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Everything happens so fast.
One second they’re fighting back to back, then the next second, Wolfwood shoulder checks him out of the way, a gunshot echoing off the buildings around them at the same time.
Vash whips around, ready to chastise Wolfwood for running into him, but instead he sees Wolfwood fall backward, hitting the ground with an echoing thud as blood blossoms over his chest, soaking his white shirt.
Everything screeches to a halt, time stopping for Vash in that instant.
“Wolfwood?” Vash says, feeling anger starting to roil within him. He can feel power leaking out from deep within him too, feel as feathers sprout along his skin, wings erupting from his back in a flourish.
Vash screams in anguish, a wave of energy releasing from his body, it leaves the air crackling around him ominously. Their attackers have stopped, all staring in shock at what has just happened.
At what Vash has become.
Vash takes two of them out with quick shots to the legs, tossing the third back as they rush him, and he hits a wall with a resounding thwack. The few stragglers run away before Vash can get to them.
Vash turns, eyes darting in every direction, senses hyper aware of everything around him. Everything telling him he’s in danger.
Until his eyes fall on Wolfwood again. He expects to find Wolfwood at the very least sitting up, having used one of his vials to heal. Instead the man is still lying prone on the ground, the pool of blood under him growing by the second. That’s when he zeros in on it.
The sluggish heart beat, so obvious now over everything else happening around him. Each time sounding like it’s struggling to beat again.
The fear that crashes into Vash is so intense it knocks the breath from his lungs. He scrambles towards where Wolfwood lies, lifeless on the ground, ending up on all fours in his haste.
“Wolfwood?” Vash chokes out, his hands on his shoulders, one slipping up to press against his neck, feeling the weak pulse under his palm. “Nick, open your eyes.”
Nothing, no response, not even a twitch, just blood slowly seeping from the center of his chest with each struggling beat of his heart. Vash’s wings mantle around them, hiding them away from the world, dragging through the pool of Wolfwood’s blood.
The next one stutters, and for a few panicked seconds, Vash fears the worst.
“No. nonononono.” Vash rips open Wolfwood’s jacket, trying not to think about the slip of Wolfwood’s blood coating his fingers. WIth shaking hands he pulls out a tiny vial, filled with blue liquid. He cracks the top of the ampoule off between his teeth, spitting the glass to the side. Then gently, much too gently for the urgency of the situation, he pulls open Wolfwood’s mouth, tipping the serum in.
Nothing happens right away, not like it usually does. Vash holds his breath as he waits for something to happen, laying his hand over Wolfwood’s heart, feeling the slow flutter of it, feeling how his chest isn’t rising or falling.
Thump.
Thump
Thump
“Please Nick, please breathe.” Vash says, his eyes burning as tears blur his vision, as sob tearing free of his throat. “Don’t do this… Why isn’t it working?”
Finally, it seems like the serum starts to work, the wound seals, new skin growing to close it leaving only the faintest spot slightlight lighter than the rest. Then after what feels like hours, but is realistically only seconds, Wolfwood finally sucks in a ragged breath, his back arching completely off the ground.
Vash thanks any deity he can think of in that moment, even the ones he doesn't believe in.
“Oh thank god, Wolfwood.” Vash says, scrubbing his eyes as he leans over Wolfwood, the man sucking in heaving breaths as his eyes finally shoot open.
“W’happened?” Wolfwood asks, noticing that Vash has tear tracks on his cheeks.
“You got shot, had to give you a vial.” Vash says, pulling his wings in close, trying to force them away to no avail. “We should probably get out of here.”
“Right,” Wolfwood mumbles, grabbing at Vash, and between the two of them, he’s able to get upright. Now that he’s up he can really feel the effects of the serum, an ache deep in his bones as it’s forced to produce a large volume of blood. “Let’s go.”
Vash and Wolfwood slink back to the grungy motel they managed to snag a room in, sticking to alleyways, thankfully unfollowed. They have to climb in through a window, just because Wolfwood is still covered in blood and Vash’s wings are still out in full.
“Do you want to shower?” Wolfwood asks.
“You can go ahead, you need it more than I do.” Vash mutters, vaguely gesturing at his own wings. “Besides, I should probably wait until these go away.”
“Sure, if you say so,” Wolfwood says, walking towards the bathroom, hoping that this dump has at least some warm water. He turns, looking back at Vash who has sunk to his knees on the floor, wings pulled tightly against his back, feathers trembling. “Are you alright?”
“Fine, I'm fine.”
“Shower is all yours, Spikes.” Wolfwood sighs, ruffling his hair with a towel, he feels a little better after a warm shower, and now he just wants to face plant into a mattress for eight hours.
Instead, when he pulls the towel from his head, he finds Vash still huddled on the floor, hunched over with one of his wings pulled uncomfortably in front of him as he scrubs at his feathers, the tips of them soaked red with blood. Small downy feathers float in the air, and a pile of blood soaked feathers surround him on the floor.
The rest of the feathers of his wings look ragged, as if he’s been picking and scrubbing the whole time Wolfwood was in the shower.
“Whoa whoa!” Wolfwood exclaims. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. It’s… I'm fine.” Vash says, forces out the words past the lump in his too tight throat, and hot, fat tears track down his cheeks.
“That’s funny, ‘cause you don’t look fine.” Wolfwood says, squatting down in front of Vash, picking up one loose feather, the base of it stained red from where Vash had ripped it free. .
“I am, I just... I can’t...” Vash starts to explain, choking on a sob, forcing its way out of his throat.
“Hey, stop it, stop that,” Wolfwood reaches out, wrapping his hand around Vash’s wrist, tugging it away from his feathers before he can pluck any more. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I can’t, I need them to go,” Vash sobs, squeezing his eyes shut, scrubbing at them with his forearm. Embarrassment and shame creeps up his spine, hot and horrible. “I just can’t…”
Vash’s breathing, already off kilter, stutters and catches in his chest, much like how Wolfwood’s heart had earlier. And that just triggers Vash’s even further as he wraps his arms around himself and cries, trembling all the way through his wings with the effort to hold back. His throat and chest hurt as he tries to pull in hitching breaths and stop his sobs.
He needs his feathers to go away now, he can’t see them anymore, can’t see Wolfwood’s blood staining them anymore.
“How do you usually get them to go away?” Wolfwood is at a loss for what to do here, he’s not sure he can really do anything. He doesn’t know shit about plants, and even less about a plant like Vash.
“I don’t know.” Vash sobs, sounding so sad, curling in on himself even further. “They usually just… go away on their own after a while but they aren’t and I don’t know what to do!”
“Vash,” Wolfwood says, his voice pitched low, he pulls Vash forward into his arms and he falls willingly, all but collapsing into him. He buries his head into his shoulder, getting his arms around Wolfwood’s chest, his fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt. “It’s alright, just try to calm down and maybe it’ll help?”
Vash shakes his head against Wolfwood’s shoulder.
“Everything’s alright,” Wolfwood soothes, running a hand slowly up and down Vash’s back. “Just breathe.”
“It’s not, it’s not okay,” Vash chokes out, shaking his head against Wolfwood’s shoulder, clinging to him even tighter. “What happened… it was way too close, Nick, you almost died.”
Wolfwood hadn’t realized how badly he’d been injured, but with the way Vash is acting, he supposes it makes sense. He’d obviously scared Vash, badly by the sounds of it.
“I’m okay now, you made sure of it.” Wolfwood says, working his fingers into the base of Vash’s wing and the dense feathers that grow there, running along the edge of it.
“Why’d d’you do it?”
“Do what?” Wolfwood asks, continuing with broad strokes over Vash’s wing.
“Knockin’ me outta the way,” Vash whispers, miserable as he shakes in Wolfwood’s arms.
Wolfwood huffs out a little laugh.
“I can’t let you get hurt, Needle-noggin, not when I can stop it.”
“I could have taken the shot.”
“Maybe, but you have to heal up the old-fashioned way.”
That is apparently the wrong thing to say, as it makes Vash sob uncontrollably.
Sure, Wolfwood does have the serum, he can heal from a gunshot in seconds, but today if Vash hadn’t been there, he would have died. He was so close to dying and he can’t stop crying about it.
“I’m sorry,” Wolfwood mutters, pressing his cheek against Vash’s head. “But I’m okay now.”
Wolfwood rocks them back and forth, back and forth, smoothing Vash’s feathers and rubbing calming circles into his back, right under where they erupt from his back. He does this until Vash’s breathing starts to even out and the sobs turn into little hitching breaths, sniffling as Vash rubs his nose against Wolfwood’s soaked shoulder.
As Vash slowly calms, with each pass of Wolfwood’s hand over his wings, the feathers start to fall away, dissolving back into the ether until it’s like they were never there in the first place, taking with them the last remnants of the afternoon.
“That’s it, Needle-noggin, just breathe, that’s it.” Wolfwood soothes. “Just needed to calm down a little bit, after all.”
Vash tentatively lifts his head and peaks over his own shoulder, relief flooding his system when he doesn’t see a single feather. He sags forward, feeling heavier even with the weight of the wings gone from his shoulders.
“Thanks,” Vash mutters out, his cheek squished against Wolfwood’s shoulder. He is properly exhausted. “M’sorry.”
“For what?”
“Over-reacting.”
“Wasn’t an over-reaction, I don’t think.” Wolfwood says, pressing a kiss to Vash’s temple. “Want to go to bed?”
Vash nods and Wolfwood drags them to bed, and as soon as Vash shrugs out of his coat, he lays himself across Wolfwood, falling asleep to the strong, reassuring beat of Wolfwood’s heart.