drab

drab·ble (drab´'l) n. : a story exactly 100 words long, excluding title

19. Duality

He always kissed her twice.

Once, a breath of reverence - transcendent, chaste love - brushing against burning lips. Pain in delicacy, need tragically pure.

Twice, a different desire. Passion deep as hers, enveloping - drowning. She'd die for it - wanted to die in it. Another type of purity.

Two kisses. Two moments. Two loves of sanctity - distilled from each other and twin on her lips.

The duality gleamed bitter-bright in his eyes.

But she didn't understand; a half-moment after the first, she asked why.

Unreadable, twofold, he explained, "Once for her." He kissed her, long with love. Whispered, "And once for you."

20. Perfect Match

"Come in farther," growled Wolfwood.

They were on the floor, Vash hovering centimeters over the prone priest.

Meryl's foot tapped with impatience, "Vash! You have to go all the way or we'll never know."

He winced at her tone, "You are really ruining the mood."

Wolfwood chuckled; Meryl had finally noticed, had demanded a demonstration, but . . . "I thought this was supposed to be about discovery."

"Meryl!" Vash whined. "Any more and I'll hurt him if I move wrong!"

"I have to know!"

Vash sighed, defeated, and leaned in as far as possible.

"Wow!" chirped Milly. "Their noses do fit together!"

21. Fate

The curved glass was sharp underneath his small, childish hand - cuttingly frosted to opacity. Under warm fingerprints icy spirals were melted into the white veneer. Penetrating cold deadened fragile nerves. Numbing.

Knives stared - fascination and whimpering fear. It was another speculative moment before he flexed stiffened fingers.

He gripped the glass, glaring at the unreflective surface. But he wasn't angry, he assured himself, and wiped the frost from the smoothness. It reflected now, showing brutally short hair.

The man inside had blind, lifeless eyes.

Knives gazed into horrible green. Dirty. Human. Not like him.

And smiled, "I know your fate."

22. Fetish

Meryl twirled in front of him slowly - smirkingly seductive. Arms veiled by gauze-y handless gloves, petite, tempting body sheathed in a shiningly short skirt, Vash was intoxicated by sight.

What she was doing was very, very wrong. Abusive. Manipulative.

She sidled up to him, tracing nails with more than faint pressure along his jaw. Eyes locked on her - on the dress, the almost-gloves - he sighed rapturously.

It was damned fun.

"You won't destroy towns any more?"

The Humaniod Typhoon nodded vacantly.

Meryl Stryfe was acting coquettish.

His fetishes were very handy.

A husky voice caressed her ear, "You wore red."

23. Symbolism

Before the blackness, the shimmering white, translucent clarity leached his warmth into dead - immortal? - space. His eyelashes whisked against the window, blinking away the uniformity. His blonde bangs pressed against glowing void.

"Any farther and you'll fall out," Rem murmured.

"If you look close enough, if you stare and don't blink, the black and white look the same." He shivered. "But they're not the same!"

Rem sighed, "There is unity in your window. They aren't the same, but they are part of a whole."

"Can you understand darkness without light?" he questioned.

She laughed, "Vash, not everything is a symbol."

24. Childish Ways

The carefully constructed model of the proposed design alteration to the cryogenic monitoring unit was perfect in every way. The small, metal bits fit together seamlessly, shining under quicksilver lighting.

It sparkled. Vash's design specs didn't call for sparkling.

Knives is freakishly meticulous, Vash decided. Obsessive even. The prototype, displayed openly on the table, reminded him of the time his brother had lined the entire ship with dominoes.

He moved closer, hand nonchalantly leaned on the table. And then his hand was nonchalantly slipping against the table, as the weight unbalanced it.

**CRASH**

"Vash!! What did you break this time?!"

notes: Okay, I've got lots of notes this time, apparently to make up for the utter lack of notes last time. Duality was yet another demonstration of the fact that, even though I don't think Vash has an Oedipus complex, I like pretending that he does! shrug I guess I just don't think he has enough problems. Perfect Match is the example of why I'll probably never be able to write believable shounen ai. Did any of you really think Vash and Wolfwood were doing anything remotely romantic in that one? No. I didn't think so. Ah, well. Maybe it's funny anyway. The further explanation on that one is a theory I swiped from Bethany (mentioned at her Wolfwood page, Cinders&Smoke) - that if you cut out Vash and Wolfwood's noses, they'll fit together with one upside-down. She said it doesn't work in reality, but that doesn't make for good drabbles, does it? Fate and Symbolism are meant as companion pieces to each other. In fact, to me they occur simultaneously. They aren't listed that way because I can't bring myself to mess up the comedy:drama listing. In Fetish I mention "handless gloves". Yeah. Most people would call them sleeves. Or bracelets. However, I always think of gloves as reaching to the elbow or farther (unless otherwise specified) and I seriously saw those somewhere once. So handless gloves are real, to me at least. And what's up with the alliteration in that one? Hmm, this particular group seems to have a lot of chibi-Vash and Knives. Why? Just obsessed I guess.

Trigun is copyright (c) Yasuhiro Nightow and Young King Ours.

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