Luida takes Vash's friends off on a tour of Ship Three, and she leaves Brad alone with the kid in that discreet way of hers. A harrowing moment passes in which Brad wishes for an interruption, even a catastrophe, just so he won't inevitably make an ass of himself when his kid decides to break his heart for the eightieth time over.

But that's ridiculous, and it's selfish, and if there's one thing he and Vash have always had in common it's a tendency to shy away from being emotionally honest. That's what Luida says, anyway.

He understands why she was in a rush once the doors have slid shut and he turns back to Vash, sees him slumped and glassy-eyed, his upturned prosthetic hand twitching with minute discharges that set Brad's teeth on edge. Much as he teases, he knows that twinges like that must feel like fire in the nerves of the stump. God knows how long his arm's been busted, or the state his legs might be in, considering. "You haven't been Home in a minute."

There's a tightening of Vash's expression, a subdued guilty flinch. He looks very pale and haggard in the cold blue-white light of ship tech. Brad was born in the vacuum of space—he had no reason to miss the sun before the Fall. "I didn't mean to stay away," Vash murmurs, nervous enough to make Brad feel bad. They've had this fight off-and-on for years. "It gets hard to keep track of the days."

"Not making a fuss," Brad huffs. He walks around the table to take hold of the chair on its other side, flicks the switch that breaks its airtight seal on the smooth floor. It slides easily when Brad pushes it to the foot of the bed. If he kneels for the full repair he might just never stand again. "Just missing you, that's all." He settles in the chair with a gusty sigh, holding out a hand for Vash's arm, the other fishing the probe out of his pocket again. "And thinking you must be feeling pretty rough, right about now."

Vash laughs nervously, settling his wrist in Brad's waiting palm. The framework of the arm is beginning to show its age in the nicks in the metal, the scratches on the glass. It doesn't feel perfectly smooth in Brad's hand anymore. "Maybe. Trying not to be a big baby about it."

Brad snorts, peering at the wiring in the open panel of the kid's forearm to find where he left off. "Yeah, you're not succeeding." To prove his point, the next touch of the probe to the artificial median nerve makes Vash flinch and yelp. "I know, I know. Gotta see what's still kicking, kid."

Brad works in silence then, interspersed with the clatter of broken glass within the prosthetic's casing, mechanical whirring when he switches out tools to tighten the miniscule bolts that keep corded tendons taut and properly aligned, and Vash's muffled noises when the misfiring synapses in his stump tell him to get the fuck away from whatever's hurting him. Brad's going to have to take a look at the port, too, and the nodes on his back, absolutely. Little brat wouldn't be hurting if he didn't go so long without maintenance. Brad doesn't say that.

Finally satisfied with the internal alignment, at least, Brad smoothes his hand over the busted casing on the palm. All his joints look clean and well-lubricated, but they'll grind down if sand gets inside. "Might need to take it off to fix the detail work," he mutters. "We can do that later, though. Can I take a look at your nodes?"

Vash's prosthetic fingers twitch and curl enough to brush Brad's forearm. Brad blinks, raises his head to look at Vash's downturned face. The kid doesn't say anything. It's best to wait out his long, thoughtful silences. "I miss you, too," he whispers eventually, and, so slowly the hinge of his elbow creaks, he leans forward, and he rests his forehead on Brad's shoulder.

For a moment of God's mercy Brad is holding his boy after a nightmare, protecting him from prying eyes, soothing him when he eats too much after too long without, all those things he didn't do when Vash was young enough for it to make a difference. He tucks the probe in his pocket, rests his now-free left hand heavy and firm on the back of Vash's neck. The kid makes a tiny sound. "Alright, little man," Brad says. "You're alright."

(He thinks, unbidden, of some sixty years ago, of a little girl. He thinks of the way Vash would sweep the child into his arms, call her his baby girl, comfort her when she scraped her knee—and Brad would watch, and he would wonder.)

Vash sniffles, and his flesh arm comes up to grip the back of Brad's jacket. He's shaking minutely. "Did you hear what Nai did?"

"At Jeneora Rock?" Vash nods, and his fingers tighten in the jacket, on Brad's arm. "Not your fault, buddy."

Vash laughs at that, winded and broken.

And Brad thinks—not for the first time—that Vash is wasting his time here. Brad can't give him whatever it is he needs or fix what was broken in the Fall. Maybe he could have, back then, if he'd even thought to try. He certainly can't fix everything that came after. The hand on the back of Vash's neck slides up into his hair, presses him more firmly into Brad's shoulder. "Stay," he whispers. "I won't ask again as long as you're here, just—fuck's sake, kid."

Another little sound from Vash, and he raises his head, presses his temple to Brad's. He breathes for a long moment, and Brad closes his eyes. His boy runs hot, even through the layers he wears to conceal his scars and circuitry. "I'm sorry," Vash says. "I can't."

How does it break his heart, every time? "I know." Brad clears his throat, ruffles the kid's hair. "I know. Sorry." Vash relaxes then, and doesn't that just ache, the way he can only be at peace when he knows he's not stuck here with the people who love him. "Let me have a feel at your back, buddy. You can stay there, just lift your arms up."

Vash does as he's told, resting his arms up over Brad's shoulders. The nodes on either side of his spine augment the functioning of his prosthetic legs and dull the pain of a never-quite-healed fracture in his pelvis, in addition to bridging some nerve damage in his spinal column.

Brad tries his best to compartmentalize when he works on Vash, to dissociate until the body in his care isn't the child he raised.

He rucks up the back of Vash's turtleneck, pausing when the kid goes stiff. Brad's fingertips brush over scars and sunspots and rare unmarred skin, still rough from wind and sand and sun. "Just me, Vash," he says, and the wrought iron body in his arms softens with a deliberate rush of breath. "You're alright."

(He thinks of a fight over a hundred years ago. It was the only one that almost escalated to physical violence between them. He thinks of Vash's pale eyes full of tears and his fists clenched at his sides and his assertion that Brad doesn't need to pretend to love him anymore. He remembers how Luida had sobbed, and how that made Vash angrier, like they were both just messing with him. Brad didn't handle it well. Brad got mad back.)

Vash hums raggedly, and his head falls back to Brad's shoulder. Brad feels him tuck himself in closer, arms cinching around Brad's neck, legs folded to the side to press his thigh to Brad's knee. The muscle of his upper thigh is nearly as unyielding as the metal of his lower. "Sorry," the kid says.

Brad ignores that. His fingers curl around the hem of the shirt and begin to pull it up. It catches on rough patches of skin and bits of metal and sheets of mesh, every single one of them burned into Brad's memory—except for the new spots, injuries that Vash amassed in his most recent travels. Brad's fingers brush one such unfamiliar blemish, a long shallow scar curving over and around Vash's hip. He doesn't ask. He makes a mental note of it, adds it to the cartography of Vash's body in his mind's eye.

Brad keeps his hands still on Vash's too-small waist, feels the discordant muscle shiver under rippled skin, evidence of the electrical misfiring Brad was afraid of, and hard-wired discomfort he doesn't think about. He sighs, and his thumbs trail up to brush the lowest ridge of the kid's ribs. "You eating enough?"

Vash presses his mouth to Brad's shoulder, voice muffled by his jacket. "No. Probably not."

It's one of those moments where Brad feels so hopelessly out of his depth with Vash that every instinct screams at him to leave lest he say the wrong thing and shatter the kid completely. If Vash was that fragile it'd have happened long ago (it didn't already happen, these aren't broken pieces in his arms, despite what it looks like) and Brad repeats that as a mantra to calm himself down.

"Yeah," Brad says, and nothing else.

When he's calmed down enough to return to the quiet place his brain needs to go to allow him to do this, Brad's fingers sink into thick muscle, iron out tension between metal and machinery. Vash grunts, his breath hot and harsh, teeth set to Brad's shoulder. "Hey. No biting." Tuning the nodes will hurt a lot more if he isn't relaxed.

"Sorry," Vash says, a little brokenly, turning his cheek against Brad's shoulder instead. His fingers bunch in his own sleeve, metal nails dragging on flesh audibly. "Ouch."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Brad murmurs. He feels along the expanse of Vash's lower back, locates subdermal implants and skirts them to press hard into underlying tissue, locating familiar bolts and pins and wiring as he goes along. By the time he lets up, Vash is panting, face turned into his own arm around Brad's neck. "Buck up, I've hardly started yet," Brad says, raising one hand for a moment to tussle Vash's hair.

(He remembers when he first installed Vash's arm, when the intricate process necessitated needles and tubes and periodic sedation. He remembers how Vash froze and stared, like he was afraid. He remembers ignoring that fear, then, and every time Vash stumbled Home afterwards, until Vash wasn't afraid of much of anything anymore.)

Vash groans, little shivers in the muscle under Brad's hand. "I'm good," he whispers after a beat.

Brad wishes he would give himself a little longer to relax. Wishes he wasn't always rushing back to getting hurt. Wishes he'd just let Brad hold him.

If Brad concentrates hard enough, he can tell which of Vash's vertebrae are metal and which are bone. He can follow the horizon of the lowest metal vertebra to the first pair of nodes, several inches above the sacrum and flush to the kid's skin. He presses the nodes in with thumb and middle finger, feels them rise minutely from the skin in response. A twist to each makes them pop, and then rise, exposing the tiny dials that Brad knows by touch, because he designed them.

Vash shifts closer, presses himself into Brad harder, braced in rigid anticipation. The first twist of a dial is slick, loose, indicating just how out of tune his body is. Vash jolts, his hurt little sound buried in the fabric of his own sleeve, then leased to empty air when he ducks his head. The leg pressed to Brad's knee spasms and jitters. "This isn't good, Vash," Brad says, soft. "You have to take better care of yourself."

"Don't start," Vash snaps, and his prosthetic fingers creak, and his teeth grit, and he holds his breath like he's expecting to be struck.

Brad goes still, and his throat clicks when he swallows. "Okay," he says, his voice all rough, hesitant in his own ears. He wants to argue and shout and tear another rift between them, all in the same second he wants to rip his own tongue out; so much could have gone better, if he was only better at keeping his mouth shut. "Relax, little man, c'mon."

Vash doesn't relax, seemingly in defiance. He turns his head, though, tucks his face into the crook of Brad's neck, breathes there shallowly with his arms heavy over Brad's shoulders. His hair tickles Brad's cheek, his heat scorches through the layers between them, he trembles and sweats and mutters little apologies that Brad shushes. Hard to tell if it's pain or panic. Brad twists the dial so he knows which it is.

He doesn't know how parenthood comes naturally to some people. His entire generation was born in space, some from natural births, most from frozen embryos. Brad was a loomborn. Luida was, too. They didn't have anyone they didn't have to share with the other kids. He told himself, when Vash was young, that this was as valid a reason as any to avoid getting attached. Someone like Brad wasn't fatherhood material.

It wasn't until Vash brought Home a little girl who called him Grandpa Brad that he wondered about the truth. If Vash could be a father from whole cloth, what was Brad's excuse?

(The truth is, of course, that Brad remembers how he didn't entertain the idea of being a father to Vash. He looked at Vash and he saw a tool, a monster, a weapon, and he didn't see a child. His excuse is that he's never been half the man Vash is.)

Vash is holding his breath again, trying to choke down his reactions to having his nerves on display and played with. He kicks Brad in the shin, apologizes, promptly does it again, and laughs, wet like he's drowning. "Tell me about your friends," Brad says, conversationally, not as though he's plucking at his kid's circuitry. "Are they good to you? Anyone special?"

"They're good," Vash answers, a little slurred and breathless. His face is damp against Brad's skin. "No one. Special."

Brad hums. "The older fellow seems like your type."

Vash laughs into Brad's neck. "Oh, god, no," he groans. "He's cute, though, sure."

"What's stopping you?" Brad twists the final dial on the first node, watches Vash's right foot tap and his hip torque.

"I look, like, twenty-five," Vash says mournfully.

Brad laughs, and if his hands weren't busy he'd tussle the punk's hair again. "Alright, well, what about the girl?"

"She's. Also cute," Vash says, with more uncertainty, meaning there's more truth to it. He's quiet for a long second, just his ragged breathing in Brad's ear. "They all seem so young to me."

Vash is older than Brad, technically. A lot older. Cycles spent in cryosleep were wiled away while Vash the Stampede wandered the sands of Noman's Land. He's lived two human lifespans, more than, and there's so much he hasn't told Brad. So much that isn't written on his body. So much that didn't drive him Home, wasn't important enough in reality or in his perception.

He's brought companions around before, a few girlfriends, a couple boyfriends, the orphan he found in the sand. They all left him in the end, broke his heart or died or hurt him until he had to leave. It's been a long time since anyone's come Home with Vash. Decades, at this point. Brad doesn't know if he's let anyone close in all that time.

His reactions to Brad's touch sing a familiar song of deprivation. And there's a broken handcuff around his flesh wrist. And there's a new scar on his hip. And he's let his body fall apart rather than have to spend a second with the man who fixes him. Brad tries to stop thinking. "Gonna move onto the next one," he says, depressing the node until it's again flush to Vash's skin, and he crosses over to its counterpart.

Vash is silent for as long as he can be. His jolts become more pronounced, his breathing rougher with every tiny adjustment. Sweat pours off him, slick under Brad's unoccupied hand spread bracingly on his lower back. "You know I love you, kid?" Brad says, to assuage his own guilt or to comfort Vash or to distract himself from the fucking sounds his boy is biting back.

(He remembers, belatedly, Knives' favorite way to torment Vash, with declarations of love and solidarity all while tearing him to shreds.)

Vash sinks into Brad's hold entirely, shivering and burning, seized by a painful sob. "I know," he forces out. "It's okay, I'm fine."

(He's always going to be just another human who uses and breaks and abuses plants.)

"They know I'm not human now," Vash says suddenly, with the weight of tears. "They might not even like me anymore."

It's as simple as that, isn't it. Brad needs a moment to close his eyes and block out cold gray walls so he can emget centered/em or whatever the fuck Luida says and can stop fantasizing about putting his fist through a wall. "They've stuck around this long, and your reputation's never been worse," Brad says. "Might be more accepting than you're giving them credit for."

"I always think that."

There's no good response to that. Brad doesn't try.

Long quiet between them. Still, cool air, familiar gray and white all around, whir of machinery in Vash's arm and legs and his stilted sounds of pain. Brad's occasional quip and Vash's answering rush of breath. Gagging, once, from Vash, and Brad stopping and rubbing his back and holding him until he isn't quivering in a cold sweat, heart thudding visibly in the sliver of his neck that Brad sees. Once Brad is sure Vash won't throw up, an announcement that he will continue.

He works his way through the nodes with efficiency born of experience. He feels over ragged scars, the edges of mesh plating, and checks that everything down to an excised lymph node is just how it was the last time Vash was Home. His back begins to ache sympathetically. Or he's just old.

Eventually, the kid is jelly in his arms, clinging to Brad's neck like it's the only thing keeping him upright. His breathing is shallow, quick, his lashes fluttering against Brad's skin, his entire body burning hot and shivering. Brad finishes probably just in time—two more minutes and the kid would be out cold. "All done," Brad murmurs, and he depresses the last of the nodes, smoothes his hand over the rippling scars and metal.

Slowly Brad extracts himself from Vash's grip, keeping one hand heavy on his shoulder. Vash curls as though around a stab wound. Bent in half, hair lank and matted with sweat, he scrabbles at his shirt, yanks it back down over his torso. "Breathe, little man." His fingers stay creaking clenched in the fabric, and he heaves, his broad shoulders drawn in tight so he almost manages to look small.

Brad rubs the kid's back in broad strokes, grips his bicep with the other hand. Brad is still, feeling Vash shiver in weak pulses, twitch in residual hyper response. Brad squeezes the back of his neck, scritches up through his sweaty undercut until the quaking begins to settle. His heartbeat doesn't feel like a human's, slightly offbeat, only obvious if one has studied plant physiology in order to recreate it with metal and glass. "Alright, buddy?"

Vash groans, throaty, and he nuzzles into Brad's sleeve. "Need a minute," he mumbles. "Thank you."

"Thank me after you feel better," Brad presses his mouth to the top of Vash's head, then turns his cheek into fluffy blond hair. "I still need to check out your ports, but if you stick around a few days it can wait. I wanna do some internal readings too, and fix up your arm's casing. Maybe your legs, if they're banged up." Vash's shirt sticks with sweat under his hand. "Nothing will be as bad as this. I promise."

"My fault it's this bad anyway," Vash says, bitterly. "You don't have to tell me again."

Brad doesn't stall, just keeps rubbing over patches of scar tissue between implants and bolts. Vash is too exhausted now to even muster worry that he's gone too far, or else he's comfortable in his righteousness—and Brad won't deny him that. "Wasn't going to."

(Vash never told Brad what happened to his little girl. He came Home and he cried in Luida's arms for a week and he stayed with them for three years, the longest he's managed since he was a boy. Then he left.)

Perhaps if Brad was a better man, a man like Vash, he'd know what to do when the kid starts sniffling, when his prosthetic hand curls and holds tight to Brad's sleeve. As it stands all Brad knows to do is stay in one place as long as Vash needs.

His breathing evens out eventually, and his spine straightens and his shoulders square and some color returns to his cheeks. He lets Brad peel away—or pushes him, it's never clear who's doing what—and watches with red, fever-bright eyes while Brad stands, moves the chair back over to the table, and sits down.

They talk, then. Just catching up on happenings around the ship and in the red wasteland. They talk until Vash's friend—the surly young guy—separates from Luida's group and comes back to Vash's room. By then Vash is back in his armor, his red coat and his orange glasses and a quick smile.

It's less than an hour together, total. Less than an hour with his boy. It's an honor.


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