Chapter Text
Dear Vash,
You haven’t been taking my calls, so please write me back so I know you’re okay. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said the last time you came to visit. I am trying to become a better person for you, I promise.
I’ve started gardening. I planted geraniums because they remind me of you. Someone stepped on them but I made sure that wouldn’t happen again. I look forward to the day when I can make us a garden of our own. :)
“Oi, Knives!” A guard slides an unappetizing tray through the slot in the door.
The solitary cell is small and dark and the air smells rancid, like earth digested. Beneath it is the stench of urine.
Nai is hungry enough to stomach the overcooked vegetables and ‘mystery meat’ that’s far more mystery than meat. His standards have dropped significantly over the past three years behind bars.
“You’re down here so much we might as well have a special spot in the hole just for you!”
The guard laughs as he says it but Nai doesn’t find it funny.
“Were a couple flowers really worth it, Knives?”
Nai gnaws on stale bread as he contemplates his answer. Perhaps shivving the guy who stepped on his flowers was a bit extreme, but he planted them for Vash, so he says: “Yes”.
The guard guffaws, deep-bellied, overdramatic, saying something about Nai being a real piece of work. Nai threatens to shiv him, too, so his stay in solitary is extended.
I’ve had a lot of time to myself to think and reflect. I’ve made some real progress since we last spoke. If you would take my calls, I could explain in further detail.
I don’t hate kitchen duty as much as I used to, and I have been trying to make friends.
“This is fucking disgusting.” The man complaining is as fat as he is hairy, bursting out of his prison jumpsuit. Not the kind of guy Nai thinks has ever said no to food in his lifetime.
Nai pushes his way out of the kitchen, striding towards the glass buffet. People make way for him, like they always do.
“Come again?!” Nai demands. His hair feels sweaty beneath the hairnet and the stains on his apron form an abstract painting. “You think you can do better with these shitty ingredients, BE MY FUCKING GUEST!”
Nai hurls a plate of meatloaf over the buffet table and it spills onto three people before falling to the floor. They all exclaim angrily, sulfuric eyes narrowing.
So a fight breaks out.
So the guards have to step in.
So Nai goes back in the hole.
But improvement isn’t a linear process (at least that’s what the books say).
Nai feels the most at home alone with his plants. He’s elbow-deep in dirt, weeding his geraniums, when an unfamiliar voice pierces the veil of his small piece of paradise.
“This your garden?”
Nai says, “yes,” in the way most people would say, “fuck off.” He silently scolds himself, in a voice that sounds a lot like Vash’s. He’s supposed to be trying to make friends.
In an effort to rectify his mistake, Nai attempts a smile.
“Ho-holy shit, man. Keep your fuckin’ plants.”
Something tells Nai he didn’t come off very welcoming.
Things have been going well for me.
My cellmate and I have been getting along better, too. We haven’t fought in almost a week.
“Hey! Knives!” His cellmate, an insufferable cockroach of a human being, calls to him from the bottom bunk.
Nai doesn’t answer. He’s halfway through 'Unf*ck Yourself' and can’t concentrate with Wolfwood’s grating voice in his ears.
“Kniiiives ,” he sings. “C’mere.”
If he expects Nai to obey him that easily, he evidently hasn’t learned anything in their two years together.
“Shut up.”
“Are you reading those self-help books again?”
Nai slams the book closed.
“I said: shut the fuck up .”
Wolfwood laughs a little too loudly for Nai’s taste.
“You? Improving yourself?” Wolfwood sighs, mirthful and infuriating. “What’s next? Frogs with wings? Monkeys that can talk?”
Nai grips the book tighter, white-knuckled.
“Funny,” he grits out. “I’m listening to the latter right now.”
“Ooooh. Good one, blondie. Seems you have a humorous bone in your body, after all!” The bed creaks as Wolfwood shifts. “You know, all the self-help books in the world won’t get you released back into polite society. Such goes: without parole. ”
Rem used to tell him to count down from ten when someone made him angry. Nai only gets to five before jumping off the top bunk, leaning on the cool metal of the bed to fix Wolfwood with a toxic stare.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Got smokes?”
“Not for you.”
“Unfortunate.”
Nai’s jaw clenches until it pops.
“That’s all you wanted to say?”
“No, actually. I’m glad you asked.” Wolfwood uses one finger to tap the tip of Nai’s nose. Nai recoils, indignance flaring in his chest. “It’s a new week.” He spins a familiar coin between his knuckles.
“Heads or tails?”
Nai fights the urge to slam Wolfwood’s head into the wall. He’d been in solitary for most of his week on the top bunk, but it feels overwhelmingly childish to be upset about that.
“Heads,” he grumbles, and Wolfwood flips the coin with a flourish, slapping it dramatically against the back of his hand.
“Ooooh. Better luck next time…”
The coin slides into Nai’s hand and he feels dread seep into his muscles as he takes in the shape.
“It’s tails,” Wolfwood says. “Or should I say, tail , 'cause looks like you’re on the bottom...”
He winks and Nai has the 4k vision of Wolfwood’s brains splattered beautifully against the dull blue bricks. Soft gray brain matter clinging to cheap paint.
But Vash says Nai shouldn’t use violence to solve his problems, so he counts down from ten and wordlessly begins to take his pictures off the wall.
“You can leave the ones of your brother,” Wolfwood says. “He’s smoking hot.”
Icy anger flows through Nai’s veins like liquid nitrogen.
“What?”
“I’m just saying… If my brother looked like that, I’d probably jerk off to him, too.”
Ten… Nine… Eight…
“You’re disgusting.”
“He’s your twin, so who’s the real degenerate here?”
It’s a true miracle they’ve made it two years without murder or limb loss.
“Get off my fucking bed.”
Wolfwood chuckles as he hops onto the top bunk.
“All yours, big guy.”
Nai settles on the bottom bunk, still seething. He picks up his book, digging through page after identical page to find his spot. All self-help books contain the same drivel. Imagine you’re on your death bed… what would you regret?
Nai’s list is short: getting caught.
“You know… count’s not for another 15 minutes…” Nai can hear the maddening smirk in Wolfwood’s voice. “How about a quick one?”
“Absolutely not.”
“C’mon, angel. You never say that once we start.” Actually, he often does.
Wolfwood climbs down. He stretches languidly, his prison-issued tank top rising to reveal his toned, dark stomach and the trail of body hair leading beneath his waistband. He pulls the curtain across the bars of their shared cell, blocking them from view. A few whistles ring out across the block.
“As per the terms of our agreement, whoever’s on the top can choose when and where.”
“I don’t care.”
“Don’t be like that.”
A shit-eating grin, a lollipop unwrapped and tucked behind milk-white teeth.
“Just imagine I’m your brother.”
So he does.
(Like it’s not the first time.)
Nai has to admit he’s been a little pent-up in prison.
Wolfwood has his slicked-up fingers slipping into Nai’s hole. One, then two, then three. Stamps won’t buy you lube, but they will buy Vaseline. Wolfwood is so unbearably close that Nai can smell the artificial cherry flavour of the lollipop clicking against his teeth.
Nai is bracing himself against the bed and Wolfwood draws his hot mouth along Nai’s neck because they’ll kiss anywhere but on the lips.
Nai keeps his eyes on his pictures of Vash, on blonde hair and endless blue eyes, and his lithe body in that outfit Nai bought him… Except Vash’s hair feels different when Nai grips a handful of it, Nai can usually feel the sharp protrustions of his ribs, his spine. And there’s a prosthetic hand where now there’s only flesh.
Wolfwood thrusts into him, rough and insatiable, like they always are with each other. Vash wouldn’t be like this. Nai would want it tender with Vash, slow. No sweaty, wet slap of skin on skin, no bit-back gasps cut short by another jolt of a cock slamming into his ass. No body-warm spunk painting his insides even when he hisses: “not inside, or I swear to god…”
The flaccid cock inside him pulses dully, clinging to the cum-stained walls of his hole.
It’s not supposed to feel this filthy.
Even when Nai closes his eyes and empties his mind of everything but Vash, it’s still not right.
“Having trouble there, angel?”
Nai bats Wolfwood’s hand away when he reaches to finish him off.
“Oh, come on, now. Do you wanna come, or not?” He asks it so patronizingly Nai almost says no , but the throbbing in his cock and the desperation coursing through his veins is enough to force him to nod, just once. Wolfwood takes it as expected – infuriatingly.
“Ask nicely.”
Nai’s glare burns hot enough to melt steel.
“Or not,” Wolfwood murmurs.
He kisses down Nai’s stomach and the feeling of three-day stubble against his skin is as sickening as it is invigorating. Wolfwood’s lips are plush and wet, lewd as they suck on the flushed tip of Nai’s cock. His tongue laps up the precum like it’s a meal, dark eyes holding Nai’s gaze all the while.
He licks lower and lower, beneath Nai’s balls to eat out his own semen, now dripping grotesquely from Nai’s raw pink hole. It’s as humiliating as it is pleasurable and Nai grips the metal bedframe until his hands go numb.
Nai can’t help the way his cock twitches, the way tension coils in his abdomen. He wants to think about Vash — God, he wants to think about Vash — but he can’t while the strong hands parting his thighs are thick and dark and veiny, and stubble is chafing his pelvis, and the velvet mouth wrapping itself around his cock is the same mouth always running, always driving him insane.
“Who knew this… this was how to shu-shut you up,” Nai gasps.
Wolfwood smiles around his cock like he knows . And he must, since Nai just gave himself away.
There’s the vulgar squelching sound of spit and skin as Wolfwood bobs on Nai’s cock, taking him deep into his warm, tight throat. He hums around it and the vibrations make Nai’s head jerk back, a broken groan escaping tightly-clenched teeth.
Someone bangs on the wall, shouting at them to be any louder, why don’t you? And Nai wants to fucking die.
Nai looks at the pictures again. Vash and Nai at the beach. Vash in his cute work uniform. Vash in that cheerleader outfit Nai got him for Halloween.
Nai’s cock is in his brother’s mouth.
Yes.
Right.
That’s it.
Except when the tension in Nai’s stomach stretches too tight and his balls swell and start to hurt, the name he moans is: “Nico.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Nai covers his mouth with his hand as if that will somehow stuff the name back down his throat. Waves of pleasure crash through his body one after the other, semen spurting into Wolfwood’s waiting mouth. He’s grinning has he licks it off Nai’s skin, even more so when he takes Nai’s flaccid cock in his hand, thumbing over the oversensitive tip, making Nai bite into his palm to keep from crying out, to keep his mortifying sounds from being heard by the whole cell block.
“Sorry, angel, I didn’t quite catch that.”
Nai wants to say fuck you , but he simply groans into his hand as Wolfwood lazily strokes his cock to the point of being fucking unbearable .
“Get... off me,” he finally manages.
Wolfwood obliges, dragging the back of his arm across the mess on his face. He says nothing, just lets the awkward silence bloom in the space between them. This always happens after they fuck, but this time, it feels different. It feels worse .
Wolfwood is padding to the sink and Nai is slowly pulling his jumpsuit back on. Tentatively, like he’s waiting for something.
“Whatever you think you heard-”
“Didn’t hear anything.” Wolfwood smirks as he squeezes toothpaste onto his toothbrush.
“ Whatever you think you- ”
“I. Didn’t. Hear. Shit.” Wolfwood’s lips are covered in a thin layer of white froth as he grins once more, speaking around his toothbrush as he says:
“But even if I did… Am I really the kind of guy who would use it against you?”