#i understand vash is not a real person

[whatever-you-can-give-me]

maybe i'm just biased because of my specific analytical read, but every time i hear something to the tune of "xyz thing knives did to vash wasn't actually quite as bad as you think it is" my hackles go up. Maybe I'm Just Biased. but i think if you cannot emotionally confront the way that knives' entire character is based around ignoring the consent or wishes of. everyone, but especially his siblings, in a myriad of extremely loaded ways, you should probably have a think about how your knives apologism starts to sound.

[vashievoidz]

Being a fictive is so stupid because why am I having devastating emotions over someone who doesn't exist. Insane to be feeling real genuine grief over someone that I am aware isn't real, like how does that even .. work..

I've been teary eyed all day and genuinely distressed and upset even at work. Work usually helps distract me cause I'm doing stuff, but no matter how hard I tried to focus on my tasks I still just kept thinking about how much I miss him. Like it feels just SO real to me, the feelings are real, the memories are there, but I am well aware I never truly experienced any of that and it's just so crazy how that even happens. Why do I have memories of things that never happened, even things that aren't canon to my source??

Another thing that's so wild is that I get phantom pains in the spots that I have scars and stuff in my source. My arm often aches and sometimes even legitimately HURTS, but this body has all of its limbs attached, it has almost no scars, and yet.. I still feel it all. The brain is such a strange and powerful thing. Fucked up that it can make me feel these things and I don't get it. Also fucked up that I'm the only fictive in our system that goes through this level of pain. Like the others do have their issues of course and do have memories of things too, but it doesn't affect them even close to how it is for me. Aauaghh augh

[qualityrain]

had the sudden realisation that legatos “i wanted to know him” @ knives is actually just a church thing. like. my church says that. @ jesus. like. he really loves knives in a religious way my fucking god! no kidding! like FOR REAL

[novasintheroom]

066. Irritate

♡ Pairing - Vash x Reader

♡ Word count - 1.4k

♡ Warnings - Vash being annoying, he pinches your butt once

♡ Description: Vash is in a mood today, and you have to take the brunt of it.

Now part of the 150 Bullets drabble series on AO3

Vash is in a mood today.

The others don’t see it. How could they? They’ve only known him for four months.

You, however, have almost seventy years of knowing him.

And you’re on your toes.

It starts in the morning when everyone is still waking up. The light of dawn is gray, casting silver sands across the horizon. Meryl and Millie are packing up their sleeping bags, while Wolfwood putters around with Vash, loading up the heavier equipment. Quiet chatter or grumbles is all anyone can muster.

You’re kicking sand over the ashes of last night’s fire when Vash comes up behind and wraps his arms around you, resting on your chest. “Hey,” he says. His voice has the croakiness of sleep still in it. He moves your hair to the side of your neck to press a chaste kiss at its base.

You warm at the affection and turn in his hold. You want a real kiss. Lips puckering, you whisper, “Hey,” and go on your tiptoes.

Instead of meeting lips, however, you feel Vash’s mouth close over your nose and blow. The air forces your voice to honk out in surprise, and Vash pulls away with a laugh. You give him a glare. He dances away before you can hit him.

That was innocent enough; he’s done that before. What really tips you off to his mood is when you’re walking through town later in the day.

It starts with one bullet casing in your pocket. Easy enough, you throw it away and continue with your group. But an hour later, you find another bullet casing in that same pocket. You look at it oddly, but again, chalk it up to nothing. Then another appears. And another. At one point, you pull your pockets out and five different bullet casings clink to the ground. The townspeople give you looks for littering their space with your junk. Embarrassed, you look to Vash for moral support. He looks away. You see the smile he’s trying to hide, though, and suddenly, you know it was him.

Little punk.

It escalates. When you go to hold his hand, he takes it and shakes it – every time – like you’re meeting for the first time. “Hello, miss, nice to meet you,” and “woah now, I don’t know you like that” are his go-to responses. He pinches your butt subtly when you’re in the middle of talking to someone, letting out a high squeak that makes the other person pause and look at you strangely. Vash also feigns a strange look, asking “Are you okay?” You can only give him another glare, the heat of the suns having nothing to the heat of your face. A hundred other little annoyances build up throughout the day, and by the end of it, you’re tired of his antics and avoid him like the plague.

The camp is set up in relative quiet. Millie’s talking about her family, with Meryl and Wolfwood halfway listening while getting dinner and a fire going. You’re trying to help, gathering sleeping bags and lean-to tents from the back of the car, when Vash comes up behind you and says, “Lemme take those.”

Your wary look has him acting innocent. “What?’

You slam the trunk closed and whirl on him, sleeping bags in hand. “Don’t ‘what’ me, what are you planning now?”

“I’m not planning anything – “

“Ha! Liar.” You hold the sleeping bags close like a shield. “Go away. Shoo. Go help Nico with the fire or something.”

He blinks. “But I want to help you!”

“Oh I bet you do.” Nose turning up, you march to the camp and start handing out everything.

Meryl gives you a strange look as she takes her bag. “Everything okay?”

You look at her, then roll your eyes. “Vash is Vash,” you simply say.

She nods like she understands. Millie frowns to the side. “Are you and Mister Vash fighting, Miss ______?”

A strange feeling settles in your stomach. The last thing you want is for them to think you’re actually fighting. “Nah,” you say, giving her a reassuring smile, “he’s just playing. He gets like this every once in a while.”

Light of understanding comes to her eyes. “Oh! My ma and pa do that! They’re always playing, poking fun at each other.” She shifts her legs to cross them. “Ma gets so annoyed at Pa, but they still love each other at the end of the day.”

“Yeah, that’s what we do.” You laugh, some of the tension of the day dropping off. Looking across the fire, you spot Vash setting up his own space for sleep tonight. You smile at him, and, when he notices, he smiles back.

Later, you’ve taken up a spot on top of the car. A small booksits on your chest as you read, curled up in a blanket, and stars glimmer overhead. Everything is cooling down, and with it, your temper.

The car shakes suddenly. You peak over your book and see Vash at the back end, climbing up the ladder. His eyes light on you, and your hackles rise. “What’cha doin’?”

You give him a look. “Reading…”

His smile is innocent to the unwary eye. You watch him carefully as climbs the rest of the way up. He shirks off his shoes and socks and coat and crawls under the blanket with you. He does not stop moving, flipping this way and that, bumping your elbows and squishing you further on top of the truck, bullying you into the side bar. You let out displeased grunts but try not to react.

When he finally settles, he’s got you pinned, rolled onto his side with an elbow supporting his head. “Hey,” he greets, and you see the mischief in his eyes.

The smile you give is tense. You only hum at him and pretend to go back to reading.

Slowly, he nestles down next to you. The blanket gets pulled up to his chin. He doesn’t give you any more room, but at least he isn’t doing anything. Your hackles settle after a few minutes, and you continue to read.

His legs shift. Then shift more. And more. His hand creeps out and takes a handful of your shirt. You shoot him a warning look. He blinks back. Then, in one swift motion, he lifts your shirt halfway and digs his feet into your side.

“Vash!” You shriek, and the others look over with wide eyes, “Your feet are freezing!” You squirm and kick to no avail; his blocks-of-ice-for-feet stay rooted to your ribs.

Vash laughs, smooshing his toes into your skin, ignoring the slaps you give his ankles. “Aw, c’mon, mayfly! It’s not that bad!” He hums and closes his eyes with a pleased look. “Nice and warm…”

You snarl and sit up, shoving his feet off you. “You’re such a boy! You irritate me! All day! Annoying little sh–”

 “That’s so mean…why would you say that…” He gives a kicked-puppy look, bottom lip wibbling.

You don’t fall for it. Grabbing his cheeks with one hand, you lean down and press your nose to his. “If you do not keep your filthy little ice nubs to yourself, I’ll throw you in the fire. That’ll warm you up.”

His eyes have a certain sparkle in them. Unrepentant, he gives you a quick peck on your lips. Ooo, he’s in such a mood. Your mouth twitches. He knows just what buttons to push to get a reaction out of you.

In the background, you hear the giggling of Millie, the long-suffering sigh of Meryl. Your cheeks heat, embarrassed. With your own feet, you push Vash away. He lets out an ‘oof’ as you push his stomach in, and he scrabbles against the luggage and roof of the car to stop this assault. “Why,” you say, “are you like this?!”

Still, he smiles. “Because I love you.” And with a great heave, he rolls over your feet and tackles you in a big hug, pinning your arms to the side to keep you from resisting. The air rushes out of your lungs in a wheeze. “My mayfly~” he sings, smooching your cheek.

“Get a room,” Wolfwood calls out.

“Isn’t it nice to see two people so in love, Meryl?” Millie sighs across the fire. “I wish I could find someone to be so comfortable around!”

When you have enough air, you reach around and bite Vash on the cheek. Hard.

Meryl smiles sympathetically amid Vash’s howl of pain. “I dunno if ‘comfortable’ is the right word for this situation, Millie.”

[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.

[portraitoftheoddity]

Trigun: Stampede, Wolfwood, and Food

So, I think a major part of any worldbuilding should always involve food, and where it comes from. The worldbuilding around No Man's Land in Trigun: Stampede is a little tricky in this regard, since there's shown to be no real agriculture or plant life (Meryl's utter shock at the "flora" on Ship Three as a total foreign phenomenon suggests it's more rare than in the manga) so sustainable human-friendly food sources are rare and not really addressed. We see characters eating worms, and presumably there's whatever it is worms eat, and beyond that, it's suggested that pretty much all of humankind's nutrition comes from plants.

The desert dudes living off worm meat refer to "plant-based food" as an "extravagance" in the opening scene of episode 4 (aptly named "Hungry"). Meryl, by contrast, is grossed out by the idea of eating worm meat -- I think we can infer then, that Meryl, being a college-educated city girl, probably had regular access to Plant-generated food, while Outlanders are more dependent on alternative sources of nutrition.

Wolfwood, I think, falls closer to the latter category -- He's very used to eating worms, as we see in this episode, not even flinching at grabbing and devouring a whole worm, and even smoked dried worm legs as a kid in a later flashback, so supplementing his diet and other aspects of his life with worms is probably something he's used to doing for survival:

And I gotta say, the way Wolfwood antagonizes the others about eating worm-based food?

Yeah, it's a power play in some respects -- he's making a point to Vash about 'kill or be killed' to survive when he catches and throws a worm at him, and he's taunting Meryl to get a rise out of her with the roasted worm meat at the end of the episode.

But there's something very "Gross Big Brother" about it -- he's antagonizing them, but there's also some underlying level of care in it. He is showing Vash how Wolfwood thinks it's necessary to survive; he's bullying Meryl into eating the food that's available, because Wolfwood probably grew up with the understanding that you couldn't afford to turn your nose up at whatever food you got.

It's food, it's there, it's a valuable and scarce resource, and as much of an asshole as Stampede!Wolfwood is, he has those ingrained big brother instincts to look out for those around him. And food is an important part of that, because when you live with scarcity, food is life.

The whole bit with Zazie in disguise might be a charade (assuming Wolfwood already clocked Zazie from the get-go and it didn't take the worm devouring them for that card to be revealed) but it still pulls from Wolfwood's characterization in the '98 anime where he gives two of his last pieces of food to a couple of hungry-looking kids:

And the sentiment of "you still deserve to eat" as an expression of care is still real for him, especially given his smile when Vash repeats his words, finally eating some of the worm meat at the end of episode four:

Our worldbuilding implication is that food is scarce and rare in the Outlands, and Wolfwood is someone who knows how to survive by any means possible -- including eating whatever is available -- which is something he's nonetheless willing to share with others, because at his core he's a decent person who isn't as selfish as he may pretend to be.

And food is one hell of a love language.

[anyasathenaeum]

NSFW Trigun Headcanons

A/N: I felt inspired to just kinda punch these out before I start tackling requests. So yeah, please enjoy these LOL my first NSFW writing ever (PLEASE BE NICE)

Warnings: MINORS DNI, nsfw writing, mentions of cunnilingus, penetrative sex, marking, rough sex, etc. etc.

Vash the Stampede

Somebody who absolutely focuses on his partner's pleasure over his own

Like, Vash would absolutely be the type to straight up cum in tandem with his partner when he's been pleasuring them.

He's eating you out/sucking you off? You better believe he's humping into the bed or whatever surface is beneath him as he does so, making his cock leak precum all over, especially hearing your moans and cries of pleasure as he does so

WOULD ABSOLUTELY MOAN INTO YOUR PUSSY/ON YOUR COCK no doubt about it

His noises? THE PRETTIEST

Vash would be the type to cover his mouth with his hand in an attempt to stifle his sounds, because you draw them out of him constantly

"Mmph, (Y/N)... y-yes, like tha-ah!"

You'd absolutely have to pin his hands down to hear those noises more, I lowkey imagine Vash is a little embarrassed at just how noisy he can be

"Now, now, I wanna hear you, Vash."

The blush on his face is unmatched, his whole face red and his blue eyes all shiny as he looks up at you

"O-Okay! Hah-, o-okay, nngh!"

Whines, whimpers, even slight sobs, they're all sounds you'll hear escaping him

As well as calls of your name and passionately proclamations of his love for you

Sex with Vash is always a loving affair, so filled with tenderness and care. It's rare for it to be rushed or purely lustful

Vash would have a hard time leaving marks on you, he doesn't like the notion of hurting you, even at the height of passion

Of course, if you insist, over time, Vash will learn to leave a mark or two on your skin, wherever you'd like him to - your chest, your neck, your thighs

He'd be!!! so!!!! gentle!!!!

Caressing your skin constantly with both his real and his prosthetic, enjoying the feeling of you in his hands

I definitely think he'd cum even if you didn't touch him, especially the first few times you have sex with him

Over time, once you and Vash become more comfortable, there would definitely be moments where you two have rougher rounds

Or, maybe not rougher, per se, but more desperate, less careful

Maybe after Vash has almost lost you or something has almost torn you away from him, he'd be tearing at you desperately, clutching onto your skin, kissing you and marking you freely, tears going down his cheeks as he thrusts into you, savouring the feeling of your skin against his, a reminder that you're still alive and still with him.

"(Y/N), o-oh... (Y/N)... I love you, I- ah! Pl-please don't leave me..."

Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Sex with Wolfwood starts out more as just a purely physical thing - an act you both partake in, but it slowly becomes something more

Wolfwood would lowkey use you as stress relief

He's had a bad day? You'll know by how hard he thrusts into you, his skin slapping against yours, his grunts and moans echoing off the walls of the empty room you two have snuck off to

"Yeah, take it, (Y/N), just like that. Take it!"

This man? Dirty talker extraordinaire, can straight up turn you on with very few words

He takes flustering you and turning you on as a personal challenge, trying to keep you on your toes all the time and see how red he can make you

If he sees you rubbing your thighs together in desperation, in need, or crossing your legs, your face heating up, Wolfwood takes it as a win

He rewards you for taking his teasing all day by giving you one of the best fucks of your life

What's surprising though - he doesn't actually have all that much experience

I actually can't imagine Wolfwood sleeping around a lot before you, despite all his confidence and his smugness in bed

So, when he actually starts sleeping with you, at first, Wolfwood knows the mechanics of the act of sex, but he doesn't understand the small things

With time, Wolfwood becomes softer with you, learning how you like to be touched, what you like to hear, all your preferences

"Does that make you feel good? Yeah? Lemme hear you, sweetheart. Yes, just like that... good."

Marks you up SHAMELESSLY - will leave hickies wherever he feels like it and he doesn't give a damn who sees because you're his.

Will smirk when he sees other people eyeing the marks on your skin

P O S S E S S I V E - he gets jealous easily, even if he doesn't admit to it, and when he's jealous? Goddamn, RIP you, you're not walking for the next few days

Will also not hesitate to fuck you wherever he feels like it - in the bathroom of a saloon? Check. In an alleyway, not too far away from the main street where people are walking? Check.

The thrill of potentially getting caught makes it all that much more exciting for Wolfwood

Not a huge fan of cuddling after sex when you first start seeing him, but after a while, he softens and doesn't want to let you go

Basically, at first, sex isn't an emotional thing with him, but it becomes one over time - it changes as your relationship with Wolfwood changes and becomes deeper, more intimate, more romantic.

And you know what? Wolfwood wouldn't change it for a thing (though he'd rather die than admit it to you or anybody else)

[having-a-hyperfixate]

Don’t mind me sprinting to try and get this thought in order before the Anime Expo panel. I need it to be out in the wild Just In Case.

So, a few of the Gung Ho Guns have gotten reworked for Stampede, yes? To varying degrees.

Ninelives is apparently not a horrific flesh mech, Dark Souls boss thing, according to the end credits of episode 3.

E.G. the Mine just got a HUGE upgrade and didn’t get owned 3 seconds after he showed up.

Monev was an actual character with a fubar backstory and emotional impact instead of just Some Guy who trained in a basement for years specifically to kill Vash. (and Orange is SO EVIL for this)

Elendira is. *gestures futilely* There is so much going on there but yeah. She’s going to be terrifying once she achieves adult body and loses (drops?) the childish attitude. Also because of the whole Plant hybrid thing her nails truly are literally infinite sooooo.

So I have some thoughts about Hoppered the Gauntlet.

In Trimax, Gauntlet’s narrative weight comes from the fact that he makes Vash remember, which by extension makes US, the reader, understand what July really meant. Before that we had heard mention of it a few times as ‘a city destroyed in a single night’ and talk of there being ‘no survivors’ but we had no actual connection to it, and also no real idea if that was even true. But in Stampede, we saw July happen. We were there. So even if Vash’s memory is still shot afterwards, and he doesn’t remember Lost July, we the audience DO. So having the Dragon’s nest play out exactly the same isn’t going to have the same narrative punch in the gut that it did in Trimax. It can’t.

There’s also the fact that, given how we’ve met most of the major players in the story, or had them mentioned at least (hi Milly), it feels kind of Odd™ that we haven’t seen someone has emotionally impactful as Gauntlet yet.

Unless we have.

We saw with Rollo/Monev that Orange is willing to have the person’s regular name be one thing and then have a second Eye of Michael code name. I suspect that is going to happen with Gauntlet; either because EoM or because he has decided on his own to lie about who he was.

And yes, I do in fact have someone in mind.

I checked myself the translation there is accurate; the only change I would make is calling the gun ‘gaudy’ instead of ‘shiny’ but that’s not a huge deal. Also for the record, the original tweet is from Jan. 11, well before he makes his reappearance for the season finale. So when it talks about a ‘reappearance’, it is talking about seeing him again in July. Original tweet here, tweet containing the translation here.

I think Chuck Lee is going to be our Gauntlet. That he made it just far enough out of the city to survive, but that he was badly maimed in the process, and that his family didn’t make it. He’s the ONLY member of the military police with a unique design. He has an actual name, and the director himself tweeted about his backstory. His gun is so unusual that we would recognize it anywhere. Hell, I referred to him as ‘the gold gun guy from episode one’ when one of my friends didn’t recognize him immediately. His gun is so incredibly recognizable. Almost like we need to be able to recognize him by that alone, when everything else about him has changed.

THIS could be how narrative weight for Gauntlet is established in the Stampede universe when it can’t be done the same way as in Trimax. Taking a character who has, in a way, also been with the audience ALL ALONG, who was there with us for two pivitol moments, the beginning and the awakening, but who comes at it from such a horrifically different angle and bringing him back in such an agonizing way. Because he was very much in the wrong with his stunt at Jeneora Rock, but his rage over the loss of his family in July would be justified, even if we know it wasn’t Vash’s fault.

(Also, the IRONY of him ending up as one of Knives’s lackeys when Knives is the one that caused all of this? Damn.)

Footnote: I have Thoughts on why they can get away with adding Milly to The Squad late. That is a whole other Thought but tldr; (and also I haven’t actually written it out) Milly is the most perceptive of all of them she doesn’t NEED an extended intro to Vash to Know.

[eilwen]

And they say romance is dead.

Joking aside, Vol. 8 further solidifies my appreciation for Meryl.

Hopefully I can put my long-winded thoughts into concise words when it comes to writing women/female characters and why I loved Meryl in the manga even when she's absent for a chunk it from Vol. 7 onward.

Good 'women/female writing', to me, is not just having more lines, more screen presence or more visibility because you can easily write a character that ticks all of those boxes and still be a shell, still be poorly written, still be misused and still fall into numerous stereotypes. Though we are seeing more female characters onscreen/on paper these days, there are still traps of 'women written by men usually for men or what they think a woman wants' with some variations (and of course some women can also find difficulty in writing women). Then there are times when women characters who are so incredible or powerful, they come off as unbelievable, as if writing a woman character is sometimes treated similarly to handling glass. Some writers are afraid to write women well, believing that it’s 'safer' to have the character be amazing and flawless than forgotten or absent (which can be problematic in a different way).

I love manga-Meryl because I know Meryl's arc, faults, growth, struggles etc.... Nightow really puts her through the ringer. We don't see her much in the later volumes once things get heavy since she's not the series' protagonist, but we learn that she has a full journey post-Colnago. Eventually she, as a person who is not super-powered in the way other characters are, assists Vash in the best way she can.

Vash is a plant, the Humanoid Typhoon, all these other labels, but he calls himself a simple gunman. So, when Meryl is the one to make sure that he has a gun despite everything she had experienced... ah, I had a lot of feelings.

Vol. 8, Ch. 3. ... God damn.

One of the best things Nightow did in Trimax was to write Meryl with doubt and fear and break her away from Vash in Vol. 6, because having a woman follow and care for a man blindly is frankly boring and adds little depth to a friendship or a relationship.

(This praise also extends to how Nightow writes Luida - but those are thoughts for some other time.)

I am also considering Meryl as one representation for humanity in Trigun Maximum's narrative. She is the ordinary person who has been unwillingly forced to witness devastation, destruction, loss etc. and is expected to continue after that. That is a difficult thing to overcome... and then to grapple with the idea of assisting that same force... I imagine that this is a very difficult responsibility. There are war films (good and bad films, from a range of nations) that touch on this theme of responsibility.

I'd like to think that real courage is understanding and overcoming a fear instead of having none.

And then in Vol. 8, Meryl does a small act. She asks someone else to help - something that Marlon later tells Vash to do (let his friends help him, I mean). Without grandeur. Kind of anti-epic. However, this small act is extraordinarily powerful because without that gun, Vash is unable to proceed.

We sometimes view power in such a black and white way when power can be asking someone else for help, trusting someone else, and not have it be about you.

Vol. 8, Ch. 5. A Marlon panel is always a good panel.

I love how Nightow illustrates this. In these panels, Vash is hearing Marlon talk about a 'guest'. Marlon never mentions Meryl's name. We know it's Meryl because we know what the back of Meryl's head looks like (and her legs, haha) but Vash is not seeing what we are seeing.

And yet, Vash knows.

[the-nysh]

Oh Meryl.....:') This will be a longpost commentary on the events of Trimax vol5 & 6 primarily from her perspective, so let's get into it!

Alright, so remember the foreshadowing in Meryl's line about seeing Vash's 'entire enigmatic past' from Trimax vol3?!

Well in Trimax vol5 all that becomes true! When getting 'touched by an angel' directly connects her to Vash's memories through contact with his feathers, she gets a front row seat to personally SEE, feel, and experience ALL the worst pain and trauma Vash has endured over his functionally immortal lifetime of horrors!!! Bearing witness to just how heavy a burden of sorrow and torment he's suffered carried with him that she's always wondered about; now she knows the full context of everything.

From witnessing his lone struggles as a younger child first learning how to use a gun, grinding through all his bloody mistakes, losses, and failures, to the worst calamity that he, as a transformed nonhuman 'gun' himself, became capable of unleashing on the planet: the terrifying destruction of July itself.

As Vash regains his lost memories of July through a meltdown of grief, regrets and revelations of his own (how firing his power inadvertently killed everyone he knew and loved), all at once, his pain while reliving those horrors of the past resonates to become her pain. (Remember this for vol6!)

And just to grab a mic to reiterate, Meryl is only a normal human woman here, with no special powers or superhuman training to prepare her how to handle any of this! (This disaster exceeds her realm of expertise!) She’s also the only one who gets to see, understand, and resonate with the entirety of Vash’s pain and feelings on such a direct, private, and literally mind-melding intimate level of connection. (Linking the human with the inhuman/monstrous.) So of course she’s terrified! Being thrust into such an unprecedented dangerous situation, witnessing inescapable horrors beyond human comprehension, AND by getting a very real demonstration of Vash’s power (on the verge of exploding out of control) and his transformed inhumanity RIGHT UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL!  

So it’s truly a testament to her mental fortitude and resilience that she didn’t just break from the information overload or succumb to the level of despair and terror right there--no, she bravely keeps her wits about her, and despite everything she remains on Vash’s side, shooting first to defend him (aiming right for Legato using the gun she picked up from Zazie's corpse) as the one who breaks the multiple-way stalemate between all their enemies instead! GO MERYL!!!!

(It's why this moment's probably one of my top favorites in the whole manga!!! ;o;) Cause the entire time, even while under severe mental distress, crawling through the rubble with his powers and feathers surging everywhere, Vash had kept her safe and physically unharmed within his wings, and then her first action upon surfacing was to take charge to protect him in turn!! I love it; cause even during such a dire emergency and all the mental stress she's put under while in the heat of the moment, her faith and dedication (to fight without hesitation at his side) still aim true~

And even after Legato critically pushes the crisis from bad to worse, to the point Vash is provoked into almost firing his Angel Arm in feral-retaliation to stop him (holy foreshadowing of their future duel!) with Meryl literally stuck in the middle of all this chaos (while shocked, powerless, and terrified--bless her heart) as Vash struggles to regain control of himself...

(Note: even Wolfwood was blown back by the surging energy, but with Meryl literally RIGHT THERE under Vash, it's amazing she didn't get hit being that close to him.) ...she STILL doesn't run away from him once the dust settles, and is in fact the first one to approach him in concern to ask if he's ok after...

(So whew, a relieved round of applause for Meryl remaining strong in the active face of so much strife!!) The immediate aftermath of this whole experience gives her the tangible proof and perspective from Vash to understand and fear that Knives--as his twin in power but having the actual intent to destroy the world behind it, is fully capable of ending humanity's future.

Of course, the experience doesn't also leave her unscathed without any lasting mental scars to cope with...as Trimax vol6 so graciously shows us how things will always Get Worse before they can get better...

Where sure enough, she's already having difficultly sleeping with night terrors and loss of appetite--it's honestly no surprise the terrible experience has given her symptoms of ptsd she'd be made of something unbelievably superhuman if she weren't affected, and consulting with Wolfwood unfortunately doesn't offer her anything (helpful) she doesn't already know...(cause at this point, she's literally seen more of Vash, especially the amount suddenly exposed to all at once, than Wolfwood could possibly know how to advise her on. He's still struggling with plenty of his own fears vs loyalties towards Vash himself.)

Only that he stresses the importance she weighs her options now to make the decision to quit her job while she still can (a choice and the freedom to 'get out' that Wolfwood comparatively doesn't have under direct orders from Knives) to remove herself and Milly from getting further involved with Vash--specifically the life-threatening danger he poses as a living weapon (despite his best intentions and character as a person!) set to explode with the firepower to raze the world--if Meryl values her life.

But truly, how does Meryl feel about that? What does she value and care for more, that'd be most important to her--her life or her job? Is following Vash (surveilling him for 'risk management') more than just a job to her at this point? What about her feelings towards him as a person--the man she already knows, vs her need to reconcile with the truth (that he's not even human!) that she didn't know until just recently. Is the level of imminent danger and risk she's putting herself into, now that she fully understands how dire, truly worth it (for him) this time? And if she still truly cares for him, does it even matter what he is? Despite any pros or cons and conflicting feelings about it, which will ultimately remain the stronger reason compelling her choice to stay?

Whew! She has many things to evaluate and consider going forward, especially if she wants to continue at his side. (And as Wolfwood stresses, continuing puts Milly at risk too, so that's even more weight/responsibility to balance on Meryl's shoulders.) Including processing the very nature of her fears--to identify what it is that truly terrifies her (is it truly Vash or something else?) before she can hope to face or overcome them. Before this biggest hurdle tips the scales to debilitate her resolve or outright prevents her from continuing her job at all. For now, she thinks and relates back to the firepower she gained when she first fired a gun...

And ah, HERE IT IS, she recalls what's scared her the most from her own past memories: "I gained the power of death at my fingertips. It was terrifying." Cause the first time she ever shot a person and realized the weight of the power she holds, she hated it. Shocked, collapsed, paralyzed, coming undone in the streets, closing herself off from others, regretting her action terribly... It was all too much. (Sound...familiar to the guilt and regrets of someone else we know? Meryl's shooting style is also notably non-lethal...because she too doesn't like to kill! When her first time wielding 'death' with her Derringers upset her this badly that she needed to adjust to be able to continue her job that required arming herself with this type of power...)

So remember when she resonated with the pain of Vash's memories? Seeing when he first struggled learning how to use a gun too, and all the blood and loss that accompanied it? However...his experiences didn't just end there, with only his first time shooting a person.....cause the first time he shot his real power (without him knowing what would happen) he caused the destruction of an entire city, killing everyone he loved in it! He didn't just 'gain the power of death at his fingertips,' he literally BECAME it, armed with the power to end the world. Hating and regretting his action so terribly, the catastrophe traumatized him with amnesia and led to a full-blown meltdown in grief and despair once he finally remembered. With Meryl there, witnessing and feeling all of it along with him. (His pain became her pain; his trauma became hers...)

That the sheer magnitude of wielding that kind of terror, as an intrinsic, inseparable part of himself (unlike a handheld gun you can choose to put down; he can't), let alone carrying the fear of it going out of control again if he's not careful, is indescribable. And if Meryl can now understand the gravity of that in relation to her own gun experiences (when the memory of firing her Derringers was already enough crushing weight for her to fear) then as the peace-loving person she knows him to be, who's always tried his hardest not to kill anyone, the crushing multitudes she knows he must feel now upon recovering his memories filled with so much death unleashed by his own hands must be unbearable. Feeling precisely just how much MORE terrifying and overwhelming the burden must be for him. It makes her wonder HOW can he still even bring himself to pull the trigger?!

Just look at Meryl's collapsed posture, it's the same she felt in her own past experiences...only this time it's directed in relation towards him--almost expressed in his place for the crushing weight he must feel. She's outright screaming/crying/bawling for him in empathy for the pain he must feel every time he's forced to fight and shoot someone with so much baggage behind it. Oh Meryl....:') (This is probably the strongest we've seen her cry for him...and it certainly won't be the last she cries in concern to relieve the pain of his burden.)

And Meryl, watching him fight on regardless, becomes struck and speechless for another reason, as she realizes how much his incredible strength and fortitude allow him to push past his unbearable pain to continue his job: "I felt...his determination is even stronger than the regret he carries."

Which is true, for the same stronger feeling that compelled him to stop at nothing, despite being on the verge of total collapse bearing his regrets of July, when he grit and forced himself to continue on his mission to save her from the Dragon's Nest. :') This is how he does it; how he continues to fight for what's important. (And yes she was that important, as the thought of losing her like his loved ones at July, is what fueled his determination back then to keep going.)

However, the struggle is never easy, as Vash, for his own part, masked behind his new goggle-edged glasses and kind Rem-like smiles 'as usual,' has not been coping well behind closed doors at all. (That Meryl could even sense an air of unusually 'off' distant/detached/avoidant behavior from him that she asks Milly about it.) We see him immersing himself in thousands of rounds of (non-lethal) target practice til his hand bleeds, and when drilling that level of focus + exposure isn't enough to take the edge off, he visits a church during service to hear a sermon on forgiveness...only for him to deem it hopeless there's no possible release from his sins when he can't even forgive himself, and there's even evidence he'd been drinking in not-quite-so savory (healthy or responsible) ways--unsettling even Wolfwood that something's uncannily off with him. (All being different attempted coping methods to drown out and escape the pain of his past regrets, but even Vash knows it's impossible now to forget...)

So all it takes is one slip-up when he's depressed off his game for everything to tumble into a trainwreck... Where Meryl seeing him block a bullet with his powers (instead of his usual self-aware dodging?) triggers all that terror to come flooding back into a panic attack.

Where it's truly unfortunate (and oh it hurts...) as an accident, something involuntary--a messy, instinctual reaction completely beyond either of their control. Cause Meryl didn't anticipate her ptsd to manifest and incapacitate her like this! that a single flash of his feathers would remind her of Everything--of all the worst horrors those powers are capable of when unleashed, the weaponized death and terror it represents, and the very moment she felt and experienced all of it while trapped powerless and panicked to do anything... No no no, returning to that headspace is horrible; it's all still too fresh to relive and TOO MUCH trauma for a human like her to bear; she couldn't help coming undone in the streets in a far worse way than she's ever had before (and I don't blame her.)

And Vash didn't mean to publically out himself as a nonhuman 'monster' to everyone either, when tensions were already high following Knives' mass murders for them to link the same culpability towards him, while he's still struggling to get a handle on his newly awakened powers too--ohshit indeed when they suddenly manifest and the truth breaches containment freaking everybody out in a witch-hunting mob of scorn, fear, misunderstandings, and hatred. (Ouch...)

What's more, Vash probably didn't even know Meryl had seen his memories, or had been affected by his trauma to such an overwhelming degree--since the transfer happened more as an autonomous side effect of his powers activating rather than anything he purposely intended....(once again, unintended consequences beyond his control; he never meant to cause any of this harm!!) So from his perspective he probably doesn't fully understand how to interpret her distress (apart from the crowd's?!) or know what to do to help. Cause reactions from strangers are one thing to bear, but if he sees her reaction to him--and his nonhuman display, as anything like theirs...then it's so much worse cause it's Meryl, who's known and been with him since the beginning. She's someone important he cares for...and now she's hurt and visibly scared from yet again another mistake he can't undo. ohno ohno he knows he messed up...

(Plus poor Milly has no context to understand what's wrong, or why Meryl's so upset either, since she'd been knocked out during the later parts of the Dragon's Nest to know what happened. So now she's alarmed and concerned trying to process why everything's suddenly gone to shit, anchoring Meryl the best she can, while shaken by the pain and cruelty Vash endures in such a situation masked with a smile...)

Despite the stones thrown by the crowd (nooo~) Vash's first priority concern is to run straight over to check on Meryl...

*And here's where I scream bloody murder* Cause that single flinch--from reaching towards her with that arm too, probably hurts him more than any of those stones thrown at him in hatred and revulsion that he's a monster. Cause to him it probably reads as a perceived rejection from Meryl (noooo~), and the amount he's hurt from realizing he's the one who hurt her this way....ohhhhh his crushing guilt must be heart-shattering...;A;

But there's no time, as before Meryl's even ready to speak or clarify how she feels, the choice she previously had on whether she wants to leave or stay is taken from her as Vash is the one who's forced to leave her instead. :')) The only thing Vash can do is repeatedly apologize as he runs away he can't even say goodbye--Wolfwood has to say that for him...and admit to Wolfwood how much he 'really feels like crying.'

(And once again poor Milly, left with no other explanations, can only read how much his pained empty mask of a smile has broken...)

What sucks even more, is knowing how much Meryl had already empathized with his pain (she could already feel that strongly for him!) and being in no condition to explain herself or her fears to him, once her panic subsides, she's bound to feel that much more terrible with guilt from realizing how her reaction (especially her flinch) had unintentionally hurt and pushed him away....leading towards a bad result she simply couldn't help and had no power to change...what a disaster.

But is someone as usually brave and tenacious like Meryl going to let that be the end of it? Broken on a disastrous parting and painful misunderstanding (she never meant to 'reject' him!!!) she literally had no say over? What of her brand of determination--especially towards what she feels (and decides) is most important, becoming stronger than the pain and regrets she carries? (Just like Vash! Can she find it within her to continue, or start over, inspired just as he does?)

Her struggle now becomes finding that strength (even a driving belief) to tentatively (re)build that trust and acceptance between them towards recovery. To endure, fight, and conquer those horrors to bridge (reconnect) the gap between the human and monstrous that separates them. (Especially if she truly cares and wants to do it--for the sake of what Matters, for what'll make the effort Worth it.) It'll be huge and seemingly insurmountable for any other person bearing the same strife she carries, but you can do it Meryl, I believe in you~~

[lonesome-greenery]

You know what fuck it.

I don't know enough voice actors to have voice claims for the Aurora Comic, but I do have a pretty well-developed imagined sound to each character's voice so let's go through them.

Part 1: The Floof Squad + Vash

Kendal: I've always imagined him as very soft spoken given the fact that the first person he ever spoke with was Alinua, and he had to be very calm and quiet to be able to interact with her properly. Also, he's always got the people of Vash's voices going in the back of his mind so he keeps his voice quiet to mitigate a bit of sensory overload. His tone is always level, but he's got a bit of a higher voice that cracks at times since he's getting used to being a person and using his voice.

Vash: Confident, loud, brassy. It's deeper than Kendal's, but they both speak with the same assuredness that makes people say Kendal almost sounds just like him. He thinks fast and often times it takes a minute for his words to catch up with those thoughts, so sometimes he slurs his words together to keep up with what's going on in his mind.

Alinua: I don't really know how to explain it, but her voice is sharp to me. Her 'r's are harsh, and she makes a point of pronouncing her 't's and 'd's distinctly. She sometimes pronounces things oddly because she's had to learn on her own. Alinua's voice takes up space and she's tried so hard to make sure that she's real and not just a branch of life without a will of her own. Her voice is the kind that you can't afford to forget because she has been so afraid of forgetting herself for so long.

Falst: His voice could only ever be described as bright. He has such presence when he's speaking that you wonder if he's mimicking someone he knew once to seem bigger than he actually is. His voice isn't slinky like some cat-themed characters are apt to be. It's boyish, gruff, and has a resonance to it. He is what he is, and he isn't trying to mask anything with his voice. Probably hits best as somewhere between Joshua Ilon and Jack de Sena's voices.

Erin: He says just about everything in one to three breaths because he's afraid of being interrupted, but he'll tell you that he's just passionate about the subject. He's loud, and he speaks with such arrogance that you're sure he's looking down on you, but his air runs out at the end of a sentence and he trials off before taking a breath and finishing the rest of it. Every emotion is exaggerated, not in mocking, but trying to get people to see, hear, and understand him. It's an act. This is the voice he uses around the floof squad and almost everyone else, but sometimes his voice will become quieter, slower, softer, and it will deepen a touch because he's getting proper airflow now.

Dainix: He's got some gravel to his voice and it's definitely deeper than most of our guys here. I tend to think that his throat is often raw from the fire energy that he holds and that makes talking hard sometimes and depending on how recently he's ignited, his voice may be raspy to a certain extent. Sometimes he's whispering because it hurts to talk, other times, he's speaking at a normal level, but very rarely does he raise his voice to a shout because he associates volume with his emotional state and why shouldn't he when he knows the fire to be loudest at its most dangerous.

Tess: She's loud and sure of herself and she is doing it on purpose. Her voice has that nice bit of vocal fry on the end that mimics the hiss of energy that comes with the lightning she keeps in her heart. She doesn't stutter like Erin does sometimes, though he remembers a time when she did, and she never wants to go back to a time when she has to. Sometimes she'll forget to tone down her speech and it'll come crashing in like a rumble of thunder. Her voice is deeper than Alinua's and she makes an effort to sound tougher as well. Her tone is usually pretty playful but sometimes it gets quiet and you know that as soon as it gets there, things will get loud very soon.

[cerealandchoccymilk]

Units in Trigun (+α)

(source will be linked in comments)

edit: GUYS. THESE MEASUREMENTS ARE NOT CANON YOU UNDERSTAND THAT RIGHT. NIGHTOW JUST PULLED THE HEIGHTS OUT OF HIS ASS. LIKE HE DOES WITH MANY OTHER LORE ASPECTS. READ THE DESCRIPTION PLEASE. STOP SAYING " :O i didnt know vash was actually so short" HE IS NOT. THIS INFO IS NOT CANON.

Remember how I've mentioned at least twice that there are actually real conversions for the weird units in Trigun? I found em. They were on the inside of the DVD sleeve for Trigun '98. There's also some other nice info about money and Nightow's character/worldbuilding (or lack of thought about it lol)

And guess what? I just checked the conversions, and these lengths (provided in metric) are almost exactly the same as their real-life imperial counterparts. The character heights are also completely wrong. Using these units, Vash's height converts to 158cm, when we know that he's canonically 180cm in the '98 anime.

So take all this with a grain of salt!

> Length 1 iich ≈ 2.54cm ≈ 1 in 1 feel ≈ 30.5cm ≈ 1 ft 1 yarz ≈ 91.4cm ≈ 1 yard 1 ile ≈ 1.6km ≈ 1 mile

> Money 1 $$ (double dollar) ≈ 100 ¢¢ (cescent) $$ are worth a bit less than USD.

> Character ages Vash: about 150 years old Wolfwood: 26 – 28 years old Meryl: 23 years old Milly: 21 years old

> Character heights Vash: 5 feel 2 iich (158cm !??!??!?!) Wolfwood: 5 feel 3 iich (160cm same as my mom lol) Meryl: 4 feel 5 iich (134.7cm girl youre shorter than the shortest person i know. and shes pretty damn short) Milly: 5 feel 2 iich (158cm)

> Character name origins? "Hmm... To be honest, I didn't put much thought into them. It's not like I didn't think over them at all, but I focus on what sounds cool when pronounced, rather than the meaning of the name. I mean, if you turn 'Vash Stampede' into Japanese, it becomes 牛の暴走 (a wild rush of cows)! (lol) That doesn't match his character, does it? Well, maybe it does...?" -Nightow

> Population density Very low, since the ships made emergency landings across a large area of the planet.

> Length of 1 Day About 24 hours, same as Earth.

Translation of the source tweet and transcription of images under the cut:

I was so happy about the Trigun re-screening that I dug back out the TV version's DVD out of nostalgia... I found lots of important information on there, so feel free to use this as a reference! However, I think this is just information for the anime version at the time. (like Wolfwood's age)

The height measurements are wrong! Be careful! (Even though it's official material…lol)

トライガン豆知識　・・・メインキャラクター編・・・

■ヴァッシュたちの年齢は？ ヴァッシュは約150才位、ウルフウッドは26〜28才、メリルは23才、ミリィは21才です。【内藤】

■ヴァッシュたちの身長（コレを参考にフィギュアスケールを決めよう） ヴァッシュは５フィールと２イーチ位、ウルフウッドは５フィールと３イーチ位、メリルはメインキャラでは一番小さい４フィールと５イーチ、ミリィはヴァッシュと同じく５フィールと２イーチといったところでしょうか？【内藤】 ※㎝での身長はＤ－２のオビ裏に記載されている、単位を元に割り出してみてくださいね。

■キャラクターたちのネーミングの由来は？ ん〜素直に言っちゃうと、何となくつけたという感じです。全く考えてないというワケでもないけど、名前の意味というよりは語感というか、発音してカッコイイとかそういう雰囲気を重視してます。だって、ヴァッシュ・スタンピードって日本語にすると牛の暴走ですよ（笑）キャラのイメージとは違うでしょ？あ、ハズレてもいないか……な？【内藤】

トライガン豆知識　・・・世界編・・・

■尺の単位 ●イーチ（約２.５４㎝）●フィール（約３０.５㎝） ●ヤーズ（約９１.４㎝）●アイル（約１.６㎞）

■お金の単価 ●$$（ダブドル）●¢¢（セスセント）セスセントの単価はダブドルの約百分の一の単価になります。ちなみに、ダブドルは実際の米国ドルとと比べると価値を低く見積もっています。【内藤】

■重さの単位 あ、特に考えてませんでした（笑）【内藤】

■トライガン世界の人口密度はどれくらい？ 惑星の広範囲に渡って移民宇宙船が強制着陸したため、人口密度はめっちゃまばらになっています。【内藤】

■トライガン世界の一日は何時間？ トライガン世界の１日は約２４時間位。地球時間の１日と変わりありません。【内藤】

[nanomooselet]

Little but Fierce IX

By the end of the finale, Knives is excused attendance on account of self-immolation. Vash, though alive, is understandably in hiding. Wolfwood's pulled a Stampede of his own and fucked off, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Roberto's gone. Meryl mourns him.

She is the last one standing.

This has changed her. Her clean white has been darkened, and her reflective shades conceal her expressive eyes - a shield between her emotions and the world she never had before. Something Vash and Wolfwood both had the right idea about. She's dispensed with her poofy jacket and her oversized shoes, and of course one cannot help but fail to notice: she's not intimidated by a hint of sexuality anymore. (Or maybe I'm just too much of a lesbian to avoid noticing the tits, I don't know.)

She wears brown slacks. Hooped earrings. A grey shirt. She carries the weight of the people she lost in a dozen other little ways, something Vash himself does. Like him, she's come into herself - though she was always a little ahead of the boys in that respect. Girls often have to be; it's expected. But she was lucky, too, to have a stable base to grow from, which neither Wolfwood or Vash had for very long.

Overlooking her was Knives's greatest tactical error. Vash keeping his distance from her might also have been a mistake. Because she played a part neither of them ever could have - and not as Rem, and while Roberto openly drew a comparison between her and Vash, not him either. As reluctant as he is to assume the role just at the moment, Vash does do a pretty good job being Vash the Stampede all by himself.

It still always comes back to the twins. Wolfwood, as I said, has more in common with Vash than not. Meryl's different. She tries to be a nice person, tries to be like Vash. But the twin she most resembles isn't Vash.

It's Knives.

Or perhaps a better way to think of her would be as Nai - the solemn little boy Vash knew all those years ago, before he became the horror he is now.

Vash has always been a pragmatic guy, very concerned with what's of tangible benefit. He's practical. He's concerned with the physical. The flower is pretty, but is it edible? (It'd be better if it was.) He's good at improvising and thinking on his feet. He's all about what's real, what's here and now, not stories.

Nai was the idealist. Emotionally-driven. Intuitive. The one who knows little of the world, but tries to learn more. The one who looks for the truth, and judges. The one who seeks and observes and remembers. The one who makes structures and strives for efficiency. The one who tells himself stories inside his head.

Just like Meryl.

Meryl is aggressive and self-righteous. She's ambitious, determined to be on top. She's angry, and her anger motivates her. Whatever she decides to do, she wants to do it well and plan it out as thoroughly as she can - like Knives, she's a perfectionist. She doesn't have the raw physical strength to smash walls, so she's had to learn to be a little smarter than that to survive which... well, is maybe a lesson Knives could have benefitted from learning. But then if he was capable of learning these lessons, none of them would be here.

Meryl has emotions like solar flares; she's intensely expressive to the point of comedy, just like Knives has every single feeling he feels written all over his silly face. And her jacket made her look bigger. Like him, she makes an effort to seem physically imposing. It's just rather less effective on her and she looks like an angry blueberry cupcake instead of a Greek statue.

You know how Knives saw Tesla's remains, and later all those Plants go through the Last Run, and he justifiably freaked the fuck out? Meryl got to see, firsthand, Dr. Conrad's handiwork, her mentor's death (which, despite his assurances, was her fault) and then poor Vash slowly having his identity and memories ripped out of him until he was a husk.

They both had older men trying to shield them from danger and retaliation. One whom we all knew was doomed to die - even him, I think - and who tried his best to make the time he had count. With his death, he freed Meryl from his strictures, but left behind all the lessons he taught her. Meanwhile Dr. Conrad is held hostage to the fulfilment of Knives's wishes, and would have been freed from them with his own death. With Knives's defeat, he remains trapped. Still bearing his cross.

And call me delusional but… something about the way he's lingered on here makes my brain tickle.

He has to be thinking of what Roberto said to him. Conrad insisted he "did nothing to demean" his subjects, innocuous phrasing for a revolting suggestion. Roberto mocks him for thinking it absolves him, telling him yeah, I bet you didn't, you seem too uptight. My feeling is that it's a moral line Conrad is very purposeful in not crossing, the same way he tells himself he's giving those lost kids purpose.

Looking out at all these poor violated Plants, can he still believe Knives shares even that single principle? Is this what the endpoint of atonement looks like? Is this "freedom" the Plants themselves would welcome? He said it was a hundred and fifty years too late to save humanity... but Roberto's triumph may yet still echo into the future.

Anyway, Meryl's also someone who imposes her will, albeit mostly by scolding. She assumes superiority and will not bend to compromise. While she can't kill people with demon blade tentacles, now she's Derringer Meryl, counterpart to Millions Kni(ves).

But she differs from Knives in a few key respects. While both are (or once were) determined to find and know the truth, Meryl doesn't close her eyes to it once she does. She has the emotional strength, or perhaps a steadier foundation, to withstand such deep shocks to her worldview, and to learn from them, as a good investigator does. Which makes her a liar's natural predator - she's a counter to Knives and his delusional manipulations, a living tool to dismantle his falsehoods. And now that she's endured all she has, she assumes her own identity, leaving behind the insecurities which Knives found he could not abandon.

She can extend trust. (I can't get a shot that makes it clearer Vash is picking Knives up, sorry.)

She remembers the past, but is not consumed by longing for it.

She's proven herself worthy to bear and reveal the truth.

She's grown up. Now she's as strong as Knives wishes he could be, and she didn't have to kill a single person to become so.

And there's still more to come. She's getting a newbie of her own now, rather more reliable protection than a single derringer, and we know Vash's story is not yet complete. Nor can they be sure that Luida's plan will come to fruition. (And, I mean, we know even getting himself melted to a skeleton didn't kill Knives. There's no way it did. Personally I'm little concerned that he might, for once, have learned from his mistake, and remembers Meryl.)

Whatever comes, though, she'll have an important part to play in it - as important as Wolfwood, the right hand to Vash's left.

Don't overlook her. She matters. Ship or not, remember her. It would be a terrible pity if all the work that's gone into her story turned out to be in vain.

Fin. Final phase can't come soon enough. Possibly unwelcome personal insight: it was in fact partly due to her that I found the courage to identify as a lesbian, so my intentions here aren't entirely honourable. I demand more sexy fanart of Meryl.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Yuri posting time. These are ships I personally vibe with from what I post about on here.

Higuchi and Gin (BSD): Okay, I'm not sure I can really explain this properly because it's so entwined with the plot of a particular fic I've been wanting to write about them, and I don't really want to spoil where it goes too much? Basically, I love the potential of two characters who (it's implied) got involved with dangerous work for the sake of their siblings. Higuchi's idealized view of romance contrasts with Gin's survival mentality (which is similar to Akutagawa's). At the same time, Higuchi gives Gin opportunities to express different sides of herself. They both work for the sake of others. Okay, so canonically, there isn't a lot there, because there is little exploration of the themes of BSD through these two characters, unfortunately. But, with a combination of "what if I explored the themes through these characters", some influence from O-Gin and Higuchi-sensei's works, and a touch of my own personal brand of "fuck it, we ball, and see where it rolls", I think there's a lot of fun things you can pull at.

Higuchi and Tsujimura (BSD): Not a long-term relationship. They're best friends who had a brief fling and then decided to remain friends. To me.

Wells and Sasaki (BSD): Absolute crack ship that I have not stopped thinking about since you suggested it @lucythejudge. It's so funny.

Meryl and Milly (Trigun): !!! THEM!!! AUGH! They spent!!! Eight months navigating the apocalypse together!!! Milly's smile and presence is enough to help Meryl out of her dark thoughts! Milly is unable to sleep when Meryl is in danger! Milly challenges Vash and Wolfwood when they try to stop her from rescuing Meryl! Meryl has complete faith in Milly to intervene when she has a literal contract killer pointing a gun at her head!!! They're always at each other's sides! THEY!

Coco and Agott (WHA): They give me slight killugon vibes (also maybe lumity - but I've never actually watched owl house unfortunately). Cute and pure. I hope they continue to inspire each other. :)

Theta and Morena (HxH): Saw art for this once. They haven't even interacted. But still, my brain thinks about it and goes ohohohoho

Ann and Shiho (P5R): Ahhh... they want to be strong for each other... avenging Shiho was Ann's reason for awakening... ahhhhhh

Ann and Mika (P5R): I just think Ann's canonical admiration for women who are mean is incredibly funny and so real. Get her a mean girlfriend.

Makoto and Hifumi (P5R): Okay, they hit it off immediately and also I want to see how intense they get over a game of shogi. Everyone quietly backing away from them... lmao. Also I think it's nice because Makoto could understand Hifumi's struggles with expectation and wanting to help her family, and Hifumi offers a familiar setting (intellectual, strategic) with opportunities for Makoto to expand her understanding as well as form a solid connection. They should be best friends at least!

Bonus:

This idea I had for a fucked up polycule that never actually becomes a polycule and is literally just Yosano, Wells, and Mary all being needed for some kind of research, with a stressed Tsujimura as their supervisor. There is... some kind of tension happening amidst the often inadvisable scientific decisions being made. No sex or romance actually ever occurs but there are conversations that sound suspiciously like flirting that usually end in Yosano gleefully hacking at something or someone in her temporary office, Mary nearly downing the entire grid because she diverted all the power to her latest project that then promptly exploded, or Wells vanishing then abruptly and calmly reappearing minutes later with no explanation except "the world will survive another day". Tsujimura is about ready to tear her hair out. The cat thief drops in sporadically to cause extra chaos. This too, is yuri.

[mega-ringsandthings-world]

I don't understand why people get up in arms over badlands rumble Vash being some sort of pervert, when it's so clear he's literally not. being. one? he's putting on a goofy, annoying, over the top show of harassment towards Amelia as a ploy to stay close to her and at the same time make her think he's nothing more than a silly jackass. and it works! Works so well people think it's for real lmao. like if he really was for real with that he'd have done something to her in the hotel room, but A. he didn't (he put her to bed and slept on the table, and brought her doughnuts in the morning, how cute is that) and B. really? we all know he's not like that, c'mon ppl. in the third act he drops his fuckboy attitude like a hot potato to try to get her to leave when he knows Gasback is coming to town, and from then on he never acts overly flirtatiously towards her again. contrasted with the characters in the movie who were actually trying to assault Amelia, it's clear Vash is putting on his usual consummate act, just this time he's taking a different angle. he'd been trailing Amelia from the start, he knew she was out to get Gasback personally, and needed to stay by her to prevent her from offing GB/to protect her, which he did on the stand steamer, and then it was just a matter of playing up the "idiot trying to smash" bit until shit hit the fan.

[whatever-you-can-give-me]

clarifying something in regards to my trigun meta, because i’m realizing finally why people get so tetchy with me about it.

tl;dr: can i please talk about canon events of consent violation as an entirely separate conversation from the fandom concept of a ship? i’m talking about what is, not what if.

cw: trigun spoilers, rape, incest. you know the drill.

also, because i made this mistake once before: if you use or interpret this post as some kind of tirade against kv shippers, or get morally righteous about icky fetishists in my notes: fuck off, you do not speak for me, i hate you, and this is exactly why we need to be able to separate analysis and shipping.

moving on.

okay but. people do understand. that rape is not necessarily about attraction or even about sex, right?

when i talk about the scenes i describe as sexual assault in trigun, i’m not saying that it means knives/vash is canon. i’m saying that there’s a deliberate construction to the narrative that makes knives’ violation of his siblings’ consent a driving force of the plot and what eventually screws him over.

i know this is a “yelling in the library and expecting not to be shushed” situation. you can’t take a piss in fandom without someone asking if you have a fetish.

but i really think we can stand to at least not keep putting square pegs in round holes, here.

yes, i know, you tag non-con with a slash too. but i’m not talking about shipping when i talk about knives violating the consent of vash and his sisters. those are two different modes of engaging with consent violation and relationships that involve it.

attraction and desire can be motives behind assault. but it’s not the only or even the most driving motivation. assault — violation of consent — is about power. having and exercising power over another. regardless of that’s to satisfy a personal desire or to force them to comply or just to hurt them.

(this is the same reason that using “pedophilia” as the catch-all it’s currently used as is rather than its actual definition is Fucking Stupid, but i digress)

when i discuss the metaphysical acts i refer to as analogous to rape, i am not saying that knives’ actions and his treatment of vash are driven by attraction (exclusively — that’s a conversation for another post) or that he fuses with his sisters to have an incestuous genocide orgy.

i’m saying that it’s extremely telling how knives treats his siblings, the acts of domination over them and the violation of their consent, their bodily autonomy, and their willpower, when his stated goal is to prevent humans from doing the same.

knives believes in power. that’s the only thing he believes in. and fundamentally, that’s why his attempts to “help” the dependent plants results in far more harm than good, and ultimately in failure.

he doesn’t understand freedom. he understands power. so for plants to be safe, in his eyes, there can be no humans that could hold power over them — the only one with the right to overpower them is him.

in vash’s case, the line blurs — vash is almost a whole, real person to him. he wants his cooperation, wants his company, he does desire him, in one way or another. but if vash won’t listen to him, won’t comply, won’t cede, won’t indulge in power for power’s sake [july incident, trimax] there’s no choice but to overpower him. consume him.

and the other reason i describe these events as assault, as rape — they are not just violations, not just acts of control. they have consequences. knives takes power from his siblings. keeps it, hoards it, so they have no way to challenge him. he literally consumes [trimax] and warps [stampede] his sisters’ bodies and destroys their homes. they cannot go back what they were before he raped them. and neither can vash — knives’ actions, nearly all of them, are designed to isolate vash. to make him terrified of his own body. to keep him from reaching out to humans. to give him nowhere to run but back to knives, knives who will stop hurting him, stop him from being hurt, if he’d just listen.

does knives love his siblings? yes. but when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. and when all you have are knives… well.

shipping is a what if. this is just what is.