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It had been a good day. A good week; a quiet week, calm and peaceful. There had been no gunfights. No fists raised against him. No yelling, even, which was a stunning change of pace. And the local bar in this town had a piano - after he'd given his sister a once-over, left her floating cool and blue in her tank up the hill, the proprietor had been happy to let him plink away on it. He hadn’t even had to pay for room and board.
Eventually, he would have to move on. Soon, likely - because eventually, someone would start to ask questions. They always did. His sleeplessness; his lack of appetite. He could hide it for a time, but his pale skin already stuck out in this sunbaked world, and the scrutiny that drew never led to anything good. So. He'd have to leave; and he preferred to do so under his own power, before it came to threats.
He still wasn't looking forward to it.
But for now.... he sat at the piano as he’d been bade and tooled around, tickling the keys with his fingertips for an audience of one. Tommy had shooed the last of the patrons out almost an hour ago with a good grace he found admirable; they'd moved around the room together, setting chairs seat-down on the tables so the bar was a forest of legs pointed towards the ceiling. Then he'd been shooed himself, straight back to the piano.
"Don't need your help for this, kiddo," the man had said. "You just keep me entertained, how 'bout that? Get yourself a drink.”
So he had.
As a child, he hadn't understood the utility of alcohol. Why consume a poison? What was the point? Especially since his metabolism, recognizing it for what it was, processed it too quickly to feel any effect. With time - with necessity - he'd learned to rein himself in. To let drink blur the edges of his mind so that the empty space at his side was nothing more than a distant ache, and the song at the edge of his mind, a call-and-response perpetually waiting for his answer, went silent.
The glass on top of the music shelf sat sweating silently on its coaster. He'd drained it twice already, and both times, Tommy had swept past and refilled it. Who was he to decline such generosity?
So his fingers were numb where they played over the keys. His nose, too; his cheeks were warm, his lashes heavy. This was the closest he could come to sleepy, as he'd heard it described. He could have folded his arms over the keys and put his head down. Not slept, of course, but he could have pretended, and that was significant enough.
He was - not happy. No. Content, perhaps. If this was all the suffering he ever experienced in his life, this purgatorial unfulfillment, maybe he could survive after all. Maybe his cowardice could be forgiven.
The jingle of the bell above the door didn't register as a cause for alarm at first. He was pleasantly distant from it all, focused on the ivory under his fingers and the song he was unspooling for himself, a familiar tune he'd once played piano four hands long, long ago.
Tommy didn't seem bothered, either. The slush of the mop across the tile didn't so much as slow as he said, "Hey, buddy. Sorry, bar's closed. You're gonna have to - "
There was a quiet pop - which wasn't really a pop, exactly. It was a sucking, split-second intake, a sharp gulp of air rushing into a void, and it was followed by a meaty thud and the clatter of the mop hitting the ground. Then, silence.
It was... familiar.
The warmth of the alcohol in his stomach soured. His blood curdled into frigid sludge. Frozen over the piano, pinned like a butterfly on display, he lifted his eyes to the sheet music on the stand for the first time that night - and saw nothing. The notes blurred into a haze.
"Don't stop," the newcomer said, unbothered, like the body before him meant nothing. That voice was familiar, too. Agonizingly, unfortunately so.
But he did as he was so bid and picked the song up from where he'd left off.
No amount of booze could have dulled him to the soft tap of soles on the tile as the man rounded the bar. Every sound he made cracked loud as a gunshot in his ears, drowning out the piano and his pulse thundering in his ears. A creak as he leaned his weight against the back bar. The clink of glass as he selected a bottle from the shelf. Something high up, probably. A rustle of fabric, a grunt, the thump of his boots as the man chose the fastest route back and vaulted over the bar rather than walk around again. More footsteps, quiet as a predator's, nearing the dais.
The bottle tapped against his left shoulder. Even through his sleeve, the glass was cool.
"Budge up, Nai," Vash said.
Nai obliged. Reflexively, he slid to the right, and his brother dropped onto the seat next to him with a rattling thump. His thigh pressed against Nai’s on the narrow bench, knee to hip. Nai couldn't look; couldn't drag his eyes away from the keys; couldn't think, hazy with drink and adrenaline and dry-mouthed fear. Unbothered, Vash reached for the dripping glass atop the piano and drained the last of the alcohol in a single swig, his throat bared in a brief flash of warm skin. The ice clicked against his teeth.
An image burst in his mind - shining steel slicing through that delicate column of muscle. Blood pouring thick and fast from a gaping maw across Vash's long, elegant neck, like a bloody grin stretching ear to ear.
He didn't move. Under his skin, the metal of his body laid dormant. Vash sighed and wiped his mouth on the back of his thumb.
There was a pendant around his neck. Taken - given, gifted; stolen; it didn't matter - long ago, it hung on a fine silver chain, the flawless planes of the blade throwing the low light back in brilliant shards where it rested against Vash’s chest.
Flesh of his flesh.
His fingers were shaking, but Nai kept playing, reaching across Vash's lap for the keys.
"Hi," Vash said. The toe of his boot snuck up the inside of Nai’s ankle. His foot twisted behind Nai's to pet up his pant leg in a gentle caress. Nai didn't shiver or stall or jump, didn't betray any of the twitchiness writhing beneath his skin, but it was a near thing, and when he said nothing in reply - because his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth and he couldn't, couldn't, get it unstuck - Vash sighed. In the periphery of his vision, Nai watched him pop the cork on the bottle with his thumb and pour himself a drink. Sloppy work - the liquor splashed off the ice onto his hand; he lifted the glass to lick the drops off his scarred knuckles.
The keys slipped under his fingers. The chord was discordant; jarring. Sloppy, sloppy work.
"You don't have to shake like that," Vash laughed. He set the open bottle on top of the piano. The cork was gone, off to some distant corner under a table somewhere. It didn't matter. They'd finish the bottle, probably; and then Vash would grow tired of toying with him and take him upstairs. And if he didn't - if Nai failed - who would care? It would be the smallest of this town's losses. Already, Tommy was cooling on the floor behind them. The scent of blood, as sharp and metallic as the manifestation of his blades, hung thick under the tang of whiskey.
Golden lashes lowered, Vash said, “I'm not going to hurt you.”
If only that were the only reason to be afraid.
"Vash," Nai started. The keys were a blur under his fingers. When had he blinked last? He didn't dare. Vash's approving palm came to rest on his thigh, and stray droplets of whiskey soaked into his pants. The glass was in Vash’s other hand now - Nai watched him take a sip out of the corner of his eye. Could he stop playing? "What," he tried, had to stop to lick his dry lips before continuing, "What are you doing here?"
Vash laughed. It was an open and honest sound, so sweetly charming that his heart throbbed in the hollow of his ribcage. "Nai," he said, drawing it out into a playful drawl. He squeezed Nai's thigh. "I need a reason to visit my big brother?"
The golden fluff of Vash's hair tickled his cheek as his head settled on Nai's shoulder, and the blade he wore swung free. In the space between their bodies, it spun in a slow, elegant twirl, throwing back glints of light from its razor-sharp edge.
At this angle, with Vash’s face tipped towards the piano, all Nai could see was the point of his nose. His fingertips dug into Nai's thigh, and his palm was a possessive weight pinning him to the bench, but there was tenderness in his voice when he said, "I missed you, y’know."
With Nai's fingers frozen over the keys, the room was silent except for the entwined song of their bodies. The ice in their glass settled with a tiny clink.
If he moved, he thought, he'd betray himself.
Finally, Vash shifted beside him. "Didn't you miss me?" He asked. The low, soft resonance of his voice was no different from the blade hanging from his neck - a potentiality.
"I - " Nai sucked in a breath. There was no sense in lying. "I... did. I did, Vash. Every day. But you..."
"Mmm?" Vash's nose brushed against his neck.
"You... didn't have to kill him."
"I know." Lips grazed his neck, petal-soft. The contact sent goosebumps racing down his arms, and he shivered when Vash breathed, "But I wanted to. I wanted you to myself."
Stiffly, fingers trembling on the keys, Nai said, "I have a room."
"I know," Vash said again. His palm slid up Nai's thigh with unhurried ease, higher and higher. Every inch was torturous.
"Vash," Nai gasped. This - this was -
“Nai,” Vash cooed back. A rough edge on his nail caught at the inseam of his pants, which he was so idly fiddling with. “Wanna play with me?”
“I - ah… “
The flush he felt rising in his cheeks wasn't only from the alcohol, or even arousal. Behind them, Tommy lay silent as the grave yet undug. Whatever blood had spilled from him - a mess, what a mess, all over his clean floors - would be congealing.
What had Vash taken? His head? His heart? His brother was eerily precise with the application of his gate. It still wasn't enough to slow the southward rush of his own blood when Vash trailed his fingertips down to his knee, then back up, denim vibrating under the rasp of his nails.
There was a body on the floor behind them, and he was too craven even to turn his head and bear witness to what his brother had done, too weak to push him away. He was pathetic. At the first touch of Vash's hand, his will crumbled. His beautiful, blood-soaked brother, with his sky-blue eyes and his spun-gold hair, his manic laughter and the hatred in his heart -
There was nothing Nai wouldn't forgive him, it seemed. No sin his brother could commit that would sever the ties binding Nai to him. This was all it took: Vash's fingers caressing the inside of his thigh, his cheek upon his shoulder. Desire bloomed low in his belly, painful and sweet, a shameful blossom unfurling under the mildest of his brother's ministrations.
“Well? C'mon, you're so quiet tonight,” Vash whined. He lifted his head, leaving Nai's shoulder cold, and took another drink, half draining the glass in one go.
In reproach, he said, “Vash,” and his brother huffed.
“Relax, Nai. It won't kill me,” Vash said. “Won’t kill you, either. Here.” He shoved the glass against Nai's chest. “Drink.”
The glass was cool in his hand when he took it, a stark contrast to his brother's warm fingers. Under Vash's watchful eyes, he took a robotic gulp. Then - because the whiskey burned all the way down, because it hurt, because his brother's blue eyes were like broken shards of glass reflecting the pitiless sky back at him and he needed to dull those sharp edges - he took another. Head tipped back, he drained the rest of the glass and handed it back. While he reeled, swallowing against the fire clawing up the back of his throat, Vash refilled it and set it on its coaster again, as if anyone would care about water rings on the faux wood finish.
A smile played over his pretty mouth. Nai wanted to kiss him so badly it set his heart throbbing.
“So. Wanna play with me?” Vash asked again.
“Uh…” Nai couldn't look at him, suddenly.
“Piano, Nai. Do you want to play the piano with me?” Vash tapped the keys with his left hand, plinking out a simple tune, and glanced at him. There was something vulnerable about it, a tenderness in the drift of his lashes, how his gaze flicked back to the keys the moment Nai caught his eye. “It’s been a while. I don't always come to see you just because I want… you know. I miss you, Nai.”
Rich coming from a man whose other hand once again lingered inches from the apex of his thighs. But he couldn't fight this. He wasn't strong enough.
He said, “I miss you, too, Vash,” and put his fingers back to the keys.
He meant it, too. God forgive him, but he meant it. The moons rose every night, and he watched them cross overhead and dreamt of his brother. As the stars faded into the dawn, he ached with it, this hollow in his chest, the empty space at his side. What was a body on the floor? A crimson tank, frothing with blood? His brother sighed, and Nai’s heart cracked open.
How could he deny him anything?
He'd been playing their song earlier anyway. Falling back into it was easy, and easier still was yielding Vash's part. His brother set his hands on the keys, and it was as if they'd never been parted. If only this was all there was - a piano, a bottle of whiskey, and Vash, that smile wide on his handsome face.
The night wore on as they played. Vash laughed, teased, poked and prodded, laid his warm hands on Nai. The bottle dwindled to scant drops of liquor. The ice melted until Vash could pop it in his mouth whole, and the kiss he granted Nai afterwards was cool, spiced with whiskey and his own innate zing, that ever-present acid-grin tingle on his tongue. One kiss became two, became three, became Vash’s hand in his hair and his own hand in the small of Vash's back, their breath heavy between them.
“Okay,” Vash said, and then laughed. “Hey, Nai?”
“Mmm?” Nai sought another kiss, but Vash turned his head and it landed on his cheek, chaste but for the spit it smeared across his jaw. The whiskey had left him pleasantly fuzzy; all that mattered was that Vash kissed him again. It was vital - a necessity. Clutching Vash close, he tried again for a kiss, and this time, Vash yielded to him.
“Ah - Nai,” Vash gasped when Nai let him break away. “Hey - ” His hand wormed between them and this time, he skipped the teasing in favor of palming the heat burgeoning between Nai’s thighs. Nai's hips jerked up into the touch. “Mmm, yeah. Ha. Nai…” Vash's eyes were so dark; night-dark, lust-touched, deep and hot, little portals to his own private hell. They crinkled when he grinned. “Wanna play with me?”
“Ugh,” Nai groaned, but Vash was laughing in his arms.
“No, really.” Disentangling himself, Vash stood - wobbled, catching at Nai's shoulder to steady himself - and took Nai's hand to pull him to his feet. “Let’s go upstairs, okay?”
“Ah - ” Nai stood where he'd been placed as Vash stepped away, stumbling off the low dais where the piano sat. “Upstairs… yes.”
He couldn't look to where the dead human lay. The first signs of stiffness would be setting in. His limbs would be frozen any which way they'd fallen, scattered like a bundle of carelessly dropped twigs.
The man had been kind to him.
“Nai?” Vash called from the foot of the stairs. He'd lifted the rope barring entrance and left it to dangle carelessly from its hook on the wall, and he stood with one hand on the bannister. His coat hung from his prosthetic. In the warm, dim light of the overhead lamps, the figure he cut - broad shoulders, thin waist, the sharp planes of his face gleaming - pierced Nai straight through.
“Coming,” Nai said, tongue suddenly clumsy and dry. “I'm coming,” he repeated. Grinding into motion, he stepped down from the platform and crossed over to Vash. Every footfall reverberated up though his foggy head. The room was so quiet. Utterly silent except for his footsteps and Vash's soft breath.
Once he was close enough, Vash turned his back. So trusting; so vulnerable. He started up the stairs, step by step, head bowed to watch his feet in the dark.
Nai could only follow.
Afterwards - of course there was an afterwards. Of course time wouldn't stop with their bodies entwined and their clothes abandoned on the floor. This ephemeral bubble containing the two of them alone would burst. The liquor would burn off. Clarity would return.
Already, from where he lay on the bed staring at Vash, his head was beginning to throb.
Vash sat naked on the sill of the open window, his thighs still streaked with their combined exertions. If he was concerned at all, if the alcohol he'd drank sat heavy in his stomach, he didn't show it. With his tanned flesh bared to moonlight, the damage he'd taken since their last meeting shone in pale, gnarled streaks across his skin. It was hideous; it made him nauseous with a kaleidoscopic whirl of longing and regret.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Vash said quietly. He wasn't looking at Nai; his focus was on something outside, the moons, or the stars, or something off on the far horizon. But he knew - their songs had met and matched, and he could feel the uneasy thrum his scrutiny raised in Vash in return.
Nai said nothing.
“You know who did this to me,” Vash said, voice still low. “You know what they're like.”
There was nothing he could say to that. He knew. And he knew why they did it, how his brother could descend on a town like a typhoon, tearing the foundations of their lives out from under them as he went about enacting his bloody mercy. Nevermind that it was pointless - what good were bullets against a force of nature? The instinct was to fight; to survive. He understood that, too, that drive which his brother had wholly abdicated.
The only thing he didn't understand is why his brother insisted on keeping his scars. He wore them like badges of honor.
“I know they've done worse to you,” Vash murmured. Those blue eyes swung around to pin him in place where he sat against the headboard. “And for less reason.” As Vash stood, slipping off the windowsill and padding over to the bed on bare feet, a shiver passed through him.
“Nothing so terrible,” Nai tried.
Nothing that showed, at least. In fact, he made a point of keeping his pale skin pristine. A scar in the wrong place put humans on edge. He'd paid for it - the streak of black in his hair crept further across his temple every time - but it kept the peace. Freed him to help his sisters. Made him safe, as safe as he could be with his brother's eye on him.
But that must have been the wrong thing to say. Vash laughed. It was a horrible sound, humorless, pitch-black, like the deep well of his pupils in the dark room.
“You think I can't tell?” He asked. His weight tipped the mattress. Nai's knee rolled towards him, and Vash placed a hand on it, warm palm cupping his knee, scarred fingertips on the tender inside. His thumb stroked across his cool flesh, and Nai shivered. “You think,” Vash whispered as he crawled up onto Nai's lap, “I can't feel what's under your skin?”
The fingers of his prosthetic wound through his hair. Nai said nothing, but he let Vash pull his head back, and he yielded to the kiss his brother dropped onto his lips.
“Give me a blade,” Vash murmured against his mouth.
“Vash,” Nai started. His brother yanked on his hair, his scalp prickling with pain, and he gasped.
“Give me a blade,” Vash said again, as cool and smooth as silk, soft as his lips on Nai's cheek.
“Please,” Nai managed, but he was lifting a hand already, the metal crystallizing out of his flesh, and Vash snapped the blade he offered off at the root with the press of his thumb. It shone beautifully in his hand.
“I hate it, you know,” Vash said. Contemplatively, he touched his finger to the blade and watched the resultant bead of blood roll down to his palm. “That you let them hurt you.” The point of the blade traced over Nai’s shoulder. Fine pinpricks of blood welled up along the track. “That you carry them around with you.”
The first cut didn't even hurt. Atom-fine, the blade parted his flesh like water. The only warning of the depth of the cut was blood pouring down his arm in a sudden gout, a hot wave of blackness in the dark room.
“Ah,” Nai gasped. Vash shushed him, then dug his thumb into the gash and pried it open.
That hurt. Nai tensed underneath his brother; sweat broke out across his back, and his palm hovered useless over the point of Vash's hipbone. Push him away, or pull him too close to cut again - or freeze.
He froze.
Vash hummed contemplatively. With a careful stroke, he swept the knife through the cut, deepening it, then tore it open wider with his thumb. Agony bolted down to his fingertips. His head spun.
“Vash,” Nai choked out. He was trembling now. His blood was spotting the sheets, great, fat droplets of it scattering across the linen as it dripped off his chest. “Please - “
“Shh,” Vash whispered. Leaning in, he pressed a kiss to Nai's pale cheek. “Don’t interrupt.”
All he could do was grit his teeth. Tears sprung to his eyes, blurring the room into an indistinct smear of darkness as Vash fished around in the cut with his forefinger. His brother tsked, as if Nai's flesh was simply being uncooperative to this intrusion, and thrust his finger in deep, digging behind something hard. Tendon? Bone? He brought the knife to bear again, and it tapped against his target with a metallic ting Nai felt reverberate through his ribcage.
Head tipped inquisitively, Vash slid the flat of the blade in - the gash gave further, permitting him to stick a finger behind the object and tug. It hurt. Badly. The edges of his vision went dark, and Nai held his breath so as not to aggravate the wound, held himself still so as not to jostle Vash while he dug around inside of him with the sharp point of his own steel.
Finally, the knot came free with a wet, sucking rip of his flesh. Vash nearly unbalanced on his lap, his fingers popping free of the wound, but he made a triumphant sound. Clutched in his hand was a smear of gore.
“There. Give me your hand,” Vash said. It was a moment before Nai could comply; his hands, numb with adrenaline, were lost somewhere in the tangle of sheets around them. When he managed to raise one, Vash set his bloody prize in his cupped, shaking palm.
A bullet. Encrusted with crystallized shards of metal, the point flattened by impact, the shape of it was barely recognizable. Nai boggled at it.
“You heal too fast,” Vash said softly. He did; the wound in his shoulder was already knitting together again, the blood drying into a tacky film on his chest. Fingers cupped under Nai's, Vash curled his hand closed around the bullet. “Hold onto that for a second, okay?”
“What,” Nai managed, “w-what - ”
“There's more.” Vash placed a palm on his chest, smearing more blood between his pecs, and pushed him back against the headboard. The knife shone in his other hand, fit to match the bright gleam in his eyes. There was nothing but warm, syrupy love in his voice when he said, “I want them out.”
Each and every one hurt as badly as the first. Vash worked his way down his frame slowly, prying each foreign body free with devoted precision. Some were in fragments, shrapnel, shattered points; he dug each free individually, holding Nai's flesh open in sticky ribbons while he worked.
“Hmm,” Vash said. The pale crescents of Nai's ribs were bared to him where he sat on Nai's thighs. “Hey - don't scream, okay?”
Choked with tears, Nai pleaded, “Vash,” to no effect. His brother slid a finger into the space he'd opened between his ribs, crooked it around the bone, and yanked back so sharply it snapped with a crack like a gunshot.
It was a near thing, not screaming. The bullet Vash sought was nestled snugly under his lung; he felt the air squeezed out of him as his brother pressed two fingers into the wound. The bone tingled as it crunched back into place and began to mend itself.
So on, so on. His chest; his ribs; the soft give of his belly, the low curve of his hip. Fingers clutched in the bloody sheets, Nai shivered and sweated and cried. The trophies in his fist multiplied. His world narrowed to a new and painful hole, a sharp edge, his brother's golden lashes dotted with blood.
“Okay.” Vash pulled his fingers free of the gaping hole he'd slashed into the inside of Nai's knee and patted his thigh. Taking his wrist, he lifted Nai's hand and tucked the last bullet between his fingers like a precious gift.
Blood dripped off the side of his palm. Dully, Nai stared at his hand, uncomprehending, then unfolded his fingers.
Over a dozen little pieces of metal, bullets and shrapnel and a fragment of rebar, sat on his gory palm. His brother had sliced him open and scraped him clean. He felt appropriately hollow.
“Thank you,” he managed. It was all he could think to say. His tongue felt thick and stupid. His heart thudded weakly in his chest, the frantic panic-flutter of it like a trapped thing beating its wings against the bars of its cage, and his hand shook.
Closing his fingers around the collection again, he let his hand drop into his lap and stared down at the sheets. They were ruined. His blood had pooled underneath him, syrupy where it wasn't sticking the sheets to his skin in tacky contact. What did it matter? Who would care? At the very least, it would serve as cover - he could leave tonight, and the townsfolk would assume he'd been murdered as well. Vash hadn't been gentle, or careful. No human could lose this amount of blood and survive. He could just leave.
No shame. No fear. Fresh tears welled in his eyes.
“What? Come on, crybaby.” Vash caught a tear on the back of a bloody finger and swiped it away. “Didn't even use that much energy. See? Not a single extra strand of black.” He tugged a lock of Nai's short hair.
“I - I'm sorry,” Nai gasped. He clutched at the handful Vash had pried from his flesh.
“I know, Nai,” Vash said softly. Tucking the blade between Nai's knuckles, where it melted easily back into his skin, he freed both hands to cup Nai's face and kissed him deeply. “I know.” Gathering him to his chest, Vash raked a hand through his hair and held him.
“Please - don't kill anyone,” Nai managed.
Vash laughed, so easily, so unreserved that it startled him. Blood on his hands; a sparkle in his eye. His brother was mad.
“Oh,” Vash sighed, once his laughter had died off. “Is that all you care about? Don’t worry. I won't kill her, Nai. I don't have to. She's already dying.”
It wasn't what he'd meant - but he was silent, letting Vash's words sink through his mind.
“She's…”
“You're a pretty good technician,” Vash murmured into his hair. “Bought her a couple of weeks, you know. I was already headed this way when I felt you. I was gonna put her out of her misery. You don't want me to? No,” he sighed again, when Nai stiffened in his arms. “Any life is better to you than no life at all, isn't it? That's why you live like this.”
His brother's arms became a steel cage around him, firm and unyielding. Nai held his handful of bullets and tried not to shiver.
“This would be easier,” Vash said, quiet, ice settling in a glass, sand piling up against the siding in a gentle breeze, “If you would hate me for it.”
“I…” The tears dripping from his eyes, fat droplets of salt falling to Vash's bare chest, welled up eternally from their original wound, that shared crack running through their lives. Tears from him; blood from Vash, always, filling his nose, his lungs, his eyes. Nai let the bullets roll off his palm and wrapped his arms around Vash's waist.
“I can't, Vash,” he sobbed into his brother's neck. “I couldn't. Vash. Please.”
“No.” Vash kissed the top of his head. His fingers streaked gore through his hair. “I can't, Nai. You know that. You know what we are,” he said. His fingers kneaded the muscles of his neck. “We shouldn't exist. None of us. We all should have died a long time ago. We never even should have been born.”
“Vash,” Nai whispered.
“I'm fixing a mistake, Nai,” Vash said. “That’s all. It'll be okay. We'll all be dead, like we should be. Okay? So don't worry. It won't hurt anymore. You won't have to be afraid,” he went on, a devil whispering sweetly in his ear. “You won't have to be in pain. It'll just be you and me, Nai, forever.”
Forever. Nai stared at the curve of Vash's neck, the blood streaked there. His brother was warm, his arms a comforting weight around him and his chin firm on the top of his head.
No fear; no pain. Forever. Tears trickled down the side of his nose.
“Okay, Vash,” Nai whispered. “Okay.”
Vash hummed contentedly above him. “I love you, Nai,” he said, lips against his hair.
“I love you, too, Vash,” Nai choked out. And - because of course it wasn't; it never could be - it wasn't a lie.