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In an instant, the scene tilts on its side, colors shifting from the grimy ivory palette of the motel room to a spectrum of carnage — candy red all the way to toxic black.
Vash’s laugh is high and unnatural — the spontaneous kind that bursts out from shock rather than any form of mirth. A manic type of energy runs through his nerves as he feels the person in his arms sliced to pieces, feels the warm spray of blood across his cheek, his arms meeting only air as the limbs and guts that once made up a body spill onto the bed they had been so close to playfully tipping onto. The once-white sheets are fully saturated around the body parts, red as the gates to hell.
He doesn’t bother turning around. He knows he’s there. Instead, he huffs out a shaking breath as he stares at the soiled mattress from behind blood-spattered lenses, black strands of hair falling over his eyes.
“My, my, I thought you’d give up after the first. Don’t you think that’s a bit… selfish? Putting their lives on the line for a cheap fuck.” A voice comes from behind him, triumph lacing the words as if he’s caught him in a lie.
Vash wants to choke that smug tone right out of him. Until he’s gasping and crying — begging for the mother he claims to have never loved.
He had hoped this time would be different, thought he could get away with it with some extra precautions. He was so meticulous: only traveling alone, on foot where his brother’s many eyes couldn’t reach, keeping his hair dyed, his tell-tale jacket traded long ago for the black trench coat of a beggar... Vash didn’t think Nai could even be aware of which city he was in, let alone which seedy motel he ended up stumbling back to with a drunken companion.
The wet astringent scent of the room clings to his nose as his heavy eyes scan the parts strewn out over the bed — tangled veins, blood-matted hair, brain matter, cut-open ribs, and oh…
The heart is still beating feebly, pumping nothing but air.
He feels numb, like his mind hasn’t had a chance to catch up yet.
“Why…?” He asks softly, as if he doesn’t already know.
Perhaps he’s hoping the answer will be different.
“I already told you, Vash,” Nai says. “If I can’t have you, no one will. Have you ever known me to go back on my word?”
Vash smiles sadly. No, he supposes not — it was naive of him to think otherwise. Despite Nai’s penchant for violence, he’s always admired his integrity.
It’s been years since they’ve been anything other than enemies. Decades since Vash last raked his nails down his brother's spine just to hear his conflicted whimpering as pain and pleasure melded — a mockery of affection at best. He had thought that, with time, Nai would stop clinging to him so desperately. Thought he would find someone better — someone who wasn’t only using him as an outlet for their blind rage.
One of their sisters, perhaps.
Long ago, Vash had loved him, still wants to love him to this day, but he just can’t. Not after what happened. How could he ever love the monster that killed their mother?
Back then, every brutal act felt like justice. Like retribution for the hollowness that had grown inside of him. It had threatened to drown him, his own hatred. That all-encompassing high, like a drug that fades too quickly only leaving you craving more. And pretty soon, nothing was ever enough. He could beat Nai until his knuckles were bloody, fuck him until he vomited and went limp underneath him, it didn’t matter. When he began yearning to go further — that’s when he realized he needed to separate himself from his brother.
Before he did the one thing he promised her he wouldn’t.
Then came the begging, the screaming and crying, evil words and eviler actions.
Nai didn’t even use his blades on the first woman he found Vash in bed with. He beat her to a bloody pulp with his bare hands before choking the life out of her, a tendril of blades holding Vash neatly out of his way. No amount of crying or pleading had saved her. Just like before.
They hadn’t spent long together, but Vash had found something he hadn’t felt in a long time in that soft fragile body. It wasn’t lust, but something cleaner. More pure. Maternal. He longed to feel it again. He had to feel it again.
He should have known that Nai would never let him love again. Not fully. All these years, he’s gotten by on only fumes — a stolen taste now and again and nothing more.
And there were more. So many more. All black hair and brown eyes compounding into a single nightmare of nurturing love ripped away too soon. He’s ashamed to admit that he lost count at some point. Ashamed that he can’t stop seeking her out. Ashamed that his humanity dwindles further with each passing day.
Sometimes Vash is glad that Rem is dead and gone. This way she can’t see what’s become of him.
She would be disgusted.
But even that thought isn’t enough to hold him back.
Vash stays silent, taking a moment to process all the darkness this scene is dragging out of him. No matter how long he and Nai are apart, no matter how much work he does on himself, Nai is able to topple his resolve like a house of cards set out in the wind. He can feel himself regressing back to that angry motherless child. The one that wanted to hurt as much as he was hurting. It was something he always had to be careful with. Humans, with their fragile bodies, could never take the brunt of his wrath, nor would they deserve to. But Nai is no human. He’s an abomination, just like him — they’re the two halves of God’s greatest atrocity.
And they bring out the absolute worst in each other.
His hands tremble, but not with fear nor anguish. No, they shake with rage. The sorrow he would usually feel for a wasted human life is entirely swallowed up by the toxic desire to destroy.
To make him pay in flesh.
Blood.
Adrenaline.
“How long will you deny yourself, Vash? How long will you deny both of us?” Nai continues, voice smooth as silk.
Vash feels blades wrapping around his legs, pressing the worn material of his pants taut against his skin as they slither higher in a gentle caress that echoes brutality.
“How long?” Vash says, turning around and finally looking at him. The blades around him move fluidly — he wouldn’t dare knick him. “How long do we have to do this until you realize that I don’t fucking want you, Knives ?” He spits.
Vash learned long ago that using his true name would only perpetuate the hopeful illusion that they could be anything other than the bitterest of enemies.
Nai stands in the middle of the room, his metallic cloak pulled up over his head, the bottom half unraveled as the tendrils stretch across the room where they tenderly meet Vash’s calves and thighs. Underneath, his gate — the pattern, a mirror of Vash’s childhood — practically glows in the soft lamp light. Inhuman, just like him.
Just like both of them.
“As long as it takes,” Nai says, crystal blue eyes deadset.
Vash takes the few steps needed to close the gap between the two of them, watching his brother's gaze soften to something full of hope as he draws closer. As if he’s waiting for Vash to thread his fingers into his hair, press his lips to his forehead before whispering sweet nothings in his ear. It makes Vash want to puke. He reaches down, unholstering his gun with a muted click, before he brings it up slowly, pressing the cold metal into the soft flesh under his brother’s chin.
Nai doesn’t bother moving away. He lets Vash have all the control, just like all those years ago. When all his layers of anger and violence are stripped away and he’s left bare, he really is pathetic.
“I could kill you right now,” Vash says longingly — how wonderful it would be, to free himself of the parasite he’s carried since birth. “Finally end this.”
“But you won’t,” Nai says, pushing into the muzzle as if it were a kiss.
Vash grits his teeth because he’s right. Of course, he’s right. He’ll never kill intentionally, even with someone like Nai whose death would be a kindness to this desperate world. Something about the way his brother speaks the words, though, with so much confidence, as if he’s memorized every fiber of his being, it makes Vash’s skin crawl. Makes him see red.
He lowers the gun just as slowly and watches Nai’s chest fall with relief before he brings it back up, quick as a whip, striking Nai across the face. Nai inhales sharply, his hands shooting up to seize the front of Vash’s coat as his head whips to the side. The metal splits his lip, causing a fat drop of blood to run down his chin as he turns slowly back to face Vash dead on. He draws closer, using his hold as leverage. Vash tries to step back, out of his range, but the many blades hold him firm to the spot. When Nai only moves closer, he drops the gun, which clatters to the floor, in favor of pushing his face away with both hands, smearing blood over his fair skin.
Vash pushes hard, digging his nails into skin until it breaks under the strain, Nai not so much as flinching in response. He feels the wetness of blood coating his fingertips, but it doesn’t stop Nai from capturing his lips in a kiss laced with metallic limerence. Vash holds his own closed, jaw clenched, not giving him anything as blades coil around both their heads like a snake preparing to strike. His hand eventually finds its way into Nai’s platinum hair and he yanks his head back to make some space between them, Nai trying to chase his lips as he’s pried away.
Vash looks him in the eyes as he says “You seem to be mistaken that there was something between us.” He tilts his chin up, allowing his blood-smeared lips to curl upwards as he delivers another blow. “I’ve never wanted you, you know. You’re a curse.”
He likes the way he sees something die in his brother's eyes. How the tones of blue turn even colder, like they’ve frosted over — another piece of that immemorial delusion stamped out. Nai tries to cover it with a dark laugh, lip splitting even further with his hollow smile.
“I’ll never stop. I’ll kill every last human on this planet if I have to.”
A threat and a promise.
Vash’s fingers grip tighter into his hair, the material of his glove creaking with the strain, as his smile drops. It’s always like this — a vicious circle of each of them going lower , exploiting each other’s weaknesses they know so intimately. Hitting right where it hurts the most, nothing to be gained or lost except dragging the other farther into the flames of hell.
And oh , Vash hasn’t wanted to knock Nai down a few pegs this badly in a long time. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, the way his skin prickles with white-hot rage. The way his mind practically goes blank, consumed with fantasies of tearing Nai apart. The way his cock is harder than it’s been in years.
He shifts to the side, feeling the blades wound around him slacken. Nai is clearly allowing this movement — a mercy he is soon to regret.
With as much weight behind his arm as he can muster, he slams Nai face down onto the bed, pressing him into the blood and guts, his other arm — the prosthetic — pinning him between his shoulder blades as he grinds against his brother’s ass. Nai jolts against his grip, a choked sound leaving his mouth as he tries to push himself back up, palms only smearing the mess around more as Vash holds him firmly in place.
“V-vash— Don’t.” Panic is beginning to bleed into his tone now, muffled by the soiled mattress.
See, Nai — he craves violence, both the give and the take. It’s what keeps him coming back, what used to keep Vash from restraining himself. He might whine and cry, but they both know being the object of Vash’s wrath is exactly what he’s desperate for. And with no upper limit, Vash has always suspected he'd come to having his throat slashed.
But dirtying him? And with the remains of a human, no less. The very thing he despises most in this world…
Vash may as well have doused him in gasoline and lit him up.
“What’s wrong, Nai ? It’s your mess, isn’t it?” He speaks his brother's true name as if it were a joke. And in a way, it is. As if there could be any part of that little boy left in this monster — this blight on humanity.
The tendrils are back, pushing blindly at his chest, arms, legs. But not cutting, never cutting. Nai might have no qualms with butchering humans, but he would never hurt a plant. And without the cut of his blades, he has no advantage. Their strength is an even match, and Vash currently has the leverage.
“Please, anywhere but here!”
Vash grabs one of the tendrils with his prosthetic hand and strong-arms it down onto the bed, painting the blades red as it flutters under his grip like a butterfly caught in a spider's web.
“Aw, come on … Don’t you want me?” Vash continues to grind against him, shaking his head to flick the black strands out of his face. “You worked so hard to get here, after all… Don’t let her death be in vain,” he hums as his grip loosens on the back of Nai’s head.
“O-of course I do!” Nai sputters, turning his head to the side to look back at Vash, his face smeared with red, fair hair streaked with it. “But-”
“Then shut the fuck up and take it , you piece of shit… Just like you always do, like you always will.” Vash lets his mocking tone evaporate, leaving the words low and deadly.
Underneath his palm, Nai’s body stills as he obeys the command, and Vash can’t stop the way his lips curl upwards.
Few things in life rival the satisfaction of Nai submitting to him.
“Always so easy…” He taunts.
Vash’s hand runs down to the back of Nai’s neck, fingers dipping into his gate as his other arm releases the tendril, hand moving up to meet the other. The tendril stays still — as if it’s been shot dead — not even bothering to retract, they all do. Vash smiles at the familiar patterns on the manifested material, fondly remembering when he wore his own. They had been born in them, these second skins, and while Vash’s faded away over time, Nai’s never had. Vash had never minded that, though. Not when…
He grips the material with both hands, tearing it down the middle — neck to mid-back. Nai howls like an animal being eaten alive, writhing frantically underneath him.
…not when you can feel it.
The ethereal fabric weeps black from its torn edges, trickling over the scarred muscles of Nai’s now-exposed back — scars that need not exist. He could have healed himself. Back then, now, any time. Instead, he’s clung to every piece of Vash he could have for himself. Every word, every mark. He always was too greedy for his own good.
“Wow, that sounded like it really hurt, huh? I didn’t totally get it, though…” Vash says. There’s an undercurrent of rage in his cheerful tone.
“Nngh…” Nai’s movements have become slower, more languid — placated by the taste of his brother’s true nature.
Vash gives another yank and the fabric tears clean down to his crotch, dragging another raw scream along with it. With Nai panting heavily, the occasional delirious word of ‘ brother ’ falling from his lips, Vash grabs either side of his hips, lifting them into the air. Nai moves easily, smoothly, not even bothering to lift his head up from the bloody mess underneath him. Vash inspects him closer to find that the fabric between his legs is darker — completely soaked through with fluids. Between the jagged edges, the swollen lips of his cunt quiver and clench, black blood running between each crease.
“Did you cum from that?” Vash laughs. “ Oh , you sick…” Vash winds his hand back, “... fuck ,” he says as his open hand makes hard contact between his brother’s legs.
“Ah!” Nai’s entire body convulses and he grips the wet blankets tightly, dragging handfuls in closer to him, oblivious to the cross-section of skull that’s coming with it, brain matter messily spilled around it. Fluid runs down his thighs, creating dark lines down his patterned gate. Through it all, though, he manages to keep his hips high, making sure his brother can see everything.
Vash undoes his pants as he watches Nai tremble and pant. He thought he had changed in the last several years, thought he was better than this now...
But how can he deny what’s right in front of him?
Nai’s never going to learn his lesson, that much is clear, but that doesn’t dampen Vash’s innate desire to try and teach him one anyway. He’s always been desperate to put him in his place. A place, however, that can truly contain Nai is nothing more than a fantasy. Vash knows it, and still…
He pushes the fabric down just enough to free his cock — he won’t be letting Nai see any of his skin, it would only make things worse for mankind. He strokes himself from root to tip, gritting his teeth as hot sensation blooms within him. He doesn’t miss the way Nai’s eyes go round and expectant when he looks back to catch that first glimpse of him. It’s like he’s completely forgotten that he’s lying face-down in gore. Like she meant nothing.
It pisses him off. Spurs him to sink lower.
“Please,” Nai whines, wiggling his hips — a word reserved only for Vash.
Vash slips a hand between Nai’s thighs, spreading them wider so he can fit between them, standing at the edge of the bed. He presses the head of his cock into his brother’s slick cunt, applying just enough pressure to have him beginning to stretch open around him. He has to fight the urge to slam fully into that tight heat, make him cry with a bruising thrust to his cervix. But even with the desire there, he’s not about to give his brother what he wants so easily. For this, he has all the willpower in the world.
Nai whimpers, pushing himself backward, trying to get more of Vash inside him. The tendrils have come back to life, winding around his legs, and Vash knows he only has seconds to act. Smoothly, he slides his cock up, gathering slick in the process just as he feels the tendrils try to slam him forward.
“Ah, ah. Can’t be too careful,” Vash says, pressing against his rim as the tendrils freeze in place, sensing the change.
“No-no-no please ,” Nai whines desperately, arching his back to angle his hips up, trying to get Vash back on his cunt.
“I know how much you’d love if I knocked you up… but we can’t have that.”
Vash would like to never learn what kind of unspeakable horror the two of them could produce. If they were to ever procreate, he’d have to choke the life out of that monstrosity himself — feel its vile heart stop beating with his own palms. Burn its corpse so it couldn’t ever be dragged back to this mortal world before sending Nai to hell right behind it, leaving the final bullet for his own skull.
He grips the flesh of Nai’s ass with bruising force, spreading him open as he snaps his hips forward, forcing his way inside, feeling the way his brother’s muscles resist before having no choice but to give. Nai grunts through clenched teeth, body squeezing impossibly tight around Vash as he white-knuckles the bloody blankets.
“Ugh,” Vash groans as he sinks down to the hilt.
Nai is impossibly warm and snug — a cheap imitation of what he really wants, what he really needs , what the piece of shit underneath him will never let him have. It feels good, of course, but something about it still feels off. Like a single bucket of water thrown onto a wildfire, it’s not enough, and it won’t ever be. It leaves him breathless with melancholy.
Droplets fall onto the cleft of Nai’s ass, streaking the black blood clear.
Fuck, he hates this.
“That’s it…” Nai pants. “Doesn’t it feel good inside me, little sun ?” He tries to coo the words, despite the strain still audible in his tone.
Nothing about this has ever been fair, yet Nai somehow always finds a way to crawl farther under his skin. Vash hasn’t heard that term of endearment in decades — nearly a century. But of course, he’s remembered it all this time, kept it tucked away as another tool to bend Vash to his will. It has the opposite effect, though. Hearing it from Nai’s mouth has Vash’s heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears as he grits his teeth.
“Shut up. ” Vash punctuates the statement with a sadistic thrust that has Nai choking on any further words. “ Shut your fucking mouth ,” he says louder.
In contrast, Nai’s tendrils are stroking him oh-so lovingly, winding around his limbs in their best impression of embrace. Their gentility only stoked the fires of his rage further.
“YOU’RE NOT HER! YOU’LL NEVER BE HER!” Vash screams bitterly, tears streaming down his face, as he continues to fuck into him hard and deep.
He could have ran. Why didn’t he?
He brings up his hand to pry one of the metallic tendrils off his arm, bringing them between the fingers of his prosthetic while he leans forward, placing his other hand on Nai’s head. He grips a handful of red-stained hair, forcing his head further into the mattress.
“Erg- Why don’t y-you… close your eyes and pretend like you - ha - used to?” Nai grits out.
“FUCK YOU ,” Vash screams as he drives the blade into his back, dragging it toward him and seeing how a new wave of deep crimson wells up, mixing with the black as it runs down the channel of Nai’s spine and muscles. He wishes the sight brought him some sort of relief, but it doesn’t. Nai moans like a whore as his flesh is torn open, and when Vash pulls the blade out at the end of the long slice, he laughs victoriously.
It rings in Vash’s ears, cruel and mocking, blots out the sick squelch of Nai writhing around in human remains as he continues to fuck him into the mattress.
He had forgotten how easy it is to get lost in him. In the vicious chaos of it all. Nai is a black hole, a singularity of malice, asphyxiating all traces of love and peace from those around him. Nothing can escape his gravity, nothing is impervious to the evil that resides in him.
Everything he touches turns black with hatred.
And Vash is no exception. He can feel it inside him, something distinctly vile taking root, lacing his flesh like mold. Despite the emptiness inside him, he can’t stop. Can’t walk away. The desire to tear his brother apart is drowning him. Choking him.
He plunges the blade into an unmarred bit of flesh, going deeper this time, dragging it over each vertebra on his way down his spine. Nai’s laughter turns to screams, his own blood saturating his gate, seeping through the material until it melds with the human blood soaked into his front — one and the same.
It’s still not enough, but he’s desperate to make it so.
Vash plunges the blade a final time, sinking it deep into the muscle of Nai’s shoulder and feeling how he twitches underneath him. He pushes his glasses up onto his head and aggressively rubs the tears from his eyes, smearing blood messily around his face. With his vision clear, he looks around frantically, scanning the butchered remains until he finds it — her heart.
She’s already dead, what does it matter?
He leans to the side and yanks it out of the pile of mangled flesh, feels how the warmth hasn’t yet left the tissue as he shoves it into Nai’s face.
“Eat it.”
“N-n-” Nai tries to refuse but he can’t get a word out with the still-bleeding chunk of meat being rubbed against his pursed lips. He wrinkles his nose, stained face scrunching in disgust.
“You owe her that much, don’t you ?”
He could stop him. The blades could probably pry his arm away… or simply slice it off.
He doesn’t.
“You can eat it, or you can choke and die on her,” Vash spits, forcing it into his mouth harder, pulling his hair to tilt his head up to combat the clench of his jaw.
He uses it all, every ounce of strength, muscles burning with the strain of matching his other half — his only true equal.
Nai continues to thrash and make muffled sounds of protest underneath him. It’s wild, feral , like a beast that’s been cornered. A few tendrils of blades flail around, knocking over the nightstand and leaving deep gouges in the blood-spattered walls, like claw marks. Vash feels it all from the inside, continuing to grind into him with short deep thrusts. A layer of dust settles over the two of them when a blade hits the ceiling hard enough to send a crack along the wooden boards. They’ve probably woken up everyone in the motel by now, everyone within a one-mile radius, more than likely. They must be scared. Vash can imagine it so clearly: mothers holding their children tight to them, murmuring desperate words to a god crueler than Nai, others loading bullets into chambers with trembling fingers, kissing the crucifixes around their necks.
The imagery eats at him, buzzes around in his head like black flies swarming rotten flesh.
But all this… it’s Nai’s fault.
And Vash is numb to the cost.
All his brother’s cool tones have been overwritten with red, skin streaked with sticky blood, hair and face stained with it as he continues his pathetic struggle. His icy-blue eyes are a stark contrast as they look up at Vash from the mess, and then, slowly, purposefully, he parts his lips and lets his tongue touch the meat before he sinks his teeth in. It’s not a clean bite, he has to work it between his teeth to chew through the bits of connective tissue that stubbornly refuse to give, lips coated in the candy-red blood squeezed from the muscle.
It shouldn’t be hot — wasn’t supposed to be — but his cock, still deep inside Nai, throbs powerfully in response.
And then he retches, body convulsing as it rejects the foreign material. Rejecting her. Nai clenches around Vash so hard that it sends him cross-eyed, shoving him violently off the edge. His hips buck forward, pressing every inch of himself inside his brother as he empties, hunching forward and burying his face into his bloody trembling back. Vash’s body feels hot as euphoria tears through him, cleansing him of thought for several rapturous seconds. He fucks into Nai messily, bordering on delirious. Through the mess of moans, a “ M-mommy …” slips through. It’s just so much all at once. Revolting and comforting. Painful and satisfying.
He hates that he can’t stop craving him.
Nai is drooling on the bed, bile pooling on the blanket underneath him, diluting the blood to a grotesque shade of orange. “I-it’s okay, I’m here,” he still manages to say softly, his blades stroking soothingly at Vash’s black hair.
“Mmm,” Vash hums, nuzzling into them before his eyes fly open and he bolts upright.
“Don’t touch me.” He snaps, pushing himself off Nai as he pulls out of him, leaving his abused hole gaping. Directly below, his quivering cunt clenches on full display — needy and unfulfilled. “You think you have any right to act like that?” He hisses, tucking himself back into his pants as he takes a few steps backward, putting some distance between them.
Nai keeps his hips up, giving Vash a full view of the destruction. Creamy spend begins to drip out of his ass and the two of them lock eyes. Nai begins to smile again, sharp edges of his mouth curling upwards, eyes lidded as his hand reaches between his legs.
Vash swallows thickly, gut sinking like he’s being dragged into the abyss.
“Nai… Don’t.”
Nai’s trembling bloody fingers collect Vash’s release on his fingers ever so carefully, as if it were a precious resource. Liquid gold.
“ NO !” Vash steps forward to grab his hand, but tendrils lash out, winding around each of his limbs with powerful agility. “STOP! ”
He can only watch in horror as Nai sinks those fingers into his dripping cunt — right down to the knuckle. Nai doesn’t bother holding back his reedy moans as he continues to stuff himself, rocking his hips back to help guide it even deeper. Vash fights the tendrils on every plunge, begging and pleading for him to stop.
Screaming.
Crying.
He gives up the fight after a while, going limp in the iron hold of warm blades. He watches Nai’s gate repair itself, jagged edges weaving back together until it’s just as seamless as always. He pulls himself off the bed, red beginning to run off his gate in beads, like the material itself is sweating blood. It pools on the carpet around him.
The blades release Vash, dropping him back onto his feet, his shoulders rounded forward in resignation. The room around them is utterly destroyed, walls crumbling in several places where they’ve been slashed too deep, once-beige wallpaper spattered with blood, teeth and hair and nails scattered over the heavily-stained carpet.
“What was her name?” Nai asks, eyes looking over the carnage. He looks almost bored, despite his face and wildly unkempt hair being smeared crimson. He hasn’t bothered healing his split lip or the places where Vash’s nails broke skin, leaving gory crescents. “I suppose she served her purpose well…” He presses a hand to his belly, leaving a bloody print.
…her name?
The motel room is silent, save for the muted sound of dripping fluids.
He doesn’t know it.
He never has.