And I know it's hard enough to love me (But I woke up in a safe house)
pairing: vash the stampede x fem!reader warnings/tags: babygirl vash, Depressing Pillow Talk, slighty nsfw towards the end, sharing one bed trope, title taken from let's get married (MITSKI VERS) word count: ~4.2k
“My husband and I would like a room,” you say with a smile as you wrap your arms around Vash’s and lean into him. You feel his body startle at your touch, his gaze on top of your head as you play the part of the excited bride. You think he might pass out on you if you don’t get him to room, and fast. “We’re on our honeymoon.”
“In this shithole of a town?” The innkeeper asks with a raised eyebrow, looking from you to Vash, who only lets out a sheepish chuckle as he scratches the back of his head. Despite his sluggish breaths, his slow blinking gaze, and the red slowly staining his shirt.
You shrug, trying hard not to be impatient. “There are worse places.”
There are. You’ve survived them. Compared to the slums of December or September, this shabby, worn inn is paradise.
“Yer right ‘bout that,” he laughs, acquiescing, as he tosses a ring of keys into your hand and takes your pouch of money. Vash is slumped into you now, and you can tell he’s trying his hardest not to place the full weight of his body on you. To anyone else, it would look as if he was clinging to you, the picture of a loving couple.
“Cheers to the happy couple!” the man calls out, tipping his hat down as the two of you move to the stairs in front of you.
Vash grins brightly, and manages a cheery, polite, “Thank you!” as the two of you pass.
You can’t resist the huff of a laugh that escapes your lips as you make your way up the stairs, and then into the small, modest dust lined room.
Vash collapses on the bed with a sharp exhale, and you immediately move to take off his shirt but his hand stops you by the wrist before you can.
“Sleep,” he murmurs, eyelashes fluttering. His fingers tightens, just imperceptibly, (even on the brink of sleep, he’s overly conscious about his strength, you think). In a way, it feels like he’s wordlessly imploring you to stay. “Jus’ need sleep. Not gonn’ take long.”
You blink. His fingers loosen, and in a few seconds his breathing has evened out into steady breaths. You’re relieved. He’s already stopped bleeding. From the months you’ve traveled with him, known him, he’s healed quickly enough that any other person wouldn’t understand. You still don’t. Not fully. But you’ve never asked questions. And as long as he never asked you any questions, that was fine with you.
You stay on the bed, by his side for a few minutes, watching him. You take off his sunglasses and put them on the nightstand after wiping the blood off them. He’s an unusually pretty man. Too pretty for No Man’s Land. You trace his face with your eyes. The beauty mark right under his right eye to his parted pink lips. Then down to the rise and fall of his chest to the plates of the cybernetic prosthesis of his left arm.
Lost technology. Not many people had access to that kind of technology. Or the knowledge to build that arm, let alone repair it.
Standing, you give him one last glance, reload your revolver and tuck it into the holster at your side, before you leave in search of medical supplies to patch him up when he wakes. You scope out the town while at it. It’s small; a handful of residents armed to the teeth with guns, and even less children. There are pipes that run through the town that you assume are fed fresh water by a nearby plant. You locate a medical shop at the center of town.
You buy antiseptic, gauze, and a few other things, before making your way back to the inn. The innkeeper gives you a wink.
When you open the door to the room, Vash is awake.
The sound of his harsh breathing fills the air. His metal hand fisted into the sheets so tightly you think it might tear. You meet his frantic gaze, and almost immediately, he slumps in relief, eyes dropping to his lap.
You quietly shut the door. “Nightmare?”
Sometimes, in his sleep, you hear him call out for a woman named Rem.
He lets out a loud laugh. You pretend not to notice the shaky undertone of it. “I slept for longer than I thought!” His metallic hand curls and unfurls, catching on the dull light of the room. “I thought you…” he trails off, suddenly embarrassed. He looks away.
“I brought supplies.” You place the bag on the table, next to Vash’s nickel revolver. You turn back to him: “Strip.”
His arms immediately make a cross on his chest, as if he’s already stripped, face bright red.
“I can do it myself—!”
Vash the Stampede. The humanoid Typhoon. The Sixty Billion Double Dollar Man. The man you originally only followed after to collect the criminals who swarmed to him, like flies to corpses. The man who leaves a trail of calamity and disaster in his wake. The man who continuously, everyday, without fail, begged you to leave the criminals you captured alive. A constant enigma and a headache. A walking contradiction.
“I’ll leave the room,” you say. “Don’t take too long.”
You leave the room, leaning against the wall, and wait two minutes.
You open the door, and Vash jumps with a yelp, stripped to the waist, arms covering whatever he can manage.
Scars cover his entire torso, running all the way down his flesh arm to his hand. Deep scars, shallow scars, scars that have never entirely healed, leaving the skin dark pink and the flesh caved in. There are more scars than there is unblemished skin, missing chunks of skin replaced with metal plates and seams.
It's not a pretty sight, but you’ve never much cared for pretty.
His face is flushed. “I thought—”
“I lied.”
“!?”
You shut the door with your heel, and then grab the gauze and antiseptic. “Turn around.”
Wordlessly, he turns, ears reddening. You direct him to sit on the bed, and then you begin to apply the antiseptic. The two of you sit in silence. You, disinfecting his fresh wounds and wrapping his back, while you also ignore the way his body tenses at your touch, his pointedly straight gaze, the constant bob of his throat, as if he’s looking for the right words to say.
He reluctantly speaks up. “You’re…not hurt, are you?”
“I’m fine,” you reply. Just a few scrapes and a bruised arm from where you had landed wrong after trying to dodge multiple rounds of bullets from the latest batch of criminals that had schemed to capture the humanoid typhoon. After hauling them to the police, Vash hiding away, you had gained yourself a hefty paycheck before being run out of the city, a bleeding Vash in tow.
You’re nearly done. The wounds aren’t nearly as severe as they had been only a couple of hours ago. The skin has healed enough that it’s already forming a scar. You don’t know much about Vash the Stampede, but you know enough to understand that he isn’t human. Not completely.
But he smiles. He laughs. He detests the very violence that nurtured you. He likes pizza and donuts. He’s moved to tears almost as easily as he seems to get hurt. He’s good with children. They trust him. Children love him in a way they don’t you: pulling him down to their height, climbing him, leading him and all his long limbs along. The way he takes their words seriously, nodding with all the gravity of a legal proceeding as they talk about the weather, their favorite foods, the silly argument they got into with a sibling. He smiles, and when he turns that smile onto you, it makes you think of everything warm and how you had forgotten what it meant to be happy.
He may not be human, but he is. Everything good about humanity that had been lost and forsaken when mankind crashed onto this unforgiving, harsh planet.
You pull away, resisting the urge to press your fingers down on his skin, to trace the map of his scars and feel him shudder underneath you. He’s as warm as a furnace. The heat of his body stays with you. “How do you feel?”
He beams at you, one hand on his upper arm as he swings his arm around. “Perfect!”
You sigh. “Don’t push yourself now. Let me finish wrapping you.”
He retreats back to his original position, still smiling, all reservations about his partial nudity forgotten as he waits for you to finish.
Vash speaks. “You didn’t kill them.”
You glance up. You can only partially see his expression from your position behind him, but the pull of his lips is unmistakable. He’s smiling. And you don’t need to look at him to see it. That sweet smile of his that pulls at his eyes and softens his entire face.
Your hands still. You hadn’t killed them. The Archie Brothers, the two brothers infamous for targeting banks and other commercial properties, who had gotten wind of Vash being in the city and emptied hundreds of rounds into the bar the two of you had momentarily settled in for a quick drink. It’s not as if you could’ve killed them in the first place. Vash was nothing if not easygoing, but keeping the criminals you turned in for a paycheck alive was the one thing he firmly enforced. Going as far to shield their bodies with his own.
He’s so troublesome sometimes.
You want to ask if he would’ve let you in the first place. If you had a choice.
You force yourself to wind the bandage over his arm. “You must be rubbing off on me.”
Vash turns, faster than you anticipate, eyes wide. You can see the pale irises of his eyes. He’s delighted. “Really!?”
You blink, staring at him in silence. He goes red, jerking back, scuttling backwards with his hands like a crab until he reaches the end of the bed and then air. He falls back first, legs raised up in the air.
He sits up with a sheepish chuckle, rubbing the back of his head. “I…I guess I got a little ahead of myself…”
“...pffft.”
He straightens just as you dissolve into full blown laughter. And when your laughter dies down he’s looking at you, eyes wide, like he’s seeing you for the first time. You clear your throat and look away, embarrassed. You don’t think you’ve ever laughed in front of him.
“...Something on my face?”
He jumps, frantically waving. “No, no. I just thought,” he hesitates. “You should laugh more.”
Something in your chest gives. You can’t stand it. Not when he looks at you like that. Eyes shining, lips curved softly, face animated like you’re the only thing that’s ever mattered.
People like him aren’t supposed to survive No Man’s Land. They aren’t built to. But you’ve seen with your own eyes how capable Vash is. It didn’t take much to kill a man in these lawless lands, but you had never seen him miss his target. Your didn't need to take pride in your aim to know it was excellent. You just didn’t have the same consideration for criminals Vash did. A life or two wasn’t something you lost sleep over. Casualties happened. And if it was a criminal, then it was simply divine judgment.
You stand from the bed and walk towards the desk. You take a doughnut out of a brown paper bag and throw it to him.
“For me?” He exclaims, easily catching it, even though you had thrown it to him.
You don’t respond. He enthusiastically tears it in half, and offers you the bigger piece.
You shake your head, the quirk of your lips, fond. “I don’t like sweet things.”
“I see…” he says thoughtfully, as if he’s digesting the information. “That makes sense. You don’t normally eat…”
It strikes you that this is the most you’ve ever talked about yourself. You’re unusually talkative today, and he notices. You find that you don’t mind. It’s alarmingly easy to talk to him now.
In the handful of months you’ve been traveling together, you’ve learned that all the crimes attributed to him had been the work of his twin, a man called Million Knives. A man you had managed to steal a glimpse of only once before Vash had locked you in a closet before rushing away. You were still sore over that. Even though he retrieved you soon after, apologizing profusely, accepting your cold shoulder with grace. Until you couldn’t bear the way he trailed after you with a pathetically sad expression on his face, and told him to stop.
You never asked him for details. Of why his brother was terrorizing towns and cities, stealing plants and lives along the way. You’ve never pushed. You weren’t following the man to learn his life story. You were in it for the money.
Until one day, you realized he knew your exact bar order by heart. The kinds of alcohol you’d drink, and the kinds you wouldn’t touch. It was a small thing. But he looked so pleased when he placed the glass down, as he waited for you to drink it.
You knew his fear of you becoming potential collateral damage, but somewhere along the way you think you had grown on him. Somewhere along the nights listening to him cry out in his sleep for a woman named Rem, somewhere along watching the sliver of light heralding sunrise on the horizon together, somewhere in the silence in the dark of nights shared.
You think he’s grown on you too.
“Have you eaten?” He asks.
“Not hungry,” you reply, glancing out the window. Pitch black other than the glow of a single lone street lamp nearly a block down. “I’m going to sleep.” It wasn’t often you got to sleep on a bed, and you planned to make full use of it.
You go to the bathroom to wash up. When you walk out, Vash enters the room with a load of blankets. You look at him curiously.
“I asked the innkeeper for some blankets.” He laughs, recalling the conversation. “I said that my…” he trails off. “My…ah…wife…” Red paints his cheeks, and he looks away, raising the mound in his arms a bit higher to cover his face.
“...”
“...”
You watch as he makes his way to the other side of the room, keeping his gaze pointedly straight, and places the pile down.
“You’re sleeping on the floor?”
“That’s right!” Vash pats the floor a little too vigorously for your liking. “Just like usual!”
You look at the bed. It’s big enough for the two of you so you had assumed you’d be sharing it… You’ve never shared a bed together before, but you had no problems with it, not with Vash.
He darts into the bathroom quickly enough that you don’t have time to say anything else. You hear the water run, turn off the lights, and get underneath the covers.
Then you wait.
When he leaves the bathroom, he gingerly folds his red jacket and sets it down on the chair. You wait until he passes the bed to strike, grabbing him by the shirt, and hauling him down onto the bed.
He yelps, a surprised, high pitched, noise that tears out of his throat.
“We can share,” you say to him, his face inches apart from you. You can see his wide eyes, the bob of his throat working, pink lips parted as he stares at you, but your gaze is resolute.
And that’s that.
You figure that it might be easier for him to sleep if you aren’t facing him, so you turn to face the wall. You stare at the wall for ten minutes, waiting for him to settle into his side of the bed. Not even a faint rustle of the sheets. You wait a little longer. You can’t even hear him breathing.
You turn back around to face him and immediately he draws back even farther from his original position, on the tip of the bed where he’s precariously close to falling off.
A nervous chuckle. “I…”
“Sleep. I won’t say it again.” You study him, his slightly panicked expression, the grip of his metal hand fisted into the sheets. Oh. “Is it me?”
“N-nothing like that—!” He inches forward, just a little bit (still keeping his distance), puts his hand underneath the pillow, and squeezes his eyes tight. You watch him for a few seconds longer, specifically at the bead of sweat forming on the side of his temples. Your gaze drifts down, from the delicate slope of his nose to his lips.
You turn back around.
Silence settles in the room like a muffled blanket. You still can’t tell if he’s breathing or not, and for some reason, sleep doesn’t come to you as easily as it usually does. The bed is too soft.
You don’t know why you say it. Maybe it’s because you’re awake. Maybe it’s because you know Vash isn’t asleep.
“When I was a child, a plant saved me.”
A few heartbeats pass.
Vash’s voice is softly hesitant. It feels like something gentle and your stomach coils tight, as if in preparation for the inevitable recoil that always follows. “Were you sick?”
“I was.” The darkness reveals patterns in the wall, and your eyes go blurry with them. “The entire town was sick. Children were dying.” Religious fervor had taken ahold. Daily ritual acts of praying and calling out for salvation.
Taking you to your town’s plant when you were on the brink of death had been your mother’s first and final act of love. Afterwards, your mother often recounted in a drunken stupor that she was sure you were going to die. That it may have even been a mercy if you had. The plant cured you. Your mother was sure of it, the plant worshiping denizens of the town were sure of it. Nobody knew how. Nothing except for the fact that shortly after—
“The plant died the day after. I’ve never forgotten it.” You killed it. It was the first life you took.
It changed you. On a fundamental level. Something had happened to you on that day you can’t even remember. But that’s something you don’t think you can share. How sometimes, you don’t even need to dodge bullets.
That plant died, and now you are here, sharing a bed with a self proclaimed pacifist who refused to kill under any circumstances. A man who defied all logic and reasoning. A good man anyone would call misguided. A fool. An idealist.
In the end, lives would always demand sacrifice. It was either you, or them. It was kill, or be killed.
You don’t know what face he’s making behind you. Is he horrified to know that your life had ended before it started? That you were responsible for taking away the source of life for hundreds of people? That your existence was predicated on sacrifice and death before you even learned how to walk? You were at inherent odds with the idealism of pacifism. With him. Not out of choice, but because of circumstances out of your control.
Maybe a part of you wants him to hate you. Maybe a part of you is looking to be understood. But you thought that part of you had died long ago.
You shut your eyes, prepared to go to sleep.
Vash exhales. “I don’t…”
You open your eyes.
There’s a conviction in his voice you don’t understand. “You didn’t kill it.” You wonder how he can be so confident. “The plant saved you.” I know it did.
You face him once more. He’s closer than he was before, close enough to easily touch. “Sometimes,” you start, hating the way he’s smiling at you in a way that touches his eyes, framed in the pale moonlight. “You really make me mad.”
His jaw comically drops open. You watch as panic instantly overtakes his face until he realizes the lack of heat in your words. His lips push back together to form a pout. He says your name.
“Why is your brother stealing plants?”
Money. Power. Recognition. Those would seem to be the most likely answers, but you’ve seen the wreckage that Million Knives leaves in the wake of his destruction. It’s cruelty. It’s too calculated to be careless. It’s pure hatred. You can’t fathom a man like as Vash's brother. Twin brother.
But then that voice inside you speaks. Are you really any different?
Vash blinks, and then his face falls, gaze downcast. It feels odd to see him like this. You rarely catch him without a big, sheepish smile on his face nowadays, especially when he catches you looking at him, but you had seen him with a forlorn expression, shoulders slumped, in your early days of traveling together. When there were no children to demand a ride on his back, when the two of you momentarily passed an overcast shadow, in the darkness of the night when he thought nobody was looking.
You almost regret asking him in the first place. But he’s so close you can count his pale eyelashes, and you lose your train of thought.
“You could say it’s…” his mouth twists, “revenge.”
Revenge.
He’s not the first misanthrope in these lands. You think the occasional mass murderous thought, and you resist acting on it more often than you didn’t, the days before you met a blonde pacifist gunman. There’s only so much a human being can take.
You think of the kaleidoscope of scars that line his body. You only saw the ones on his upper body, but you don’t doubt the existence of countless others everywhere else.
It must’ve hurt. It must’ve been other people. People intent on capturing him. People who wanted to hurt him. You hate them all. Every single person that has permanently marked him a way that wasn’t theirs to do in the first place. You hate whoever severed his arm, whoever had repaid his kindness with violence.
Desire strikes you, hot and sudden. You want to count them all, trail your fingers over the heat of his body, the uneven layers of skin, and feel his breaths underneath you. You look at him, as his gaze lifts, remeeting your eyes, pleading for your understanding. Ball and chain to his brother. Shouldering the sins of family. You don’t understand it. Why he’s looking to you for acceptance, as if it’d even make a difference.
He is the only good thing in this harsh world, and you’ve found him.
“Maybe,” you tell him, as he hangs onto your every word. “We deserve it.”
You see the split second sadness weighing in his eyes, at your words, right before you curl your fingers into his shirt and pull him to your lips.
His eyes go wide, and something that sounds like a mixture of an exhale and gasp leaves his lips. You separate, your lips a hairbreadth away from his, as he stares at you.
“Is this okay?” You ask. If it wasn’t, you’d go back to sleep, and forget it ever happened in the first place. You made your move. It wasn’t reciprocated.
But then he nods, so vigorously that his blonde hair flops into his eyes.
You smile, and Vash lights up.
You kiss him again, drawing his face closer with your hand on his cheek. He complies with his entire body, closing the distance immediately, like if he can’t help himself. His lips are clumsy against yours, too eager, too desperate, wet and messy, as he pants into your mouth. Heat pools in your stomach, and you want more. You run your tongue over the seam of his lips, and he lets out a sigh of something that sounds reverently like your name against your mouth.
Then your tongue is in his mouth, and his flesh hand jumps. There’s a breathless, throaty whimper, the entire weight of his body pressing tight against you. So you can feel every part of him. How he’s willing to give you everything in the name of desire, of love. And when you pull away, his lips follow yours, spit slicked and swollen.
You easily lay him flat on his back as you move to straddle him. You kiss him again briefly, tenderly. Then you sit up and pull up his shirt, just enough to expose his torso. His metal fingers fist into the sheets when your finger goes to a scar of pink skin right about his hips, lightly following it to right below his chest.
He chokes with a shudder that wracks his body. You can feel him, heavy and hard pressing against you. The slight jump of his hips, barely restraining himself from rutting into you.
“It’s not…” Vash struggles with the words with heaving breaths, face bright red, embarrassment splayed out. He looks to the side. “A pretty sight.”
You think of heated irons and blistering pain. Thousands of blades slicing you open, needles penetrating flesh, blind white heat enveloping your body, and the mindless oblivion that would follow.
You realize you’ve been silent a beat too long when Vash looks like he’s preparing for your inevitable rejection.
“I’ve got scars too,” you say, finally. Quietly. You take his mechanical hand in yours and slowly slide him up underneath your shirt. “You want to see?”
