sweeter dreams (in your arms)
Pairing: Vashwood Rating: T Words: 6,823 Tags: Nightmares, Angst & Hurt/Comfort, Nicholas D. Wolfwood is Bad at Feelings (and Needs a Hug)
Summary: The nightmares and recollections of a past that never feels distant enough don’t plague him every night. It’s like a game of roulette at times. Never a specific pattern or telling when luck will run out. There’s those swaths of luck where Wolfwood can go days or weeks at a time without any sleep disturbances, but lately he’s had a consistently unlucky draw. He doesn’t bother pondering how or why. He simply endures until they stop.
He wonders how many times Vash overheard it, though. The gasping fits as he would wake up in a cold sweat on the verge of screaming.
Wolfwood is haunted by the cold terror of his past. Lucky for him, Vash is good at grounding him in the much warmer present.
--
The fire of the campsite is, thankfully, warm enough to stave off the cold of the desert tonight. Wolfwood sits in front of it atop one of the spare blankets, soaking in said warmth as he watches the steady dance of the campfire. He stretches one leg out, bending the other at the knee to serve as an armrest while he absently taps at the butt of a lit cigarette.
For as much as Nicholas can complain about the heat of No Man’s Land, he hates the cold even more.
He hates shrinking and shivering underneath blankets, and hugging himself in an effort to maintain some of his own body heat. He hates having to stop his own teeth from chattering or when the hair on his neck and arms stands up. Something about these acts always make him feel vulnerable or small, or send his mind back to the times he felt vulnerable and small amidst the cold.
There were more than a few nights where he felt that way at the orphanage despite being looked after and cared for. He can recall far too many nights, when in the clutches of the Eye of Michael, where he felt this way. Whether he lay in a pitiful, broken slump in the corner of a dark cell or confined to the cold hard table of a lab, trembling in dread of how the next experiment might break and morph his body.
The quick flashes of those memories send a chill through him now; A harmless child one moment, bundling up in his blanket as snug as possible while curiously staring up at the stars through the window above his bed. A makeshift adult frozen in his own agony the next moment, hooked up to who knows what through tubes and wires, trapped in a pool of his own blood, eyes wide in shock and barely registering the ceiling above him.
Wolfwood takes a big drag of his cigarette to combat those flashes, inhaling deeply to ensure he can feel the scratchy burn from his throat to his lungs. He lets the smoke sit there for a few beats, the steady dance of the campfire reflecting over the lenses of his glasses. His exhale comes out slowly, the resentment of those colder memories puffing out with the smoke, wafting off to dissipate into the smoke of the fire.
Wolfwood sighs and taps the butt of his cigarette again, shaking off the extra ash.
(Read the rest on ao3) (Reblogs would be really, really appreciated <3)
