Chapter Text
It’s happened one time — in the haze of drunken hours, when thoughts get blurry and rationality serves no purpose, in the chase of something, whatever it is, that will make you feel alive. When touches start to linger a little longer, when shirts are coming off, abandoned on a cold floor — bodies running after each other on a random bed, during a random high school party. It’s happened one time, meant to be forgotten, long lost in phantom memories — events you barely remember that are not supposed to stick with you, because you were drunk, wasted, because you woke up on an unmade bed crushed between two people that were as naked as you were, and neither you neither they remember, so it doesn’t matter. So it’s just a fun memory.
Except Wolfwood remembers, every single detail — curses his ability to hold his liquor, wishes he could be like every other teenager, not really used to cigarettes, not really used to alcohol, not really used to drugs — but it’s all Wolfwood knows, and it’s in moments like these that it stops being a boast, a source of pride, a feather in his metaphorical cap, when he’s partying and he seems to never get drunk.
“Nicholas?”, he hears, and it’s pissed, but his name sounds better when it’s him pronouncing it. Nai not so gently flicks his head, says, “Is my brother still here?”
His heads hurts from the remnants of the alcohol circling in his body, but he can tell Nai looks good — Nai is annoying. Nai is one of those people you don’t really want to mess with, a bit for fear, a bit for his lack of empathy and kindness — a bit because he remembers Nai between his legs, with his cock nestled deep inside his throat, looking up at him like Wolfwood was, for once, the only thing he really saw.
A bit because he remembers kissing him after, his own taste lingering on a soft tongue, sharing a kiss that was much more intimate than what was due.
“What the fuck is wrong with you today?”, he mutters, walks past Wolfwood, “Making me repeat myself three times like an idiot”.
“Sorry—” he apologizes?, tries to catch himself, “I mean, fuck off. It’s 6 am in the morning and we don’t even have school, the fuck are you banging on my door for? I just got to sleep”.
“He has to come home”, Nai states.
Wolfwood knows he’s playing with fire when he grabs Nai’s arm before he can open his, their, bedroom door, and he clicks his tongue.
“He told me you two had an argument after the party yesterday”, but he should say after sex, “He went home with me. Had to hold a tissue to his nose ‘cause he was crying so much I had to remind him to blow his nose and take a deep breath if he didn’t want to pass out”.
“Maybe he deserved it”, Nai starts, a little too close to Wolfwood’s face for his liking, “For drinking and fucking around with someone like you”. It hurts a little, maybe, somewhere — well, if someone asked, maybe he’d lie about it, but what does someone like you really entails?
“What?”, Wolfwood snorts, smug, “Can’t bear the fact you’re not the only one fucking your little brother?” — wishes he could add weren’t you just as involved?, but that’d be confessing directly that you clearly remember something neither of you want to talk about.
Nai sighs so deeply and pulls him so close Nicholas knows the next thing he’ll see is the floor, when he’ll stumble back after Nai will land a punch on his face. He smells nice, he thinks — and then he sighs as well, closes his eyes — and nothing comes. Nai is staring at him with everything but rage into pretty, green-blue eyes. And then he’s leaving the house like he’s never been here in first place.
Wolfwood stands there looking at a closed door for, probably, about five minutes. He even considers running after him, but to tell him what? Why does he even care?
That’s his boyfriend’s insane brother, who also happens to fuck his boyfriend as well, he’s pretty sure — he remembers the way they looked at each other and he remembers Vash saying I miss you even if he was in the same bed, catching the meaning only when Nai kissed him and pushed inside, and Vash cried a little, clinging onto him in a way he’s never clinged onto Wolfwood, and Wolfwood didn’t find it in him to care — maybe because of the alcohol, maybe because it was so endearing it made him want to protect them both from this world’s prying eyes and from the evil and from everything that could happen to people like them.
Maybe because, after all, he could come to terms with being with them like this.
But these are not thoughts to share — and every time he found himself thinking back at that night at the end of the day, he didn’t find it in himself to jerk off to it, like anyone else would. There was just a warm, fuzzy feeling laying deep in his core, that made him want to pretend to be completely drunk again, just to share another bed, another night.
“Who were you talking to?”, Vash’s sleepy voice reaches his ear and it confirms he’s probably been standing there for ten minutes at the very least. He turns around and Vash is leaning on the door frame, his own a little too big shirt hanging off his shoulder, hickeys and marks scattered all over pretty skin, “Come back to bed”.
And Wolfwood does.
—
It’s happened one time, and now he barely ever sees Nai. Nods at him in acknowledgment when he’s picking Vash up, or when he’s leaving his room after making a mess of him — observing Nai seething in controlled rage at the kitchen counter, typing on his computer like the best student he is out of the three of them. He know he’ll fuck Wolfwood off of him once he leaves the house.
It’s the sudden realization Vash was their in-between, the middle bridge, that there probably was never between them anything deeper than the silent agreement to share. That he misread what went on that night, that it was the alcohol, that during after hours some things that are not meant to be done and said are done and said.
They were used to each other, too young and in love to truly ever care. Wolfwood’s love for Vash was big enough to engulf and accept the relationship him and Knives had — and it was fine.
They don’t share afternoons like they used to when they were a little younger, the three of them, in the school’s courtyard, laying on a white blanket and nibbling on sandwiches, the early spring’s breeze making them shiver and cuddle up against each other without ever realizing. Pretending to study when it was simply sharing space and time, basking in the feeling of being just the three of them in the world, even if they weren’t — but they were, for each other. This is what they grew up with, after the first time Wolfwood fought off Vash’s bullies and Nai decided he was okay. After fighting Nai next, overbearing and protective of his brother as he was, until he decided he was going to trust him after it was further proved that Nicholas was there to protect Vash, nothing more. After Vash confessed he fell in love and Nai got upset but pushed him into confessing all the same, because Wolfwood was okay.
They grew out of it, like it happens to teenagers when they’re growing up. Wolfwood knows it was a forced bond, just the silent agreement to share, and that breaking apart was supposed to happen — but for some reason, melancholy gnaws at his bones and it risks breaking them. For some reason, Knives is stuck into his thoughts like a splinter in his flesh.
—
“Doesn’t it bother you?”, Wolfwood starts, sweaty and boneless on stained sheets. Vash looks at him like he’s concerned. “That me and Knives don’t talk anymore”.
He sits up and Vash sighs from where he’s laying, head resting on naked thighs. He lights up a cigarette even if he doesn’t feel like smoking.
“Why are you bringing him up after I just blew you off?”, he laughs, but there’s no humor in his voice. It’s the stubbornness of avoiding talking about it, whatever it is.
“‘Cause there’s something you ain’t tellin’ me”, Wolfwood says, cigarette hanging from his lips. It’s bitter and Vash knows with the way he sits up and looks away, back to him — reaches out for Wolfwood’s shirt and slides it on, “What did you two argue about that night?”, Wolfwood continues. It’s the first time he mentions it. “He hasn’t talked to me since then”.
“I’m hungry—” Vash starts, but Wolfwood grabs his arm — in the same way he grabbed Nai’s a few weeks ago, “Don’t fucking change topic”.
“It does bother me” Vash mutters, “But it should be up to you two to talk”.
“’s weird”, Wolfwood counters, “The fuck am I supposed to tell him? Me and Nai don’t talk like that”.
Uncharacteristic silence settles between the two of them when Vash doesn’t reply.
“You know why he stopped talking to me”, Wolfwood states. Vash shrugs, trying to look anywhere but at him not to show he’s grinning. “Why won’t you tell me? Weren’t we friends? Even if he didn’t like me?”, he insists.
“Even if he didn’t like you?” Vash giggles. Silly and genuine and pure like only he can laugh, in any way — he places one hand on his cheek. Smiling genuine and sincere in a way only he can master.
“Nai doesn’t keep around anyone he doesn’t like, Nicholas”, he shakes his head, then he’s laughing again, “You misunderstood just how much he likes you, maybe. If you think about it”, and his hand is sliding down, to his neck — touches where he knows Nai has left a mark that night of a couple weeks ago, “I think you know very well where the truth lies”.
—
He’s not supposed to be here. He realizes when he’s already in the house, thanks to the second key Vash gave him (to which Nai disagreed, to an extent: only if he never actually used it). But Vash’s late from his training, and Wolfwood was tired of waiting outside, and Vash specifically told him oh, go inside, Knives isn’t home anyway — and all Wolfwood needed was a couch, maybe something cold to drink.
And now, as he’s inside, leaning on the door, soft moans reaching his ear — he realizes he shouldn’t be here. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, really — Knives is definitely having a fun time and he’s in his house waiting for his brother and he shouldn’t be here, he thinks, when he’s walking towards the alleyway with his cock straining in his pants. It’s just out of curiosity. It’s just, maybe — maybe it’s Vash, and he came home earlier from training, and he’s trying to surprise him. There’s no way Vash forgot Knives was actually at home.
Wolfwood comes up with any improbable story to justify the fact he wants to see.
He regrets everything when he walks by a slightly ajar door — and he can see Nai’s back flexing as he humps a pillow. It’s the most vulnerable he’s ever seen him, all whimpers and red skin and thighs trembling around scratchy cotton — bitten lips caught in his teeth, eyebrows furrowed like he’s really about to come. And Wolfwood feels wearing pants is now way too uncomfortable — wonders how it’d feel to just touch, once, slide his hand on the curve of Nai’s back, push his face into that same pillow and take him there.
He has half a mind to get lust off of him, lean on this door and jerk himself off like a pervert to the sounds reaching his ears, like a freak — and thoughts stop running wild when he realizes what he’s thinking, as Nai moans a little too louder for him to bear.
And he makes his way back until he’s outside.
—
“Are you there?”, Vash asks, from the other side of the phone. He’s not sure. It’s been over a month and his thoughts are stuck again on that night — stuck on when, after Vash fell asleep with his head laying on Wolfwood’s chest, Nai looked at Wolfwood and smiled. He could tell he wasn’t drunk either — he could tell because there was no tinge of alcohol on his lips, in his mouth, when he got closer and kissed him, before turning around and muttering a dopey Goodnight, Nicholas.
And then they move to Nai on a pillow, sweat clinging to his skin — sure he’s heard him whimper his name right after whimpering his brother’s, silent tears filling his eyes as he was about to spill on already stained sheets. How good it’d feel to have them both again into his arms, to have them whining his name and begging for a little more, for a little—
“Wolfwood” Vash whines.
“Yeah”, he hums in reply.
“You’re distracted lately”, Vash notes, “Something’s on your mind?”.
Wolfwood shakes his head and lies — he’s promised Vash they were never going to lie to each other, but this feels entirely different — like words are stuck somewhere between his soul and heart, in a corner, sticking to his stomach. He doesn’t like it.
“Just worried about the exams”, it’s only half a truth.
He wants to ask if he remembers anything from their shared nights, and why he lied about Knives not being at home, but he’d have to give explanations he’s not willing to give. They’re all small events — butterfly effect, the compounding impact of small changes, stuck in time. Like the consequence of the truth increasing only after you’ve lied — inevitably colliding with reality and messing with your soul.
Vash smiles, and somehow Wolfwood can perceive it just from the silence that settles between them, unusual for someone who always has something to say — it’s what he does when he’s about to lie, about to leave, or about to change topic. Like he’s read his mind.
—
It’s just another party Vash drags him to. He’s a social butterfly and Wolfwood can’t bear tearing his wings apart — always says yes, always by his side in yet another social convention he truly doesn’t get. But Vash looks pretty — the prettiest he’s ever been, pretty enough to make him jealous, when people lay their eyes on him like he’s the center of the world, and to Nicholas, when it’s in his arms he ends up at the end of the night, in the pale moonlight, he is.
But it’s the start of his first conversation with Nai in months, when he brings Vash home a little tipsy, and it’s an argument.
“Sweet seventeen”, Wolfwood mutters, the last cigarette of the day between his lips, “You should let yourself go, live a little”.
“This is not about me”, Nai counters, squeezed in his nightgown. Wolfwood almost slips when he looks at him three seconds too long and thinks he misses him, and that he should tell him he looks good even at 2 AM, in a blue nightgown, messy a little too long hair. So he settles on that, says, “Shouldn’t you cut your hair?”, but it’s not what he would have liked to say. It comes out wrong and he sighs to himself.
“Shouldn’t you have taken care of Vash? Specifically told you not to let him drink”, he mutters.
“No”, Wolfwood laughs, but there’s no sugar, “You didn’t tell me anything. You don’t talk to me anymore, remember?”
Nai stays silent.
“Goodnight, Wolfwood”, he’s turning around. He didn’t call him by his name.
Wolfwood is as tipsy as Vash was and it’s what makes him reach one hand out, take the handle of the door to close Nai out of the house. To force him against it, to force him to look at him — Nai could easily overturn this situation, but he doesn’t.
“Nicholas”, he starts. Wolfwood smiles, loopy, head over heels — it feels good, for Nai to acknowledge him. This is what he gets high off to. “I am simply not willing to share like that anymore”.
“We’re not talking about a package”, he replies before he can even finish his sentence, “It’s what Vash wants. The two of us”.
“But do you?”, he counters. He’s close enough for Wolfwood to kiss him again, to taste, to test if it’s as good as he remembers. If his lips are still as soft, if they taste like vanilla, like Vash’s lip balm.
“What?”
“Want us both”.
There’s a nightgown falling on the floor, in the middle of the kitchen — milk spilling over from where it was left, when Wolfwood pushes Knives up on the counter. He has his hands everywhere on his body, gripping, scratching — teeth are biting, lips sliding up on the column of his neck just to reach his lips. They taste like vanilla, like Vash’s lip balm.
“So feelin’ neglected”, Wolfwood pants into his open mouth, as his hand slides in a cute pair of white panties, “Makes you throw hissy fits, huh?”.
“I wasn’t— ah, Nicholas, feeling neglected”, he’s seething, “You just don’t know how to fuck two people at the same time”.
Wolfwood snorts and goes, “Really gotta fuck some honesty out of you”, and Knives flushes a pretty shade of red and looks away for a couple seconds, just enough to collect himself. Wolfwood knows he’s still playing with fire — that Nai decides, Nai wants, Nai takes. That he could push him away if he did the wrong move, pretend to — or maybe he wouldn’t be able to, now that Wolfwood’s thumb brushes against his clit gently enough to make him moan.
“Vash told me—” he starts, a whimper slipping from plump lips, “You fuck harder when you’re angry and resentful”.
“You took it too far”, he chastises, pushes one single finger in with ease and bends it just enough to touch Nai where he knows he’ll make him moan, where it usually makes Vash cry a little — and it works, Nai’s head falling into the crook of his neck, “Pretty easy to pick a fight with me. Couldn’t do that?”
Nai shakes his head, and his hips arch beautifully against Wolfwood’s skilled fingers. He understands why Vash is so hooked over him just now.
I want you to love me like you love Vash.
“What made you this wet, angel?”, Wolfwood grins, gaze transfixed on his pretty face. It makes Nai look away.
“You talk too much”, Nai mutters, his hand reaching down to uselessly fumble with a belt, just to hide from his study — trembling, wrapping his thighs around Wolfwood’s waist to keep himself upright, but when a second finger slides in, the lewd, humiliating squelch filling the kitchen, he has to grab Wolfwood’s shoulder not to fall apart.
“You talk too much as well, Nai”, and Knives whimpers, “But say very little truth”.
“This is not the time—” he starts, biting on his lower lip to hold back an humiliating whine when thick fingers leave him. Wolfwood is kneeling between his legs and with his hair mussed and lust sitting in his eyes, it’s difficult to continue — he looks away, goes, “—not the time to talk about— hah, fuck”, and his head falls back when he feels Wolfwood pulling his panties to the side and his tongue on his throbbing clit.
“C’mon, baby”, Wolfwood whispers against dripping folds, “Talk to me”, and then his flat tongue is sliding on Nai’s aching cunt — whose fingers end up through his hair, gripping, pulling, and then pushing him closer, deeper. Enough to arch his hips and fuck himself back into his mouth.
“You barely—” he whimpers, “—barely looked at me, when the three of us were fucking”, but now Wolfwood is looking at him with so much adoration in his eyes he feels like he’s the only God he’ll ever worship. Hands grabbing plump thighs, spreading him open more, to slide his tongue in, fuck him with it— shameful, lewd, wet. Spit dribbling down his chin and making a mess of his face, of Nai’s thighs, and never looking away — studying his every reaction, drinking it up, drinking him up.
Nai wonders if this is what Vash wanted — if when he cried to him that he wanted them to love each other as well, as much, because it was difficult to be like this and they argued about it and then he fucked off for a week, this is what he wanted. He wonders if Wolfwood even knows the truth, wonders if he’ll ever discover — that he loved him way before Vash even asked him to try.
“I don’t— I won’t come”, Nai lies, back arching against his own will. His thighs are trembling and closing around Wolfwood’s head, maybe in the desperate attempt of actually not coming — but he’s clenching around the fingers sliding inside of him, of Wolfwood’s mouth sucking, gushing. It makes a good, shameful sound, and Nai blushes when he realizes it’s coming from him.
“You will, pretty thing”, he mutters, barely a whisper against his swollen cock — when he lightly nibbles on it, Knives has to pull on his hair, starts “No— no, stop it, fuck— Nick, hah”, and Wolfwood’s hands sneak around him, grab his ass in his hands and pull him even closer, close enough to sink his face into his slicked pussy, soft pubic hair tickling his chin.
It only takes for Wolfwood to suck his cock back into his mouth for Knives to come on a long moan, a long string of broken sobs made of I hate yous, as his head falls back and his hips instinctively arch up, seeking more of the warmth of a knowing mouth. There are tears gathering in his eyes and threatening to fall, the heat pooling in his gut so hard for him to handle he feels like he’ll pass out on this soiled kitchen counter.
When he comes to his senses, all trembling, tearing up — Wolfwood is staring at him in genuine wonder, softly kissing his soft, pliant thighs. It makes anger build up in his core and he pulls on his hair to get him away from him — but Wolfwood comes up instead, grabs his hips to keep him close, to keep himself stuck between his thighs.
“Open your mouth”, he whispers — and Knives has half a mind to push him away, tell him to fuck off, that this wasn’t supposed to happen, that he didn’t mean what he said when he was too horny and pliant and willing to function normally.
But for some reasons, he opens his mouth slightly — soft tongue lolling out — that Wolfwood sucks back into his mouth, hand grabbing his hair without half of the kindness with which he was kissing his thighs just moments before. Lips slotting together perfectly, tongue sliding against his — and Nai can feel his own taste on his tongue, and it feels shameful.
There’s a blush that’s even deeper creeping on his neck, on his light cheeks, but Wolfwood is kissing him like he won’t have enough of this. When he’s pulling away, bottom lip stuck into his teeth hard enough to risk bleeding, Knives would want to pull him closer.
“You taste good”, Wolfwood states. Sneaks one hand between his legs and purposely brushes against his wet folds, his now stained panties — Knives writhes a little on the counter, winces at the contact, oversensitive and fucked out.
But it’s only for Nicholas to put his panties back into place and slap him there, right where he’s ate him out minutes before — and Nai whimpers, bites down on his bottom lip as his thighs automatically clench around his hand, trying to close his legs but meeting nothing but hard hips.
“Stop fucking— playing around”, Knives mutters, but it’s barely a whine, a cute one, if Wolfwood has to decide. Because that’s what he’s doing — toying with him. Making it impossible to run away, from this, whatever it is — making him face the awkwardness of coming on your brother’s boyfriend’s tongue, of moaning out his name without shame, of letting him see you like this. Wolfwood chuckles, smug, lips now close to his ear — there’s his clothed cock rubbing uncomfortably against his wet panties, “No. You’re the type of toy I like to break”.
—
That he wakes up tangled up in bed with Knives is not something they talk about — and how actually pure Nai looks when he’s sleeping is not a thought he wants to get stuck on, but he does. He thinks about a pretty mouth on his skin, on his cock — about how he only got the tip in, just a little, before coming on Nai’s mound, because going further than that was admitting they have for each other feelings that go way past being opposites who like to fool around when not even the moon is watching. Thinks about how difficult it is to dislike someone like Knives.
Like always — because Nai is as pretty as Vash has always been, all light, white skin, full lips, beauty spots. He knows it’s not something they will talk about, either, and that Knives is going to close himself in his prideful bubble again before he can manage to burst it.
When he has the full intention to leave the house and pretend nothing has ever happened, Vash smiles at him from the counter he’s sitting on. He’s coincidentally sitting where his brother came the night prior, like he’s trying to tell him something.
“Good morning, Nick”, it’s as sweet as poisoned honey. Wolfwood knows Vash knows because Nai slipped — remembers well Vash told me you fuck harder when —, “Don’t get lost in your thoughts”, Vash interrupts. He’s never seen quite a satisfied expression laying on his face — him, who’s always worrying about everything. He starts wondering if this wasn’t in his plans all along, like a game of chess.
Because Vash loves in a way that’s so overwhelming the love he wants back has to be as overwhelming — as complicated, fucked up, take his breath away the way he takes Wolfwood’s when he’s kissing him, smiling at him, riding him and telling him I love you, diametrically opposed to the I hate yous Knives has fed him with with during the night.
Wolfwood comes closer because that’s what Vash can do — pull people in, like a magnet, like there’s not a danger sign hovering on his head. A smile escapes his lips when he gently takes his face into his hands, just a small peck on his lips.
Wolfwood licks his lips to gather up the sugar Vash has left there, from the strawberry donut he’s eating.
“Nai usually never sleeps this late”, he notes.
There’s an instant in which Wolfwood considers keeping the act up, pretending — or dropping it.
“Except for when you two spend the night fucking”, Wolfwood considers. “Right, Vash?”.
Vash’s smile falters for a split second, and then he’s giggling, and then he’s laughing, lets his head fall back. It sounds eerily attractive, and it’s the indirect confession that both of them do remember, and that neither of them were drunk enough to fuck around without being entirely aware.
“It’s what twins do”, Vash shrugs, “Care for each other”, his hand finds Wolfwood’s chest — slides down, pops some button, “Share love”, it’s sneaking inside unzipped pants, “Share you”.
Wolfwood shakes his head, chuckles.
“Take me on a date tonight”, Vash demands. It makes Wolfwood sigh, the way his slender fingers wrap around his cock, “You’ll get all the answers”.