#Nicholas d. wolfwood x reader

[jackrabbit-fandom]

Dear authors, you should really stop putting "x reader" in your OC insert fics because it's a self insert of YOUR character and not that of the reader. I understand you want attention on the post, but it's completely misstagging the story and is quite frankly frustrating and annoying. Yeah, some readers may adapt to it, but some absolutely can not. Thank you very much

[rush-the-stars]

Dogfight

pairing: nicholas d. wolfwood x reader, vash the stampede x reader, vashwood x reader

wc: 4k what the actual hell lol

cw: jealousy, mild smut/suggestive content, fighting, blood, biting, marking, possessiveness. the boys are jealous of each other sorta but then get on the same page. minors dni, 18+ only

a/n: this is for an anon that asked me about jealous vashwood and then i spent days working on this and it got too big so i made an Official Fic Post rather than just answering the ask bc im insane and unwell lol this is also probs more 98 vash and wolfwood than stampede! i hope you enjoy!! banner from @/cafekitsune

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The first time they meet you, its through a shower of gunfire. Your wild smile is all that’s left when the smoke clears.

Wolfwood thinks he hasn’t seen anyone so damn beautiful in his entire life—streaked with blood and eyes lit up like a flame, twirling a twin pair of pistols like fucking ribbons.

And Vash thinks maybe he’s in love? And then he shakes his head and tries to clear it, tries to clear you from his vision, and at least the smoke disappears some. And the chaos stills. But you smile all crooked at them, tilting your head a little in greeting and he feels wobbly all over again.

“Happy to save your asses,” you say, “buy me a drink?”

Vash hears wedding bells.

(It’s just church bells tolling in the distance.)

“Happy to—happ—“ Vash trips over all his words.

“Shit, I’ll buy you dinner, too.” Wolfwood says.

Vash looks at him, Wolfwood looks back. And then they’re stumbling over themselves to get up, clambering and clawing and falling over each other and they must look like foolish, scrapping dogs in the dirt at your feet.

You laugh, though, warm and amused.

“Settle down, boys. bar’s still standing—you can both buy me a drink.”

And they’re left to watch you walk away and talk to Meryl, whose shaking her head and rolling her eyes at them. You introduce yourself to her.

And they both scramble after your heels, right on the tails of your skirts.

***

You sleep with Wolfwood first—

He’s surprisingly gentlemanly with you, even if you can feel the desperation and hunger that he tries to keep so far from the surface. He’s all bravado, all honeyed words and little growled praises as he squeezes the fat of your hips.

He gets you so wet it’s almost embarrassing, except that he also makes you come so hard that you forget about it almost immediately. He adores being between your legs, adores tasting and taking—being on his knees for you.

Wolfwood is a worshipful man. Devoted. Adoring. With a little grit and bite when you need it.

He leaves a mark or two. Around your collar bones or neck. One on your hip. He can’t help himself.

He takes good care of you in that brutishly charming way of his—fucks deep and hard, carves his way through you and makes you toss your head back into the pillow and pull at his hair. He loves to please, loves to be told what to do or what you want. Take what you need, pretty girl. He hums to you, groaning when you tell him how good he feels.

Rarely impatient except when you rile him up, Wolfwood makes a good lover. Fun and obedient and affectionate.

You adore him.

***

Wolfwood and Vash get testy with each other.

Tensions are high—Vash is surprisingly sharp with him, in a way that makes you a little wary, treating him like a bit of a ticking time bomb.

Wolfwood doesn’t help. He’s an instigator and if there’s one thing he loves, it’s to get under someone’s skin. Especially someone like Vash, whose usually easy and cheerful and kind.

“Would you leave it?” Vash snaps at Wolfwood, shoving the man’s hand off his shoulder. He bares his teeth a little and in the dim light you see the knife-sharp flash of his pointed canines.

“I was just trying to be friendly,” Wolfwood drawls in a way that indicates he most certainly wasn’t just trying to be friendly.

“Something the matter?” You ask and when Vash’s eyes land on you, he immediately softens. He looks guilty. Hangs his head a little and looks at the ground.

“No,” he says, “sorry—“

But Wolfwood says, “Blondie’s got his panties in a bunch about something and I was just trying to see what was wrong—“

Vash’s eyes flash.

“Nick,” you snap. Short and sharp, like reprimanding a dog.

He looks at you. You look back. Then you jerk your head to tell him to get lost, “take a hike.”

“And who made you the boss?” He snarks.

You level him with a more serious look, hand on your hip, “I’ll find you later.”

“You can’t just order me—“

“I wanna talk to Vash.” You respond firmly, “and you’re being a jackass.”

He stares at you for another long moment. You don’t back down, in fact you tip your chin up a little, meeting his eyes with a flash of authority.

He looks at Vash, who quickly glances away.

He scoffs, “whatever. You’re both a pain in my ass.” But he listens to you and skulks off.

You turn to Vash when he’s out of ear shot, “you okay?” You ask.

Vash can’t look at you. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that—“

“Not your fault. He can be a pest. Walk with me?” You ask and now you hold up the crook of your elbow.

Vash eyes you uncertainly for a moment, before he lets go of a small breath, and siddles up to your side. He loops his arm through yours and you begin to guide him through this little, nowhere town. The sun is setting. The dusk sky is smoky and golden, like a quartz glittering, shadowed and shining.

“You seem—“ You choose your words carefully, “troubled lately.” And then you amend, “more troubled than usual.”

“I’m sorry to worry you but everything’s fine.” Vash shakes his head.

“Vash,” you implore gently, shaking his arm a little. “I can tell something’s bothering you. Won’t you tell me?”

“Ah,” Vash says weakly, “it’s alright.” And he looks ahead, out at the horizon. You follow his gaze. There's nothing out there but the line of land in the distance.

“Thanks for standing up for me tonight but you should—you should go find him. He’ll be waiting for you.”

And then Vash drops your arm and walks away, his head down, a little furrow to his brows. And you watch him go, dumbfounded.

When you return to Wolfwood, he’s waiting for you on the porch of the little inn you're staying at, smoking a cigarette.

“What the hell was that all about?” He gruffs, blowing the smoke from the corner of his mouth.

You don’t answer him at first. You slip into his lap easily. He raises his eyebrows in slight surprise, but immediately adjusts, one hand around your waist, the other holding his cigarette away from you.

“You need to leave him be.” You say, sighing as you sink into his embrace.

He pauses for a moment, looks at you—really looks at you.

Then he says, “he wants you, you know.”

“Is that what this is about? Are you jealous? Is that why you’re pestering him?” You rub your knuckle against his stubbly jaw, pet him a little. He leans into the touch, nudging himself against your hand.

"You like him?" He asks instead.

"Course I like Vash." You hush, fingers moving to card through his hair.

He takes a slow drag from his cigarette before he leans away to blow the smoke away from you. It lingers in the air around him and for a moment, you look at him through the haze. The smell of it reminds you so thoroughly of him nowadays that you almost crave it when its not around.

"No," Wolfwood corrects, "do you like him the way you like me?"

"You think I like you?" You tease, but he doesn't take kindly to that and jostles you in his lap a little and even goes so far as to jerk his head away from your touch.

"Woah, take it easy," you say, realizing he really didn't like that joke, "I was only playin' with you. I'm in your lap, aren't I?"

He softens a little. Lets go of a breath. He squeezes your waist, maybe in apology. To soothe the ache, you lean forward and press a kiss to his jaw, pepper them lightly down his neck.

"You didn't answer the question." He mumbles and you feel more than you see him flick his cigarette down and crush it with the heel of his shoe. He pulls you closer now that his other hand is free, slots you tight against him, and leans back to give you more room at his neck.

"Would you be mad if I said yes?" You murmur, carefully kissing at the pulse in his neck. You hide there.

"If i was?"

"You aren't good at sharing?" You coo, nudging your nose against his jaw, up to catch him in a quick kiss. He nips a little in answer.

"Not usually," he finally says.

"Not even with Vash?" You ask, because you know him better than he'd like to admit. And now you pull away to look at him.

To really look at him.

His eyes flick away, maybe bashfully, "yeah, well—I don't think I'm the one you have to worry about."

"What do you mean?" You ask.

He shrugs a little, "you think cause he puts up the goody-two-shoes act that it makes him good with sharing?" He asks, "why do you think he's gotten so pissed with me lately?"

You hum in acknowledgement. "Have you been rubbing it in?" You ask.

"Not intentionally." He says. And then when you look at him more pointedly, he admits, "not intentionally most of the time."

"Well, we'll see if Vash can share." You finally say and lean again to kiss him.

But in a sudden move, he grabs your chin, forces you still. Forces you to look at him.

"Only Vash, you hear me?" He says. His eyes are dark suns, all encompassing and imploring and fiery, "anyone else and I'll lose it."

You can't tell if it's a warning with the slight waver in his voice or a threat, with the growl behind the end of it. And then you remember scared dogs bite.

"Only Vash." You swear, "only you."

He settles a little, leans back again, and this time, when you kiss him, it's harder. More a claiming than a kiss — more a damning than a passion. He gives it back tenfold.

He litters you in little marks, in his scent, and drops his blazer around your shoulders in the morning. At breakfast, right in front of Vash, he catches you in a sharp, burn of a kiss.

More of a claiming. More of a damning.

***

When you sleep with Vash for the first time, it’s after a near-death experience. You were being reckless. The room is charged.

And Vash kisses you not like it’s the first time, but like it could be the last. He's the heat of a falling star, searing you, devouring you. He's all desperation. All starvation.

You'd thought with how sweet he usually was, that he'd be even more well behaved than Wolfwood, but that is far from the truth. He's a little untamed, untrained and clumsy and ferocious.

He whines as he takes you apart and you think he'd probably take praise well if you could teach him but right now he's just so— raw. So yearning and famished with it all.

You've no choice but to try and give everything you can in hopes of soothing him in some way. Filling the emptiness in him. And even still, you're aching and sore and torn-up after all is said in done.

Vash is bashful and a little remorseful about it come morning.

But you twine your arms around him and kiss him hard in reassurance. In encouragement.

He's passionate and all-encompassing. He's all your world in this moment.

You adore him.

Later, when Wolfwood sees the marks he left on you, he curses.

"Is he a fucking vampire?" He asks, tilting your head to the side to see the dark bruise in the side of your neck. But then he realizes how tender you are still, how aching, and he coos all soft.

Tells you he'll lick the wounds Vash gave you.

Says. I told you it wasn't me you had to worry about.

Vash avoids you and Wolfwood for nearly two days.

On the third, he finally breaks.

And when he does, he bundles you in his red coat after a long day, fists his hands in the collar of it to pull you towards him, and kisses you hard in front of Wolfwood, underneath the dark heavens above. He says he'll be back later.

Your lip throbs from the nip of his teeth.

(When Wolfwood kisses you shortly after, pushing Vash's coat from your shoulders, he soothes the sting with his tongue.)

***

For awhile, all the boys do is fight when they're around each other. It's getting to a point where Meryl is avoiding them at all costs—and you're just short of joining her.

The worst of it is on one of the hottest days in a long time.

Wolfwood says something he shouldn't—asks Vash if he could smell his cologne on you. Asks if he likes it.

It's too far. Usually, they bicker and fight over unrelated, stupid shit.

But that strikes a nerve.

And it's so fast that you don't even catch it, and suddenly Vash has Wolfwood pinned against the wall, hands fisted in the front of his shirt.

You always thought, maybe just on height and weight alone, that Wolfwood was stronger. But looking at Vash now, easily pinning him, you aren't quite sure.

"Oh, you wanna finally fight?" Wolfwood asks, baring his teeth, too.

And really, it's like when dogs fight.

It's fast and vicious. It sounds worse than it is—snarling and growling and wrestling with each other. It's artless. You've seen them both in a fight and this isn't—this isn't that. It's better, maybe, on Wolfwood's end. He's not trying to kill Vash. But maybe it's also worse, more personal, more brutal.

You hear Vash yelp—Wolfwood curses. More fighting.

You yell at them, the way you shout at fighting dogs, grab hold of Wolfwood around the collar and pull hard enough that he stops from his place over Vash, panting.

His mouth is bloody and it drips down onto Vash, his teeth still bared and crimson.

For a moment, they look at each other.

(And Vash thinks wildly, looking up at Wolfwood, sorry about the blood in your mouth. I think I wish it was mine. He tastes blood himself and wonders if it is Wolfwood's. If he really did bite him.

Wolfwood thinks, hit me again. If that's all you'll give me now, I'll take it. Wolfwood looks down at Vash, feels his heaving chest beneath him, and thinks, if I can only have you this close in a fight, I'll take that, too.)

You're cursing them both out, hauling Wolfwood off of him. You're furious and shaking and you're scolding them both.

You're fussing over them both, too, angrily wiping at their mouths and inspecting their wounds.

And they both think, maybe I should pick more fights, to see you like this, too, flustered and livid and worried. Doting. Adoring.

You shake your head at the both of them but—

You adore them.

***

It takes another man sniffing around you for them both to finally get on the same page.

And if it's one thing about Vash and Wolfwood, for all their bickering and differences, they know when to shut up and work together.

The moment another man starts chatting you up at the bar, they both go still and silent.

"You see what I'm seeing?" Wolfwood asks.

"Yeah," Vash says, eyes narrowing behind his glasses as the man manages to make you laugh. He leans all close to you. Vash has a near visceral reaction to jerk up from his seat beside Wolfwood.

Wolfwood grabs his arm.

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin' then?" He asks.

Vash spares him only a glance—his eyes are trained on you and the man at your side. He grimaces. "Probably not. I don't wanna kill him."

Wolfwood barks out a laugh as Vash adds, "but I don't want him here, either."

"You wanna chase him off?" He asks. "Or you want me to be the bad guy?"

Vash swallows.

"She'll get mad at me for being an asshole. She'll be all pleased with you for being so good." He says and there's a dryness to his tone, a certain resignation or—

"Why would you do that?" Vash asks and he finally peels his eyes away long enough to look at Wolfwood.

To really look at him.

He shrugs, "I don't mind being in the dog house."

Vash eyes him.

Wolfwood smiles a little, "and I think she's hot when she's mad."

Vash frowns at that, a little twitch of his lips, almost in a pout. "Besides that—I meant—why would you do that for me?"

Wolfwood looks back over at the man at the bar, whose gotten even closer to you, his shoulder almost brushing yours. You're smiling and playing nice. Wolfwood's hackles rise. He bristles. He finally stands, too.

He never feels this way when he sees you with Vash. He never feels this way on the nights when Vash has you. In fact, the idea of it is—it's—

Kissing you after Vash. Knowing he'd just kissed you. Sinking his teeth into the ridges of marks Vash leaves on you, like he's trying to get his own taste. Or compare his teeth to Vash's. Maybe he growls and snaps at him and bares his teeth the next day, too, but he never feels like this.

Scared and mean and angry and—

"What, are you gonna make me fuckin' say it?" Wolfwood snaps.

"Say what?!"

Wolfwood slugs his arm hard. The flesh one, so he doesn't damn near break his knuckles doing it. And Vash yelps all high and Wolfwood wants to shake him and he also sorta wants to hit him again. And maybe he wants to kiss him stupid, too—

"I don't—" Wolfwood swallows hard, "I don't mind sharing. With you. With only you."

Wolfwood looks at him.

Really looks at him.

And then Vash turns the deepest shade of red.

Wolfwood's face gets hot all over, too. "Oh, Christ, blondie—did you really not know?"

"I don't know what I thought!" Vash says and his voice gets sorta high.

"Well—" Wolfwood shifts, uncharacteristically nervous, "what about—I mean, do you—are you okay sharing...with me?"

"At first, I thought I wasn't." Vash admits, "and I was jealous of—" he swallows, "I was jealous of both of you, if I think about it. You're just—you push my buttons more than she does—so. I took it out on you, mostly."

"Ah," Wolfwood says, "you took it out on her, too. Just in a different way."

Vash cheeks somehow get darker with color and Wolfwood laughs, realizing that he's—it's relief. He feels relieved, finally, as he laughs.

"You're a dumbass." He says to Vash.

And Vash smiles at him, crooked and boyish and stupidly handsome. That smile that Wolfwood has always liked.

Wolfwood then turns his gaze back to you, back to the man at the bar whose leaning in all close. He sees you tip away, adjusting your space. And he says;

"Now let's go get our girl."

The moment Wolfwood comes up behind you, you know there will be trouble unless this man doesn't leave quick — what you aren't expecting, is Vash to come up on the other side of the man. You tilt your head.

You feel a broad hand on your lower back, "he botherin' you?" Wolfwood asks, leaning all into your space.

The man sizes up Wolfwood, weighing his chances still and you can nearly feel Wolfwood stiffen and bristle behind you. He doesn't like being challenged.

"He was just seeing if I wanted a drink."

Vash, on the other side of the man says, "maybe he'd like it if I bought him a drink instead!" And though it's said brightly, it's almost a little too bright.

Vash's eyes gleam like the cold edge of bright moons.

You look between them for a moment as the man says, "alright, what the hell is this? You her boyfriend or something?"

"Or something." Wolfwood agrees casually.

"And whose this guy?" He snarks to Vash, "her other boyfriend?"

"Or something." Vash says, still smiling, and that really pisses the guy off.

"Would you back up?" He snaps and he shoves at Vash enough that he stumbles away a few steps. And before he can do something stupid, you put yourself between Wolfwood and the man.

"Leave him," you say lowly to Wolfwood, whose hackles are raised.

Wolfwood isn't looking at you, he's looking at the man behind you and his eyes are hard and cold and mean looking.

"Nick," you say, "I don't want a bar fight."

"Worried he can't handle me?" The man asks, "no wonder you were letting me chat you up."

Wolfwood jerks a little in your hold and Vash speaks up, laughing a little, "no reason to fight! Wouldn't want to clean you up off the floor."

Well, that does it.

The man swings on Vash, who yelps a little, but easily evades him. When he ducks, the man connects with another person behind Vash.

Damn it all.

The bar breaks out in pandemonium. Wolfwood shoves you beneath him and Vash works on ducking and diving out of the way of the first few swings sent his way. Shouting and glass shattering, raining down from above, makes you curse.

Wolfwood dodges the first punch thrown his way and he shoves you out of the way, before he takes a swing himself. When he connects, it's a nasty punch. Blood erupts.

Food is getting thrown. Alcohol sailing overhead, soaking the fighting crowd and angering them further. The poor bartender is hiding, ducking behind the counter and shivering.

You clamber atop the bar to get a look and—it's a wild crush of people, fighting and wrestling and breaking glass over each other's heads.

You put your fingers to your mouth and whistle—the loud, piercing kind that usually gets everyone's attention. This time, there's so much noise and shouting, that not a soul stops their fighting.

You pull out one of your pistols.

The shot thunders in the bar, makes your ears ring.

Everyone gasps and yells in surprise, instinctively ducking, covering their heads. But they all finally turn to look at you.

"Everyone out!" You shout, "take your fighting elsewhere!"

Grumbles erupt. But you hold up your pistol and shout again, with more force and fire, "out!"

The bar begins to stir, all the patrons dislodging and shifting about, detangling themselves from their fights. They meander in knots of people, twisting out the door slowly.

When Vash and Wolfwood appear again, they look disheveled and Vash's lip is busted. Wolfwood's sunglasses are shattered. You put your hands on your hips as you look down at them.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with you two?" You snap.

Wolfwood reaches up to lift you right off the bar and back onto the ground in front of him. He shrouds you, "nurse our wounds?" He asks.

"You're a pain in the ass. I told you I didn't want a bar fight."

"He didn't throw the first punch, in his defense." Vash speaks up, but he's talking sorta funny because of his lip, which is swelling even now.

You sigh, "let me see."

Vash siddles up to you, a little sheepish, with that puppy-dog look on his face. He bends down a little, so you can get a better look at his face, dipping his head down in a show of submission.

Woflwood, behind you, whistles. "That's a good one, blondie."

"Hurts." Vash says as you carefully inspect it, debating if he'll need stitches or not.

"You gonna kiss it better?" Wolfwood asks.

"Why don't you?" You snark back, "since you two are finally working together it seems."

Vash smiles a little, which makes him wince, which makes you scold him. Wolfwood laughs, cooing a little, before he says, "alright, alright—lets get him patched up."

And you walk out with them at your skirts, hovering around you, dogging your steps. They follow you all the way back into your little room at an inn on the edge of the world.

And they settle in like they both own the damn place.

Wolfwood is tormenting Vash a little, whose whining and coming to your side for aid. But they're both—getting along, at least. And they're both demanding all your attention and taking up space in your room and—

And you adore them. You adore both of them, even with all their damn dogfights.

[triplesilverstar]

Everyone needs an omega to make a trio, and yet you hate being one

Rating: 18+ Minors DNI

Pairing: Wolfwood X F!Reader, Vash X Wolfwood, Vash X F!reader

CW: Smut, Shameless Smut, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Verse, Blow Jobs, First Time Blow Jobs, Vaginal Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Penis In Vagina Sex, Oral Knotting, Knotting, Spitroasting, Creampie, Sex Toys, Condoms, Alternate Universe - Modern

Word count: Roughly 12.5K words

A/N: You were born an Omega, and you hate it. Having been able to hide it thanks to another orphan you grew up with, Nicholas D. Wolfwood, Nico, except now as an adult he's still helping you while trying to deal with keeping his Alpha Vash from meeting you. So what happens when it goes sideways when you try to return Nico's leather jacket to him, only to find Vash at the door of his Beta's apartment instead of Nico?

Oh. Vash is also getting ready to start his rut too. Aren't you a lucky one.

So. Never written something like this before so I tried my hand at it. I hope that you can at least enjoy this crazy smut filled thought all thanks to a friend of mine, a certain person that here goes by the name @awkwardchick87 . Thanks a lot Awks you horny person you.

“Harder Ni-” You let out a long moan as the man behind you increases the tempo of his hips slapping against yours. Your hands grip the pillow under your chest with enough force that the joints of your fingers hurt from the way you’ve stretched the fabric taut. The sound of squelching from your core and the wet slap of Nico fucking you like he plans to breed you has your blood pounding in your ears. The omega part of your brain has you squirming as it floods your system with the hormones from your heat. That’s exactly what it wants, to be bred. Your hatred for that feeling always rears its head after your heat passes.

A feeling that since you were fourteen you’ve hated because it makes you powerless. In a world where your secondary gender has so much sway, being an omega means to a large part of society you exist for one reason: offspring. Sure, not everyone saw omegas like that anymore, but you knew better from experience. 

You had been an orphan, brought up by an organization that looked clean cut yet just under the surface you could see the rot. In your time under their care you had seen five other omegas have their first heat, and five times you saw them adopted within hours after a bidding war by rich old men who wanted an omega regardless of how old they were. You had been certain you were going to be next when you felt the first bubble of heat low in your belly. 

“That hard enough, Darlin?” The deep husk from your savior has your cunt tightening around his length. Another orphan that had caught you stealing some of the suppressants kept for the alphas. An orphan that could have sold you out and instead helped you hide what you were. 

One Nicholas D. Wolfwood. 

Glancing upwards you look in the mirror on your dresser and let out a low whine as you glush another round of fluid. His tanned hide is covered in sweat that glistens in the hair of his chest as it rolls downwards along his well defined muscles, licking your lips as you try to gather your scattered mind to answer him. “Close-” Gasping when the tip of his cock hits your cervix, a noise that has him briefly grinning before closing his eyes. 

Nico is a beta. And is the whole reason that, now in your mid-twenties, you haven’t been claimed by anyone forcefully. A few years older than you, he had been more than willing to keep your secret, even going out with the money from his part-time job to buy you the correct suppressants. Those first few years had been hell until you were eighteen and could go find a place of your own. That first night that you didn’t need to fear being sold off had been freeing. It wasn’t just the drugs he had bought for you either, Nico helped you get your first job, and your first apartment. Nico had, after you turned nineteen, learned you had to have a heat once in a while to let the medication to suppress it work properly so you didn’t turn into a puddle of hormones the second you missed a dose, been the one to help you through each and every one. 

“Good” Grinding his teeth for a moment. “Because I’m soon gonna blow and I need a recovery period.” You let out another whine, this time because the omega part of your brain doesn’t like the sudden empty feeling in your core. Clenching around nothing you arch your body to raise your ass a little higher, as if you could tempt him back inside your slick walls. “Hang on Darlin.” Blinking you watch his motions in the mirror, as he grabs the thick ring that serves as a false knot and slides it down over his condom covered cock. He doesn’t need to be an alpha to put a pup in your belly. 

“Nico!” Moaning this time your voice has a twinge of hoarseness to it, this is far from your first round this heat. “Fill me up! Please!” Tears prick your eyes as you watch him line himself up again, sweeping one of his large palms over the meat of one of your ass cheeks before giving it a slap. 

“Patience Darlin, I’ll give you what you want. A nice big load of cum.” You both know it’s a lie. Arching more into him as he slams forward suddenly and you’re stuffed to the brim with his cock, the base of the toy hitting your entrance. It makes your toes curl, the simulated knot being worked more and more into your body with the snap of his hips. You catch his eye in the mirror as your walls start to flutter, a soft little moan echos around the room as he sends you a wink. His dark locks are plastered to his forehead with the effort he’s put into making you cum several times on his dick while holding off his own orgasm. His control is iron clad, it always has been. “You want my knot?” His voice is strained, no doubt ready to reach his own peak as he whispers it against your ear with both of his hands now planted over yours pulling them away from the pillow. 

“Please Alpha!” You need it, need to feel that length and knot plunging into you freeze as you reach that plateau and fall over it. It’s words you’ve screamed before and Nico has never questioned it. As if he knows your rational mind is no longer the one in charge. 

“Then take it all” Snapping his hips a final time and you shudder as you grip his cock and knot feeling your core flood for a different reason that makes your omega sigh in contentment. Nico takes every precaution to make sure he doesn’t empty his balls inside you, something the omega in you has never liked and delayed the end of your heat. The toy knot took care of that, the reservoir inside of it flooding your walls to simulate your partner spilling himself inside you. 

“Nico” You whisper in the afterglow as your body relaxes, all tension washed away with your orgasm. 

“You alright?” His hands are on your sides as he moves you so you’re both laying on your sides and spooning, his nose pressed into the back of your head as his fingers start to rub gentle circles into areas you both know will have bruises later. 

“Hmmm” You know what he’s really asking as the omega side of your brain has released its hold on any higher level thinking, taking a breath as you take in how your body feels. “The churning in my belly is subsiding.” 

“Good, because my dick is starting to hurt.” You chuckle at the playfulness of his complaint. A rustle and a bit more light appears in your peripheral, Nico has his phone. “This has been the longest one in a while, almost a full twenty-four hours.” 

“I’m starting a new suppressant after this heat, the doctor said I was starting to metalobish the last one too quickly.” Nico had been the one to find you this doctor, most hadn’t wanted to prescribe any of the stronger ones to you. Instead, they had suggested you just find a mate and get to having pups. You were glad for the more progressive alpha who didn’t think you should be made to do something you weren’t ready for.

“On that note, how’s the datin going?” Another normal part of your post heat cooldowns, Nico and you talking about your lives. 

“Terrible.” You snort. “Every date has either fallen off the cliff the moment it starts or at the end when they say they just want a little barefoot omega at home.” You weren’t against the idea of having pups, but you didn’t want to have them with someone who thought your place was to stay at home and always be pregant. You liked having a job, you liked having something to define you that wasn’t just your place at the bottom of the social ladder. “It’s not like finding Mr. Right is as easy as walking through a door.” Jerking your elbow back to hit Nico. “Serious how did you find your partner so easily?” 

“He hit me with his car.” You roll your eyes, opening your mouth to respond as the phone in Nico’s hand starts to ring. “Speaking off.” Hitting the button he places it to his ear, well aware you’ll be quiet during his phone call. “Hey, Vash.” The difference in his tone as he starts chatting is evident, Nico might try to act like a stoic hardass but there’s no hiding that tenderness as the two talk. “Yea, I should be back in another few hours.” 

You bite your lip hearing that statement. Nico has his own life to live and his own alpha to go home to at night. You try to sigh quietly, it’s something that’s been bothering you for a while. The fact that Nico still comes to help you with your heat when he has a pack of his own, sure it’s just the two of them but you can’t imagine his partner is happy knowing his beta runs off to fuck an omega once every few months. 

“Someday you’ll meet her, Vash. Promise.” His hand is trailing along your side again as if he knew where your thoughts were going. “As always, she says thank you for letting me help her through this.” You hadn’t said it, but you sure felt it. 

When Nico had first started dating this Vash person you had wanted to meet him, you still do. Nico however, put his foot down. “Neither of you have a mate yet, with my luck one of you would trigger the other and I’d have an omega and alpha trying to fuck with neither of them wanting it to happen because of biology.” You had learned that like you, Vash didn’t want to just mate the first omega he met that was unclaimed. You could respect that, even if it did make you a little jealous. Nico was so stubborn on the issue he didn’t want you to even hear one another’s voices. 

“Alright, see you later.” A huff and you hear a much lower “Love you too.” Nico has the call ended before turning his attention back to you. “Does it still feel like your body is cooling down?” 

“Yea. I think in another few minutes you can pull out and get going.” 

“Not yet.” A quick press of his lips to the top of your head, the only place Nico ever kisses you. “You still need to be cleaned up and these bed sheets need to be changed, don’t need you sleeping in them and smelling like you’re still in heat.” You try to argue that you can do all of that yourself, and like always, you lose the argument. Nico is just too much of a caring beta to let you look after yourself after your heat. You’ll miss it when you start dating someone or his alpha stops him from coming to help you. 

A few days later, while cleaning your room you spot it sticking out under the bed. Tugging it into view you frown. It’s Nico’s leather jacket, you remember him wearing it when he came to help you, he must have forgotten it after the haze of helping you fuck your brains out. Grabbing your phone to send him a quick text with an image attached. 

Forget something?

I’ve been looking for that all day. 

His response was almost immediate and you grin, typing back to him. 

Want me to bring it to your place? 

Please

See you soon then, unless it’s a bad time?

Nah, you’re good

With that you grab your shoes and purse along with his jacket before heading to his apartment. 

Elsewhere, Nico placed his phone down before hearing a knock at his door and frowning. There was no way you were here already. Opening it, he blanched. “Vash.” 

“Um, were you not expecting me?” The blond man has his head tilted as if in surprise. “I thought you were the one who suggested us trialing living together?” 

Slamming a hand to head Nico groaned. “I did, but I thought you’d be at work for another few hours. Shit, I need to text someone.” Turning to grab his phone while Vash followed him in a large bag slung over his shoulders. 

“Is this a bad time?” Vash, while he has all the physical appearances of an alpha almost never acted like one. Preferring to act more meek, something that in the past once had someone confuse him for an omega when he was a child. That had been a sight when Vash had kicked the man to the curb along with his twin. Vash wasn’t violent by nature, but the alpha in him did not like being compared to anything but what he was. 

“No. Just, I left my coat at my friend's and she’s bringing it over. I need to meet her somewhere else.” Bitting his lip as Nico sent out a flurry of quick texts to you before looking for his shoes to pull on. 

“Oh, the little omega you help?” It sets a small churning in his gut, Vash is aware he’s very much in love with the tan man. He knows the reason Nico helps out his friend and some of the things that had happened at the orphanage when you had both been younger. It just doesn’t help soothe the alpha in his head who wants to keep his beta in his bed. Giving his head a small shake to rid himself of the thoughts that were starting to intrude. Thoughts that when he voiced them to Nico were shut down before they could manifest into anything. “I understand, and I’ll see you when I get back.” 

Nico stops before he leaves, pressing his body to Vash’s and going in for a searing kiss that leaves both of them weak in the knees. “I’ll be back soon, then we can get you settled for that oncoming rut.” 

Vash can’t help but smile as Nico steps outside, touching his fingers to his lips with his heart warm. Of course his beta remembered the other reason for him coming to stay over, they might have been together for a while but adapting to a shared space was still something they were both working on. 

Climbing the stairs to Nico’s apartment you check your phone, sending him a text saying you were almost there. You had sent him one when you got off the train too which is currently saying is gone unread, that isn’t normal for Nico when he knew you were coming. Maybe he was having a nap while waiting? Shrugging your shoulders as you reached the landing for his floor and headed to knock on the thick door. 

Quirking your nose as you wait for Nico to answer the door you can’t help but notice the whiff of something different in the air. Maybe the building has a new cleaning agent being used for the hallways? Tilting your head, it smells nice in a very subtle kind of way. 

Hearing the door crack you turn with a grin. “Here’s your jack-” It isn’t Nico at the door, taking a step back you look at the door again. You have the right apartment. “You aren’t Nico.” It tumbles from your lips before you can realize how rude it sounds. 

“No, I’m Vash.” You’re floored. This is the man Nico is dating? He looks like a total sweetheart with his golden blond hair and wide orbs. You can’t tell with the lighting if they’re blue or a shade more like aqua but you know one thing, you feel at ease with the way he’s looking at you. “You must be…” Trailing off as he thinks before he says your name and you nod. 

“That’s me! I didn’t think I’d run into you.” Tucking your hair behind your ear before you remember the reason you came. “Right, here’s Nico’s coat! He must have fallen asleep or something.” Handing it to him you feel your face heating up for some reason. Well, you have a good assumption of the reason with the way Vash is looking at you. Like he’s sizing you up and you can’t help the flush. You are the reason his beta disappears for hours, almost days sometimes. Maybe he’s trying to figure out if you’ll somehow pull Nico away from him. It’s a laughable thought, Nico has always been more like a family member. No matter how much you sometimes wished he was interested in your that way.

“He stepped out actually. Would you like to come inside?” You aren’t sure why, maybe something about him is just calming as you nod. Once the door is open large enough for you to step inside you do just that. Following him into the space that leads almost immediately to the kitchen. 

With his back to you, you don’t notice the deeper inhale Vash makes with the coat just under his nose. The scent has him blinking rapidly as the alpha in his mind roars. He can smell the lingering scent of an omega prime for breeding. The rational part of his brain knows it's from days ago, but to the part of him that was stirring to start his rut, it doesn’t matter. 

“You know it’s a little strange to meet you at last, with how adamant Nico was about us not meeting.” Turning back towards you, Vash has to suppress the low growl deep in his throat. You look so… so… tempting as you rub the edge of your ear as if pushing some of your hair back behind the shell of it once more. Is the real reason Nico didn’t want the two of you to meet? Did he just want to keep you for himself? Glancing down to your stomach and wondering if his beta didn’t have a pup growing inside of you. No. The smell from the jacket hangs in the air, tricking his mind into thinking you’re still in heat. 

“He kept saying it was because he was afraid one of us would trigger the other. I wonder if it was because he wanted to keep you away from me.” Vash, was a rational man. He spent his life making his own decisions and one of them was that he never wanted to take an omega by force or overpower their senses with his scent. Right now, however, with your scent on the air laced with his beta’s and his rut starting he was anything but in his right mind. Starting to let his scent gland flood the kitchen with his own unique smell, watching as you blinked in a way that seemed cute to him as you tried to process his words. 

“I mean, Nico just wants people to…” You trail off as your mind feels a little fuzzy. Licking your lips as your core throbs and you feel the slick starting to form in your walls. What is wrong with you? You just had your heat? 

Blinking again, you find your back pressed against the door of the pantry and Vash pressed to your front with Nico’s jacket just under your nose. “Why do you smell so fertile? So breedable ?” 

A short breath in, and under the cloying scent slowly encapsulating your senses you smell it. The smell of your slick laced with hormones from your heat. Your mind replays the scene in your head like a video reel. 

The moment Nico stepped into your bedroom you had been on him, naked as you whined with your hands on his shoulders. “Nico! Please I need you!” Panting as you rubbed your body against him before he chuckled. 

“Not even going to let me get undressed before I make you cum?” Grinning as one of his hands tangled in your hair and the other ran down your side. “So needy little omega.” Jerking your hips forward as those large digits of his play with your sex, smearing your fluids around your folds and up to your clit. Sinking one of his fingers up to the knuckle, the leather of his jacket sliding across your dripping hole as your body arched into his. “Let’s get that first one of the way shall we?” 

The fluid had since dried, but Vash could still smell it, and now so could you. “I’m not, Vash, the smell is from my heat. I’m not in heat anymore.” Trying to get the words out as your brain grows fuzzier. 

“Really? Is that because my beta fucked his pup into you?” Growling as he hisses the words in your ear you find your core clenching at how harsh his tone is. “Nico knows I want a pup one day, but I want us to find an omega we’re both attracted to. One that’s attracted to us.” As quickly as you had been forced against the door, you find yourself free again with Vash stepping further away from you with a hand to his head. “You need to leave.” Giving his head a shake. “My rut is starting and I’m not in control. It’s taking everything to not take you and I don’t want to force you.” The smell that was starting to permeate the air fades, not a lot but enough for the fuzz to leave your mind as you realize it was from Vash.

You watch as his back hits the counter, letting the jacket fall from his fingers as he swallows and the smell of him fades more as he tries to reel himself back in. “What do you mean an omega you’re both attracted to?” You feel so confused, Vash is attracted to you right now because of his rut but your feet are firm on the ground. Nico isn’t attracted to you. 

“Nico wants you, but he won’t say it.” Seeing those wide eyes peek at you from behind his fingers as he tries to slow his breathing. “He won’t talk about it, but he’s afraid your feelings for him are out of gratitude.” Panting now as he pulls his hand away. “He wants you as badly as I do right now, he’s too afraid you’ll see it as him having groomed you to be his.” 

“That doesn’t make sense, he’s always pushing me away.” You blurt, all the dates he’s pushed you into going on. Except. It does make sense. You’re well aware of your own attraction to Nico, something you’ve shoved down for a while because you thought he didn’t care about you that way, in retrospect you were on the far side of the spectrum for knowing his true feelings. You’re a bit of an idiot. “I’m so stupid.” 

“You’re not.” Vash moves closer, trailing one of his hands along your chin to tilt your head upwards to look into his eyes. “From what I hear you’re very smart, the head is just good at keeping the heart in check.” Like this you can see his pupils are blown wide again, swallowing as you realize that maybe, you don’t want to leave this apartment and this charming alpha. 

“What do you want?” Your tongue feels thick in your mouth as you speak, watching his face for any sign that he’s playing you. You don’t know him well enough for his tells, but deep down you’re certain you want what you think he’s offering. 

“Easy. I want to be happy, and I want Nico to be happy. We both make him happy, so I want you to join us.” Dipping his head down for a kiss that while it feels chaste has your head spinning, working his plush lips against yours and swiping his tongue along the seam of your mouth before pulling back. “I want both of you in my bed, I want both of you to be mine. I want you to be as possessive of me and Nico as he is of you.” You don’t miss the unspoken words. Vash is possessive of Nico and by extension, you. “Now my rather cute little omega, do you want to stay here with me and let me breed you, or do you want to leave? I promise we can pick up this conversation another time when my head isn’t screaming to just fuck you over the dinner table and force you to be ours.” 

Ours. Not his. A very clear distinction in your mind and it's one that has your heart thundering in your chest. Licking your lips at the offer and his option to let you walk away and talk about it another time. “You’d just let me walk away?” Your hand is slowly creeping up his chest, feeling the muscles under his t-shirt. He feels solid and warm under your fingertips, like he's burning up under the thin layer of cotton. 

“I would.” Slotting his hips forward and rubbing up against you, the bulge in his pants grinding against your covered sex and belly. “At least until my rut is over, then I'll be dragging Nico with me to see you and for us to have a conversation when my hormones aren't running rampant.” Tilting his head once more as his lips descend towards you, except he doesn't kiss you this time. Keeping just enough distance that you can feel his labored breath washing across your face, laced with just a hint of the pheromones from his rut. “We're running out of time, if you're going to leave you need to do it soon.” 

It's like time slows with his comment, you're hovering on the edge aware that he's left the decision up to you. Your mind is spinning lost in your own swirling thoughts about Vash's offer and all the times you've been with Nico and purposely ignored the undercurrent of his feelings. What you keep coming back to is simple. Vash is willing to let you walk away. He might not be saying it but you both know what it means, he might want you but he's willing to let you go, fully aware that while he deals with his rut you could find another alpha. That if that did happen, Nico and Vash would lose the chance to even try and bring you into their pack. 

“I want this.” The smallest movement on your part and you're the one instigating the kiss this time, almost melting into Vash as he quickly takes the lead dominating you. A growl from him as his hands slide up your ribs, pushing the fabric of your top up with it. While you've certainly kissed someone before, you've never delved too far past just tentative licks to your partner's lips. Or them doing it to you. Maybe because deep down, you always wanted to kiss Nico, to feel his stubble crusted chin against your face. So when Vash starts trying to work his tongue into your mouth, you part your lips and let out a noise of surprise. It's a different sensation as the wet muscle glides across your teeth, sweeping into the space as if trying to coax you to respond in kind. Your brain is going haywire from the way he slides his tongue and you try to tentatively press back, an action that rewards you with a deep rumble from within the blond's chest. 

Letting out a soft whine when he pulls back, at least before you realize your chest was heaving as you tried to suck in air to alleviate the burning in your lungs. Slowly blinking as you become more aware of your surroundings, no longer sensing just the hammering of your heart and the pounding of your blood in your ears. At some point during the kiss, both of your hands had moved to tangle in his hair. It's so soft, almost like the feathery down of a bird. 

“Why do I feel that was your first real kiss?” Resting one of his arms above your head as he pants the question between nips to the corner of your mouth. His other hand has slipped under your shirt, his fingers ghosting along the material of your bra. Still trying to catch your breath and let your brain catch up to process the question you moan as his fingers squeeze one of your fabric covered breasts. “I asked a question, and I expect an answer omega.” 

You shouldn't find it as hot as you, but the low growl as he referred to you by your caste has your heart beating a mile a minute and a warmth spreading in your belly. “No, alpha.” The rumble from his chest at you referring to him as such has your knees trembling, if he didn't have you wedged between him and the wooden door you're certain you'd have fallen to the floor. 

“You mean to tell me.” Rolling his lower body so his cock is firmly against your belly, the heat through the fabric has slick pouring from you like a tap. “In all the years Nico has helped you with your heats, he never once kissed you?” His voice is so deep you could almost feel it in your bones, nodding before giving him a verbal answer. 

“Never. Nico wouldn't even let me try anything.” Turning to slide the tip of your nose against his while your hands keep playing with the shorter strands of his hair. “He'd just please me, he'd never let me return the favor.” For the longest time, it had bothered you, now you know why. If you didn't get to touch him he could pretend he wasn’t attracted to you like he was. 

“Have you only been with Nico?” 

A loaded question, but you have no issue answering it. “Only Nico.” The tanned man had been your first and only for so many things. The thought of it has you rocking your body back in response.

He's grinning, a quick lick of his lips and a glint in his eyes. “You've never sucked Nico off?” You shake your head in a gentle negative, feeling more than seeing his arm move from the place above your head. “Never enjoyed the taste as he sent a searing load down your mouth? Never felt your throat convulse while he held you in place with his balls against your chin?” Another shake of your head in the negative, inhaling deeply you can smell his scent starting to flood the room. Your belly feels like an inferno is starting to rage inside of it, the slick from your weeping cunt has seeped into your underwear making the fabric stick to your skin. All because of his voice, so deep as it rumbles out of him. 

“Today you are!” His fingers hook into the hem of your shirt, ripping it up and away from your body. The force of it has your fingers tugged away from his hair, so you do what the quieter part of your brain is whispering. You grab his shirt as well, yanking the fabric up and letting out a soft noise of appreciation for the skin on display. 

He's so different from Nico with his tanned skin and the thick patches of hair along his chest. Vash, is pale and covered in scars, the tip of your fingers tracing one of the larger ones. It doesn't take away from how attractive he is, at least not to you. It makes you wonder what kind of life he's lived up to this point, the jagged lines tell you one thing for certain about his story. He's a survivor. He'll come back time and time again for Nico and you. 

“Do you like what you see?” Growled in your ear as he paws at the snaps of your bra like the garment offends him. A noise of triumph from him once the lined material falls away and he can grasp the smooth skin in one of his long-fingered hands. “I certainly do.” 

“You're handsome.” You whisper before his mouth slots against yours, emboldened by the previous kiss and the haze from his scent starting to flood your senses you find yourself moving your tongue against his. It's not smooth, or coordinated as you feel the saliva from your sloppy attempt drip from the edge of your lips and down your skin. If anything it seems to drive Vash wilder as his hand rolls the mass of your tit around your chest, his palm gliding over your hardening nipple as his free hand works at the fastener of your pants. 

The rational part of your mind is growing more and more silent as the kiss goes on, the taste of a cloying sweetness added to the smell of his musk and the sweat starting to form on his skin. The omega part of your brain is screaming to move faster, to let this alpha fill you to the bursting. You had read of alphas that could pull an omega into heat, and had even heard stories of some triggering heats just with a passing hint of their scent. Vash, has done just that. Your body doesn't seem to care that it just went through a heat cycle, that it isn't actually fertile right now. The churning of your stomach that always comes with your heat and the throbbing of your core is almost painful, but you want it. No. You need it. 

Gasping into Vash's mouth as his fingers work their way down your open slacks and trail against the soaked fabric of your underwear. Another rumble from him as his knuckles press against your slit, tracing the opening that is gushing fluid to prepare you to take him. You're going to need all the benefits of your heat if the heaviness under your hand and trapped inside his pants are anything to go by. Giving it a quick squeeze earns you a long growl with the gnashing of his teeth as his head snaps back from your mouth. 

“You make me want to ram my cock down that throat of yours.” Grabbing both of your hands in one of his as he works his belt free before working on the zipper keeping his length hidden from view. “I was going to have you on your knees to undress me, but after that little stunt I can't wait.” Shoving his pants and underwear to the floor, your core lets out another flood of liquid. The tip of his cock is gleaming under the natural light flooding into the kitchen, the length of him is covered in fluid and you wonder how long he's been pumping pre cum from the opening on his dick. 

Vash smiles at the way your lips parted when his cock bobbed free from his pants, he knew he wasn't massive compared to some alphas but from the way you were drooling his inner alpha was preening in delight. You were perfect, and he was about to be the first to fuck that pretty mouth of yours. 

“On your knees omega, and open wide.” You drop as soon as you hear the words, opening your lips as wide as you can and sticking your tongue out. “Such a good girl.” Vash had let go of your hands at some point, you aren't sure when too focused on his length and the thought of it being inside of you. Humming in delight as one of his hands lands atop your head, watching and waiting as he wraps his fingers around his base before guiding his cock closer to your lips. “Stay just like that.” Tapping the head of his cock against your tongue smirking as he does so, the look in his eyes has your toes tingling and the fire inside of you building hotter and hotter. It’s almost burning you alive, and the heat coming from the head of his cock isn’t helping. Tasting the salt from his leaking dick almost made you cum on the spot. 

Making a soft whine Vash pauses to tilt his head at you as if thinking of something. “You probably don’t know much of what to do for a blow job do you?” Rocking on his heels so his shaft slides along your tongue and partially into your mouth. “Today, I’ll show you the basics, but after this I expect you to do the work when I want you to suck me or Nico off.” You let out another whine, you do know the basics of how a blow job works, you’ve watched porn. This, however, still turns you on, watching his stomach move closer and closer to your face as he works more of his length into your mouth. Even with his slow and gentle pace, it doesn’t take long before your lips are stretched around his girth with fluid, a mix of your spit and his pre cum dripping from the corners of your mouth. 

Both of his hands and on your head now, his thumbs near your jaw as he starts to increase the tempo of his movements. It feels so deprived having your mouth used by Vash, almost dirty, your pussy is a mess of fluid and you’re certain at this point you have drenched your panties and your pants. You don’t know what to do with your hands, and Vash didn’t say you could or couldn’t move them, feeling your fingers ball into fists before you force them to relax. Letting out a choked noise when his tip hits the back of your throat, your lips pressed firmly to his balls, and something is swelling inside your mouth. 

A delayed reaction, you know what it is. “Fuck, omega, you look so good with my knot inside your mouth.” Gagging as he moves with shallow thrusts so he doesn’t have to remove the mass that would have locked his dick inside of your walls. “In through your nose.” As much as his thrusts are shallow, he’s picked up speed, your throat convulsing around him as tears start to drip from your eyes along with drops from your nose joining the rest of the mess on your face. 

It’s too much. 

You never want it to stop. 

“You’re doing so good.” Panting Vash watches your face, feeling the swirling in his stomach and the spamming of the muscles of his abdomen as he holds himself back from fucking your mouth with abonden. “Can’t wait.” A groan that sounds more like growl rings out past his lips. “To tell Nico” His balls are starting to tighten, hitting the bottom of your mouth with the swing of his hips. “I got to cum down your throat first.” Letting out a roar as he jerks his hips and places more pressure on the back of your head, the feeling of your throat massaging his length and knot pushing him into his first orgasm. 

As the first thick splash of his cum hits the back of your throat you moan around him, it’s almost searing, and with his knot just past your lips, your only option is to swallow it down. Involuntary jerking your hips as you work, your body trying to chase its own release as your sense of taste is overwhelmed by the salty fluid still coming from him. “Every drop Baby, drink every drop.” Cooing almost as his fingers play with your hair, watching as choke on his cock and seed. The wire inside your body has grown so tight yet you can’t seem to find release, the omega in you screaming to do as your alpha wants and drink his seed down like a wine and maybe you’ll find that edge. 

Eventually, the spurts slow, until a final trickle is all that’s left. “You did so good.” A long drawn out sigh as Vash says your name, using his fingers to work your jaw open to pull out his partially deflated knot. Lowering himself to his knees to take in the sight of your blissed out face and noticing your gentle rocking. Your mind is lost, trying to figure out how to get rid of the burning inside of you without the alpha before you aiding you in your pleasure. You don’t want him to be upset with you. “Open your eyes.” 

You don’t remember closing them. Blinking you react, closing the distance to kiss him and rub your still clothed core against any part of him you can reach. If Vash minds the taste of his cum in your mouth, he doesn’t show it, plunging his tongue into the space as if it was still his cock fucking your mouth. You’ve never felt so alive as you do like this, like you’re hyper aware of each and every fiber in your being while you rock your body more against his. 

“You’re a needy little thing aren’t you.” Tugging your head away from his lips with your hair trapped in his fingers. Opening your eyes at the teasing in his voice once more and blinking slowly before licking your lips, letting the point of it peak out past the edge of your lip. 

“I’m so desperate.” Aware of his eyes falling to your tongue, watching the way his pupils widen. “I need to cum so bad it hurts alpha.” Tacking on a whine at the end, you’ve never had to beg like this before, not with how quickly Nico would tend to your needs. You really are desperate, desperate enough that the smell of the impromptu heat you’ve gone into is starting to flood the apartment with Vash’s scent. 

“You just want to cum?” Smirking as his cock starts to stir once more, Vash has never needed too long of a recovery period. Knowing your only partner has ever been Nico takes the way you're acting away from the realm of an omega wanting to manipulate him into one where you are simply desperate for him. Another thing that has his inner alpha preening, you’re doing this for him and him alone. He can smell your body on the air and it’s one of the sweetest scents to ever grace his nose. Giving his lips another lick as he gives your body another tug to create a barrier between your bodies of open air. 

“No!” Your hands are scrambling trying to touch more of his flesh, wanting to be close to him as your clit throbs. “I want you inside me alpha!” A pathetic murmur that can’t quite be called a whine as you claw for him in the air. “I want your knot!”

“I was just inside you, did you forget?” Vash can’t believe the change in your personality from when you first walked in the door. That shy little omega washed away under the effect of his hormones. Well, and perhaps your own too. Watching you writhe as you try to get closer to him without tugging too hard against his grip on your hair. 

“Alpha please!” 

“Please what?” Vash is loving this, watching your eyes blink rapidly as your bruised lips part and your brain scrambles to find the words. “Tell me what you want, use your voice little omega and I’ll give you what you want.” 

“I want your knot in my cunt!” Practically screaming the words at him as the pinprick of tears almost becomes too much for you to handle. 

“Just my knot?” Asking his question as his hands grab the edges of your pants, pulling them down your legs after pushing you onto your back and slightly away from him. A long inhale and his cock twitches between his thighs, with nothing to hide your sex the smell of your slick is thicker. 

“Cum too! I want your cum alpha!” It’s like you’ve said the magic words, the last of the fabric encasing your legs removed along with the soaked material that had once been your underwear. 

Flipped onto your stomach with a hard slap to your ass that makes you whine, feeling the skin warm from the harsh impact. “You’ll have it. Now put that rear end of yours in the air.” It’s a command, and the wire that’s coiled tightly in your belly grows ever more tighter. Struggling to get to your knees with the fire inside you, aware of your slick dripping down your thighs and onto the floor. 

Vash licks his lips once more at the sight, to think his beta was hiding you from him. All the fun the three of you could have been having with how much fluid is pooling on the floor. Lowering his head to the space between your thighs and taking a deep inhale, the scent driving him wild. A quick hard lick from your clit to the edge of your opening and he lets out a long hum, his brain processing the fluid laced with hormones. You taste so perfect to him, but you are missing that tang of being fertile. Something his inner alpha doesn’t like, it wants to put a pup in your belly and you won’t be able to make use of his seed. 

Pausing as his brain tries to make sense after smelling Nico’s jacket earlier and now the confirmation of what his rational side already knew. A soft whine and a shake of your shapely rear bring him back to the present. “Alpha please, I need you!” A choked-out sob and he smiles, one filled with teeth and a bout of possessiveness, he might not be your first but he is about to be the first, and only, alpha to feel those sweet sweet walls of yours. 

Shuffling on his shins to get closer to you, Vash lines the tip of his cock up with your slit moving it against your folds a few times and groaning at the whimpers coming from you that sound oh so pretty to his ears. “Beg.” One word. One command. 

Vash doesn’t have to wait long. 

“Please Vash! Please alpha, I need you to breed me!” Your control and sense of shame snapped a while ago. Probably when he was pouring his cum down your throat, your voice sounded nothing but broken and desperate as you begged for Vash. 

“Good girl.” His hips surged forward and you both cried out as he went as deep as he could on the first thrust. Your hands shake from the effort of trying to remain in your position as he stretches you out with his cock. He feels so different from Nico and his veiny dick, at the same time you squirm as the shape of Vash’s length hits different places inside of you. 

Vash. Feels like he’s in heaven, his shoulder blades arching back at the slick, tight walls surrounding his body. The pull of your inner muscles as you try to somehow take him in even deeper, has him groaning. If you hadn’t of sucked him off he has no doubt his knot would have swelled immediately to send ropes of cum into you. Glad he’ll get to give you a proper fuck before pumping you full. One of his hands lands on the small of your back, sweeping over the curve of your body as he waits for you to adjust, ignoring the sound of a ringing phone in the background. “Just a little more, and I’ll breed you just like you deserve.” Chuckling as your walls tighten around him at his words. 

Nico is panicking. Running his fingers through his sweat-laced hair as he taps his foot on the bus trying to get closer to his apartment. 

When he got off at the stop near the coffee shop the two of you normally meet at he realized he messed up. In his flurry to text you, he had accidentally turned his phone to airplane mode, and those messages hadn’t been sent. Biting his thumb as he paced waiting for it to reconnect and seeing two new messages come in from you he felt his stomach drop to his shoes. 

You were already at his apartment. “Fuck!” Screaming while ignoring the people around him sending him glares from his outbursts he bolted towards the bus stop checking the online schedule to see if he should just start running. Luck for the first time today was on his side, the bus had just arrived and he was quick to dart inside. 

Now standing by the doors to get off at the closest stop to his home he’s back to biting his thumb nail. Every message he’s sent you has gone unread. It’s the same for Vash. “Shit, you two.” Switching tactics Nico hits the call button for Vash, praying to whatever power might be listening for his alpha to answer. 

You feel like you’re in agony, torn between being satisfied with Vash deep in your cunt stuffing you to the brim, and wanting him to move to finally help you find your release. Every muscle in your body is tense while the arousal flooding your system wants nothing more than for that fine line to snap and send you into blissful oblivion. 

Letting out a soft whine before biting your lip, you know begging isn’t going to get you what you want right now. A small shift from Vash and your entire body trembles, panting at just how good he feels without moving. “Almost ready, you just need to relax a little more.” His voice is strained, something you might have missed if you weren’t paying such close attention to each thing he did.

Swallowing you try to will your body to do just that, trying to let the tension fade. It’s almost impossible. Your body is so wound up it refuses to relax, it wants to be pounded into slumping to the ground while Vash pumps his seed inside your walls. 

Watching you Vash bites his lips, you’re just so tight and he can’t help but wonder if it’s because of your recently passed heat. If your body wasn’t trying to recover. Glancing to the oven he lets out a small noise. 

Nico should be back soon.

Vash, very much wants you locked onto his knot when that happens, suspecting the beta would come bursting in and trying to separate the two of you. Honestly, he reasons in his own head, he’s doing this to make the three of you happy. Giving your side a squeeze he weighs his options. You’re still so tight, but he needs to move. 

“I’m going to give you what you want, it might hurt, but we can tend to that later.” Bending forward and pressing a soft kiss to the center of your back. Upright once more, Vash starts to pull his cock from the warm confines of your body all the way to his tip. He can feel the churning in his gut once more, well aware his balls are filled to the brim again after that first load he shot off. “Now be a good omega and take what I give you.” Ramming his hips forward at a blistering pace with his head thrown back Vash starts breathing through his mouth, you feel so good surrounding him, like you were made for him. 

You start breathing like you’re running a race as soon as Vash starts hammering into your core, all of this movement so quickly as the head of his cock hits your cervix with each and every thrust you can’t help but whine his name between breaths. A chorus of Vash and alpha litters the air as he spares your body no thought of comfort, lost in the feeling of your walls clamping down around his length. You’re not in any better state, the omega in your head screaming in delight at the treatment. You hate to admit it, but you’ve always loved when Nico would fuck you rough and hard during your heats. Of the three, betas are the caregivers, the ones that look after the other two. The bridge between them. You love Nico, but the omega in you loves the feeling of Vash plunging into your slick walls even more. 

It isn’t long before you feel a mass starting to press against your core, a warm as it hits your opening but not quite breaching you. One of your arms shakes from the increased effort of keeping your body upright so Vash can keep slamming into you with abandon. Licking your lips as the sweat dripping down your body makes the tiles harder to put your weight on. Your heart is pounding inside of your chest once more, and the fire in your core has been stoked to levels you didn’t think were even possible. All because of the man behind you who is moving with the intention of breeding you. Gasping as the mass hits your folds a little harder, his knot wants in and he is bound and determined to lock you to his body. 

“Vash!” Crying out at another harder hit, your arms finally give out and you fall forward with your face pressed to the puddle of your own mixed fluids. His grip on your hips grows tighter, and you glance upward catching the reflection of the two of you on the surface of the stainless steel fridge. You look like a mess, draped across the floor while Vash looks feral with the pistoning of his body trying to drive his knot past that tight ring of muscles. It feels so much better than the toy used to trick you. Your eyes are slow to process his hand lifting to harshly slap one of your butt cheeks once more. 

“Wrong.” Panting and you can almost see the exhale from his exterion. “Name.” Grunting as his hand returns to your hip he sets a blistering pace, the sound of wet skin on skin echoing in the space as his knot starts to slide into your core. “Who’s breeding you?” His words are fast, and you catch your mistake. 

“Alpha!” Screaming it as his hips snap forward with enough force to finally push his knot through the muscles of your slit and locks your bodies together. His voice joins yours as he screams an answering cry of omega, and you could swear you heard another, very familiar voice scream your name. 

You freeze and feel your body spasm with enough force that your vision fades to white as Vash does exactly as promised flooding your womb with his seed that has nowhere to go with his knot blocking your opening. 

Nico takes the stairs two at a time, racing up them to his floor. The sense of trepidation grows as he catches a familiar whiff closer to the landing. It’s your scent. “Fuck!” Launching himself up the final stairs, his heaving chest taking in more oxygen. 

His senses might not be as sharp as yours or Vashs, but he knows the scent of a rut and heat well enough. Especially when they both belong to the only two people he’s ever truly loved. 

Almost ripping his doors from the hinges to freeze in the opening to his apartment at the sight before him. Clothes strew about the kitchen in haphazard piles with two bodies intertwined. Watching with his jaw open as the sound of you screaming reaches his ears before you slump to the ground, Vash behind you and the scream he wasn’t aware he made falls on passed-out ears. 

Vash is panting like he’s run a marathon, one arm moving to wipe the sweat from his face and flicking his soaked blond locks from his eyes. Setting those bright orbs on Nico’s face and licking his lips. “You’re back.” Tilting his head with a smile that makes the tanned man shudder. “Now close the door beta, and come help me breed our omega.” 

Turning as if underwater, Nico realizes he’s been standing there with the door wide open, too lost in shock at the scene that had been playing out in front of him to notice. You don’t need the embarrassment of being seen by his building naked. Stepping inside, Nico swallows. If he was anything but a beta it would have been a mistake, his apartment reeks of the musk of sex and hormones. 

“Please tell me you didn’t knot her?” 

“Tsk, tsk Nico.” One of those long digits in the air as Vash waves it as if speaking to a child. “Of course I did, but only because she asked me.” 

“Vash-” It starts out as a growl before Vash sets his shoulder and cuts him off. 

“Beta. If you had gone to her with my proposal this could have been settled a while ago. You don’t get to grouse about it now, it isn’t like I forced her.” Wiggling his eyebrows at the end before gesturing to Nico’s crotch. “Besides, it looks like you seem rather turned on by the thought of her being ours at last.” 

Nico, doesn’t need to look down. Not when he can feel exactly how tight his jeans are. It’s no use trying to argue that he isn’t turned on by the sight of the two of you locked together, but it doesn’t mean he needs to be happy about how it came about. The scathing remark he opens his mouth to make lost to the sound of Vash cooing your name. 

“Looks who finally showed up.” You’re awake once more, slowly pushing your body up which is hard with the way you feel. It’s like your bones have turned to jelly and you’re floating underwater as you roll your neck languidly while a palm goes to your belly. You can feel Vash still locked against you, his hot cum sticking to your wall has you shivering from the pleasure. You could certainly go for another round of that before the day is out. Letting Vash use his hand to guide your head to look where he wants, you smile as you slump backward, a warm chest pressed to your back as Vash adjusts both your bodies. 

“Nico! I brought your coat back” Giggling as Vash makes another minor adjustment, ensuring the tan beta has a perfect view of the bulge just above the opening to your sex and where Vash is connected to you. “Oh, and I met Vash.” Another giggle, almost as if you’re drunk as you try to hide behind your hand. “He’s wonderful.” 

“Hear that Nico? I’m wonderful.” Pressing his lips to your shoulder and planting a small trail of kisses. 

“Oh! But you are too Nico! You should come closer so I can kiss you.” Reaching out one of your hands towards him leaves Nico reeling. He’s never seen you this out of it, but the twitching of his cock in his pants tells him his body doesn’t mind. 

“You want to kiss me?” 

“Of course silly! I’m your omega, and you’re my beta. Why wouldn’t I want to kiss you?” You say it almost as if you’re speaking to a child, that soft smile still on your face that has Nico entirely disarmed. “And Vash is our alpha, so come join us! Plus I wanna tease you after learning you were afraid I loved you for the wrong reasons.” 

The dark haired man finds his chest suddenly full of pain like a hand has reached through the sinew of his body and wrapped around his heart and started to squeeze. The phrasing of your words has him shocked. Did you just say you loved him? “You sound a little drunk.” It’s blunt and to the point, you don’t seem very much like yourself right now. 

“I’m not” It doesn’t seem all that believable to him when you start giggling again. 

“I think, my caring beta, our omega is high on whatever hormones her body is pumping out to counteract any of the pain she might be feeling.” Vash still has his lips near the side of your neck, his hands wandering along your sides. “She’s in a false heat after her real one, if I had to guess she’s still recovering from that.” 

“She isn’t ours Vash.” Grinding his teeth Nico is finding this situation harder and harder to ignore. The more he hears from the two of you, the more he just wants to give in to accept that you’re here with him and Vash. 

“She wants to be.” Lifting his head and letting the point of his chin land in the muscles of your shoulder, a pleased little hum coming from you at Vash remaining so close. “I told her she could leave and we could talk about this when my rut was over.” Shrugging his shoulders before making a small adjustment again, once that makes you let out a soft moan feeling another stream of cum pour from his slit. “She decided to stay.” 

“Nico, please.” You can feel Vash still hot and heavy deep inside your walls, the difference between a simulated toy and a real knot evident as he keeps making more cum shoot inside your body. You know his knot will soften at some point, but right now with how tight you are his sex is reacting to your own clamping around it. “You’re starting to make me think staying was a bad idea.” 

The soft whine that echos around the space does Nico in. He might have his reservations but the noise you made just has the caregiver in him quaking, you’re starting to look dejected and it’s all because of him. “No, no.” Finally moving closer and lowering his body to the ground so he can cup your face in his rough palms. “I just.” Pausing Nico tries to think of a better way to word his reluctance. “I’m worried both of you are feeling more hormones than anything else, and I don’t want this to turn into a regret.” A long swallow on his part as he stares long and hard into your eyes, he knows what you look like when you’re lost in the haze of your heat. He doesn’t see that right now. “I want a promise from both of you right now, no claiming, no marking. Just sex, I can’t put this off anymore but when you’re both clear headed the three of us will talk about this alright?” 

You’re quick to agree, both of your hands running along the corded muscles of his arms. Vash however. 

“Beta.” Growling the word out as his arms tighten around your body more. “She’s already ours.” 

Nico sighs, turning his attention to Vash and seeing the glower on his face at the thought of letting you learn with nothing to say you belonged to them. “Vash. You’re being irrational, and that’s why I want that promise. We can all talk about this without hormones later.” 

Another growl and Nico looks to the sky in a silent prayer before trying again. “Alpha. She might hate you for it. Can you handle that?” Nico knows what he’s doing, manipulating Vash to get him to agree with him by playing on his emotions. A tactic that works in this case as the other man relents. 

“Fine. I don’t want my omega to hate me.” Grumbling his agreement, his hold on your body loosens. “Now will you finally strip and join us?” 

At that question you smile, dropping your hands down to Nico’s crotch and trailing your fingers along his length that is hard to miss with the outline of his jeans. Enjoying the heat from his skin and the short hiss of his breath as he inhales in through his teeth. He didn’t tell you to stop and you keep going, working his pants open and pushing some of the fabric of his underwear aside to touch his skin directly. “Seems someone can’t for me to do it myself.” Pulling his shirt off before wrapping his fingers around your wrists to remove them from his skin. 

“But I wanna touch you.” Blinking up at him with a pout, you wanted to touch Nico and try to make him feel as good as he made you feel so often with no thought to his own pleasure. 

“You will.” Closing the distance to press his lips to yours. You almost swoon at finally feeling his rough skin against yours, something you’d wanted for so long without realizing it. Almost like you had been dying of thirst and never noticed the spring of clear water beside you, moving your lips the way Vash had as you tried to deepen the kiss. Nico, is more than willing to oblige, letting you slip your tongue into his mouth as you explore. He knows you’re inexperienced, but it doesn’t change the fact that he lets you lead and guide the kiss. 

Vash turns his body, letting out a noise of satisfaction watching your sloppy attempt to repeat his actions. You’re so willing to learn and to try and imitate what you learned. Vash can’t wait to have Nico and him teach you so much, of all the new things the pair of them will get to try with you as you explore each other. Licking his lips at the saliva dripping from between the two of you before reaching out to wipe some of it away to pull both of your attention to him. 

A soft noise escapes you as you break the kiss humming as you look at Vash, the pressure in your core having relented, his knot soft Vash had pulled out of your pussy. “Are you ready for the next round?” You clench around him, liking the idea of another round and this time with Nico joining both of you. Nodding your head quickly and making a noise caught between a moan and a purr. “Good girl.” A whisper of praise as Vash slides one of his hands over Nico’s. “I was thinking, I stay right where I am, and you put what you learned earlier to use. How does that sound?” 

“Yes! Yes alpha.” You're arching your body at the thought, the idea of giving Nico a blow job while Vash keeps pounding into you makes you smile. The fluttering in your chest was matched only by the shifting of your walls, another round of slickness starting to form in your core. 

“What did she learn earlier?” Nico has a frown on his face, putting a bit of distance between the three of you to remove his remaining clothes. As much as his cock being free has him sighing in relief he doesn’t like the tone in Vash’s voice. 

“Oh yes,” Vash is smirking now, moving your body into a similar position as before so you’re on all fours with your ass in the air. “Our little omega let me fuck her mouth, you’d be proud of her for her first blow job.” Catching the other man’s eye and letting his pride shine through. “She drank. Every. Last. Drop.” Putting emphasis on his words and ending it with a slap to your ass. “Now I want her to do the same for you.” 

You're grinning, trying to reach out and grasp the length bobbing between Nico’s legs, something you’ve wanted to touch for so long and it’s finally going to happen. A shiver of excitement races up your spine, you’re not just going to get to touch him, you’re going to get to taste him. “Nico~” Another soft whine passes from your lips as you focus on his crotch. 

“You fucked her mouth?” He might want to be mad, but he was the first to feel you cum, the first to have his fingers in your core and his cock pressing to the deepest place inside you. 

“I did.” Tilting his head like the preening shit he was being. “She loved it.” Lining himself up once more, Vash surged forward ensuring his dick was all the way inside your clenching hole. Groaning at the tightness surrounding him, a vice formed from muscles that wanted to keep him there. Watching your head tilt upward as you moaned his name long and loud. “Now hurry Nico, I want us to cum at the same time.” Rubbing his hand along your back as he started a gentle pace to keep his mind occupied while he waited for the show to start. 

“You’re always bossy when you’re in a rut.” Grumbling as Nico moves closer, one hand on his cock to make it easier for you to grasp it. “Good thing you’re hot.” It’s the usual song and dance the two of them play, teasing back and forth except this time they have a third partner. Turning his attention to you Nico sends you a soft smile, one hand cupping the side of your face. “Two taps if you need a break.” 

You nod, replacing Nico’s hand with yours and enjoying the silky smooth feel of his skin under your palm. As your fingers touch you feel a pulse under them, almost like you can sense the blood being pumped by his heart running through the veins along his length. A wave of apprehension washes over you, what if Nico doesn’t like what you do? Almost as if sensing it, he brushes the wet stands of your hair from your face. “Just try your best.” With that reassurance, you part your lips and slip them over the head of his cock. Moaning and curling your toes with your eyes closed at the taste on your tongue. It has more of a tang than Vash did. 

Nico slides closer, to make it easier for you as you grip his cock and start to bob along his length. You don’t have much experience but you’ll have more soon enough. For now, Nico watches with hooded eyes as more and more of his dark skin disappears into the warm cavern of your mouth. The bubble of want and need in his gut grows as the spit trails down to his base and into the dark hairs there. 

Vash grins, watching from behind with his head turned on an angle, he can’t see much of what you’re doing but both you and Nico are making a symphony for him with the sounds of your pleasure. Sighing himself as your walls clench around him like a vice as you suck Nico off, it’s something Vash thinks the three of you are going to do a lot because your body clearly seems to like it with the force your insides are exerting on his length. Done with his gentle pace, Vash starts to move faster, smirking as the movement has you jerking forward and a choked moan leaving Nico. “Good girl.” Starting to breathe deeper as the pleasure starts to mount and he plans to chase it. 

Your eyelids flutter as you find your lips touching Nico’s base after jerking forward for the snap of Vash’s hips, a whine of surprise before you moan around his cock. You can feel him twitching near the back of your throat and it sends a flood of slick down your walls, making it easier for Vash to buck into you harder and faster. 

Nico groans, all of the times he imagined how you’d feel don’t compare in the slightest to the real thing. The sudden jerk of you to his base and he almost came on the spot. Grinding his teeth to hold off before hissing at Vash. “Alpha, I’m not… Gonna… Last.” 

Vash looks up from where he’s watching his dick slamming into your welcoming cunt, taking in the sight of Nico and the clench of his jaw. Nico does look like he’s at his limit. Vash knows Nico doesn’t want to cum without permission, not when Vash had said for them to cum together. Pistoning his hips and slamming his knot against your folds, the three of you will have at least a day until his rut passes. What’s letting Nico enjoy painting your throat white without having to wait too long just the once? 

Letting out a roar as Vash feels his knot starting to push past your opening before catching on your walls and locking him into your welcoming sex. “Then fucking cum beta, make sure our omega drinks it all down.” One of his long arms snaps forward to grab Nico’s shoulder and forcing him to close the distance so Vash can plunge his tongue into the other man’s mouth in tandem with his cock inside you. 

Both men groaning in your ears and the feeling of being split open as both of them pump their seed into you sends you over the edge. With your nose deep into the mess of curls around Nico’s base you smell the musk of his arousal and sweat, using it to ground you from passing out and to keep breathing through your nose. Using it to moan around him as you tip over that edge once more. 

When they break the kiss for air, Nico notices your slight distress moving away just enough that you can pull your mouth from his cock. Groaning again when you look at him with a look of pure debauchery as you slowly stick out your tongue to show him the spatter of white on the muscle. “Fuck me.” Hissing as you make a show of swallowing it. 

“Oh don’t worry my beta, I plan to.” A devilish grin that seems out of place on his face Vash can feel the burning in his gut growing once more. You, now that you don’t have to fear passing out, let your eyes close as you need to rest for a moment. The omega in you content to belong to a pack and aware you are far from done.

Almost a full day later, you pant under the sheets of Nico’s bed too exhausted to move. “So. When are we talking about what we just did.” 

“Later” both men whisper, equally as exhausted. 

“After a nap?” 

“Yes.” You want to laugh at how funny it is, but that takes effort. Instead, you let yourself drift off, a nap sounds wonderful, and you’re curled up with the two people you think you can easily spend the rest of your life with. 

Well... I tried

[wreckmetoji]

Close to Heaven 

A fic in which Vash finally gets what he’s been yearning for and then some.

↳ Vash the Stampede/Reader

↳ Nicholas D. Wolfwood/Reader

content warning. gender-neutral pronouns, afab reader, mild overstimulation, unprotected sex, profanity, alien anatomy, whatever the plant equivalent of a creampie is, shameless smut, fluff, slight angst, wolfwood tops vash and vash tops you, everyone is winning

I recommend reading Wanna Be Yours for context 7.2k words

Life was unforgiving, there was no such thing as being dealt a good hand. At least, not unless it was at the expense of another person. Vash knew this better than anyone, but long ago had he accepted he wasn't here to have a good life. He was here to fix what was broken, help the people that needed it, and while that didn't always go as planned, he always tried his best.

You just pick yourself and dust yourself off, that's what I admire about you the most, Vash. Even eight months later, Vash could still hear your voice in the back of his head when he went on with his daily life. He'd hear you chide him while he poorly patched himself up in alleyways, he'd hear you tell him to eat more when he denied himself of decent meals, or yell at him to get up and keep going when he fell. It wasn't easy, of course it wasn't, making that decision to leave. He wanted you to have the best life he couldn't give you, and if you managed to find that happiness, then he was more than willing to cut his losses and hope that one day he would run into you, see you flourishing and happy and alive. So, he continued, hopping from one town to the other, helping when and where he could. Vash heaved a sigh, pushing his way through the doors of the tavern he was staying in. Today had been a bust, nearly managing to get roped into an encounter with July Military Police, he was completely unable to secure himself a vehicle or mode of transportation out of the city. He was running low on money, he would really only feasibly be able to stay at this inn a couple more days before he would need to start running small jobs around the city. That would surely be risky in itself, knowing that if he were to be exposed to the general public for longer than a couple of hours, someone was bound to try and turn him in. He'd leave tomorrow, even if it was by foot.  Shuffling over to the bar, he plopped down in one of the tall stools, waving at the barkeeper he had come to enjoy chatting with over the last few days. She was friendly, older, definitely making more of her money off of regulars and locals than tips and travelers. She had mentioned it was refreshing to see a new face that wasn't sour. "Hey Nadina," Vash greeted as she sauntered over, glass and cloth in hand, "Things been busy today?"  This earned him a playful scoff, to which he chuckled at, knowing the two occupied tables covered in cards and bottle caps were enough of a tell. "If it was busy, I wouldn't have to work here every day," She quipped, pouring a pint for Vash without him even asking, "Did have an interesting fella come in today, though." Smiling, Vash accepted the drink from her, already pulling out a couple of bills from his pocket to place on the counter in front of her. He lifted the glass to his lips, humming inquisitively to her previous statement. "Yeah," She continued, giving him an unimpressed up and down, "Said he was looking for you." Ah. Maybe he would have to leave a bit earlier than expected, if the Military Police were already this hot on his tail he was bound to be cornered in his rented room. That would get messy, and he wouldn't want poor Nadina to fork up a bunch of nonexistent money for property damages he was inadvertently the cause of. "Did... They say why they were looking for me?" He dared question, giving her a sheepish smile.  "No, just mentioned you by name, described you. Didn't even introduce himself, but I'm sure you could spot him in a crowd," She mused, shining up some spare glasses behind the counter, "Had this massive cross he was carrying around. Must've thought himself a priest or something. Wouldn't be able to tell by lookin' at him though, sketchy lookin' bastard." Suddenly, his smile was gone. Vash swallowed, eyes wide in disbelief as he stared at Nadina. She caught this, her hands pausing their ministrations as they exchanged stares.  Vash broke the silence first, his voice breathy and barely above a whisper. "Did he have anyone with him?" Nadina didn't answer, not at first, obviously too caught up in his immediate reaction. After he cleared his throat, taking another long sip of his beer, she pursed her lips and quirked a brow. "No, he didn't have anyone with him," She crossed her arms, leaning against the back counter, "You know him then?" With a nod, he threw back the rest of his beer, placing it back on the counter with a thunk. He decidedly left out all and every detail of who that stranger was or how he knew him, mind reeling as to what he was doing around here looking for Vash. His head spun, and it definitely wasn't from the less than seven percent beer Nadina had so graciously poured for him. "Thanks for the drink Nadina, think I'm gonna hit the sack early though." He didn't give her a chance to interject, taking out an extra bill from his pocket and slapping it down on the counter. A tip, but also hopefully buying her silence. She nodded, taking the pile of bills and pocketing them in her half apron as Vash gave another friendly wave, crossing the pub floor and heading up the old metal staircase.  Fuck. Wolfwood was here, and he was looking for him, but most importantly, he didn't have you. Did he leave you behind? Were you hurt? Did he lose you? It had been at least eight months, a lot can happen in that amount of time. Maybe the two of you split up, and he was worrying his head about nothing at all. Still, he couldn't shake the bad feeling he had. Part of him wanted to find Wolfwood, ask what happened, if you were safe, but the other part of him didn't know if he wanted that answer. Seeing him would only serve as a reminder of what he had to let go anyways.  Unlocking his room, bumping his metal arm into the heavy material to force it open– perks of renting one of the cheapest rooms in town– Vash entered the small space, leaving it opened a crack. He wasn't going to be staying long, and he didn't have much to gather up. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could avoid the police and secure a ticket for the last bus out of here. It wasn't too late, the sun now just peaking over the dunes in the distance.  Vash shoved his sleepwear in his bag, yanking the cords shut and swinging it over his shoulder. He'd cut his losses on paying for the room tonight, and besides, if things went sideways he could always sneak his way back in without the stress of trespassing.  He had managed to sneak past the bar without Nadina noticing him, or maybe she did and just decided not to say anything. She was a perceptive woman, nothing slipped past her, so maybe Vash was foolish for thinking he could. He pushed his way through the doors, setting a brisk pace that didn't look too suspicious as to garner unwanted attention, adjusting the straps of the bag on his shoulder as he stepped through the weighted double doors of the shoddy bus station. The clerk was in the middle of cashing out as Vash ran up to the till, putting down a little more money than necessary just to secure his ticket in case the gentleman was in a poor mood.  Being eyed up and down never got easier. It was always fifty fifty on whether he had to run if they recognized him, or if they just thought he was some weirdo. "A ticket– please! A ticket please. Are there any seats on the last bus?" He was sure the desperation was even more suspicious, but he couldn't care. Not right now, at least. "It doesn't matter where it's going." The man grunted in response, taking the money– all the money– that had been placed on the counter in front of him. He scribbled something down on his receipt paper, tearing it off and clipping it to the bus ticket he then handed over. Vash smiled gratefully, brows upturned, before turning on his heel and speed walking out the door. People were lined up in front of the doors, already boarding. At least he wasn't going to waste any time. He sucked in a deep breath, stepping forward when the line moved up, his eyes scanning the crowds in the streets to make sure he wasn't picked out. And then he saw an apparition. And apparition, or an angel. Off to the side, two or three buildings down, back facing him but he could recognize it anywhere. He could point it out with no doubts, the presence you radiated was something he still constantly saw in his dreams. He had spent so many nights laying next to you, how could he forget about all of that in a measly eight-or-so months? His breath was caught in his throat, lungs feeling tight and his eyes stung. Suddenly everything hurt, his heart, his eyes, his muscles, he couldn't move. You were talking to an older man, his brows furrowed as he looked up and around. He pointed his finger towards Vash, and everything moved so slow. You turned, eyes wide, and he could see the tears welling up from where he was standing. You were beautiful, so so beautiful, hair a bit longer than he had remembered, new clothes he hadn't ever seen before, but... You were the same. The same lips he had traced with his thumb, the same cheeks he had squished in his hands, the same eyes he could stare into for hours, just watching every sparkle and light flare every time you talked about nothing in particular. Then your mouth moved. He couldn't hear it, but he could see it plain as day. Vash? He watched you, watched as you took one slow step forward, then another, then another, steps slowly increasing in pace until you were running full sprint towards him. He was now stood in front of the open doors of the bus, ticket gripped so tightly in his still–flesh hand that it was barely legible. He didn't get a chance, didn't get a chance to step onto the bus, didn't get a chance to say anything to you, didn't get a chance to pull away or run like he thought he wanted to. Not before you were hurling yourself into him, arms wrapped so tightly around him he thought you were trying to crush every bone in his body. The impact made him huff through parted lips, cerulean eyes wide and glossy behind tinted glasses. You said something, something he couldn't hear with how hard you had shoved your face into the fabric of his jacket. The bus driver called out, catching his attention. He said something along the lines of are you getting on, and Vash didn't even register the fact he was shaking his head no. All he registered were the bus doors closing, and his shaky hands coming around and resting on your back. "You're so stupid!" You shouted, sobbing into his shirt. Your shoulders shook, your body trembled, and he could feel the wet of your tears seeping through the fabric. "You're so stupid and I'll never forgive you!" There were so many things he wanted to say in response.  I missed you so much. Every day without you felt too long. You're my everything. None of it came out, he tried. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a pathetic, choked out cry of your name. You looked up at him, and he watched as his own tears cascading down his face landed on your cheeks. His fingers fisted the back of your shirt, his arms starting to quiver, his glasses fogging up. Your hands reached up, pushing his glasses up into his hair, then sliding back down to rest on his cheeks. He leaned down, pressing his forehead up against yours as you whispered, "I never stopped looking for you." Vash kissed you, now for the second time, but instead of grief and distress and sorrow, there was relief. Comfort. Solace. He kissed you, and this time you kissed him back. You pushed your soft, beautiful lips up into his, finally letting go of all the heartache you had evidently been carrying with you for the eight months since he had left you. He pulled back, only for a second to look into your eyes, before he kissed you again, and again, and again. He kissed you breathless, his hands coming up to cup your face, mimicking how you were holding him, only pulling back far enough so he could see you. You still shared your breaths, shared the heat radiating off of each others' faces, shared wet tear stained cheeks. You were even more breathtaking than he remembered, the way your wet eyes shone in the setting sun, how your lashes clumped together, your sentimental smile enough to make him swoon.  "You two are making a scene," Vash heard from behind him, lips parting as he snapped away from you. Wolfwood stood with a stern look, cigarette hanging loosely from his lips as he stared at Vash over his glasses, "July police are in town right? Maybe not a good idea." To say he was confused would be an understatement, eyes flickering over to you when you muttered a meek apology, an embarrassed smile on your lips and red ears. Vash opened his mouth to speak, apologize, his heart threatening to break all over again until Wolfwood shrugged, adjusting the cross slung over his shoulder and rolling his eyes. "Just save it for later. Good to see you Spikey," He nodded, walking towards the tavern Vash was staying at, "You got a room, right? Let's go, I could use a drink. Walked through the entire town all damn day." Vash furrowed his brows, mouth opening to speak, before he felt you grabbing his hand and lacing your fingers between his. He looked down at you, expression somewhere between confusion and distress, but you smiled and shook your head, giving him a small tug as you pulled him along behind Wolfwood. "I'll explain. It's okay." He complied, following wordlessly until the three of you had entered through the tavern doors. Nadina looked in his direction, her eyes widening slightly before smiling. "Welcome back," She greeted, holding up three fingers inquisitively. The three of you nodded in unison. "Comin' up." The three of you sat, mostly in silence until Nadina came over with the drinks. Vash didn't miss the way she eyed up Wolfwood, and then yourself, especially with how tight you were holding Vash's still flesh hand. Once she had gone back to the bar, starting casual conversation with other patrons, did you begin talking.  "I don't want you to feel like I'm deceiving you," You began, eyes everywhere but on him, "I'm... We're still a thing." You gestured between yourself and Wolfwood with a finger, earning a curt nod from the priest as he slugged back his drink. He felt his heart ache again, something he hadn't felt in a while. He smiled, disingenuous and sad. He should have known better, Nadina had told him it was Wolfwood looking for him after all. The second he saw you, he should have known Wolfwood would have been in tow. He should have gotten on that bus, he shouldn't have froze the second he saw you. "But," You continued, "The night everything... The night you left, I told Nick about what happened. I told him you kissed me, I told him you left, and..." Your tiny voice tapered off, and he could see you fighting back tears. He wanted to reach up, wanted to cup your cheek and brush the cool metal of his lost-technology hand under your eye to catch the wet before it trailed down your cheek. He clenched his fist, forcing back the urge, glancing over at Wolfwood who really only seemed to be half interested in the conversation. You sighed, calling his attention back to you. "I told him that I care about you Vash. So much, and... He was okay with that." Vash furrowed his brows, lips parted in visible confusion. You took a deep breath, clearing your throat a bit. "I failed to realize that I had feelings for you too, but I felt bad already being committed to... this," Once again gesturing between Wolfwood and yourself, "We talked about it. Talked about having you join us, or at least try things out and see how they go." You held your palm out flat, pointing towards Wolfwood as he slowly nodded. "So– you– you aren't mad at me then?" Vash asked towards Wolfwood. The tanned man scoffed, leaning forwards on the table as he stared at Vash. "You aren't seeming to get it, so I'll spell it out for you Blondie," Wolfwood tapped his index finger on the table, "Us. All three of us. Relationship, or whatever the fuck you wanna consider it." It took a moment for Vash to register what you both were saying, brows furrowing again as he glanced back at you, then Wolfwood again, earning a nonchalant shrug as he grabbed at the glass sitting in front of you, tipping it back and drinking half the contents. You didn't seem to notice, or you did and simply didn't care, your thumb rubbing busy circles into the back of his partially gloved hand.  "So," Vash cleared his throat, scooting a bit closer to you in his seat, "You... Both of you... want...?" "You're both easy on the eyes, 'n I don't mind sharing," Wolfwood cut in unabashedly, both yours and Vash's cheeks heating in surprise at his boldness. "Both my type too, lucky me." He sparked up a cigarette, hanging his head over the back of his chair as he blew smoke up and away from the conversation being had. Vash was quiet, taking in all the information and emotion, the relief and the anxiety, as he looked back and forth between you and Wolfwood.  "It's okay if that's not something you want, Vash," You smiled, understanding and sweet, "I can reimburse you for the bus ticket, and you can leave first thing–" "No!" He took his hand from your grasp, holding them both up to stop you from speaking. "No, I– of course, of course I want this but, I mean... Are you two sure?" Wolfwood and you chuckled in unison, your hand coming down to settle on his bouncing knee. He remembered when you used to do that, when you would be in a pub or a diner and a bounty hunter would walk in, how you would place your hand over his restless knee or hold his arm, and suddenly any anxiety he had about the situation dissipated into thin air. He smiled, laughing a small bittersweet laugh, and finally picking up his drink. Vash would let himself be selfish, he would let himself have you, have Wolfwood, even if something could go horribly wrong tomorrow, or the next day, he would enjoy you now.  "Okay. Yeah, okay!" His agreeance called for a celebration, your hand going to reach for your now empty glass of beer, slapping Wolfwoods arm in faux outrage. You laughed, and Wolfwood waved your hand away, insisting that he would buy you another one. You argued, bickering with him in good fun about how you have no money, I'm the one paying, and Vash laughed. A hearty, genuine, full laugh that used his entire diaphragm. It turned heads, and the smile that reached his eyes made you melt. The argument in front of him dissipated, your quick hands grabbing the empty on the glasses and heading over to the bar. Vash watched you leave, the smile never leaving his eyes as his heart swelled inside his chest. It almost felt like too much, almost felt overwhelming, seeing you so easily chatter with Nadina as she prepared more drinks for the three of you. He turned his head, giving Wolfwood such a soft expression he swore he could see his sun–kissed neck and ears go red. The night carried on, more drinks and more laughs and more playful bickering, the occasional hand on your knee, or his thigh, or feeling Wolfwood bump his leg with his own. The three of you had managed to stay up until closing, getting ushered upstairs by Nadina to the room Vash had rented. All three of you had more than enough to drink, considering at some point every single person had tripped going up. Vash shoulder checked his door after inserting the key, chucking his bag down beside the door. The bed was small, probably much too small for three people comfortably since it could barely be considered a full. A heavy thunk gathered his attention long enough to see Wolfwood resting The Punisher up against the wall in front of the foot of the bed. You giggled, and he smiled, watching you lay back onto the bed. Vash closed the door, shucking his coat, glasses, and holster off and tossing them over the desk in the corner, before flopping down on his stomach next to you. His metal arm laid over your torso, mechanical thumb running gentle circles into your sides. It was sweet, it was how things should have gone before, maybe this is just setting things right– "Move over," Wolfwood complained, and when Vash looked up he could see the tanned man throwing his pants into a crumpled pile in the corner with the rest of his clothes. Really, Vash hadn't even noticed him strip, only to be left in his boxer briefs. His cheeks flushed red, quickly averting his eyes as he readjusted himself and you on the bed so you were now laying properly. Vash had wedged himself back against the wall, your back pressed to his front, as Wolfwood climbed in to join. "Tight fuckin' fit," Wolfwood grunted, and Vash would have been embarrassed at his phrasing if you hadn't laughed at him and playfully swatted his chest. Considering the limited space, the three of you had to shuffle around for a bit to get comfortable, one of you earning an elbow to somewhere sensitive, or a knee to the thigh, but finally everything settled into a comfortable position. Wolfwood laid on his back, arm outstretched for both you and Vash to rest your heads on, your back to his side, face to face with Vash. It didn't take long for Wolfwood to doze off, his light-sleep snoring filling the otherwise empty room. Vash tried to sleep, really he did, but he couldn't keep his eyes off of you. He couldn't stop staring at the curve of your jaw, the halo of hair on the arm and pillow below you, and your beautiful dazzling eyes. This time, he didn't have to shy away when you met his gaze. This time, he could stare and stare until he went blind. And, as enamored with you as he was, he could see that same infatuation as you stared back.  "Hey," You whispered, closing your eyes as his metallic hand brushed a strand of hair behind your ears. "Hey." Those were the only words you exchanged, afraid you might wake up your sleeping companion. That didn't stop you grinning from ear to ear, though, and it didn't stop him from shuffling impossibly closer, or his cold mechanical hand running up and down your side, slowly skating up. He traced a trail with his fingertips, going from your side, to your back, up your arm, brushing over your collarbone, and up your neck. It was feather light, scared that if he pressed any harder you would disappear into a cloud of smoke. His fingers stopped at your chin, index finger gently hooked underneath, while his thumb traced the outline of your lips. Vash sucked in a deep breath, half lidded cyan eyes staying locked on the slight part of your mouth as you kissed the pad of his metal thumb. He exhaled in a puff, watching the hairs to the side of your face shift in place. "This doesn't feel real," He admitted in a whisper, barely audible had you not been mere inches away from him, "I feel like I don't deserve this." Frowning, you pressed another kiss to his hand, and he vaguely registered the warmth of your palm on the side of his neck. It was as gentle as a mayfly's wing, and had he not seen your arm move, he would have missed it. The same hand reached out, grasping his wrist and pulling it away from your face. Vash swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, his still tipsy mind hazy as you leaned in and placed your petal soft lips on the corner of his mouth. It wasn't enough, he could never get enough, he thought as he turned his head, greedily taking you in and kissing you so gently. His eyes fell closed, fingers threading between yours. Shifting slightly, his other hand came up from beneath him, cupping the back of your neck. It was slow, languid, gentle, like you both had all the time in the world to simply exist with each other. Vash wanted to make up for lost time, apologize for leaving you in that motel room, tell you how much he missed you, but instead he spoke with his actions. He kissed you tenderly, lovingly, over and over again, his hands holding you so close you might think it was his last night alive. "I never stopped thinking about you," He whispered between kisses, turning you over on your back. He propped himself up, torso hovering over you as he kissed your cheek, nose, jaw, the shell of your ear. The sigh you breathed had him closing his eyes, scrunching his brow and committing it to memory.  Untangling his fingers from yours, his metal hand reached down, firmly grasping your hip as his lips moved down. He wanted to do this for so long, shower you in love and affection, to be showered in love and affection back. He wanted to give and take and exist in a world that was entirely you. When his lips came back up, there was more intensity behind his kisses, welcoming the part of your mouth with his own. Your mouth was warm, welcoming, and he could taste the lingering booze left behind when he pressed his tongue into your own. There was a whine, and it took him longer than it should have to realize it came from him, pulling back quickly when he felt a shift in the bed beside the two of you. A thick strand of saliva kept your mouths connected as he glanced over, seeing Wolfwood tugging his arm back and tucking it behind his head. Vash stilled, waited, and when he heard the telltale snores again, he was back on your lips in an instant. "Vash," You breathed into him, your hands grabbing the back of his shirt and fisting the material in your palms, "It's okay, I'm not going anywhere."  You sounded amused, and his fingers gripped you just a little bit tighter as he kissed you just a little bit harder. "I know." But he didn't know. He didn't know when would be the last moments he spent with you, and he didn't want you to slip between his fingers again. He didn't want to dance around his feelings to keep you safe when neither of your futures were guaranteed tomorrow. So, instead of pulling back when you patted and rubbed his back, he slipped between your legs, his hands grabbing at your thighs and pulling you into him, adjusting your position. He hunched over you, forearms resting beside your head as he took more and more, stealing the breath from your lungs, soaking in your tiny whines and insincere protests. There was a fire in the pit of his stomach, and everything about you, everything you did, stoked the flame, made it burn brighter, hotter. Vash didn't know where this boldness came from, brushing your bangs back from your face and kissing you once more, the heat of his hand searing your skin as he dipped his fingers just below the band of your shorts, hiking your leg up around his waist. Immediately met with eager compliance, Vash smiled against you and rubbed an affectionate stroke on your outer thigh. His hand moved up, further and further until his fingers were tangled in the strands of your hair. He lowered himself, just a bit, but it was enough to have his pelvis rub up into you. The moan you let out was less quiet, but he couldn't care less when you were pulling him so much closer, arching your hips to press up into him. He shuddered, a small hiss making it past his teeth as you rubbed up into him. He was already getting so worked up and he didn't even know if you would be okay with something so different, something that could send you running. "I want you," He sighed into your temple, cheeks flushing, "Just... Promise you'll try to keep an open mind?" He was suddenly bashful, watching your brow quirk at his request. "Wha– why?"  "It's– my, ahem... It's a little different than, uhm–" Vash paused, a shiver wracking up his spine when you reached down and palmed the front of his pants. You kissed him, obviously not swayed by his lack of human anatomy– he didn't know why he expected anything less from the person that would patch him up and nurse his hard to reach wounds. He relaxed into your touch, cock pulsing in its confines as you flattened your palm and stroked up and down the front of his pants, arms shaking as he pulled back from you with a sheepish smile. "Sensitive," He explained, fingers pushing up the hem of your shirt until you lifted your arms, allowing him to pull the fabric off and toss it behind him and onto the floor. His eyes widened, before softening, hands clutching at your sides and moving up and down soothingly. "Beautiful." Both hands, metal and flesh, gripped your ribcage, thumbing over the perk of your nipples. You reaction was immediate, back arching, one hand flying to cover your mouth. Vash exhaled, breathing ragged as he repeated the action, this time watching your face contort, trying your best to keep quiet and not wake Wolfwood next to you. He pinched your nipples between his thumb and forefinger, gently rolling them in his grasp. Your airy moans urged his own whine, his lips replacing one of his hands, working you just a little faster. Hands moved, clothing was discarded, and by the time Vash had gotten his senses about him, you were in nothing but your underwear, urging him to tug his shirt over his head and throw it into the dark with the rest of your clothes. Vash knows he was supposed to savor this, commit it to memory, but your wandering hand stroking his cheeks, pulling his hair, pawing at the front of his pants, had all of his senses kicked into overdrive. You were beautiful, more so than he had ever imagined, and he didn't want to wait another second to have you. The warm pad of his thumb came up, pressing into your bottom lip, urging you to open up for him. He kissed you, more tongue than lips, while his metal hand caressed the innermost part of your thighs, the tips of his fingers teasing up against your clothed clit. When you moaned into his mouth, he moaned with you, the sound less quiet than desired and entirely debauched. Handling you with utmost care, his hand peeled your underwear to the side. Vash was surprised when you didn't flinch at the cold– but then again he was probably warmed by your body heat– as he dipped his fingers into just slightly, coming back up to circle your clit. Sounds he didn't think he would ever get to hear cascaded from your lips, and he greedily lapped them up like his last meal. Occasionally returning your noises with a choked out moan or breathy whine, his fingers trailed back down, one finger slowly dipping into your heat. When you gasped into him, he curled his finger up slowly, pulling back before pushing in a second. You were soaked, and your combined groan echoed off the walls of your small shared room. "Having all the fun without me," Broke the silence, hands on Vash's hips from behind making him startle out a high pitched eep! "Got room for another?" In all honesty, Vash hadn't even noticed Wolfwood move, and he wondered if it's because he was so wrapped up in you, or if Wolfwood was really that quiet. His cheeks flushed a deeper red, if that was even possible, when he glanced down, watching Wolfwood press his tented boxers up and into his ass. Cerulean eyes shot back up, like a deer in the headlights as Wolfwood ran a hand up his bare spine slowly. Vash turned to glance at you, only to see you biting your lip to suppress a shy grin, then back at Wolfwood. He nodded, barely finished the action of agreeing before he was being grabbed by the back of the neck and tugged up. Back to his chest, Wolfwood moved his hand around his neck to cup his jaw, pulling him into a mind-numbing kiss. His lips were rougher, chapped, and he could taste the leftover nicotine lingering on his breath when his mouth was pried open by his tongue. Vash moaned, eyes rolling back into his skull when Wolfwood reached around with his other hand, cupping the front of his pants and giving a gentle squeeze. Back arching, Vash bucked into his hand, pulling back to fix Wolfwood with a half lidded, embarrassed expression.  "It's... it's different," Vash explained again, earning a snicker in response. "You got a hole?" His expression fell, eyes wide in shock, nodding slowly. "We're all good then." He should've been embarrassed, really. Should've been embarrassed that Wolfwood speaking to him so directly made his cock twitch, or embarrassed by the fact when he glanced over you were touching yourself below him, but he couldn't. He locked eyes with you, his breath catching in his throat as you pushed yourself up on your forearms. You sat up on your knees, hands holding his waist as you kissed him again. Being pulled back and forth made his head spin, and he didn't know who was unbuttoning his pants and pushing them down his hips, but every touch and sensation and movement had him absolutely delirious. A hand was on his face again, Wolfwood squishing his cheeks to open his mouth and pull him back for another debauched, sloppy kiss. He didn't have time to be bashful about his state of undress, but the way you gasped when his pants and boxers had been pulled to his knees had his body tensing. Wolfwood seemed intrigued, parting only far enough to glance down. Vash slapped his hands over his face, not daring to peek through the cracks of his fingers. "Vash," You breathed, a yelp leaving his lips when he felt your smaller hand grasp him, "You're so gorgeous." Finally, Vash had gathered the courage to look at you from behind his hands, seeing the intrigued, bewildered expression on your face. You were tracing the neon glyphs running up his length, which would look like a normal human appendage had it not emerged from opened, flourishing petals. He was twitching with every slight touch, panting behind his hands as your fingers moved down, hips jumping and cock bouncing with even the slightest graze. "C–Careful, sensitive." Slick ooze coated his entire length, your hand glistening after releasing him from your grasp. Vash tossed a glance over his shoulder, seeing Wolfwood's furrowed brows and focused expression. Oh God, he thought this was weird didn't he? His worries dissipated the second Wolfwood reached around, using two fingers to gather up the slick coating him. He smirked, using his thumb to smear it around on his fingers before pulling his hand back. Vash would have been confused if he didn't feel a slimy finger circling his asshole, making him gasp and jump. "Tell us if it's too much," You soothed, laying back on the bed and coaxing Vash to come with you. He complied, of course he did, forearms holding himself above you as you whispered sweet words, followed by a quick, "Touch me again." Skin–warmed metal prodded at your entrance again, moving up, then down, before two fingers slowly entered you. In unison, Wolfwood pressed a finger into Vash, pulling a surprised mewl from his throat. Still, he melted into the touch, fingers pausing only briefly as he caught his bearings, before curling his prosthetic digits and stroking inside of your dripping cunt. The sounds you made were heavenly, his legs shaking as Wolfwood slowly worked him open. A second finger was added, his back arching and pressing down into your chest as he choked out a cry. "You're so pretty," You murmered through the haze, a grunt coming from Wolfwood behind him, "Please, Vash... I want you." Three words he never thought he would hear, three words that almost had him cumming on the spot paired with the quick work Wolfwood was making of him. He nodded frantically, glancing over his shoulder at Wolfwood, seeing his boxers now gone, cock impossibly hard and heavy under its own weight. Vash audibly choked, eyes wide when he made eye contact. "B– aha, big," Vash stuttered intelligently, earning a smirk in return. "How–" "The man upstairs blessed me in that way. Dont worry your pretty little head about it." Wolfwood pulled back, shucking down Vash's pants the rest of the way and pulling them off, allowing him to look back at you and crowd you in his space. Metal fingers gripped himself by the base, swiping one, two, three stripes up the line of your pussy, making his body jolt every time. The head caught on your entrance, his arms shaking as he slowly, oh so slowly, pushed himself into your welcoming heat. The slide was easy between your combined slick, his slow inch-by-inch entrance more for him than you to adjust. Once he bottomed out, you breathed a sigh, and he whimpered into your neck. Vash wasn't given much, if any time to adjust, before Wolfwood was pressing his cockhead against his hole, only managing to get two or three weak thrusts into your clenching heat before he was being split open. He was loud, the moan ripped from his throat when Wolfwood pushed himself in, filling him so good and so much. His cock twitched, jumped, and throbbed inside your soaked cunt, earning a string of pleas and mewls from your lips. He couldn't think straight, couldn't see straight, and he didn't even register the fact he had started moving back and forth in your heat in time with Wolfwood's thrusts until a particularly spongy spot inside him had been prodded by the other man's cockhead. "Ah, s–so much!" Crying out in pure bliss, Vash quickened his speed, the slap of Wolfwoods hips against his ass barely audible over his moans and mewls and whines. It was almost too much, almost enough to push him over the cliff of overstimulation, just barely toeing the line. Tears pooled in his eyes, knocking his forehead against yours as he panted into your open mouth. "I love you, I love you I love you I–" Vash sputtered, only a fraction of his brain working well enough to know he was going to cum fast and hard if he didn't try to anchor himself. "'m gonna cum, please, please cum with me." He didn't know who exactly he was talking to, you, Wolfwood, or both, but he was desperate. Bringing down the pad of his thumb, he spun quick hard circles around your clit, revelling in your gasps and whines. His hips stuttered when Wolfwood slammed into him with a particularly hard thrust, knocking him forward into you deeper, harder. He couldn't stop himself even if he tried, his voice caught in his throat as he choked, wailed, tears falling from his eyes and drool slipping from the corner of his mouth. Moan after syrupy thick moan, he emptied himself into your welcoming heat. The shockwaves of Wolfwood pounding into him mercilessly pushing you over the edge with his restless fingers. He could never forget your please, please, please now that he was the cause of your pleasure, pumping you full of viscous fluids and bringing you to your own finish. In sync, Wolfwood growled behind him, grabbing a fistful of his hair from behind and tugging him so his back arched, feeling a warm wetness spill into him. In silence, the three of you quivered, bodies shaking from the intensity as you stilled. The hand in his hair loosened, his body falling slack on top of you, both of you grunting at the impact. His cheek was pressed against your chest, smearing the drool running down his chin against your smooth skin. "Fuck," Wolfwood broke the silence, pulling out and away from Vash, "That was..." "So good," Vash slurred, mind broken as he continued to quake on top of you. Both you and Wolfwood laughed, turning him on his side to the center of the bed. He groaned, eyes glancing down between your legs to see the sheer amount of liquids that had left a sizeable puddle on the sheets. He couldn't find it in himself to be shy about it, simply smiling at you and murmuring an insincere, "Sorry." Your hand came up, gently smacking his chest in jest as you curled up as close as you could, partially to avoid the quickly cooling liquid and partially to bask in the afterglow with him. Wolfwood sighed, content as he laid down on the other side of Vash, throwing his arm over both of your waists. "No cleanup?" You mumbled into Vash's chest, earning a scoff from Wolfwood in return. "You wanna get up?" "Nooo," You whined. "Then it can wait 'til mornin'." Vash exhaled a weak laugh, his heart feeling so full, so warm, turning his head back to look at Wolfwood and getting a surprisingly tender kiss in return. Turning his head back to you, his warm fingers tucked a strand of hair behind your ear as he placed a slow, gentle kiss on your swollen lips. Just as he began to doze off, Wolfwood steadily snoring once again, he heard your exhausted, crackled voice in the back of his mind. “I love both of you. So, so much.” And in that moment, Vash the Stampede knew he had so much more to look forward to in his following days.

[vashs-turtleneck]

Sharing is Caring.

Rating: EXPLICIT (18+ ONLY) Summary: You, Vash, and Wolfwood have a bit of a wild evening together. Pairing: Vash the Stampede x f!reader x Nicholas D. Wolfwood Content: pwp, threesome, p in v sex, rough sex, voyeurism, hand job. Word count: 3.1k

NSFW BELOW, 18+ ONLY, MDNI

Blue.

Bluer than the sky, even.

It’s all you can see as you cling tightly to the man above you, wrapping your limbs around him and pulling him into your tender embrace like you’re trying to melt into him. Those pretty eyes stare back down at you, so perfectly blue that you’d drown in them if he let you. With how adoringly they drink in the sight of you, they’re the only thing you can focus on. 

Well, that and the feeling of him stretching you out on his cock, completely flooding every one of your senses with nothing but him.

“Mayfly…” He breathes out sweetly, brokenly. “M-Mayfly… I’m not gonna– I can’t–”

“Me too… I’m g-gonna– nngh!”

“God, yes. C-Come. Come all over me, mayfly. Please. I want– I need to feel it.”

Vash holds you tighter, his fingertips deliciously digging into the meat of your thighs as the tip of his cock keeps relentlessly hitting your sweet spot like a goddamn jackhammer. His voice is dripping with agonized pleasure as he chants a quiet ‘please, please, please’ against your shoulder, feeling what must be tears pooling in your collarbone as he pistons his hips over and over. He wants to come so bad it hurts, but he needs to feel you come with him or else he knows he won’t be satisfied.

Your nails press into his toned and scarred back, clutching onto him like he’s the only thing keeping you together, leaving little marks that he hopes won’t fade right away when you let go. Your legs fight against his grip and your entire body tenses with euphoria. The rhythm of his hips carves a deep arch into your back as your cunt pulses, your velvety walls sucking him in and squeezing him so tightly that he comes so hard he thinks he might have blacked out for a moment. He brokenly cries out your name with a sob, spilling himself inside you as your body milks his throbbing cock of everything he has to give you, flooding your insides with so much cum you can feel it already start to drip down your inner thighs.

Vash has to stop himself from collapsing onto you, shifting his weight up on his forearms and trying not to crush you. You can feel him trembling, sweat dripping down his forehead and his back, your fingers delicately tracing up and down his spine. He nuzzles his face against the crook of your neck, his breaths coming heavy, ghosting his lips over your skin as he tries to come back to his senses. 

Once he feels he’s come down somewhat from his mind-shattering climax, he weakly lifts his head from your body, hazy, watery eyes meeting your gaze. God, he was crying.

“Are you okay, angel? How you feeling? You ready for more or do you need a sec?” Vash asks you breathily, his voice still shaking. Despite how blissfully fucked out he looks right now, his mind is immediately focused on you and your comfort. 

Typical Vash.

“I’m okay… Want m-more…” You mutter, realizing that your voice is no stronger than his.

He gives you a smile so soft that you swear you feel yourself die and come back to life, pressing his lips to yours so tenderly that it leaves you burning for more when he separates them as quickly as they came.

“Let’s give you more then, mayfly.”

You feel Vash slowly pull out of you with a quiet whimper and immediately feel the wetness dripping from between your legs, your thighs slick and making a mess of the tangled sheets beneath you. He swiftly switches your positions, flipping you over and holding you on top of him with his half-hard cock pressing against your abdomen and smearing its slick on your skin. His large hands grip your ass, holding your hips up and open, presenting you unabashedly to the other man in the room. Vash presses a soft kiss to your cheek before looking towards Wolfwood with a smirk that’s all too beautiful for how lewd this is.

"All yours, Wolfwood." He chimes out far too casually. 

Your eyes follow Vash’s, your gaze falling to the priest sitting in his chair next to the bed. His cock stands at attention, delicious beads of precum dripping from his tip all the way down the length of him as his own hand slowly trails up and down like he’s teasing himself. He’s covered in a pretty red hue from his cheeks all the way down to his broad chest, undoubtedly having enjoyed the show the two of you just put on, his dark eyes focused on the spot between your spread legs. 

"About damn time." Wolfwood grunts as he rises from his seat and situates himself on his knees behind you, his rough hands gripping your hips as his eyes stay fixated on the view in front of him. “Thought you two would never stop. Shook the bed so hard I thought you’d break it before I got a turn.” He teases, a subtle groan leaving him, watching as Vash's cum drips from your inviting cunt.

"Looks like needle-noggin’ did a good job of getting you all warmed up f’me, sweetheart." He grins, calloused palms massaging your hips. “You ready?”

Still dazed from your previous mind-numbing orgasm, you nod weakly, eyes fluttering as you look back at the dark-haired man. "Yeah... Ready. Want you."

"F-Fuck, sweetheart…" he hisses.

“Atta girl,” He purrs with a hungry smirk. “Keep that ass up nice and high for me, baby.”

You feel one of his hands let go of you, moving to grip his cock and pumping himself languishly from tip to base a few times as he aligns himself with your dripping entrance. He teases you, making you whine as he rubs his tip along your hot flesh, grinding against you and coating himself with a mix of yours and Vash’s juices. A low growl leaves the priest as he finally pushes inside you, splitting you apart on his scorchingly thick cock, finding little resistance as he sheaths himself completely inside your tight heat in one fluid motion.

Vash keeps his hands on your ass, gently squeezing you and steadying you as Wolfwood gets going, carefully moving your body in the other man's rhythm. Your hands instinctively grip Vash's shoulders to ground yourself as your body shudders. It's all so much, but it's so good.

“So pretty. Makes me want to keep her all for myself.” Wolfwood chuckles, greedily wringing your body of every bit of pleasure you have to give him as Vash lays back and watches, just as Nicholas did mere minutes ago.

"Mayfly..." Vash whispers to you, his voice low, a tender whisper against your throat. "You're so beautiful when you're all flushed and sweaty like that." He watches as Wolfwood grips the fat of your ass, your body shaking.

"So damn cute. God, you like her, don't you, Wolfwood?" He observes, still holding you in place, keeping your hips up for the other man. "Look how pretty she is."

“H-Hey! Don't joke like that!” The man beneath you whines, and the priest only responds by squeezing you harder, clawing the plush meat of your thighs and ass rougher, fucking you like you’re his, perfectly aware of your limits to know he won't break you, but that doesn't mean he won't rough you up a bit. He wants to leave a lasting reminder of what he did to you, after all. You can only mewl out wantonly, letting him have his way with you, pistoning his cock so deeply into you that it rips the air from your lungs every time he sinks back inside your inviting sex. 

Vash's eyes glitter with joy, brows upturned with glee. There’s nothing he wants more than your pleasure, even if he's not the one splitting you in half on his cock.

"Shit, look at you. So damn perfect. You want him? You want Wolfwood to use you, huh baby?" He coos, flesh hand gently massaging the plush of your ass. "You're doing so well, mayfly. You're being so good for us."

"V-Vash..." You whine brokenly.

But just as his name leaves your lips, you feel a harsh slap on your ass, squealing out in a mix of pain and pleasure as you look back at the man behind you.

"Blondie's not the one fucking you right now, sweetheart." Wolfwood rumbles, leaning over you so you feel his weight against your back. He grabs a fistful of your hair, tugging it back to look at him, his piercing dark eyes commanding your attention. "You'll cry out my name."

His name leaves your lips as a choked whimper, so fucked out of your mind right now that all you see and feel is the scorching, white-hot pleasure being given to you by the two men sandwiching you. “N-Nico…”

“Mayfly, you doing okay?” Vash whispers to you, his hot breath ghosting over your cheek. You don’t trust yourself to speak right now, your voice a mess of mewls and moans, so you simply nod your head. You are okay, you try to reassure him. In fact, you’re feeling the best you ever have, high on the rapturous feeling of being completely sandwiched between your lovers. 

"That's it. Always been such a fast learner." He praises teasingly. Wolfwood keeps a firm grip on your hair, pulling it harshly and pulling you back onto him.

"Don’t hurt her.” Vash says to his friend. "Make sure you give her back to me the same way you found her, got it?" His flesh hand leaves your ass to lovingly trace the contours of your face.

Wolfwood’s ruthless thrusts push you down with every fluid motion, forcing you to grind your pelvis against Vash’s cock, his shaft teasing your sensitive clit and filling your body with so much mouthwatering pleasure you think you might be drooling. You know it’s not enough friction to satisfy Vash though, so with what little grip of reality you still have, you reach a hand down and start pumping his cock, matching Wolfwood’s rhythm. Vash immediately reacts, feeling a shiver run deliciously all the way up his spine.

“O-Oh, mayfly…” the humanoid typhoon whispers hoarsely, his breath catching, looking down between your bodies and watching as your hand so lovingly glides up and down his dick. You see his eyes focus on the motion of your hand, his mouth falling agape and his brows upturning in grateful euphoria. Soft little whines leave his perfect lips, and you can see his adam's apple bob as he tries to swallow down his noises of pleasure. Yet, to your surprise, you suddenly feel his hand wrap over yours and pull your grip away from his cock, making you release your hold on him and letting his dick fall with a slap against his naval.

Confused but too distracted and dazed by the man pounding into you from behind to form any words, you mutter a barely coherent ‘w-whu–?’ to the handsome blonde. Vash sucks in a shaky breath and places an apologetic kiss to the tip of your nose. 

“Sorry, mayfly. Can’t have you doing that. Gonna come if I let you do that any longer.”

But… isn’t that the point?

Vash must see the look on your face, confusion blending in with love drunk euphoria. He chuckles hoarsely, hand caressing your cheek as his eyes go dark with lust. 

“Saving all that for when it's my turn to fuck you again, angel.” He purrs, his voice dripping with sexual promise. “Don’t want any of it going to waste.”

Vash holds your chin between his thumb and forefinger, pulling your face towards his and catching your bottom lip between his teeth before sliding his tongue in your mouth and tangling it with yours.

“That’s if you get another turn, Blondie.” Wolfwood chimes from behind you, grunting with every powerful pump of his hips, eliciting desperate little whimpers from your lips that Vash drinks in all too eagerly. “Like I said, might keep her all to myself.”

Vash parts his lips from yours, a string of your mixed saliva connecting your mouths before breaking. He licks the taste of you from his lips before he looks up at the other man pumping his precious mayfly full of cock. “You’re hilarious, Wolfwood,” he says sarcastically, to which Wolfwood smirks.

“What can I say? The man upstairs blessed me in more ways than one.” Wolfwood tugs your hair back again, bringing your face closer to his and exposing the curves of your throat as he meets your blissed out gaze. “Ain’t that right, sweetheart? You feelin’ just how blessed I am?”

Your answer is a broken sob of a moan, borderline overstimulated by all the pleasure and attention the two men are pouring into you. Wolfwood’s tongue suddenly invades your mouth and floods your senses with the taste of ash, giving him a turn at swallowing down your moans. Vash, tempted by your supple neck looking oh so vulnerable and begging for his attention, latches his mouth to the column of your throat, sucking and nibbling along it, grazing his sharp canines along your skin, teasing you, but never daring to hurt you– a stark contrast to the man fucking you into oblivion from behind.

“Fuck, squeezing me so damn tight. You gonna be a good girl and come on my cock, sweetheart?” The priest growls. 

“Hm?” Vash hums as he pulls his mouth from your neck, Wolfwood’s words getting his attention. The flesh hand leaves your face, trailing down your body to squeeze your ass again, his prosthetic now making its way to the apex of your sex.

“Oh, you can do it, mayfly. Come on Wolfwood’s cock for him. For both of us.” The fingers of Vash’s cold prosthetic make contact with your clit, circling against your sensitive bud. The initial feeling of cool metal on your hot skin makes you squeal before you’re made a whimpering mess by the two men, groaning out deeply with every breath you exhale, a beautiful crescendo of moans from the three of you filling the otherwise unassuming hotel room.

“Shit, shit, shit!” the priest hisses from behind you when he feels your body tense and pulse around his cock, your inner walls sucking him in like your body is begging for him to fill you until you’re bursting. He lets out a loud and guttural moan at the feeling of your cunt tightening around him, forcing his eyes to roll back, his grip tightening on your hair and hip. His own hips stutter and you feel his cock twitch inside you, the tip kissing your cervix as hot ropes of cum paint your insides even more white.

You yelp when you suddenly feel a sharp sensation on the side of your neck, realizing the dark-haired man balls deep in you has latched his mouth to the divot where your shoulder meets your neck, biting hard enough that he’ll undoubtedly leave a mark. You can already feel the mess of both the men’s cum and your own juices trickle from your pulsing cunt all the way down to your knees, your legs shaking. When Wolfwood releases his tight grip on your hair and unlatches his teeth from your supple skin, your upper body collapses onto Vash, who is all too happy to hold you close and cradle you in his arms, cooing soft praises into your ear as you tremble against him.

“Shh, mayfly. I’ve got you. You were so good. Such a good girl for us, baby.”

Your hips remain up and held in Wolfwood’s hands, now tenderly massaging the soft skin, unabashedly admiring the mess he’s helped make of you. “So damn good.” Wolfwood whispers out, his own voice trembling, leaning forward to press soft kisses along your spine and between your shoulder blades, the gentleness a stark contrast to how harshly he was fucking you mere seconds ago. 

Two pairs of strong hands hold you, gently maneuvering you off your knees and off of Vash, carefully laying you on your back against the soft and messy sheets. 

“Catch your breath, baby. Do you need anything?” Wolfwood breathes, peppering soft kisses all over your cheek and jaw. 

You feel hands caress you, massage you, and trace the gentle curves of your body. Both of them are still hard, Vash achingly so, but they still focus themselves on your wellbeing over the tension they each feel between their legs. Blue eyes fall to the deep bite you now have at the base of your neck, a mark that will undoubtedly take days to heal. His warm thumb traces the harsh red mark, dark brows furrowing. 

“Thought I told you to give her back the way you found her.” Vash chastises, a subtle hint of jealousy painting his voice.

“I wish I could say I was sorry, Blondie.” Wolfwood retorts, words trembling, still having barely recovered himself, yet still using what little breath he has to taunt the other man, and you can see the stern glare Vash is already giving him. 

You can’t just lay back and let your lovers fight now, can you?

Just as Vash’s mouth opens to scold the priest, any words he was about to form are interrupted with a surprised moan from both men, feeling the sudden warmth of your tender hands wrap around their cocks, liberally stroking them each from their dripping tips down to the base.

“F-Fuck! T-Take it easy, sweetheart. You’re still shaking.” Wolfwood blurts out, yet his hips are already following the delicious motion of your soft hand. 

Oh how sweet of them to be so concerned about your wellbeing, but the precious looks on their faces as they try to hold back from fucking themselves into your palms like a couple of dogs in heat is so much sweeter.

Vash’s eyes shut tightly, biting down on his bottom lip to try to stifle his moans, only to finally give in and start rutting his hips against you, letting you squeeze a hot glob of precum from the outlaw’s dick. You and Wolfwood gave him such an incredible show, how could he possibly hold back when you’re so eager to make him feel good?

“These sheets are gonna be unsalvageable.” The blonde groans, his eyes opening just enough to let you see them rolling back already. 

“S’ fine, Blondie. Cleaning fee will be worth it.”

divider.

[bakughosts]

how real hunger has a real taste

Trigun Stampede ✮ Wolfwood/f!Reader, 18k. Also on AO3!

You want everything. You want the real and the not, who he is and what he sells people. You want to run your thumb across his jaw without the expectation of anything else afterwards. A touch for the sake of a touch. You’re struggling with understanding whether these thoughts are because of who he is or because he’s the closest thing you’ve had to an object of affection since—ever. Maybe if you closed your eyes, it wouldn’t matter if it was him or someone else. (It matters. And then he inevitably betrays you.)

notes: mutual pining, angst, wolfwood in early twenties but looks older & reader implied to be in mid-to-late twenties, a little praise kink for the both of you, love confessions (but who knows if they're real? definitely not you), spoilers for all of trigun stampede s1 (HEAVILY canon reliant so it probably won't make sense if you haven’t seen it; if you don't have the time etc. and still want to read this, reading on from 'before julai' should be just un-confusing enough to work for you hopefully???)

The Fall of JuLai

It’s not like Nick thinks he’s a good person by any means. 

He delivered Vash to JuLai Tower like he was supposed to, and even though he begrudgingly likes the guy, Nick knows that he doesn’t stand a chance against his brother. His ‘do no harm’ bullshit is gonna put paid to that. Meryl and Roberto are there, too, because they're nosy and got swept up in all the things happening on this hellish planet that Nick has too much to do with. You’re there for the same reason—and when you had your chance to leave, to get out of the city safely, you didn’t. Because you’re entirely too idealistic and you’re delusional enough to believe that Vash can save the world.

The streets of JuLai are crawling with vines and blooming flora, petals and leaves black as the heart of a killer. Fluorescent blue pestles illuminate ruined homes, collapsed buildings, bodies. Some moving, some not. 

People are crying out, begging for help—from others, from God, which is funny considering Nick has known since long before he signed his pastoral contract that there’s no way any God could’ve seen this planet and not been disgusted enough to destroy it.

Navigating the streets is easier now that there aren’t guards shooting at him every five minutes. He ignores the people around him—the moving ones and the motionless ones. Kicks rubble as he walks much too slowly towards the exit of the crumbling city. The cigarette that he bummed off of Roberto is mintier than the Skulls he usually smokes. He didn’t know you could get menthols these days. The taste is unpleasant. Explains why the old man always smelled a little like toothpaste under all that stale tobacco.

Roberto’s dead now. His blood is still drying on the floor of the elevator where his life abruptly ended. These people are going to die if they haven’t already. Meryl is going to die. Vash is going to die. You are going to die.

So no, Nick doesn’t think he’s a good person. He never has.

But his freedom is his own. The orphanage is safe. His family—whatever remnants are left, without Livio—are all safe. That’s what being the bad guy gets you, because no one gives a rat’s ass about how good you are. No one cares about anything but themselves. No one was gonna give Nick his freedom, give the orphanage its safety. Not without something in return.

He’s moving so goddamn slow that you wouldn’t expect him to have just given up everything—to have betrayed the only people that were kind to him, that cared about him when he saw his brother die, when his childhood home was almost obliterated. If he doesn’t start running, he’s gonna go down with this city, and all of it will have been for nothing.

He can’t stop thinking about the look on your face when you realized what he’d done.

Meryl’s nattering is something he hardly remembers, something about him being unbelievable, I thought better of you, why isn’t everyone a goody-fuckin’-two-shoes like me, but every time he blinks, he can see you in perfect resolution, like there’s a screen on the back of his eyelids replaying his worst memories.

You hadn’t even said anything. That was the worst part.

The street beneath his feet shudders, the entire city groaning, the metal hull on which it stands screaming out in protest. Nick stops. He stops moving, all because he can’t get you out of his goddamn head, like you’re some sort of worm that’s crawled its way in there, all cozy and nested where he wants you least.

Knives is gonna tear you apart. You and the bratty reporter. You’re strong—you’ve shown that to him in your travels, that you’re not one to back down from a good fight, and he liked seeing a gun in your hand, fire in your eyes, blood on your teeth—but Knives is on a whole other level. Even Nick couldn’t take him out, and he’s a freak of nature thanks to all the shit Conrad did to him. 

He and Vash moved a fifteen-ton ion cannon with their bare hands because they were built to, and you’re up there in that tower all soft and kind and human . 

“Fuck.” His cigarette burns down to the filter, the taste more like plastic than mint. His cross is heavy, shoulder protesting the one-handed hold with which he carries it. He’s not going back there. He did all this for a reason. He saved his own hide because he’s a bad person and that’s what bad people do. You shouldn’t have expected more from him. 

Even though you did. Even though sometimes you looked at him and he really thought—and don’t get him wrong, it’s because you’re delusional—that you might’ve actually believed he could be a better person.

“Fuck.”

He’s back in the building before the butt of his cigarette has a chance to hit the ground.

Following Meryl seems to be a bad idea, but you do it anyway. Even as she calls after Vash, climbing through the broken window of JuLai Tower’s penthouse office, even as you hear the sound of metal hitting metal, knives and bullets clashing in violent bursts of embers, even with Doctor Conrad behind you—a man who, not even fifteen minutes ago, you would have ripped apart with your bare hands—you keep going.

What else are you going to do? What else is left?

There’s the gleam of silver, the sound of something very sharp slicing the very air, and before you’re able to get outside, Meryl is thrown across the roof of the tower, the dome of the office collapsing inwards. Glass tumbles down on your shoulders and you have to move—that’s all you’ve ever known. Just keep moving.

You’re out of the window frame and running towards her in an instant, lungs burning, but Meryl is still rolling, still sliding towards the downturned side of the roof edge, and you’re going to lose her, you realize—she’s going to fall.

Maybe you call out to her—you’re not sure. Your throat is raw already from yelling, your bones aching from the multiple injuries you’ve sustained. You’ll die here too, most likely.

The realization feels peaceful in a very empty way.

But before it can settle in, you see a familiar figure—a dark suit, a too-large gun in the shape of a cross, and Meryl is yelling, “Undertaker?” and Nick is there and you hate him for coming back.

When you reach them, he barely looks you in the eye. Just motions to his shoulders, asks, “Think you can hold on?”

You don’t want this man to be your salvation. You don’t want him to have anything he can possibly use to redeem himself. But you’re not going to die because of your pride. You let him turn and kneel before you, and your arms are around his neck and he’s got his gun in one arm and Meryl in the other and you’re flying—

Honest to god flying through the air, falling far off the top of the tower and then further, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, Nick taking the brunt of each fall. You have to close your eyes or you’re going to throw up, and your legs are wrapped so tightly around his waist that you think you could cut him in half, and he smells like Roberto’s menthol cigarettes—and you knew something was different about him, that he was inhumanly strong, but the way he waltzes through the city from rooftop to rooftop while carrying a couple hundred pounds of extra weight is simply incomprehensible.

Things don’t feel real because there’s no way this could be really happening. You feel the wind against your face, the dulled impact of Nick’s feet hitting hard concrete and metal, and you can hear his labored breathing, hear Meryl scream for him to hold her tighter or she’s gonna fall, hear the gunshots of soldiers on ground level who have still, for some reason, decided that you are the enemy they should be after and not the miles-tall Plant aberration that’s growing out of JuLai Tower.

You can’t open your eyes even when Nick stops moving, when you’re far outside of the city. Even when his gun is on the ground, when he’s put down Meryl and lowered himself so your knees are on the desert floor. Prying your arms from around his neck would feel the same as dying.

Gently, Nick does this for you—moves your arms, but not off of him completely. Enough that he can turn so you’re both kneeling and facing each other, and only then do you open your eyes. He lost his sunglasses at some point during the escape. JuLai is a mess of pulsing blue behind him. He says your name very, very quietly. Your hands are curled at the back of his neck, fingers carding through the hair at his nape because at this point it’s instinct. His eyes are so dark they look black, and there’s blood smudged on his cheek, and your first instinct is to wipe it away for him—to remove any sign of hurt, any sign of injury. 

But Vash is gone, and Nick's the one that made sure it happened. 

You push away from him so quickly that you fall on your ass, sand dusted in a cloud around you. Maybe he was going to say something, some other half-assed excuse, but the hull of the ship that JuLai grows from groans loud, its metal body screaming for help into the desert night as if it’s not far past the point of salvation. The roots that pulse from the city begin to recede, crawling back through the holes they’ve made in infrastructure, curling back up to the top of the tower.

Much more quietly than it should, the largest city on the planet creaks, falls, and goes completely dark.

Before JuLai

Nothing annoys Nick more than routine gun maintenance, and the fight on the Sandsteamer had really done a number on the Punisher.

He always hated the way the doctor called him that—this is your duty, Punisher, this is what I created you for—as if he was nothing but an extension of his weapon. Though that’s all he’s really supposed to be. An executioner, an undertaker, a priest. A sentient trigger.

He doesn’t let things like that get to him. Seeing his brother as what he’d become, seeing him kill himself to escape the life he was living because he wanted to be just like Nick—

None of it gets to him. He doesn’t let it. He doesn’t care.

You sit down next to him when he’s in the middle of oiling one of the crossgun’s many chambers, kicking up sand in your wake. He probably shouldn’t have decided to sit out here to clean his gun, but where else is he gonna do it? In the car? Everything on the planet is covered in sand. He’ll have to deal with it. Still, he gives you a nasty side-eye for putting him back about three minutes of work.

“Am I interrupting? Sorry,” you say, and he can tell you’re not. “Thought you were gonna help us set up camp.”

“I’m busy.”

“You can get hot and heavy with your cross later. Meryl needs help getting a fire started.”

He doesn’t look at you. Doesn’t want to. The cloth he uses to clean the chambers is black with grease and he wonders when he’ll have to tear a piece of his shirt off to replace it with and he wonders if you got hurt earlier keeping the Bad Lads Gang off the reporter duo and he wonders what he could possibly do to get you to quit staring at him. His collar feels too tight even though the buttons start four inches down his chest. “Get Blondie to do it.”

At the top of the dune closest to camp, Nick has an excellent view of the stretch of absolutely fucking nothing that surrounds you all. Vash said his home was near here—needed to get his prosthetic arm fixed up by the people that built it. He probably isn’t in good shape to help anyone do anything. You both know that.

The wind pushes the dunes further out, transforming the desert into a rippling, golden sea. The sun is about to set, the sand already cast a shade of light pink by oncoming dusk. You’re silent for long enough that Nick is forced to look at you, which he doesn’t do often because it always makes him feel a bit hot under the collar, a bit hunted. He can’t explain it. Sure as hell doesn’t like it, though.

You’re not even paying attention to him. Instead, you take in the wide open desert as if it’s the first time you’re seeing it, and the sun touches your face soft like a lover and—there’s a pang of something in his stomach. Like jealousy. 

He can’t escape you. It isn’t like the others don’t try with him—he has to deal with Vash, who thinks he can befriend the entire fucking planet and bombards Nick with friendly remarks that he’s dying to see turn into banter; Meryl, who isn’t interested in him as more than a journalistic pursuit but still asks some very pointed questions; Roberto, who offers him a smoke every now and then and thanks him for doing shit that he didn’t do for anyone but himself in the first place.

And then he has to deal with you, too, but you approach him in a different way. A way he isn’t used to—not that he’s used to any of it—but that he can stomach. You’re open with him, but you don’t inundate him with things he doesn’t care about. You ask questions when they’re necessary. You give him disapproving looks when he runs his mouth a bit too much and much more pleased looks when he lets Vash wax poetic about saving the universe from evil. He finds himself shutting up sometimes just to see it—the slight curve of your lips, fond exasperation at Vash’s unyielding hope, a silent thank you in the pointed look you send his way.

“You grew up there?” you ask. “At that orphanage?”

You’ve decided, it seems, that these questions are necessary. He’d talked about the orphanage at some point in front of you, so he’s not exactly surprised that you know about it. Still, he’s in a shitty mood and he doesn’t want to talk about this with anyone. Especially you, even though most days you’re the person he’d be most willing to tell. “I never liked twenty questions. Too much talking involved.”

“I already know the answer,” you say.

“Then you shouldn’t have asked the question. That’s not how you win.”

“I’m trying to—I don’t know. Is it so ridiculous for me to ask you something personal every once in a while?”

He scoffs. “You’ve got more questions than bullets. And you fire them quicker, too.”

You fix him with a look, and he can only hold your eyes for a moment before looking back at his gun. Too much shit to do to get distracted, anyways. 

“How long have we been traveling together?”

“I dunno,” he says. “Couple months. Why?”

You shrug, and he can see it in his peripherals. You move fluidly, in a way he catches himself noticing too often. “Are you gonna tell any of us something real about yourself?”

“You should talk to Meryl,” he says. “I’m sure she could find you some kind of job in investigative journalism. Or maybe you could do some cam work, since you’re so far up my ass.”

“Fuck off, Wolfwood,” you say, but he can see the edge of your grin, hear the mirth in your voice. Something he likes about you: his attitude doesn’t piss you off. You take it in stride and on occasion, give it back. 

“I was here first,” he reminds you. “You should be the one doing the fucking off.”

You don’t fuck off. You sit next to him and things feel heavy but no heavier than they always do. 

He wants to hear you say his first name—a misplaced thought that he shouldn’t have had, like finding a coin in your pocket after it's already been through the dryer. (He’d kill to find a town with a laundromat, but they’re few and far between.) Wolfwood is so impersonal, what everyone he’s ever traveled with has called him. Punisher is out of the question. Nicholas he likes even less, somehow, because it feels like a name that was taken from him when he was too young to ask for it back. But thinking about the idea of you saying fuck off, Nick, or Nico, or whatever the hell you want to call him and trying badly to hide that little smile from him has his heart racing a thousand miles a minute. He looks at you and realizes what a bad idea it is because once he starts, he can't stop.

You frown—ruminative. Something’s on your mind. Something he’s worried you might try to tell him. “Are you ever, maybe…” you begin. Your words are quiet, measured. “Would you ever tell me something real?”

Nick’s hands are too clammy to keep working on the intricate parts of his gun. You’re setting him back even more. He hates it when you ask questions like this. He hates it when you mention the thing that sits between the two of you, the quiet understanding that even though you’d been a gun-for-hire traipsing around the planet and Nick had been tortured until his fucking eyes bled, you can somehow understand each other. He wants to knock you down a peg. To get you to leave him alone before he says something he’ll regret telling you. “I don’t know how you got the idea that you’re special,” he says, and the air in his lungs feels like too much for his body to hold, “but you’re not.”

You stare at him, hurt slowly curling your lips downwards. He shrugs his shoulders as if this isn’t how he wanted you to react and goes back to cleaning his gun. Tries to let himself breathe. It’s difficult. His big fucking mouth is gonna get him in trouble again if you don’t say something soon, or slap him, or leave, or—something. Nick doesn’t apologize for things. Never finds himself wanting to like he does right now.

“Forget it,” you say, standing to leave. “You—fuck. No, forget it.” 

You won’t look at him and he hates that you won’t. Some days it’s all he wants.

Traveling with Wolfwood is torture when he’s in a bad mood. He’s barely spoken to you since your conversation a few days ago—hasn’t even looked at you. That sucks for multiple reasons, but partially because today it’s you, him, and Vash in the backseat of the car, Roberto in the passenger (as always), and Meryl driving. 

You like Meryl—she’s sweet, and she has a lot of grit—but you don’t like the way she drives. The three of you slide all over the backseat like butter across a hot pan, your seat belts barely holding you in place each time she takes a hard turn—you’re in a desert, for Christ’s sake, and your destination is a straight line away from you, so you have no idea why she has to steer somewhere new every thirty seconds.

Vash had (without Meryl noticing, which would save everyone an earful) arranged the order of seating so you wouldn’t get crushed between him and Wolfwood, and took the driver’s-side seat so his prosthetic wouldn’t smack into whoever sat to his left and leave them with some nasty bruises.

Every two minutes your entire body slams into Wolfwood’s side, and he was already in a sour mood—by the time you reach the town you’ll be staying in for the night, he’s steaming, practically shoving Vash out of the car so he can leave the enclosed space he’s been forced to share with you.

Sometimes—or maybe more than sometimes, because you think about it often—you want to tell Wolfwood how childish he can be. You want to tell him that there’s more to life than smoking and sulking. But you prefer him when he isn’t giving you the cold shoulder, so you keep it to yourself.

The motel you find is cheap and clean. Well—clean might be a strong word, but at least it isn’t bug-infested like the last place you stayed, so everyone agrees to stay in town an extra day in order to rest. 

You all have lunch together (where Wolfwood ignores you), play games of pool in the motel lobby (where Wolfwood decides to go back to his room when you and him are finally up against each other), and even share a few drinks at the town’s bar after the sun sets (where Wolfwood flirts with any person that even so much as glances his way all night).

It’s not like you want to watch him shoot whiskey, head back and the long line of his throat exposed. It’s not like you want to hear the depth of his voice, its seductive edge, when he gets the bartender wrapped around his finger in under a minute flat. There’s just nowhere else to look, nothing else to listen to. The bartender leans in, smiling softly, as Wolfwood tells her something secret that has her face dusted a pretty pink. 

There’s a hand in front of you, snapping, and Meryl is asking you, “Are you even paying attention to me?”

“Yes,” you lie, “of course I am.”

She rolls her eyes. “What’d I just say?”

You genuinely have no idea. You didn’t even realize that Vash and Roberto had left the table, both fully concentrated on a game of darts across the bar.

“Yeah, thought so. Look—can you do something about it?”

“I still don’t know what you were talking about—”

“New subject. Keep up,” she says. “Can you and the Undertaker stop fighting? His moods drive me up the wall.”

Your eyes narrow. She’s doing that Meryl-thing where she asks you a question about something you’ve never established because she wants you to confirm whether or not it’s true. The amount of times Vash has been caught out by this technique is comical. 

“We’re not fighting,” you say. Fighting implies more than lukewarm camaraderie and routine disgruntlement. Fighting implies caring enough about each other to fight about something.

“Uh-huh,” she says, and you both watch as Wolfwood looks at the bartender and grins, all pretty white teeth, before glancing back at the table where you and Meryl sit. “So he’s doing this to, what, make me jealous?”

“I’m not jealous,” you say, and the speed with which the words leave your lips has already damned you. “And he’s not—it’s not for me. It’s—he’s just being Wolfwood. What else do you expect? He likes the attention.”

Meryl only looks smug when she gets someone to say something she wants them to say, and she looks very, very smug. 

“We’re staying here extra time to rest,” you tell her, “not to—do whatever he’s doing. I’m not jealous, I’m annoyed. If I have to cover his ass in a firefight because he spent his spare time with some—some random, then I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Some random,” Meryl parrots, using her fingers to put quotes around the word. “Would you rather it not be someone random, then?”

You stand too quickly, the booze going to your head. You haven’t had that much to drink, you don’t think, but you sway a little on your feet. “I’m not going to be the one that lets down the team,” you tell her. “So I’m gonna get some sleep. For the team.”

Meryl hmms, amused, playing at believing you. “Go get some sleep for the team. We all appreciate your sacrifices.”

You laugh, and though you can only see him from your peripherals, you think you see Wolfwood’s head turn just a little. Probably looking for back-ups in case the bartender loses interest.

The walk to the motel is brisk and cold with the sun finally in bed for the night, and you hate the way you think about the slope of Wolfwood’s throat and the points of his canines when he grins and the darkness of his eyes peering over the rim of his sunglasses when he glanced back towards you—

You sigh, stopping outside your door and pushing your thumb and middle finger against your closed eyes, as if you can massage the images out of your sight permanently.

You can’t. No matter how hard you try. And you know why—really, it isn’t even buried that deep down. You like his cocky grin and dry sense of humor and the way his inky hair falls soft across his forehead. You like the way his hands look when he cleans his gun, long and pretty fingers removing and reloading clips of bullets that he clicks into place one-by-one with his thumb, quick and confident. You like talking to him in the middle of the night when you camp out in the desert and everyone else is asleep, and even though you’re both in your sleeping bags, you look up at the same stars and tell each other about your worst fights or about the people you used to know, and sometimes he makes you laugh so hard that you have to cover your mouth in fear of waking everyone else.

Sometimes, you think that—maybe he feels something like that too. Maybe there are things he likes about you that he keeps to himself, little secrets lined up like cigarettes in a pack. But he keeps you at arm’s length and it kills you. No matter how much he gives you, it’s never enough, and he knows it. You know a lot about him, but you don’t know him.

So when he flirted with the bartender, it wasn’t him trying to make you jealous. Because making you jealous implies that he wants something from you. 

Maybe he just wants to fuck you. That’s another fairly viable option, but not your favorite. It’s not like you’re asking him to profess his undying love—that doesn’t exist out here. You meet people and you form tenuous connections and you enjoy the time you have until it inevitably finds its end. Law of the wasteland. 

You just want something a little more real. You want him to like things about you the way you like things about him.

If it’s a physical connection he’s looking for, he can find it with the bartender once her shift is over. You’re in travel clothes still, cargo pants and the most worn shirt you own, and you’re covered in desert grit besides. The bartender is clean and pretty and much more accessible.

He can do whatever he wants. He just lost someone. Even if you were on the other side of the Sandsteamer, you’re positive you could've heard Wolfwood cry out when Livio’s body tipped over the side of the ship and melted into the sea of sand below. Maybe fucking away the pain is what he wants to do. And that’s fine.

When you get to the door of your room, you hear hurried footsteps and your hand is on your hip, finger already ghosting the trigger of your holstered pistol—but it’s him. Not enough for him to plague your thoughts, apparently. He had to follow you back to the motel and remind you that you aren’t going to be able to escape him for the foreseeable future.

“Why’d you leave?” he asks. Blunt, for him. You wonder how much whiskey he’s had. There’s a cigarette in his mouth and the smell of tobacco overwhelms you, makes you want one yourself. Smoking’s an expensive habit.

“Got tired,” you say. You’re pretty sure he knows you’re lying. It’s hard for you to not speak out of bitterness after you've had a little too much to drink. “I didn’t think you’d care that I left.” 

You don’t know how to define what you feel for him. It’s a soft spot, maybe. You like the way he looks at you. You like the way he seems to enjoy you looking at him. Maybe you’re both vain. Maybe you’re both lonely. Whatever it is, it’s been going on for too long and you’re tired of the uncertainty. 

“Nightcap?” he asks. You hadn’t noticed the bottle in his hand, some unlabeled, murky brown liquid.

“Have one with Vash.”

“I don’t want one with him.”

“What do you want, Wolfwood?”

He meets you at the door, and sometimes you forget how tall he is. But not right now. His hand covers yours on the door handle, cigarette between two fingers, and he’s standing closer to you than he ever has outside of a fight. Nothing you’ve felt has been as warm as his skin against yours. The ash that falls on your hand burns a little. “I want to have a drink with you,” he says. “And I want to tell you something real.”

“You’re drunk,” you tell him. His palm is softer than you expected it to be. “But I’ll humor you.”

When he grins, there’s something animal to it—something on the wrong side of feral. He pushes your door open and you follow him inside, sealing your fate for the evening.

There are no chairs in your room, so the both of you sit on the floor, backs against the foot of the twin-sized bed. There are no glasses either, so you both take turns with the bottle, choking a little after each sip. Whatever’s in there could level even the rowdiest bars in November, where you’ve seen more bourbon consumed in one night by your then-traveling companions than you’ve seen altogether in one location since.

“This your way of apologizing to me?” you ask.

He laughs a little then takes a long swig of liquor, inhales sharply through his teeth as the liquid burns down his throat. “I owe my fair share of apologies. What am I sorry for, exactly?”

What are you going to say to that? He hurt your feelings? He didn’t call you special, like some sort of child that needs the recognition, the assurance? He gave you the cold shoulder for a couple days? The way he’d laugh himself to death would definitely bruise your ego more than you can handle. “Tell me what you want to tell me or get out.”

“Don’t sound too eager,” he says. He hands you the bottle, whittling down his cigarette. The smoke that escapes his lips seems to sit between you instead of floating upwards and dispersing. Everything is hazy, soft-edged. “What do you wanna know?”

You wonder if you’ll only get one question, or if he’ll have patience for more. You wonder what the hell you’re even doing here, sitting on the floor with him, making progressively worse decisions. “Who was he to you?” you settle on. “The person that attacked us on the Sandsteamer?”

“No foreplay, huh? Getting right to the main event?”

You try to hide the choking noise that wants to escape you by taking a sip of the booze, but this makes you choke harder, and you have to cough for a few moments before you can even begin to consider a response that doesn’t bring your mind closer to Wolfwood and foreplay. Once you’re able to breathe again, you manage to say, “You were the one that said you wanted to tell me something real.”

He pulls one knee up, leaning forward to rest his elbow on it, and you watch as he cracks his knuckles slow and loud. Not a threat—a nervous tic. You’ve seen him do it after confrontations with Vash, after Meryl asks a question that hits too close to home. “He was, uh… someone I knew when I was a kid. Someone I was supposed to take care of. But I didn’t do a very good job.”

You’re sure he’s also thinking about Livio falling hundreds of feet to the planet’s surface, the sound of the gunshot when he killed himself, Wolfwood calling his name, crying out as he watched this person that he was supposed to take care of meet an untimely and awful end.

Guilt is something that everyone on Gunsmoke is familiar with. Its constant presence doesn’t make it any lighter to carry, any easier to share. Wolfwood bears far more than the cross on his back. The look on his face tells you he already knows where your mind is going and that he doesn’t want to talk about it. He holds out his cigarette to you in lieu of speaking.

You accept what he offers. Close your lips around the filter, try not to think about his lips touching the same place, about the nicotine you could probably taste on him. The drag you take doesn’t feel deep enough. 

“Your turn now,” he says, his deep voice almost too loud in the small room. “I want something real.”

You clear your throat, hand the cigarette back. “I give you real things all the time. You just never reciprocate.”

“My stuff comes with a price. Not my fault you give yours out for free.” Without his sunglasses, his stare is piercing. It makes you feel warm all over. 

Your fingers brush his as you both reach for the neck of the bottle, and neither of you move away. As if the liquor is a safe-ground where contact is okay. It doesn’t have to be questioned, because there’s reasonable doubt when it comes to either of you wanting to touch the other. The problem is that you’ve never wanted so badly to touch someone before now. 

“Tell me something,” he says.

“I want you to kiss me.”

His brows raise, shocked by your boldness maybe, but the cigarette is already out of his mouth and he’s flattening it against the floorboards beside him. His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip and you need to know what he would feel like against you more than you need to breathe. “Yeah? You want that?”

You nod and everything else is forgotten. The liquor is pushed aside, his body flush against yours, his big hand cupping your jaw, and—how long has it been since you’ve been touched like this? 

His lips find yours too easily, the first kisses slow, exploratory, but he’s impatient—this shouldn’t surprise you. His tongue slides against yours, permission for more granted without the question ever being asked. You want him messy—you want him warm and whole and unrestrained. Every slide of his skin against yours feels electric, sparks flaring and wires buzzing. 

“This good?” he asks—as if he’s worried, as if this isn’t what you’ve wanted for weeks .

You can only hum in response, pulling him back to you by the lapel of his blazer—his dumb fucking blazer that he fills out so perfectly, all wide shoulders and strong arms and—it needs to come off. 

Pushing it down his arms yields little in terms of results, but he takes over for you, carelessly tossing it across the room before returning to the kiss, allowing your hands to run across his chest, up to his muscled shoulders, twining your fingers in his soft hair.

He doesn’t push—just takes what you give him, which means you have to give him more, breaking the kiss and hooking your leg over his lap to straddle him. 

“Fuck, okay,” he says, more to himself than you. His hands find your hips and squeeze, eyes locked on the touch, pulling you closer to him. Through his slacks, you can already feel how painfully hard he is for you. “Okay,” he repeats.

His uncertainty begins to worry you. You tilt his head up carefully, forefinger crooked under his chin. His stubble is rough against your hand and you can’t help smoothing your thumb across the cut of his jaw. “Wolfwood—you know we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“Are you—? Of course I want to,” he says, incredulous even though only a moment ago he looked absolutely at a loss for what to do with you. His hands move past the boundary of your shirt, warm palms against your sides, fingers digging into your skin a little desperately. “Fuck, baby, of course I want to.”

“But there’s something on your mind.”

From the way he pauses, you gather that there’s more than just one thing on his mind. He looks conflicted. His hands are still warm against you, and he squeezes your sides once again, warmly, before responding. “Use my name.”

“Okay,” you say, soft. You move your hands to the back of his neck, carding your fingers through his hair. It feels so good to touch someone after so long—but it also feels so good to touch him, specifically, after wondering what it would be like for all those months. “I can do that.”

“Nick.”

Something about the way he tells you this makes you laugh. “Do you think I didn’t know your name?”

He looks up at you, unimpressed. Even if you’re joking, he doesn’t like to be made a fool. “Didn’t want you to call me Nicholas.”

“Okay,” you concede, leaning closer to him. You won’t ask the reason because you’re sure it’s locked behind at least six boundaries you aren’t allowed to push. Into his ear, you whisper, “Is there anything else you want, Nick?”

You can feel his cock twitch against you, and he tries and fails to bite back a groan, exhaling hard, his lips ghosting your neck, the curve of your jaw. “Can you, uh—I just need to know that you… want this. You’ve gotta tell me. Keep telling me.”

Seeing him vulnerable is something you’re not used to. You get the sense that he’s not entirely comfortable with it either. He kisses your shoulder, bites softly at the junction of your neck, intent on not looking at you, you think, before you answer. 

“I’ve wanted this for a while,” you tell him, because it’s easier for you, too, when you don’t have to look at him as you say these things. “I’ve wanted—I want you.”

Before you can say more he takes your chin in his hand, pulls your mouth to his and kisses you hard, his teeth knocking against yours, and stands—stands while you’re in his lap, inhuman strength displayed in such a careless action. Your arms tighten around his shoulders, but his hands are on the underside of your thighs, holding you as if you’re lighter than air. He takes you to the bed and your back hits the mattress, a little dust springing up from the threadbare comforter. 

Looking at him above you is a religious experience. His eyes are black, clouded with lust, lips kiss-reddened, face flushed.

There’s an unparalleled need in his expression, his movements. He pulls your cargos off impressively fast, his knees hitting the wood floor hard enough that the impact rings through your bones as well as his. You’re wearing boxer briefs, you realize, because underwear is at a premium out here in the desert, and they’re fine but they don’t exactly make you feel sexy. Your face flushes a little, suddenly so worried about what he thinks of you, what parts of you appeal to him. “Nick—”

“What do you need, pretty girl?” He kisses the inside of your thigh after asking you this, eyes never leaving yours.

Christ—the pet name alone could kill you, but the look on his face is worse. Desperation doesn’t even begin to cover it.

His long fingers dip into the top of your briefs, and suddenly whatever you’re wearing doesn’t feel all that important. “I’m gonna take these off. That okay?”

You nod because you’ve been rendered unable to speak and he takes care of everything for you. He returns as soon as he’s physically able, kissing the inside of each thigh with a reverence you wouldn’t have ever expected to see from him. It draws a sigh from you, and it’s so nice to be touched, to feel Nick’s skin against yours, to feel the heat of his breath between your thighs.

The second his tongue is against you he groans, vibrations running straight through your body. “All for me, huh?” he asks, half-lidded eyes meeting yours, and you miss the heat of his mouth already. “I’m gonna make you feel so good. So good, I promise.” 

He kisses the inside of your leg once more and wraps his arms around your thighs, pulling you closer to the edge of the bed, closer to him, and he eats you out like a man starved—there’s some sort of technique to it, but it’s lost in the fervor of his movements, in the desperation of his mouth, in the depth of the noises he makes, like he’s been waiting for this for months and now doesn’t know what to do with all the pent up want inside of him.

You tell him he’s doing so good, so perfect, treating me so well, and the encouragement spurs him on, but when he’s opening you up with his long, pretty fingers, when he curls them inside of you just right, your words lose their shape. 

You’re at the edge before you realized you were approaching it, and Nick doesn’t stop his movements. He’s intent on getting you off, tongue moving in rhythm and fingers hitting the perfect spot, his other hand gripping your thigh hard enough to bruise. There’s nothing you want more right now than for him to mark you, to stake some sort of claim on you. To want you for more than just this. 

On instinct, your fingers curl into his hair, guiding him to where you need him—and a second too late you worry that it’s too much, that he won’t like it, but when your grip loosens and you begin to pull away, he grabs your wrist and places your hand back on his head, urging you to take what you need.

And you do—his soft hair thick between your fingers, your grip tightening as you pull him into perfect position, as he lets out a half-broken noise against you, grip tightening painfully on your thigh. His fingers reach a feverish speed and that’s all it takes—you cum hard against his face, your legs tensing around his head, and he couldn’t pull away if he tried. 

But he doesn’t—he works you through your orgasm until you’re oversensitive, until you’re tugging at his hair to get him to stop, until words come back to you and all you can say is please, please, Nick, please.

When he finally relents, he’s breathless, his mouth and chin shimmering and slick. He wipes his face off on the inside of your thigh, which instinctually you want to give him shit for, but immediately after he licks up the mess, placing a kiss to your sensitive skin when he’s finished. “Was that good, baby?” he asks, his breaths heavy, arms still loosely wrapped around your thighs.

He can’t possibly be serious. Yes, it was good. You don’t think anyone will ever be able to follow that up, and all he’s done so far is eat you out.

His face lights up wickedly, and—you said that out loud, you realize, without meaning to. You can’t find it within yourself to care. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so wholly true. “So far, huh?” he asks. “Think you can take more?”

You tug at his shoulder because you want him close—you want to kiss him again, because you’ve gone so long not kissing him that even now, only five minutes feels like too long without. He follows your commands with no complaint, a knee up on the bed, leaning over you to kiss you and you can taste yourself on him, on his swollen lips and the wet slide of his tongue.

“Nick,” you say when he gives you a moment to breathe, and—you had an idea of what you were going to say, but you can’t fully reach it. Any time you’ve slept with someone, it’s been quick and perfunctory. Either you ask them to fuck you or they do the same, and that’s that. But this is so different. You want him to fuck you more than anything, but telling him that you want him to fuck you feels too small for what you actually want from him. 

You want everything. You want the real and the not, who he is and what he sells people. You want him to kiss you when you’re not in a bed in a cheap motel, and you want to sleep next to him, and you want to run your thumb across the stubble on his face without the expectation of anything else afterwards. A touch for the sake of a touch.

You’re struggling with understanding whether these thoughts are because of who he is or because he’s the closest thing you’ve had to an object of affection since—ever. You want him to touch you again. Maybe if you closed your eyes, it wouldn’t matter if it was him or someone else.

“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t because he can’t, because everything that’s going through your head isn’t allowed because that’s not how the world works. Because you think even if you closed your eyes, he’d be the only thing in your head, just his name on a loop and the sounds he makes behind it. He kisses the corner of your mouth and you wish you were in a different reality entirely. “Give me—five minutes, and I’ll be good.”

So he knows what you’re asking for. And he can’t give it to you right now. “Did you already—?”

He stops you before you get further. “It’s—I, uh. Fuck.” His olive skin hides any blush that’s not very deep, but there’s pink staining his cheeks, painting the tips of his ears. “Yeah. You just—yeah.”

“Oh my god.”

“Look, if you’re gonna have an attitude about it—”

“I want you so badly,” you say, and nothing has ever been more true. You’re kissing him before you can stop yourself and you’d thought five minutes was a generous estimate, but that’s really all it takes, his body pinning you to the bed, your hips moving beneath him, your hands running up his back and fisting in his hair. You pull at his shirt, barely buttoned now. “Take it off?”

It didn’t even need to be a question. He stands and his shirt is on the floor in seconds, his slacks following quickly behind. His skin glows in the low light, dark hairs peppering his chest and trailing lower, and you can’t stop yourself from reaching out, running a hand up his stomach, feeling the indents of long-healed scars and the coarseness of his hair. When he breathes out, it’s shaky, poorly controlled. He, too, is wearing boxer briefs, and even though this is normal because they're best for the heat, you somehow feel less self-conscious about anything from earlier. He’s hard again, the boxers stained dark because he came while eating you out which you wouldn’t have believed possible before right now and he’s so disgustingly sexy without even trying that you need him to fuck you right now, actually.

You’d been too enraptured watching him to undress, and his patience is short. Your shirt is pulled up over your head and quick work is made of your bra, and Nick’s breath comes out a little less steady when he palms your breasts, when one hand runs up your sternum, up the column of your throat, before tilting your head up for a surprisingly soft kiss.

He smacks the side of your ass lightly, herding you up the mattress, laying you out fully. When he’s fully undressed, when he’s completely yours to admire, you can’t take your eyes off the precum rolling down the tip of his cock, down the incredibly pretty length of him.

The things you would do to this man if you had time—which you do, but it really seems like you don’t, the pent up energy making you both hazy, rushing you towards what you need. With him on top of you there’s barely any room to move, the twin not built to hold a man as large as Nick, let alone a second person. 

He kisses down the length of your neck and your eyes flutter closed. You tell him how pretty he is, how badly you want him, and his hands squeeze your hips in response, pulling your body so, so close to his. He’s hard against your thigh and you need him right now—you could die tomorrow and be happy if you could just have him inside you this instant. He sucks a bruise into the skin right above your collarbone, and you’re too far gone to worry about whether or not your traveling clothes will cover it tomorrow. “This okay?” he asks, moving a hand between the two of you to position himself at your entrance and ever so slightly push.

“You don’t ever have to ask,” you tell him, voice almost too breathy to be heard, because you would have him whenever, wherever—whatever he wanted. 

Slowly, he thrusts inside, and each inch has your legs clenching tighter around him, your nails digging into his perfect shoulders, most assuredly leaving marks. When he bottoms out you basically whimper—it’s embarrassing, the sounds he’s coaxing from you. 

But you can’t help it—he’s so deep you can barely breathe, and his face is buried into the curve of your neck, moans muffled by your skin, teeth digging into your shoulder.

“Kiss me,” you manage to stutter out, the pace he sets slow and deep, and you want him closer, somehow, as if you could have him living in your skin and it wouldn’t be deep enough. 

He does what you ask, hips snapping to yours, the old mattress squeaking in protest beneath you. The kisses are sloppy, wet, at some points your tongues simply pressed together. He pants something against your mouth—your name, you think, though it’s too quiet for you to know for sure—and with each kiss his thrusts get sharper, deeper, hitting spots you didn’t even know existed. 

Your vision spirals at the edges, white and black stars sparkling in your peripherals. And in the center, Nick: pupils blown, lips a perfect pink, cheeks reddened, and his eyes always, always meeting yours when they can, as if it’s essential whenever your lips aren’t slick against his, like he wants to be connected to you in every way possible.

“Want you to cum again,” he murmurs. “You can do that for me, right?”

All you have to do is hum an affirmative and his hand is between your bodies, thumb honing in on your clit and rubbing tight circles, his pace measured and even and so, so deep, and the closer you get the harder it is to keep your eyes open, to stop yourself from curling into him.

His forehead is flush against yours, his explicit groans all breaths against your mouth. “Look at me, pretty girl,” he says. ��I wanna see you.”

You moan his name like a prayer, your eyes opening, still so close to him and he’s beautiful—sweat dripping down his forehead, face so open and earnest, as if this is the closest he’s ever come to being completely vulnerable with you.

It only takes a few more thrusts, his cock curved in the perfect way to hit the right spot inside of you, and you’re coming apart, arms wrapping around his neck and fingers gripping his hair and his name on your lips over and over, because he’s the one that did this and you want him to know that you’re only thinking of him. 

Your vision is blank, head hazy. It takes a long moment for you to feel like you’re a part of your body again, Nick still fucking into you, thrusts becoming sloppy, his hands gripping your hips, fingers digging in so hard you’d be surprised if they weren’t meeting bone. He mumbles something into your neck that you can’t hear, and you can feel his muscles tense, and you say please don’t pull out and he’s cumming inside you while holding your hips flush to his, and he keeps saying things to you like he can’t stop himself. When your senses return to you, you realize he’s saying so good, baby, knew you’d take me so good—and then, out of nowhere, “Love you. Fuck, I love you.”

After a moment, Nick pulls out, his chest heaving with heavy breaths. He lays his head against your chest, one hand curled into your hair, the other gently tracing your side.

You can feel the exact moment that he realizes what he said. 

His entire body tenses, his hand stills, and it reminds you of the way a prey animal locks up when it knows it’s been spotted. When panic fills it so intensely that all bodily autonomy is removed.

What he said isn’t true, obviously. The words barely faze you. There are people in some towns that you can pay to sit in a room with you and tell you how much they love you, that they would do anything for you, that they would die for you. There are so few people scattered across the desert. If you’re a lonely traveler passing through, or even someone city-based but just as alone, being able to say you love someone and hear it back is intoxicating. The chances of anyone saying it to you organically are essentially non-existent. 

It’s certainly not something you’d have expected someone like Nick to be into, but who are you to shame him for the things he likes? He wants praise, he wants to feel wanted, he wants to tell someone that he loves them—there are much crazier things he could like. You’re fine with this.

What you’re not as fine with is the strained look on his face when he pushes himself up on his elbows, the way his words tumble out so quickly when he says, “I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s okay,” you say, but a stupid part of you stings in the face of such an emphatic rejection of any feelings he could have for you. “I know.”

Connections on Gunsmoke are forged fast and broken bullet-quick. You could meet someone and travel with them for a week and convince yourself you were in love with them because they’re the only person you talk to, the only person to offer you kind touches and pretty words. But those connections aren’t real. They don’t have weight to them, a foundation to stand on.

You and Nick don’t really know each other, despite the nights you’ve spent talking. Despite the ways he’s made you laugh and the ways you’ve made him smile genuinely—even if it’s a small ghost of a thing that doesn’t often grace his handsome face. Logically, he doesn’t love you. You don’t love him. There’s not even a fraction of you that’s tempted to say it because you know it’s not true. 

And yet, a small part of you yearns to have something like that—to have Nick tell you he loves you and mean it, and for you to love him back.

His face is red despite the aplomb with which you handled everything. He doesn’t quite look you in the eyes. “I’m, uh… Damn. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” You still like him being close to you. You like the way he touches you, the way he looks at you. You don’t want this to ruin the chance of getting to do this again.

“That was—a lot.”

You run the back of your knuckles across his stubbled jaw, pull him towards you with a hand on the back of his head. He follows without any complaint, even kisses you back when you lean up to kiss him, which really was a gamble because some people don’t like any kind of affection once the sex is over. “You can tell me you love me if that’s what you like,” you murmur against his lips. “I can say it too, if you want.”

He breathes in deep—his exhale almost sounds like a sigh, as if he’s about to deliver bad news but has to gear up for it first.

“If you want to do this again,” you say, pulling back to look him in the eyes—to make sure he knows you’re serious. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so presumptuous. “If you don’t, we can go back to how it was before. That would be okay.”

“I want this,” he tells you, eyes flicking to your lips for an instant. “I mean—I want to do this again.”

Smiling at him is easy. Identifying the warmth you feel in your chest is harder.

He kisses you and you sink into the comfort of him, his easy grins and soft moans and light touches. He only stops to ask you very quietly if he should be worried about finishing inside of you, but years of radiation exposure from the dual suns have taken care of any risks there. In turn, you ask him to stay the night. The questions both somehow feel extremely intimate even though they’re normal questions to ask someone you’ve just slept with. He doesn’t hesitate to say yes, and you think—maybe this will end well. Maybe it’ll be exactly what you need for the limited amount of time you have it. 

When he falls asleep, he has one hand on the back of your head, holding you to his chest, and the other in yours, your fingers loosely intertwined. It’s sweet in a way you’ve never experienced.

Maybe this will end well, but you’re almost entirely sure it won’t.

For the next three days of travel to Ship Three—or Home, as Blondie calls it, which is a stupid name—Nick feels like he’s dying. He chain-smokes faster than normal, burning through a pack every couple hours. It’s like his skin is being express-washed with sandpaper and bleach. He wants to touch you so badly it burns.

And you just sit there all pretty, in the back seat next to him and in front of the campfire and on the car’s hood when you have to pull over because Roberto gets too sick from the driving and the alcohol. You sew up the bullet holes in his blazer because of course you’d do that for him, and you laugh at Vash’s jokes and talk to Meryl about the time you both spent in November and you look at Nick and smile like it’s nothing—like your eyes on him don’t drive him insane. 

He gets lucky on your final night of travel, everyone asleep except the two of you, and he takes his time kissing you against the side of the equipment trailer, the car shielding the two of you from your snoring companions.

He’s not gonna ask you to say you love him—when you told him you’d say it if he wanted you to, it felt like there was a bug crawling around in his stomach, an unnameable feeling that he didn’t ever want to experience again.

Saying he loved you in the first place was embarrassing as hell for multiple reasons. First off, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t. Secondly, it was his goal when he approached you that night to play it cool, and he ended up finishing before he’d even started because of how good you tasted, how much he liked the way you pulled his hair, how pretty you sounded saying his name—and then on top of that, you let him cum inside you and you felt so good, so fucking right, and he spilled those words because in that moment, he loved you like absolutely nothing else.

He’s half-hard thinking about it, kissing you slow and deep because fuck, he loves the way you sigh into him when he kisses you like this, the way your hands grip the open sides of his shirt right below the collar as if you wouldn’t let him pull away if he tried. 

There’s not a second where he’s not tempted to mark you, to suck a deep bruise into your neck right below the jawline so everyone knows exactly what’s happening when they’re not looking. But he won’t. He won’t. He’ll be good. He’ll stop kissing you, he’ll ask if you want to lie with him for a little before you go to sleep, he’ll talk to you until you begin to nod off.

Let it never be said that Nicholas D. Wolfwood isn’t a paragon of restraint. He’s the king of it.

The only slight relief he gets is when you all arrive where Vash grew up, when you get to stay in rooms that are a little more private. When he can sleep next to you at night, sometimes after he fucks you as quiet as possible so no one but him gets to hear the noises you make and sometimes after he doesn’t. 

He thinks it should only be about the sex—that’s what everything else he’s ever done with someone has been about. But he gets possessive over your time. He likes to listen to your soft breathing as he falls asleep, likes to feel the weight of you against his chest. Likes when you wake up before him and trace the angles of his face and the planes of his chest with a feather-light touch until he’s up too, and he could never be mad about losing sleep over you.

And he’s a shitty person for doing this. For letting you sleep in his arms, for enjoying the way your hands feel on his skin. There’s so much you don’t know about him, but that doesn’t stop you from asking. He can’t tell you his actual age, he can’t tell you exactly what made him into the freak he is, he can’t explain to you why Livio was after Vash and how he was like a brother to Nick. He doesn’t want to disappoint you, doesn’t want you to pity him. And most importantly—

He can’t tell you what his mission is. The cost of his freedom. You’d never forgive him.

He tries not to lie to you. He avoids questions, omits information where he can. And he knows that this is essentially lying. It’s the same as a broken promise. He’s a hypocrite for calling out Vash’s lies while adding on to his own burning pyre.

This doesn’t stop him from wanting you. He takes back all the paragon shit—Nick has never been very good at denying himself what he wants.

It’s when you’re having breakfast with everyone on an unremarkable morning that Nick reaches his breaking point. Vash’s foster parents are keeping you all fed well, vegetables grown in actual gardens and meat cloned from animal cells on your plates every day.

Nick doesn’t eat breakfast—doesn’t need as much food as other people. He has his coffee like always, a cigarette soon to follow. He sits next to you because that’s his unspoken and permanent spot during meals and at the campfire and absolutely anywhere else. He leans back in his seat, sips from his mug, chimes in on the chatter when he has something to say. Everyone else is chowing down, and Vash says some stupid joke about forgetting what greens taste like when they’re not covered in sand, and you laugh—and something snaps in him.

Nothing big. It’s wishbone-small, the slightest crack. But it’s enough.

He drapes his arm across your seat, cups the back of your neck with his hand, strokes his thumb over the dip of your spine right below your hairline. You swallow hard and he can feel the vibration in his palm.

Everyone is silent. You turn to look at him slowly and he can feel the heat that crawls up your neck. He thought you might be mad—but your eyes are wide, mouth parted in surprise, as if you thought he wouldn’t want everyone to know you were his, as if he’d never claim you publicly.

He’d do a lot more to you publicly if you’d let him, but he doesn’t want to push his luck.

“What?” he asks, as if this is something perfectly normal for him to be doing. He looks between the four of you, and every single one of you is looking at him dumbstruck. “Guess staring problems are an epidemic.”

Vash’s face is a deep pink. He stutters out, “Wow, guys—congrats. Or, uh—I mean. That’s nice that you’re… that—”

“It’s just puppy love, kid, you don’t have to make it awkward,” Roberto says—and Nick barely stops himself from bodily flinching at that word. It shouldn’t be spoken in the context of the two of you so soon after his mistake. “Let the Undertaker have his moment in peace.”

Peace isn’t what Nick was aiming to achieve by touching you like this—but he still got what he wanted. You and Meryl are staring at each other, communicating in a series of complicated eyebrow maneuvers. Vash is looking anywhere but Nick. Roberto, somehow the voice of reason in all this, is already shoveling the rest of his breakfast into his mouth.

He’s itching for a cigarette. He slides his thumb over your soft skin once more, then stands, curling a finger under your chin to tilt your face up. You don’t protest as he leans down, as he kisses you softly and extremely chastely. It’s not like he doesn’t know that he’s pushing boundaries right now, that you might be pissed at him for this. He’s not gonna stick his tongue down your throat in front of everyone. But he couldn’t stop himself from having just one kiss. 

Whatever broke inside him couldn’t be patched up, and he just—he needed everyone to know what you were. That you were something. That he was the one that’d take care of you if you needed it, that he was the one you were sleeping next to every night, that he was yours.

“Nick…?” You don’t look angry with him. Just confused. Concerned, maybe.

“Gonna go out for a smoke.” He knows you don’t like him smoking next to you while you’re eating, or he’d already have a cigarette lit between his fingers. His thumb swipes across your lower lip because he has a hard time keeping his hands off you once they’re on. 

He turns from the table and heads towards the hallway—where he’ll be breaking out his smokes, because he’s not walking through the entire damn ship to have a cigarette if they haven’t complained about him smoking inside yet. 

Before he makes it to the door, he hears Meryl loudly whispering at you, questions pouring from her lips, and Roberto saying, “Christ, Newbie, let her breathe.”

Outside the mess hall, Nick turns to the wall of the hallway. Presses his forehead against the cool metal. He’s an idiot for doing things like this. For acting on impulse. For not being entirely honest with you.

Maybe if he could get his contract from the church, you’d understand. You’d see the clauses on there that he remembers watching Conrad write— if this contract is breached, the Hopeland Orphanage will be destroyed and the lives of every child that resides within will be forfeit. You’d see the thick black line at the bottom that he was forced to sign when he was too young to know what a signature was. Vash wanted to see his brother anyway. All he had to do was deliver the kid to Knives. It wouldn’t even be extra work on Nick’s part. 

But he knows you well enough now. Too well to ignore the fact that you don’t forgive easily.

And this still doesn’t stop him, because he’s an awful person. Blondie’s arm puts you back a few weeks—weeks spent gathering materials and waiting for the old scientist to finish his repairs. 

And even as you spend more and more time with him, holding his hand when you walk into the mess hall for breakfast, laying against his chest as you read old books from the ship’s small library, kissing him goodbye when you or he take turns helping out on scavenging trips, he doesn’t tell you the entire truth. 

Even as he finds such simple happiness in talking to you about your day, even as he finds some kind of divinity in the way you moan his name, in the way your nails scrape against his scalp when he fucks you—always face to face, because he loves the way you look at him, like he’s the only thing that exists to you—even then, he doesn’t give you the most delicate, secret parts of him.

Just once—just one time while he has you laid out beneath him, while he has you in his ear telling him what a good job he’s doing, he considers taking you up on what you’d proposed to him all those months ago. He thinks about what it would sound like if you told him you loved him, even if you didn’t mean it, and he cums so unexpectedly that his vision whites out, that he feels a tipsy sort of dizziness, that you ask him if everything is okay after.

You mess with his head. He doesn’t know whether he likes it or hates it. Doesn’t matter how he feels about it, really—wouldn’t stop it from happening every time you smile at him after you’ve been away from him for a little while, the first time you woke up in his arms and said morning, handsome and every time after that.

When Brad finally tells everyone that he’s almost done with Vash’s repairs, Nick is disappointed. He wants time. He’s only had a month of this. He wants all the time in the world and more because he’s greedy and needs every part of you.

Only a few days later, you’re in the mess hall for dinner and Wolfwood is coming back from helping Blondie scavenge around for old ship parts. There are specific metals the scientist needs for his final repairs, all located in burnt out scraps of fallen spaceships that litter the wasteland around Ship Three. He’s been gone for eight hours and it’s been too damn long with you out of his sight.

It’s later in the evening—most of the crew have cleared out, but stragglers sit at the tables around the edges of the room and chat tiredly. You’re already done with your meal and Nick is so ready to pick you up and carry you all the way back to his room and get you in his shower, because he can’t wait to touch you until after he’s clean, free of the sweat and sand that feel like a second skin at this point. 

Except you’re talking to some asshole with a lopsided smile on his face, obviously already half in love with you. The guy isn’t even your type. Too soft, baby-faced, completely untested by Gunsmoke and its inhabitants. He looks like he wouldn’t know how to shoot a gun if Nick put one in his hand with the safety off and positioned his finger on the trigger.

He leans the Punisher against whatever’s closest to him and its weight causes the metal table it falls against to scrape across the floor harshly. You turn to look at him and you smile so softly despite the loud noise, and maybe he’ll just hoist you out of your chair and carry you to his room right now even though you’d complain about him being rude to this wet rag that wants to fuck you.

You greet him when he sits in the chair next to you and he missed your voice so much. The guy you were talking to looks at Nick, brows raised, as if expecting—what, that you’d actually want this asshole? Over him?

Nick shoots the guy a withering glare, then puts his arm around your shoulders lazily, murmuring hey, pretty girl into your hair while this idiot keeps staring at him as if it could intimidate him into leaving.

“I’ve heard about you. The Undertaker, right?” the guy asks, holding his hand out, as if Nick would actually shake it. “I’m—”

“Leaving,” Nick says. “Unless you’re looking for a problem.”

You turn to look at him, his name a protest on your tongue, but the guy is already getting up, muttering to himself about Nick having awful manners. Doesn’t matter—he’d rather have every person on this ship hate him if it meant keeping you to himself.

“You can’t talk to people like that,” you say.

“I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.” He could see the hunger in that asshole’s eyes, no matter how well he was hiding it from you. “He wanted something that wasn’t his.”

“Nick…” You pull back a little further away from him to really look at him, and he curls his arm around your shoulder because he doesn’t want you further away. He wants you against the wall of his shower right now, and then maybe on the countertop next to the sink, and then preferably in his bed for the rest of the night. “Maybe… we should go somewhere more quiet. To talk.”

Dread settles into his stomach so quickly that it’s like being hit by a bullet to the gut—and Nick’s taken plenty of those over the years, but none have felt quite as cold and heavy as this. He refuses to panic right now. “To talk,” he repeats.

You must see it in his eyes—the fear. Your hand is on his cheek in an instant, and you kiss him so soft and chaste, exactly like the first time he kissed you in front of everyone, and he feels safer. His heart stops beating out of his chest, the dread in his stomach warms to a tepid anxiety. He’s beginning to like kisses like these. Still not as much as when he can really kiss you the way he wants, long and deep and thorough, but there’s something in the simplicity of them that pleases him. They’re a message more than anything. An assurance. You still like him. You still want him.

Regardless, he follows you to your room with a stone in his throat. He’s not a big talker. Not when it comes to serious stuff. And this feels serious. You start pacing and his pulse quickens again, a raging beat against his sternum, an echo that rattles around his head.

When you stop, it’s sudden enough to rock you in place a little, as if you didn’t realize you were going to cease moving before it happened. “Sometimes,” you say, not looking at him, “you say things.”

He waits, but you don’t continue. “I tend to do that.”

“Nick—unless I’m not understanding things right, we’re not… we’re not together.”

Refusing to panic seems to be something he’s no longer good at. “We’re not together,” he repeats, because he’s an idiot that can’t string two words together if you haven’t already said them.

“Okay, that’s—that’s what I thought. I didn’t think you… yeah.” You still won’t look at him. You’re picking at your cuticles so hard that there’s already a little blood on your fingers.

His immediate instinct is to stop you—to step forward and take your hands in his, to smooth his thumbs over the wounds you’ve given yourself. “Look at me.”

When you look at him, your eyes are full of an emotion that Nick can’t name. Not desire—but want, on a certain level. There’s something you want that he can’t give you.

And he knows what it is. He’s not an idiot. He knows that the way you smile at him isn’t the way you smile at someone you’re not together with. He knows you don’t give him those reassuring kisses because you don’t want to be together with him. You don’t ever press him about it because this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. People don’t connect like this. Whatever the two of you are doing—it’s fragile, and you’re ready for it to fall apart at a moment’s notice. He is, too.

If there wasn’t so much he wasn’t telling you, then—he doesn’t even want to think about it. Because maybe he’d like that too. Maybe he’d be able to give you parts of what you want, to be enough of what you need in order for you to be happy. 

You’d do it for him, no question. You already do it for him. 

“I’m not great at this,” he tells you. He’s not. He’s slept with a lot of people, but that’s easy on Gunsmoke. If you’re even a little good looking, half the planet wants you. But he hasn’t held anything more real than that, hasn’t felt the weight of it in his palm. “But I want… just you.”

You bite the inside of your lip, unsure—because what has he given you, really, beyond vague answers and truths that aren’t fully fleshed out? He can understand your hesitance. You’re so devastatingly beautiful and he wishes he wasn’t a piece of shit.

“Okay,” is your eventual response. 

He can tell that what he said wasn’t enough. But it’s all he can give you. It’s selfish of him to want reciprocation, he knows. “Do you…?” 

“Yes,” you say, but you look so sad and he keeps fucking up more and more. “Just you.”

He wishes he could see what kind of thoughts are running through your head—whether you hate him now, whether you’re okay with just this, whether he could ever make you forgive him for everything he’s about to do.

“Kiss me,” you tell him. “Please.”

How could he deny you that?

He doesn’t take you to his shower but you don’t seem to mind the grit and sweat of the desert on his skin—you’re pliant underneath him, you come apart on his hands, you kiss him like you mean it, and when he’s inside you and he whispers I love you, I love you, I love you into your skin, you don’t question whether it’s real or not and he doesn’t tell you.

You don’t say it back, but he didn’t ask you to.

After JuLai

There’s nowhere you can go but Home.

The entire coast of the Great Sand Ocean is covered in the debris of JuLai, and even then—no Sandsteamer is going to stop on a random stretch of coast to take you somewhere safe. If you can all make it to Home, Meryl can go north to November, Nick can go back to December, and you can figure out what you’re going to do since you didn’t have the good fortune to die.

So many people didn’t make it. You should be happy you’re still alive. But traveling with Nick makes you wish that someone else was here instead of you.

Vash is nowhere to be found. You don’t think he’s dead—because it’s him. Even with everything that happened to him in that tower, you have such a strong belief that he lived through Knives’s torture, through that bright pink light in the sky that exploded up into space, through the collapse of the world’s largest city.

Maybe that’s naive. But if you can go look for him after you get situated, that’s—something. You can do something and not feel so empty. Or you could follow Meryl to November, become a gun-for-hire like you’d been for so many years.

It’s a week's journey to Home on foot. You barely sleep. You and Meryl take turns keeping watch at night, always right beside each other, because there’s no way you could trust Nick to keep the two of you safe after everything.

But you can’t kick him out of your little group, either, because you’re without cover and without your weapon, lost somewhere in the escape, and Meryl’s Derringer only has three low-caliber shots before the bullets Roberto gave her are gone.

As much as you hate it, he’d be your only chance of survival if you got caught in a firefight out here.

Nick doesn’t seem willing to leave, either. He doesn’t speak to either of you—out of shame, you wonder, or because he simply doesn’t care?—but he nods when you say that Home should be your next destination, follows quietly when Meryl begins to lead the trek with her unflappable sense of direction, smokes cigarette after cigarette until his borrowed pack of menthols runs out and he gets twitchy, bouncing his leg whenever he sits down, toying with the buckles on the cover of his gun tirelessly.

The noise doesn’t bother you when you’re walking, but in the middle of the night, it sounds like a fucking alarm going off. And he doesn’t sleep—at least, you never see him unconscious during your trek, even though you know firsthand that he’s capable of sleeping—but obviously there’s a lot he hasn’t told you about himself.

The night before you get to Home, it’s too much for you—you’re about to wake Meryl for her watch, and you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week, and he’s flicking a buckle open and closed, and you find the half-finished pack of cigarettes in your pocket that, before everything, you’d been holding for him.

There are no campfires these nights. You don’t have the resources, and you sure as shit don’t want to be spotted by anyone that might be heading to JuLai to scavenge its corpse. In the shine of the five moons, you make your way over to him—he’s never too close, maybe because he’s trying to be conscientious. 

He looks up at you, surprised, and—he’s terrible enough to have something like hope on his face. It’s not a good look on him.

“Here,” you say, and you hold out the crumpled pack of cigarettes. He takes it from you slowly, like you’ll scare if he moves too quickly. “You need to stop fiddling with shit so I can get a good night’s sleep.”

“Thanks,” he says, but you’re already walking back towards Meryl, shaking her from sleep. 

The sound of his lighter clicking, the sound of him taking a deep drag and exhaling a long moment later—it’s so familiar. You’ve fallen asleep to that many nights over the past month or so, when Nick hadn’t been able to rest without a little nicotine to calm him down. He was always thinking hard when you were quiet in his arms, something in his eyes that spoke of conflict. You wonder now if he was thinking about the things he was keeping from you. The way he was about to betray you.

Meryl eyes the lit cigarette in Nick’s mouth when she wakes up, but she doesn’t look at you with any kind of judgment. She squeezes your hand and smiles at you, quietly says, “It’s okay. You need some rest.”

Maybe she’s talking about the noise that kept you awake every night—maybe she’s talking about something less tangible, an unrest that lives deep within you. You still don’t sleep well, and it’s his fault. Without the sound of the buckles clicking, you can hear him smoke, hear his deep breaths in the silence of the night. When you dream, it’s a hazy memory on loop, Nick holding you close and whispering things he didn’t mean.

Luida cries when you arrive and tell her what happened. You can’t blame her—you want to cry too. It’s all you’ve wanted to do for days. You just want to get to a room where you can be by yourself and finally, finally be allowed to feel.

Brad tells you that the room you’d stayed in is exactly how you left it, and you leave Meryl talking to the two of them, leave Nick leaning against the wall next to his gun, quietly smoking one of the last cigarettes from the pack you’d given him.

You get to your room, untouched to the point that it still smells a little like the body wash you used the last time you showered here, a little like stale smoke from when Nick would come to you at night because he basically refused to sleep if it wasn’t next to you, and you find that you can’t even do what you’ve wanted to do this whole time.

There are no tears. There’s no terrible cracking of the makeshift foundation you’d built to hold yourself up over the past few days. No collapse, no city falling dark. There’s nothing.

You shower and sit on the tiled floor, letting the spray hit your hair, your back, until the water goes lukewarm. Even after you’ve scrubbed every inch of your skin, you can still feel the desert on you, sand under your nails, baked into your hair, seared into your bones. You lay in your bed in clean clothes—truly clean clothes for the first time in more than a week, comfy pajama shorts and an actual sweater—and all you can do is stare at the ceiling, waiting to sleep, or to sink into the sheets and melt away, or to simply cease to exist.

He comes to your door in the middle of the night, knocks and waits outside, as if he couldn’t simply open the door himself. They don’t lock. People on this ship are respectful about privacy. There’s a large part of you that wants to leave him out there. He won’t come in if you don’t let him. You may not know a lot about him, but you’re at least sure of that. 

When you open the door, he’s flicking the butt of a finished cigarette to the ground. It bounces, crosses the threshold of your room. “Shit—didn’t mean to do that,” he says. I didn’t mean it, you hear. “Didn’t even think you’d see me, to be honest.”

“Do you need something, Wolfwood?” you ask. Whenever you’re not speaking your jaw is clenched so tightly that you can hear your molars grind against each other. He’s doing irreparable damage to your teeth. “Or are we done here?”

His face falls—not that it hadn’t been in a state that could be classified as ‘fallen’ before that—and he jams his hands in his pockets, swaying back on his heels, looking more above you than at you. The mask he wears to hide his thoughts from you doesn’t fit very well anymore. “I’m leaving,” he says. 

It’s what you wanted him to do, but it doesn’t stop you from inhaling sharp, from feeling a sudden pain against your ribs. 

“Thought I’d, uh…” He shakes his head. He’s replaced his sunglasses, or maybe he had them the whole time, and you can’t see his eyes in the hallway’s ambient night-time lighting. “Nah, never mind. Get some sleep. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

He turns to leave and the lapel of his jacket is suddenly in your hand, sandworn and stitched through. You sewed up the bullet hole that rests snug beneath your thumb. You ran your fingers over the skin of his chest not long after that, marveling at its smoothness, the lack of scars to follow the wound. You thought then: was he disappointed that he didn’t have any marks to show for the trauma he’d endured? Or did he prefer that—a blank canvas that let him pretend that everything he’d ever known hadn’t really happened?

You had eventually come to the conclusion that he didn’t care. His scars were littered across bone and organ, never to be shown to another person. The cross he bore was his own terrible burden to shoulder.

Back then, you had been okay with that. After everything that happened, you shouldn’t care. You should let him shoulder the weight. You should let him leave. 

There are more holes in the blazer now, wounds he picked up on the way to his betrayal. “Let me fix this for you.”

He says your name small, quiet, the same way he’d said it when JuLai was burning with life behind him, exploding in flowers and vines.

“Before you go,” you say. You have no idea what you’re doing. “I want to fix it before you go.”

He swallows, nods. You can tell he wishes he had a cigarette right now. “Alright. If you want."

It takes a moment for you to let go of him, as if he’d melt into sand once you let go, as if this is only an apparition before you and your grip is the only thing tying him to the physical realm. 

He doesn’t melt. He doesn’t fade away. He follows you into your room and shrugs off his blazer, offers it to you. 

You take it from him silently. The sewing kit you use is somewhere in your travel bag, right where you left it before you were stolen away to JuLai. The sooner it’s unearthed from your stockpiled life, the sooner he’ll be gone. You should get it. “What did you come here for?”

He leans back against the doorframe, arms crossed, fingers drumming against his side. After a moment he takes his sunglasses off, puts them down on the table at the end of your bed. Drags a hand down his face like he’s the most exhausted he’s ever been. “There’s not a lot I can give you. I don't have much.”

You weren’t asking him for anything. You bite your tongue when you go to remind him of this.

“But I have answers now. The ones you wanted. Before.” He clears his throat. “If you still want them.”

You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. 

When you don’t stop him, he continues. “I had a contract.”

“A contract.”

“The people that drew it up weren’t above breaking a couple bones to get me to sign it. ‘Cause I’d just heal up, right?” He laughs, and it’s an awful, bitter noise. “I’d be back in one piece so they could break the same bones again.”

You’re quiet.

He holds out a crumpled piece of paper, obviously balled up at some point in time—at the top: Pastoral Contract. At the bottom: Nicholas D. Wolfwood in a series of childish curls and shaky lines. Nick had written the terms of his contract out in the careful cursive of someone still learning to use it. The word ‘receive’ is misspelled. “How old…?”

“Nine,” he says. “I’d just turned nine.”

The first thought that crosses your mind: how many people has he killed in his time as a pastor, and could he remember each one if he tried? “How long have you—”

“I’m twenty-two.”

You’re stunned into silence. There had been no question in your mind that Nick was older than you by at least four or five years. 

If things weren’t the way they were, he’d probably make a joke about looking good for his age. If things weren’t the way they were, you’d be examining how much his age matches up with the way he acts, his impulsiveness and brashness and possessiveness, the way he couldn’t even handle someone else looking at you.

But this is how things are, and you can only stare at him. “How.”

“Conrad created his perfect weapon. I paid a price.”

You sit on the floor. You’re not sure why. You just can’t be standing anymore. 

Nick looks at you for a moment, quiet—then slides down the doorframe, joining you. The room is small enough that there’s only a foot or so between you. His knees are bent, forearms resting across them, and he somehow looks small like this. Like there’s a weight compressing him, curling his edges closer to his center.

“You weren’t—when we… was it your first time?”

His eyes snap to yours and he’s incredulous, amused, unable to stop himself from laughing. “You didn’t defile my innocence, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Something about his smile makes you want to scream. He looks so soft when he’s not being entirely too serious, the kind of soft you can’t fully comprehend until it’s felt, like the leaves of lamb’s-ear you touched in Home’s gardens when Vash told you I have something to show you that you’re gonna love. Because you’ve always longed for softer things, for things that have no chance of survival in the desert. “How long have you… looked older?”

“Since I signed my contract.”

You try not to think about it and fail. How old did he look when he was nine? How old was he when the church he worked for sent him out on his first terrible assignments? You know what he’s done—you’d known the reputation of Nicholas the Punisher long before you met him—and though innocence isn’t something you find in spades on Gunsmoke, you can’t help but feel a gut-wrenching sadness because his had been ripped from him so early. When did he take his first life? When was the first time someone took advantage of him at such a young age without even realizing they were doing it?

Nick hates it when people pity him. He knows he was dealt shit cards—he didn’t hesitate to let you know that anytime he told you the smallest details about his childhood. Now you have the big details, and you’re positive he wants you to pity him even less. 

You toy with the collar of his jacket, resting atop your crossed legs, because you have to do something with your hands. You have to have somewhere to look other than him. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You really think that would’ve gone over well?”

How could he even be asking that question?

“Yeah, I do. You know how Vash is.” Was, your mind supplies. You’re so, so tired. “He would’ve understood. He would’ve gone with you anyway if he knew what you were being forced to do. He would’ve jumped at the opportunity to help you. He cared about you so much.”

He cared about all of you. And you’d all failed him. He was the only fully good person you’d ever met and you all failed him.

“He knew,” Nick says. “Before he got to Knives—we talked about it.”

You know without having to ask that Vash forgave him. He’d probably pieced it together already and forgiven Nick long before they even got to JuLai. There’s cotton in your throat, your tongue is a stone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

A memory crosses your mind—sitting in the desert with him atop a sand dune, his gun laid out before him, telling you that you shouldn’t think you’re special.

If he’d told you everything, maybe you’d be sitting with him and Vash and Meryl and Roberto in a bar in JuLai, drinking to your victory. Maybe you’d be here with everyone, and Luida wouldn’t have let out that awful noise when you told her about Vash—a long, drawn-out note that she couldn’t hold inside, a keening that begged the question of why? and tapered off into silence. 

Maybe nothing would have changed at all.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I should have. I just—I didn’t want to disappoint you. I thought that if I didn’t give you all of me, then it’d be easier when we… when I did what I had to. When things were over.”

So he’d also known from the start that things wouldn’t end well.

“I would’ve done anything for you,” you tell him. It’s embarrassing to say out loud. You shouldn’t have said it in the first place—shouldn’t have even thought it. But you’re past keeping things from one another, it seems.

He stretches out his long legs, leans a little closer toward you. His hand reaches out towards you, an invitation to be taken or refused. “C’mere for a minute?”

You let him hold you. Your legs are across his lap, your body pressed into his chest, your arms curled around him so tight that it can’t be comfortable on his end. He has your head tucked beneath his chin, one hand on your hair and the other pulling you closer by the thigh, like he could crawl into your skin if he just had you close enough. 

“Was it easier?” you ask him.

“No,” he murmurs into your hair. “I think it made things worse.”

“How?”

“I didn’t want things to be over. Still don’t.” His hand tightens on your thigh, his entire body shifting to get you closer. “I know I’m selfish for that. You don’t have to tell me.”

Maybe you’re selfish, too. Maybe the words are softening the wall around your heart because if you were in his position, you probably would’ve done the same thing. You still can’t forgive him. “Nick,” you say. Pull back and look at him. 

“What do you need, sweet thing?” His voice is quiet when he asks this. It reminds you of the first time you kissed him—the first time he said those three heavy words to you, accidental whispers that held no meaning. 

“I want you to tell me you love me.” Even if it’s not real. Even if it’s just for right now. Even if it’s something he only murmurs into your skin when he’s between your thighs, when he makes you see the face of God in the way he touches you.

You expect him to kiss you. To start this final goodbye. But he doesn’t. He pulls you close to him again, lays his cheek against the top of your head. “‘Course I love you.” 

It’s nothing above a whisper. It’s a breath released into the air, something you wouldn’t hear if everything else wasn’t completely silent. But it makes you feel like crying and maybe you don’t hate him like you thought you did, but why shouldn’t you? All this wasteland has taught you to do is never trust people. Nick showed you exactly what Gunsmoke had already shown you a million times over. There’s not a person you know outside of Vash and Meryl that hasn’t betrayed you at least once. 

You’ve committed your fair share of betrayals, too. Law of the wasteland.

When you pull away from him, he looks a little panicked—but all you do is perch yourself on his lap, your knees boxing him in on either side, your face above his. “Could you ever mean it?”

He looks up at you blankly.

“If we stayed together. If we traveled. Or settled down, whatever,” you say. “Could you ever be able to say that and mean it?”

His brows scrunch, confusion painting his handsome face. “I mean it now,” he says, as if it’s obvious. 

And it’s like everything comes to a screeching halt inside you: all the hurt, all the exhaustion, all the emptiness. Emotions flood into the cavity of your chest so quickly that you’re drowning, your lungs full of too many things that aren’t air. 

Because this doesn’t happen. Not on Gunsmoke. Not to you.

“How do you know it’s real?”

“How would I know it’s not? Is there a checklist I should be consulting?”

You don’t know how to answer that because you feel like there should be a checklist, something that was left behind on the planets before Gunsmoke, burnt up in the crashes of the ships that populated the planet. Something you’ll never know the contents of—only that it existed.

“I know because it’s how I feel. Not gonna argue with myself on that,” Nick says, and maybe it’s that simple. He cups your face with a warm, careful hand and you melt into the contact. The first time you’d touched him like this, you worried that it might’ve been the contact alone that you liked. Not the person providing it.

But you know now that anyone else could touch you like this and you wouldn’t feel even a shadow of the way he makes you feel.

“You’re being awful quiet,” he says.

“You hurt me really badly, Nick.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

You think he is. You want to stay angry with him but he makes it hard. He made a mistake. He didn’t trust anyone enough to share his burdens. And could you blame him for that? You know firsthand how frightening it feels to trust someone. To want to.

“Would you want that? Us—together?” you ask.

“Yeah, I want that.” He laughs, as if any of this is remotely amusing. “Thought I made it clear.”

“You’d have to tell me everything,” you say. “Be honest about whatever I ask.”

“For you, anything,” he says, because he’s a corny idiot who likes his one-liners too much and it’s this stupid line above anything else that actually brings tears to your eyes, that makes you realize how badly you would’ve missed him if he’d left without saying goodbye, how much you want to keep him and how much you want him to keep you.

You still don’t know what to do, so instead you kiss him and he kisses you back and he feels exactly like he did the last time you’d been together like this. Things devolve quickly, as they often do between you. He pulls your hips against his to create friction and you missed him. It’s messy and his teeth find their way into the kisses a little too often and he can’t even stomach moving from the floor before he touches you, it seems, because he’s already pushing your sleep shorts to the side, feeling exactly how badly you want him. 

“Shit,” he breathes. “Shit, I’m sorry, baby. I can’t wait.”

He unzips his slacks and pulls them down along with his boxers, just enough for him to free his cock, and you inhale sharply when he pulls you further into his lap, ruts against you, coating himself in your slick wetness. The noise he makes is haunting, a little broken.

You cup his head with your hands, fingers twined into his hair, and kiss him hard, licking into his mouth, grinding against his pretty length. He makes sounds you want to lock up and keep under your bed. He says your name as if it’s the name of God. “Can’t wait,” he repeats. “Need you to take it. Be good and take it for me, pretty girl.”

He positions himself so you can sink down onto his length, shorts pushed to the side, strong hands guiding your hips slowly. It hurts a little more than usual, but everything is so rushed, so feral, that it doesn’t really bother you. The warmth of having him so close, the delicious stretch of him inside you, the way he groans when he bottoms out—it’s all worth the pain. 

It’s almost a disappointment when he goes still, when he waits for you to acclimate to his size. “Okay?” he manages to ask, because he always has to make sure you’re okay with things, even when he’s being reckless. 

You nod and you don’t even get a chance to move against him—his feet are planted on the floor, still in his dumb little loafers, and his hands hold you exactly where he needs you for him to thrust into you over and over again, root to tip, so fucking deep that you can feel him in your stomach. 

Your hands are pressed flat against the wall behind him, your face buried in the crook of his shoulder to muffle the noises you can’t keep yourself from making. He just feels so good—so perfect inside of you and against you, where he was made to be, and you tell him this because he needs to know.

His hand finds the small of your back and pushes you into an arch that has you seeing stars with every thrust. Not even pressing your mouth to his skin can quiet the moans he’s eliciting from you, so you bite down on the junction of his neck and shoulder and he whines, body tensing, arms circling your waist to pull you against him in a crushing embrace as he buries himself deep inside of you. He twitches hard, talking without a thought like he always does when he finishes, saying that he needs you, saying that you’re the only person that's ever made him feel like this, saying that you’re the only person he ever wants to do this with for the rest of his life.

After his body loosens up, after he pulls out and his breathing slows to something manageable, he says, “One of these days I’m gonna be able to last more than a minute. Just need you to stop feeling that perfect.”

You laugh—honest to God laugh, and you want him so badly and you’re still so turned on and he’s exactly what you’ve always wanted. “You think that’s ever gonna happen?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” he says. His teeth nip at your bottom lip, the ghost of a bite. A hallmark of want. “Are you gonna let me take care of you?”

Always. You’ll always let him take care of you.

He carries you to the bed and your shorts are gone, your sweater is gone, your sense of dignity is gone because you would give this man anything right now. He lays you out and takes his time pulling you apart, breaking you down with his tongue, his hands, his long, pretty fingers.

When he finally gets you off he keeps going, driving you to a point where you can’t handle any more and then pushing you through it, and when you reach your second peak, he laps up everything you give him, sighing soft against you.

He tries to wipe his face off like usual and you stop him, pull him to you, gaze at the shimmering mixture of your slick and his cum that covers the lower half of his face. You run the flat of your tongue up his chin and you could get drunk simply off the taste of the two of you together. His eyes are half-lidded when you pull away, and he whispers, “Christ, you’re perfect,” almost more to himself than you. When he kisses you, he holds you so close you can hardly breathe.

The after with him is always soft. He undresses himself because you’re undressed, then holds you gently, kisses your hair, tells you sweet things that he’d never say in public.

At least—that he wouldn’t before. Maybe things are different now.

You’ve been lying together, quiet, for a long while before he says, “I’m not gonna ask you to say it back.”

The air conditioning kicks on, a low drone that hums through the room like a distant insect swarm. You feel frozen, unsure what to do with your body.

“But do you think you ever could?”

You sit up because everything suddenly feels too heavy. Your face feels hot. You’ve never been good at thinking through your emotions because you haven’t had to. You’ve been a mercenary for a long time. You’ve killed a lot of people for a lot less than they were worth. You’ve traveled with so many companions over the years that you can’t remember all of their faces anymore. There’s never been anyone you’ve had to think over your feelings for—it’s been either like or dislike for so long that it feels like it’s all you know.

The things you feel for Nick, though—would they be classified as like? Or something more? He makes you laugh. He makes you so frustrated you could scream. He makes you want to travel to places you’ve already been just so you can see them together. He makes you want to cry, sometimes, because you’re scared of this, and you forgot what fear was much too long ago to feel comfortable with it now.

“How can I know?”

He looks a little hurt by this. He’s terrible at hiding his emotions even though he thinks he’s good at it.

“Genuinely, Nick. I haven’t… had anyone like you. I haven’t wanted to be with anyone like this. I haven’t cared about anyone like this.” You look at his jacket, discarded on the floor, still riddled with bullet holes that you were supposed to fix. “But how do I know if that’s enough?”

He sits too, takes your hands in his. He’s always so beautiful like this—when he’s taken off all the armor he shields himself with and lets you touch what’s underneath. “It’s enough for me.”

You look at your hands, fingers intertwined with his. “I could, I think.”

“Don’t want you to feel pressured,” he tells you. “Just—if it happens, you know, I’d appreciate it if you’d clue me in.”

“I can do that,” you say, and you can, because he doesn’t look disappointed that you didn’t do something you weren’t ready to do. He doesn’t look angry. He smiles at you, so warm and genuine that your heart feels like it’s cracking open, like everything inside you is spilling out. “I do. I already do.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I love you.” You cover your mouth with a hand after you say it, because it feels so heavy and damning. But it feels so right , too, and you don’t know what to do with that. How to fit the rightness into the way you’ve built your life on the foundation of so many wrongs. After a long moment where he waits for you to collect yourself, you’re able to lower your hand. “I love you,” you tell him. “I want it to be enough.”

“It is,” he says, thumb caressing the back of your hand. “It’ll always be enough.” 

You’ve never expected to get everything you want in life, and you most definitely won’t. But you can have this. This delicate thing that you’ve been building together, despite the missteps. Despite the fear. And it’ll be okay, because there’s no checklist. No requirements. You just love him, and he loves you back, and you're both allowed to decide what that means.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

[fairy-writes]

SO MANY KISSES, SO LITTLE TIME

Reblogs and Comments are greatly appreciated!!

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Fandom(s): Trigun Stampede

Pairing(s): Nicholas D. Wolfwood x Reader

Word Count: 1.2k

Genre(s)/Tag(s): Gender Neutral!Reader, “Sweetheart” as a nickname, Types of Kisses

Notes: I’m still very new to the Trigun Stampede fandom. Seriously, I finished the anime two days ago. So please forgive me if I get anything wrong! (I’ve also only seen Stampede, so don’t come for me pls)

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Kissing Nicholas D. Wolfwood was hesitant.

He kissed you like he was scared you’d disappear. Like you were nothing but a mirage he couldn’t touch with his fingers. Almost as if he expected you to be a ghost and not a real person before him.

His lips are chapped, and he tastes like the cigarette and booze he had just had. But you can’t bring yourself to care all that much.

Because your first kiss with Nicholas D. Wolfwood is hesitant, yet as the kiss goes on, he gets bolder and more confident. But he still handles you with the delicacy of someone who was oh so scared.

You pull away from him gently, playing with the baby hairs on the back of his neck as you lean your forehead on his,

“That was a long time coming.” You tease, and he just huffs, pinching your side and making you squeal slightly.

“Shaddup. I wanted to do it right.” He grumbles but leans back in to peck your lips once more. 

Kissing Nicholas D. Wolfwood was tender.

It’s late at night, and Vash is snoring lightly in his sleeping bag just a few feet from you. Roberto and Meryl are asleep in the van, leaving you and Nicholas awake to keep watch.

After all, you never know when bandits could strike.

You toss a stray stick into the dying fire and look up at the stars. You can hear Nicholas lighting up a cigarette next to you, but you don’t say anything. You’ve chastised him enough about his smoking habits, and you know for a fact that he doesn’t care enough about his health to really do anything about it.

Eventually, you lean your head on his shoulder. He doesn’t move at first. He never does. But slowly, as if reassuring himself that this is truly okay, he wraps an arm around your shoulders and tugs you through the sand until you’re flush against his side. You hum when he asks if this is okay. He’s always asking if this is okay, even though he knows your answer by now. 

“‘Course it is. You know you don’t have to ask Nick.” You whisper into the night and hear him chuckle under his breath. He doesn’t respond. Not verbally, at least. 

Instead, he tilts your chin to face him and presses a kiss to your mouth. It lasts no more than a few seconds. You reach up with one hand to cradle his jawline, feeling his stubble scratch your fingertips and bring him back to your lips the moment he pulls away. He laughs,

“Can’t get enough of me, can ya, sweetheart?” He teases, and you grin, nudging his nose with your own. 

“Never.”

Kissing Nicholas D. Wolfwood was quick.

Gunshots rang out around you, and you ducked as one whizzed over your head. You could hear Vash trying to talk down the bandits trying to claim the bounty on his head. 

It wasn’t helping much. 

You unholster your pistol and check the magazine. Fully loaded like it had been a few minutes ago. Meryl and Roberto cower behind you, and you load a bullet into the chamber of your gun. Your trigger finger doesn’t touch said trigger just yet. 

Nicholas slides around the corner and bumps into you, hauling his cross behind him as one of the bandits throws a freaking grenade. 

“What a shit show!” He snarls, and you bark out a laugh, 

“Any chance we can leave Vash behind?” You say, not meaning it because Vash is a good person and an even better friend. He always had your back, just as you vowed to always have his. 

Nicholas scoffs,

“Trust me, sweetheart, I’d love to if it meant getting these bastards off my ass.” He says, peeking around the corner of your little hidey-hole before jerking backward to avoid getting hit with shrapnel from another grenade. 

Just as Nicholas makes to run back out, you snag ahold of the collar of his shirt and haul him down to press a bruising, quick kiss to his lips. He looks half-dazed with surprise but recovers in milliseconds. 

“Be safe out there.” You plead, and he grins that suave grin that has your heart stuttering in your chest, 

“Always.”

Kissing Nicholas D. Wolfwood was slow.

You sit up against pillows, nursing a bullet injury to your shoulder, some minor scrapes and bruises, and a fractured ankle to top it all off. The town you were in was small, with only a few hundred residents and the only medical clinic for miles. You had to shell out your last few double dollars just to pay to be treated. 

Nicholas sits beside you, cleaning his Punisher while you doze. He had volunteered to stay behind to watch over you while Vash went into hiding until you were healed. Meryl and Roberto holed up in the ramshackle inn down the road. 

“How ‘re you feelin’?” Nicholas asked, and you snapped awake. The painkillers you were given thankfully muted the pain to a dull throb, so you were able to adjust your pillows without any issues. 

“As good as I can be, I suppose.” You mumble, and he scoffs, 

“Needle noggin is gonna get you killed one of these days.” You shrug your good shoulder,

“I’ll live. I got you to protect me, right?” You say goodnaturedly and smile when his lips twitch up just the slightest bit. 

It’s silent for a beat. Then two. 

“Y’know… There’s something that might make me feel better.” You muse, and he looks at you, eyebrow raised, as he sets aside his Punisher up against the wall. 

“And what’s that?” He replies. You look up at the ceiling, tapping your lips with a finger before looking at your lover with a sweet smile, 

“A kiss.” 

Nicholas stares at you for a second before hanging his head with a shake and a chuckle. But he doesn’t say no. 

You knew that kisses were the one way to get him out of his slump. And you also knew that kisses were the one thing he never said no to.

So, he scoots off his chair and onto your bedside, where he leans in and kisses you slowly. You taste the barest hint of the medical serum he had used to heal himself after the gunfight and the cigarette he had had before stepping inside the hospital. You inhale through your nose and take in his scent of sand and the earthy smell that seemed to cling to him no matter where he went. 

Nicholas pulls away after the kiss and flicks your forehead, 

“Get some sleep, sweetheart. You’re going to need it if you’re gonna get better.” He whispers, and you roll your eyes. 

“Only if you sleep, too.” You say and tug him down until he’s lying with you on the cot. It’s small and, therefore, awkward, but you’ve slept in worse places.

The only thing that matters is that Nicholas is there with you.

[aimfor-theheart]

cielo,, how does nico react to you shifting around in his lap when you're in public w friends,, if you'd have any ideas,,,

of course i have ideas anon. of course. pls enjoy 💗

pairing: nicholas d. wolfwood x gender neutral reader

cw: sweetheart pet name used, flirting…suggestive…

ﾟ•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ ୨♡୧ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈• ｡ﾟ

the night is young and warm and hazy—the moon is a shy curve in the sky, glowing beneath thin clouds that amble by. the stars are dancing and bright, like girls in the night, heavendrunk and giddy.

on the patio of an old dive bar in the middle of nowhere, you sit in nicholas’ lap.

vash and meryl and milly are around the table. their drinks are almost empty—you’re just shy of finishing your own. the card game has just begun. some old one vash likes to play and milly claims she used to play with all her siblings. nicholas knows it because—well, when doesn’t he know a card game?

you and meryl are new to it but meryl has that determined little furrow to her brow. she’s set her jaw. she wants to win.

but you’re in nico’s lap, sitting pretty with your bare legs thrown over his. one arm looped around his neck so you can lean back into him and look at his hand of cards. he claims he’s tryin’ to teach you.

you haven’t been paying enough attention.

it’s a rare night that you really indulge in displays of affection this large, especially around the group, but you’re all a little tipsy and soft-hearted and there had only been four chairs around the table. they’d all taken their seat and nico, without missing a beat, had pulled you right in to his lap. fit you snug against him.

meryl hadn’t even said a peep about it, who usually complains if you get a little overly affectionate in front of her. instead, she’d just kept chatting away to you like nothing had ever happened. like you weren’t perched in nick’s lap with one of his arms looped around your waist.

vash eyes you a little funny from time to time—staring a little too long at you or nico. you catch him once glancing down to nico’s hands on the curve of your waist or softness of your thighs.

you don’t really mind.

“alright, sweetheart, let’s see what we got.” nico says to you, leaning back in his chair so no one can see his cards except you, nestled close to him.

you lay your head against his sternum to look, tucking beneath his chin. his arms are looped around you to fan the cards out for the two of you to see.

seems like a good hand to you—two queens, a jack, and a ten. you don’t say a peep, though, and you feel nico sigh beneath you. he nudges his nose to your temple absentmindedly.

he smells like the faded cologne he wears—grisalva and amber and leather. and a little like the sun, after a long day beneath it. bourbon on his breath. tobacco.

you nuzzle into him—you forget yourself for a moment. you have half a mind to dot little kisses against his jaw, maybe a little nip of your teeth—

“what card should we put down?” he murmurs, voice rumbling and low. you can feel it vibrate in his chest.

you squirm a little and sluggishly return your focus to the cards.

you eye them. then eye the card meryl put down.

you tap one of the queens.

“good call,” he says and leans forward, jostling you a little to put it down on the table.

“damn,” vash says and he’s got a flush on his face. you think it’s from the drink—he’s got the same drink as nico. something strong and stiff—milly does, too. she likes to keep up with the boys. “i’ve got a shit hand.” he laughs, nudging down a four.

you and meryl have something a little sweeter—peach and honey and liquor.

you don’t really know how the game is going.

when the round is over and nico throws down his cards, the table groans.

“i really thought i had him!” meryl cries.

“you’ll get him next time, meryl!” milly encourages, sliding the cards into her hands, collecting them all.

“hard to beat him this round.” vash agrees, looking at you.

with nico’s hands free, he squeezes your thigh, your waist. “got my lucky charm right here.”

vash’s eyes flicker. you squirm. vash quickly takes a sip of his drink, averting his attention.

“meryl, if you want, i can start cheatin’ for you.”

nico bounces his knees a little, jostling you, “you’d betray me like that?”

he hitches his chin over your shoulder to rub his stubbly cheek against your own. you can’t help but laugh a little, the soft, high way you do when it’s just you and nico. giggly and sweet.

“you always win card games.” you reply, “i’m rooting for meryl this time.”

he nudges his nose against your jaw and—

you wanna kiss him. you wanna turn in his arms and straddle his waist and you wanna—

your hips shift a little. his hand squeezes your thigh. maybe in warning.

“while i appreciate the support, i need to win fair and square.” meryl announces and the flush in her face, all rosy, is certainly from the drink. she hardly pays you or nico any mind.

“atta girl, meryl!” milly says, beginning to deal the cards again.

nico’s got his arms around you again to hold up the cards. you’re not really thinking of much except that he’s so big and solid beneath you and you wish his hands would do something else than hold some cards.

he has some rings on his fingers and you eye them.

you squirm again, imagining those fingers between your legs or in your mouth or—

this time, he rumbles in your ear, low and soft and just for you, “sit still.”

which only makes you want to move more.

he hums as he looks at his cards.

you have half a mind to purr, to wrap your arms around him and just melt into his embrace, let him have you whatever way he wants. and though nico can be a brute, he tries not to react to the way you shift again.

the game unfolds.

you try to stay patient but it’s proving difficult.

your hips shift fractionally, an aborted little rock, and you feel—

you feel that he’s hard and.

heat rushes through you, cracks through you like a lightning strike to an old, dry tree. and—

and you want more.

“how much longer until the game is over?” you try for casualness. nico huffs.

“probably a half hour or so,” milly says and then she looks dead at you and asks very cheerfully, “why? in a rush?”

vash coughs into his drink.

you feel heat rush to your face. “no!” you reply quickly, “i’m just gettin’ tired.”

“poor baby,” meryl mocks, “i better hurry up and win then.”

nico remains strangely silent. but when you shift again, he grabs your waist tight. he stills you. he doesn’t let you move like that again.

he finishes his drink—he tosses down his cards.

meryl shouts, cheering. she’s won finally and with it, the whole game.

“good play, stryfe.” nico grunts, “you caught on fast.”

“that’s what i do!” she boasts, clinking her glass with milly’s, then vash’s. then yours.

“and now you’re free to go—“ meryl looks at the pair of you and she flusters a little finally, “uh—sleep.”

vash laughs and milly chimes in, “beauty rest is important, after all.”

“yeah, yeah,” nico waves them off, “i need a smoke. and to sleep.” he says, more to you, as he urges you up with a little tap to your thigh. you hop up.

you bid your friends goodnight, downing the rest of your drink, before skipping a little to catch up to nico. the moment you’re beside him, his big hand comes down on the nape of your neck, and he pulls you in close.

you cozy up to him.

“you think you’re cute?” nico asks, leaning down a little, “squirming in my lap the whole damn night?”

“couldn’t help it,” you try to shrug, smiling up at him with a little too much innocence, “was feeling antsy.”

“you’re a brat.” he says, “you need better manners, sweetheart. i was enjoying myself.”

“oh i know,” you say, “i felt that—“

he swats your bottom and you yelp his name, scandalized and quickly glancing behind you to see if anyone saw. no one in sight. he guides you back to your room.

“maybe i’ll teach you some, huh?” he asks but he’s not really asking. you feel warmth hit your face. you peak up at him.

he squeezes the nape of your neck as his dark eyes find yours.

a fissure of heat, like lightning bursting across the sky.

“maybe a lesson in patience.” he says and though his tone is light, you hear the barb in it somewhere, catch the flash of his teeth when he smiles at you.

your stomach flips.

you have a feeling you’re in for a long night.

[novasintheroom]

Hello! Could you write about Vash and Wolfwood reacting to a shy/timid reader?

Thank you for this ask! I hope I did justice to what you had in mind! <3

I think Vash would see it as a sort of novelty to come across you – quiet and timid, shy to a painful degree. Most people he meets are brazen; gruff. To come across someone so…soft, is a treat in his long life.

He may not realize how loud he is at first. And even if he isn’t loud, he certainly catches quite a bit of attention. He’ll realize quickly, though, that this sort of attention is not something you enjoy. So he’ll do his best to quiet down and stave off any unwanted attention. He wants to talk with you, to see how someone remains so soft and shy in such a harsh world and survives.

If it has something to do with your living situation, you bet Vash will do his best to right it in some way. Maybe he’ll even offer for you to join him to the next town – see if you can start a new life there! If it’s just your personality though, Vash will see a strength in you that others often look over. It takes a lot of guts to remain soft and not crowd the world with your noise. He’ll have a great respect for you by the time you two part ways.

If you two decide to stick together, however, Vash may try to take over talking for you at first. He just doesn’t want anyone to walk all over you! You’ll have to grow into something a little more sturdy to adventure with Vash, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be quiet and strong at the same time. Quite the contrary. Vash often seeks you out for advice, as you often notice things others don’t. He will appreciate any look into your inner worlds, as they are vast and deep if he just has the patience to be let in.

/~*~\

Wolfwood would be a little jerk about it at first. He’d probably call you something like “Squeaky” for how timid your voice comes out or how you squeak anytime he looks at you. You remind him of some of the younger kids he was with in the orphanage – the ones who look lost and alone no matter how many kids are around. When he makes that connection, he turns into Big Brother™ and takes you under his wing.

Wolfwood would still tease you a bit, but it’s out of love and concern. If he keeps teasing you, you might actually grow some teeth and bite back one of these times. That would be a relief in his eyes, because he hates the thought of someone bigger than you coming along to rough you up. If you’re sticking with him and the gang, you’ll need to grow a backbone. Don’t worry, he knows it takes time. It’s a hard shell to crack! But with his help and jokes, you’ll be toe-to-toe with the best of them.

The longer you stick together, the more he seeks you out for company. Wolfwood may be able to keep up with Vash’s rowdiness and Meryl and Millie’s antics, but at the end of the day, he just wants to relax and have a smoke. You provide a warmth like that of dying embers on a perfect night. Your quietness turns more comfortable than awkward, as you settle into the routine of finding a secluded place to just sit and watch the sunset together. It can’t last forever – there are people to save and a Stampede to follow, after all – but it’s tradition. It’s sacred. It’s only between you two. He’ll protect you ‘til you’re ready to fight for yourself.

Even then, he’ll still call you ‘Squeaky.’

[bendycxmet]

Pent-Up—Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Summary: Wolfwood has been waiting for you all day. Plus, he's horny.

Pairing: gn!reader x Wolfwood

Content: smut (18+ MDNI), oral (reader receiving), maybe a lil nasty if you count not showering immediately when you get home, dry humping, desperation, wolfwood is horny and a lil dirty pervert, i tried to make this as gender neutral as possible

with a heavy sigh, you shoulder your way into your and Wolfwood's apartment. the door shuts noisily behind you as you collapse your whole weight against it, alerting your boyfriend to your late arrival from work. wherever he is.

you groan, upset he's nowhere to be seen. you really needed a hug from him. immediately.

you throw your bag onto the ground, relieving yourself of some of the heavy burden that's been on your shoulders since leaving your workplace. toeing off your shoes, you make your way into the kitchen to look for a much needed snack.

"wolfwood??" no response.

"wolfie~?" you start to tease, knowing he despises but secretly loves your nicknames for him.

"...woowoo?" you try one last time. that's definitely gonna get him to you.

closing the fridge, you peek around to the hallway, finally noting the doors are all closed. is he not home?

you're quickly proven wrong, the door to your shared bedroom flying open, steam flowing to the ceiling from the bathroom off to the side. Wolfwood stands in the doorway, a surprised look on his face.

"wolfwood! i knew that last one would get you. sorry i got home so late. busy day yanno. did you just take a shower? a bit late isn't it?" you remark to him, turning your eyes back to the kitchen, navigating your snack options.

"how-" he clears his throat. "how was your day darling?" he breathily asks.

you look towards him, eyebrow raised. you take in his appearance, from his heaving chest, to his hand gripping the doorframe, and finally to his boxers. he's only in his boxers, a tent evident in the front.

"uh, it's not that important. it's whatever. are you ok?"

he growls at you, taking steps towards where you stand in the kitchen, grabbing at your hands.

"I've been alone all day, missing my sweetheart, and the first conversation we have, they won't even tell me about their day? the day that's kept them so busy... away from me?"

you gulp at the gravelly tone he's speaking with.

"Wolfie... what's gotten into you?"

"oh honey, a guy has needs. and today, i was feeling a little... abandoned. with my issue down there." he moves your hand to cup him, gasping when you feel how hard he is. he's been pent up for hours.

he moans, squeezing his eyes as he pushes your hand away. "I've missed you too much." he sinks to his knees, hands wrapping around your hips to keep you in place.

"wolf-" your knees buckle slightly when he noses your crotch. "wolfwood! wait! i haven't had the chance to shower! I'm all sweaty and gross." you whine.

his chuckle vibrates into your pelvis.

"when I asked you about your day, i want to know about all of it." you shudder at his implications, hand shooting out to grip the counter as he grabs your bottoms, pushing down both your underwear and pants.

your other hand knots itself into his dark waves when you feel his hot breath hit you. a deep groan rumbles through him.

"yeah you better hold on tight baby. I've been waiting for this all day. not even a hot shower could clear my head of you."

with that, he dives in, desperately sucking in a mouthful of you. you cry out, your fingers tightening in his hair. he puts his tongue to work, licking you vigorously.

you pry your eyes open, haze settling over you as pleasure courses through every nerve ending. you wanted to see what was down below you, rarely seeing wolfwood on his knees for you.

maybe you could die happy in that moment, knowing wolfwood would always worship you like this.

a long lick up your most intimate area causes you to hiss, your body stepping backwards to get away from the overwhelming sensation. wolfwood doesn't like that.

he pulls away, an angry downturn in his eyebrows. he wraps his large hands further around you waist and pushes you against the fridge. now there was no space left for you to shy away from his affections. his hand snaps against your backside, causing you to yelp.

"stay." he demands, a finality layering his command.

wolfwood returns to you with newfound determination. perhaps as punishment for keeping him waiting so long today. his hands comes backto your backside, squeezing, humming his appreciation of the nectar that flows from between your legs. you whimper, feeling your lower stomach beginning to burn, signaling the end. he brings his hips closer to your leg. you feel the wetness of his pants, the twitching of his cock. so he was getting off to this. what a pervert.

you give him some relief, pushing your leg harshly against his cock. he moans his thanks into you, hips moving against you.

"baby, i won't last much longer," you manage to get out between stuttering breaths, his tongue making it hard to concentrate on the sentences formulating in your head.

he hums, knowing exactly what'll get you to your peak. his hands move to play with you, stroking you gently, the opposite of how his tongue was treating you. your hips begin to buck, breath hitching as the coil in your stomach tightens.

"wolfwood-!"

his lips suddenly reach your most sensitive spot, lips wrapping and sucking harshly around the area. you moan loudly into the kitchen, body rigid as your orgasm courses through you. the fog in your brain clears just enough for you to catch the hitch in wolfwoods panting, hips pressing roughly into your leg. your knees shake, threatening to take you to the ground.

wolfwood of course would never let that happen. he grabs you, pulling you down to his level, letting you catch your breath against his shoulder. he pets your hair, kissing the side of your face.

"so rough day huh?"

"you have no idea." you reach your hand down to graze your fingers against the incredibly wet spot on his boxers. "looks like I wasnt the only one having it rough."

he laughs roughly, pulling you up until you're standing.

"let's just call it a tie. shower?"

"never without you~" you peck his cheek, pulling him towards the bathroom.

masterlist

divider by saradika

a/n: look i just remembered someone talking about their fav eating them out pre shower and I immediately thought of wolfwood. that man can get down and dirty. also this is written so late at night for me so forgive me for any errors. i need to go to bed

[vshthestmpede]

Hi there!

Could we get some headcanons for vash, nick, and knives and what pet names they use for their s/o and how they would use them? Like in what situations they would use them? And what their s/o would call them in return?

Thank you 🫶🏻

the boys & their nicknames for their significant other

word count; 896

warnings; none, this is just some sweet stuff to alleviate the constant trauma our boys (and subsequently, we enjoyers) go through

note; i am such a damn sucker for cute nicknames, so this request was super fun to write!! tysm for requesting, i truly appreciate it <3 so sorry for the lack of things, covid has been kicking my butt lately on top of college ;-;

cross-posted to ao3

VASH

mayfly + lovebug

to make up for the lack of pda, vash makes sure you know how he cares by the way he calls for you

as soon as it starts, your real name is out the window and you're only to be called by the pet name he bestowed on you

you love the way it rolls off his tongue, like it was meant for you

started as a private thing as vash prefers to keep his love life under wraps but eventually became something he was proud to use in public amongst those he trusted

"good morning, mayfly."

you stretched the sleep out of your joints, blinking to adjust to the bright sunlight. vash had himself propped up on his forearms, twirling your hair around his fingers gently.

"sleep well?" he asked as you turned on your side to face him. he leaned forward and kissed your forehead as you nodded. "good. we don't have to leave for another hour or so, wanna snuggle?"

you responded by pulling him closer to you, burying your face in his chest. he wrapped his arms around you, his fingers lazily drawing shapes into your back.

"how'd you sleep, lovebug?" you murmured, voice still heavy with sleep.

vash grinned. "lovebug, hm? that's new."

you shrugged and readjusted, looking up at him. "well i thought with mayfly i needed to come up with something similar."

"fair enough, i like it." vash chuckled. "very creative. i slept okay, had a weird dream though."

"is that so? tell me all about it."

WOLFWOOD

my star + handsome

you never took wolfwood to take to romance or any of the cheesy aspects of being in a relationship

however, being a man who wasn't given any real love growing up, he craved it more than anything

of course, he'd never show it to the other three, so things like nicknames were saved solely for time between the two of you

you savored those times, enjoying the softer side of the undertaker

he would tell you how there were billions of stars in the sky yet only you were his, the brightest and most dazzling in his eyes

you pounded on the bathroom door, fed up. "c'mon, princess, i'm sure you look amazing now open the damn door!"

the door swung open and nicholas, hair still wet and messy, gave you the coldest stare behind his sunglasses.

"the hell did you just call me?" he asked, blocking you from moving past him. "no, no, no. you've never called me any sort of name before and now you just -"

"i'll keep calling you it if you don't let me use the damn bathroom," you snapped back, grabbing his arm and literally pulling him out of the bathroom. "thank you!"

coming out of the bathroom after finishing your business, you held back a laugh when you found nicholas sitting on the edge of the bed with his lips pressed into a tight frown. you flopped on the bed next to him, pulling him down with you.

"oh my gosh." you laughed as he turned away from you with a small 'hmph'. "c'mere, handsome."

instantly, he melted into your embrace, clearly much more pleased with the new nickname.

"that's better," he murmured.

"you're such a big softie," you chided playfully, brushing his hair from his face. "never change, okay?"

"yes, my star."

KNIVES

sunshine + sweetheart

if you thought it would take knives forever to even acknowledge the feelings you two shared, just imagine how long it took for him to take up on any sort of romantic gesture

you were at the helm in this voyage, showing him acts of affection first to egg him on

quickly you both learned he wasn't the biggest on physical touch but definitely enjoyed the whole concept of nicknames, something that made you stand above the rest even more to him

despite that, he found himself fighting on what he thought would fit you perfectly

you had cycled through the generic ones (babe, baby, etc.) but decided that sweetheart was the winner the way a goofy, almost childlike smile appeared on his face when you called him it the first time

knives refused any help on coming up with your nickname, demanding he figure it out himself

"i've got it!"

your head snapped up from your book as the piano playing suddenly ceased and knives stood, knocking the bench over at his abrupt movement.

"are you alright, sweetheart?" you asked, pushing yourself up out of your chair and heading towards him. he met you halfway, taking your hands in his excitedly. "what's going on in that head of yours?"

"you're my sunshine, (name)."

he had said it so happily, staring right in your eyes as he declared his newly thought of nickname. you felt your heart race at the simple gesture and the look on his face, basking in the joy that radiated off of him.

"i love it." your hands moved from his up to cradle his face. "what made you think of sunshine?"

knives leaned into your hand, proud of himself. "you just. . .you light up my life. you're so warm and caring, it's like you're if sunshine was a human."

your heart swelled at his kind words, this soft and sweet side of knives - albeit rare - was something you treasured and would always hold close to your heart.

[rush-the-stars]

undone

──────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────

pairing: nicholas wolfwood x afab f!reader

cw: smut. quickie? praise, reader referred to as "girl" and "sweetheart" and "baby". f!receiving oral. hair pulling. this is pretty tame tbh

wc: 2.4k

a/n: the fact that i wrote 2k words in the span of like. 2 hours for this man. unhinged. i am really going through something. shoutout to the anon who asked about wolfwood undoing corsets. i had softer and sweeter ideas with this but. alas. maybe i'll make it a lil series.

──────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────

You have roughly twenty minutes before Meryl and Vash are back from the water-station. Maybe more, depending on how much trouble they manage to get into on the way there or back—but that means you'll have to bail them out, too. So, still, twenty minutes.

Your back hits the door to the little room at the inn you'd gotten for the night with a dull thud.

"Nico!" You hardly have time to yelp before his mouth is on yours, stubble scraping against your soft lips. You claw at his shoulders, pawing and pushing at his blazer until it falls to the floor.

There's only two buttons on his shirt you have to pick at before it's open to you, since he wears it so obscenely low and unbuttoned already. When you get your hands on his bare skin, he's making a sound against you, low and desperate.

It's been a week and a half since he's had you like this, in his arms, big hands all over you.

It's been a week and a half since you'd had even a moment to yourselves long enough to do anything—

When his lips move over your jaw, your fingers sink into his dark hair, tugging, "don't leave any marks!"

The sound he makes can only be considered a growl, a rumble of it from his chest in annoyance, almost a groan. Your stomach swoops, tilting your head back anyways to give him room.

"Why are we hidin' it from them, anyways?" He barely gets out against your throat, warm, wet lips trailing lower and lower.

If you weren't half out of your mind with him, you would've been able to give a cohesive answer—something about not wanting it to make it strange to travel with or—maybe because Meryl's been warning you away from Nicholas for awhile now and you don't yet want to hear it from her.

Something like that.

But for now, all you can do is whimper when Nicholas' lips get down to the tops of your breasts before meeting the arch of your corset. He suddenly turns you and your hands fly up to steady yourself against the door.

And behind you, he gets on his knees and you feel a sharp tug at the lace of your corset.

You groan, "we don't have time for this—"

"Damn you, you said that last time—"

And he’s right, last time was quick and hot in the back of the truck, with your skirts hiked up around your waist but otherwise not a piece of fabric fully taken off. Just your poor bloomers ripped at the gusset.

And stubborn man that he is, he continues to pull at the laces expertly. Thick, strong fingers weaving into the delicate satin of the ribbon, as he gives another tug. It loosens.

You glance over your shoulder and the sight is—

Nicholas on his knees, shirt open, dark lashes fanned across his cheeks as he focuses on your corset. Another quick tug and the bodice loosens again, then he brings his other hand up—so big, so rough, and pulls at the corset deftly.

“Careful—“ you barely manage to breathe, watching, enamored with the way his fingers delve in to the delicate satin again. “You have to get this back on me before they get back, too.”

“Quit worrying,” he says, and you feel the stiff fabric give away, laces coming undone with his expert hands. “I don’t know when I’m gonna get this much time with you again.”

You let it fall from your body, freeing your breasts and revealing the sheer, ruffled slip underneath.

He hardly lets you step out of it before he tugs at the strings of the underskirt around your waist, expertly undoing that, too. It pools around your feet in swaths of peach and cream, joining your poor, undone corset.

“Slip off,” he gets out, big hands coming up to bunch in the fabric at your waist. You listen to the command almost instinctively, letting the white fabric fall from your shoulders, but realize sluggishly that—

“You’re a little too good at this,” you manage to get out as you’re finally bare up top, slip joining all your discarded clothes.

Down to your little bloomers and stockings, he lets out a huff of a laugh, one hand roaming over the bare skin of your side, other curling into the waistline of your bloomers. “What are you tryin’ to say?”

Bloomers slip down your legs with an easy pull.

“You’re a dog, Nico—!”

Your words break off into a sharp breath, just as you feel the nudge of his nose against the back of your thigh, lips settling in a wet kiss towards the inner crux of your legs. One of his hands presses on your lower back, bending you into a pretty arch for him.

The other holds you steady, creeping over your waist, thumb stroking soothingly against bare skin.

Heat rips through you like the high sun at noon, blazing, and furious. You whimper when you feel his stubble against the soft skin of the back of your thighs.

You feel where he’s headed—and it’s—in this position—

“Nico—“ you whine, and again, you try to say there isn’t time—maybe, to spare you some form of embarrassment or, or—

His tongue is sinful and hot between the shockingly wet glide between your legs. He shoulders your legs a little further apart for himself, squeezes your hip appreciatively and groans low and dirty.

You curse, hips twitching, trying to wriggle out of his hold, but he bares down. His hands squeeze.

“Don’t you run from me, sweetheart.” He gets out, gruff and soft.

And then the hot clutch of his mouth opens, sinful, against your cunt, damn near dripping onto his waiting tongue.

The whimper that works its way out of you is a flustered one, nails digging into the wood of the door as he sets to work on you. It’s messy—it’s fast and heated and his hands are being a little rough, guiding you on his mouth.

Sparks of pleasure, low in your stomach, erupt. He’s a little relentless—a little desperate. And you’re so damn wound up—

You arch into it and he hums in praise, pulling you back into the warm, wet heat of his moth, into burning pleasure.

It’s honestly a little embarrassing—

He slips one finger inside of you and curls and the angle with—his mouth—

You cry out, a pleasure burst of heat racing through your body, along the arch of your back to pulse hard and quick against his tongue.

He laughs a little when he realizes he’s already made you come, but he doesn’t let up right away. Not until you’re mewling and whining all pitiful, voice going high and desperate.

“Poor thing,” he says when he stands, crowding you against the door now with his height. His size. “Must’ve been so worked up—didn’t know you needed me that bad, sweetheart.”

“Just hurry up and fuck me—“

He laughs, low and soft, as he unzips his pants and pulls himself out. You feel him then slip through silken folds, glide all sweet and easy over where you need him most.

“Don’t have to tell me twice, hellcat.”

You groan as he sinks the head of his cock inside you. He curses. The stretch burns a little, aches deep inside—

“So fucking tight still,” he gets out, almost a growl, as he eases out and then a slow glide back in. You arch your back for him further, rock back further so he sinks deep down into you.

His turn to groan, one hand coming up to steady himself on the door by your own hand. He laces them together—sap that he is.

His other hand feels your bare body for once, no corsets or shirts in his way, calloused hands skimming over your torso. Your breasts.

He keeps himself deep inside you a moment, marveling, petting and stroking you as you try and catch your breath.

His thumb grazes the peak of your breast, pleasure skittering to life and rushing through your body. You wiggle your hips, desperate.

“Nico, c’mon, don’t tease—“ you mewl.

And then you move your hips off him, before taking him back deep inside you.

He groans again, “fuck—how could I deny you?”

You begin to set a slow pace, easing off him almost entirely before sinking back onto him. He carves a blaze inside of you, turns your mind to mush, as you continue rocking.

“Atta girl,” he gets out, watching himself disappear inside of you, before slowly pulling back out.

You moan, arching further into his touch, his embrace, before you feel his hand squeeze at your waist.

And then he thrusts, slower at first, letting you adjust. But you’re finding your own rhythm with him, chasing your own pleasure—chasing his. The way he moans, dragging you back and forth on his cock. So thick and deep, pressing into you.

His hands are all over now, savoring the way your skin feels, being able to hold and grope you like this. Rough hands on your breasts, your thighs, your ass.

You tip your head back onto his shoulder and he showers you in attention and praise—

“So fucking pretty, huh? You feel good, sweetheart? Whad’ya need from me, hm?”

“Harder,” you get out, turning desperate eyes on him. He groans again, helpless to your whims.

“Whatever my baby wants,” he says before moving to tangle a hand in your hair, taking a fistful in a swift move that has you gasping. Not too hard—but—

You moan as he sinks in roughly this time, tips your head back with his hand in your hair.

He doesn’t change the pace, just the strength. And you feel yourself flutter around him, feel the way he rumbles out another low sound of his own pleasure, as his thrusts get harder. Deeper.

“You got one more for me, sweetheart?” He asks, scattering kisses on your jaw, the side of your neck.

He lets go of your hair to skim his hand down the front of your body, to find the bundle of nerves between the crux of your thighs. It changes the angle, he crowds you, big bare chest up against your back. You’re so close he hardly even pulls out of you now, and you grind back against him.

“That’s it,” he hums, “take what you want, pretty girl.”

That’s all it really takes, with his fingers making quick, easy passes over your clit.

Your moan is broken, walls tightening up around him as he groans.

“Ha—fuck, good girl—just like that.”

He buries himself to the hilt just to feel you come around him, just to feel the way you squeeze and milk him.

“Nico—“ you get out, “want you—want you to come—“

Again, he says, voice a little wrecked, “how could I deny you?”

And then grabs hold of your hips to thrust, hard, and deep, chasing his own pleasure. It doesn’t take him long, especially when you start mewling and begging for him, arching all up into his hands desperately.

He comes hard, you feel him pulse and jump inside you, insides flooding with warm.

You’re both breathing a little heavy on the come-down, his lips scattering kisses along your bare shoulders.

For a moment, it’s peaceful— the sun is setting in a gold fury out the window, casting you both in its glory. Your body is warm and loose and—you press back into him.

You realize you want more, wiggling your hips again, but he stills you.

And somehow, he’s the voice of reason when he says, “I gotta get your corset back on you.”

You curse.

You have maybe, maybe five minutes. If that.

And then you’re both a flurry of movements, trying to clean up and get clothes back on. He helps you back into your slip.

He takes a seat on the edge of one of the beds and you stand between his legs, facing him, as he helps with your skirts, dutifully tying off the knots around your waist.

And then he’s helping you with your corset—

Nimble, knowing fingers lacing it up as if he’s done it a hundred times before, barely looking over the curve of your waist to do it.

He tightens it up, nice and snug, and you gasp at the way his big hands pull at it. At the cinch he makes.

He looks up at you, all dark, smoldering eyes.

“That was a real pretty sound,” he rumbles, twisting the lace around his hands carefully, then giving another swift tug.

You gasp again, reaching out to steady yourself on his broad shoulders.

He swears under his breath, “I need at least forty-eight hours with you alone.”

You hardly get a retort, because you both hear commotion down the hall of the inn. And two familiar voices bickering—

You lurch away from him, stepping out of his grasp and bustling over to the other bed, where you’d set down your bag, as if you might be unpacking.

Nicholas pulls out a pack of his cigarettes, puts one between his lips and lights it just as the door bursts open.

Meryl is berating Vash over something, but they’ve got the water they set out to find. And the town is still standing.

Vash cocks his head all funny when he gets in the room and looks between you and Nicholas, but otherwise doesn’t say a word.

Meryl, oblivious, is going on about how Vash almost stuck his nose somewhere he shouldn’t.

“What else is new?” You snort, trying to feel normal and not like jelly, not like you want to collapse in the arms of the man just across the room from you.

You turn to keep folding clothes, when Meryl says;

“Oh—your corset came undone. It’s untied.”

For a moment, your heart stops.

You glance at Nicholas, who catches your eye through a haze of smoke.

“Let me fix it.” Meryl says easily and you nod, swallowing, mumbling a thank you, as you turn away from her.

Her hands take the ribbon in hand and begin to wind and tie.

You face Nicholas, who’s eyeing you darkly.

And then Vash who says, “strange thing, that. Good catch, Meryl.”

He shares a look with Nicholas.

And then he chirps, “who’s sleeping with who tonight?”

You almost choke.

Meryl pipes up about how obviously you and her are sleeping together and Vash and Nicholas can figure something out—just like always. Why would it be any different? She asks.

True to his list of disastrous namesakes, what Vash says next makes pandemonium break out among the room. And truly, this might as well have been the trouble he was trying to stick his nose into, the kind of trouble that might just take down the town itself with the storm it’s about to cause.

And here you thought they’d managed to avoid trouble and you and Nicholas had gotten away scot-free.

Vash shrugs and says, “I dunno— why was her corset untied?”

[whirlwindimagines]

hi hi!!! i love your work so much and feel like there is not nearly enough wolfwood/reader content. can i request wolfwood/reader scenario with a very oblivious reader who doesn't realize when wolfwood is flirting with them until it's spelled out or until it's so obvious that they're like "wait are you flirting with me" ("have been for the past few months thanks for noticing" type response)?

Thank you so much! And yeah I agree lol, poor Wolfwood I feel like he wouldn't know what to do with such an obvious person like he's making big heart eyes and you straight up don’t notice at all. Lol, enjoy! Also, I’m not good at writing about flirting :D

'Notice me'

Nicholas D. Wolfwood x Reader 

“This is just painful.” You glance over at Meryl confused, “What are you talking about?” she gives you a deadpanned look, had you seriously not noticed Wolfwood staring at you for the past ten minutes? You watched Meryl open her mouth to say something, but it looks like she decides against it, “Never mind, you’ll figure it out!” she says with a wave of her hand. 

She leaves you then, you're still confused by the whole conversation, but you don't need to think about it long when Wolfwood sits down in the seat Meryl was sitting in and places a drink in front of you. You light up at seeing him and thank him for the glass. 

You notice him staring openly at you, placing a hand to your face you meet his gaze, “what? Is there something on my face?” Wolfwood startles, downing his drink instead of answering. You watch him raising a brow as he smirks at you. 

“I’m just thinking how lucky I am to be having a drink with the most beautiful person in here.” Your eyes widen, and you look around the room before pointing to yourself, “me?” You squeak out, and he gives you a deadpan look. Funny you’ve been receiving a lot of these looks today.

“You think I’m pretty?” You say with a nervous laugh, really looking at Wolfwood, you can feel your face growing warm. What is happening here? Surely, he couldn't really think that? Could he… 

“No, I said you're beautiful.” He leans in closer, and you blush brightly, your hands going to your face. “Careful Wolfwood if I didn’t know any better, I would say you're flirting with me.” You say this with a light laugh. Because no way, Wolfwood was attractive, and he knew it too he could probably have anyone he wanted in this bar. Yet here he was with you instead.

Wolfwood leans back with a groan, he takes your unfinished drink and downs it in one go you can only watch surprised, “I am flirting with you.” He says as he drops his head to the table, the ‘thud’ is audible and you swear your heart stops beating. 

His words register in your mind and then your jaw drops, because what? “You are!?” You say surprised, “I have been this whole time.” You start to think back on all your interactions, and ohhhh…. Yeah, maybe those were flirty…. You feel bad now, reaching across the table, and resting your hand on his head to run your fingers through his dark hair.

“Oh well! Please continue then!” God, you are so embarrassed, how could you be so dense? He grabs your wrist and it stills your actions. Wolfwood brings your wrist to his face and places a light kiss on the inside of your wrist. Your whole face flushes and you make a strangled sound.

Wolfwood looks at you with that damn smirk, “well if you say so.” You laugh, God what have you just unleashed on yourself? You don't pull your hand back, choosing to lift his face gently “Well don't hold back for my sake, let's just say I’ll be paying much closer attention now. Nicholas” Your heart skips a beat at his blush. 

Well, this was certainly a change, but a welcome one. You had no idea you had such an effect over the Punisher, you were definitely looking forward to future exchanges between the two. “Now I think you owe me another drink.” You say pulling your hand back, with a smile.

[wreckmetoji]

An Audience

A fic in which Wolfwood is still bad at feelings but at least he dicks you down good

↳ Nicholas D. Wolfwood/Reader

content warning. gender-neutral pronouns, afab reader, mild overstimulation, unprotected sex, profanity, shameless smut, fluff, slight angst, don’t worry baby boy vash will get his turn eventually

I recommend reading Stargazing and Cigarettes for a bit of context, however it isn’t completely necessary

minors DNI

6.8k words

Love wasn't in your cards. That was something you had to wake up and realize, seeing the empty space in your sleeping bag that seemed twice as big now, despite being made for only one person. You weren't surprised, you couldn't be, you knew Nicholas D. Wolfwood well enough despite him only being in your life for the span of a couple weeks. He seemed... Non-committal, avoidant, and definitely bad at expressing feelings, let alone understanding them. Still, though, the short lived pang in your chest made you visibly wince. Either that, or the sun peering over the dunes, momentarily blinding you. It seemed you were the first to wake up, thank the gods for that, because you wouldn't know how to explain your brief moment of melancholy to the honest, good-hearted people around you. They would all be waking up shortly, so you were quick to recoup. Rubbing your eyes, slapping your cheeks, and standing from your sleeping bag, you vowed to carry on bravely. It was a moment of passion, you were both looking for a lifeline.  At least, that's what you told yourself. You had been silently pining over Wolfwood for nearly the entire time he had been traveling with you, but it was time to shove those feelings deep, deep down, bottle them up and put them on the shelf of regrets and things left unsaid. You would have time to reminisce over it later down the line in your life. Poorly rolling up your crumpled sleeping bag, making sure to smack the sand out of the creases in the process lest you want it in every single crevice next time you find yourself stranded. That action must have roused Vash from his sleep, as you could hear a small groan from beside you. It made you smile, shaking your head. For someone constantly on the run, he seemed so carefree sometimes. That was just so undeniably Vash, though. "Good morning," Vash rasped, both hands coming up to rub his eyes, before placing his glasses on his face. "Mornin'," You returned, clipping the straps over your sleeping bag to hold it in place. "Did you sleep alright? I thought I heard you up pretty late, and now you're the first up." You weren't sure why you didn't expect Vash to be perceptive, considering it's in his passive nature to worry about and care for the people around him. The slightly bitter purse of your lips seemed to give you away, and he obviously took the hint not to pursue how you were feeling any further.  "Well, once we get to the next town over, we'll get a motel or something and you can nap. Don't worry about coming to get the car with us." A poignant smile graced your lips, more than likely noticed by Vash.  "Thank you." It didn't need to be said, but you wanted to voice your appreciation to him whenever you could. You noticed in your travels together he didn't get that a lot, being that his reputation as The Human Typhoon preceded him. You'd been witness to some of the horrible things that followed Vash and his attempts at helping the general populous, and at first it terrified you, but after watching him dust himself off and get back up every single time, you came to admire him more than anything.  Vash stood, kicking some sand over the makeshift fire pit that was most definitely already completely out, not that there was anything anywhere around you to catch fire anyways.  "Looks like Meryl and Roberto are up," You stated, thumb pointing to the open passenger door of the vehicle several feet away. Meryl was already hopped out, and Roberto sat up groggily in the back seat. No Wolfwood, you took note after a glance around the area.  "Great! We can head off right away... then..." Vash trailed off, glancing around the area. Seems as though he had the same realization you did. "Do you know–"  "Let's get going."  Both you and Vash whipped around, seeing Wolfwood walking over and down the nearest sand dune, his cross slung over his back in the usual fashion. You tried to make eye contact, but it seems he wasn't interested in catching your gaze, let alone acknowledging you at all.  Maybe letting everything roll off your back would be harder than you anticipated.  "Ahh, it's already so hot... I thought waking up early we would be able to beat some of the heat," You heard Meryl groan, earning a chuckle from both you and Vash. "How far is the next town?" "Uhm, twelve or so miles?" Vash seemed unsure, running his intricate cybernetic hand through his fluffy hair. So it could take you up to four hours to get there? By the time everyone had come to the consensus that it was time to leave right now immediately, Wolfwood was already a good several yards ahead, obviously having no intention of slowing his pace.  The trek there was awful. You were tired, hungry, covered in grime and sweat, and Christ almighty, you could absolutely crush a glass of water. It didn't even have to be cold, you'd take lukewarm. You and Vash walked side by side, occasionally joined by Meryl and Roberto for a chat. At some point during your venture, Wolfwood had ended up behind everyone, probably something to do with his inability to trust anyone and everyone around him, or maybe you were just being bitter.  "Wahhh, I'm so tired," You whined, wiping the sweat from your brow with the back of your hand. You intentionally made it seem exaggerated, hoping covering it up as fun and games make the shake of your legs less obvious as you walked up another mountain of sand beside Vash. "How much longer until we're there?" "We should be– should– oh, we're here!" Vash exclaimed after you had reached the top of the dune. You felt like you could cry tears of joy if your body had any moisture left in it at all, so instead you settled and a pathetic little cheer, your knees wobbling and threatening to give out. Your blond companion seemed to notice this, his metal arm coming down to your waist. He didn't touch you, simply hovering just in case you were to collapse. It wouldn't be the first time he's had to keep you from falling. Wolfwood walked in front of the two of you, bumping Vash in the shoulder with his cross as he passed. He stumbled, arm catching around your waist, nearly causing both of you to tumble down the hill. His sour mood made you scowl after you and Vash had gotten your bearings, in which you got a very frantic apology despite nothing being his fault. Wolfwood was simply acting like a petulant child throwing a tantrum.  The group of you got to town, branching off in your respectful directions. You and Meryl made a beeline to the nearest and only motel in this tiny backwash town, deciding it would save on money if everyone paired up into their respective rooms. You and Meryl would share, as would Wolfwood and Roberto, leaving Vash his own room. You mutually decided he deserved privacy, considering he was the one that got everyone here in the first place. (You also decidedly left out the fact you were in this predicament because of him as well, since he was on car-charging duty.) Despite the slightly murky water and shitty soap that made your skin too dry, you accepted the cramped motel shower with open arms– after you had gotten a good late lunch in you– the lukewarm water sending goosebumps up your body. It might as well have been ice cold, considering you were in the direct sun and ridiculous heat for the first four, nearly five hours of your day. Your only respite in the sweltering heat was when Vash used his body to block the rays from hitting you first thing, but once the sun was high in the sky he could do nothing to save you. Fresh out of the shower, you sighed at your bag thrown on the bed. Your day clothes were hanging to dry, so really that only left you to putter about in your sleepwear. Not that this was an issue, considering you planned staying in this dingy motel room for the next twelve plus hours. You slipped your sleep shorts on, tugging the ratty worn t-shirt over your head soon after, flopping onto the bed with a huff. Meryl had gone out, most likely to the nearest market to stock up on supplies while Roberto, Vash, and Wolfwood fetched the car with a fully charged portable battery in hand. It wouldn't hurt to take a nap, you thought, considering how little you managed to sleep last night. You kicked your foot pathetically, cheeks flushing at the recollection of how warm his embrace was. Doesn't matter if he's just gonna be a dick to me after.

With a heavy, exasperated sigh, you pulled the blanket and sheet back from the bed, only flipping the thinner of the two on top of your body. He didn't explicitly tell you that you'd get to talk about it, he just made a noise and you had made an assumption. You really don't know what you were expecting of him, you didn't know why it bothered you so much. It was fine, everything would be fine, you just had to get over yourself and everything could go back to normal. It wasn't like he was treating you any different, he was probably just grumpy because he had to walk twelve miles on what felt like the hottest day of the goddamn year. Everything was going to be fine. You just needed a nap. You awoke with a slight start, eyes adjusting to the dark of the room. Meryl laid beside you, her back rising and falling at a steady pace. It was obvious she'd been asleep for a while with how disheveled the blankets were around her, and the slight tousle of her hair. Fuck, you hadn't meant to sleep this long, you didn't even hear her come into the room. You stretched your legs, swinging them over the side of the bed, and sliding your shoes on. You hoped the motel lobby was still open at the very least, and also hoped they sold snacks and drinks.  As quietly as you could, you opened the squeaky motel door, sliding out, and shutting it behind you. Luck really was not on your side today, was all you could think as you came face to face with the closed blinds in the windows of the motel lobby. The open sign was flipped, all the lights were off, and not a soul adorned the streets. Considering how high the moons were in the sky, you could only assume it was pretty late.  Well fuck. Heaving another sigh, you dejectedly turned heel, heading back to your shared room. What you didn't expect was bumping into another person on your way there. Wolfwood stood outside his- Vash's room? It was fine, everything was fine You tried to get away without saying anything, but having to walk past him in silence seemed to be mission impossible, especially considering the circumstances.  "Why are you standing outside Vash's room?" You asked, hand coming up to the door handle of your shared space.  He reached into his pocket, pulling out the numbered key ring and spinning it around his finger. "Traded," He mused, fingers tapping the cigarette he held in his hands, "Why, disappointed?"  It was intentional, you knew he was trying to get under your skin, that's what he did, and as much as you wanted to say you wouldn't fall for it, you absolutely did. "No, I was just curious. I already told you, it's not like that." Wolfwood hummed in response, low and void of melody or emotion, almost like he was mocking you. "Right, and I'm Mother Mary."  "Listen," You hissed, removing your hand from the door knob and taking a quick two strides over to him, "I'm okay with pretending like nothing happened last night, that's fine, but that doesn't give you an excuse to be shitty to me. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine too, but don't be a dick." This seemed to irk him, the scrunch of his nose surprising you. "Who said I didn't want to talk about it?" God, you wanted to rip your hair out. Or his. It was fifty-fifty. "You're the one that ignored me all day," You whisper yelled, pointedly shoving a finger into his chest, "You're the one that wanted to act like nothing happened, you're the one that was nowhere to be seen first thing in the morning!" "Oh, I didn't realize you wanted an audience for it. If that's the case, why don't we wake everyone up and call them out here?"  You raised your hands, dragging the heels of your palms down your face in frustration. "I can't win with you, Wolfwood. You're impossible. I'm going to bed."  As you turned on your heel, you felt his hand close around your wrist. It was warm, electrifying.    "You said you wanted to talk about it. Let's talk about it." A response you didn't think you'd ever hear from Nicholas D. Wolfwood. You sighed, nodding slowly, but when you turned to him he was releasing his grip on you and headed to the door of his room. "Not out here," He muttered, stamping out his cigarette while opening the door for you. Stepping inside, you saw his cross leaning up against the wall in the corner, but other than that nothing else was out of place. His room looked entirely clean, no belongings strewn about, the covers on bed were still fitted and tucked. Did he ever sleep? You kicked your shoes off and heard the door click closed behind you, making you vaguely aware that you were completely alone with Wolfwood once again. Through the thin walls, you could hear snoring, and you weren't passively aware of everyone's sleeping patterns enough to tell if it was Vash or Roberto, or both. You nervously wiped your palms against your sleep shorts, bravely turning around to look up at Wolfwood. His arms were crossed over his chest, standing tall in front of you. The longer you stood in silence, the more desperate you became for any kind of saviour. "Okay, I guess I'll go first," You whispered, stepping back and taking a seat on the edge of the untouched bed, "I... expected things to be like this. I was happy about what happened last night, but I mean... you don't exactly seem the type to want that kind of thing, y'know?" Silence. "It was nice indulging, lying to myself, telling myself that's really what you wanted as well," You picked at the skin on your fingers, acutely aware of Wolfwood stepping away from the door and closer to you, "That you wanted me. That it wasn't just... I dunno, us being caught up in the moment?" You were embarrassing yourself. What were you saying? He was going to laugh at you and call you an idiot, traveling with everyone just got that much more awkward. A small part of you wondered if you should just pack up your stuff and disappear into the night. The likelihood of you making it even a week with no food, no weapons, no money was absolutely slim, but it was a risk you were willing to take. You would leave a note for Vash, he would understand– "You done?" Blinking dumbly, you finally glanced up. He was much closer than you had anticipated, or even noticed, the proximity making you swallow the lump in your throat. Not trusting your voice, you simply nodded, a shaky exhale pushing past your lips when he began to lean down. "Good." His breath fanned over your face when he grabbed your chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing you to tilt your head back and crane your neck up. It seemed so easy for him, the way he pressed his lips against yours, the way his hand trailed feather light touches up your jaw, fingers moving back to tangle in the hairs at the nape of your neck and tug oh so gently. And as you were, right here, right now, you didn't want anything else. It's like he knew exactly what strings to pluck to make your heart sing, knew what to touch and where to have you wanting more and more of him. Or maybe you just felt that way about him all on your own. You parted, but not for long, only pulling back long enough for him to start leaning you back, one of his knees on the bed as he knelt over you. He had a hand on either side of you, bracketing you in, much like he had done last night but this was just so different. There was no confusion, astonishment, or impulse. This was planned, this was calculated and it was desperate. His lips were desperate to feel you, his tongue was desperate to taste you. It was suffocating, having him lean into you, press his chest to yours, coax your mouth open with his tongue. It was dizzying, and instead of allowing yourself to dive headfirst into the glue trap that was Wolfwood's affections, you pulled back. "Wait, Wolfwo–" "Nicholas," He breathed into your neck, licking at your pulse point once before biting down. You whined, feeling his canines press harshly into your skin. "I told you to call me Nicholas." Hands planted on his chest, giving a gentle push, but his lips and teeth and tongue made quick work of your neck. "W–Wait, please–" You insisted, giving a gentle push on his chest, "I don't–" Wolfwood pulled back, only far enough for him to look up at you out of the corner of his eye. His body was rigid again, unsure, muscles tense. He panted, breathing uneven and hurried, but ultimately nodded, huffing out, "I'm sorry, I thought– this seemed like this is where things were going." His body pulled back first, his leg sliding down the edge of the bed when he pushed back to stand. This time you were the one to grab him, your fingers closing in on the lapel of his blazer. You were both ruddy cheeked, eyes half lidded as you stared at each other. You took a second to compose yourself, voice small and breathless. "I want you, but–" He pushed forwards again, knee back on the bed. You choked on your words, keeping your hand on his blazer, "But, I feel like we didn't really talk about things." It was a wonder to see Wolfwood at a loss for words. Still, he pushed forward, much slower this time. He leaned into you, closer, hovering mere inches above your lips. "'m not exactly a man of many words, but," He placed a slow kiss on your lips, hands palming at your waist, "I'd like to show you how I feel." All the air was punched out of your lungs, jaw hanging slack in awe at his forwardness. Part of you wondered how honest he was being with you, but there was a glimmer of something in his eyes that had you falling back into his glue trap. A nod was all it took before Wolfwood was dipping leaning you back down, kissing you so deep it made the room spin. Your eyes slid shut, every nerve ending electrifying when he would touch you, kiss you. His hands felt like molten fire against your skin when he grabbed at your inner thighs, parting them so he could comfortably slide in between. His touch moved down, around, holding under your knee as he wrapped your one leg around his waist. It was slow, but deliberate, the slide of his palm back up your leg, thigh, before settling on the meat of your hip. His other hand was just barely hovering beside your neck, fingers brushing back and forth along your jaw. Something you could say you never expected of Wolfwood was the tenderness of fleeting touches. When he pulled back from your mouth, you gasped, the string of spit connecting you snapping and soaking into the fabric of your night shirt, some of it dribbling down your chin. Despite not even being touched by him yet, you could feel how dizzy and– most likely– thoroughly fucked you looked. "Fuck," Was all he growled, both hands under your ass to hike you further up the bed to make room for him. The rusty springs creaked in retaliation, the flimsy headboard gently tapping against the wall at the motion. Impossibly warm hands scooped your other leg to wrap around his waist. His hips pressed down into you, pinning you to the bed, the seam of his zipper rubbing up into your clothed mound. You squeaked, hands coming up to his hair when he ran his tongue down the shell of your ear. He kissed, licked, bit every piece of skin he could reach, and all you could do was whine and sigh and take his affections. Hot palms ran up your sides, taking your shirt along with them as he hiked it higher and higher, eventually getting to the peak of your chest. He stopped, peering up at you inquisitively, as if you would say anything except please rip my clothes off. Another nod from you, another smirk from him, and your shirt was quickly pulled up and over your head, leaving you half exposed and on display for him. You had half a mind to hide behind your arms– how long had it even been?– but he seemed to predict your train of thought and beat you to the punch. Lips descended, trailing down to the concave of your chest, kissing your solar plexus. His tongue laved across your skin, circling a pert bud, before his mouth latched down and made quick work at diminishing your leftover self conscious thoughts. You were so caught up in trying not to make too much noise, you hadn't noticed the hand that came down between the apex of your thighs to swipe a thumb up the line of your clothed pussy. It made you gasp out a moan, hands flying up to slap over your mouth just a moment too late. He chuckled, seeming amused by your outburst, the vibrations making you shudder. "You can relax," Wolfwood breathed into your skin, fingers replacing his mouth, "I won't bite unless you ask me to." "You ah–already did!" A grin, cocky and wide and toothy and just so undeniably Wolfwood, was all you got in return. You didn't have any time to chastise him, considering he was pushing one leg of your sleep shorts open with his index and middle finger. Descending back down to your mouth, he smirked, running his thumb up and down the line of your aching core, his voice a low growl. "No underwear?" Tiny and meek, the little rebuttal of how these were your pajamas, of course you weren't going to wear unnecessary layers to bed died in your throat when the same fingers that coaxed open your shorts were spinning slow circles against your clit. The sound you made was airy, desperate, surprised at his forwardness and expertise with his hands He kissed you once, twice, licking into your mouth and pressing his tongue up against yours as his fingers worked you up. They dipped down, trailing through your slick, then came back up with more fervor, tight circles winding you just a bit tighter. You moaned into his mouth, absolutely certain with how fucking wet you were already, you were going to ruin these sleep shorts. There was no time to voice how tight the coil was twisting in your stomach, Wolfwood having pulled away much too fast for your liking right as you were starting to hump into his hand. He laughed down at you, sitting up and stripping your shorts from your body. "Don't look so disappointed," He mocked, shrugging the shoulders of his blazer off, "I'll give you better than that." You squealed when he grabbed your ankles and yanked you back to the edge of the bed, pushing up on your forearms to ask him exactly what he planned on doing with half of you hanging off the bed like that, but the sight of him dropping to his knees on the floor answered your question. You think, possibly in that moment, that was the first genuine and honest reaction Wolfwood had to something that wasn't annoyance. He looked like a man depraved, starved, his hungry gaze watching your face as his mouth and tongue worked up your inner thighs. He looked debauched, hair messy, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and while usually his shirt was unbuttoned up top, it trailed much further down, exposing the dark patch of hair disappearing into his tented pants. Good God. "Ain't no God here," Wolfwood verbalized, flattening his tongue and licking up your pussy, "Just me." Heavy against the bed, you fell back, the creaks and groans of the frame and mattress reminding you that you'd have to be much more quiet if you didn't want to alert your friends sleeping just on the other side. Easy enough was a farfetched thought as Wolfwood licked up the expanse of you again, arms looping under and around your legs, fingers digging into your inner thighs. He brought two fingers down, circling your clit as he tongued around your pulsing entrance, having you squeezing around nothing. "W–Wol– ah! " You squeaked when he slapped your clit, "Nick! " The depraved groan he breathed into your pussy made your stomach do flips, bringing one hand down to his hair and the other up to your mouth, biting down on the meat underneath your pinky. He was relentless, completely devoid of rhyme or reason but absolutely he knew what he was doing would drive you up the wall. His fingers and mouth changed places, the slow stretch of two fingers sliding into your dripping pussy making you keen for him. The curl of his fingers, the way he pushed and pulled just right made you see stars but it just wasn't enough. "Nick– f–fuck, please," Your begs and pleas dripped from your mouth like honey, sweet and syrupy and tantalizing. "Please, more, pleasepleaseplease–" It would be a lie to say you didn't know what your begging and pleading did to Wolfwood, it would be a lie to say you didn't see him rocking his hips up into nothing when you peered down at him devouring you whole. It would also be a lie to say that isn't exactly what you wanted, to push him to his breaking point so he would absolutely wreck you, because it was obvious he was going to take his time in teasing and toying with you. His fingers moved faster, managing to stroke a particularly spongy spot inside of you that made your back arch and your hips jump, and the fucked out noise you moaned into your hand was downright sinful. That seemed to be the desired effect, because Wolfwood was abusing that spot like a man on a mission, his tongue working in time with your clit to send you hurdling over the edge at break–neck speed. The hand you were holding to your mouth shot down, both hands gripping his hair as you rocked your hips up into his mouth and hands. It hit you like a truck, temporarily blinding you. Your hands clenched in his hair, looking for any kind of purchase to help ground you from your earth-shattering orgasm, his free hand coming up to press down into your pelvis, preventing you from squirming and bucking up too much. You whined, gasped, moaned, and pleaded too much, please stop stop too much before his mouth was pulling off of you, fingers slowing to a stop inside you. Your entire body went limp, eyes wide as you stared up at the dingy motel ceiling. You didn't know how you were ever supposed to be satisfied with your own fingers again, let alone another person. A distant chuckle snapped you back, your eyes trailing down to see Wolfwood now shirtless, working at the belt and button of his pants. "Y'look fucked," He mused, pushing his pants and underwear down at the same time, "Hope you didn't think I was done with you yet." It was a visceral effort to not stare at his cock as it bounced between his legs when he stood up straight. He was thick, and definitely longer than anything you had taken until now. You didn't have much time to gawk, considering he was hooking his arms under your legs and tossing you to lay on the bed properly without a seconds notice. He crawled up and between your thighs, coaxing your knees to hook around his hips and circle his waist while he sat back on his haunches. His thumb pressed against the base of his cock, hips slowly moving back and forth as he dragged through your slick and his spit. He hissed, his tip catching on your hole just briefly, before he went back to teasing up and down. Your drawn out whine made him grin wolfishly, but he didn't say anything. You knew he wanted you to beg. "Please, Nick," You whined, fingers gripping the crumpled sheets below you, "Please fuck me, I need you." "Fuck, you look good like this," Wolfwood sucked a breath through his teeth, thumb angling himself down to catch on your entrance once again. "So pretty, begging like a whore." The praise and degradation made you wail, as did the slow slide of every ridge and vein of his cock as he slid himself in you to the hilt. You were surrounded by him, drowning in him, every scent and sight and touch was nothing but Wolfwood and you would gladly die like this. He leaned down on his forearms, one hand coming to the center of your lower back and angling your hips up so he could drive even deeper and you swear you saw God. He started slow, only pulling out an inch and pushing back in, his lips on your neck, jaw, temple, as he slowly worked you through any potential discomfort. "F–Fucking– feels like you're in my throat," You sighed, hands coming up to claw at his shoulders. He chuckled, biting down on your pulse points. "So deep, so big. Please move, I need–" As soon as your plea graced your lips, he had pulled his cock out to the tip, then slammed back in with fervor. You cried out, only vaguely aware of the headboard slamming into the wall with equal force. You couldn't see straight, let alone think straight, with the brute force behind his thrusts. He was still taking his time devouring you, savoring you, his pace slow but deep and hard. You could swear you felt his cock tip reach your guts with every thrust, his name a mantra on your lips and your fingers scribing his shoulders and back. "So tight," Wolfwood huffed, hips bucking out of pace for a mere second, "Feels so fucking good." He was losing himself in you, emphasizing his words with harsh thrusts, his eyes rolling back into his head as he sped up. All you could do was hang onto him, desperately raising your hips in time with him in an attempt to get him further, closer deeper. He was intoxicating, the woodsy second-hand smoke emanating from him paired with his thick cock pushing you harder and harder into the bed making you drunk off of him. You couldn't string together a coherent sentence to tell him how fucking good he felt, only punched out moans and shrill cries of s'good, fuck me, harder, faster. He took them just as well, eventually folding you in on yourself. Your knees ended up over his shoulders, his arms outstretched and hands against the headboard as he fucked down into you with vicious ferocity. The constant bang of the bed frame against the wall getting faster, and you couldn't find it in yourself to be shameful if it ended up waking your companions, because you were lurching closer and closer to the edge you could taste it. "So good, you're so good, too good f'r me," Wolfwood panted in your ear, a hand coming down to grab your cheeks and crush his lips against yours in an agonizingly desperate kiss. It was deliciously wet, all tongue, spit dribbling down your chin. Another two, three, four thrusts, and you were whining into him, trying to voice I'm cumming, fuck fuck fuck I'm cumming, only to have it sinfully swallowed up in his gluttony for you and your desire. Your pussy squeezed him like a vice, trembling and quaking and milking him for everything he was worth. He pulled back panting, a sheen of sweat illuminated by the moons peering through the window. You barely got to say please cum inside by the time he was already pulling out, fisting his cock to completion. He groaned, spurts of his seed coating your pussy, stomach, and chest. "Fuck, f–hah, should've said something sooner," Wolfwood huffed, voice low and gravelly, "Would've filled you to the fuckin’ brim." You should've been ashamed that your pussy quivered at the thought. Both of you were panting, eyes half-mast, staring at each other with an equally amused and fucked-out expression. He was the first to crack, a chuckle leaving his lips as he unfolded you from your position underneath him. A swift smack to your ass made you squeak before your legs fell back to the bed, sprawling out like a starfish. He leaned over the bed, picking up an article of clothing and wiping you off with it. You quickly recognized it being the fabric of his button-up, your cheeks flushing at the thought of him walking around with everyone cum-stained tomorrow. Once you were sufficiently cleaned up, though still sticky with sweat, he tossed his shirt back to the floor and flopped down onto the bed beside you. The bed creaked and groaned under his weight, threatening to give out if there was even the slightest bit of extra exertion on it's frail frame. His arm snuck under your head, nudging you to lean into his side and cuddle up against him. Your arm slung over his torso, hand slowly sliding up and curling gently against his chest. His heart hammered in his chest, much faster than it should be by now, and when you looked up you were surprised to meet his eyes. It was quiet, and you simply watched as he processed his inner turmoil, waiting for him to come to a conclusion on what he wanted to say to you. Finally, he quietly muttered, "Will you stay with me tonight?" You beamed, watching his ears glow red at his request, simply settling for a nod. You rest your head against his chest again, slinging a leg over his thigh, eyes sliding shut for what you think was one of the best nights sleep you've had in years. The morning after, you woke to three loud consecutive knocks on the door. You groaned quietly, turning away from the noise. Four knocks now, this time harder, had you groaning just a little bit louder. You heard a sigh from beside you, then a gentle pap pap on your ass, before the weight on the bed shifted. Turning your head, you watched a still very naked Wolfwood march his way over to the door, the scratches running down his back and shoulders still angry, red and irritated. He cracked the door open, keeping the deadbolt fastened. "What?" He drawled, clearly unimpressed he was woken up from his slumber with you, "Someone better be dying." "Oh you're just as rude first thing in the morning, great," You heard Meryl, irritation dripping from her voice. She said your name briefly, trying to get another three words in before Wolfwood started closing the door. "Don't know, probably around somewhere. Be out in a bit." The sound of her cursing him from behind the door made you giggle, hands coming up to your mouth to muffle the sound. When he turned around, Wolfwood looked just as amused, plucking your clothes off the floor and tossing them to you. "That's not gonna buy you a lot of time," He chided, watching you slide your shirt over your head as he pulled his underwear and pants up his legs, "Better get going." "Yeah– I'll probably get an earful either way though," You laughed, walking over to your shoes as you put your shorts on. You were going to say something about have fun with your cum-shirt, but a hand grabbed at your hip and spun you around before you could slip your shoes on properly. You turned around, surprised by the soft kiss placed on your lips. "I don't want this to be a one time thing," Wolfwood looked away, his blazer slung over his shoulder, "If... I don't know if you–" "No, I'd like to do this again... and again and again." His ears and neck were red, making you laugh. You went to pull away, but his hand was steadfast on your hip, grip unwavering as he stared into you. You watched him inquisitively, blinking in confusion, what else needed to be said? "I did– do, I do want you, by the way." The way you looked at him must have been absolutely bewildered, incredulous, before you snorted, stifling a laugh in the back of your hand. "I think you showed me that much, Nick." He cleared his throat, taking a step back and looking away, his face a deep crimson. "R–Right, yeah– I did." You unlocked the deadbolt, then the door, twisting the knob and opening it just a crack. Looking back at him over your shoulder, you grinned, giving a little wave. "I'll see you at breakfast?" "... Yeah, see you at breakfast." And with your final goodbyes, you shuffled off to your room discreetly, getting ready for the day. It was a race against time and you won, managing to get changed in record speed and go downstairs to find Meryl and Roberto sitting across from Vash in the small diner attached to your motel. You smiled, waving, and made up some piss poor excuse about trying to find some cheap clothing stores along the market strip. You sat beside Vash, who was uncharacteristically quiet, his cheeks and ears a dark red, as opposed to their usual pale pink glow. Maybe you interrupted a sore subject. Not even a minute behind you, Wolfwood came strolling through a door, a very obvious damp patch on the front of his shirt where he had selectively scrubbed his cum out. Vash scooted over, then you, allowing room for Wolfwood to squeeze in beside you at the end. Conversation picked up as food and coffee was served, but Vash continued to stay mostly quiet, only ever piping up when addressed or spoken to. At some point you got concerned, placing a gentle hand on his metallic arm. He jumped, looking down at you, then over your shoulder, as you muttered a quiet, "Hey, what's up? You've been really quiet today." Cerulean eyes glanced back down at you as he weakly and nervously chuckled, seeming to not completely want to divulge in what was bothering him so much. You pursed your lips, giving him a knowing look. "Ahaha, w–well, I mean... last night I heard–" Wolfwood's knee jumped, hitting under the table beside you and shaking all the cups, plates, and cutlery strewn across it. Coffee was spilled, forks were lost, and audible disappointment was voiced from more than one party. "What was that, Spikey?" Wolfwood muttered through his teeth. As messes were hurriedly wiped, Wolfwood leaned back in his seat, peering over your head and glaring at the blond sitting beside you. They held eye contact, and all you could do was nervously glance between them. ".... Y'know, I was probably just imagining things!" Vash exclaimed, running a hand through his fluffy hair. "Roberto snores pretty loud!" There was some back and forth between Meryl and Roberto that seemed mostly one sided, leaving you room to heave out a breath you didn't know you were holding in. God, how embarrassing would that have been?

A hand on your thigh grabbed your attention, eyes glancing up at a very nonchalant Wolfwood that was leaning down to whisper in your ear. "Guess you still got an audience."

[galactiquest]

I just adore your blog! Something about it and your imagines are just so sweet and homey 🥺 Could I please request some headcanons for Vash, Woowoo and Knives with a reader who loves to draw and is really passionate about it? I mostly have general sketching/figure studies in mind but you can do whatever is easiest for you! I hope that you have a good day and your blog continues to prosper <3

Thank you for the compliment 🥺!!! I'm so glad it feels homey. I try to make things like a home here... after all I LIVE HERE... thank you I hope to keep this blog going for a while after trying to revive it like twice before!

I think this request is so cute, I'm an artist too (have been for like, over a decade ^_^) so I've got lots of ideas in that aspect. I tried to keep to general sketching/traditional stylings of art but I think a lot of these can be applied to other art areas too!!

Vash, Wolfwood, and Knives x Reader: Artistry

Content Warnings: None! Reader doesn't have a specified gender, and some parts of the imagines are a little romance-oriented but this could also be interpreted as a strong friendship. Also this is my first mutli x reader so I hope the formatting's alright. No version was in mind for any of these so take them as you will!

Vash

Oh, he is definitely excited about this.

Vash is a bit of an artist, himself. He can do those super-complex technical drawings, and he really likes making art of machinery and stuff like that. There's a lot of diagrams of his arm lost in a notebook somewhere.

He loves to see your style and interpretation of the things around you. Seeing the world through your eyes, even for just a moment, is like heaven to him.

If you ever give him some of your art as a gift, he keeps it hung up on a wall or wherever he can stay for a while. (If he's in a more permanent place, his walls are covered in your art. He just loves it that much.)

The ones that are most special to him, he likes to keep in his pockets, so he can look at them whenever he needs a morale boost. Like, this is what he's fighting for: a world full of love and peace, a world that's able to keep creating beautiful art like this for years to come.

One day, the two of you get to draw each other as a sort of practice. Seeing each other through the others' eyes... again, it feels like a dream. Vash draws all the parts of you that you weren't always confident about with such care that you feel truly loved by him in that moment.

Wolfwood

"Oh, yer an artist? ... Can ya draw me?"

Yes he will absolutely pull that stunt at least once or twice, if only to get a hilarious dirty glare out of you. If you do actually take him up on this, he might let out a nervous "Haha... I mean, ya didn't have ta' do it, but..." He'll be really charmed.

Though his hands are strong and nimble from doing all those flippant tricks with the Punisher, he's entranced with the way you're able to use yours to create, to draw.

He's always sneaking you extra supplies, like pens, pencils, and paper, whenever you least expect it. You never have to ask for any of those things anymore, or even shop for them--they just happen upon your desk whenever you think you're running low.

One day, he takes a piece of your paper and a pen and doesn't let you see what he's doing until he's all done. He's a little dodgy about showing you, eventually he does. It's a crude scribble of the two of you, though you can tell he really put his all into it.

It's your most prized possession, and you give him a big hug for it.

Knives

Much like Vash, he's actually an artist himself--but doesn't really call himself one, rather saying that he's... capable of copying something he's seen part-for-part. So, his drawings are more like pictures or prints. They're exact. Eerily so.

The art that you make gets a half-hearted snort of approval from Knives, which is basically one of the highest praises he can offer in his own sort of language.

Though normally he'd want to give some sort of unwarranted criticism for a drawing looking wonky or off, he saves you from it. He doesn't want to break your passion--but he's not going to admit that outright.

If you do ask for criticism, though, he's very thorough while keeping you on the road to improvement. If you're studying a specific style, he's reading up on it. If you're trying new materials, he's making sure you have all the tools necessary for it.

And speaking of materials, he's able to secure uncommon colors and rare tools for you to use for art. He's making sure that everything you create is of the highest quality.

One day, you drew a portrait of him and presented it to him as a gift. He gave out that little snort of approval and maybe even a a tiny "Thanks..." as he wandered off. He secretly keeps it close to look at it in his private time, tracing his fingers over the ink marks and recalling your movements.

[ne0nic]

Late Nights & Shorter Skirts

Nicholas D. Wolfwood x Fem!Reader x Vash the Stampede

MDNI

ִ ࣪𖤐 Word Count: 2.6k

ִ ࣪𖤐 CW: NSFW, Sex, Car Sex, Threesome, Dubious Consent, Sneaky Sex

ִ ࣪𖤐 No use of Y/N, Never use of Y/N

It's been an exhausting day, spent mostly on the run. Eating was a luxury you barely had time for. Now, the car is filled with an uneasy silence, broken only by Roberto's snores up front, seemingly indifferent to the day's chaos. The radio softly plays, its evangelical preaching ignored by the occupants. In the back, you find yourself sandwiched between the two formidable men – Wolfwood on the left and Vash on the right. Both wrapped in their own contemplative quietude.

The late hour extends beyond the appropriate time for driving, a result of being abruptly chased out of the last town by relentless bounty hunters, leaving you all restless. Meryl yawns from the driver's seat, gradually turning up the radio, likely in an attempt to stave off drowsiness.

The weariness and frustration are palpable among the occupants of the car. Yet, each person in the vehicle copes with this exhaustion in their own manner.  

Wolfwood's calloused fingers graze over your bare thigh, a gesture both sweet and comforting. The touch is gentle, barely skimming your skin, and as he gradually adds more fingers, you feel a sense of warmth enveloping you. His fingers dip towards your inner thigh, his palm pressing against your skin with a hearty squeeze. Your hands slowly wrap around the arm pressed into your chest, and you find solace in resting your forehead on his bicep, savoring the comforting presence after a long day.

After a few moments you feel his fingers slip under your skirt, but he doesn't go much further. Simply continuing to run his fingers along your upper thigh. But that obviously doesn't last long as his hand slides up higher. His middle finger just barely brushes your panties when you grab his wrist to stop him. Your wide and curious gaze meets his. Wolfwood senses your questioning thoughts about the timing of his movements, not the movements themselves. He smirks, confidently reaffirming his touch and slipping his middle finger between your legs. The first initial dull touch to your clothed clit has you grabbing onto him tighter. He rubs shallow circles over your panties, awakening your senses just like he intended. 

You press your lips into a fine line as he adds his ring finger. The two digits stretch downwards, pressing against your core that's already making your underwear damp, a fact he revels in. 

Roberto snorts and stirs, causing Wolfwood to retract his devious fingers from you. He corrects his posture as you pull your skirt down. But it's momentary and soon Roberto is snoring again and everyone else in the car didn't notice the two of you. Wolfwood rubs the stubble on his chin, taking a glance at you. Even in the dim light he can see the unease on your face. A fire between your legs that he started, evident by the way you press your knees together in an attempt to smother it. But it would be such a waste. The thought of you, cheeks pink, head reeling, cunt dripping next to him wanting more, makes his cock flood with need. And, fuck, would he be stupid to pass it up. 

You go stiff as you feel Wolfwood's fingers slip behind you. Between you and the seat he reaches down, fingers slipping past the band of your skirt. Your breath hitches as you realize what he's doing. 

Vash hears the jolt in your breath and turns. He glances over your form, but other than your pursed lips and stiff back, you seem fine. On the other side of you Wolfwood rests his head in his hand, his elbow against the door, uncaring. Vash returns his gaze out the window.

Wolfwood's slick fingers pass the top of your panties and reach down further beneath your ass. From underneath you, without restriction his fingers finally reach your slick pussy. He runs his fingers through the sopping mess, emphasizing it, making sure you know he can tell how much you want this. And then slides his fingers inside. 

You press the back of your hand to your mouth, hoping to cover the mewl that threatens to escape your lips. From this angle his fingers reach deep within you, stirring the need that boils through your core. He starts out gentle, just brushing the parts that have your head spinning. But soon it's clear that his teasing is only making it worse. 

God, you're fucking soaked. His hand becomes covered in you, begging for something more, something harder. And, fuck, does he want to give it to you. But no matter how much his dick is starting to hurt he needs you to suffer, just a little bit. He needs you to feel what he felt all fucking day while you bounced around in this short ass skirt. Jutting your hips out every time you bent over even slightly. Jumping onto your toes every time Vash addressed you. Not to mention watching other men take even just a peek at what was his. He needs to make sure you know what you've done, what you've put him through. And engrave into your body just who it belongs to. 

Your head is going fuzzy from pleasure and need. He's ruthless in the way he takes you apart with nothing to brace yourself with. Wolfwood is usually the rougher type when he steals you away in the night. But this time he's just brutal, doing everything to wear you down into a begging mess. You need more. You need him. 

Your fingers trace over the thick bulge in his pants. Pleased to find the protruding line of his dick already hard and ready. Wolfwood drops his head at your touch. The sigh that passes his lips half full of relief and frustration. With confidence your hand moves towards his belt and pulls it. 

Wolfwood snatches your hand, pulling it away. “That's dangerous, babygirl.” 

“Keep messing with me and I'll show you dangerous.” 

The subtle threat you spit back drives him. You're already so needy you're getting mouthy. Usually after saying something like that he'd shove you down, his hand around your throat, and fuck you hard enough that your eyes would roll back, but he can't, not here, and you know it. Instead, he whips out his cock, stiff and leaking. You press your lips together feeling his fingers slip around your neck. 

“You want it so badly? Take it.” You glance around the car, making sure no one else is paying attention to you both. His fingers grip tighter causing your breath to hitch. “Don't you worry about them.” Swiftly and carefully you seat yourself in Wolfwood's lap, his cock between your thighs. He's quick to smooth your skirt over the top of you both. Then presses your legs together, smothering himself against your soaked panties. The tips of his fingers dig into your plush skin as his hips rut into you. 

Ah shit. He's not gonna last. Fucking these thighs that have been testing his patience all day, he'll lose it. 

It feels so good, the hard tip brushing against your swollen clit, dulled by your panties. Your pussy is clenching in need. You want to be filled, but Wolfwood is so damn cruel. You know he's upset about the skirt, but he was the one who made you wear it! And now he's punishing you for it! 

His head smothers into your neck, trying to hide his groans and sighs of pleasure. In no time your thighs are slick with your combined juices and there's no chance of saving your panties nor the skirt. But he can't hold back anymore. He needs to feel you tight around him. Wolfwood reaches under the skirt pulling your panties to the side and adjusting his hips. Before you can even breathe he's thrusting into you. The both of you sent reeling. 

You clench tight around him instantly, causing his teeth to bare. Your cunt flutters around him, your eyes rolled back body shuddering. Wolfwood smirks as his hands wrap around your torso. 

“Did you just cum? Just from me putting it in?” He asks, his tone full of taunting. 

“You prick,” you huff at him, only making his sadistic smirk grow wider. And he thrusts again, throwing your oversensitive body back into the fray. You clamp a hand over your mouth, begging that nothing comes out. He takes you, brutally and silently, knowing how to make you fall apart. 

His rough fingers slide up your shirt, pushing the flimsy bralette out of the way to pinch at the pert nipples it did a terrible job of hiding. Your other hand takes his wrist, trying to stop him from making you any more sensitive. Fearing that you may be discovered soon. 

His lips trace the back of your neck, kissing and biting until he's sure he's marked your whole shoulder. That way no one can even question who you belong to. 

From the corner of his gaze he can see Vash. None the wiser about the inappropriate things being done just next to him. What a shame. It was Vash's idea to get the skirt in the first place. It's rude not to share with him the fruit of his labour. 

Wolfwood turns your head, bringing your hazy eyes towards Vash. “Let him have a taste of you too.” 

You purse your lips, but you can't deny, you want Vash too. It's a shame you were all chased out of town before you had a chance to mess him up. You'd been craving him all day, making it apparent in the way you'd hold your chest out to him with big sweet eyes, bouncing in the skirt he got for you. The way his cheeks would tinge red and he'd began to stammer would drive you mad with want. 

You slip from Wolfwood's lap, your attention on Vash like a tiger stalking their prey. Your hands on the seat as you crawl towards— Without warning Wolfwood grabs your hips and shoves his cock in, throwing you forward into Vash. 

The blonde, startled by your sudden weight looks down at your dazed, blissed out expression. His eyes widen as he turns, seeing Wolfwood smirk at him as he thrusts his hips forward again. Your arms wrap around Vash's neck loosely, his cheeks now burning crimson. 

“Kiss,” you mewl to him. “Vash. Kiss.” 

He's conflicted, but it's evident his turmoil is a losing battle when you look at him like that. His flesh hand caresses your face lifting it so he can slot his lips against yours. Vash covers your moans with his mouth as Wolfwood's cock reaches deeper inside you. Wolfwood grows even harder at the display of Vash crumbling to your needs before him. 

Your hand rests on Vash's thigh as he kisses you breathless. Breaking the kiss you lean into his ear. “Mmh~” Your fingers brush over the tent in Vash's pants making his body go rigid. 

“Shit. What are you doing?” Vash asks you. Your lips kiss just below his ear. 

“Let me make you feel good too. Please?” you ask, desperate to feel him as well. Vash doesn't protest as you pull his zipper down and free his aching cock from the confines of his pants. Your hand wraps around him stroking him. His breath shudders at the contact making you smile, pressing kisses to his jaw. 

You bend down eagerly, licking the tip, making Vash's thighs tense. And then you swallow him whole, relaxing your throat to take him all the way in. It hurts a bit but it's worth making Vash throw his head back, hand covering his mouth as he tries to hold back his own moans. His hand rests on the back of your head. His dick pulses in your throat while simultaneously Wolfwood thrusts undeniably harder. 

You work in tandem, Wolfwood thrusts you forward and down onto Vash. The blonde becomes weak to the motions. His cheeks burning red as he looks out the window with glassy eyes, trying to hide his pleasure. But it becomes evident he wants more as his hips move upwards, trying to push himself deeper into your mouth. 

Wolfwood grips your hips painfully tight and smacks his hips into yours causing your limbs to go limp instantly. He's getting close, and he wants you right there on the edge with him. 

Little does he know just how ready you are. Stuck between your two favorite men, pleasing them with your body, it's enough to make anyones head spin. 

Vash's hand tightens in your hair signaling his own approaching release. One more hard thrust has all of you cumming. Both men filling either side of you as your mind goes numb. 

You float through your daze, feeling a simultaneous ache in your pussy and your throat. Your head rests against Vash's shoulder the blonde feeling like he's shaking beneath you. Once your head clears enough you look up at him. His hand pressed tightly to his lips and eyes glassy as if he's either in pain or going to cry. It alarms you so you lift your head only to see his dick still standing straight up, tip red and angry. 

It wasn't enough and he's so hard, ready to burst, that it hurts. Luckily, you think you can manage another. 

Shifting over to Vash you straddle his thighs his face showing surprise and imminent relief. You take his cheeks, kissing his lips feather light. “I've got you. You only need to ask.” You reassure him just as you sink onto his cock. The stretch burns in the wake of your second orgasm, making your head fall to his shoulder. Vash huffs and pants, the sensation immediately too much for his sensitivity. God, he needs you, he needs more of you. His arms wrap around your back, one gripping your waist the other your shoulder and he plunges you deeper onto him. Your body tenses at the depth of his cock within you. 

“S-Sorry. I'm sorry,” Vash mutters into your ear. “I need you.” He snaps his hips upward and you realize you've made a grave mistake. 

Vash loses his reason to the pleasure, quickly, and you start to loose consciousness with the way his tip hits your cervix. He pummels his need into you, holding your arms at your side so that you're helpless against him, not that you'd stop him anyway. The pain and pleasure mix so good you're growing addicted to the way every other part of your body turns numb. 

Tears drip down your cheeks, as you beg him for release. Whether you're begging for his or yours no longer matters. You want this pleasure to peak so badly you can taste it. Or maybe that's just you biting his neck, trying to find something to ground yourself. 

Vash's cock grows impossibly bigger inside you making silent cries fall from your lips as he snaps his hips once more throwing you both over the edge. He fills you up, a relentless amount, the kind that's determined to keep you, make you his forever. And all of it only makes your orgasm all the harder. Your face smothered into his shoulder, trying to silence yourself the best you can as Vash's struggled groans fill your ear. The sound itself so sexy you could listen to it always. 

But your mind is getting fuzzier than before, exhaustion suddenly taking you. You slump against Vash, eyes already closed, sleep floating you away. 

After a while Vash finally stops cumming. His hands rub against your back before realizing just how deep in sleep you are. Not that he can blame you. With great care he lifts your head, sliding you off his lap and into the seat next to him. Your head against his arm. Wolfwood fixes your clothes and brushes his fingers down your face, knowing the mess they'll have to deal with whenever they get where they're going. 

One simultaneous thought in agreement between the three of you. 

Skirts are dangerous.