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Wolfwood wakes up with a sharp pain in his mouth, and a taste of blood. No, it's actual blood, because his mouth isn't dry, a blessing on this dark planet. It even tastes wonderful, salty but with a note of honey, like the rivers of paradise...
And then he remembers everything.
Him not killing Chapel, and Chapel shooting him.
Not saying goodbye to Vash, wanting to die alone, in peace, without fussing.
The church. God, maybe.
He's dead, and he doesn't think that you drink blood in paradise (or that they let you drink at all in hell).
He opens his eyes. He sees Vash's face, so close, and for a very short moment, he panics again, wondering if it's the face of the angel that decides his fate.
Because he sees shining, spine-chilling cold blue eyes on Vash's face; also the shape of wings - he feels he's lying on a bed of feathers. They're very soft and they're also pricking his skin like needles. He thinks he's naked. He's very unsure of what's happening.
I did so much harm, he confesses inside his heart, half-dreaming. I killed so many people. I thought there was no other way.
In the end, I followed your dream. Tell me if it counts for something.
Vash's hand is close to his face, and Wolfwood realizes it's dripping with blood.
Did you let them hurt you again, too? I'm glad you're getting off more lightly than me.
A drop of blood falls on his lips, and then, the world tumbles. Wolfwood suddenly feels awake. Alive. And the blood he has been drinking is not his, even if the wound in his tongue is real and painful indeed. It's flowing from Vash's body.
"What?" he croaks in horror. The blood is still filling his mouth, and he wants to spit it out, but Vash's hand is now firmly held over his mouth. He certainly won't swallow it, he thinks, and still his mouth is emptying, as the blood is entering the cut on his tongue.
The fuck...
Vash is half-crying, his face as soft as the grasp of his fingers on Wolfwood's mouth is hard. His other hand, the metal one, is caressing his hair.
"I got you back," he says, and his eyes are still too shiny, they don't look right. "You're alive. I'm never letting you go again."
From his finger grows one more of the feathers Wolfwood doesn't understand. It enters Wolfwood's mouth despite his efforts, forces his lips open, very close to cutting.
"Eat it!" Vash orders - yes, it's an order, even if it sounds like hope and love. There's no way around it.
Wolfwood has so many questions to ask, but a feather is filling his mouth. So he's swallowing. It's suffocating, the texture all wrong, afterfeathers tickling and barbs sticking to his throat just as unpleasantly as he would have imagined, but it's also heavier, like he's eating thick black bread, or even raw meat, crawling inside his guts.
It will be short, he thinks. Soon the feather reaches his stomach.
Only then it really enters him.
He feels the prick of it in the depth of his guts, not unlike the discomfort on his back; and then it enters more deeply, grafting itself into him, and he screams.
It's not pain, not really. The energy running through his veins like liquid fire should kill him, but it gives him the strength to resist itself. And then all the feathers that have been grazing at his skin enter him too. The sensation is so intense that he can't say it's pain, there's nothing to compare it to. It just is. It's like being born.
Slowly, he's getting back his ability to analyze the world. He was dead, or at least, dying. He no longer is. He was in the church, now he's in a kind of weird lab that stinks of lost technology.
He looks at his hands, and the skin is all weird, seems wrong, almost false, like it knows it won't get old again.
He can now clearly see some feathers left on Vash's arms, even if the wings don't look as huge as they did (was it a dream? or are they retracting now that they've been used?)
Now that he's certain that Wolfwood has obeyed him and eaten, Vash frees his mouth (last caress on his lips like a goodbye). He cradles Wolfwood's face with both hands instead. It feels tender. What's happening inside Wolfwood's body is anything but tender. He's lucid enough to know this is real, not an hallucination, and it terrifies him.
"You're not human," he says. Good, Nicholas, insult him. That's absolutely not stupid. It's not like you haven't suspected as much before.
"Ah," Vash says, apologetic. He's getting closer, his hands on Wolfwood's neck now, caressing his shoulders. "It's possible you're no longer fully human yourself."
Wolfwood realizes only then that some of the feathers haven't fully entered his skin, and are still sticking out. He looks like he used to have wings that have been torn off, when it's exactly the reverse. He's not a fallen angel. He's a human who tried to be an angel for the first time and failed.And he should be dead, not that.
He needs an explanation, he wants to understand. But no, nothing can explain this, and all he finds in his throat is a deep, hysterical laugh.
"Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. Is it that you're doing, Needle Noggin? Taking me from my God to have me instead?"
Vash could do that, that's the part that's terribly wrong. Wolfwood read about God for hours and days and months, but he never really believed in the part where you're not supposed to kill people.
Not until he’d known Vash.
Vash doesn't laugh with him, doesn't pretend to, not this time. He looks deadly serious, still caressing Wolfwood's face, his hair, making his skin shiver.
"If it's what it takes to keep you alive."
He's not an angel and he's not a God! Wolfwood is in a lab and he can almost guess what happened. But to Wolfwood's poor, imperfect soul he looks too much like one, he grasps at his belief, trampling the facts. Knives was not a God, Wolfwood desperately lectures himself. But of course, Vash, twin or not, is different.
"What if I should be dead?" Wolfwood asks. He wants it to be a joke, but it isn't. He can't find his humor again, here, in presence of the creature that brought him back from the dead.
And maybe he never understood Jesus' endless suffering for the sins of humanity before he met Vash. And maybe he's ready to believe the story of Lazarus more deeply than he ever did. Take off the grave clothes and let him go. And all of this is blasphemous, monstrous. He could surrender so easily to him, and he shouldn't.
Vash's face looks pained, a pain that reverberates in Wolfwood's bones, and Wolfwood's not sure whether it's because he loves this guy, or if it's because his blood is singing, shining in Wolfwood's veins.
"You can't die." Vash says. "I wouldn't... I'm not losing you again."
Wolfwood remembers how opposed Vash is to suicide (a common feature with the Church's God, really, but that God has the excuse of never having seen this planet up close). He knows that Vash only means well. He wonders if there's a threat under this, I'll bring you back even if you don't want to.
Yes, there is. But does Vash even know it? He's got tears in his eyes right now. It's also the fate he condemns himself to, and he finds it fair.
Wolfwood hopes he can reason with him, even if he's not human.
And then Vash leans over him and kisses him.
It kills any hope of reason, in Wolfwood's mind anyway. All he can do is take in the delight of Vash's lips on his, of his hands grasping him, and kiss back like it was this bringing him back to life, and not the blood.
He only now really feels naked, and Vash wearing all his clothes should keep some pretense of distance between them, but no, it makes Wolfwood even more vulnerable to his hands, to his gaze, to the weight of his body against his skin...
It's so unfair. He worked so hard at not getting close, at not letting his feelings for Vash control him, knowing that he was betraying him, that it would end, that there was nothing to build.
Now Vash is very, very close indeed. And Wolfwood's body arches on its own, wishing to be closer. So he can't blame Vash for taking it as an invitation, for desperately grabbing at him, for licking his skin, driving him mad.
In the end, he allowed himself to belong to Vash, to pray to him instead of God, but it's because he knew he was already dead.
He was wrong.
"You're alive," Vash whispers, like he'd just witnessed a miracle, and of course he did, he's just the one who performed it.
He's kissing Wolfwood's body like he wanted to be the one to devour him, and, Wolfwood thinks for a feverous second, wouldn't it be fair? Vash's long fingers are playing him like a helpless instrument of joy.
Wolfwood has no idea how to open Vash's underwear, made of straps and leather and lost technology. Vash's long, red coat is already lying on the floor, so maybe for Wolfwood’s sake he already lays himself bare, but it's still far from what Wolfwood doesn't dare to take or ask for.
Even touching every one of his scars wouldn't mean anything, compared to the intimacy of Vash grabbing his soul from the depths of purgatory. He longs for it, though, how he does! He kisses his neck instead, his shoulder, tastes his salty skin.
At long last Vash opens his own pants, his hard cock freed from the constricting leather, and grabs Wolfwood's hips. Wolfwood's mouth waters, his cock twitches against his stomach, his blood pulses in his asshole. His body wants to be taken.
Wolfwood is a fighter, and part of him still revolts. He shouldn't submit to another man like he's some kind of higher power. He had dreamed of freedom. He didn't want to belong to anyone. Even if he was too weak to be free, he wanted at least the ability to feel contempt and anger.
It's too late now.
Vash raises his legs up, and enters him. Wolfwood didn't think it would be so easy. It should hurt. But it's like his body is opening for Vash, remade to be close to him ever. Wolfwood can't even blame him, he doesn't think Vash had any idea of what he was doing.
And maybe it's Wolfwood's fault too. He did kind of want this, just— he didn’t expect any of this.
Vash's cock inside him feels alien, Wolfwood’s own body feels alien too. He can't imagine that being fucked by a man would feel like this. And it wouldn't. Because he's fucked by an angel, and he's experimenting the delights of paradise and the resignation of hell.
He can't have all that he wants. He can't be Vash's equal, but if that was what he wanted, he’d gotten closer, even if only by a little. Maybe it makes sense that he's no longer fully human. Maybe he can live like Vash. (He has no other options. A human Wolfwood could have come back to a soft and kind insurance girl. Now he can’t.)
He just lost his faith, in this bargain he didn’t ask for, as well as his freedom. Damn, it’s almost worth it.
He comes like a heavenly light tearing him up. This isn't normal either. It comes close to making him beg for more, and he's meant to cling to his pride.
"Why me?" he asks instead.
Vash holds him, looks at him with eyes so bright that they look mad. "I love you." he simply answers. The words make Wolfwood's body all hot again, and his heart, already beating fast, bolts forward.
Do you think love is simple? Wolfwood thinks, do you think that it's enough, that it fixes everything?
But as he looks into Vash's eyes, full of a determination that has stolen his own death from him, but almost innocent. he words choke in his throat.
Other words come to his lips. I love you too. But he smothers those ones too.
He can still do this, at least, he realizes.
Some things don’t have to change, and he clings to them, even as he regrets them.