#wedding (ear)ring agenda prevails too

[scoundrels-in-love]

Something that's neither word vomit nor fic for @frappeflamingo who inspired me with this post and for @cosmixseerart who also wanted essay (and arguably, made far better one in the tags).

Tri-gun Stampede Mashwood agenda prevails.

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To say all of them are restless sleepers would be an understatement. She can count the times all three of them slept through the night without waking from nightmares (memories) or merely because, on one hand. 

It is often Meryl that wakes up first, if merely by virtue of being temporarily squished by one of the men wrapped around her. One of the many dubious benefits of being ‘pocket sized’ as Wolfwood puts it - if she sleeps between them, they can hold her and each other at the same time. It’s not as if most beds are meant to hold three adults, either. 

Still, occasional ache in her bad shoulder through the day from where Vash or Nico crushed her into their chest is a small price to pay for the quiet, soft mornings like the one she’s coming to. (She’s paid so much more for no other reason than she dared to keep what she loved.)

It can’t be long past the sunrise and it’s been a peaceful week, so there’s no need to wake the men, hurrying to leave the tiny town in early hours before someone has thought too long just where they might’ve seen the blonde’s face before, or the silent telephone reaches far worse people. 

Maybe today, she and Vash will succeed in letting Wolfwood sleep in. Lately, it is as if the sleep debt of years has been catching up to him and he can cycle through several four-five hour blackouts and a few minutes of wakefulness between them. They must fool his sleep-addled senses to believe they’re still asleep, though, or he shakes it off and insists on getting the day started. Vash has her beat with twenty seven to fourteen, but she’s determined to catch up. 

Right now, the cause of their competition is snoring away into the crook of her neck, tickling her just so with his breath. In an attempt to escape the torture, but not wake Nico, she turns her head to the side and makes the tiniest wiggle toward Vash. He sighs softly, snuggling into her chest deeper, and she runs soothing fingers through his hair. It’s a victory of sorts, that they can touch him with intent now and he won’t wake up with a start. 

Yet another sign of domestication, as Wolfwood calls it derisively. 

Like the Punisher leaning against the wall tilted just so, as if almost reaching for the bedside table where her and Vash's guns are resting side by side.  He hasn't fussed over its placement being perfect and in arms reach upon waking in a while. 

Like her earring in Vash's ear that looks so good, swaying and glinting as he moves, laughs (genuinely), that it makes her want to bite. (And sometimes she does: tugs on the silver just so with her teeth, eliciting a breathy sigh underlaid with chest rumble that vibrates under her palm, unique to just him.) In the same way, Nico likes to run his thumb down the shell of her ear, brush over his own earring there. His, even though he bought it specifically for her to wear and he bears Vash’s from the day of piercing his ear. 

Like the way she says, thinks, we so often these days. Meryl's never been good at belonging. Not in her family or community, not even with crowds at University or the average, tired run of the mill news reporters at the agency. She's always been restless, wanting more or something different, as if to pacify the loneliness that has been chasing her, hiding in the sharp midday shadows. 

But here, in this moment, she is content and home in a way that has given genuine definition to it, not just a string of words she's known, but not felt. 

Meryl’s gaze lingers on the guns, a whisper of an ache trickling into her chest, like a string with glass beads slowly curling in pretty lines with more and more weight. She knows enough from Nicholas’ halted stories, from the confession that had clawed its way out of Vash one night, leaving him open and waiting for their damnation. She knows that all of them came at the cost of something severed, a connection broken beyond comprehension and the last vestiges of childhood blown away like smoke. She, too, had lost her last guidance the day that derringer came to her and often, she wonders what would Roberto think of the times she’s fired it. He’d scoff a little, take a sip and, in the end, say “not too bad for a rookie”, maybe.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? They’ve all paid the price and, in the end, decided not to pay it forward, best they can. Their individual tactics might fail at times, their work is not perfect and can’t be, with what they’re facing, but they’re damn well trying.

Three guns against the world. Three guns for the world.

Three guns of the Stampede, she thinks sleepily content. It wouldn’t be too bad a title for a book about them, one day.