thinking about how VASH is painfully protective over you, except when it comes to matters of the heart. he'll throw his life on the line for yours. take a bullet and a beating like it's what he was born to do. yet, when you order a new round of drinks at the bar—your treat, you had claimed—and he watches a stranger slinks just shy of too close to you, he doesn't intervene. not when they duck down to whisper in your ear. nor when he notices the small smile on your face, half-formed, curious, as you sway towards them in quiet interest.
this is one thing vash cannot provide you, one thing he will not protect you from. he can give you everything but what you seek in this stranger. touch—unbridled from the leather of his glove or the metal of his arm. connection—human skin on yours. open desire—unashamed in the crowded bar, not cloyed by fear or guilt or an undeserving, foreign core.
the stranger, emboldened, crowds closer and you bloom carefully, subtly, like the most beautiful flower vash starts to recall from a lifetime ago. it returns to him in fragments. the delicate red petals—swathes of colour against the sterile backdrop of his spaceship, now swipes of light in a dim, crowded bar. sweet smells and tempting fragility.
above the raucous laughter of drunken patrons, vash thinks he hears your honeyed-laugh, low and guarded and warm. so warm. maybe he's imagining it. playing a sound he knows intimately, allowing himself to pretend it's meant for him even when you laugh once more at words the stranger must say, your knee brushing theirs playfully.
vash tips back his drink, drains the dregs, and lets his system flush the alcohol from him before it can dull his mind. the action is learned—from you, from wolfwood, from meryl and milly. to finish a drink quickly and chase the relief that follows. it is another part of him that has become human. he does not resent it, but the hope it grows inside his heart is most devastating.
the stranger's fingers slide down your forearm, your wrist, your palm, until they're tangled in yours between one blink and the next. a murmured question, an answering nod, a brief flash of your gaze to vash—slightly giddy, saying i'll be back soon—and you're led from the bar out into the night.
vash has blended in amongst humanity for one hundred and fifty years, yet he will never be human. not in the way that matters. not to you.
