*humbled* I hope this makes up for the shoddy-ness of my previous
chapter, everyone. I humbly apologize if it's just as bad as the
last one, but I did
make a valient attempt...and while it's not quite lemon, I hope it's
acceptable.
x.x Yay. Master finally kicks some ass.
~Tomo
Whose muse's finally kicked in...S'been a while.
~~~~
It's only when I lose myself in someone else
That I find myself
I find myself
Something beautiful is happening inside for me
Something sensual, it's full of fire and mystery
I feel hypnotised
I feel paralysed
I have found heaven
There's a thousand reasons
Why I shouldn't spend my time with you
For every reason not to be here
I can think of two
To keep me hanging on
Feeling nothing's wrong
Inside your heaven
[Lose Myself - Depeche Mode]
~~~~
The gun was still trembling, up and down, the fearful rattling echoing endlessly in Wolfwood's ears, like shivering laughter, unspoken. He glanced to his left, scanning the hallway and trying to gauge the closeness of his enemy, of a potential friend, of anything that could alter the situation. "There is another way," he whispered, half praying, half kidding.
"Shut up!" someone called, and the scene seemed to waver like a choppy reflection on the surface of a pool. Wolfwood leaned back against the muzzle of the gun in his hair, knowing, waiting for Vash to arrive.
Vash would change things, because he always did. When he lifted his gun people either ran or died, but things changed inevitably - where *was* that stupid blonde? Wolfwood shifted against the gun, needing time - he wasn't sure what he was waiting for, other than Vash...something seemed missing.
"I know a guy who whines and cries until he finds a way to save everyone," Wolfwood whispered. How many times had he admonished Vash for tactics that kept everyone safe and produced nothing but a happy ending? How could he have so routinely ridiculed the chosen path of the blonde who was renowned the world over...?
That was easy. Vash was a fool.
But so was he.
It was nobody's fault but his own that there was a gun pressed to his head, and Wolfwood knew that. Because he was hated, because he was nothing but trouble, because he had long ago fallen into a pit with sides to slick and pristine to be climbed, and now the rope was dangling before him, inches too high to be reached.
"I know a man..."
He didn't know himself, let alone anyone. Everything was a lie, the world, the smiles, and here he stood proclaimed to know the man he loved...
"...who takes a stand..."
...Who fought injustice, who dreamed of rape and death, who was plagued by the ghosts of centuries of living and twice as many dead souls...
"...though it scars him from head to toe..."
Though it tore the very flesh from his bones, he believed. The faith would slowly kill him and extinguish that brilliance, but it was a real, tangible faith, and wouldn't it be better to die after truly living than to truly die after living a lie?
Those scars were each a mark of the human race's own particular version of love.
"And he's right there."
Gunshots, and bullets bit into Wolfwood's shoulders, one on each side - in shock he dropped his weapon, as blood burst from his chest and began running in torrential rivulets down his torso. In seconds his shirt was soaked and his jacket damp, his fingers twitching at nothing but air as he staggered forward.
The gun behind him was gone, kicked to the side, and suddenly-
"The man who rings the black funeral bell...Chapel the-"
He was flung against the wall abruptly, and there was a leather-clad cybernetic arm pressed against his neck. "That's who you are!"
Wolfwood opened his mouth to speak. "That's who you are, you...."
"I am nothing."
Blood was blossoming from his lips, spilt down his chin as Vash glared, his sunglasses hiding any hint of mercy that might be lingering in his once-gentle eyes. "You would hurt me so deeply..." Vash accused, voice breaking. "You would....you would be just like... him..."
Him. As if his name was a summons, Knives turned around, holding the phaser that had once been firmly jammed against Wolfwood's neck. "Just like me, Wolfwood? You think you could be what I am to him, his other half, his lover, his brother? Vash is mine, he does not belong to any pitiful human."
"You're wrong..."
The gun turned, it's red bullet-eye training on Vash's forehead. Before Wolfwood could so much as move, the blonde was falling forwards, blood spraying across his face-
It was salty, cool, filling his mouth as he rolled over and screamed -
"VASH!"
The blonde blinked at him, his body naked, coated in the blood dripping from the bullet hole in his head. The blood drizzled across ravaged scars and slick metal, like smeared watercolors - Vash lifted a hand, palm up, and the liquid poured between his fingertips in an endless current of crimson droplets. "Why?" he asked, voice pitifully small, eyes full of something midway between fear and agony. "Why don't you want me?"
Wolfwood shouted back, staggering to his knees and wiping his hands free of blood - was it Vash's or his own, or did it even matter? "Why do you want *ME*?"
"I love you," the blonde whispered, face growing paler and paler as the blood leaked from his body. Wolfwood outstretched his fingers, groping for flesh to hold, but there was nothing there for him but Vash's blood, pooling and flowing and cold.
"I love you..."
"Vash!"
~~~~
It's only when I lose myself in someone else
That I find myself
I find myself
I can feel the emptiness inside me
Fade and disappear
There's a feeling of contentment
Now that you are here
I feel satisfied
I belong inside
Your velvet heaven
~~~~
Wolfwood sat up with the name burning on his lips, and Vash's arms strung around his waist. It took him a long, heart stopping moment to realize that he *wasn't* on the Seeds ship with a gun to his head, and Vash wasn't dripping and crying blood and begging to be loved.
A dream, then.
Oh.
The priest closed his eyes for a long moment. Why? Why did that incident haunt him so, filling his dreams with what could have happened if the timing had been different, if another body had appeared? It was over, and unlike Vash, Wolfwood had not thought twice about the experience - only in his dreams did the morality involved in crashing an entire colony ship really start to bother him.
Why did it have to be like this? Was it guilt for his hard words that had unknowingly been a portent for the near future? He had told them that the time would come, and in the sick way fate had of intervening, it had been *his* fault that the ship fell.
If he had only been faster, or stronger. If his enemy had been living, if he had been human...
Death was everywhere he went, chasing his - it's long fingers touched even the most innocent of plans - and Wolfwood had been trying so hard for so long to cast his guilt aside, to rid himself of the blood money and in the course of doing that, rid himself of blame...
This couldn't be shoved aside. He had not just killed people, this time, he had forced them into a life so miserable that even he, a priest, prayed for death now and then rather than another day on a burning chunk of rock that barely passed as a planet.
Unforgivable...
"Wolfwood?" Vash's breath was cool against his shoulder. Wolfwood shivered as it traced across his body and dissipated into the night, his thoughts vanishing with it. "Another dream?"
"Yeah," the priest responded gruffly, pulling himself up in the bed and groping about on the night stand for a few moments until his fingers fumbled across his cigarettes and the lighter next to them. For a moment the fire flared, and then all Wolfwood had to focus on was the soft glow of the butt of his cigarette - he let out a satisfied sigh.
"Smoking in bed is dangerous," Vash murmured, pulling himself up next to his partner. Wolfwood glanced over, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light seeping through the window, and smiled thinly. Vash's hair was tilting at an even more precarious angle than usual, and his eyes, though crinkled at the corners with concern, seemed peaceful enough. It was good that one of them, at least, was having a 'good' night.
'Good' meant that the nightmares were not so bad they both woke up screaming, trembling against each other.
"I'm a dangerous kind of guy." Wolfwood tilted his head back and let in fall against the headboard, angling his cigarette up a bit more and sighing.
Since they had returned from the Seeds ships, several things had changed. Ever since Wolfwood had been the only person who could pry Vash's arms from around Brad's cooling figure, Vash had scarcely left his side - thinking up excuses or simply refusing to take a path that would part him from the priest's immediate vicinity. Wolfwood wasn't sure what that attachment meant, but in part he welcomed it - because, damn it, he wanted to be close to Vash - however, the portion of him that was still concerned with surviving this ordeal was growing increasingly nervous with the companionship.
So they ate together, at a table with the insurance girls, Milly opposite of Wolfwood and Vash opposite of Meryl, and when they were together like that, there were no small looks or tired smiles - around the girls they were as close as friends could be without going overboard. The most daring thing Wolfwood had done was fling an arm around Vash's neck or ruffle his hair, which always made the blonde catch his breathe - though the girls charted it up to brotherly appreciation. At night though, when the door was closed and locked, they slipped into one of the twin beds in their hotel room for the evening and fell asleep together, curled warmly against the pillows.
So oddly innocent, those nights alone.
Part of Wolfwood suspected that Vash was growing to trust him more and more, and that was why he was so insistent on being around the priest. Vash was a strong, powerful man - but he also had a side to him that Wolfwood loved, the side that needed to be reassured. It was hard to explain without Wolfwood feeling utterly foolish, but Vash felt like a child, someone who was lost at an early age and had been wandering for years, looking for a place to belong. As if he had finally found a safe haven and was running as fast as he could towards the doorway, eager to throw himself into the embrace of solace...
Was that why he had offered himself up, Wolfwood wondered? Did he think that Wolfwood could be that home he was searching for? If so, Vash was sorely mistaken. There was nobody more likely to *hurt* him than Wolfwood himself, and the way Vash so blindly took everything he said at face value...
He would have felt better if Vash had questioned anything, been suspicious. That naive innocence was what Wolfwood felt terrible about debauching, after all... To make a child cry was a sin without redemption, and Vash was as much a child as he was an adult, a collage of bits and pieces strewn haphazardly together.
"Why did you come to me in the shower, Vash?" He asked at length, slowly inhaling the tinted smoke of his cigarette.
Vash shifted, the rustling of his tank top a testament of the nervous motion. For a long while Wolfwood thought he would not get an answer, but at last Vash spoke up, his hair highlighted by the window frame and the outside world's leaking light. "I thought, maybe..." The blonde looked down. "I thought if I slept with you, you would stay."
"Stay?" Wolfwood's fingertips paused in their motion of fetching another cigarette. "Stay where?"
"Stay with me. Always," Vash breathed, "and always."
Alarms went off in the back of Wolfwood's mind - the way Vash said that, like a prayer, a sinful hope - it was almost obsessive in it's intensity. It was frightening, the power behind those soft, strong words, but at the same time it seemed too fitting to deny... Because nothing else would suit the two of them, of course, they who were drawn together by the most inexplicable of deceitful webs - there were no vows more precious than what they whispered in the dark, and knowing that, Wolfwood sought Vash's hand with his free one and squeezed.
"I'm not leaving," Wolfwood murmured, then spoke again, voice growing more fervent as he spoke, the jumbled words escaping his lips even before he realized what he was saying. "I could never leave you, Vash, ever."
Maybe it was the bloody nightmares that loosened his tongue. Maybe the remnants of sake on his lips and the relaxation of a smoke...maybe just the soft smile gracing Vash's face as he spoke that egged him on to that confession.... whatever the cause, it was true.
"I love you," Vash whispered, sounding so much like he had only minutes before in the midst of Wolfwood's nightmare that the priest's hair stood on end. In response (he had yet to find the courage to say those simple words) Wolfwood pressed his mouth to the blonde's and lingered for a long moment there, fingers lifting Vash's hand and clasping it to his chest.
The kiss was alive, a thing in itself, seeping into the crevices of Wolfwood's soul as they touched and lighting the flickering kindling beneath his scarcely-calmed exterior. His hand slid from Vash's palm to his thinly clothed shoulders, and concentrated on nothing more than devouring the mouth beneath his, plucking at the swelling lower lip, tasting the palate, purring into the moans that were slipping around his probing tongue. It was fire and ice all at once, melting his soul and freezing his senses with the sheer electricity, and he shivered, leaning closer. Anything for more of that burning coldness - Wolfwood tightened his grip on Vash's shoulder before fumbling one-handed for the ashtray on the stand and snuffing out the dying coal of his cigarette.
That was what he loved so about Vash's body, the tension that forged between them, between his bloodied hands and the gentleness in Vash's eyes... Whenever they touched there was a sort of cold, frigid electricity that gave way to gentle echoes, as if their souls were resounding against each other like crystals pinging in waves of sound.
Touch, like molten metal, cascading down his spine as Vash's fingers of metal and flesh ghosted over the curvature of his shoulder blades - heat that he reciprocated as the blonde tilted his head back, baring the pale expanse of his unmarked neck to Wolfwood's roving tongue. He suckled at an earlobe, laid delicate kisses along the hairline at Vash's nape, then licked sensuously across the ridge of the adam's apple, sending waves of shivering heat up and down Vash's cool limbs.
The blonde trembled against him, half parted lips calling softly, nervously, as he had never been kissed in such a way...
A lie, but one that Wolfwood would accept.
It was nothing they hadn't done before, this gentle, seeking game of touch-taste-feeling. It was sexual, but on the lightest note - it was pure and utter ecstacy, the feeling of their bodies playing against one another, the light, gentle touches - seeing how far they could go together without snapping the invisible trip wires set around their souls.
Wolfwood's hand slipped lower beneath the fabric of the blonde's boxers, until he was cupping Vash's outer thigh, his thumb sweeping against the pale flesh in a delicate, heated arc in the most intimate of touches they had ever shared. Vash's eyes went wide and his lips parted wide, trembling with surprise as he spoke - "Wolfwood!"
It was too much, those parted, pale lips, eyes and skin, so soft and cool, the fire within his chest expanding, growing, heating - and Vash's skin was so very, very cold, so detached.... The way he moved, the mole at the corner of his eyes, the pallor of his skin in the dusty moonlight - it was all too much to bear! Fighting whatever pulled them together was maddening, and while giving in was death....
Realization. It was worth it.
With a moan that was almost a sob, Wolfwood claimed Vash's mouth for his own again, kissing forcefully in a way he had not dared to only moments before. If he had to fall, if he had to give in, it would be like this, and he would sink in the sweetness of another's body. He would love while he could and die when he had to - that was all he could do.
Vash automatically leaned back, falling into the cushions, pulling Wolfwood down over him, their mouths still joined completely - and they kissed, and Wolfwood's hands began roaming sharply, fingering the ridge and crevices of Vash's torso, the scars where nipples might have been, the jagged displays of humanity, cool and soft.
Wolfwood broke away and turned his attention to the juncture of neck and jaw, where he bit and kissed and marked before trailing down to Vash's collarbone, sweaty and cold and sweet. Fingers were in his hair and his own were sliding down, parting Vash's boxers from his hips with clumsy motions, the fire building and stoking -
"Yes, please, Nick...."
That name, oh *God*, that name - Wolfwood felt tears prickle against his eyes once more. He would die just to hear that gentle nickname fall from those lips again - with a desperate lunge, he heaved himself forwards, forcing his knees beneath Vash's thighs, their hips meeting with alarming speed -
Fire. Vash was warming up, the cold melting away as he cried out and writhed, as Wolfwood pinned him to the bed's headboard and ravished the underside of one grate, nipping and biting and raking his teeth across the tender flesh. A name, over and over again, ringing in his ears as he swept his tongue across the sinful scars, up and down, over and over-
One of them was thinking, and Wolfwood was not sure if the mantra was his own or not. Yes, yes, let me have you, let me make you a part of me, take me, let me kiss you and own you and dominate you, let me show you, let me kiss everything away, let me have your soul, because I love you, because-
He moaned, kissed again, lost himself in the heady embrace. Some things were holy, and this was one of them - he would sell his soul for the simple sensations of taste and touch, of cries and tears, anything for another moment of unity.
Vash was trying to buck, clawing at his back in a desperate attempt for more contact of skin, cloth, anything, and his hips were nearly gyrating, grinding against Wolfwood's with the same enthusiastic force that the priest was delivering against his chest. They rocked, they moved with incendiary obscenity, together, until Wolfwood could stand no more and at last pulled Vash from the heavy hardwood bedposts and kissed him again as the blonde's fingers slipped across the fastenings of his pants.
A malevolent hiss, cunning, slithering into his mind between the panting gasps and throaty moans
'Chapel.'
For a moment it didn't register, the icy voice was overwhelmed by the heat between the partners. For one last moment Wolfwood drowned in the heat, ad then-
Agony purred and roared in his ears.
Sheer and utter and fast it ripped up Wolfwood's spine, exploding at the base of his neck in a firey burst that sent the priest howling in agony, throwing himself backwards as he clawed at his head, screaming and screaming and screaming.
It was ripping him apart from the inside, his heart was pounding and threatening to claw it's way free from the confines of his ribcage, his very skin with all it's liquid layers of flesh and muscle was burning on his body, melting away, each nerve end sparked with sheer, utter pain.
Scream.
The superficial sensation of Vash's nails raking against his skin as he jerked away, eyes wide with terror that would not die - Before Wolfwood's eyes things were changing. Vash's expression was wavering and slowly reddening, then darkening - he screamed again as his eyes began burning, and when he touched them, invisible liquid slithered trails down the crevices in his hands. "MY EYES!" he choked, scrabbling at his face in horror. "They're bleeding! God, stop the blood, please-"
The purr continued, low and caressing, metallic and hard, the shackles closing with a snap around Wolfwood's soul.
Don't.
Touch.
What.
Will.
Never.
Be.
Yours.
Wolfwood was not concious of Vash's terrified whispers as he backed up, slamming hard into the door of their hotel room and fumbling for the lock - if he could just get away from Vash, things would be alright! If he could just escape the heat and too-close scent of sweat and fire he would be safe from the pain that scorched his senses and dulled all sanity to a hopeless hum in the chaotic background...
Vash was moving, but too late to recapture his prize as the priest bolted, escaping out the portal and disappearing in the depths of the hotel.
"WOLFWOOD!"
Laughter, somewhere.
~Mine.~
~~~~
Did I need to sell my soul for pleasure like this
Did I have to lose control to treasure your kiss
Did I need to place my heart in the palm of your hand
Before I could even start to understand
It's only when I lose myself in someone else
That I find myself
I find myself
~~~~
