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If there was any sure sign that Vash the Stampede was not feeling like his usual self, it was a lack of appetite. In general, he ate like a starving dog that expected someone to snatch away his bowl at any moment: testament to a life spent on the run with bullets singing in his wake. But in his darker moods, he would go days without anything but water and whiskey, consumed in bleak silence while staring into nothing.
This, Wolfwood noted, in a low voice to Meryl and Milly, seemed somewhere in-between. There was a lot of food, but also a lot of whiskey, and very little conversation. Vash cleared out enough of the former for three men (big men with vast appetites and equally vast deathwishes) and then wished them all good night and fled up to his room. It wasn't even eight in the evening, yet.
"Is it just me or is he bein' weirder than usual?" Wolfwood said, picking up the three empty bottles of Pogue's Irish Whiskey to see if Vash had left any remains. He hadn't.
"My dad used to eat like that before long, dangerous shifts in the mine," Milly said over her half-eaten cake, with somber wisdom.
"What, to sustain him through the hours?" Meryl had only just gotten started on eating her own supper, mostly because she was still tallying the damages Vash had racked up in the last town, her notebook open next to her plate. In her time with Vash she'd gotten very used to tepid food and long division.
Milly stabbed a stray strawberry with her fork and regarded it seriously. "No, it's so he'd have to poop so much he couldn't go down in the shaft."
"Somebody should go check on Spikey, I guess," Wolfwood said, mostly in the hopes of derailing Milly from one of her scatalogical anecdotes. She seemed to have an infinite supply. In response, Milly looked up from her cake and Meryl from her calculations, and both of them held out a fist.
"Fine, "Wolfwood sighed, and ground out his cigarette in his empty soup bowl before adding his own hand to the challenge. "One, Two--"
Three minutes later, Wolfwood was walking up the stairs of the inn, grumbling at the injustice of it all. No matter how many times he explained that that was how he'd been taught the rules, and that Gun should beat Rock Paper and Scissors, they outvoted him every time. In this case, though, he figured it was for the best. If one of the girls had come up, they'd find Vash in one of his usual moods, for some weird Vash reason, and they'd both try in their own ways to coax and cajole him out of it.
Wolfwood wasn't doing any of that shit. For one thing, it wouldn't work, and for another, his way (usually saying, "quit being such a fucking Tongari about everything"), while still equally useless, saved a lot more time in the bargain. But they could not do nothing--they all agreed they should make some kind of effort. Just to show Vash they cared. And Wolfwood, who wanted to smoke an entire cigarette uninterrupted as soon as possible, was going to do that and no more.
"Oi, Spikeypants," he said, knocking and opening Vash's door in the same blasé gesture, "You gonna tell me what's goin' on or--"
"Shut. the Goddamn. Door." Vash's voice was a broken rasp, like the chamber of a revolver in need of grease. He was half-concealed in the shadowy corner between the dresser and the window, and his eyes were unusually bright, feral, flashing like an animal's in headlights.
Wolfwood was taken a bit aback by the snarl on Vash's face, but he was taken several yards further by the realization that Vash had torn off most of his clothes the minute he got in his room. And then Wolfwood was yanked so far aback that he went clear though the door, out of the building, and around the planet to come right back to where he started: with a half-naked Vash the Stampede leaning against the dresser, breathing hard, with an egg in his hand. It took Wolfwood a very understandable second to find words.
"Did. Did you just--"
"Either stay and help," Vash gasped, "or leave, and lemme get on with it." And with a low moan of something that wasn't pain, a pale shape spread his flushed pussy wider than Wolfwood's eyes. A second, pretty egg of pastel teal fell into Vash's waiting hand with the first. "Just shut the damn door."
Wolfwood shut the door. And then he locked and bolted it for good measure.
Vash fell back against the bureau with a wheeze, legs spread and wobbly. His expression was one of involuntary gratitude and patent disbelief. "You--You're not thinking of--"
Wolfwood stripped briskly out of his jacket and went right into the bathroom to wash his hands. "You look like you could use some help." He leaned out of the small room to tilt his head at the eggs in Vash's hand. "For one thing, you're about to make an omelet."
"I don't need your--ghnnk!" Vash, his body wracked by another spasm, was unable to complete his witty rejoinder.
"Here." Wolfwood came out of the bathroom with one towel over his shoulder, all the rest under his arm, and the empty basket that had held them outstretched in his hand. "Put 'em in here."
Vash pried his fingers off the edge of the bureau and tried to stand, mostly by scooting himself up along the faded wallpaper. The eggs cradled in his gun hand clinked like shotglasses at a bachelorette party. "Wolfwood. You really don't have to--"
"I know I really don't, but I'm gonna. Now take this. I don't want to step on one of your kids."
"They're not my--nngh!"
Wolfwood luckily got the basket in position just in time, as Vash dropped the two eggs he was holding to brace himself between Wolfwood and the wall, and added a third one to the clutch. It was pink.
"Don't worry, I ain't gonna count 'em." Wolfwood had the nerve to wink. "C'mon, get on the bed before you collapse. Whatever you're doing, there's no sense in doing it standing up."
"When I said you could help, I didn't mean boss me around," Vash said, testily, but he let Wolfwood loop him under his shoulders and walk him over to the bed.
"You should know by now that that's how I help," Wolfwood sat down with his back to the headboard, and pulled Vash down with him. "Lord knows, somebody's got to do it."
The bickering did not relent, even while Wolfwood got Vash into a semi-reclining position, with a towel underneath him and a very put-upon expression on his flushed and sweaty face.
"You can say it's weird, you know," Vash said, between spasms. "It's weird."
"Not here to make any judgements, Spikey," Wolfwood answered, and slid his hands up Vash's scarred thighs. It was a pose they'd done before, but for much more simple activities. "That's for billable hours. Now c'mon. Show me."
Vash let out a breath, closed his eyes, and spread his legs.
His pussy was throbbing, though not with the usual arousal. Something was pushing and pulsing inside him, and as Vash let out a soft moan, his lips spread wide over a glistening circle of sky blue, and a perfect egg the size of an apple dropped out of him and landed on the towel between his thighs.
"Huh." Wolfwood's assessment was quiet, impressed. "I'll be damned."
"It's just one of those things," Vash said, in a weary voice.
"So why is it that you--?" Wolfwood could only manage half the question before Vash cut him off, another twinge sharpening his fatigue into annoyance.
"I don't know, maybe I should go ask my Mom. Oh wait, I don't have one."
"Okay, okay, you don't have to be a dick about it. It's a reasonable question when your buddy starts spontaneously--"
"Nnghk!!" It was another pink one this time, medium-sized, with white speckles.
Wolfwood put it in the basket with the others, and his fingertips tingled at the heft and warmth of it. What does it feel like to-- He cut off the train of thought. Later. He'd think about it later. "Sounds like it hurts."
"It ...doesn't. Not like you're thinking."
Wolfwood arched one black eyebrow. "Is that why you're blushing like that?"
"I'm blushing because you're watchnnnghhh--" Vash broke off with a groan as a spasm wracked through him, hand clutched tightly in Wolfwood's, as though the warm scent of cigarettes and gunpowder were all that was keeping him attached to the ground.
Wolfwood moved his other hand down to help, and could feel the curve of the brilliant shell already hardening as it worked its way out of Vash. Trying to gauge the best catch angle, he brushed his fingers around tight, burning flesh, and his thumb grazed the swollen bud of Vash's clit. The effect was electric and instantaneous; Vash shivered violently with a rising cry of pleasure, the egg shot out of him in a burst of slickness. Wolfwood blinked at it, in his hand, in surprise.
"Wait. Did that help--"
"Fuck," Vash answered, both hands over his flushed face.
"Oh my god. You're supposed to be getting off during this."
"This is so embarrassing--" Vash's voice was muffled through his hands.
In reply Wolfwood only pressed down on Vash's wet trigger, and felt the answering sensation ripple through Vash's body. The next egg slid easily out of him, like a gleaming pearl from an oyster, as Vash's thighs trembled with aftershocks.
"Oh, I've got it figured now," Wolfwood said, with a dark chuckle. "Cummin' makes it easier." He nuzzled a kiss into Vash's knee, followed it with a whisper. "Want me to suck it?"
Vash's moan was answer enough; but if not, rolling over onto the bed, ass lifted in full presentation, added emphatic punctuation. Wolfwood stripped out of his remaining clothes with lightning speed and rolled over to lie under Vash, telling himself it was no different, really, than the times they've done this sort of thing before. There was just an extra, unusual wrinkle to it. One that--if he didn't watch out--he would really start to enjoy.
After all, he thought, pressing his face eagerly into Vash's wet heat, that seemed to be how it was supposed to work. The more ardently he tended to Vash, the easier the process seemed to be, and Vash's sounds of pleasure burned in Wolfwood's ears as he buried his face in Vash and urged him along.
The eggs came along at intervals, every five minutes or so. He caught them against his mouth when he could, learning fast by the noises Vash was making when one was about to emerge. Where they were coming from he had no clear idea, as Vash's waist was as narrow as ever, even when the egg was a big one. The colors varied as well, pale teal and faded pink and at least one pearly gray. Sometimes the sensation of them bumping gently together inside of Vash was more than he could take, and he'd release several of them at speed to slide down Wolfwood's chest and into a heavy, hot pile around his twitching cock. It was intimate, it was visceral, it was oddly sweet, and Wolfwood stopped trying to make sense of it early on. One thing he'd learned while traveling with Vash was to have an open mind about everything from basic morals to alien reproduction, and after a few jarring starts he had learned to quickly take stock of what was happening and then do what he had to do. Rumination could wait.
That applied to both manic gunfights and, at the moment, just how much he wanted his cock inside Vash's gaping, dripping, exhausted pussy.
"Might be all for a minute," Vash gasped, thighs shivering. Wolfwood licked a circle around the swollen clit against his mouth, and a hot squirt of sweetness was his reward, but nothing else came out.
"Want me to check?"
"God, " Vash breathed, as though he hadn't heard. "Aches...so empty."
Wolfwood knew how to fix that, and slipped two fingers in with no resistance. Vash was hot and loose and deliciously accommodating, and Wolfwood's mouth went dry as Vash accepted his whole hand with a throaty moan.
"Oh god...Nico that's good, that's so good...make me feel... keep me full..."
"Yeah?" Wolfwood asked, in a breath, but he didn't really need any further confirmation, not with Vash clenching around his fist in a rippling wave, sucking at his wrist to draw him further inside. "Is that what you need, darlin'?" Slowly he unfolded his fingers, remembering that he was supposed to be checking for any stragglers, and in the process dragged his fingers in such a way that Vash quivered like a leaf in a high wind. The sound of his metal fingers ripping through the sheet was audible over the wet sound of his orgasm. Wolfwood was drenched to the middle of his forearm.
"Jesus, you are on a hair trigger," Wolfwood said, as if his own cock wasn't weeping in desperation to cause Vash's next one.
For a second all Vash could manage was broken syllables, catching in his throat in time to the hot pulse around Wolfwood's wrist. Wolfwood thought that if one more drop of blood detoured from his brain to his cock, he'd be a dead man. Luckily, Vash managed to convince some to go in reverse. "Careful," he said, when he could. "Don't--don't hit my gate."
Wolfwood's hand stilled. "Your... gate. You mean that thing you do with the--"
"Hnnnngk!!" Vash's eyes rolled up. Wolfwood's hand had jerked reflexively to make a gesture as he spoke, and it very nearly made Vash black out in ecstacy.
"Sorry. Your... your dimensional--"
"Where," Vash gasped, turning his head so he could look at Wolfwood, "do you think these damn eggs are coming from? I'm not carrying a clutch, I'm not a chicken, I'm just the entry point for the--nnghkkaah!"
Wolfwood had touched the gate.
It felt like nothing, except perhaps a cool, tingling open-ness in the midst of Vash's rapidly tightening heat. All Wolfwood knew was that the second he hit it, Vash came so hard he was sobbing and he clenched around Wolfwood with a beartrap grip. His clit bloomed into a thick, pointed cock, like the secret heart of some blushing succulent, and spurted gleaming strands of cum over Wolfwood's face before subsiding into a human-looking clit again, if one that was still twitching, along with the rest of Vash.
"Are you okay?" Wolfwood rasped, his eyes starting to burn. He hadn't blinked in a while.
Vash managed a nod. His eyelashes were spiked and sparkling with tears. "Just maybe--back it up just a lil' for me..."
"Yeah yeah sure," Wolfwood said, trying to sound more reassuring than he felt.. "Anyway, if they're coming from your... uh. gate, you've got them all out." He eased his hand out, wiped his face with it without thinking, and laughed unsteadily at the mess as he reached for one of the towels.
"Should be all for now," Vash breathed, and scrubbed his own face on the bed before falling over. "...Thanks."
"Is that all of them, then?"
Vash shook his head. "Usually happens off and on all night. One time it went on for two days, thought I'd die. Heh."
"I need a cigarette," Wolfwood confessed, pulling one from his discarded shirt pocket and shakily lighting it one-handed. His own thighs were sticky; the sight of what Vash had done had finished him off as deftly as any hand.
"So it sounds like you've been through this before," he said, once he'd gotten enough nicotine in him to know his ass from his elbow, and Vash had rolled over onto his back and asked for a drag with a familiar gesture.
"Not a lot," Vash said, breathing out smoke and passing it back. "Maybe every five or so years? I haven't found a pattern. I don't know what causes it. I don't even think other plants reproduce like this, so it's probably just me."
"Maybe all plants do it," Wolfwood said, smoking harder as though it would help ease the forlorn note in Vash's voice. "Y'know. In the wild." For a minute he thought Vash was going to argue about the terminology, but Vash just stared thoughtfully at the ceiling, too tired to try and close his splayed legs.
"Maybe. There's a lot I don't know," he admitted.
"Makes two of us," Wolfwood muttered around his cigarette.
"I think some--oough." Vash went pale, then flushed, in quick succession, and pressed a hand to his belly. "Sorry Wolfwood I think we'll have to continue this later," he gasped, in one breath.
Wolfwood flicked his cigarette out the window, wondering if he was ever going to manage to finish one, and scrambled to get back into position. He hoped he had enough cigarettes. He got the feeling they were in for a long night.
"Wanna fuck me?" Vash said it easily, sleepily. It was two a.m., they were between bouts, the egg basket was half-full, and Vash was riding high on three bottles of whiskey and plant hormones whose names Wolfwood could neither spell nor pronounce, even if he knew what they were. Over the evening Vash's moods had cycled from introspective to fatigued to cranky with roulette speed, but this time, apparently, the marble had landed squarely in the slutty compartment.
Wolfwood's eyes widened as Vash lay back into the pillows and slid his hands down his flat belly, between his thighs, and spread them in offering. His pussy opened like a nectar-heavy blossom, a blushing pink one dusted with gold hair at the edges, and a deeper, shadowy rose at the heart. Wolfwood forgot to breathe. His mouth ached to caress those honeyed folds, so swollen and loose right now. He wanted to slip his tongue in as far as it could go, and lap that sweetness down into his throat like holy water. It was an effort to look away.
"Are you sure that's a good idea right n--"
"Niiicooo~" Vash's voice was teasing, but there was something unrelenting and commanding in it. He was going to get what he wanted, and they both knew it. But he liked to ask, and Wolfwood liked to give, even if both of them could only do so in times like this. Flirt a little. Tease. A small invisible safety in a decidedly unsafe world.
Vash made a slight motion of his fingers and lifted his hips. "I know you want to. Your cock sure does."
"Leave him out of this," Wolfwood said, but he could no longer keep his eyes off Vash, spreading himself with such shamelessness that it bordered on innocence. He was so perfectly ready. As Wolfwood watched the display in front of him, a gleaming jewel of liquid swelled in Vash's pussy and rolled down to pool in the tight divot of his asshole, like a diamond. Wolfwood swallowed hard. Jesus, of course he wanted to fuck him. He wanted to ruin him, and not to pretend it was just to make what Vash was going though easier. He wanted it for himself, eggs be damned.
Vash's eyes were on Wolfwood's face, watching the emotions shift over it like faint clouds through the sky. With one deft mechanical fingertip he stroked the slickness over his asshole, and then into it, with a little cry of pleasure as he fingered himself. "C'ourse, if you don't want my pussy you can always--"
Wolfwood did not need to answer, his cock was jutting and rigid to the point of pain, and Vash saying "pussy" like a flirtatious barmaid was the last straw. He pulled Vash into his lap and onto it, taking him by the hips as he thrust upward into that blissful heat. They intertwined with ridiculous ease, as Vash ground down onto the thick cock impaling him as though trying to trigger his gate again.
"Fuck, yes." Vash rolled his hips gratefully, playfulness gone in exchange for honest gratitude, hands gripping Wolfwood's shoulders hard enough to bruise. "Want something normal for just a--" he broke off, biting his lip as Wolfwood shifted just so inside him.
It had never occurred to Wolfwood before then, but in that moment he realized how desperately Vash wanted to be human. The things his body did were only marginally less strange to Vash than they were to Wolfwood, and for Vash, every new thing he had to explain or apologize for only alienated him from those he loved, made him painfully aware of his otherness. He wanted to be accepted so much he could taste it, but his own body saw fit to tell him otherwise at every turn, drawing a stark line between Vash and all his dearest friends.
Normal. The word broke Wolfwood's heart.
"Listen," he said roughly, as if Vash could do anything but with Wolfwood's mouth against his ear and Wolfwood filling him up. "You are normal. You're a perfectly normal plant, there's nothing weird about you, there's only endless ignorance, and I'm sorry, Tongari. I'm sorry if I ever made you feel--"
"Stop," Vash said, his tear-wet face down in Wolfwood's shoulder, "God, Wolfwood, why're you making a man cry just because he needs to lay some fukken eggs..."
"Don't feel any in there right now," Wolfwood said with a hungry smile, lifting his hips for emphasis. "A'course, I might need your help to get way up in there..." The motions he made and the answering noises from Vash, however, proved that he didn't need any help with anything. Vash kissed his gratitude, wrapped his legs around Wolfwood's waist, and ground down onto him with open pleasure.
"Gate's shut for now," he gasped, and licked a drop of sweat from Wolfwood's temple. "So the pulpit's all yours, padre." Vash rolled them both back onto the bed, with Wolfwood on top of him and still inside. "So why don't you give me some of that old-time religion."
"I better hear you say hallelujah, then." Wolfwood withdrew only for the pleasure of going back in again, his cock trailing a glistening streamer from Vash's open and hungry pussy. Wolfwood spread him with two fingers, watching Vash's hole clench needily on air, and his cock jumped in response. "Cos you're wet enough to be a baptistry," he said, and thrust in between his fingers before slipping them into Vash alongside his cock.
Vash came up off the bed in a taut arc around the unexpected fullness, urging Wolfwood on as the minister fucked him with the raw urgency of a poor man in a whorehouse.
"Do you gotta have an open gate for that trick?" Wolfwood stroked Vash's slick, scar-dappled belly with his free hand, and pressed his thumb and forefinger in a hard, hot circle around Vash's clit. "Never saw your cock look like that before."
"It's.. cos my..." Vash was struggling for words, hands behind his knees and Wolfwood railing him, the wet sounds of his thrusts and his rough breathing the only sermon Vash wanted to hear. "Ah--! It's not... doesn't look--"
"Don't explain how it looks," Wolfwood thrust in deep and stayed, his eyes hot on the place where their bodies joined. "Just show me."
Vash bit his lip, clamped himself tight around Wolfwood inside him, and did. His cock bloomed more slowly this time and Wolfwood felt it push between his fingers, thick and hot and slippery, unbearably beautiful. The rosy head was delicately pointed, velvety as a violet's throat. It was absolutely not human, but there was no mistaking what it was, and what it was for. Wolfwood pulled his dripping fingers from Vash's pussy, and stroked him with them.
"Pretty thing," he breathed. "That wasn't so hard, huh?"
"You asshole, it is so hard," Vash choked out, but he wasn't talking about the difficulty. "I didn't want you to see--"
"What, how your junk actually looks?" Wolfwood started to pump Vash's cock, hips rocking into motion again. "You think I wouldn't like it?"
"No--! I--well, maybe..."
"Think I wouldn't wanna suck it?"
"Ah!"
"Wouldn't want you to jerk it into my mouth?"
"Wolfwood."
"Wouldn't ask you to fuck me with it, ride it over my tits till you come, give it a friendly handjob under a back table in a dark bar, do anything to it, to you, that I would do and have done regardless of how you look, where you came from, or how many feathers or eggs or vines shoot out of you? Do you think it makes a goddamn bit of difference to me, Spikey?"
But Vash, laid bare by the sermon, was coming too hard to answer.
By the fifth round, Vash was starting to show signs of exhaustion. Wolfwood was supporting him, Vash's back to Wolfwood's chest, his legs between Vash's scarred ones to hold him spread. It gave Wolfwood an incredible view, but Vash was groaning as the second egg pushed past the aching lips of his pussy and landed on the towel next to the first. They were both blue.
"C'mon angel," Wolfwood urged, petting the soft blond down between his splayed thighs. "You're doing great."
"I want a drink," Vash said, in annoyance. "And to sleep for fifteen hours, and then wake up and eat a bowl of spaghetti the size of your ass."
"My ass?"
"It's bigger than my--" Vash bit the rest of the sentence in half. His pussy pulsed with a visible spasm, and Wolfwood knew that the insistent pressure of the egg was bearing down hard inside him. A thick rope of slick came out of him, but the egg did not, half emerging and then remaining in Vash's straining body. Wolfwood could not get purchase on the slippery curve to pull it out, and he worried that any pressure would rupture the shell. Vash hung wheezing with effort from Wolfwood's arms, and for the first time Wolfwood felt a flicker of genuine worry.
"Easy, Spikey. We'll get this out of--"
"You can't pull it," Vash said, and he took Wolfwood's wrist in his shaking fingers and guided it lower. "You have to push."
Wolfwood understood immediately. Vash's asshole was as slick as the rest of him, but it was dizzyingly tight. Wolfwood pushed two fingers in, feeling the shape of the egg through the wall of muscle between them, and rolled his fingers down with an instinctive motion. The egg slipped out of Vash with a plop.
"Ah." Wolfwood said. He was hesitant to take his fingers out, especially with the noises Vash was making. He was right to do so; three smaller eggs followed, one of each shade. They wouldn't have given him trouble at the start, but by now Vash was glad for the extra push. A few more followed, none of them very big, and at last Vash went limp.
"S'all," he gasped. "It's done."
"You sure?"
Vash could only nod, holding onto Wolfwood like a blind kitten, his breathing slowing into relieved sobs.
"Okay. S'okay." Wolfwood put the final eggs with the rest, and wrapped Vash up in the last dry towel. "Good job, darlin."
Vash shuddered, and let Wolfwood rock him gently in his arms. He took a furtive glance at his watch. Nine hours they'd been at it. No wonder Vash was crying with relief. Wolfwood was about to join him.
"Thank you," Vash was saying, into Wolfwood's throat, over and over again until it was obvious even he wasn't aware of what he was saying. "Thank you, Nico, thank you, I couldn't've--"
"Enough of that," Wolfwood said, and petted Vash's hair with one hand. "C'mon. Get some sleep and we'll talk about it in the morning."
"No we won't," Vash said.
"No, we won't," Wolfwood agreed, and they both laughed weakly, and held on to each other, until the world steadied around them.
"Shouldn't we do something about your. Um." Wolfwood asked, nodding at the eggs. There were a good two or three dozen in the basket, pretty as anything.
"Oh, don't worry about them." Vash yawned, showing his slightly too-sharp teeth. "They'll be gone in the morning. They always are." He fluttered his shaky fingertips in the air. "Dry up like little empty paper husks and then pffapph into dust at a touch."
"So you don't even know what's in them?"
"Just egg stuff. I've broken them before. Yolk matches the shell, with kind of an iridescent sparkly white. It dissipates almost instantly. Can't sustain itself in this dimension's atmosphere, I guess. Must be looking for some suitable environment."
"That is so w--" Wolfwood began. Vash looked up at him. "--onderful that we don't have to worry about finding homes for them all?" he finished, in a desperate save. Vash rolled his eyes and put his head back down on Wolfwood's chest.
"Let me sleep, Nico."
"Have you ever tried to ea--"
"I SAID LET ME SLEEP, WOLFWOOD."
"Okay, okay okay."
Wolfwood had only been dozing a few minutes when he was startled awake, along with Vash, by the most terrifying sound he'd ever heard.
An eggshell cracked.
"What." Wolfwood wasn't sure if it was himself or Vash that said it, as they lay perfectly still, eyes wide in the dark, clinging to each other.
"Like? I said?" Vash did not sound as confident as Wolfwood would have liked. "They just break up when they--"
crik! Crack! Crickcracksnapcrunchcrack!
"Spikey. Are those eggs hatching."
crak!
"No?" Vash said, in desperate hope. But another, new series of sounds came to prove him wrong.
Va!
Woo?
Na.
"Oh hell no," Wolfwood said, and stood up, shoving Vash off his lap as he went. The eggs had hatched. The end of the bed was swarming with small, round, colorful, cute... somethings. Queasily familiar somethings.
They did not look exactly like their full-size versions, as besides their softness they had an altogether different look to them, but there was no mistaking who they were.
"They're wearing little clothes." Wolfwood's voice was flinty with disbelief. "How they are wearing little clothes, Tongari." The Vashes were all in some kind of red parka with a hood that kept falling over their faces, as if to be a cute as possible. Nai wore some kind of body stocking and a shimmery blanket, and the Nicos had, in Wolfwood's opinion, a very sloppy suit and some really stupid-looking shoes.
"Don't ask me everything!" Vash was sounding a little panicky for the first time that night. He was trying to scoop up all the Vashes, but they slipped between his fingers like water balloons and bounced onto the floor, making delighted little va! va! sounds. Some climbed back up Vash's leg to do it again. A Nico did a cannonball into the crowd, and a few Vashes popped up signs with scores on them. Nai held up a negative ten. "Half of them look like you, you know! Take some responsibility!"
"Responsi--" Wolfwood took out a cigarette and immediately threw it down, unable to even smoke in these conditions. The Nicos went into an immediate dogpile to fight over it. "Listen, you--you noodle, I'll have you know I have no intentions of being a father!"
Vash had the frantic look of a man rapidly losing an already tenuous grip on his sanity. "Then maybe you shouldn't have fucked me so hard, Padre!"
Wolfwood clapped his hands over the ears of the nearest chibi. "Watch your goddamn language in front of the kids! And I'm not responsible for that." He flung an accusatory finger at the one tiny Millions Knives. Well, more like a single knife, by the size of him.
"Well, this never happened before you were involved!" Vash shot back, and reached for the basket to try and scoop the chibis back into it.
Meanwhile, two of the Vashes bumped gently into each other and stuck, like soap bubbles, and with a little plip suddenly there was only one, slightly larger Vash. It burped and fell over, tiny feet waving. Three Wolfwoods came over to help, but were useless until they popped into one who was big enough. The lone Nai watched this all with cold, adorable eyes, and crept ominously towards any Vashes who had been foolish enough to wander off into dark corners. He returned by himself, slightly larger and looking pleased with himself.
"I'm dreaming," Vash was muttering, grabbing the Nai and yoinking him back before he could absorb any more.
"You're not dreaming you're having a nightmare and I absolutely did not agree to be in it," Wolfwood retorted. "So wake up already. Or wake me up. Do something."
"I think I've done enough tonight, Nicholas!"
Before long there were only three of them left, a kitten-sized Vash and Wolfwood, and a smaller, surly-looking Nai, about the size of a guinea pig. They seemed to be done absorbing each other, but if the Vash got too far out of Nai's sight he sprouted vines no sharper than plastic cutlery and started hissing violently, like a tea kettle.
"Well," Vash said, with desperate optimism, "At least there's only three of them, now?"
"How are you going to explain this to the girls?" Wolfwood asked, repeatedly taking his cigarette away from the remaining Nico, who would immediately bite him and then go back for it as soon as Wolfwood was distracted.
"I'm sorry," Vash said, with the tone of a man who has given up on trying to make sense of his life, "But I swore off explaining things as a new year's resolution eight years ago and I'd hate to break it now."
"What kind of chicken--"
"HEY."
Wolfwood growled in outright frustration. "NO I'm not CALLIN' you a chicken because of the eggs I'm calling you a coward now you better come up with some way of--of. Of um. Oh." Wolfwood simply stopped talking. The tiny Vash had clambered up into his hand, turned around three times like a puppy, and then fallen asleep clinging on to his thumb. "Oh," he said again, more softly, because he hadn't thought of anything else.
Nai had likewise tucked himself against Vash's neck, while the little Nico had curled up into a nest into his hair, and each of them clearly thought he had gotten the best in the bargain. Vash and Wolfwood looked at them, and then at each other, and carefully sat down again.
"I think they've got the right idea," Vash said, with a yawn, and settled down against Wolfwood's side--slowly--so as not to disturb his drowsing passengers.
"You still haven--" Wolfwood began, in a stage whisper, but both the larger and the smaller Vashes were snoring in tandem, and he didn't have the heart to continue. Exhaustion crashed over him like a shoddily-constructed brick wall, and his last thought was that maybe this would all make sense in the morning.
Wolfwood woke up to the unmistakable smell of breakfast in the making. He rubbed his unshaven face sleepily into the pillow and muttered something about omelets before the events of the previous night returned to him, and he shot bolt upright in the empty bed. Vash was gone. The basket and towels were gone. There was no trace of the eggs or the things that had been in them, and the room was in no more disarray than that of any other boarding-house they'd fucked in. Downstairs he could hear Vash chattering to the girls about bacon and coffee, and the panic in Wolfwood's bones melted out of him like tallow.
Of course it had been a dream. What the fuck did he think it had been? He blamed it on the bad whiskey, the long hours of travel, the alignment of the planets, childhood trauma, and on anything that would stand still long enough to be blamed, and then he showered and dressed and went downstairs.
Milly was presiding over a giant pan of scrambled eggs in the kitchen, Meryl was haranguing Vash about the extent of the damages from his last escapade, and Vash, unmoved, was mowing through a stack of toast. It was so normal he could have wept.
Well. Except. The little things had been kinda cute. In a terrifying way. And Vash had been--
Vash met his eyes over his coffee cup, an in that instant, Wolfwood knew. "Oh," he said. "Jesus."
"Good morning, Mr. Priest!" Milly said, bubbling up between them with utter disregard for the turn in the atmosphere. "Would you like some eggs?"
"I'm good on eggs," Wolfwood said, from three feet to the left of himself, and sat down in the nearest chair while Vash choked quietly in his coffee.
"Aww, but I made so many, and Mr. Vash didn't want any either..."
"You always make too many, Milly," Meryl said, while Wolfwood lit up a cigarette, staring into the air, and groped around on the table for a coffee cup. Vash pushed one towards his hand.
"Where are they?"
Vash's coat made a muffled va? and Wolfwood closed his eyes, in prayer or surrender.
"I thought we could--" Vash began, but Wolfwood held up a hand to silence him.
"I am going," he said, "to smoke this cigarette. And then I am going to smoke another cigarette, and then god willing I am going to smoke one more, and we are never going to talk about this again."
"Bu--"
"Three. Cigarettes. Tongari."
"Oh well," Milly said, somewhere in another timeline that made sense. "I guess I'll eat them."
"I guess you will," Meryl said, from the newspaper crossword.
"Knew I should have made an omelet," Milly said, and something in Vash's coat made a soft woo in agreement.
~o~