Chapter Text
Four. Days.
Nicholas D. Wolfwood had had it. Even Christ himself had only been expected to put up with Hell for three.
But it had been four days for Wolfwood, four days in the desert with the double suns blazing down unmercifully on his shoulders, four days with the cross on his back as hot as a skillet even through its wrappings, and four days of Vash the Stampede's ass ten feet in front of his face at all times. Wolfwood might not have minded the last bit, honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that the other end of Vash had been singing the Willy's Water Wagon jingle for the better part of those four days. Hearing the line waves o' water, winter-fresh! approximately fifty times an hour had, in Wolfwood's estimation, taken the situation from 'annoying' to 'war crime'.
Which was something Wolfwood was going to commit, if he didn't see a town on the horizon by nightfall. He bit down on his last cigarette, still unlit. The thought of breathing in even hotter air was unbearable, but he'd held it in his mouth for solace since lunch (which had been half a meal block and a warm, tinny cup of canteen water).
"Where the hell is this place, Tongari?" he said, not because he had the energy to talk, but because if Vash was talking then at least he would not be humming. "I thought we were supposed to be there by yesterday."
"Eh, that was just an estimate!" Vash was every bit as filthy and sunburnt as Wolfwood was, possibly even more of the latter, but somehow his spirits remained high. "Nobody's making you follow me, you know."
"Tch," Wolfwood said, because he couldn't very well say that someone was indeed making him follow Vash, and a year in the company of the entire Willy's Waterbug Sing-a-Long Jamboree was far preferable to what would happen if Wolfwood went back on that order. He tried another tack.
"What's the name, again? Glory Hole?"
"Glory Springs." Vash gave him an annoyed look over his shoulder, which improved Wolfwood's mood at once.
"Close enough," he said. "These hot spring places are all little hole-in-the-wall tourist traps anyway."
"You're just saying that," Vash said, putting his nose in the air, "because you've never been there."
"So," Wolfwood got out his lighter, opened it, closed it again, put it away. "I assume there's a bathhouse there or something, right? 'Cause if I get any more sand fleas living on me I'm gonna have to ask them to start tithing."
"There is a springs right there in the name of the place," Vash said, with a great display of patience, as if he was the one who had been suffering, and not the one whistling about water in every quiet interval for the last fifty iles.
"Yeah yeah, I was just makin' sure it's not the kind that'll parboil you or melt off your skin if you dip a toe in." Wolfwood sank back into miserable silence, apart from the squelchy, gritty noise of his own sweat-drenched, sandy body moving forward like a wind-up toy with a slackening spring. "Although to be honest, I think I'd take one of those if I could get it. I'm disgusting myself back here."
"You and me both, buddy," Vash grumbled, his cheery disposition slipping down a bit. Sweaty as he was, Wolfwood thought it a wonder that he'd been able to keep it stuck on as long as he had. But then Vash gathered himself together, and with a breath that was only slightly labored, began, "Who's got the water, where's it gonna be, does Willy's Water Wagon have the water for me..."
And Nicholas D. Wolfwood prayed--genuinely prayed--for the strength to endure.
"All right," Wolfwood said, looking up in awe at the endless tiers of neon lights and bouncing fountains above them. "This is a little bigger than I thought."
"Yeah, uh," Vash said, equally impressed. "They've cleaned it up a bit since last time I was here."
The place was in fact a giant birthday cake of a resort town. They had arrived, at last, just after sundown, but the streets of Glory Springs were illuminated bright as day by the endless neon signs for restaurants, saloons, and stage shows of all kinds. The sidewalks were busy with patrons in search of all of the above and more. There was, however, only one hotel, and by the way it sat at the top of the bluff in the biggest, brightest puddle of neon, it was clear it was the business at the backbone of the whole town.
"How many years did you say it had been since you were here?" Wolfwood asked, in tones of deep suspicion.
"I didn't." Vash shifted his bag on his shoulder and headed up the brightly-lit path to the hotel. "Let's go see if they've got a vacancy."
The hotel clerk recoiled at their approach, more likely from the smell than the sight of them. It had certainly cleared a path for them in the lobby.
"How may I help you?" she asked, making a visible effort to breathe through her mouth.
Vash and Wolfwood both put an elbow on the counter.
"Doubl--" "--ingle," they said, and then turned to each other, scowling.
"A double is a better value!" Vash insisted, tapping one metal finger on the price list on the counter. "It makes more sense for us to share!"
Wolfwood shook his head, resolute. "This is my first time in weeks staying somewhere nicer than the territory prison, I want a single for once."
The clerk did her best to defuse the argument. "I'm sorry sirs, all our singles are booked, so it will have to be a double for each of you--"
"But I can't afford that," Vash wobbled, giving Wolfwood the biggest, bluest eyed puppy-dog look he could manage.
"Don't see how that's my problem." Wolfwood was selectively immune to puppy-dog eyes.
Defeated, Vash fell across the counter like a filthy house of cards.
"Or the...um...the honeymoon suite--" the clerk continued, attempting to rescue her price list from under the ruins of Vash the Stampede.
"Oh? Maybe we--" Vash picked up his head, but Wolfwood slammed it back down on the counter again, a hiss of warning between his teeth.
"Don't even think about it. The stories I've heard about those things. Liable to come out of there with everything broken from your heart to the fourth wall."
"The fourth wall of wh--" Vash began, but Wolfwood slapped a bill down on the counter and didn't let him finish.
"Fine. Get us a double."
The clerk, relieved, snapped two keys and a brochure out for them. Normally she had a spiel she gave about the park and room amenities, but she made a command decision that getting these two men out of her lobby as fast as possible would be the best thing for business and her burgeoning stress migraine.
"Sirs, if you will please note there will be an additional charge for any deep-cleaning the room might require."
Wolfwood gave her an eyeball that was only marginally hairier than the rest of him. "And you're telling that to us why?"
The closer Wolfwood got to her, the more she leaned back, words barely escaping between her clenched teeth. "It's only... that the smell of... you two gentlemen... is scaring away the other customers."
"Heh. She's got a point." Vash scratched the back of his head and scattered sand on the lobby floor in the process.
"Speak for yourself, Spikey," Wolfwood snatched up his key and headed past him for the stairs. "I am as fresh as a goddamn daisy."
"Yes," Vash said with a wince, trailing a few steps behind him and wishing he was more downwind. "One growing out of a worm corpse."
The Glory Springs Hotel was the destination in the territory and it did not skimp on the details. Even the cheap double room they'd reserved was nicer than the finest lodgings in most hotels: the whole space done up in gleaming white tile, twin beds made with crisp, cool sheets, and a massive bathroom like an operating theater. Stepping inside, the two of them felt like filthy stray dogs on the marble steps of a cathedral. Vash let out a low whistle, and modestly tucked his hands behind his back, as though afraid to get smudges on anything.
"Right." Wolfwood dropped his cross on the floor of their room with a resounding metallic clang. "One bathroom, two of us. I paid for the room, so I should get it first--" He broke off as Vash waved a limp, sweat-stained bill in front of his face.
"That's for my half," Vash said, sweetly.
"Thanks, Spikey," Wolfwood said, wrinkling his nose as he gingerly took the money between his thumb and forefinger. "I'll throw it in with my whites."
"Arm-wrestle you for dibs on the shower?" Vash asked, and set his bag down by one of the beds. "Since now we're even on the payment."
"Ha!" Wolfwood draped a hand over the Punisher and patted it, as though for emphasis. "You wanna lose that bad?"
Vash merely sat down at the little table by the window, and braced his left elbow down on it. He looked back at Wolfwood, his eyebrows calling him out.
"Oh, I see." Wolfwood tipped his chin at Vash, belligerent. "You wanna go man versus machine, huh?"
"Afraid you'll lose?" Vash had the audacity to bat his eyelashes and flutter his clicking fingers.
Wolfwood stripped off his jacket and hung it on the cross, rolling up his left sleeve as he crossed the room. "Not a chance."
Vash flexed his artificial joints with the barest hiss of moving metal, and Wolfwood put the considerable heft of his forearm on the table.
"On three," he said, and Vash's fingers clicked around his palm. "One."
"Two," Vash said.
"Three," they said together.
It was over in less than a second. Wolfwood tensed his arm, prepared for the unyielding strenth of Vash's gun-arm, but met absolutely no resistance in return. As a result he went flying out of his seat, landing sprawled out on the floor. Wolfwood looked at his hand in confusion. It was still holding Vash's. The rest of Vash, however, was sprinting to the bathroom.
"Thank youuu Niiicooo! I'll just be a sec so hang on to that for me, okay?"
"I'll hang you, you son of a bitch!" Wolfwood scrambled to his feet and banged Vash's disarticulated arm on the bathroom door. "You're a goddamn cheat!" Vash's limp arm folded over and clonked him on top of his head. "Ow!"
From the other side of the door, the sound of cool water blasting out from the spigot at high pressure was as alluring and unobtainable to Wolfwood as a prostitute's silken call to a beggar on the street. He grit his teeth against the utterly indecent sound of splashing, and Vash's tuneless whistle. It was bad enough he had to wait out here in a cloud of his own stink, but to have to listen to--
Wolfwood looked at the door, and at Vash's arm in his hand, and a wicked smile crept over his features as he got the worst best idea of his life.
Vash had just gotten the shampoo bottle open--a tricky operation requiring his one good hand and his teeth--when the noises began. Somehow the resonance of Wolfwood's low, guttural moan cut right through the sound of running water, and trickled down Vash's spine like an icy finger. And that was before he could parse the actual words. Once he did, there was no ignoring them.
"Nnnnngod, Spikey," Wolfwood's gasp was quick, eager. "Your hand feels so good."
Jerk, Vash thought, furiously scrubbing shampoo into his scalp. By some trick of acoustics or his own guilty conscience, Wolfwood sounded like he was right next to Vash's ear, which made ignoring him even more challenging than usual.
"Ah!" Wolfwood's voice rose and fell on a sharp hiss of startled pleasure as Vash scrubbed harder. "Oh yeah baby, I like it when you know what you wan--nnt! Oh no, I haven't even--it's too dirty---Ah! Ah!! right there Angel, right there! Put your hand right up inside my--"
Vash yanked open the bathroom door, dripping a puddle around his scarred toes, hair still full of suds, expression as dark and threatening as a sandstorm on the horizon. "Has anyone ever told you," he said, "that you're a horrible person?"
In spite of his noises of lustful abandon, Wolfwood was leaning against the doorjamb still fully dressed, looking bored as he used Vash's hand for nothing more scandalous than to scratch his filthy hair. "In case you hadn't noticed, Spikey," he yawned, waving Vash's limp hand in front of his mouth, "that is literally the entire point of the church."
"Fine," Vash said, and snatched his arm back. Even an uncatchable legend knew when he was beaten. "Get in here, dammit."
"I thought you'd never ask, Darling," Wolfwood drawled, and started unbuttoning his shirt. Vash clambered back into the shower and started rinsing his hair.
Their mutual task kept them from sniping at each other for a good ten minutes, rotating under one and then the other of the two shower heads with the comfortable familiarity of long-time square dance partners. The water swirling around the drain went from muddy gray to clear, Wolfwood flicked Vash's ear with a precision washcloth whip, Vash tried to play keep-away with the toothpaste, and then somehow they were crammed together in corner of the shower stall, hands and mouths everywhere, ablutions forgotten.
It seemed to always be like that, Wolfwood thought, with the very small part of his brain that was not occupied with the way Vash's skin felt under his teeth, and the gasps he made in response. One minute they were joking or fighting, the next they were crushed together against whatever surface would hold them, desperate to fold into each other. At least, that was how it had been before, and two years apart had not changed things.
"Wolfwood--" Vash began, unevenly.
"Whatever you do, Spikey, don't ruin this for us by thinking about it."
At least, Wolfwood thought that nothing had changed. But as the seconds piled up into minutes, a cold realization began to seep into the corners of his mind, and it had nothing to do with a lack of hot water, which was unfailing. The expense of it ran down his back, priceless as time, and just as impossible to get back.
"Hey. Listen." Wolfwood had his cheek against Vash's throat, but his whole body had gone still, his hips and his mouth and especially his hands. "If you ain't into this, you don't have to pretend you are."
Vash caught his breath in his teeth, and Wolfwood's face in his hands. "No!" he gasped, and then, after a confused pause, he said, "Yes," and then several expressions skated across his face as he tried to say something to go with each one. What came out was a jumble of apologetic sounds, all incomprehensible under the hiss of the shower.
Wolfwood's thoughts were more clear, but they were not very pleasant. "You flinch every time I touch you," he said, and his fingers brushed Vash's waist, to prove it. Vash tried to hold his face still; he could not.
Wolfwood's smile coiled bitterly around his teeth. "It's all right." He took a deliberate step back, away from Vash, from the fall of the water, and held up his hands as though in surrender. "Hey. It's been two years, and we didn't make any promises. I won't make it a thing."
"Wolfwood," Vash said, and reached after those surrendering hands, so ready to give up without a fight, for his sake. "It's not--I want--" He shook his head hard, and as words collapsed under the weight of his feelings, Vash wrapped Wolfwood up in his arms, and held him. "You," he breathed, hands tightening. "I just...I must not feel good to touch." He swallowed, his mouth a flat line.
In all their time together, Wolfwood had only ever heard him speak of his scars with indifference, or sometimes a kind of self-incriminating pride. He had never heard Vash use such a tone of disgust, of revulsion.
"Who told you that?" Wolfwood made it sound like both an affirmation and a threat: that it was patently untrue, and that moreover he would break several major bones of whatever bastard had dared to say so.
"I'm not blind," Vash whispered.
"Neither am I," Wolfwood said, and wrapping Vash's scarred thighs around his waist, lifted Vash back up against the slick tile, under the falling water, and kissed him. This time, Vash yielded. For an all-too brief moment it seemed this story was going in a much different and more interesting direction. Then the knocking started.
Vash pulled his mouth away with an audible pop. "Wait a sec. Do you hear banging?"
"No," Wolfwood lied, stomach sinking, because he did, and that meant they weren't. But then the knocking on the door of their hotel room reached such a pitch that neither of them could ignore it. Wolfwood snarled a curse, snatched up a towel, and stepped out of the shower: drippy, thwarted, furious. "Wait here, Spikey. I'm just gonna go kill whoever that is. Won't be a sec."
"Oh no you don't!" Vash grabbed the nearest towel from the hook and tried to tie it around his waist and follow Wolfwood at the same time, but only managed the latter with his one good hand. He got out of the bathroom with the towel held over his most critical bits right as Wolfwood yanked open the door.
"Listen you sonuvabitch," Wolfwood was saying as he did so, his voice searing the air like hot lead, "You better have a hell of a good excuse or I'm gonna blow you clear to holy----jugs," he finished, in a very different tone of voice.
"Hello Mr. Priest! Hello Mr. Vash! I told you it was them, Sempai!"
Vash got to the doorway and saw at once the cause of Wolfwood's distraction. To be fair, it would be hard to miss it. Them. Milly Thompson stood there, cheerful as ever. She was wearing a tiny bikini top that had never anticipated a challenge like Milly's decolletage, but it was making a valiant go of it, pink strings straining over her freckled shoulders. She waved at Vash in excitement, and the bikini did its best to hold on, though its strength was fading and there was no sign of reinforcements coming on the horizon. There was only Wolfwood, backing into the room and putting a hand over his face as though to hold his eyeballs in.
"All right, all right, Milly." Meryl's swimsuit was a more conservative make--or possibly it had just lucked out with more modest demands. It was white and blue with little triangle cutouts up the sides. At the sight of Vash the Stampede wearing nothing but a towel, they lit up like elevator lights from her blush, and she did her best to cover them with her hands. "I can see it's them."
"Not much you can't see," Wolfwood muttered, letting his fingers slide down his nose before tightening the towel around his waist. Vash moved to do the same, realized he had only managed to grab a hand towel, and had to spread out his fingers in the hopes of keeping it in place.
"Hi girls," he said, with an embarrassed chuckle. "Um. Fancy meeting you here!" He gave way to let them in, keeping his back towards the wall as much as possible, muttering in an undertone to Wolfwood as he passed him, "You ok there, Padre?"
"Sure," Wolfwood coughed. "Just uh. Little bit of whiplash." He clapped his hands together and clapped his eyes on whatever parts of Milly and Meryl seemed safest. "So what brings you here, Ladies? The sights, the sounds, the showers?" He jogged a thumb in Vash's direction. "The Stampede?"
The Stampede in question was sidling towards the bathroom in the hopes of finding a slightly larger towel.
"A suit," Meryl said, striding past Vash into the bathroom and wrinkling her nose at the dirty clothes scattered around the tile floor. "Do you have a clean one, Mr. Wolfwood? It's a very urgent matter!"
Vash, blocked from the bathroom, reversed course in the other direction with a pitiful little sound of defeat. Wolfwood stepped up to Meryl to help cover his escape.
"Honey, I haven't got a clean anything, and neither would you if you'd walked half a week through the desert to get here--"
"You walked?" Milly was very impressed with this. "Gosh, that must have been hard! We just took the steamer."
Meryl dismissed this distraction with a wave. "Nevermind, all the rooms here have a laundry unit and they're quite fast. We'll have you presentable in time."
"In time for what?" Wolfwood demanded. Usually this kind of thing was directed at Vash, and he did not like being the target of Meryl's gimlet-eyed attention one bit. His questions and protests, however, were no more effective than Vash's were.
"Does anyone have any change?" Meryl eyed up the washer/dryer coin-op machine in the corner of the bathroom. Wolfwood had not noticed it before, what with having a drippy, naked Vash the Stampede to attract his attention instead. He sighed wistfully for what might have been.
Milly produced a handful of silver doubledollars from the pocket of her shorts. "I do! But don't use the hot water, Sempai, remember what happened!" Milly added to the other two in a confidential undertone, "I shrank my swimsuit."
"No kidding?" Wolfwood managed to wedge only the barest fingernail scrape of incredulity into his voice. "Anyway, I ain't agreed to anything yet. What's this all about?"
"And could you throw my things in there too?" Vash called, from the other room.
"You can do your own laundry, Vash," Meryl sniffed in disdain as she reached for Wolfwood's shirt, and then regretted it immediately. She fetched up against the sink, trying not to gag. "Eugh! Especially if it all--smells like that." Her face went a whitish green before she rallied, looking around the bathroom for something to use other than her bare hands.
"Everybody in the company vacations here, you know," Milly said, idly twanging one bikini string. "Willy's Water World at The Glory Springs Hotel and Entertainment Complex is one of our biggest clients!"
"So it's a business trip," Wolfwood said, trying to keep one eye on what Meryl was doing, one on Vash and his slipping towel as he sidled over to his rucksack, two on Milly and her structural hazards, and failing in every respect.
"Oh no, we're supposed to be on vacation too. But then a crisis came up."
"Gunmen?" Vash guessed, sitting down on the bed with a noise of relief and dragging the sheets into his lap. "Bandits? Worm attack? Plant malfunction? Sandstorm?"
"Worse!" Milly declared. "The resort minister has laryngitis."
"God Forbid," Wolfwood drawled. "So what do you need an emergency priest for?" His eyebrows lifted hopefully. "Last Rites? Funeral?"
"Baptism!" Milly answered, with a bounce.
Wolfwood's face fell. There was no money like funeral money, and Baptists were lousy tippers. He rescued his cigarettes out of his jacket before Meryl could put them into the wash. "Well, I'm pretty sure I mentioned before, but technically I am a Methodist--"
"Yeah, a pull-out Methodist," Vash snorted, and then had to pretend it was a sneeze as Meryl shot him a warning look that said--not for the first time--to stop making jokes she would have to explain to Milly later.
"Martin Luther has been too dead for too long too many galaxies away for me to worry about denominational folderol," Meryl said, using the shower brush to shove Wolfwood's pants into the machine. "All I need is someone in a suit to say something suitably preachery before dunking people. Don't you have a tie?"
"I do!" Vash said, yanking his special-occasion yellow and orange horror out of his rucksack and waving it.
"We'll skip the tie," Meryl said, at once.
"Aw," said Vash.
"Thank Christ," said Wolfwood, ignoring the no smoking sign in the room and lighting up before asking, in a speculative tone, "How many people are we talking here?" Even basic services could add up if there were enough heads to charge, after all.
Meryl, businesswoman herself, saw right through him. "For your information, there's a whole busload of congregants from the Libertyville New Reformed Evangelical Full Gospel Holy Baptist Church of the Nazarene on their way here right now--"
"How long is that bus gotta be to fit that name on the side?" Vash wondered aloud.
"--for their twenty-seventh annual tent revival, singspiration, potluck supper and baptismalabration."
"Also Vacation Bible School!" Milly piped in. "I got to see the craft room, too. It's going to be so fun! They're going to make glow-in-the-dark popsicle stick crosses, and friendship bracelets with beads in different colors, and every color means something different, like red for blood, and black for sin, and clear for the inevitable eschatological dissolution of all things!"
"I need a drink," Wolfwood said, looking almost as nauseated over this as Meryl was over the state of his underwear.
"And If the Glory Springs Hotel can't provide a minister for the baptism, they're going to cancel the entire thing, and as that's covered by their policy rider, we, the Bernardelli Insurance company--"
"Like we could forget the name," Vash muttered, tossing four or five of Milly's business cards out of his rucksack as he continued his quest for a clean pair of shorts.
"-- cannot allow that to happen!" Meryl concluded, jamming Wolfwood's last sock into the laundry, and wiping her forehead. "Phew. How many worm carcasses did you walk though on the way here?"
"Just the one," Wolfwood said, with a smile that was equal parts teeth and smoke. "Longways."
Meryl could not fully repress her shudder.
"Ah-HA!" Vash had found--if not a pair of shorts--a large fluorescent pink t-shirt that would have fit all four of them inside it with room for company. Like the tie, Wolfwood knew better than to inquire about its provenance, but he didn't have to. On the front in large letters it read I ATE ALL THE HOLES AT DICKY CRUMBS' DONUT BAR, JULY CITY along with the worst depiction of a slutty pastry that Wolfwood had ever seen in his life. And there had been a surprising number.
Unphased by the dubious looks the rest of the room was giving him, Vash crawled into the shirt and sighed as he was able to stand up fully at last, dignity--if not intact, then at least in a different category than full frontal nudity. The shirt hit him modestly at mid-thigh, and fit him with all the tailored grace of a circus tent. "That's better. Doesn't look too bad, either!"
"Yeah, for a patio umbrella." Wolfwood gnawed his cigarette before turning back to Meryl. "Anyway, I don't see why I should spend my downtime fixing your problems when there's nothing in it for--"
Meryl snapped out a fan of small paper squares, and Wolfwood instinctively took a step back. He'd seen her disarm a man at thirty paces with a flicked business card once. But he needn't have worried, these were not her usual ephemera.
"Tickets," Meryl said, with the tone of a poker player about to claim the pot, "Three-day full passes with all amenities to Willy's Water World, including all E-ticket slides, infinite lazy river loops, one free small drink voucher per day and unlimited pool hopping!"
Meryl waited for this to have the impact she knew it deserved, but unfortunately she was talking to a man who had grown up in abject poverty and whose radio had never gotten any of the good stations from December. Wolfwood stared at her blankly. "You're trying to bribe me with some puddle park tickets?"
Meryl sighed. "These puddle park tickets," she said, biting the last letter off each word, "Are a $$250 value!"
"Oh, then I'll absolutely take them," Wolfwood said, and did.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" Milly enthused, as Wolfwood tried to tuck the tickets into his shirt pocket but forgot he was just wearing a towel, and had to scratch his nipple with them to avoid looking foolish. "It's so much fun, Mr. Wolfwood! There's the twisty slide, and the submarine tour, and the jellyfish jumpers, and grilled squid shaped like grilled squid!"
"Sounds great," Wolfwood said, and found his wallet on the bathroom counter and stuffed the tickets in. He fully intended to scalp them at the first opportunity. He could lop off $$50 each for a quick sale right by the gates and net a tidy sum. Still not funeral money, but nothing to sneeze at.
"Right then," Meryl said briskly, clapping her hands together, "As soon as the wash is done, you get all dolled up--please button most of your shirt, at least--and meet us in the lobby in forty five minutes. That should give you two time to finish up...whatever..." Realization, after a long delay, single-track slowdown, and several station changes, had finally arrived at Destination Meryl. If she had blushed at the sight of the two of them sopping wet and nearly naked, the comprehension of why that might have been the case nearly caused steam to vent from her swimsuit cutouts. Wolfwood found her stammer immensely satisfying. Not as satisfying as what he'd been about to do to Vash in the shower, but the night was young.
"Oh, there's not near enough time for that," he said, just to rub in a bit of salt. "But I guess we can finish up the shower part."
"Wolfwood," Vash said in warning, but it was impossible to take him seriously in that shirt.
"It's so great how you're conserving water by sharing, even here!" Milly said, and tugged up her slipping strings. "But the whole city has a huge recycling aquifer, so it's actually pretty sustainable! There's a three-minute informative film that plays on loop in the lobby if you--"
"Ireallydon'tthinktheyneedtohearaboutthatrightnowMillylet'sgo." Meryl put her hands on Milly's shoulders and steered her at full speed to the door, refusing to look at anyone on the way. "R-remember! Downstairs in forty-five minutes or I'll come back and--and--"
"Interrupt us again?" Wolfwood drawled. He was having a wonderful time.
"Wolfwood," Vash said, without the teasing tone this time.
"FORTY. FIVE. MINUTES." Meryl shouted, as though it was her last offer, and slammed the door after them. From the other side came a deep, broken-banjo twong as Milly's bikini string finally surrendered to the implacable forces of gravity.
"Aw," Wolfwood said, with a moue of disappointment.
"Are you sure about this?" Vash asked, walking up to him as the sound of the girls' voices diminished in the distance.
"Yeah, I hate being rushed through a fuck." Wolfwood caught a glimpse of Vash through his cigarette smoke, and his face was grave. With his hair slicked down out of its usual spikes, he looked like a stern angel glaring down from a cathedral spire. Wolfwood suppressed a shiver, coughed and said, "Oh. You mean the Baptising thing? Not at all. If nobody else is available, that's just interdenominational professional courtesy. Besides, it was invented in the stone age or something. How hard can it be?"
STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO