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In all of their time traveling together, Wolfwood has never seen Vash go into heat.
Vash takes suppressants like most of the people trying to get by on this hell planet do, but he and Wolfwood had been stuck on the outskirts of some remote town because a rancher caught his attention with a sob story about a broken ankle and a collapsed fence and an escaping herd—which is how Wolfwood found himself digging post holes and shoveling dung for the past few weeks. And, apparently, is how Vash ran out of his suppressants.
The past several days have been a tedious lesson in patience as Vash became increasingly evasive. It wasn’t like Wolfwood didn’t know what was happening—anyone who got within a ten foot radius of him could tell what was happening. But Vash, stubborn and reticent, blithely continued on as though he didn’t notice the stuttering attention from every random passerby.
When it became clear that Vash wasn’t going to do anything to help himself, Wolfwood dragged him to a hotel, got him squared away with his own corner room, and went out to buy all the food and water he would need.
Vash is gone when he gets back.
It isn’t hard to find him. There are only a few hotels in this city, and Wolfwood knows he can’t have left entirely—not in that shape. From there it’s a simple matter to sweet-talk the receptionist with a story about a doting mate who went out to buy supplies and doesn’t want to force their partner out of bed to answer the door. If she could just give him a spare key, he and his drawling charm would be ever so grateful.
He sheds the charisma like a lizard as soon as he rounds the corner, annoyance burning holes through it. He ought to leave Vash and his stupid self-sacrificing act to sweat out his heat into sick dehydration. He ought to let him starve in that room, shaking and delirious as the fever bakes through him.
Instead he’s stomping up the stairs and following the scent that makes him want to claw his skin off, until he gets to the door he knows Vash is hiding behind. He kicks it with his shoe, arms full of his cross and the rations his ridiculous instincts gnawed at him to bring along. “Let me in, Tongari.”
There’s a loud thump on the other side. Wolfwood hopes he fell off the damn bed.
“I don’t know what’s going through your head making me chase you all the way out here, but I’m gonna give you about five more seconds before I break this down.” He punctuates his threat with another kick and flips the key around in his hand.
There’s a shuffling noise, and then Vash’s voice comes from much closer than he’d expected. “I can’t afford to replace a broken door, you brute,” he grumbles.
Wolfwood rolls his eyes and gives it another kick. It rattles ominously on the hinges and goes still when Vash braces against it.
“You think I won't break it down with you leaning on it?” The key slides easily into the lock, but Wolfwood pauses, his temper at the mercy of the thin hope that Vash might open it himself.
“You should just go back,” Vash says, and he sounds so wrung out and soggy, muffled through the wood.
Wolfwood feels his tolerance peak with a near-audible crack and slams his body against the door while he twists the knob. The shock of it forces Vash back a few stumbling steps, enough for Wolfwood to bully his way into the room.
“I’m not—” Wolfwood starts and breaks off in a frankly embarrassing whuffle. The scent he was mostly able to ignore from outside pours over him like sand, rushing to flood the empty cavern of his lungs. It’s a redolent fragrance, dripping with sweetness like the perfumes the hawkers at the market tout as authentic floral oils from the biosphere reserve up north.
Wolfwood has never particularly appreciated the appeal of flowers, but he understands with sudden clarity why someone would go to the effort to replicate their scent. The fragrant waves rolling off of Vash reduce the best lab-made imitation to shadows thrown on the wall by the fire burning at the core of him.
Wolfwood pants through his mouth and lets the warm taste of honey coat his tongue for a long moment before his good sense flickers back to him.
He takes in the room at a glance. There’s a billowy mess against the far wall where Vash has dragged the mattress and piled it with towels and pillows and whatever else he could get his hands on. He squints at a few familiar pieces of laundry woven into the fray, but doesn’t let himself dwell on it for too long.
The only light is streaming in from the window above, Wolfwood chokes a bit, Vash’s nest.
The polite thing for Wolfwood to do would be to set the food and water on the table and leave Vash to his self-indulgent pity party—leave the rude intimacy of barging uninvited into a cycling omega’s nest. But then, the polite thing for Vash to have done would have been to at least give some small indication of where he was going before sneaking off. If Vash wanted to buck courtesy, Wolfwood was all too happy to wrestle with him in the dirt beneath the low bar of civility.
While Wolfwood was huffing like an animal, Vash slammed the door shut and is now glaring, cagey and waspish, from the corner.
“There’s a reason I went off alone,” he snaps.
Annoyance flares, bright and hot, and Wolfwood drops his bags on the floor—leans the Punisher by the door with a bit more care.
“What, so you can languish for a few days like a crumpled tissue and then pop back like nothing is wrong?” he asks. Vash says nothing, but Wolfwood has more than enough words for the both of them. “For once in your damn life why don’t you let someone help you? Did you think I would sit back and twiddle my thumbs after you fucking disappeared?” Without quite noticing, he’s crowded his way into Vash’s space. “Imagine for a second how I felt! What if I ran off without a word? Would you just let me go, not knowing if I was dead on the side of the road somewhere?”
The unnatural blue of Vash’s eyes flashes above his reddening cheeks, and Wolfwood wants to jerk him around by his hair until he stops making that ugly glowering face.
“Lord in heaven, I can’t keep worrying about your sorry ass. You see this grey hair?” He throws his hand up near his temple. “This is all you, you inconsiderate bastard.”
“Are you finished?” Vash asks tightly when Wolfwood pauses to breathe through the dizziness brought on by proximity to that smell. He opens his mouth to spit something nasty back, but Vash shoves him against his chest. “No, I’ve heard enough. I’m sorry,” he grits out, “that I made you worry about me.”
“As long as we’ve known each other,” Wolfwood bites, “I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t come looking for you.” He doesn’t say as long as we’ve been friends. The vulnerability of that would make him cower away from the words he can feel bubbling up and into his mouth. “Let me help you.”
Vash’s face pinches even further, and he draws back. “You can’t help me with this. It’s not even a big deal—it’ll pass in a few days. Just go back—”
“Let me stay,” Wolfwood says in a rush. “It’ll be easier with a partner.”
Vash bristles and then shutters immediately, any trace of annoyance wiped clean and tucked away. “No,” he says evenly. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do you want me to?”
“It’s too much to—”
“Do you want me to stay?” he asks again. Wolfwood is willing to let Vash hide behind whatever excuses he builds up for himself on any given day if it means he doesn’t chase him off, but he left his benevolence out in the hallway. He allows the concession, “I want to help you.”
Vash sways a bit, but otherwise gives no indication that he’s considering the offer. He was right when he said it’s not a big deal, that he’s more than able to handle it on his own. Especially after a century of wandering, often alone, Wolfwood knows that Vash doesn’t need him.
Heats aren’t particularly dangerous. No more than any mild fever, at least. In the paltry sex-ed Wolfwood had received, they had explained the feeling as being like the inextricable pull of a magnet lodged deep in your lower belly, tugging you toward something. If you can’t find it, you’re left disoriented and adrift, grieving as your body cries out against being left only half. Having a partner, a mate, means equilibrium—a restored balance, and an inevitable union as two poles settle into one another.
It’s a bit simplistic, he remembers thinking, and overly romantic, but he’s felt the parallel in his ruts. After presenting, too young and all at once, he mourned in his whole being for the entirety of those few days the sudden incompleteness—the lack.
Spending the time with another person, even a stranger, soothes that anguish. They say it’s better with someone you love, that it completes the circuit, but Wolfwood has never let himself go that far. Attachments are dangerous in his line of work, and getting close enough to someone to want them in particular wasn’t something his life has ever allowed him the luxury to afford.
He hadn’t even meant to offer this, really. He was going to come in and drop off the supplies, maybe shove Vash around a little for being a dick, and then leave him to it, respectfully. Somewhere between concussing himself on the wall of Vash’s scent and getting close enough to see the flecks of gold in his eyes, his baser side tore its way past his reason.
There is no good way for this to end, if Vash lets him stay. Wolfwood can already see exactly how it will play out. The sex will be good, intense like everything else between them, and the connection will course through them like electricity, encompassing and coiled, tying their cores inseparably together.
Then Vash will withdraw. Wolfwood will be left with the same polite and friendly, placid and invulnerable Vash that all of humanity gets. He’ll have to prise his way back in.
Maybe it is stupid.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Wolfwood says instead of anything reasonable. “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of partners for your heats.” And that—rankles a bit. For some reason.
Vash is still staring at him with that blank expression. The sweat beaded on his brow is the only clue that anything is going on inside of him at all.
“If you tell me to leave, I will. But—” he clears his throat. “But I’m offering, is all.”
“It’s a lot to offer,” Vash finally says.
“It’s a physiological need. Just like—like sleeping.” Why is he being so insistent about this? This misplaced altruism has dug him so far into the sand that it’s starting to slough back over his head.
Something flickers across Vash’s face and settles in the tight corners of his mouth.
“Let me scent you, at least,” Wolfwood says and swallows thickly when Vash’s eyes dart to his throat. “It’ll help a little.”
“Scent me,” Vash repeats. “Will it make you feel better?”
Wolfwood wants to shake him. Grab his shoulders and slam him into the wall a few times. But if Vash needs to rationalize in his convoluted way that he’s helping Wolfwood out by accepting the smallest bit of generosity for himself, then Wolfwood will let it slide. Once.
“Give me your hand,” he grouses.
Vash’s inhale is shaky when he offers up his right arm. His sleeve has ridden up enough to expose the gland there, shiny with oil, bright and fragrant, nestled in the dip beneath his palm.
Wolfwood’s mouth waters.
Ignoring his instinctive urge to lap at his skin and knead it between his teeth, he instead grabs Vash just below it and pulls his pliant wrist up to his throat.
“Here,” he says and rubs it over the gland tucked beneath the curve of his jaw. That sweet floral scent bursts with renewed vigor, and he indulges a bit by tucking his chin over Vash’s arm, nuzzling against the muscle there.
Vash’s intense focus prickles, but he can feel the tension seeping out of him as he mingles his pheromones with Wolfwood’s.
“Can I?” He holds up his own wrist in a gentle offering.
Vash’s nose flares and his teeth flash through his parted lips. He drags Wolfwood’s arm to his neck with his free hand and inhales, deep and greedy, through his mouth.
A pleasant warmth beats through him from the intimate points of contact. It isn’t new, what they’re doing—this feeling. They’ve scented one another before, after close calls or on particularly cold nights. Sometimes the platonic physicality of mingling scents, of feeling the other thrumming and alive, would stop the trembling that neither of them would admit to once it was over.
Vash always smells sweet, like honey and citrus, but the floral scent has bloomed only during his heat, like a secret that Wolfwood wants to bury himself in—wants to collect in a fragrant puddle and roll around in, bleed his own spicier scent into the source until it can’t be disentangled.
Some distant part of his reason is clanging around in his head, but it goes startlingly quiet when Vash turns to rub his mouth along his wrist, which is—new. This is new.
Holding himself perfectly still, Wolfwood lets him press formless kisses there. There’s color bright and flushed across his face and his eyes have slid shut like maybe not looking will mean he’s allowed to take something for himself.
In a flare of protective fervor, Wolfwood burns to offer him the whole wretched planet if he would only take it.
“Wolfwood,” he breathes. When he finally licks across Wolfwood’s skin, he groans low and guttural in his throat. “Please.”
Given all the permission he needs, Wolfwood noses at Vash’s arm until he gets enough space to set his teeth to his wrist. Sweetness pours over his tongue in a honeyed burst when he rolls it across the gland.
Vash whines high and familiar, and Wolfwood never thought he would be so happy to hear that noise.
“I’ve got you,” he says into Vash’s skin. Then, possessive in a way he doesn’t want to examine, “I’ll take care of you.”
Vash’s eyes have gone half-lidded and the blue that peeks through his lashes is clouded, but he still shows a nonsensical amount of self-possession, given that he must be aching and soul-bruised by this point in his cycle. Always too damn stubborn.
“What do you need?” Wolfwood wants to hear it.
“I don’t—” Vash starts. He sways a bit, reticent even now. “Anything.”
“I’ll give you anything,” Wolfwood says, and maybe that’s a little too honest. More than he’d like, anyway, but Vash is gazing at him like he’s worth something, and he wants to flood into him all of the affection that his corrupted soul can offer. If Vash will accept him, even just for this, Wolfwood will worship him. “Ask me.”
“Whatever you like is fine,” Vash says, and that urge to shake him is back. But his eyes dart down to Wolfwood’s neck, and his nose is rubbing little unconscious circles against Wolfwood’s forearm where it’s still held near Vash’s mouth.
“Ask me,” Wolfwood says again and sucks a bruising kiss into his wrist.
Vash keens. “My neck,” he says. A flush burns across his face. “I—please.”
That’s good enough.
Eager to reward him, Wolfwood surges forward to kiss the fragrant skin of Vash’s throat. He’s so warm here, and Wolfwood can feel his heartbeat throbbing beneath his parted lips as he laps at the sensitive gland. He cards his fingers into Vash’s hair and holds him still when he thrashes.
“I have you,” Wolfwood murmurs. He wraps his other arm around Vash’s waist and braces him against his chest as he trembles. Absently, he feels Vash’s arms circle his shoulders. “That’s it. Good boy.”
Vash huffs, indignant, but his weight surrenders further into Wolfwood’s body.
Wolfwood is too far gone, caught up in the dizziness of all of this, to spare a thought for Vash's pride. If he wants to be pissy about it later, well, that’s a problem for later. Instinct is a powerful thing, and right now, his is snarling at him to coddle his omega.
Which—Vash isn’t his omega. He’s an omega. An omega Wolfwood is going to help through his heat and nothing more. It’s getting harder to remember that, the more of Vash he smears against his tongue. More painful.
Wolfwood presses one last lingering kiss and draws back to examine his work. Satisfied with the blotchy marks he’s left on one side of Vash’s neck, he switches to the other, and the fresh pool of sweetness here tugs him under again. Like a magnet, his fuzzy brain provides.
“Got no damn business tasting like this,” he grumbles and licks a long line across Vash’s throat.
Vash makes some disparaging noise and Wolfwood rolls his eyes.
When he bites him, just below the curve of his jaw, Vash gasps and clutches fistfuls of the back of his jacket, tugging at it.
“You want this off?” Wolfwood says into his neck. He presses soothing kisses to the place he just had his teeth, and pulls Vash closer when he trembles. From the touch or the words he doesn’t know, but he’s all too happy to provide more of both. “Take it off me.”
He feels the process of Vash’s decision as it moves through his entire body. Feels him go lax, then stiffen, as his desire wrestles with his shame.
“Here,” Wolfwood says and separates from Vash’s neck long enough to grab his hand. “Like this.” He slides their linked fingers beneath his lapel, over his shirt, and presses firmly into the back of Vash’s hand until he can feel his own heartbeat thrumming through it like a rhythmic echo. “Take it.”
Vash’s breaths come fast and loud when Wolfwood leans back in to kiss soothing pressure into his throat, holding him loosely around the waist.
It’s not entirely selfless. There’s a lot for him to enjoy here, nosing into hair that’s so much softer than it looks, damp with sweat and limp where it tickles across his face.
He can feel Vash working through his buttons, clumsy and slow, but so endearing, somehow. And it’s frustrating, really, to be so charmed by something so stupid, from the man who made him track him across town to this dingy hotel room when he could have just stayed put where he was—opened his mouth and said any words at all. Let someone in.
Wolfwood will pry some directness out of him with his teeth if that’s what it takes.
“Wolfwood,” Vash says. He’s finished with the buttons and has slipped his hands underneath the jacket and over Wolfwood’s shoulders.
Wolfwood releases him and lets it fall to the ground behind him when Vash pushes it the rest of the way off.
Vash’s eyes are mostly black, swallowed up by his pupils, and he’s panting through his mouth. Honeyed perfume pours off of him, his pheromones affected by the burst of Wolfwood’s scent that had been dampened by his collar.
“Let me,” Vash mumbles and tucks his mouth under Wolfwood’s chin to lap at the skin there.
It drags a rough gasp from Wolfwood. Somehow he hadn’t expected Vash to reciprocate, even though Wolfwood’s scent will do more good for Vash right now than the other way around. Still, it’s been a long time since anyone has kissed him there, and he finds himself mindlessly grabbing at Vash for balance as he continues to lick long lines against his throat.
“Y’taste good,” Vash slurs, and Wolfwood shivers when his breath tickles across his damp skin. “Like cinnamon.”
Wolfwood hears himself make some weak sound of agreement. Everything is muted and too slow, like he’s on the cusp of falling asleep, like a thick blanket has settled around him.
“Wolfwood,” Vash whines into his neck and takes the skin there between his teeth.
“Okay,” Wolfwood groans and tries gamely to rally himself. “Okay.” He counts off a long exhale and grabs a fistful of Vash’s shirt over his chest. “Help me get this off.”
Vash is wearing a loose sweatshirt instead of his normal complex layers, so it comes off in one smooth motion when Wolfwood tugs it up and over his head.
“Fuck,” he says when Vash immediately goes back to his throat.
He’s seen Vash naked before, when he sacrificed his dignity, and in the passing and casual way that comes part and parcel with spending prolonged amounts of time in close quarters with another person. The bare skin under his hands is rough and knotted with scar tissue, bits of metal where his body couldn’t re-form enough structure to heal on its own. When Wolfwood traces the puckered scar cut across Vash’s shoulder, he knows by memory exactly where it will begin and where it will end.
The urge to reprimand him blazes through his gut, but he tamps it down with the unusual forethought that starting a fight right now would mean that Vash will stop kissing him. He chokes down his righteous fury and soothes the burn of it by stroking his hands in firm sweeping motions across Vash’s back, like his palms can erase the needless pain that’s been scattered and shot through his body.
The corded muscle under his hands is warm and strong, but Vash is so much smaller without his usual bulky clothes to puff him up. As formidable and terrifying as Wolfwood intimately knows him to be, the wiry body leaning into his own riles up his protective instinct into a fierce storm.
Vash resists when Wolfwood tugs him away from his neck with a fist in his hair.
“Be good,” he reprimands, and Vash whines petulantly.
“I am being good.” He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and lets it back out with a pop. “You should let me keep being good to you.”
And Wolfwood doesn’t know what to say to that. When Vash leans into the other side of his throat to bite at him, he lets him be for an aching moment and then forces him back again. He waits until Vash stops pouting and meets his gaze before he says, “Get on the bed.”
A shiver wracks itself through Vash before he stiffens again, eyes flitting away.
“You want to be good for me, right?” Wolfwood says and squeezes at the hair in his fist just enough to refocus Vash’s attention where he wants it. “To give me what I want?”
Vash rears back a bit and his eyes go comically wide, but something hopeful flickers across his expression before it shutters again. Wolfwood sinks his fingers into that brief transparency and wrenches it back open.
“I want you to finish undressing and get on the bed,” he says.
Vash stays frozen for so long that Wolfwood starts to doubt that this was the right track to take with him. He had responded well earlier to instruction—to the idea that he was somehow pleasing Wolfwood with his obedience. But now he’s just staring, unblinking and inscrutable.
Wolfwood tries not to fidget, but the detached assessment being leveled in his direction has him itching like he just rolled around in the sand. He’s pretty well-versed in Vash’s idiosyncrasies by now—the myriad slippery ways to talk around a point he’s trying to make without triggering that fake smile. But Vash is smarter than most people give him credit for, a fact that he likely owes his life to several times over, and it’s easy to tell when he sees through Wolfwood’s delicate handling (which, unfortunately, is most of the time, despite all the work he puts in to cover his tracks).
Sometimes it’s in the softening of his face, a slight upturning of his mouth, touched to be considered worthy of care. Sometimes he flushes and shoves away, aggrieved and offended. And sometimes it looks like this—an intense and expressionless appraisal that lasts an unnerving amount of time.
Wolfwood has never felt quite so on edge about where Vash’s final judgment would land him before.
If Vash balks at his request it will stir up some embarrassment—he’ll have to lick his wounded pride a bit, but he’ll change tack and carry on. If he rejects him completely, Wolfwood might just sustain himself with liquor for a few days and drown away any memory that this ever happened. He would respect it, of course, but the fallout might be a far sight more intensive than he’d like to admit.
“You really want this?” Vash says at last, and Wolfwood hears you really want me?
“Yes,” he says without hesitation. Despite the heat prickling across his cheeks, he knows that if he wavers now, Vash will withdraw.
“Okay,” Vash says, nods, and moves around Wolfwood to do as he was told.
Wolfwood gapes. He’s the one who told him to do this, of course, but watching Vash strip off the rest of his clothes feels like asking God to spare a dead man, and then reeling with astonishment when he actually does.
“Like this?” Vash asks.
A few of the items near the edge of the mattress fell to the floor when Vash wriggled out a place for himself in the middle of it all, and Wolfwood is picking them up and rearranging them back where they belong before he can stop himself.
Vash’s expression cracks open for a brief moment, and his next exhale is pitched into a whine.
Wolfwood pauses. It’s intimate to involve yourself in an omega’s nest. Laying inside of it to fuck them is one thing, but shifting things around or rebuilding it is normally left only to the omega. Or their mate.
“You—” Vash starts, clears his throat. “You can leave it.” His eyebrows have drawn up and together, and his scent is pouring out in fresh waves again.
Wolfwood is barely able to hold back from telling him exactly how much he wants to not do that, and just glares while continuing to tuck the towels and pillows back into some semblance of soft order.
“Wolfwood,” Vash says, and it sounds like a question. Wolfwood’s traitorous lizard brain tells him it sounds hopeful.
Fed just enough delusion to make him brave, Wolfwood finally lets himself look over Vash’s body.
He’s sitting up with his knees together and tucked modestly toward his chest, his metal hand splayed behind him to bear his weight. The blush staining his skin trails all the way down his chest, splotchy and bright like he’s spent too long under the twin suns, and his stomach rises and falls in rhythmic motion while he breathes. Light-colored hair flows in a smattering trail down below his navel to where—
He’s hard. Wolfwood knew as soon as he walked in that he was—could smell it even if he couldn’t see it. But Vash had been careful to keep his hips angled away, not allowing himself any friction or relief in spite of the pain and desperation that his heat must be choking him with.
Wolfwood restrains himself from reaming him for this continued martyrdom, but only just.
He reaches out to touch, first Vash’s chest, palm flat over the warm metal of the grate there.
“Does this hurt?” he asks and leans further into Vash’s space to kiss the warped skin that frays around the graft.
“No,” Vash says after a long moment, and Wolfwood chooses to believe him if only because he really doesn’t want to use his mouth for anything other than this right now, even if Vash does deserve a lecture on taking care of himself.
“Idiot,” he can’t resist saying, although it comes out rather more fond than he’d have liked, pressed into the firm muscle on Vash’s chest.
Vash hums above him and Wolfwood can feel it under his lips.
His hand trails down to Vash’s stomach and splays over the intersecting lines where he was gouged open in the crude shape of divinity and stapled back together. When he kisses the same ambling path downward, Vash stops him with fingers tangling in his hair.
“You don’t have to,” he says and smiles, tugging Wolfwood gently away from his intended destination.
Wolfwood resists and bites at one of the few patches of unblemished skin he can find. “Presumptuous.”
Vash ignores him. “It’s not necessary.”
“You only do things that are necessary?” he asks into Vash’s hip. Maybe he’s talking to himself a little as well, justifying his own desire. Because the way his mouth waters when he imagines drawing Vash between his lips and curling over him with his tongue is a normal physiological response, but the way his entire being aches to devote itself to the task of pulling pleasure from every fiber of Vash’s mutilated body until he can’t remember his own name, much less the pain of his perpetual atonement, is—well, it’s a little to the left of normal. “Tell me you don’t want it.”
“It’s not like you’ll get anything out of it,” Vash dodges.
Wolfwood stills and lets Vash pull him back this time, straightening until they are eye to eye.
Vash stares at him, firm and defiant and looking far too miserable for someone Wolfwood is gunning to get his tongue inside of. There’s a hint of his usual self-deprecation in his expression, that firmly-rooted idea that he himself is the sole exception to the grace he single-handedly affords all of humanity, but mostly it’s a resigned sort of honesty.
Wolfwood has the dawning realization that, for all of his everyday bravado, Vash might be slightly newer to this than he had assumed.
He eases back a bit and moves to unbutton the rest of his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Vash asks, eyes flitting down to the newly revealed skin.
“Going for a jog,” he says. Then, more gently, “Just evening things out a bit, Tongari.”
“You don’t—”
“I swear to God,” Wolfwood interrupts, “If you tell me I don’t have to do this, I will peel you like an orange.”
Vash wisely snaps his jaw shut. When Wolfwood shrugs off his shirt and stands to remove his pants, Vash’s attention immediately refocuses to where he’s swollen and straining against his zipper.
As much as his skin prickles with the rather indecent exposure, he lets Vash stare, lets him experience for himself the consuming desire to take someone into your mouth, feel them come undone in such an intimate place. Wolfwood watches as his breathing shifts until he’s panting and his face flushes a violent red. A renewed burst of sweetness greets him when Vash rubs his thighs together, eyes drooping and head tilting back to reveal his throat.
Wolfwood takes in the unconcealed draining of Vash’s self-possession with a spiraling hunger. To reduce his controlled and private omega to such—
He swallows.
Vash is his—friend. His friend.
No amount of reminders will calm the snarling, instinct-driven part of him, but he has to do what he can to keep it from leaking into his conscious thought. He has to.
While Vash stares at him with enough longing to stretch out to Earth itself, Wolfwood calls upon all the self-discipline he’s had flayed into his body over the years and wrangles his composure back into some approximation of normalcy.
They’re only doing this to help Vash—his friend. Any pleasure he gets out of it is incidental. Wolfwood may want to wring him thoroughly dry and sated, but it’s—platonic. This eagerness to please is just his pride as an alpha. Only that.
Wolfwood quickly finishes undressing and moves to kneel on the mattress in front of Vash, not allowing either of them any more time to focus on his arousal.
Vash’s knees part easily when he settles his hands on them, and he stretches out to lay on his belly between them.
“Wolfwood,” Vash says, the only argument he has the remaining strength to put up.
“I’m doing this for myself,” Wolfwood says, which is almost a lie. “I want to taste you here,” which isn’t.
Vash’s eyes hold only the faint memory of his usual attentiveness, sort of like he’s drunk.
On me, Wolfwood thinks and immediately tamps down.
He presses his mouth to Vash’s inner thigh to keep from saying anything stupid and sucks a rough bruise there in misplaced aggression. The skin here is salty and not as scarred as the rest of his body, by a painfully narrow margin.
He can still feel Vash burning holes into the top of his head, too stubborn to give in without winding through whatever maze goes on in his thoughts, like blindly palming his way to the finish will let him sneak up on the acceptance of pleasure for its own sake without having to acknowledge along the way that he’s taking something for himself.
Wolfwood bites him, and this time his aggression is aimed directly at its cause.
Vash just sighs when Wolfwood licks over the marks he left.
“Lie back,” Wolfwood mumbles and smooths his hand up Vash’s body until he’s pressing on his chest.
Vash hesitates only for a moment before he gives in and leans into the pillows situated behind him.
“Good boy,” Wolfwood says, and this time Vash whines. “Let me take care of you.”
Wolfwood smears kisses up to his hip and finally lets himself look.
Vash is—he’s beautiful. Flushed and hard against his stomach, leaking a milky puddle into the grooves of his abdomen. Lower, he’s wet and open, swollen and oozing out the fragrant dew that will help ease the way, later, when Wolfwood—
“Fuck,” he breathes and presses a reverant kiss just below the head of Vash’s cock. It twitches when he laps at it and sucks gently on the velvety skin.
“Wolfwood,” Vash whimpers and threads his fingers into his hair.
“Yes,” Wolfwood encourages and takes him warmly in one hand while he drags the flat of his tongue up to where Vash is dripping, smears his lips there in a messy circle until they’re slick and taste of honey. “I’m here.”
The anguished sound that Vash makes when Wolfwood takes him into his mouth rips through his self-control like tissue.
He uses his free arm to brace across Vash’s hips and sinks down until his nose is pressed into wiry blond hair. The intrusion makes his throat spasm, but he hums around it, swallows, and pulls back to the head in a slow glide. He suckles at it like candy and chances a glance up to Vash’s face.
Vash is already staring at him, and he dribbles across Wolfwood’s tongue when their eyes meet. He looks dazed, a little lost, and his hands come around to cup Wolfwood’s face with concentrated reverence like he can ground himself in Wolfwood’s devotion. There are tears clinging to his lashes and one slips down his cheek when he finally blinks.
Wolfwood would thumb it away if he wasn’t happily occupied licking at the sweet droplets that continue to leak from Vash the longer he just looks at him. Instead he covers one of Vash’s hands with his own and leans further into his palm.
Vash makes a wet gasping sound and his head drops to one side, catching a beam of sunlight. His hair has gone dark with sweat at his temples, but the light shines a watery halo in golden rivulets through the length.
Wolfwood has never been more certain of God’s existence than in this moment, layed between the thighs of one of his angels. Idolatry may have to be tacked onto his long list of damning offenses, but if his soul can ever be redeemed, he thinks Vash will be the one to lead him there.
He presses a worshipful kiss to flushed skin in penance.
“Feels good?” he asks and lets the tip rest in the cradle of his tongue.
“Don’t ask questions with an obvious answer,” Vash says and, oh, his voice has gone low and shot through with grit.
“Maybe I want to hear it.”
Vash sighs and trails his fingers down Wolfwood’s face until they tuck under his chin and rub a circle into the gland there. “It feels good,” he says and brings his hand to his mouth to taste the fragrant oil he collected from Wolfwood’s throat. “You’re making me feel good.”
And maybe Vash was right, that he shouldn’t have asked that question.
“Fuck,” he says eloquently. “What am I—fuck.”
He quickly sinks back down on Vash’s cock to try to regain some dignity.
“You can if you—ah—if you want to,” Vash pants out, and Wolfwood grips his hips hard enough to bruise.
Vash has said a lot of stupid things over the years since they met, but if you want to leaves most of them in the dust.
Wolfwood commits himself to his task with renewed vigor, singularly focused on leading Vash to orgasm like heaving a bucket of water out of a well, rhythmic and steady. The sweet fragrance of him is headier here, musky and thick, and the taste settles warmly down his throat and into his lungs.
Vash is still more restrained than Wolfwood would like, a great deal more than any omega in heat should be, only letting out quiet sighs and rolling his head back and forth between his shoulders.
More than once, Wolfwood feels the muscles in his stomach go impossibly tense, hears his breathing falter into brutal gasps, but then he takes in a deep and steadying breath, and the tension leaves him.
He knows he can make Vash come like this, wanted the first time to be with only his cock in his mouth so he would feel keenly where he was twitching, desperate and empty, and the second time would be all the sweeter for finally being filled. But Vash seems determined to keep himself from finishing, and it’s riling up Wolfwood’s competitive nature.
He pulls off with a sucking pop and waits until he has Vash’s attention before he moves to press an open-mouthed kiss to the soft folds of his cunt.
Vash’s thighs immediately clamp around his head.
“Wolfwood,” he warns.
“Don’t like it?” He licks the stickiness from his lips.
“It’s not—that,” Vash stutters when Wolfwood traces the point of his tongue through a warm groove. “Oh.”
“You’re sweet here,” Wolfwood says, like Vash hasn’t been sweet everywhere. He kisses over the center of him and dips briefly inside to pull out more of that syrupy taste. When Vash twitches up, Wolfwood circles his hips with his hands and encourages him to rock against his open mouth.
Vash catches on quickly, but every time Wolfwood stops moving him, he whines and peters out after a few seconds. Like he would suffer somehow if he just took what he wanted, what Wolfwood wants so desperately to give him.
If Vash needs to be taught how to take for himself—if in this, too, he needs a guide—Wolfwood will continue to heap offerings at his feet until he has no choice but to take them into his arms or be rendered immobile under their weight. It is, after all, far more of a hassle to keep him alive when he seems so intent on getting himself killed than it is to nuzzle his nose alongside the warm base of his cock while his tongue sinks inside.
When Wolfwood languidly pulls him back into his mouth and slides a finger in, Vash goes so suddenly tense that he’s afraid he might’ve hurt him. He freezes and starts to pull back out as gently as he can, but Vash grabs his wrist like a vice and keeps him still.
“Wait,” he gasps. “Just—wait.”
“Are you—” Wolfwood sputters, “are you close? And you want me to hold still?”
Vash huffs and falls back heavily into the pillows, like he can burrow himself away from having to answer. Like Wolfwood isn’t literally inside of him right now.
Wolfwood would be in awe of Vash’s self-control if he wasn’t on the opposite end of this ridiculous tug of war.
“You have something against orgasms, Tongari?” he drawls. “I hear they’re pretty nice, especially when you’re in heat.”
Vash raises his head just enough to glare at him.
“It’s been a long time,” he huffs and flops back down.
Wolfwood doesn’t know if he means that it’s been a long time since he’s had an orgasm or since he’s had sex, but for both of their sakes he hopes it’s the latter. He can only handle so much of Vash’s self-deprivation schtick before he snaps, and he’s really been trying so hard not to snap.
“All the more reason to let yourself go,” Wolfwood says, sarcasm creeping in. “Don’t you want to be a good boy for me?”
Vash pulses around his finger, and Wolfwood lets himself focus for the first time on how warm he is inside. He’s so—soft. When Wolfwood curls his finger gently up toward Vash’s belly, he marvels at how easily it sinks into the plush walls. Vash is all hard lines and lean muscle—it’s a wonder that there’s a part of him with so much give.
Wolfwood’s throat clicks when he swallows, rapt attention on the place where a part of himself disappears into Vash, reveling in the clutching grasp as his body pulls at him with a helpless suction.
“Don’t stare,” Vash says, his face having reappeared after giving up on trying to hide away.
“You’re too damn pretty,” Wolfwood grumbles. “Can’t expect me to not want to look at you.”
When he sees—feels—Vash twitch around him again, the thought shakes loose that this will be wrapped around the most sensitive part of his own body, soon actually, and—Wolfwood loses himself for a moment. He knows, distantly, that he looks like an idiot with his mouth forming soundless words and his eyes crossing to focus on something so close to his nose, but his usual scope of concern has narrowed to only the two of them, at this moment, with his finger tucked inside his omega—his friend. Inside his friend. And if Vash makes a comment about his face, he has a way to shut him up quite literally at hand.
He’s so hard that the top layer of his skin has gone numb, all the energy usually devoted to his nerves directing its attention between his legs. It’s been easy enough to ignore until this point, absorbed as he was in taking Vash apart, but now it’s like he’s been shown a glimpse through the gates of heaven and his baser side is clanging around in his head unable to think about anything besides those streets of gold.
He thinks Vash might’ve responded, probably with some self-effacing comment that he would rather ignore anyway, but when Wolfwood drags his eyes back up to his face, he’s smirking.
“You’re always nagging at me about how I worry too much about other people,” Vash says and rakes his fingers through Wolfwood’s hair to push it back from where it’s falling into his eyes.
“I’ll nag your ass,” Wolfwood grumbles.
Vash’s grin goes soft as thomas down, fondness crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“I don’t want you to think of this as just a favor to me.” His palm slides down to cup the side of Wolfwood’s neck. “I want you to enjoy it too. If you can.”
Wolfwood chooses to ignore that last bit, for the sake of peace. “I’m not the one in heat.”
“That doesn’t mean it should only be about me.”
And that’s—wrong. It is only about Vash. Wolfwood is just helping his—friend. They wouldn’t do this for any reason but to alleviate his discomfort because friends don’t have sex. Wolfwood doesn’t have—not with his friends. And Vash is his friend. Which is why this isn’t sex. It’s fucking, or—something. It’s just doing something that he’s good at to help someone who needs him. He doesn’t need this. He shouldn’t get anything out of it. Because Vash is his friend. And Vash doesn’t—belong to him.
“Don't overthink it,” Vash says, still smiling at him so patiently, and presses a warm kiss to Wolfwood’s forehead.
“Why—” Wolfwood starts when he pulls back.
“I wanted to,” he says like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
Maybe it is.
“I want to make you come,” Wolfwood says in a rush, clinging tenaciously to the fast-crumpling idea that this is all for Vash’s sake even while it splinters apart in his hands.
Vash laughs. “You will.”
Wolfwood stares dumbly for a moment because, right, he supposes he will. That’s been his goal all along, even, but hearing Vash say it so easily is twisting knots into his stomach like it’s gearing up to rip its way through his chest. It should be lower, probably, but the ache is radiating from beneath his sternum, so that must be where his stomach has lodged itself.
“God help me,” he says when he can and takes Vash back into his mouth.
Vash sighs happily and sinks back into the pillows.
Wolfwood’s wrist has gone stiff from the awkward angle he’s held it at for so long and when he stretches it back to crack the joint it drags his finger through Vash’s body, and he gasps above him like he’d forgotten it was there. Wolfwood hums around him and rubs his fingertip in a firm circle just inside his entrance. It takes a bit of searching, but he knows he’s found what he’s looking for when Vash goes impossibly tight and his hips twitch helplessly into his mouth.
“That’s it,” he pulls off long enough to say, pressing lush kisses along Vash’s length. He trails down to the soft skin of his balls and takes one into his mouth. He just holds Vash there, lets him feel the gentle suction and the warmth of his tongue for a long moment, before switching to the other.
“You’re very thorough,” Vash says, and Wolfwood is gratified to hear the tremor in his voice.
“I take pride in my work.” He dips lower to lick alongside his finger.
“You should,” Vash gasps and his hand finds its way into Wolfwood’s hair again from where it had fallen by his side.
“You can pull it,” Wolfwood says and hopes he does—hopes he doesn’t need to be convinced that he’s allowed.
Vash scratches at his scalp and doesn’t tug, but Wolfwood will take it. He’ll get him there.
Wolfwood shifts from where he’s been laying and huffs when it rubs his cock into the sheets. It’s too easy to establish a steady rocking motion, just enough friction that he doesn’t feel like he needs to claw his skin off every time Vash lets out a breathy little sigh. Bright shocks of pleasure throb through his neglected body and he can no more stop the moan that rings heavy in his throat than he could stop the suns from rising.
“Wolfwood,” his own little golden sun whines. “Yes.”
Vash’s heel finds the curve of his ass and presses in a rhythmic weight, encouraging him to grind into the mattress.
“Fuck, Tongari,” he slurs and slides another finger into the warm clutch of Vash’s body alongside the first, trailing his tongue in a long line back up Vash’s cock.
For a while everything is a bit of a blur. The feeling of Vash, dear and slick, pressed to his throat, his cheek, the point of his nose while he works over him with adoring focus scatters any thoughts that try to form. His eyelids have drifted shut, and his breaths are full of Vash like he’s cracked open his ribs and buried him there. If he could just keep him safe and whole within his chest, he’s sure that Vash could make a home there, could learn to love the intimate place between his lungs.
Vash is making noise, aborted moans and choking gasps—occasionally he exhales Wolfwood’s name. If Wolfwood could drag himself away from sucking amorous kisses around his cunt he would tell him how beautiful he sounds, that he would gladly stay here forever if it meant he could keep hearing him.
Some muffled voice in the back of his head whispers that it’s probably for the best that his mouth is busy, but it’s drowned out by Vash’s responsive praise, encompassing and sweet like the chiming of a bell.
He’s rubbing Vash against his palm in firm, twisting strokes up and down his length and has three of his fingers tucked inside of him, beckoning them persistently against that spot that has Vash rocking into the pressure, his thighs pressing heavy and rhythmic into Wolfwood’s shoulders.
“Please,” Vash breathes and clenches helplessly around Wolfwood’s fingers, finally starting to tug the slightest bit at his hair. “Please.”
Wolfwood hums deep in his throat and opens his eyes to meet Vash’s gaze.
Vash’s countenance splits open like crackling glass, spider-webbing beneath the relentless impact of Wolfwood’s attention, the unguarded expression exquisite in its rarity. As if all he needed was the comfort of Wolfwood’s regard, Vash arches and spasms in brutal waves, clamping Wolfwood’s head tightly between his thighs, as he spills in warm pulses across his stomach.
Vash mangles his name and gasps out broken little cries, eyes wide and searching like he’s surprised at the intensity of his own body’s response while Wolfwood works him through it. The display is so shockingly unrestrained, and Wolfwood goes completely to pieces watching him—carries him to the shore and up onto the shifting sand until Vash finally clenches his fist in his hair, strung out and oversensitive.
Wolfwood nuzzles his head into Vash’s thigh where it’s still squeezing around him, and Vash jolts. “Sorry—I didn’t—”
“Don’t you dare,” Wolfwood rasps, and Vash frees him in a straining movement. Wolfwood doesn’t even have a threat to toss at him, fuzzy and untethered as he is. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
Helpless as a newborn kitten, he kisses around where his fingers are held, heavy and comforting in Vash’s body, lapping reverently at the honeyed benevolence spilling around them.
This precious gift granted to him by his—by his closest friend, who he—this warm and affectionate secret, that he is so undeserving of. Even still, his wonderful and infuriating—omega, his omega, cried his name, came around his fingers and against his tongue in desperate abandon, gave of himself so beautifully. Wolfwood was helpful to him, was able to soothe him and leech some of the longing ache from the soul of his dear mate.
“Fuck,” he says, furious and unsurprised that he couldn’t keep it together, and kisses his way to Vash’s stomach, pulling the sweet and milky streaks of his come into his mouth. The muscle there jumps when he sucks Vash’s skin between his teeth.
“Ah—that’s—I can just wipe it off,” Vash says, some of his normal self-denial returning to him in the brief clarity following his orgasm.
“Like hell you will.” Wolfwood’s free hand burrows itself between Vash and the bed, sliding beneath his back to wrap around to his waist and, fuck, his waist is small enough for him to reach it even at this awkward angle. Pinning Vash under his weight so he absolutely cannot reach for anything to wipe it off, he chases every scattered drop he can find. “I worked hard for this.”
“I have more,” Vash says wryly and pets through his hair.
Wolfwood stares—takes in the amiable sincerity in Vash’s bright eyes, the wild fray of his hair tangled around him in a radiant halo, the beautiful and familiar curve of his smile, and presses gingerly around the new and still tender gouge he dug out of his own thoughts.
His mate.
That idea is lodged firmly in his mind now, screwed in and glued stuck. And it’s—not as terrifying as he thought it would be. As long as he can keep it where it is and doesn’t let it come pouring out of his mouth like poison all over Vash’s good will, he might even be able to live with it. It—hurts a bit. But not in the way he expected it might. There’s no coiling bitterness, only a cold pinprick in the warmth filling his chest like mist.
He knows that Vash wouldn’t resent him for this. There are many things that Vash could, ought to, resent him for, but he would allow this with the same magnanimity with which he allows most things. He wouldn’t understand, which—aches. But he wouldn’t send him away in disgust.
They can still belong to one another in their usual platonic way. Wolfwood will silently gather into his arms his longing to tie himself to Vash with a more tangible permanence, and will tuck it safely away into the privacy of his own thoughts. To be granted the ability to stay by Vash’s side—it will be enough.
“I’ll take whatever you want to give me,” Wolfwood says, aiming for his usual levity and landing a little too close to the glaring bullseye he only just tossed a blanket over. “You taste good,” he tacks on like it makes it any better.
“I might need a minute,” Vash says. He’s still breathing heavily, face glowing with sweat and an open smile. His hands slide down Wolfwood’s shoulders until he’s got his palms splayed across his back, soft and casually intimate. His left arm is warm like the rest of him when Wolfwood lays his cheek against the smooth prosthetic.
He feels the brief tension flicker through Vash like he wants to pull it away, and turns to kiss it in praise when he instead lets it settle more fully in the cradle of Wolfwood’s neck.
“You feeling okay?” he asks and rests his chin against Vash’s hip.
Vash laughs, and the sound of it lashes around his wrists and binds him. “What did I say about questions with obvious answers?”
Wolfwood rolls his eyes. “I’m just checking on you, you brat.”
“Mm,” Vash hums and gazes at him so tenderly that Wolfwood forgets to breathe. “I’m glad.”
He wants to kiss him—his entire body throbs with how much and how suddenly he wants to kiss him. His arousal has settled into a low and steady simmer, the instinctive urgency fading a bit after satisfying his omega, and all that energy redirects with alarming focus to Vash’s mouth. His lips are pink and full, curved delicately in the middle like the dip of the mattress beneath their combined weight. It would be so easy to close the distance between them and inhale the sweet surprise from Vash’s lungs, curl their tongues together and bury all of his longing in the precious surrender of Vash’s mouth. It would be so—stupid.
“You’ve got a funny look on your face,” Vash says and knocks his knee against Wolfwood’s shoulder.
“Your face is funny,” Wolfwood grumbles intelligently.
Vash is looking at him in that neutral, assessing way again. “Are you feeling okay?”
Is he? His fingers have gone completely numb where they’re still tucked inside of Vash, and his arm is cramping a little from letting Vash lay on it, but he’s got no complaints about either of those things and tells him as much.
One side of Vash’s mouth ticks up and he blessedly lets Wolfwood swerve around what they both know he meant by that question.
“I could always,” Wolfwood says and flexes his fingers, “shift around. Get more comfortable.”
“Is that right?” Vash asks when Wolfwood leans down to occupy his dangerous mouth with sucking bruises into the dip of his hip.
Wolfwood kisses a line to where Vash is still hard against his stomach and nudges at him until he gets him in his mouth.
“Ah—it’s sensitive,” Vash says and lets out a shaky laugh.
Wolfwood hums and frees his arm so he can get more leverage, and so he can hold Vash steady in his palm while he traces his tongue around the head of his cock.
He pulls off just long enough to say, “I want you to come again before I fuck you,” and then sinks down to the base of him.
“Yeah,” Vash gasps. “Yeah, I can—okay.”
Wolfwood eventually sets up a steady rhythm after trying and failing to get Vash to thrust up into his mouth. The most he could manage to get was involuntary little twitches, and he’s feeling generous so he has mercy and doesn’t push it. If he’s ever lucky enough to get the chance to do this again, he’ll make sure Vash knows in no uncertain terms that he likes to be gagged a little.
And—he probably won’t. Get to do this again. Which—
“Wolfwood,” Vash breathes, and Wolfwood looks up at him, forcing into memory every detail of his open expression. He throbs around Wolfwood’s fingers when he curves them up toward his belly. “I can’t—I’m close.”
Vash’s fingers thread into his hair and Wolfwood feels the prickling sting when he tugs at it. It’s too intent to be mindless grabbing—focused like he wants to pull Wolfwood off.
Wolfwood follows his direction and lets him pop free of his mouth. “Absolutely not,” he snarls and takes Vash into his throat—lets him feel Wolfwood’s desire in the tight pulse of muscle clutched around him.
It hurts.
Vash whines and cradles the back of his head.
And I still want you here.
When Vash comes, it’s just as stunning as the first time. He curls over Wolfwood like a ribbon run taught against a blade and released, rubbing the firm muscle of his stomach against his hair and crying out over and over.
Wolfwood swallows what he can, the rest dribbling out messily to pool on Vash’s flushed skin. This time when Vash pulls him back, he goes easily.
“Come here,” Vash gasps as soon as he’s free, hauling Wolfwood up his body with his hands tucked under his arms. “Wolfwood.” His omega is so strong even in the wake of his orgasm, and he heaves until their chests are pressed together, falling back into the pillows and dragging Wolfwood down with him. His eyes are wet, tender like new skin, and fall shut so trustingly when he noses under Wolfwood’s jaw to kiss at his neck. “Fuck me.”
Wolfwood’s brain goes so abruptly silent that it’s a wonder he stays conscious. His fingers came free when Vash picked him up with all the effort it would take to lift a kitten, and their bodies have slotted together so perfectly that it would only take some slight shuffling, the guiding press of a hand, and he could sink into him.
“Don’t you—” he says, barely recognizes the broken sound of his own voice, “don’t you need a minute?”
“Don’t make me wait,” Vash pleads and rocks against him. “I need you.”
A chunk of the crackling barrier damming up Wolfwood’s thoughts from flooding into his mouth snaps off in a catastrophic fracture.
“You have me,” he whispers into Vash’s hair, entirely too honest, “my—you have me.”
Vash reaches between them and takes him in the warm circle of his hand, curiously exploring with his fingers like he wants to commit the size and shape of him to memory. Wolfwood breathes deeply through his reverent touch, rustling the soft hair under his nose with every exhale until his beautiful mate shifts him, hitching his thigh over Wolfwood’s hip and angling himself until Wolfwood rests against warm folds.
Vash falls away from his neck and meets him with searching eyes.
I’ve never been so certain of anything in my life, Wolfwood doesn’t respond to the question Vash doesn’t ask—doesn’t need to. The same intrinsic understanding of every expression and delicate flux of energy that winds through Wolfwood winds through Vash as well.
Wolfwood can’t bring himself to say I’ll make it good for you or I’ll be gentle like he has in the past. Lines like that offered reassurance to the strangers he bedded, but the disingenuousness of a cliche has no place here.
“Vash,” he breathes—the most sincere prayer he has.
“Wolfwood,” Vash answers, and the truth of who they are, what they’re doing, is open between them. “I’m here.”
Wolfwood watches him, watches every minute expression play across his face as he presses forward, coming home to the warm place that Vash has offered him inside of his body.
Vash holds him steady through it, fingers flexing unthinkingly around him as they join, until he has to let go and then smooths his hand over Wolfwood’s stomach up to the center of his chest, moving from one exposing place to another.
“Hi,” Vash whispers when Wolfwood’s hips finally nestle against his own, a gentle smile blooming across his face, crinkling his eyes.
“Hah,” Wolfwood says elegantly. Vash is—tight. And soft, wet, everything he knew he would be from stroking into him with his fingers, now holding him so dear and unreserved, the closeness a bit more intense than he had prepared himself for. Batting at the haze that’s fallen over him, he manages, “Okay?”
“I’m okay.” Vash sighs and lets his body settle more naturally into a relaxed position. One darling hand comes up to cup Wolfwood’s cheek. “You can move.”
Wolfwood really doesn’t know if he can—not with Vash gazing at him with such consuming focus, squeezing around him in an unsteady cadence, his body betraying his serene expression. The inescapable intimacy of this position—the fragile bond forming in the magnetic pull that’s been redoubled by Vash’s heat—the molding of their bodies into one intimate mass—shreds apart any cover he might seek to hide behind.
And if he lets himself sink fully into this staticky and tangled interdependence, something might break inside of him when it's ripped away again.
At the very least, he will say something stupid.
Unable to bear the weight of Vash’s full attention, he tucks his face into his neck. It’s cowardly, but acting in the interest of self-preservation has always been his way.
He eases out a bit, letting the suction of Vash’s body pull him back in. Weighing up one confession against another, he says, “Feels so good,” instead of, I’ve think I’ve wanted you for so long that I can’t remember what it’s like not to.
He can feel Vash’s racing heartbeat beneath his lips and smears kisses along that precious rhythm in a demonstrative honesty he won’t allow in his speech. The honeyed taste of him still hasn’t faded from his mouth, and it takes on a new shape, sliding sweetly into the citrusy scent he’s more used to, as Wolfwood hikes Vash’s leg further up his waist.
It smells like collapsing together into the only narrow bed they could afford after too long on the road, too exhausted to care about the oppressive heat; like hearing his own thoughts echoed back to him and answered before he even speaks, a developed understanding leaving half the conversation unspoken; like soaking blood and sweat out of their clothes in a stained yellow tub in some backwater town, cigarette smoke curling in the air while Vash chatters about the homebrewed lemon mead the proprietor sold him.
“Vash,” he whines—it smells like Vash.
His hips fall into an instinctive rhythm, slow and deep, reluctant to withdraw at all from the warm acceptance of his mate.
Vash is murmuring absent praise into his hair, the sound of his voice soothing and familiar, and he threads his fingers into it. His other hand moves to clutch at Wolfwood’s back, splayed to feel the rippling muscle there.
The pressure is grounding, and Wolfwood blinks away some of the fuzziness clouding his brain. He shifts his body, angling himself until Vash’s breath stutters and then pressing in and in with honed precision.
“There?” he asks into Vash’s neck.
“Uh huh,” Vash gasps. “Wolfwood—ah—”
“Good boy.” He sucks Vash’s earlobe between his teeth. “Say my name.”
Vash immediately obeys and it calms some of that possessive fervor burning in his stomach to be soothed with the reminder that Vash has accepted him, knows who he’s with and who it is that’s making him feel this way.
“I love—the way you call out for me,” he breathes, grinding in deep circles.
“Wolfwood,” Vash says again.
“Just like that.” He noses up behind Vash’s ear, resting their cheeks alongside one another. He can feel the humming vibration of his breath the next time he calls for him.
“You’re always so good to me,” Vash whispers, sweet and intimate, tugging him closer until their chests press together. The hard length of him gets caught between their stomachs, and he whines with each rough drag. “So good to me. Thank you.”
Wolfwood pulls back to look at him, tell him, don’t thank me—I don’t deserve it, and finds he can’t say anything at all.
Vash is a wreck. His hair is sweat-damp and loose, sprawled across the pillow and tangling at the fine ends. Tears have left pale streaks across his flushed skin, falling into his panting mouth, and his attentive eyes have gone wide and far too adoring to be directed at Wolfwood. A shy smile curves across his face like a secret too heavy to keep to himself, a burden he needs to share with his dearest friend.
Wolfwood’s next thrust makes Vash’s eyelids flutter, body squeezing around him while pleasure dances across his features in a lovely concurrence, and he gets to watch as his name falls brokenly from parted lips.
“Beautiful,” he groans helplessly. “My—you’re so beautiful.”
Vash’s eyes go wide, eyebrows drawing together, and Wolfwood puts a stop to the denial before it can start.
“You have no idea,” he says, “the way people look at you. The things they would do to have you like this.” Vash shakes his head and Wolfwood grabs his chin, desperate to be understood. “The things I would—they can’t have you. Tell me they can’t have you.”
“I don’t—” Vash says, the corners of his eyes tight with confusion and something close enough to hope that Wolfwood breaks.
“You’re mine,” he pleads. “Say you’re mine.”
Vash goes still, even the instinctive rocking of his body against Wolfwood’s stops, and Wolfwood waits in the interminable calm until his expression splinters.
“You—” he breathes. “Wolfwood, you—” And then he’s lurching forward, pressing feverish kisses to Wolfwood’s cheeks, his chin, the bridge of his nose. “Yours.” His fingers dig into Wolfwood’s back. “I’m yours.”
His precious mate.
“Vash.” Wolfwood nudges affectionately against his face. “Vash,” he whispers and kisses him.
Maybe it’s just the artificial closeness of his heat making Vash respond like this—in way over his head from the ecstatic rush as two magnets clang together—and maybe that can be what Wolfwood blames this on, after, when Vash inevitably feels whole on his own again and wonders with mild embarrassment why he let himself get so carried away. Maybe it isn’t even the first time that Vash has done this. Maybe he’s promised himself to some other alpha because it stirred something in him, made the joining better, and then genially parted ways after.
Maybe Wolfwood should have offered to call a service for him instead of offering himself. Because if Vash gives him that empty smile when this is all over, thanks him for his help and passes the time on a long bus ride sleeping against the window instead of Wolfwood’s shoulder—Wolfwood won’t come out of that intact.
Maybe this is the stupidest thing he’s ever done.
The point of Vash’s nose digs into his cheek when he shifts. He huffs out the smallest sound of amusement and Wolfwood feels it there, humid against his skin, and moves to cradle Vash’s face in his palm, thumbing over his cheekbone and the ridge of his mole.
For all of Wolfwood’s urgency, the kiss is chaste, just a warm slide of their lips together.
Vash deepens it first, his tongue a soft pressure against Wolfwood’s bottom lip before pulling away again. Wolfwood opens himself to it on his next exhale, letting Vash into his mouth with a quiet sound. He presses forward against him, sliding their tongues together in the close join of their kiss, unable to resist the taste of himself in Vash’s mouth melding with the honey gathered in his own.
It’s too easy to get lost in this.
With Vash clinging to him with more strength than any one man should possess and running bruising lines up and down his back with his fingertips, Wolfwood starts moving again—slow and deep in a mirror of their mouths.
Vash whines so sweetly and Wolfwood can feel the echo of it in his entire body.
“Feels good?” he whispers when he has to pull back for air, trailing aimless kisses along Vash’s cheek.
“Yes,” Vash says and his nodding smears Wolfwood’s mouth across his face until he’s nudging at him with more purpose.
The kiss is more heated this time, consuming and desperate. With his eyes closed, Wolfwood slips even further into this overwhelming unity until it’s difficult to tell where his body ends and Vash’s begins. Vash is soft everywhere, even the hard metal flecked throughout his skin has melted so far down in Wolfwood’s awareness, like a candle left burning overnight.
Wolfwood means to tell him that he’s doing well, praise and reassure him in the wake of this new match that he struck close to the plush wax of Vash’s current emotional state, but he can’t bring himself to pull away for long enough to do anything but breathe his name and fall back into him.
He finds that angle again, the one that has Vash gasping and rocking up to meet him, and Vash’s mouth goes lax until he’s just weakly reacting to the movement of Wolfwood’s own. Wolfwood moves to press kisses below his jaw, not wanting to muffle the sweet cries Vash pours out like water.
Their joining is loud, wet and obscene in the bright light of the afternoon suns, and the sound of it, of his physical union with his mate, makes that deeply possessive part of Wolfwood preen.
“Vash,” he murmurs into his neck and takes him in hand.
Vash jolts, his fingers ripping at Wolfwood’s skin, and he hopes he draws blood—hopes this violent affection marks him in a way he will feel every time he shifts and the stiff fabric of his shirt scratches against him. He wants himself under Vash’s nails, in that tender crease that will stain like silk and remind him of Wolfwood’s devotion, of his readiness to bleed.
Wolfwood leans his weight further into him, steadying his thrashing, and Vash draws big gulping breaths.
“Wolfwood,” he gasps, “it’s too much—I can’t—”
“Please.” Wolfwood pulls away from his throat. “Come for me. I want to see you—I want to feel it. You’re so good, Vash, please give it to me” he babbles and lets the grounding pressure of his voice wrap reassurances around Vash while his stroking takes on a frantic single-mindedness. “Let me do this for you.”
Vash is loud when he comes, louder than he has been all day, like all he needed was one last promise that he was bringing Wolfwood pleasure, instead of the revulsion he’s always turning over stones expecting to find, before he could finally let go. His face opens so beautifully, unrestrained and overwhelmed while he finishes in thrashing waves, the tension coursing through him like electricity in time with the tight pulses of his body around Wolfwood’s cock.
Wolfwood kisses him through it, though Vash can do little more than cry, pliant and loose, into his mouth. He feels the distorted shape of his own name on Vash’s tongue and rocks the singular mass of their bodies together in a slowing roll of his hips.
“Don’t stop,” Vash breathes in the dizzy space between them and digs into Wolfwood’s back with his heel. “You too—inside.”
“Vash,” he says, overwhelmed.
“I need you—please Wolfwood, I need you.”
Wolfwood groans and finds new leverage on his knees, tugging Vash’s other leg up around his hip and finally lets himself take.
It overwhelms him when he focuses on it—the heat and the embrace, the wet clutch of Vash surrounding him and pulling him ceaselessly in. Their foreheads have fallen together and Wolfwood smears mindless kisses against Vash’s face while he fucks into the welcoming body of his dear mate.
Vash’s hands are a warm brand against his shoulders, his neck, his waist, all of him petted and squeezed like he can drag him closer to the edge through the warmth of his palms—like Wolfwood needs anything more than Vash’s eyes welling with so much affection that he can almost fool himself into calling it love.
His rhythm stretches and breaks until he’s only pressing in, grinding in desperate and clumsy circles, and he comes in a rush deep inside the tight hold of Vash’s body. The drowning waves of pleasure go on for so long, washing over him again and again until his arms collapse and he falls on top of Vash, unable to divert attention away from the instinctive and mindless drive to tie them together.
“Vash,” he gasps, still circling his hips and clinging to the only anchor he’s ever wanted. “Vash.”
Vash is whispering to him, soft reassurances while Wolfwood’s knot swells and locks them together, and his hands come up into his hair to stroke over it and down his neck.
Wolfwood is hot all over, his skin charged and sensitive, still holding onto Vash like he’ll shake apart without him. He nuzzles into his temple and presses kisses to the damp skin there in the shape of his name.
“Thank you,” Vash whispers, and his lips brush like feathers over Wolfwood’s throat.
The sentiment is warm but it falls like a pit into Wolfwood’s stomach, and all at once he is desperately embarrassed. This is Vash’s heat—Wolfwood had absolutely no business getting so tangled up in it and losing his entire mind like an inexperienced child fumbling all over himself at his first whiff of an interested omega.
Maybe he can salvage this. Vash has wrapped his arms around him and doesn’t seem immediately put off by the things he said—God, the things he said.
And, okay, It might be a little awkward for a while, but he knew it would be from the start. Anyway, even though he has more of an excuse, Vash also said some things that—
Vash also said some things that he would never say outside the hazy endorphin rush of a heat with Wolfwood goading him on like an absolute bastard.
Wolfwood wants to dig a hole and bury himself in the sand, maybe let the scorch of the sun bake the memory clean out of his head until he can stand to look at Vash without—well, without wanting to bury himself in the sand.
Despite his mortification, he is stuck. His body hasn’t even stopped seizing with aftershocks, and it will be at least several minutes before he softens enough to slip free. And besides all that, Vash still needs him. Wolfwood offered to help him, and if he got this far he’s certainly not going to let himself fail right here at the end.
He eases his weight off of Vash a bit, accidentally dislodging him from where he has taken to smearing his mouth into Wolfwood’s scent gland.
Wolfwood can see immediately that Vash has noticed that something is wrong. His face pinches and then goes blank, taking on that assessing stare again, and that is so much worse than just letting him suckle passively at his neck.
Wolfwood stomps down the panic rising in himself and forces a calm smile. He doesn’t want Vash to figure him out, but he also doesn’t want him to blame himself, which is exactly what he will do if Wolfwood can’t hold it together. So he scoops his heartache into his palms and tucks it behind the wall of his affable demeanor that years of experience in hiding his feelings away have built.
It’s never worked on Vash before, but it’s all he has.
“You feel better?” Wolfwood asks and swallows the prickling wrongness clogging up his throat. “Much easier with a partner, right?”
Vash squints like he didn’t quite hear him, and then his eyebrows shoot up and he laughs.
Wolfwood barely has a moment to reel from the blow of that before Vash is kissing him.
“You idiot,” Vash mumbles fondly into his mouth. “Like I would ever let you go. You’re mine now, aren’t you?”
His eyes are bright, attentive and clear of any lingering fogginess for the moment, and his face goes a brilliant red when Wolfwood rears back.
“You—” Wolfwood starts, and a smile wobbles across Vash’s face.
“You’re so pretty when you come,” he teases. “I think you’ve ruined me for anybody else.”
“What are you even saying,” Wolfwood grumbles, but then he’s smiling too, helpless as his head spins. That Vash could ever want him in the same way—it shouldn’t be possible.
But here he is, grinning like a fool with Wolfwood still held tight inside of his body, looking for all the world like there’s no place he would rather be, and Wolfwood dares to hope that maybe there’s nothing that needs to be salvaged—that maybe he didn’t send them crashing down in a fiery wreck.
Maybe Vash wants to stay put where he has burrowed his way into Wolfwood’s heart like a worm, and maybe Wolfwood couldn’t rip him out without damaging both of them in the process. Maybe one day that choice will be taken from him, but for now—
Maybe they get to have this.
And he kisses Vash right on his smiling teeth