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Even at night, the desert has a way of burning beneath Wolfwood’s skin.
Light to dark. Hot to cold. Extremes, embodied in Vash’s back curved to Wolfwood’s chest. Wolfwood curls his fingers tighter into Vash’s undersuit, the grate covering his chest like elongated goosebumps beneath his touch. The itch for a smoke rises fast.
So does the other itch, that twinge that feels like being too damn hot and freezing all at once, a sensation not easily soothed. Paranoia, somebody might call it. Wolfwood wanted that hypothetical somebody to spend a day—hell, half a day—with Vash.
Wolfwood raises to an elbow. Beyond the craggy overhang, the sands seem calm enough, content to bristle beneath the same wind that flutters the Punisher’s covering. His traitorous heart does the same. No worms. No guns. No sound. Damn eerie is what it is.
Eerie isn’t worth waking Vash for, especially not after the day they had. Disgust twists deep in Wolfwood’s gut. Maybe if they were in a motel and things were going sideways. Yet things had already gone sideways, lopsided, tits-up, everything in-between, Vash’s purpling skin evidence enough. By morning, the bruises will be gone, but the dull thud the stones made against Vash’s jaw will still be ringing away in Wolfwood’s ears. Vash hadn’t even been mad—of course he hadn’t been mad, and that made Wolfwood mad. Makes him madder yet that his nerves are tingling and won’t let him use sleep to dim the memory.
Fuck, he really needs that smoke.
Suddenly, Vash shifts against him. “Wolf—”
White-hot light steals Vash’s voice.
Dark to light, silence to a screeching, wailing ring—extremes, damn extremes. Wolfwood grapples in total blindness. A gun. He needs a gun. Ideally, the Punisher, but any gun with bullets would do. If someone was sending up flares, they’d been waiting and watching for a moment like this, waiting and watching for them to sleep. He’d been arrogant for not insisting that they sleep in shifts, greedy for wanting to hold Vash tonight. Even greedier than usual.
This was not what they did.
They fucked. Only that.
After fucking, they sometimes happened to fall asleep in the same bed. They didn’t hold each other a mere hour's walk from a town that tried to stone Vash to death.
Voices replace the ringing. Four—no, five of them. Deep. Fervored. Slurred. Christ alive. So some idiots spent an evening pickling their livers and decided hunting down Vash the Stampede was the next best move. Wolfwood couldn’t even be relieved. Drunk didn’t always mean full-on stupid. Sometimes, drunk meant stupid enough to hurt someone bad, real bad.
The stars and moons pinprick his sight, shadowed figures seeping in along with them. A bearded man, his teeth bared, shoves a lit torch into the ground. Four other men copy him. Fire bleeds over the dunes, staining Vash’s coat and illuminating his tired, red-rimmed eyes.
“Hey, now.” Vash laughs, that damn nervous sound Wolfwood had come to loathe. Why did he always insist on sanding himself down to a hapless fool?
You know why.
Wolfwood was there. Wolfwood was his weapon, and Vash was a hypocrite. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that Wolfwood was sharpened, that if Wolfwood had to choose between Vash’s life and a stranger’s, he’d always choose Vash. No, Vash knew. He knew that Wolfwood was good for one thing: killing. He allowed Wolfwood to protect him and then silently condemned him for it. It should have bothered Wolfwood more, but he was already damned. All that condemnation meant was that Vash was alive to do it.
“Come on,” Vash says. “It’s so late. You guys have to be tired after today, right? How about we all just go our own way?”
“Not gonna work, Spikey,” Wolfwood mutters.
The second flare comes like God seconding Wolfwood.
Calloused hands close around his arms, dragging him back, and Wolfwood kicks his heels into the ground, Vash, Vash, and they’re shoving him face-down. Sand grits his tongue, stings his eyes. He snarls, but the sound only gets a taunting laugh. Wolfwood thrashes.
“Hey, now,” a man whispers. “Don’t be like that.”
They wrench Wolfwood’s arms over his head. Rope bites his skin, twisting, entwining, frayed twine splitting across his veins.
Another laugh—the bearded man, Wolfwood can make out the darkness like a rash across his cheeks. “Real tight, Tom.”
A chiseled man, Tom, pulls the binds tighter. Wolfwood gasps. White teeth flash through the flare’s blinding light, and behind, the Punisher stands tall and unreachable.
Darkness comes again, and with it, a nightmare.
Vash is already curled on the ground, taking their blows like it’s something he deserves. Like he didn’t save the whole town before they got antsy and tried to kill him and fuck, if that doesn’t stir some terrible anger up. So many people, kids and innocents and all in-between, wish for the strength to fight back. Wolfwood’s seen that fire spark in his kids’ eyes; he’s seen their jaws clench and their fingers twitch. He’d seen it in the mirror day after day all those years ago, when he prayed the kickback from the gun he pointed at his guardian wouldn’t hurt him too bad.
And here’s Vash with strength beyond understanding, power beyond human, letting men he could kill in an instant beat him bloody.
Hypocrite, he’s a damn hypocrite.
Wolfwood shouts. He’d suffocated his innocence. He’d become a weapon. What did it matter, though, with rope binding him to the ridged wall?
“Fucking fuck !” The bearded man’s frustrated voice rings out. “Shut up!”
A stone blurs. Collides with his temple. Sparks dance across his vision, blurry, bloodied.
“Hey!” Vash cries. “Don’t hurt him!”
Wolfwood could almost laugh. Now Vash has something to say. Is that what it’ll take? Will he have to provoke these men so they both make it through the night alive? Maybe. Probably. Either way, he needs to get free. He uses the slight slack for all its worth, bracing his knees against the ground. A growl slips from his throat.
The men aren’t even looking at him—but they are stepping away from Vash.
“See here,” the bearded man says, almost gently. “I’m curious about something.” He reaches for one of the torches. Light flickers over his upturned lips. “Does the Typhoon burn?”
A spark catches deep in Wolfwood’s soul.
He’s already on his damn knees. He wants to beg Vash to run, to leave him. If the men want to set someone on fire, hell, Wolfwood will douse himself in gasoline, so long as Vash leaves this place alive. The words are on his tongue. Too gentle.
He swallows them.
A weapon does not offer itself in place of a victim.
“You won’t see the sunrise!” Wolfwood shouts. “You hear me? I’ll make sure of it myself.” Nothing. “Spikey, run.” Hysteria shatters his voice. He can’t do it. He’s selfish, he’s horrible, he’s nothing but a sinner and he can’t watch Vash burn. “Run. Just run. Vash.”
The bearded man rolls his eyes. “Will someone shut him up? Don’t really care how.”
Tom takes that honor. Wolfwood throws himself to the ground. The ropes hold, slicing his wrists open. Good. Maybe if the skin is blood-slick, they’ll come off. His shoulder cracks against the sand. His back. Fuck, how are the ropes holding?
Wolfwood growls.
A grin plays across Tom’s face. “Stampede’s guard dog, huh?”
The back of Tom’s hand cracks over Wolfwood’s face.
Pain and humiliation reverberate through his stinging cheek. God, he feels small. He hasn’t felt this small in so long. Wasn’t everything he endured supposed to change that?
“That supposed to hurt?” Wolfwood forces himself to grit out.
Another backhand. Tom squats down before him, that stupid smile still splitting his face. “Not much of a guard dog,” he says. “Just a bitch.”
Yeah, Tom wants him to feel smaller yet. The worst thing is it’s working.
They’ll kill him.
It didn’t matter how small Wolfwood felt. It didn’t matter if Tom called him a bitch or a bastard or anything in between. You are a weapon.
And Tom has a knife on his belt.
Wolfwood lunges forward and sinks his teeth into Tom’s jugular.
Somewhere, there’s screaming. Somewhere, there’s a body thrashing. Somewhere, someone’s calling him a bitch, a bastard, Stampede’s whore, a motherfucker and a monster. All the same to him. Wolfwood’s world narrows to blood and its coppery tang against his tongue. He’s tasted his own blood before, but he’s never had another’s spill into his mouth, never had it spill over his lips and down his throat. The heat of it threatens to burn him alive and fuck it, it’s what he wants. If someone has to burn tonight, it’ll be him—and if not by their assailants’ fire, then by Vash’s scorching, judgmental gaze once he sees what Wolfwood did.
Fucking monster.
Someone else is saying the words. They’re coming from within. Extremes and all.
Bastard.
Maybe. He wouldn’t know. He liked to tell the worst of the worst that he was a devil, hell-spawned, before he turned their gun on him. Probably better than the truth.
Bitch.
Still had his teeth, though.
Arms lock around his chest. Wolfwood digs his teeth deeper, grappling for the knife, forcing himself not to draw away even as the blood flow goes sluggish and Tom turns limp. There. The blade finds his palm. Better to grab it by the handle, but desperate times and all. Serrated teeth return the favor, dredging blood from Wolfwood’s hand. He spins it. Slices the rope. He drives his elbow back and delights in the strangled gasp. A beard scratches his neck.
Ah.
Maybe if someone else had come to help Tom, one of the men who didn’t actively threaten to set Vash on fire. Maybe if Wolfwood were kinder.
Maybe.
Maybe even then, he would do exactly as he chooses: driving the blade into the bearded’s man heart and looming over him so that his last sight is Wolfwood. Let him be the demon chasing him to death. Let him be the damn monster in this story.
Distantly, panicked shouts echo. Wolfwood crawls away from the bodies, head spinning, cheeks stinging, temple throbbing from the stone.
“Go, go!”
“We have to warn the others.”
“Do you really wanna stick around? Is it worth it?”
They’ll spread stories. Rumors will distort and disperse until Wolfwood vanishes from the narrative and Vash is the one who tore a man’s throat out with his teeth. That’s the shit part: whatever violence Wolfwood inflicts, Gunsmoke gives it to Vash. The bounty climbs; the hunters sniff the air for the coming storm. Over and over, again and again.
But Vash is alive.
Vash is alive and Wolfwood can’t look at him.
He stays down. Always comes back to this. What had he done so wrong in his life to always end up on his hands and knees, waiting for punishment? Even the first time he’d knelt for Vash, in some moonlit motel room, he’d been a live wire, shaking so hard that Vash got down on the floor, too, and just held him. Vash wouldn’t ever hurt him. Wolfwood almost wishes he would. The language of violence is never misunderstood.
“Wolfwood.”
Wolfwood can’t look at him.
Red fabric brushes sand. Vash’s hand catches beneath Wolfwood’s chin like a brand, tilting his face up. He looks okay enough—a little bruised, eyes watery, but okay.
“Just say it,” Wolfwood rasps. “Come on. Lay it on me. I shouldn’t have killed them. There was another way. Say it.”
Vash’s lip wobbles. Crybaby. The tears don’t spill and the typical words don’t come. Vash studies Tom’s fallen form and the missing skin from his throat, the same throat that had conjured words like bitch and bastard and whore, Stampede’s whore. Vash must have heard. His quiet holds the same eeriness of the once-again silent desert. Wolfwood exhales. Yeah, Vash would never condone killing. Death is death. No matter who it is.
But his silence said a lot.
Still wordless, Vash reaches for Wolfwood’s rope-raw wrists, tracing the wounds. He takes in the swollen shape of Wolfwood’s cheek. Blue eyes cloud.
“I’m…”
Okay, Wolfwood means to say, but the words taste bloody.
Vash reaches for a canteen and holds it to Wolfwood’s lips. He drinks greedily. Vash pulls the container away and murmurs, “Spit.”
Wolfwood furrows his brow. They don’t have enough to drink to rinse out their mouths. Water is water, bloodied or not.
“Spit,” Vash says again, firmer. “That man’s blood doesn’t belong in your mouth.”
Wolfwood swishes the water and then spits. “Because I shouldn’t have killed him.”
Vash’s expression complicates. He stares at his coat’s hem like it’s the most novel thing on the damn planet, then takes it in his hand and dampens it with the last of their water. Painstaking, Vash wipes the blood from Wolfwood’s mouth and chin, then from his wrists. Wolfwood closes his eyes against the touch.
Not like this, he wants to scream. I don’t deserve this.
Vash doesn’t seem to pick up on that one. He’s still bright-eyed when Wolfwood blinks, watching him like he’s preparing to catch Wolfwood, if necessary.
“Because,” Vash says, “you are none of the things he called you.”
The enormity of the night crashes down on Wolfwood’s shoulders. God, maybe not, but he’s so many other terrible things. Vash doesn’t know the half of it, but he’s doing a tightrope walk with his morals for Wolfwood. He’s still getting down on his knees because Wolfwood’s too broken to stand up. He’s still sharing his body and his bed with him. For all Wolfwood knows, he could be dragging Vash to Hell with him.
“I don’t know, Vash.” Wolfwood sits back on his heels. “Maybe he just saw me.”
“It’s dark. He didn’t see anything.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“He didn’t see you, Wolfwood.” The storm in Vash’s eyes lifts. “I see you.”
And Vash brings his lips to Wolfwood’s reddened mouth.