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Johnny, take a walk with your sister the moon
Let her pale light in to fill up your room
Johnny, take a dive with your sister in the rain
Let her talk about the things you can't explain
To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal
If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel
On your knees, boy
-U2 Mysterious Ways
Wolfwood woke up suddenly, completely, even though by the angle of the light, it was not yet midnight. Outside the opening of the stone niche they'd chosen for the night's camp, the two smaller moons had just breached the horizon, but the largest one was still hidden, waiting in the wings. Wolfwood felt the place beside him where Vash had been when they'd gone to sleep, but the blankets were empty and cold. He did not have to look for him long, however. Their evening fire had not yet burned out completely, and in its flickering glow he could see Vash's shape in the cave entrance, like a black paper cutout over the stars.
Beyond him, it was a singularly beautiful night. The dunes lapped up against each other in motionless ivory waves; the stars were as piercing and shrill as steel sparks. The cool air of the desert was strangely fragrant, and he wondered if some night-blooming desert plant was flowering in the moonlight, unfolding its mysteries and beckoning passing insects and birds in for a rare banquet.
Wolfwood frowned at his own poetic turn of thought. It had come into his mind unbidden, and was in no way the sort of thing he was likely to think of first thing on waking suddenly in the middle of the night. Usually he would wonder instead if he needed a cigarette or a piss or if someone was shooting at him. Wolfwood lifted his head, and as his eyes met Vash's over the dying fire, he realized, with a jolt, it was because it wasn't his thoughts he was hearing at all. He had picked Vash's out of the air somehow, as if his internal musing was no more than a scent, itself.
"What the hell," Wolfwood said, because that seemed to cover it, and Vash, smiling, turned away from the stars and walked over.
"It's still several hours to apogee," he said, and crouched down next to Wolfwood's blanket. "But I guess if you're already starting to sense it, that answers my question."
"It doesn't answer any of mine," Wolfwood said, and crammed the heel of his hand into his eye, as if rubbing away sleep would also clear up everything else. It didn't. If anything, Vash's nearness made both the feeling and the scent stronger. He felt loose in his own body, slippery, like all his edges had become porous, somehow. "What did you just say? Applebees?"
"It's the moon cycle. They're synching up, and I guess that means we are, too." Vash brought his hand up to the side of Wolfwood's face. "I wasn't sure if you would be able to feel it, but looks like you are. How are you feeling?"
"Weird," Wolfwood said, batting Vash's hand away. "Listen, if this is some of your kooky plant shit, I don't see why you gotta--"
"It's not my kooky plant shit," Vash said, with a twitch of his mouth that showed his effort not to smile. "It's our kooky plant shit."
Wolfwood opened his mouth, but nothing came out of it. Like waking up a second after getting punched in the face by the floor, he had just remembered a critical new fact about his life. Several of them, in fact, along with a few colorful memories of the past, all of them hitting at once and in no particular order, and none of them fit to print. He was not wholly human anymore. The part of him that wasn't was like Vash, and Vash was a plant, and every now and then, when the moon orbits did certain things, plants...
"Oh," Wolfwood said.
"Exactly."
Wolfwood looked at his hands, and then down at the v of skin visible in his open shirt, as though expecting vines and wings and god knows what the hell else to start erupting out of him at any second.
"It's not going to happen that fast," Vash said. "And it probably won't even be that severe for you, anyway."
"Quit doin' that," Wolfwood snapped. "Have the decency to let me ask the question before you yank it out of my head."
"Sorry," Vash said, scruffing a hand in the back of his hair and smiling sheepishly. "You were doing it so easily, I was enjoying it."
"I'm not," Wolfwood said, fighting down the very real possibility of panic. It was all well and good for Vash to be a mixed bouquet of weirdness, he was Vash, he was made that way, and he'd had over a century to get used to it. Two months ago, on the other hand, Nicholas D. Wolfwood had been dead. He'd just started to really get the hang of it when Vash had brought him back, and he'd used his own eldritch biology to make it possible--The same biology that made him into a feathery, flowery fuckmonster whenever he got his interdimensional period, or whatever the hell it was. Wolfwood had been through it with him more than once in his former life, and he still didn't understand it, even though the memory made him weak in the knees and itchy in his sinuses.
Wolfwood struggled to get his pulse under control, and it was much more difficult than it should have been. He could feel the moon lying in wait for him under the horizon, in some kind of astronomical ambush. "I--are we--izzit the thing? With the--at the same time?"
"It's a good thing I can hear what you're thinking," Vash said, very sober now. "Because you aren't making a lick of sense with what you're saying."
"That's because I'm freaking out!" Wolfwood thundered at him, the combination of his vocal and emotional transmission enough to make Vash rock back on his heels. "I've only just got this body, I didn't get to test drive it, and now you're telling me there's a horny interdimensional albatross under the hood!"
"Shhh, okay, okay. Let's back this up a little." Vash pulled Wolfwood up to his knees and then he swung astride them in one easy motion, probably because Wolfwood's distraction made him more pliable than usual. "Look at me, Wolfwood."
Wolfwood's eyes were darting like startled fish; Vash put both hands around his face to hold him steady. "Eyes, Nico."
Wolfwood blinked, and then focused. Vash's eyes were a serene, engulfing shade of blue. Wolfwood had only heard of oceans in old songs and childhood picture books, but he thought of one now, like a great unbroken plain of inverted sky, and sank into it.
"That's it," Vash said, and his smile was in his voice and the edges of his eyes, places Wolfwood knew existed but didn't dare venture towards right now. "Deep breath. With me. Focus on where you are."
Wolfwood's first attempt was shuddering and shallow, but Vash stroked his face and his hair with his fingers and kept with him until he managed one, and then another, and another, until they were breathing in tandem. Vash's steady pulse pulled Wolfwood's galloping one back down, as though he was wrangling a runaway thomas, and the creeping, prickling fear withdrew its claws and retreated. Wolfwood felt the tension melt out of him; he finally broke the gaze enough to put his head against Vash's shoulder, and slumped in his arms with a sigh of relief.
"That's some good woo-woo plant magic," he sighed, gratefully.
"No it isn't," Vash countered, smoothing the back of Wolfwood's hair. "It was just you trying to have a panic attack."
Wolfwood made a noncommittal grunt.
"Feel better?"
Another grunt.
"Good."
Wolfwood turned his head to the side, against Vash's neck, and looped his arms around his waist. "Now," he said, chagrined, "I guess you're gonna have to give me a little talk about what happens when a mommy plant and a daddy plant love each other very much--"
Vash snorted with a stifled laugh. "It's not that. It's the duration of the light cycles, and the pull of the gravity of the moons. Even the cacti out here feel it, it's why they're blooming."
That was the feeling Wolfwood was having of being loose inside himself, pulled towards something he could not touch or taste, except in his yearning for it. He let himself feel it, cautiously, as though wondering if it could take his weight. It was not entirely unpleasant, and there was the promise of a rich conclusion behind it. "Do all the plants go through this? In the ships and everything?"
"Most of the working ones have hormonal suppressors, unless they want them to bud off and make new starts," Vash said. Wolfwood felt him shrug. "And even when they do, it's a communal phase, it hits all of them at the same time and as far as I can tell, it's not as intense that way. But for the independent ones, it's a little different." His hands tightened on Wolfwood's back, and a jumble of images and feelings spilled into Wolfwood's mind, like a dozen puzzles tipped out of their boxes at once.
"Sorry," Vash said, and it felt to Wolfwood like he had thrown himself over the mess, desperate to scoop it all up before a singular picture could form.
"Wait," Wolfwood said, and pulled them closer together, as though that would keep Vash from retracting again with his memories. "Tell me."
"It's..." Vash struggled for words, and gave up. But the feelings slipped between his fingers, and Wolfwood caught them. A desperate need, a longing as keen as a knife between the ribs. Easily sated, and made into perfect completion and balance and communion if Vash would only give in to it--and the deliberate, debilitating repercussions of his refusal to concede. Loneliness like a wandering planet slung from orbit, empty and ashamed.
Wolfwood shivered in spite of the warmth of the fire, as Vash's remembered emotions threatened to capsize him. The echo of every cycle Vash had spent alone drove into him like a bullet, every time longing for the brother who would make it bearable, knowing Knives was feeling the same pull, and yet unwilling to go to him. And then the last few fallow years, when Vash could only feel the tug of the moons and the light on him, but was too weakened to answer it. And at last, so recently as to be right now, the realization that it was going to be different from now on, a joy and a relief so bright and hot that it was blinding. Wolfwood lifted his face out of Vash's neck, and it was wet with tears.
"Vash."
"Sorry," Vash scrubbed his face on his hand and took a steadying breath. "It's a lot, I know, But you're too good at picking it up, I can't keep you out when--"
"Please don't keep me out," Wolfwood said, and silenced Vash's protests in the best way he knew how. Already he could taste what was coming for them in Vash's kiss; he remembered what it had been like those rare times he had witnessed this event when they were traveling together. It was, after all, the kind of fuck a man doesn't forget even when he's dead.
Only he did not remember so much nuance in Vash back then, just the hunger and honey-sweetness of him (and, it must be said, the two days of violent sneezing that followed). But even though the scent and taste were still faint, and not yet fully present, there was a complexity this time that Wolfwood hadn't been able to sense before. He tried to find words for it, but a life on a barren planet had not given him the vocabulary of flavors he needed to try and encompass it. Besides, trying to cram the concept into speech was vulgar and awkward.
I know, Vash said between them, or rather felt in Wolfwood's direction, along with a melange of understanding and eagerness and need and caution that threatened to make Wolfwood forget where his outlines were, but it was Vash who broke the kiss for a deep breath of air.
"Listen, Wolfwood--Nngh--before we---I should talk to you--"
"We'll talk after."
"It hasn't even started yet--"
"Mmm. I'm pre-gaming."
Dammit, Wolfwood, listen to me so I don't hurt you later.
The thought hit Wolfwood like the shock of cold water; for a moment he thought Vash had physically slapped him. The blind need and desire retreated back into the corners of his mind, temporarily held at bay, and the worst of his overextended senses went numb, as though a nerve had been cut. Vash was only Vash, and the air was only air, and Wolfwood felt suddenly bereft.
"Christ on a--! What th'hell--"
"Sorry, Sorry," Vash said, slipping regretfully off of Wolfwood's lap to get some space between them. "I should have talked to you about this sooner, but honestly, I wasn't even sure if you had enough plant in you to react."
Wolfwood involuntarily thought something filthy about getting a particular plant in him, and from the way the color came up in Vash's face, his transmission had been heard loud and clear.
"Ah, hell," Wolfwood said, putting his hand over his eyes, chagrined at his own loss of control. "This is. Jesus. I'm sorry, Tongari. I feel like I'm fourteen years old."
"I know you do," Vash said, and gave both of Wolfwood's hands an understanding squeeze. "But honestly, I don't know how this is going to work with you. You're less than half plant now, but obviously--" Vash's eyes flicked down the open neck of Wolfwood's shirt, and it was a visible effort to get them back up to Wolfwood's face, "There's still a chance you could lose control during this, and until I know what we're dealing with, for both our sakes, I think it's best to--"
Vash trailed off. Wolfwood was already holding out his wrists, as Vash's thoughts had long since beaten his words.
"Go ahead and use the Punisher's spare straps," Wolfwood said. "They should hold me. I'll probably just break anything else." He lifted an eyebrow at Vash's expression. "Unless you thought I didn't know you still had them in your bag."
"I was just gonna do it myself if I needed to restrain you," Vash said, "So I wanted to tell you first before things go too far. But if you just wanted to be kinky about it--"
Wolfwood's expression said enough, but in spite of whatever dampeners Vash had put on their senses, the borders between their thoughts were still perilously porous.
"...I'll get the straps," Vash said, and stood up.
"Okay, so this is some good clean fun and all," Wolfwood said, watching Vash truss up his wrists. "But I seem to recall that usually you're the dangerous one when this happens. Wrap that around one more time, darlin'."
Vash did so. "I was the only plant in hormone range back then. My biology was screaming at me that I was the last of my kind and I'd better start self-replicating or the species was gonna go extinct. It's no joke--Why do you think I was worried I might kill you? How's that?"
Wolfwood strained his wrists and the reinforced leather creaked in protest. Vash had given him a few inches of play between his hands, but it restricted his movements to a minimum. It was also, apart from the blanket, all he was wearing. "It's good. I could bust out of it if I really had to, but it'll keep me honest." He gave Vash a speculative look. "So basically, you were knocking yourself up?"
Vash allowed himself a tiny cough. "Triggering enough brain chemicals to make me think I was, anyway."
Wolfwood's expression was priceless. "How does that even work?"
With Wolfwood stripped and secured, Vash peeled out of his shirt and threw it on top of his folded coat, and then started undoing his boot straps. "I'm not sure this is the best time to get into advanced plant biology and reproductive morphology for the curious beginner."
"I'm not sure there's a better time. Just. Get me a smoke, would you? If I'm waiting around to start howling at the moon any minute I might as well have one."
"We've still got a while to go." Vash rummaged around in Wolfwood's discarded jacket and pants, and expertly lit up a cigarette in his own mouth before passing it to Wolfwood. "But are you sure you want to hear about this now?"
Wolfwood took a grateful drag of smoke before nodding emphatically at his straps. "I got nowhere else to be."
"Well. All right." Vash sat down cross-legged on the blanket next to Wolfwood, and popped open his gun arm to unload it. "It's not much for pillow talk, but, back in the day when humans first managed to fuse an extradimensional being into a physical form, they used a base comprised of Earth plant material as a base to hold it in."
"Aha!" Wolfwood's eyes lit up in understanding. "So that's why you've got feathers and flowers at the same time? Because you're an angel stuck inside a begonia?"
"That's one way of putting it." Vash took a deep breath, and unraveled a belt of ammo out of his arm. "What they didn't consider--or maybe even care about--is that Earth plants will do anything from mimicry to outright murder to complete their reproduction, so what happened is they wound up with something highly situationally responsive, with a mercenary streak and the transformative powers to boot. Leaving aside how dangerous that could be in general circumstances, now you've got a lifeform that will do whatever the situation requires for the best chances of successful reproduction. And that means kooky plant shit--" He smiled wistfully as he snapped his arm back into place, and used it to point at himself. "Or spontaneous reproduction, which apparently only happens in deep space. During planetary cycles, it's an environmental response. It gives us a power overflow--which, by the way, is more severe on this particular planet due to the extra moons and binary daylight. Knives picked this place to maroon us because the conditions would make plants reproduce faster, and that's what he wanted. But as for plain old anatomy, the rest of the time..." Vash waved his unloaded gun hand indifferently. "Well. You know what I look like."
As if to prove his point, he stood up and stripped out of his pants, wrapping them up into a ball before sending them over to the pile with the rest of their clothes.
"No complaints about the goods or the services," Wolfwood said, blowing smoke in the direction of Vash's ass. It hit his hip and folded around him like a filmy veil, not enough to conceal anything. Wolfwood did, indeed know what Vash looked like, and if right now that was something more feathery and concealed than usual, well. He was all right with that. He was all right with pretty much anything Vash was, no matter what that happened to be from one day to the next.
"Hey." Vash stood up straight and shot Wolfwood a sudden and slightly wounded look. "Did you just call me a monster?"
"Ah!" Wolfwood felt like he'd just been caught in the cookie jar, and not only that but they were Vash's cookies, and he'd been saving them for a special occasion. He leaned up on his knees, looped his bound wrists around Vash, and pulled him down into his arms. "I think the words I was thinking were my beautiful monster, and if you were nosin' around in my thoughts and heard me, then you heard how I felt, too."
"It's still kinda rude," Vash pouted, and Wolfwood could feel how it concealed an ancient pain, and resolved to guard his thoughts a little better.
"No," Vash said, his hands tightening on Wolfwood's arms. "You don't have to do that--you didn't say it out loud, I just--"
"I'm still sorry." Wolfwood kissed his apologies down Vash's throat. "You don't mind when I call you an angel, though."
Vash's pulse tripped under Wolfwood's hands. "I mean," he breathed. "It's better than monster."
Wolfwood chuckled darkly into Vash's shoulder. "Tongari. Have you read the Bible? Angels are monsters. Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, and all that. Shit made out of eyes and wings and tongues of fire."
"Maybe," Vash said, but he relaxed into the curve of Wolfwood's body, skin to skin under the blanket. "You only ever pull some theology out of your ass when you're cornered, though."
"And that's been a Christian tradition since the beginning, trust me." Wolfwood looked over Vash's head, outside of their shelter, where the red moon was just now a thin wound opening on the sharp edge of the horizon. "How long do we have? It's been pretty quiet in my head for a while now, did you do that?"
"Just a little restraint," Vash said, and tapped the slack length of strap between Wolfwood's wrists. "Like these. So you don't jump the gun. I'll take it off when it's time. But it's not on you." He nuzzled his cheek into the soft planes of Wolfwood's chest. "It's on me." Wolfwood felt him smile. "Since your beautiful monster is clearly too much of a temptation for you in your present state."
"Hm." With his bound hands, it took Wolfwood some effort to pinch Vash's ass, but he felt it was worth the trouble.
They both watched the stars in silence for a little while. Both the panic and the need Wolfwood had felt on waking had been placed at arm's length, but how much of that was Vash's doing and how much of it was the cigarette and science lesson, Wolfwood was unsure. Vash's weight was warm and comforting against him, their legs in a lazy jumble. Wolfwood spat his spent cigarette into the fire, curled up against Vash, and did not remember dozing off.
When he woke up again, the campfire had gone out, but another fire was just starting. In his arms, Vash was taking slow, deep breaths, but they were trembling, and so was he. Wolfwood knew instantly that Vash was awake, and had been all the while. He also understood--completely and without being told--that Vash's strength for holding back was nearly spent.
"It's okay," Wolfwood whispered, and pressed his open mouth to the back of Vash's neck, tasting salt and honey. "I'm awake. It's time, right? You can let it go."
Vash made a soft noise of relief, going limp as an exhausted puppy in Wolfwood's arms, and the unleashed momentum of stars and gravity and desire slammed into Wolfwood like a truck at highway speed. His lungs filled with Vash's scent--such a layered, indescribable sweetness that he wondered how blunt his human senses had to have been to reduce it to one note, and the leather straps creaked as he instinctively strained towards getting as far into it as possible. Vash was not just a physical body in his arms, he was a whole cloud of presence: a gleaming, burning presence that needed Wolfwood then in more ways than humanity had words for. And Wolfwood, down to the fiber of his being, was ready to answer.
"Okay," Wolfwood gasped, steadying his back against the cave floor, all his senses reeling in the sucking whirlpool that threatened to drown him. "This. This is. Wow. All right. Be gentle with me, okay. It's my first time."
Vash laughed softly, breathlessly, turning around in his arms. His eyes were a scalding blue, his body rustled in Wolfwood's embrace like a tree full of doves. "Is that really what you want?"
Wolfwood leaned in for a kiss, first to Vash's face, then his jaw, and then the soft hollow behind his ear where the scent of him was stronger. "Hell no, baby," he breathed, his hands tensing on Vash's narrow waist, pulling them tightly together. "Fuck me up."
"I don't think that's going to be a problem," Vash gasped, as Wolfwood's tongue dragged over his skin, and he took Wolfwood's bound hands and guided them down in invitation, his voice a smoking whisper. "But I wanna go first."
Wolfwood made an inarticulate noise of longing against Vash's throat; he petted the tightly folded wings between Vash's thighs until they trembled open and let him in, their slick embrace closing first around his fingers, and then his hand. Vash's breathing pitched up into a moan as Wolfwood stroked him open wider, his back arching, legs spreading, utterly wanton in his need.
"God, Nico, Please."
He didn't need to ask, and Wolfwood didn't either. He would have known what Vash wanted even without it forming a melody inside his mind. He hooked Vash's spread knees on the span of the strap between his wrists, folded him over his shoulders, then bent down and buried his face in that fluttering sweetness. Vash cried out softly, tangling his hands in Wolfwood's hair, and Wolfwood drank long and deep from the font of nectar that Vash offered him.
Unbearable pleasure, burning on Wolfwood's tongue. Vash clutching around his hand, throbbing against his mouth, and the taste of him flooding Wolfwood's senses. He was everything, in that moment. Vash, alien in his shifting and glorious form, Vash in his scars and mussed spiky hair and his heaving flesh-and-bone ribcage, Vash nothing but beating wings under and around and over Wolfwood like a host of seraphim.
Wolfwood could have gone on like that forever, in spite of a need so keen it was almost pain, the untouched weight of his cock aching for mercy. It didn't matter, as he hummed a wordless hymn of praise and adoration against the honey and heat overflowing on his tongue. Only Vash mattered, and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, more a holy mendicant in that moment than he had ever been before in this life or any other, was bound, on his knees, and ready to serve.
Fortunately, the being whose praises he was so ardently singing was both generous and merciful. Though he could easily have taken everything he needed as he was, from the mouth and hands that worshiped him, Vash was in no frame of mind to be selfish. And while a docile Wolfwood was a thing to be admired, Vash wanted something a little more rough, and he said so in a way that left no room for doubt.
The Punisher's straps were thick leather and steel, meant to hold the weight of a thousand rounds of belt-fed mercy, but when Vash breathed out fuck me, they did not stand a chance. The tether between Wolfwood's wrists snapped like a string, and Vash's hips were in his hands and Wolfwood's cock was buried to the hilt inside him before his growl of need had fully escaped his teeth.
Vash made a sharp noise, and Wolfwood struggled to ease the crushing pressure of his hands on Vash's hipbones, to steady the desperation of his thrusts. "Sorr--I--don't--ngh--"
"Don't you dare apologgnnnngghh--" Vash quit trying to talk, giving himself up to it, and plumes and pinions began unfolding around him, over his shoulders and down his curving spine, as Wolfwood drove them both farther from control. Wolfwood licked his lips and tasted Vash there, still wet with his nectar all over his face and down his throat, and with a guttural moan pulled Vash bodily up into his lap to fuck him harder.
Vaguely he recalled how much Vash had to work for his finish last time; instinctively he knew that would not be the case anymore. As if the shared memory of that moment was the last straw for Vash, he ground down hard in Wolfwood's lap, and his teeth were sharp as they closed on one tan shoulder to stifle his scream. Wolfwood felt something inside him strain and then break, as easily as he had broken the straps still dangling from his wrists. Pleasure rolled over him like blinding thunder as Vash clenched around him, and he pulled them down into it together.
It was everything, and it was nowhere near enough. They had barely finished kissing through the aftermath before Vash broke off with a hungry sound.
"Need you in my mouth," he breathed, and it was Wolfwood's turn to be flat on his back as Vash went down, his feathers doing the work that the straps had failed to manage, binding Wolfwood in soft constraints as Vash licked the taste of them both off of his cock. His thoughts and his emotions were mixed with Wolfwood's in the same way as the taste of them both was hopelessly commingled on Wolfwood's skin, and he strained against his bonds in shared ecstasy, tasting it with him. And even though Vash could not form audible words, Wolfwood heard him anyway, as Vash's plumes stroked his thighs and curled around his throat and moved like ghostly fingertips over his ribs, adoring him, exulting in him.
You aren't required to only serve, Nico. Tell me what you want.
Vash's tongue slid over him as the permission unlocked doors inside of Wolfwood: the spiral of possibilities winding out endlessly for them both, now and in times to come.
Anything, he thought, and never had that concept contained such multitudes for pleasure, for experience, for existence. Wolfwood felt as though he had been made infinite. Everything. You.
He felt Vash laugh at him, felt how charmed Vash was by his enthusiasm and innocence, felt the unfathomable expanse of the love Vash had for him. And Vash lifted his head, and eased up between Wolfwood's bound-apart thighs, and with a greedy little wiggle said, "Okay, but what do you want now."
And Wolfwood felt the flutter of wings spread him open, felt the slick, heavy pressure of a cock nudge against his asshole, and suddenly knew the answer to that question.
"This," he gasped, as Vash took him, filled him, and gave him everything he had not known how to ask for. Wolfwood was laid bare before the pleasure; he could feel the moon's gravity pulling him towards the sky as surely as he could feel Vash moving inside him, every motion sending him further beyond himself. Vash was the entire universe in his hands, completion and perfection and an angel's burning coal upon his tongue. Vash said his name, said it and felt it and wrapped it around him, and blossoms of black plumes bloomed up from Wolfwood's shoulders as Vash bore him upwards, an angel carrying a man's soul up from his broken body to lay before the gates of heaven.
"You didn't do as many vines and stuff this time." Wolfwood was on his third cigarette before he could manage to talk. Outside, the moons had set, and the dunes were gray and indistinct with the coming dawn. In the little cave in the rocks, Vash and Wolfwood lay intertwined and spent in a cloud of slowly fading feathers.
"Wrong time of year," Vash yawned, from Wolfwood's armpit.
"Christ," Wolfwood sighed. "Just when I think I'm starting to get this shit figured."
"You've got time," Vash said, and then, as his arms tightened around Wolfwood, he said it again to himself, in quiet wonder. "...we've got time."
"Still." Wolfwood flicked his cigarette away. "I guess I'm an interdimensional goo factory now just like you are." He lifted his head as a thought struck him. "Hey, what did mine taste like?"
"O-oh," Vash said, in a deeply untrustworthy voice. "It was ...fine."
That was what Vash said, anyway. Out loud. But what Wolfwood heard and felt and sensed was a still-smoldering memory of blackplumsburntsugarwhiskeysmokesogoodsogoodsogood and from the way he hid his face in Wolfwood's chest and blushed all over his bare shoulders, it was obvious Vash knew he'd been found out.
"I'm sorry, what was that, Tongari?" Wolfwood grinned, leaning down as if Vash hadn't been enunciating properly. "Burnt sugar and plums and what? Whiskey smoke and what?"
"hnnnnnnnnnngghhhhhhh," Vash said into Wolfwood's chest, like a car that didn't want to start. "Shut UP, Wolfwood."
"I knew it," Wolfwood said, settling his shoulders against the cave wall in a satisfied fashion. "I'm fucking delicious, you couldn't get enough."
Just how much enough of him Vash couldn't get was reflexively transmitted to Wolfwood in full color in a sticky, shameless fantasy before Vash forcibly interrupted the signal by blowing a massive raspberry right into Wolfwood's chest. "You enjoy this now," he said, "but in about an hour and a half we're both gonna be fully back to normal, which means no more lifting thoughts out of my head just because you can."
"Yes, so normal," Wolfwood said, holding up one of the few black feathers in the pile. He hadn't produced nearly as many as Vash. "This was just one of the most normal nights of my life, just an everyday evening of boring ol' plant reprodu--" he broke off suddenly with a startling thought, and though the red moon was now a pale pink dream on the far horizon, from Vash's stifled laughter, Wolfwood knew he'd been heard loud and clear.
"I'm not pregnant," Vash said, and sank back down onto Wolfwood with a luxurious stretch.
"Phew, well. Thank Christ for that."
"...You might be, tho."
"What?!"
Vash was laughing too hard to say outright that he was joking, but he still got the message across, while Wolfwood clutched his chest in the desperate hope of keeping his soul inside his body.
"Ahahahaha, oh damn," Vash was laughing so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks. "Sorry--ahaha your face--sorry, but I can only make that joke once."
"Sorry? You sonuvabitch, you aren't sorry. Fuck me half to death, give me a fukken heart-attack--"
"Aww, Nico. Can I buy you breakfast when I wake up, make it up to you?"
"Yeah, if I don't buy you a funeral first." Wolfwood reached for his smokes with a shaky hand, and tried to pretend it was only from exertion and not the scare Vash had just given him.
It was evidence of Vash's good mood that he didn't give Wolfwood any grief for the morbid joke, and as Wolfwood felt him slip into sated, exhausted slumber, he pulled the blankets more tightly around them. He smiled into Vash's hair, winding up his thoughts for one last message while the channel was open. Maybe the market in town has plums.
And Vash the Stampede somehow managed to kick him even in his sleep.
~o~