Kiss Meme Prompts
42, out of pride
for @ziusik on bsky
“You’re doing so well,” Vash murmurs against Nicholas’s temple. “Just a little bit longer for me, hm?”
“Didn’t have you pegged for a sadist,” Nicholas pants, his hips jerking up into the loose circle of Vash’s fist. Vash’s other arm is wrapped heavily around Nicholas’s chest, the metal strangely warm as he holds Nicholas in the cradle of his body. Somehow Nicholas is fully naked and Vash is still clothed; this doesn’t seem fair, but Nicholas is not about to point this out if it means Vash is going to stop touching him.
“I just don’t want this to be over too soon,” Vash says, nosing into Nicholas’s hair. His breath is warm against Nicholas’s scalp. “You’re so beautiful like this, Nicholas.”
Nicholas. He’s Wolfwood out on the streets, in the endless desert; Mister Wolfwood if Vash is feeling particularly cheeky. Nicholas is something he’s kept for himself, but he’d offered it to Vash freely, and Vash has given it back to him in the quiet dark of this room lit only by moonlight. His name sounds different on Vash’s tongue. It sounds important.
Nicholas whines and arches, straining after the friction of Vash’s hand, and in response Vash drags his fingers slowly down to the base of his cock and squeezes gently.
“Not yet,” he murmurs. “Not yet.”
Nicholas categorically refuses to call the noise that escapes him a whimper. He braces his hands on Vash’s thighs, digging in his fingers, and Vash hums. A metal hand comes up to Nicholas’s jaw, turning his head.
“You’re so good,” Vash says into his mouth. He sounds so pleased, like Nicholas has done anything special, like he has a unique talent for getting jerked off. “So good for me, Nicholas.” He kisses Nicholas fiercely, his hand moving again on Nicholas’s cock, and Nicholas feels something in him turn, and settle. He kisses back and lets Vash play his body like an instrument, like something beautiful, until he comes undone.
He catches his breath lying boneless against Vash’s chest, Vash’s hand drawing patterns in the fluids spattered on his stomach. Vash is still holding him like he doesn’t intend to let go. Maybe he doesn’t. It’s wishful thinking, but — maybe he doesn’t.
1595 words, pre-canon nai pov, uhh some vivisection related body horror but the show did it first, new fandom ma i'm scared
thanks to @portraitoftheoddity for being a terrible influence and also giving this a quick beta read
--
Vash is…
Nai doesn’t have the right word for it, exactly. Rem says kind, Rem says sensitive, but Nai thinks maybe a better description is vulnerable. He’s so exposed, so raw, his heart on his sleeve. Right now it’s just them and Rem and a few other people they don’t see very much, but when everybody else wakes up Nai isn’t sure that’s a good thing. He’s not sure everybody should see Vash like that. There’s no guarantee that they’d treat him as gently as they should.
He’s not sure he wants anybody to see Vash like that. Sometimes Nai thinks it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the other humans never woke up and it was just him and Vash and Rem. Vash is excited about it, excited to meet all the humans sleeping in pods, but Nai’s not sure it’s actually something to be excited about.
Maybe Vash hasn’t noticed, but Nai hears it in Rem’s instructions: be careful. It’s not safe. Why would she tell them to pretend to be humans if there wasn’t some sort of danger because they’re not? He doesn’t know what the danger is but it’s there, Nai can feel it. Vash doesn’t.
So that’s what worries him about Vash. It’s what he thinks about while watching him sleep, the bond between them a warm and thrumming pulse more reassuring than his own heartbeat. Nai tried to talk to him about it once – do you ever wonder why Rem says we have to pretend? – but Vash brushed him off. Either he actually doesn’t see it or just doesn’t want to and Nai doesn’t know how to change that.
Maybe it’s fine for now. If Vash can’t or won’t protect himself then Nai will just have to do it for him. If Vash is fragile then Nai has to be strong, like walls around a city, or ribs around a heart. When the rest of the humans wake up he’ll do what he has to so that Vash will be safe. Whatever that means.
Whatever it takes.
**
Vash flutters nervously (are you sure we should be here, we’re going to get in trouble) but he doesn’t leave, because he’s just as curious as Nai is, and he knows, same as Nai does, that there’s something here to find. There’s something Rem is keeping from them and that means it’s either bad or interesting; either way Nai wants to know.
Nai’s struggling to get through the security when Vash puts in the access code. Nai would kind of like to know where he learned it but isn’t going to ask right now, not when he doesn’t know how much time they have left. He does make a note of it though, just in case he needs it sometime later and Vash isn’t there.
Everything after that happens very fast.
At first he doesn’t understand. Or, he does understand but it doesn’t make sense, won’t make sense; how can the picture of the girl – the Plant – have anything to do with these bits and pieces floating in tubes?
He can feel it coming in that brief moment like the worst most terrifying monster of any story he’s ever heard and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, nothing he can do to unknow what he’s about to understand. But as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.
That’s her. There, that’s what’s left of her. There was another Plant like you and this is what they did to her.
Nai’s not sure who starts screaming first, if it’s him or Vash or both of them at the same time, only that the room’s full of it and it’s like he can hear her screaming, too, with them, he’s hot and cold at the same time and the only thing he can think is get away, we have to get away, we have to go, but he can’t leave without Vash and his body won’t move right, helpless, frozen, he wants to look away but he can’t look away, keeps going back to the eye, her eye, green rather than blue, their sister he never got to know because they took her away, why, why–
The door slides open and for a terrifying moment Nai is certain they’re going to die. It’s only Rem and that should make it safe but when she scoops them into her arms Nai tenses.
She pulls their heads to her shoulders like that will wipe away what they saw. Vash is bawling; Nai is still paralyzed. Floating, suspended, like one of the other normal Plants. Like their sister here.
Rem is saying something. Nai thinks it’s meant to be reassuring, you weren’t supposed to see this or this isn’t going to happen to you, but it sounds like gibberish. He’s still seeing it, seeing her, every time he blinks, so he tries not to blink. He’s sick and woozy, his ears ringing like somebody’s still screaming. He can hear Vash saying his name but he sounds very far away and what’s closer is the voice in his head that says that could be him. That could be you.
He wants to be somewhere else but there’s nowhere else to go. Just this ship and the vastness of space outside.
**
When he can think again, he’s in the room he shares with Vash. He doesn’t really remember getting there and isn’t sure how long it's been. He still feels weird, weak, tired. Scared.
“Nai?”
He turns to look at Vash and the relief on his brother’s face cracks some of the ice that’s formed around him. “You’re back!”
“I didn’t go anywhere,” Nai says. He feels like someone else than he was. A clear sharp line between before and after, something fundamentally changed, and it seems strange that everything else looks the same.
“You weren’t answering me or Rem,” Vash says.
“Oh,” Nai says.
“It’s going to be okay,” Vash says, like he has any way of knowing that. “Rem said…she says she’s sorry, she said it was a mistake, and she would never let anything like – like that happen to us.”
What Nai thinks immediately is and you believe her? Rem has always been good to them. Maybe he should believe her too.
Nobody ever said there’d been another one like them.
Nai wonders if there were others, too. And where they are now.
*
Vash is quick to accept Rem’s reassurances but Nai wonders why she says she’s sorry if she didn’t have something to do with it. She obviously knew. She knew all along; every time she told them she loved them she knew what was in that room and said nothing.
Nai can’t stop thinking about her, the other one like them. Tesla. He wonders what she was like, what her Gate was, whether she would resonate with him the way that Vash did.
What her Gate is? Alive, her file said. Nai can’t stop thinking about that, either. Alive. What does it feel like to live in pieces? Does it still hurt? Is she scared?
Why did the humans do that to her?
Are they going to do it to us?
He wakes up from a nightmare where he’s looking at Vash’s eye in a tank where its swiveling around wildly, and Nai knows that Vash is looking for him (what’s left of Vash because they took him apart like a machine to be disassembled), and three things occur to him with the cold clarity of truth.
One: humans use Plants for what they can provide. What they can do for them, make, produce. That’s what Plants are for, he knows. That’s why all the other Plants are here on the ship, because humans take what they give and Plants don’t ask for anything back. Plants don’t need food or water or rest.
Two: Vash isn’t like Nai. Vash needs to eat and drink and sleep and he hasn’t shown his Gate yet. Vash consumes resources. Vash isn’t useful.
Three: Vash’s file wasn’t in the same place as Nai’s. It was with Tesla’s.
Nai doesn’t usually feel cold but he feels cold now. Shivery and sick. He thinks of the dream, Vash’s eye searching for him. Nai is supposed to keep him safe.
There are two of them, and so many humans all around.
Nai doesn’t know how to keep Vash safe.
Right now – right now maybe he can do it, if he’s vigilant, if he’s careful. But when the others wake up, when all those people these ships are carrying around wake up, then what? They’ll be outnumbered and if they come for Vash, Nai can’t fight them all.
They’ll take Vash and they’ll cut him up into pieces. They won’t kill his brother. It’ll be worse. He won’t be able to stop it. And who’s to say they’ll stop there, maybe they’ll come for Nai, too, maybe they’ll decide he’s more useful when he can’t ask questions or argue or say no.
He can’t. He can’t he can’t he can’t. It’s not going to happen. He’s not going to let it happen.
Drawing his knees to his chest, Nai tries to think of how he can stop it. The beginnings of an idea are already starting to take shape in his mind.
Vash – kind, sensitive, vulnerable Vash – won’t like it. But he doesn’t have to.
Someone needs to do the hard things. Nai can, and Nai will.
Kiss Meme Prompts
20, on a scar
for @westiec on bluesky
Nicholas likes taking his time, when he can. They don’t often have the luxury of it, and anyway to pin Vash the Stampede down for even as long as a few hours when he’s not unconscious is a feat Nicholas takes pride in.
There’s a story in every scar and graft on Vash’s body, lit up by moonlight into silver and gray. Nicholas knows some of them. The divot here on Vash’s left side is a remembrance of a military rifle; Nicholas bends and brushes his lips over it. Vash sighs underneath him, arms folded underneath his head. Nicholas rubs his thumbs over the lines of Vash’s hips and presses his mouth to an ugly whorled scar close to Vash’s spine. Too close for Nicholas’s liking. He hopes whoever shot Vash in the back is dead; although knowing Vash, there are only even odds there. Nicholas shifts where he’s sitting astride Vash’s legs, running his hands up Vash’s back as Vash makes happy melty noises beneath him. He doesn’t know even half of the stories here but in a way he knows all of them: a man too stupid to take the simplest route out of trouble, and a long lifetime of nothing but trouble.
As Nicholas’ hands slide back down his fingers graze a series of thin, silvery scars below Vash’s shoulder blades. Nicholas pauses. He traces one with a finger, and Vash goes still beneath him.
“I gave you these,” Nicholas says, into the quiet and the dark.
Vash shifts, enough so that Nicholas can see the gleam of one eye. “No, you didn’t.”
Nicholas is not in the habit of taking on guilt, whether or not it’s his to bear. But something in his chest pulls tight at the casual denial.
“You forgive too easily.” Nicholas presses down on the scar, and Vash makes a small noise. “You always have.”
Vash turns his face back into the pillow. He doesn’t answer for a long moment.
“It’s not like forgiveness,” he says finally. “What’s between us. You wouldn’t be here if it was.”
Nicholas huffs. He digs his thumbs into just below Vash’s shoulder blades; Vash makes a pleased humming sound, the muscles in his back loosening again.
Vash may be right, although Nicholas will walk barefoot into a sandstorm before he admits it. He leans down and presses his lips to a graft high on Vash’s shoulder. He doesn’t need Vash to say it. If there is penance here, if there is absolution, it’s not in the way Vash melts underneath his hands, or in the way Vash breathes his name. Those are just for Nicholas, and he’s too selfish to share them with any God.
They have time. Penance and absolution have no place here in the quiet moonlight. There’s just Vash, and Nicholas, and the slow press of lips to skin.
Kiss Meme Prompts
44, out of lust
for gaycowboyjesus on bsky
At first Nicholas thinks it’s the gun. It is impressive, and Vash the Stampede should know guns, but Vash doesn’t seem particularly bowled over when Nicholas sheds the wrappings and does what he does best. Then again, they are both busy at the time.
There is something when Nicholas is putting the wrappings back in place, carefully tightening the fastenings and smoothing down the cloth. Something about Vash’s gaze as he watches Nicholas work. Something that makes Nicholas think, oh. There’s something there, or there could be.
Maybe it’s not the gun, not exactly. Nicholas has it leaning up against the table in this cheap hotel, halfway disassembled, and is carefully cleaning and oiling the component parts. Vash walks by the half-open door, audibly pauses, and reappears in the doorway, asking if Nicholas wants company. Nicholas hadn’t been particularly looking, but he’s not about to turn this offer down, and that look is back in Vash’s eyes as Nicholas rubs a cleaning cloth over a delicate piece. Interesting.
Nicholas tests the theory one night out in the open, around a campfire that burns a little too brightly against the desert night. Ostensibly he’s showing Meryl how a shell game works, and winning cigarettes from Roberto in the process. As he moves the cups around on the board, telling Meryl to watch where the coin is, Nicholas is watching Vash watch him. It could be the firelight, what’s in Vash’s eyes. Nicholas thinks it isn’t. When Meryl loses the game and her patience, Nicholas pulls the coin from behind his ear and rolls it over his knuckles, flipping it up in the air and catching it again. Vash looks away, a dusting of pink across his cheeks.
There are a lot of things Nicholas will do on purpose, but this one isn’t: he’s merely bored at the bar, picking at the label on his bottle. It comes off surprisingly easily — cheap glue, go figure — and his fingers work by themselves, folding the paper into a little bird shape.
There’s a strangled noise next to him, and when Nicholas looks up Vash is staring determinedly at his own bottle, hands clenched tight around it. The shell of his ear reddens as Nicholas watches.
“So that’s all it takes to get you going, huh, Stampede?” Nicholas drops the delicately folded little bird in front of Vash. “Birds?”
Vash picks it up carefully, holding it in the palm of his hand like something precious. He glances at Nicholas.
“Yeah,” he says, eyes like firelight in the desert. “Birds.”
Nicholas lifts one hand, brushing the back of his knuckles over Vash’s cheek. Vash shudders, grabbing at his wrist, but his lips when they brush over Nicholas’s palm are gentle and warm. Nicholas’s fingers flex involuntarily and Vash releases him immediately, face going remorseful, but before he can apologize or say something similarly stupid Nicholas puts a thumb on his lips. Vash stills immediately.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Nicholas says, grinning. “In fact, let’s not stop at all.”
The next morning the little bird is attached with a loop of thread to Vash’s pack, and Vash himself is smiling, smiling. Nicholas is smiling too. Roberto takes one look at them and huffs. Nicholas grins unrepentantly, and flicks the little bird on Vash’s pack. Thread is fragile; the bird will likely get blown away or disintegrate before too long.
Vash turns and smiles over his shoulder, and Nicholas lets his hand drop. Then again, he’s seen stranger things survive out here. Maybe the bird will do all right.
