Chapter Text
Vash has spent the better part of an hour playing Wolfwood like a cello. He’s squared away in his lap, tipped back against his warm chest. The ache of his knees started 15 minutes in, and he’s been counting the seconds ever since to keep his mind from wandering. His body’s stilled by a few calculated, intuitive touches: a tongue laid down against his mouth, moving in slow strokes across the stubbled skin of his jaw, a hand threading through his hair, another roaming the surface of his stomach.
It’s nothing meant to sink him — nothing that could, so soon — so Wolfwood’s body opens and resonates as it always has. Groans cut through by strained whimpers float out his mouth and stir up the noxious silence of Nai clenching his teeth in front of them.
The chair is high off the ground. Nai perches dangerously on the pedestal’s edge — its legs are bound to his ankles bound to his wrists. The places corners meet flesh go white; everywhere else takes on concerning shades of red, especially where bones and skin rub raw against each other and their bindings.
If Nai could move, he’d have kicked Wolfwood’s face in by now. If Wolfwood had any foresight, he might have paused at the door when he saw Nai tied up like a plucked chicken — maybe even tried to escape, politely but weakly and with the certainty of not getting far.
But he didn’t because he’s got sense enough not to test Vash. He keeps his eyes low to the ground, high to the ceiling, or stuck to the semi-neutral center of Nai’s chest.
That’s all Wolfwood needs to see.
“Soft,” Vash coos and rolls his nipple between his fingers.
The sensation’s so gentle anyone else might’ve missed it — the tiniest beat in a longer, larger rhythm. So small that Wolfwood nearly jumps out his skin. His cock bounces and aches between his thighs like Vash tugged at it once and released it back into the air.
And as the initial shock recedes, he feels the same, sick kind of reassurance at how much attention’s being paid to his body, how close Vash keeps. His hole dribbles slick into the cloudy mess of fluids on the floor, a small affirmation of his devotion.
“How fucked up do you have to be to get off on this?” Nai interrupts, irritation clawing at the edges of his words.
Wolfwood opens his mouth to clear up just how little this has to do with him, how little he knows about anything ever also shut up, dickhead — then has to double take because Nai’s speaking and Wolfwood forgets he can.
Out of mutual respect for Vash and his self-preservation, they don’t acknowledge each other. Nai exists to him most days as a fleeting, bitter concept; one that Wolfwood’s gotten so good at putting out of his mind that when Vash fucks him to sleep — still smelling of his brother — Wolfwood can turn off his brain like a light switch, go into himself, and focus only on what Vash wants him to.
But if Nai really wants to talk, sure.
“Y—”
The chair’s feet tip violently underneath him when Nai lunges.
“Please don’t start, Nick. You know how he gets.”
He does know. He’s never met a man so ready to rip his head off just for being moved — so down bad that every touch, thought, or look Vash offers Wolfwood is some kind of threat to his existence.
“I’m sorry,” Wolfwood apologizes, tilting his head to kiss Vash’s neck.
And he is sorry that Vash had to step in again, though grateful for his intervention because Wolfwood doesn’t know how to explain to someone like Nai that there’s more to touch than just getting off. And that what Nai thinks is happening when Vash makes his cunt drool is so childish, so boring it’s almost insulting.
He’s lucky that Wolfwood doesn’t care enough to humiliate him (Nai’s perfected that for himself). Even if he did, he’d never ask an infant to run a marathon.
Nai’s just starting to discover what it means to be Vash’s toy and only by force so it doesn’t even count. What could he possibly understand about the struggle of going willingly? He’s barely spent time surviving Vash’s creativity. He’s never experienced the horror of ‘I wanna try something’ long after please stops meaning more, the shock of confronting his own weaknesses, and the pleasure of offering them up for correction.
Vash looks over at him with an easy smile tugging at his mouth. The ceiling light glows and wavers rainbows around him.
“How sorry? Like really, really sorry, or just sorry enough to get me off your case.”
God damn, he’s pretty.
“Could stand to be a little more apologetic, actually,” Wolfwood responds.
Anticipating his request, Wolfwood presents his tongue to Vash like he’s done a million times — to do whatever he wants with it. No need for straps. Just Vash talking to him real nice with those puppy dog eyes and even the pain of being twisted up like a pretzel and edged to shit for days diffuses until it no longer registers as “pain” — just a background sensation against which other smaller, sharper sensations glow.
Vash lays soft little licks onto the surface of the muscle, not sparing his barking brother a thing — licks off the afternoon cigarette, his morning coffee, the spit he settled there earlier. Then slots his mouth completely over Wolfwood’s so he can suck at his tongue, soft and secretive, ’til every pant becomes its own apology. When Vash pulls away, he leaves Wolfwood’s lips shiny with spit and his own drool.
“I think so too,” he murmurs against his mouth, “You and him both.”
A vision of Vash unloading on him like Nai zips across Wolfwood’s mind, but he keeps his mouth shut because Vash wants him like this. Nai can have his scrap punishments, Wolfwood knows the pleasure of his approval.
The fingers stroking the damp hair of Wolfwood’s nape finish their work and guide his head off Vash’s shoulder.
Wolfwood’s “What’re you—” and Nai’s “What the fuck?” grind against each other when his hand brings Wolfwood’s face into Nai’s body.
At first, the pressure on his scalp feels good because it distracts him from Nai’s cunt ghosting heat into his face, then the pain itself becomes a problem. It’s not the fist so much as every square inch of skin, his lungs, and the knobby parts of his knees and ankles and calves that he managed to forget about in the wake of Nai’s interruption.
Wolfwood only recognizes these as early signs of sprinting when the muscles in his thighs and chest contract into a solid cramp. His body tells him to save himself, but he’s frightened by Vash and so full of love, so he does nothing. Just waits until a decision can be made for him.
He’s never seen anyone recoil as fast as Nai does the moment he realizes Wolfwood’s watching him.
“Get him off me!” he yells, keeps yelling.
Nai’s pussy is hairless, but it’s not pretty. Not really. Puffy, strong maybe. It’s pretty to the extent that the outside’s completely painted with Vash’s cum. Smeared on his mound, leaking around and off his clit. His entrance is swollen, red and clenched so tight Vash’s cum only seeps out in a thin, broken rivulet.
All of these things surprise him. That Nai doesn’t seem any angrier than he usually is, just louder. That he’d retreat from anything, much less Wolfwood. That he hasn’t squirted Vash’s cum onto his face like a vindictive little gag flower. That a very remote part of Wolfwood’s mind and throat want him to.
He doesn’t know what to make of that. The disgust trickles in.
But Vash paws at the back of his neck and that’s his cue to stop thinking about it and just listen to the hormones and receptors of his body urging him to yield. So that when Vash guides his lips to the head of Nai’s clit, he’s no longer in a state of shock but the details of his doubt lose their substance, and the only response Wolfwood can give Vash is Yeah, whatever you want.
“Do you remember what I told you this morning?”
“Uh, don’t panic,” Wolfwood repeats. Water drips onto him from above.
“Yeah, and?”
Wolfwood’s looking up at Nai’s face and can’t tell if what’s drizzling onto his skin are tears or beads of sweat or spit, but his nose is definitely running. Gross.
“Baby?”
“I— ah shit, I dunno.”
“Oh, you weren’t listening to me?” There’s a frown in Vash’s voice.
“I was,” he reassures, “I’m just a little distracted.”
He talks and Nai’s clit bounces against his lip. A hard blush spreads across the pale expanse of his chest, pressed out and positioned so Wolfwood can’t see his expression. Vash gives his throat an encouraging squeeze.
“That’s okay. You’re doing it. Just concentrate on the moment and on what’s in front of you, and you’ll be fi—”
Nai bursts into a fit of breathy giggles above him.
“I just…this…it’s just…so corny,” he sputters between sniffles, “The kneeling, tying me up, him, everything.”
Vash goes completely still.
“We’re at your feet, and that’s all you have to say?”
“Yep.”
Wolfwood has only heard that animosity directed into a phone and moderated by Vash pacing around his apartment, jerking his hands through the air. Now that Vash is stuck underneath him — it’s hot and sparking and concerning.
“Baby, come o—”
“Hold on, Nick. Do you ever think that maybe you’re the corny one, Nai?”
“Nope.”
He makes sure to pop the P and that sends Vash’s pulse jackhammering through every part of his body.
“Okay, we can think about it together,” he starts, “Belittling me and my relationships? Is that new for you?”
Wolfwood and the room go quiet.
“What about petty, predictable insults? Your overinflated ego? Wanting and fighting everything and risking nothing ever?”
The twins are locked in a tooth-grinding silence.
“What do you even know about what I want?”
“I don’t give a fuck about what you want, Nai. It’s the endless wanting and running from anything that scares you that’s the problem. Look at Nico…”
Uh.
Nai’s jaw clenches audibly.
“He’s terrified, but he’s curious. He tries,” Vash says, “and I’m happily surprised. Every time. Why is that?”
The praise goes straight to Wolfwood’s cunt.
It shouldn’t.
He doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about or what he should be doing. Nai’s chest heaves with the force of his breaths, Vash does not sound happy in the slightest, and Wolfwood’s the inappropriately wet third party stuck between the two of them.
“How many years have you been at war and what have you got to show for it? A pussy full of cum? That’s enough for you?”
“You’re so m—”
“Nai, you can’t insult me in any way that matters. Especially not now. Just shut up and enjoy yourself for once, holy shit.”
Hearing Vash tell Nai about himself isn’t the gotcha! moment Wolfwood imagined it would be. It actually makes him feel kind of sorry for him. Uneasy? Probably because the Nai in his head doesn’t have a body he's gotta feel squirm.
“Nick?”
Wolfwood finds his hand being guided to the inside of Nai’s thigh. The skin there is hot and angry, and his muscles are as rigid as bricks.
“Please set a good example,” Vash pleads, interlacing their fingers against his body, “You’re the only one I have.”
Nai lets out a pathetic whimper.
Shit has got to hurt all around. He’s not sure even he could handle getting whipped like that, so he tries for empathy, even sinks fingers into the fat of Nai’s thighs to reassure, but there’s only so much he can do; Wolfwood’s being called to take care of him despite their feelings and refusals.
Despite the air shooting in quick gusts from his nose, Nai’s voice comes out watery and vague.
“Don’t.”
Wolfwood looks up at the eyes cresting the top of Nai’s tits — a life’s worth of hatred hammered into twin daggers — and shrugs.
“Sorry,” he apologizes, pressing the first kiss to his clit, “I’ll make you feel better.”