is hard again, aching for his place with this soul and no other. Vash makes one token protest, a cry of shock, of betrayal, and then bare need. A hard sound. Tears leak from both his eyes, drip from his nose. Knives pushes inside him in one steady thrust. One more, he tells himself. One more to make it take—not that it will. Knives was too young before. He didn't have enough to give his other half, and now Vash is too weak, too set in hurting. His seed won’t take in this barren place, but Knives can dream. Soon, he tells himself. After Vash has been remade. After his Gate has been opened in full, this too will open to him. He’s an optimist, if he’s anything.

“Nai,” Vash says brokenly. He knows Knives won’t listen. He knows he needs this.

Vash’s build up is slow this time. Immortal things have trouble counting time; Knives notices only that the night shifts around them, a distant dawn impending. And Vash is still so broken, so full of pain. He aches, and Knives aches with him. Vash throws his new arm over his face to hide himself, as if this will do anything, as if Knives can’t feel his every hurt in the press and pull, in the way Vash’s body clings to his. He’s soundless this time. No denials, no pleas, nothing but the wet meeting of their bodies. So Knives doesn’t feel it coming. Vash’s build up is slow and quiet and in the end all he seems able to do is open his mouth and bite his own wrist, to cry and hook a leg behind Knives. 

It’s only after he gets loud. “I’m sorry,” he chokes, muffled against his own skin, and the reason is unclear until he feels it. Vash rippling around him, wetter still. The sound of their coupling becomes obscenely slick as Vash leaks around his cock.

It’s unexpected, and it doesn't stop. It goes on and on, Vash’s lids fluttering, his hands grasping at the blanket Knives has made for him, his chest rising and falling faster and faster. He pulses in time with their shared heartbeat, dripping with it. Knives can't stop staring at him.

"You need this," he says, trying not to sound mad or hurt though he's both. His hands find Vash's trim waist and a place to grab between the metal and the scars and the bruises and he can see it if he looks. He can see the way his cock reshapes the inside of Vash's body. "Stop running from me. It makes it—it makes it so hard—"

He fucks in, his steady control snapping. Their coupling becomes something animal, something lower even than human, and something more. Vash makes weak nonsense sounds, protests, his sensitivity turning it into agony. Knives knows this, but Vash must know by now that Knives is his slave, and unable to stop. When Knives comes again, it’s redundant. There’s no room in Vash to hold more. It floods out of him, though Knives presses into him until the grind of their bodies is as painful for him as it is for Vash, and as good. Knives is shocked at himself for a moment, at his desperation. He wants, right now, to take Vash back with him to July. Abandon all plans of a breaking and Gates. Keep him close, keep him happy, fuck him happy. Fuck him full. Fuck him back to what they were before, and— 

And—

And humans will spread. Their filth will spread. They will find Vash again, and the simple and terrible truth is that even the worst Knives could do to him is lesser than the wounds humans inflict on him. As they will, with certainty. Their existence is the final and greatest threat to his brother. Knives will save him from this. He’ll break Vash, and save him, and put him back together again, piece by piece and year by year. If it takes centuries. He falls over Vash as he ruts in and kisses him in a way that doesn’t feel like kissing, bumping their noses, licking over his teeth and over his tongue and trying to convey in the last way left to him: I love you. It’s all for you. 

Vash returns it. Their mouths find each other and fall apart. He kisses Vash's neck, the hollow of his throat, sucking to leave marks there he hopes will bruise.  “Hold onto me,” Knives orders

“What…?” Vash asks. 

“Hold onto me,” he repeats, and Vash does. His thin arms come up around Knives’ wide shoulders, the tips of his fine fingers digging into Knives skin, to leave bruises there. He hopes they leave bruises. He prays to every god the humans espouse that they leave him something. Some mark of Vash’s passing against his body. 

“I miss you,” Vash whispers against his ear.

Knives freezes. “You—?”

“Even when you’re right here,” Vash says, his words wet, his eyes wet, “I miss you.”

It’s dawn before they come back, but Vash is on his own two legs, with his brother’s help. Roberto watches them walk. They’re paired so close together that Roberto can’t make them out as separate shapes at first. It’s only when they get close that he can see Knives is bent over Vash and into his space, around him, encompassing. Vash’s mouth moves quickly, his eyes fixed onto the sand. Roberto can’t hear, but he sees Knives reply and the way his eyes half-close, the way he brushes his cheek through Vash’s hair. 

A lovers' spat. 

He was half-right, but they aren’t fighting now. 

The odd cloak is still wrapped about Vash’s shoulders, and he holds it there, tight over his chest despite the fact he’s fully clothed in his jacket and all. The girl is still asleep, and Roberto is glad for that. The pair stop at the edge of camp, at the edge of the firelight. He kept the fire going even though the sun is almost up, so Vash would know where to come back to, if he made it out. 

Roberto can hear them now, but he’s an accessory. He isn’t something that enters into this calculation. 

“Keep it,” Knives murmurs. “It will return to me when you no longer need it.” 

Vash repositions the cloak about him and closes his eyes. Knives reaches out a hand and cups Vash’s head. He ruffles his hair. For a moment he pauses there, and says nothing. Nothing left to say, it seems. He turns to go. 

“Wait,” Vash says. And then, louder, loud enough to wake the girl, “Wait—Nai, wait.”

Vash catches him by the hand and tugs him back around. Some private conversation passes by gaze and nothing else. Roberto can’t make it out. And then Vash uses his grip to pull Knives closer still. The kiss they share is horrific. It’s wet enough to hear at that distance, and so full of need he can’t recall a time he ever wanted so much from another body. Knives lingers there, close, even after the contact breaks, and presses his lips to Vash’s forehead.

“I’ll see you in July, Vash.”

A promise. The kind that only exist between lovers. He goes. 

Vash follows one step. “You don’t have to do this. Nai,” he starts, and chokes. “Nai!” he says in miserable repetition. Vash drops to the sand, fists in the sand, the cloak pooling around him. “Nai,” he cries and his voice breaks. Nai, Nai, Nai. 

It’s an old song, Roberto can tell. The oldest song this boy knows. One he’s been singing to himself for decades it seems. 

One he’ll be singing for the rest of his life.