Chapter Text
There's a shake to him. Barely.
Meryl's observant eye doesn't miss it - hasn't missed it, not for the last five hours of driving. With nothing but miles and miles of sand to contend with, her active attention span jumps the rounds of their car like a cricket on crack. Her pattern-seeking brain sweeping like a radar for any single trivial minutia details to take her idle notice.
...
...
Ugh, she'll need to wipe that damned rearview again. How does it manage to get so musty, this is the fifth time in as many--
Wait, there it is again!
That same tentative tremor travels the tall, tall height of their resident fool. It interrupts what would be a soft inhale, creating a hitch that sounds like how getting stuck halfway down a children's play slide feels.
Meryl tucks this latest shudder into her growing mental tally of such details that she's noticing lately - ones that just don't sit right with her. For whatever reason, something about it has her ineffable intrigue sitting up straight and squinting in focus. Now, if only she found it so natural to intuit why these small shifts in her peripheral were daunting her so.
She's always been on the qui vive - something that once made Roberto's brow pinch in a frown so often and so dramatically, she had made a secret game of it. Spot the old grump. A little mean, of course, but it's from a place of fondness these days. Familiarity.
Regardless.
This affinity for spotting the seemingly inconsequential, only to read into it a wealth of information built from curious observation alone, is strong. And it's picking through her memories unbidden right now with enough fervour to drive any singular person mad.
Oh, hasn't it been long enough now? She's been dying to stop this monotonous drive since forever ago.
Taking that silly deal with Roberto to ditch the shift-switch today had been a mistake - the promise of stopping at an actual inn in the next town had been so tempting at the time, especially with the promise of a day off of driving in return to sweeten the deal. He'd agreed to trying not to smoke out the car alongside Wolfwood, so long as he got the chance to close his eyes a while longer than usual. Something about being weary, or his joints' increased complaints the past couple times, she wasn't even sure anymore because nothing seemed able to hold her attention quite like this new... Whatever this was.
She'd honestly be embarrassed at the notion of the others catching on that she was being so scrutinous of Vash this whole time, however the other three were gone to the wind and had been since they'd left behind the last plant station.
Roberto was "resting his eyes". Which of course meant that right now she could hit another wandering man with the car out here in the vast sandy plane and he wouldn't lift a lid at the commotion. Similarly, Wolfwood's most recent burnt up cig was a breath away from falling from his drying bottom lip. Perhaps if he possessed the grace to keep his mouth shut and not snore her eardrums into an early grave, he wouldn't be risking losing such a precious commodity to the depths of the car footwells.
Dirty habits aside, at least he seemed peaceful in this moment. Far too many close calls have ground a certain grit into the set of his teeth. He's been nothing short of a nuisance in the car as of late - perhaps the reason that Roberto had been so eager to ask her for this break in the first place. Quick to temper, ridiculously tense, a hard glint in his eye and a bitchiness that nobody - not even Vash - has been tolerating with any believable or lasting patience.
Meryl has to be patient though, and she reminds herself of this as Wolfwood sucks in perhaps the most violent snort yet. With the gusto of a backfiring engine exhaust, the man does his good Lord proud with such a powerful, grating snore, that Meryl wonders at the resilience of his iron-forged windpipes.
She allows herself a silent chuckle at the silly thought, spotting the growing mish-mash of rusted beams and boxes sprouting from the horizon as the day's light begins to wane. The town is a sight for sore eyes - and her eyes really are sore, after all this staring dead ahead through the muggy glass before her.
She looks again at her entourage, counting heads in the giddy way only a truly bone-tired person can; taking stock of her three sleeping beauties and wondering whether she can afford to have her own fun later when she has to rouse them. Release some of the tensions with a bit of light teasing and cheeky antics. It might be good for knocking off Wolfwood's current lone wolf dramatics at the very least.
Although...
She still never made up her mind about the whole thing with blondie back there.
Tearing her gaze away from the beautiful sight of this fast approaching full night's sleep - likely in a proper bed, no less! - is hard. Emotionally, even. But she does it with little difficulty as she gets pulled right back into her building concerns. Eyes catching on Vash's stilted shoulders, uneven against the door frame, Meryl immediately catches that stuttering shake again. Not to mention the twitching furrow between his dark brows, or the tautness of his frame. It's like his strings are all drawn tightly inwards into a single point, as though he is collapsing into an internal gravitational pull. His limbs seem to be trying to subconsciously crowd in around his center at every instance possible. Protective, anxious... hurting.
Oh.
Oh, how could she be so stupid! Obviously!
So frustrated is she with herself for not thinking of such a clear cause for all of this sooner, that she smacks the edge of the steering wheel with a tight fist. It's a dull thump, but apparently hard enough to stir Thunderlungs out of his loud slumber, his incessant snoring finally, mercifully, snagging on itself and stumbling to a halt in his sinuses.
Wolfwood blearily catches eyes with her in the rearview mirror, a little lost and not yet awake in any meaningful sense. She gives him a huff of acknowledgement, still preoccupied with her working theory that Vash has been... Hiding, for want of a better word.
That stubborn, selfless man screams pain in every fibre of his stature right now. And she can't believe she hadn't come to that conclusion sooner.
The more she looks at him now that she's had this thought, the more dumbstruck she feels at her own oblivion to all the signs.
Shifting the car a couple gears, she begins preparing to reach the upcoming town on autopilot whilst her mind is elsewhere, cross-comparing Vash's secretive behaviours with each instance in her memory of the same. A silenced grunt as her mother stands on her bad hip. The tender rub across his chest that her father employs at times, as though to ease his aching chest from outside of it's bone cage. How the barkeep at the town before last had a quiet habit of pressing her burnt palms around her own cold glass of water at the back counter of her work station - an easy practice to the manner she'd roll the glass between her palms and a small way down her inner wrist. Repetitive and soothing.
All of these tiny motions and more come to mind. Little actions and habits that she realises have been staring back at her this whole time through the one man in their party so resistant to asking for help. It's even become a bit of a running gag, to ask how he is twice - once for prosperity, and the next for sincerity. Of course, he's never fooled into revealing his pain, but his facade itself is only so strong...
And yet she'd still failed to notice an increase in his attempts to stifle his outwards signs of pain. As had apparently everyone else.
Had he gotten injured worse than usual lately? She thought to herself miserably whilst her body went through the muscle memory motions of easing their increasingly tempestuous vehicle - one needs to have a knack for cooling this one down, these days. Such is the state of the thing, after all their trials and tribulations since merging paths with the Typhoon himself. (Okay. Maybe her driving had something to do with it too, but that's neither here nor there at this very moment.)
Their janky little four wheel tin can complains pathetically as its engine is shut off, and Meryl pulls herself in two great, shuddering twists from side to side. Her vertebrae creak and pop as she does, and then she is twisting around between the front seats to get a good long look at Vash before he can put his little act on again. His favourite play at being invulnerable. One that he seems to hope will deflect their questions, their concerns. As though their care is too much for him, or that he somehow shouldn't allow himself to rely on them. The act, like a wall.
She hates that one. It makes her think too much about past hurt he must have felt, to get to this point. Rejection, minimisation, neglect...
She really hates it...
Wolfwood's grumbling lifts her from her reminiscing. His huffs and quiet drama as he sat himself up and cricked his own neck and back both ways abruptly stopped, attention following her eyes onto long limbs tangled in a great red coat, repurposed as a blanket.
After a brief moment, she hears him say,"Needle-noggin... What're we gonna do with him, eh?" He scoffs a laugh and when she looks from Vash to him, she can see how he considers their friend with gentle eyes that he would swear up and down he would never make at any of them, not on his life. A small bit of tension finally bleeds out from her shoulders - air from a balloon puffed up too taught, released in relief. She knows she's not as alone as she'd thought. Wolfwood's eyes find hers and he gives a sad flicker of a smile, just a lift in the corner of his mouth. But it's enough.
"Is he gonna listen to us?" Uncertainty hitches her voice, chin dropping onto her hand curled over the side of her seat - other hand finding her seatbelt buckle and clicking it free.
Wolfwood lets out a bit of a bolder chuckle at this, stirring Roberto, but thankfully not Vash just yet, and Meryl is sure to reach out to Roberto's shoulder and clasp it, giving a squeeze in greeting as Wolfwood responds, "You're kidding. No." Roberto's groaning in the passenger seat, rubbing his eyes hard enough that it must be putting spots in his vision and peering back at where Meryl is leaning into the back of the car with measured curiosity. Wolfwood's rubbing his face too now, side-eyeing Vash again as he adds, "Don't worry, Shortie, we won't give him the satisfaction anyway."
"Huh?" Meryl responds a little louder than she meant to, at the same time that Roberto asks, "What on No Man's Land are you two on about?"
The poor man is disheveled beyond belief despite his extra rest today and Meryl almost feels indignant about it, considering the extra driving she'd done only for him to somehow come out of it looking worse! The nerve! Her own tired eyes ache in sympathy though, and before she could tease the old sod over his sorry state, there's a quiet whine from the back.
She drops the thought immediately and swivels back around to see Vash's flinch at coming to. Wolfwood's eyebrows are all the way up, body frozen like he somehow expects that to make a difference. His efforts are of course fruitless and soon enough two sky blue eyes blink open, flickering on a wince as Vash's torso straightens out from its slouch. Wolfwood grins, leaning right into his space. "Mornin, Sunshine!"
His boisterous leering has Vash startle on a lean backwards, which he immediately halts in its tracks with a far better suppressed wince this time around. Too bad that they're onto him now, though. Shucks.
"Ah- hi guys!" His voice is scratchy, not quite up to the task of putting on a brave face like the rest of him apparently is, and Wolfwood visibly zeroes in on it. He is unblinking, and Meryl quite frankly can't blame Vash for the reproachful look he gives him out the corner of his eye, trying to meet Meryl's gaze in between the side-glances, a plea for help. "How was the drive, Meryl?"
"Well... Let's just say a bed has never sounded more like the heaven Nicholas talks of." She sighs, but gives a worn-out smile nonetheless, "Not too bad though, thank you, Vash." She turns to Roberto, leaving Vash to wave off Wolfwood's nonsense now that she's left him at his mercy for now. The weary man is creaking like an un-oiled door hinge, shifting around in his seat, getting himself together in the way he does when they will be leaving the car parked anywhere. His checks for anything remotely valuable not to be left in sight, all windows to be rolled all the way up - as though that'll stop anybody desperate enough, but she can appreciate the gesture anyway - and kicking around the shallow pools of sand in the footwells like he's going to actually do anything about them, without ever really committing to clearing them fully. "The usual, for the inn?" she queries, rubbing the back of her neck where her growing hair is starting to get past that comfort zone she likes best, and fiddles with the finer hairs there anxiously.
They have needed to be more careful with spending money on rooms, and so have taken to splitting into two twos more often than not, when they do get to stay anywhere. Depending on Roberto's paranoia, Wolfwood sometimes stays with him but usually it's he and Meryl sharing a room, since he's "gotta keep up to date on how that article is coming along" - she's actually pretty sure he's just more attached to her than the others, and when weighing up his trust levels, more often than not he decides to prioritise his closest. It's sweet, really. He wouldn't dare let on such fondness in his words though, no siree. But that's okay. Meryl doesn't need him to.
"Yeah," his gruff reply has a backdrop of light-hearted bickering as Wolfwood tests Vash's (usually) deep well of patience in the backseat, "I'll leave you with these two if you don't mind, I can come back shortly to let you know what we get round here." His face is a little too smug as he explains this, not waiting for her thoughts on it before he pats his flask pocket twice to check it's there, and swings his door open to get out. "Good luck, Newbie!" He swings the door shut on her weak protest ("Hey!") with an unrepentant Ha! His lilting pace takes him out of sight around the corner, leaving her in the company of her two nearest and dearest headaches. Speaking of...
She takes a deep breath and faces them again, one hand behind her hovering near the dashboard as inconspicuously as she can manage when twisting around like this. No time like the present.
The sight of her movement in his peripheral has an impressively agitated Vash glancing her way, and she takes the chance to interrupt whatever asinine rambling Wolfwood has been spewing to address him face to face, where he can't shy away from her eagle eye. "Did you get hurt in the last town?"
The response is immediate. His face falls and his hands hesitantly raise up like a physical barrier against a line of questioning that he doesn't like. He's so predictable.
"Uh, no? No, I'm fine. Those bounty hunters were all sorry shots, anyways," he tries an airy laugh, it falls flat in the same way she saw Wolfwood's brain shriek to a stop at her direct confrontation. What else had he expected from her, at this point? He should really know better by now than to expect her to beat around the bush when it comes to any of their safety and wellbeing. Vash keeps talking, almost tripping over himself to change the mood, like he is often wont to do, "Remember? No need to worry yourself, Meryl!" Wolfwood has sat back like he's watching a show, apparently having seen something in Meryl's gaze that tells him he should sit well and attentive. Ah. Seems she needs to school her expression more. A bit more subtlety, perhaps. Whoops. She tunes back into Vash's rambling, "-either way, I should really be asking how you're feeling after that drive! I know you say it went well but while I'm impressed by your focus, I wonder if this long drive without a swap-out was really okay for yo-"
"Don't change the subject, Vash - you're hurting."
Now that gets his attention, and the awkward laugh is back. "Uhm. I'm sorry Meryl, I don't know what you mean...?" His eyes are flitting around so fast she almost feels bad, but when his arm twitches towards the car door, she pushes the button waiting under the hand she'd left hanging behind her back. The child locks click into place and Vash's betrayed expression pulls hard on her heart-stings, stirring guilt she couldn't let herself get distracted by right now, but will be apologising for like a broken record once this is all through.
Wolfwood lets out a long whistle in the following shocked silence. "That's one way to do it!" His bravado is starting to piss her off, and she's surprised at herself. Maybe she didn't give herself enough credit earlier when she'd internally lamented on everyone else's growing tension recently. An embarrassing oversight, now that she thinks about it. So she grants him the least poisonous glare she can muster whilst stretched so thin emotionally, hoping to remind him of their goal. Or at least, what she's assumed was a shared goal. Thankfully, he catches her drift and she sees his leg start to jostle up and down, a reassuring sign that he might be dropping his offensive defence mechanisms, and committing to this chat, after all. She feels a wave of appreciation, bolstering her resolve once again.
"Ignore him-" The "him" in question harrumphs indignantly, "-Vash, I can't ignore this any more. You seriously can't believe that we haven't picked up on your discomfort." Meryl's voice gets a little too affected and she blinks fast. Goodness, she was really bothered about this. So much more than she'd previously ascribed herself until now. Shooting a quick look to Wolfwood to see him watching Vash's shrinking posture - hand still on the seat near the door where he'd thought about fleeing this confrontation - she picks up again, a bit stronger now, "So you didn't get hurt in the last town. That's a relief, but Vash I still can't turn a blind eye when your body won't stop swaying out the corner of my eye."
"-Wha-"
"Vash, shhh, please," She holds up the hand she'd used to trap him in there with them both, gently but firmly pleading with him both in voice and upturned eyebrows, a bitten lip worried between her teeth, "I know this goes against every instinct you have, or something like that, but please trust us." He looks alarmed at all the insinuations hiding in that sentence, clearly never having considered the flip side to his secretive behaviour. Somewhat shakily, now, "You've gotta know we actually care about you by now... Right?"
Seconds drag like molasses whilst she holds his gaze. Her sincerity is desperate. Please, please, she begs internally, believe me, accept me. And it feels so utterly ridiculous to be putting up such a fight but she can see his resolve weakening in the curling of his hand into the car seat and the welling of tears. She cannot possibly understand why he's fighting so hard against relying on them.
It's almost an insult. But she knows better, still. Knows that he thinks he's doing the kind thing.
He's wrong.
So, so carefully, Wolfwood catches a tear before it can fall, and Vash's whole body jolts from a jump, followed by a shiver. His glasses are hanging onto the pointed tip of his noise for dear life, baring his ocean eyes for both of them to see how they widen and zero in on the thick tan knuckle that had brushed his under-eye without him realising. Wolfwood chuckles warmly at his expression, taking the chance to scoot closer across the seats and swing an arm up and over the back of Vash's headrest. "Crybaby."
It is said with such an incredibly besotted smile that Vash is effectively disarmed entirely, giving Meryl the similar boldness to climb between the front seats into the back and insert herself into the tiny, Meryl-sized gap on his other side. She just barely slots in, and valiantly ignores the uncomfortable press of the door's parts into her lower back. She can pay for that later with a sore spine, it's not nearly at the top of her list right now. "Vash... Look at us," She sniffs a little, feeling a tad overwhelmed even as she's trying to express herself clearly, "You can't not know how much we care." With a huffy little frown and a finger to his chest to further her point, she implores him, "We want to know when you're hurt. No, we need to know."
Her partner in crime-of-making-the-prettyboy-cry is nodding along, letting her do the heavy lifting where his emotional intelligence falls short. Good boy.
Now that she's pressed up against his side, she can feel the tremors that she'd been observing this whole time, tiny but near-constant - they wrack his frame from top to bottom and back again. She's seen this bone-deep pain before a hundred times, and she's not fooled by blondie's brave face. She's hoping Vash is starting to get their point, as quiet as he is right now, because her patience is waning. She needs to be able and allowed to help, and she knows Wolfwood is the same. He's just less talented with his words, really, bless him. He does mean well, under all that bravado. It's just a matter of bringing it all into the light.
Gosh, these boys are hard work sometimes.
"So, Vash-"
"I'm sorry, Meryl. Wolfwood." He stumbles through the words clumsily - fast, a little too loud and shakey, like he's been building the confidence this whole time to do so. Which, judging by his wobbly lip and weepy eyes, is most likely. "I just-" He droops like a sad flower, "I didn't want to worry you."
Hard front thoroughly dismantled by Vash's broken dam, Wolfwood almost coos in the very particular way only he can. His gruff voice cracks around the most tender proclamation of, "Oh, darlin'!" that Meryl has heard out of him yet. It breaks her own tough act down too, a watery smile shimmering up onto her face before she can stop it. Heart filled with fondness as she lets Wolfwood take over, having not much strength left in her anymore to play the 'tough love' part they'd needed to reach this point of openness from their silly ol' gunslinger.
He's got Wolfwood on one side, curled around him, absent-mindedly caressing his short-shorn undercut - the big softie - and Meryl on his other, wrapped around his prosthetic arm and boldly leaving her legs half-swung over his lap, having climbed none-so-gracefully into the back of the car with her boys at the soonest sign that Vash wouldn't bolt the moment she tried to do so. It was pretty ridiculous, and irrefutably evidence of how much they didn't care for pretence. And if they didn't mind looking silly and flirting with the boundaries of an already hardly platonic friendship, just to comfort him, then Vash really could no longer fight them off, could he?
He lets out a great sigh through a rattly chest, throat thick with emotion, and finally - finally! - shows his hand. "Well," He lets out one of his characteristic, slightly self-deprecating little laughs, trying to fruitlessly put off the inevitable - it would seem, "I'm... I- you're not gonna be happy with me so please, bear with me," Oh, Meryl already doesn't like the sound of this, but she keeps her mouth shut. For now. "How long have we been travelling together now?"
She doesn't get how that's supposed to have made her angry, so she assumes there's more to come. Her eyebrow twitches, contrary to how her palm has begun to soothe up and down the inside of Vash's wrist. A habitual effort to reassure him that she then realises she doesn't even know whether it'll work, if he can feel the warmth of her skin there. She blinks a couple times, clearing her head. He'd asked her a question... God, she was sleepy. "Uhm, must be coming up on about five months soon. Ask me again when I've had some sleep." She tries for a sly smile, letting her head fall onto his shoulder. She's not sure just how bad it'll be - this thing he's about to share with them both. Gotta try and hide her instinctive reaction, she can't risk offending or startling him now. Not when he's only just exposing such an apparently vulnerable part of himself. "Why do you ask?"
From her new position where she rests her head, she looks up at Wolfwood. His dark eyes are uncertain from where she can see up below to behind his sunglasses. He glances down at her as though alerted by a sixth sense of her gaze, and flashes her a smile, lifting his eyes back up to Vash again in time for him to admit, quietly as can be, "I've not been taking my prosthesis off at night..." That gets her attention. She peeks at him just in time to catch how his face scrunches up, anxious of their response - she assumes- but Meryl is just confused. And from the look of his single raised brow and slack mouth, so is Wolfwood.
"What're you talking about?" She blunders, admittedly a little louder than necessary. Vash's face falls open again in complete blank confusion. He blinks multiple times at her, and she can almost hear the cartoon 'dink dink dink' sound effect with each blink. Moving her head from his shoulder, she gestures at the very same arm she's curled around. "You've been taking this off every night that you've been next to me or Wolfwood. We've been keeping it safe whilst you sleep and everything!"
The dawning realisation on his face is almost comical, he's so animated with every expression, and the anxiety seems to fly right back into his wide baby blues, flitting from Meryl to Wolfwood and back before he begins to stammer through his explanation, "I- Well, you see, y'know... It's!" His hands are making wide arcs as he flusters and fumbles his response. Meryl is a simple woman at the end of the day, so of course she finds this all suitably adorable - especially that precious blush - but she's still worried. She can't wait any longer, so she musters up her remaining patience and slides a hand up his chin to hold his jaw steady. She turns him to look at her as sweetly as she can. Can't risk losing his confidence before he can even get down to confiding in them properly, after all.
Ultimately, she doesn't even need to say the word for him to start over. Much calmer, holding her eye contact as though she's a balm to his stress, he confesses, "It's not my only prosthetic."
...
Her hand stills where it cups his face. He drags his eyes away from her face and she follows them to his lap. "Needles? Come on now, you can't be..." Wolfwood's rough timbre is hesitant, and rings with a strange mix of shock and clarity, "Are you-?... Uhh..." As he's stopping and starting, Meryl is wiggling her legs a little, feeling struck dumb at the suddenly and painfully obvious, very solid feeling of Vash's legs under hers. Not the kind of solid you get from pure muscle, either, and she feels let down once again by her usually faultless ability to pick up on the little things, because this has always been the case. Wolfwood's rough hand hovers close to the worn canvas of Vash's right trouser leg, fingers curled with uncharacteristic diffidence, as she recalls an occasion where she tripped over Vash's wayward lanky legs whilst manoeuvring around their campfire huddle. Lord almighty, it had hurt like a bitch for days after - a dark bruise not from the fall itself - the sand caught her well enough, despite it's unpleasant grit - but from the sheer smack of her shin into what she'd joked was the boniest leg she'd ever met with. The blonde had laughed suspiciously hard at that one, when she thinks back on it, seemingly unable to recover as quickly as usual. Far too flustered at the time by his bright smile and hitching giggles, she'd brushed off the incident without much of a second thought.
"I'm sorry," Vash says softly, breaking through her reminiscence. He leans his cheek into her palm for a moment before pulling away again, "I guess by the time it occurred to me that I hadn't told any of you, we were all so busy trying to get through each new day and... it just didn't feel relevant." Wolfwood's hand had begun to pull back at this point - possibly, he hadn't wanted to overstep a boundary he wasn't personally well-versed in, such as some kind of unknown-to-himself social rules around touching your friend's newly-revealed prosthetic limb without asking - but Vash huffed a breath through his nose and caught him by the wrist, settling his own warm hand over the other's on top of his thigh. "You've never been shy before, Wolfwood. Why start now?" He said warmly, with a tiny shove of his shoulder at the other man.
Flushed pink from being called out and with racing thoughts second-thinking himself, the clunking cogs of Woldwood's brain distract him from the fond - if exasperated - roll of Vash's eyes. "It's still my leg, Wolfwood," and with a coy grin, Vash leans into his space in a very Wolfwood-esque manner, voice teasingly low, "if you would have grabbed my thigh before, don't let a bit of metal stop you now." In a flash, Vash leans back again and the only sign he'd messed with Wolfwood was the red burning up said man's face, steam almost whistling from his ears.
The poor sod.
Meryl chews her cheek in thought. She begins piecing together moments which are now making so much more sense in hindsight. She can see in her mind's eye the range of faces Vash had made at the news they'd be sharing rooms more often. Something Roberto had first regretfully told them about a month back. Unable to do anything but wear his heart bare on his sleeve, she had seen him flash from giddy excitement (not unlike an excitable kid promised a sleepover) to a bright fluster, and then all the way straight to a startlingly sudden apprehensiveness. It had seemed odd, considering his usual attitude towards being around the others typically being very positive. She hums thoughtfully, short and strained, "You said you've not been removing your prosthetics - plural, now that we actually know you have more than just that arm of yours-" Vash winces at her sharper tone there, not thrilled by the implications of her phrasing. Too bad! He'll just have to handle some ire after she'd been worried sick by him. She continues, "- and I'm going to go ahead and assume that's not been every single night for the whole past five months or so, right?"
It's an almost-rhetorical question delivered with the no-nonsense tone of a mother asking her kids why there's a ball-shaped hole smashed through the window, and it has her precise intended effect. She throws him a look that has him letting out a nervous whine, leaning back a little with nowhere to retreat but Wolfwood's chest behind him. "N-no..." he admits, miserably. "Not the entire time! Just, ah-" He cuts himself off before he can dig the hole deeper.
Despite his wriggling, he hasn't moved his arm in Meryl's hands an inch, so she knows she hasn't pushed him too far. Especially with how easy it would be for him to push them away, and she trusts that if he needed to actually shut them out or leave, it's well within his capacity to do so. After all, he's shown his capability for worming his way out of difficult situations time and time again.
Before she can pick up where she left off, Wolfwood drops his chin onto Vash's shoulder and says, "So, we can assume that any night where one of us has ended up rooming with you, you've gone ahead and slept with these on." It starts out sounding like a question, but morphs midway into simply a realisation vocalised as it occurs in the moment. He drums his fingers just above a solid knee from between where his and Vash's fingers are interlaced close to the joint. He then teases their tumultuous (so-called platonic) dynamic more than ever when he slips his other arm from where it had lain across the seat back and instead curls it loosely around their blondie's waist - a move that has even Meryl blushing pink, let alone Vash, who's gone such a glowing shade of crimson it puts his oversized coat to shame. "How about this, eh, sweetheart?" A noise like if a hiccup and a squawk got into a fistfight and both lost leaves their pitiful friend, "You let us take care of you this time, yeah? Won't you?"
Meryl's jaw nearly drops. This man is unhinged!
But she likes his style. Or, more to the point, she likes how easily he's wrangled Vash's last braincell. It's downright impressive, really. Still... He's perhaps gone a little overboard with the implications of his tone, and words and... position. No wonder the man sandwiched between them seems so effectively addled. Alright, time for the social know-how to make her re-entry into the discussion. Without consciously noticing, she finds herself lasso'd back into their shared orbit - much too close to each other as always, in the manner which Roberto often teases her for behind the boys' backs. Accusing her of being soft for her journalistic muses. ("May as well include yourself in your writing now, eh, Newbie? Attached at the hip as you all are!" said with a roar of a laugh, every time.) She pokes a finger into Vash's sternum, looks into wide eyes, and lays it on thick."Trust us?" She both requests and demands. Then, she flattens her palm to his chest, feeling bold but also subconsciously cataloguing the sensation of bolts - bolts?! - through his black turtleneck. She bites down those concerns for now. She has to assume that's not a new thing or she'll go insane before they can even get to the inn. On that thought, she purposefully widens her own darker blue eyes just to wheedle the guy over the precipice of his hesitance, and presses further yet, "Won't you please trust us with this?"
Three: Vash's wet waterline quivers under her unflinching staring contest.
Two: he draws a deep resigned breath. Wolfwood's eyes glint with premature satisfaction.
One: Bingo. A long breath out. She sees it in his pretty face - expression so painfully open around them - how his remaining resistance falls like a stack of cards.
"Yes," he surrenders into their demands with poorly concealed relief. Closing his eyes with a smile against Meryl's possibly quite evil grin. "As if I could stop you two, anyways. Your resolve is kind of unnerving to be honest." Wolfwood belly-laughs when Vash directs that last bit at Meryl herself, and she gives a faux-offended gasp before giving in to the giggles as well.
Vash drags one eye open, lid heavy and warm gaze dunking her in a metaphorical honey pot that feels like a thrilling, syrupy death she wouldn't fight. It's too much and not enough. And she has just long enough to start to freak out about that overwhelming feeling before a thump shakes the window behind her head.
"Alright, lovebirds!" Roberto grouses, muffled through the dusty glass, "Let's get this show on the road!"