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Nicholas slammed the Punisher against the wall of their crappy little motel room hard enough that the bed squeaked in protest next to it.
“Let me see,” he snarled.
Behind him, Vash stood placidly in the doorway, sluggishly bleeding from the graze in his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing his jacket; he’d taken it off to shield the girl at the saloon and had left himself vulnerable instead. The black material of his shirt hid the wound well, but Nicholas could smell his blood from here.
It set Nicholas’s own veins boiling.
Nicholas violently dug through the travel bag he’d thrown on the bed until he found the suture kit, a roll of bandages, and a half empty bottle of whiskey. He jabbed his finger at the bathroom.
Vash at least knew better than to fight him on this. He followed the silent order, slinking into the bathroom to sit down on the toilet and take off his shirt while Nicholas laid his supplies out on the tiny sink.
He wanted to stab Vash with the needle, to make the business of stitching him up hurt him as much as it hurt Nicholas. Against his will, his hands were gentle as they cleaned the blood away from the wound. Vash watched, unnaturally silent and still, as Nicholas sloshed whiskey over it. He gave no indication he even felt the sting.
Nicholas took a swig from the bottle himself for good measure.
Vash maintained his preternatural quiet as Nicholas stitched him up with brusque efficiency. He hadn’t said a word since Nicholas had dragged him out of the way of that bullet. A bullet Vash would have let hit him without a second thought if Nicholas hadn’t intervened.
Bandaging Vash’s injury did nothing to soothe the simmering frustration under Nicholas’s skin. As soon as Nicholas was finished, he stormed back out into the bedroom and grabbed the Punisher off the wall.
Vash appeared in the doorway again, eyes tight and expression flat like he thought Nicholas was about to leave. Instead, Nicholas flicked the buckle to loosen the straps of the Punisher. He forced himself to move slowly as he undid her wrapping and set about taking her apart. Cleaning her always soothed him. He needed to focus on his hands and all her mechanisms and fiddly bits. It helped him stop thinking, stop seeing Vash standing there doing nothing while some asshole pointed a gun at him. Again.
Vash sat down on the bed as Nicholas spread bits of the Punisher out across the floor and set to work. He seemed to be trying to make himself as unobtrusive as possible.
Good. If he drew Nicholas’s attention right now, he would suffer his wrath.
Fifteen minutes in, Nicholas’s movements were no longer so sharp and jerky. Thirty minutes in, he’d forgotten that Vash was even there.
More than an hour later, as Nicholas was slotting the Punisher’s final pieces back into place, Vash crouched down behind him, watching his hands over his shoulder.
“Next time, I’ll just fuckin’ step in front of the bullet myself.”
At Vash’s sharp intake of breath, Nicholas laughed.
“Yeah, don’t like that, do you? How do you think I feel every time you got a gun pointed at you and refuse to do anything about it?”
“Wolfwood…”
“Don’t you Wolfwood me. The least you could do is try not to get shot!”
Vash’s weight settled against Nicholas’s back. His arms wrapped around Nicholas from behind, chin resting on Nicholas’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
Nicholas huffed, “You always are.”
They stayed like that for a long moment, Nicholas rewrapping the Punisher while Vash held him and failed to say anything he hadn’t said before.
“Nico,” Vash murmured as Nicholas tightened the last of the Punisher’s straps.
His lips brushed along the edge of Nicholas’s jaw. “I promise I’ll try not to get hurt.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it, Blondie.”
Even this short conversation had set his heart back into a pounding double-time rhythm in his chest. If he thought too much about that gun aimed at Vash’s chest, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. Anger and fear washed over him in equal measure. Some of the peace he’d managed to find in the Punisher vanished under the wave.
The arms around his waist tightened. “Nico, do you trust me?”
“I trust you to martyr yourself like a self-sacrificing asshole,” Nicholas snarked.
Vash’s sigh ghosted over the skin of Nicholas’s throat. “Nick.”
“How do you expect me to trust a promise like that? You’ve never followed through before.”
“I’d say I’m sorry, but you won’t accept that either.”
“Actions speak louder than words, Needle-noggin.”
They went still again, close and intimate and yet so far away. A quick sideways glance showed Nicholas the contemplative expression on Vash’s face, his eyes unfocused and a little sad.
“Do you trust me?” he asked again. “I want to try something.”
It was Nicholas’s turn to sigh. “Yeah, Lord knows why, but I do trust you. I just need you to keep your word.”
Vash nodded. “I will. I’ll show you. Take your clothes off.”
Nicholas’s whole body reacted to those words. He swallowed against the heat blooming in his chest and between his legs to complain.
“You want to have sex now? We’re arguin’.”
Vash laughed, and a little knot in Nicholas’s stomach loosened. It gave way to more of that feverish need spreading up from Nicholas’s loins and down from his heart.
Sometimes he hated how quickly Vash could get that reaction out of him.
“Have you ever been tied down before?”
“We were literally just tied up at the saloon.”
“Not what I meant.”
Nicholas thought back to metal tables and being strapped down onto them. To scalpels and foreign fluids and blood.
He shuddered. Vash loosened his hold.
“Or maybe not.”
Nicholas dragged Vash back into place so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. He shook his head hard. He didn’t want to think about that with Vash. He didn’t want Vash to leave.
Vash seemed to sense what he needed. He blanketed Nicholas from behind with his whole body.
“You know the answer to that,” Nicholas said, voice rough.
“This would be different. I’ll show you that you can trust me. That I can keep my promises.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. I said it, didn’t I?”
Vash smiled. He kissed Nicholas’s cheek. Then he unwrapped an arm from Nicholas’s waist. His long fingers toyed over the straps of the Punisher.
“These would work well.” He was asking for permission. Like Nicholas could ever deny him anything in moments like this.
“Gonna tie me to my own cross, Blondie?”
“Hm, now there’s an idea.”
Nicholas shivered. Vash finally moved away from him enough for Nicholas to turn around and drag him into a kiss. Vash kissed him back, slow and reassuring against the sudden frenetic energy that had started building in Nicholas’s veins. Now that he was letting it, the desperation he had felt in that moment at the saloon, while Vash stared down the barrel of a gun, had begun to stoke the fires that Vash had started with his simple command.
“Take your clothes off.”
This time it was whispered tenderly against Nicholas’s lips as they broke from the kiss. Vash sat back on his haunches to watch as Nicholas started unbuttoning his shirt, fingers fumbling. He didn’t know where this urgency had come from, but he couldn’t bear a second longer without Vash touching him.
Too bad Vash got off on watching. He backed off further when Nicholas reached for him, made Nicholas slow down and take a breath before ridding himself of his shirt. Once Nicholas stood before him—naked and vulnerable while Vash remained fully clothed—Vash leaned down and picked up the Punisher like she weighed next to nothing.
“You know I was kidding about the Punisher, right?”
Vash flashed him a bright grin, the kind that used to set Nicholas’s teeth on edge because it felt so fake to him. He knew a little better now, but he still didn’t like how it never quite reached Vash’s eyes.
“Well, I wasn’t,” Vash said cheerily. He set the Punisher down next to the bed and set about securing a few of the straps to the creaky metal footboard. It took Nicholas a moment to realize that Vash was planning on tying him to the cross standing. The bed was there to offer support so she didn’t topple over in the middle of whatever Vash had planned. The tiniest thread of anxiety curled in his stomach, quickly squashed.
“Come here, Nico.”
Like a faithful lamb stepping up to the sacrificial altar, Nicholas went. He let Vash take his left hand, run his fingers over the delicate veins on the inside of his wrist, kiss his pulse point with a reverence he didn’t deserve. As if their stations had suddenly flipped, and Nicholas had become the angel in this scenario while Vash had become the wicked mortal destined to ruin him.
Nicholas found he wouldn’t mind being ruined.
Gently, Vash turned Nicholas and guided him backwards until he hit the Punisher. The fabric of her wrappings rasped roughly against his bare skin, and beneath them, the unyielding press of her lost technology metals forced Nicholas’s spine straight. It was an inescapable reminder that this was no holy symbol at his back. She was a weapon of mass destruction.
Vash intended to turn her to a gentler purpose tonight. Or at least a less deadly one.
Long, deft fingers brought Nicholas’s wrist up to the arm of the Punisher. Three of her straps wrapped around his wrist, holding him in a secure embrace. He tested the give, and found he could break free if he truly wanted to, but it would take some work to do so. The Punisher’s straps were designed to lift a three-hundred-pound weapon. They could hold Nicholas too.
Vash held out his hand, and Nicholas offered him his free hand without a second thought. This time, he set his teeth to Nicholas’s pulse point. He suckled the skin, drawing blood to the surface. Nicholas had never thought of his wrists as sensitive before this moment, but with Vash lavishing attention there, he’d become hyperaware of each swipe of Vash’s tongue over his skin, the light tug of his teeth, the way his own pulse beat under Vash’s devout attention. By the time Vash moved his arm to attach it to the Punisher, Nicholas’s thighs were wet.
He wondered what he looked like to Vash right now. Desperate and wanting. Flushed and dripping. His previous worried anger faded entirely for a hunger that Vash had deliberately fed.
He stood in a position that mirrored Jesus on his cross. Nicholas had been raised religious enough to know this kind of blasphemy should be sending him straight to Hell.
He’d go there gladly for Vash.
Behind him, he was aware of the power of the Punisher. She was hardly a divine symbol. She killed with bullets that ripped bodies to shreds. She may have been hidden in the clothing of a lamb herself, but she bound Nicholas’s soul as surely as her sturdy straps held him in place. He couldn’t escape the death she wrought. He didn’t even know if he wanted to. Not if it meant keeping the people he loved safe.
If it meant keeping Vash safe.
Still, even with his weapon at his back and his feet secure beneath him, Nicholas couldn’t help but feel a spike of humiliation churn in his gut as Vash stepped back to admire his handiwork. Vash, who looked at him like a pious man might look at a righteous god, awed and ardent, love and fervor shining in his unnaturally blue eyes. Nicholas couldn’t possibly be the idol that Vash looked at like that.
And yet, here he was.
“Okay?” Vash asked, interrupting Nicholas’s wandering thoughts.
Nicholas nodded. Swallowed. Tugged on the Punisher’s straps.
“This is different than what we’ve done before, so I’m going to need you to go over this with me. Tell me your colors.”
Nicholas’s mind flashed to plants, floating in their tanks and oblivious to the world around them. To their different colors and the meanings behind them. Vash had taught him this color system early when they’d started sleeping together, but he rarely asked Nicholas to recite it before sex.
“Blue is safe. Keep going. It’s good. Red is slow down. Talk. Try something else. Black is an immediate stop.”
Nicholas wet his lips. Words were becoming difficult and they hadn’t even done anything yet.
“Good boy,” Vash praised, and Nicholas’s gut clenched. “And your word?”
“Chapel.”
Vash rewarded that by coming closer. Close enough to cup Nicholas’s chin and kiss him.
“My good boy.”
“Fuck,” Nicholas hissed, when he could breathe again.
Vash grinned at him, and this time the light reached all the way up into his eyes.
“Color?”
Nicholas tugged his bonds. “Blue.”
“Good.”
And Vash was on him again, mouth biting a searing line down Nicholas’s jaw to the base of his throat. He moaned. On instinct, he tried to wrap his arms around Vash, to bring him closer, but he came up hard against the bindings of the Punisher. Somehow the thought of her holding him back from reaching Vash made him moan louder.
God, he was wet and Vash had barely touched him.
Vash slid down his body, mouth following the line of the long scar left by Conrad’s experiments, from his sternum to his belly. His hands traced the intersecting scars under Nicholas’s pectorals, moved up to cup his chest and tweak at his nipples. The opposing textures of Vash’s flesh and metal hands made Nicholas arch his back, pressing helplessly into his touch. Vash’s mouth moved farther south.
Nicholas was burning all over. It felt like the Punisher had just fired her lasers, the heated metal searing the rough fabric of her wrappings and branding into Nicholas’s back. Every time he tugged on her straps, she burned hotter, brighter.
Vash put his teeth to the soft skin of his lower stomach. Nicholas’s hips bucked, but Vash was quick to pin him down. Between Vash’s hands and the Punisher’s hold, Nicholas felt trapped in the best possible way. The bright sparks of pain from Vash’s fangs went straight to his cock. He desperately wanted to bury his hands in Vash’s hair, shove him down to his hard, aching cock, but the Punisher held him helpless in her grasp.
Finally, Vash pulled away from the bruise he had sucked into Nicholas’s skin to admire his handiwork. Nicholas tried to roll his hips, to move Vash along to where he really wanted him, but Vash only pinned him harder and tutted at him.
“Impatient, Ni~co,” he singsonged. Nicholas was tempted to kick him.
As if sensing his intentions, Vash ducked all the way down to lift one of Nicholas’s legs from the floor. It forced him to put more of his weight on the Punisher. She kept him from falling as Vash began a new meandering path up the inside of his leg, tongue and lips and teeth charting a wet path from his heel, up his calf, to the back of his knee, where Vash lingered to suck another bruise. Nicholas strained to keep his balance, to stop his other knee from buckling.
Vash gave the new bruise one final lick, almost apologetic, and pulled both of Nicholas’s knees fully over his deceptively broad shoulders, taking all of his weight. Now Nicholas was truly trapped between the Punisher and Vash, with no leverage left to defend himself.
For a moment, they stayed there, Nicholas squirming under Vash’s rapt attention. Vash, for his part, seemed content to simply look at Nicholas, spread open like a feast before him.
“Mmm, you’re so pretty, baby, did you know? So wet and hard for me.”
Nicholas nodded, though Vash didn’t appear to be paying attention. “Please. Vash.”
Vash hummed. He turned his head to press a soft kiss into Nicholas’s thigh. Nicholas trembled against him.
“I love you, you know,” Vash said, conversationally. Nicholas blinked and tried to pull his brain back from where it was starting to melt out of his ears. Vash tended to babble during sex, but this…this sounded different.
“I’m terrified all the time,” Vash continued, “Of loving you. Of losing you. I guess I sometimes forget that it would be the same from the other side.”
Nicholas tensed. He couldn’t do this, have a conversation like this, while he was naked and hard and tied to his goddamn gun. But apparently his vulnerability was acting as the trigger for Vash’s sudden honesty.
“It’s hard to believe you love me the way I love you.” Nicholas opened his mouth to reply, but Vash silenced him with a gentle nip to his sensitive skin. “I know you do. You wouldn’t be here, trusting me to touch you, if you didn’t. You put so much faith in me, all the time. I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t want you to leave.”
“Not…” Nicholas had to stop and clear his throat, blinking, “Not goin’ anywhere, Vash.”
The smile Vash angled up towards him was one of the most beautiful Nicholas had ever seen. He looked like an angel, kneeling in supplication to a venerated effigy of God.
“I can’t promise I’ll never scare you like that again,” Vash whispered, soft and reverent, “but I really will try. I’ll remember what it felt like, right here, holding onto you. I’m going to keep this as a reminder that I can’t leave you alone here.”
“Don’t think—don’t think I’d survive that, angel.”
Vash kissed him again, a silent promise. Then his tongue came out to forge a new path up Nicholas’s thigh. The fire that had been banked by Vash’s oath rekindled, bigger and brighter than it had been before.
By the time Vash reached the core of him, Nicholas was truly aflame.
Vash closed his lips over the head of Nicholas’s cock, jutting out from between his folds. Nicholas keened. The few thoughts he’d managed to gather flew right back out of his head. Vash sucked, and Nicholas yanked harshly against the Punisher’s straps. She gave him no room to move, no space to breathe. The drag of her fabric against his scorching skin was nearly painful in contrast to the pleasure of Vash’s mouth on him. Vash spread his legs wide, held him open for Vash’s tongue and lips and a hint of fangs. Behind him, the Punisher stood tall, an immovable symbol of death, a reflection of every scar he bore, snaring him in a lethal noose of love and pleasure.
There was no escape.
The orgasm, when it came, almost surprised him. He’d gotten so lost in Vash and the unique sensation of the Punisher’s cage being turned to such an opposite aim, that he hadn’t even noticed how much the pressure had built within him until he was writhing against his bonds, Vash’s name on his lips.
Vash, for his part, simply ignored Nicholas’s climax. He kept going, until Nicholas was whimpering, tears building in the corners of his eyes. His long, long fingers spread Nicholas open, bullied their way inside while Nicholas was still pulsing tight around them, and curled until Nicholas screamed. Only then did Vash back off, his face and hands covered in Nicholas’s slick. He looked up at Nicholas with wide eyes, their blue-green tint nearly lost in the darkness of his pupils.
“Nico,” he breathed, voice awed.
Nicholas panted, chest heaving, weight caught between the Punisher’s strength and Vash’s. Vash held him until he stopped shaking, then carefully lowered his legs to the floor.
When he stood up, he didn’t do as Nicholas had expected and free him. Instead, seemingly in a daze, he walked past Nicholas to the bed behind him. Nicholas could hear him rummaging around in their bags. Something like fear pierced his chest the moment Vash was out of sight, and a high, terrified noise that he’d never heard from himself before tore its way out of his throat.
With a speed no human could ever hope to match, Vash appeared back in front of him. He cupped Nicholas’s face and made soft soothing noises.
“Shh, shh, baby, I’m sorry. I just really really want to fuck you. I’m going to get the strap. I’ll be right back, sweetheart, I promise. Color?”
Hazy as he was, Vash’s reappearance immediately reassured him. He didn’t know what had come over him, but he felt like he was floating in a warm bath, cradled safe even with death standing tall at his back. When Vash kissed him, it took him a moment to find his body enough to respond.
“Blue.”
“Good boy. Just one minute, baby.”
This time when Vash walked away, Nicholas was able to track him by sound without panicking. He listened as Vash dug through his bag, heard the tink of the metal box that held the strap and the rustle of fabric as Vash presumably removed his clothing and put it on.
When Vash reappeared, naked, scarred, with his cock jutting proudly between his legs, he was the most beautiful thing Nicholas had ever seen. Nicholas would have died for him a thousand times over. Nicholas would live to see him smile.
Vash wasted no time in kissing him, pressing them together from chest to hip so that Nicholas could feel the hard length of him slide into the crease between his legs. He moaned as Vash got his hands under his ass and lifted him like he weighed nothing, hiking Nicholas’s legs over his own hips and leaving him suspended between the unmoving steel of the Punisher and the equally unmoving steel of Vash’s abdomen. Nicholas rocked into him, smearing his own slick over Vash’s muscles, desperate for more friction even though he’d already come.
Vash gave him a wicked grin. He ground his cock between Nicholas’s thighs, catching on his rim without pushing in. Nicholas whined and wriggled but no amount of movement could make Vash do what he wanted.
He hadn’t expected Vash’s cock to start vibrating.
He knew, logically, that the lost tech strap had a vibration function. They’d used it before. But in the haze that had enveloped him, the suddenness of the vibrations took him by surprise. He gasped, fingers grasping for some kind of purchase against his bonds and finding nothing to hold onto. Vash rolled into him, painfully slowly, dragging that pulsing length all along his folds and over the head of his cock. Nicholas choked.
“Can you come like this, Nico?” His hands slid up underneath Nicholas’s lower back. With better leverage, he thrust forward again, drawing the vibrator back and forth over Nicholas’s cock. “You have no idea how pretty you look, tied up and wet and ready for me. Helpless. Only able to take what I give you.”
Vash readjusted and thrust down between Nicholas’s folds hard enough that it brought the head of his cock in contact with the Punisher. Suddenly, the vibrations were hitting Nicholas from both sides. Nicholas’s mind conjured the impossible image of Vash somehow triggering the Punisher, reminded suddenly that he was bound to a weapon that could destroy this entire room with ease. The fear that image triggered only made him clench down harder, seeking Vash’s cock even though Vash refused to give it to him.
“Ah,” he gasped, “Vash please, please.”
Vash laughed, delighted and almost cruel as he changed his angle again and dragged the strap over Nicholas’s hard cock. He let go of Nicholas, supporting his weight with only one hand, to grip his cock with the other and press it hard into Nicholas’s cock, until the vibrations were shaking his very core.
Nicholas came with a cry. Slick gushed from his hole. It coated the space between them, Vash’s hips and thighs, and the vibrating head of Vash's cock. Without giving Nicholas a chance to come down, Vash pulled back and thrust inside in one firm stroke. Nicholas howled and clawed at his bonds, but he couldn’t find an anchor.
Vash gave him no quarter. He set a brutal, desperate pace that had Nicholas spasming hard around him. The tears that had built up earlier finally fell, and Vash leaned forward to kiss them without slowing his hips. He was saying something, showering Nicholas in an endless torrent of praise, but Nicholas couldn’t hear him over the tingling pleasure that had all but ripped him out of his own body. He didn’t know where he ended and the Punisher—the weapon—began. He didn’t even feel like a person anymore so much as he had become a shuddering ball of pure pleasure.
Nicholas didn’t know if he’d ever even stopped coming, but he nearly drowned under the newest wave. Vash was babbling and moaning above him, his hold on Nicholas’s hips bruising and urgent, a stark contrast to the unbending grip of the Punisher. The world around Nicholas exploded into divine light.
When he came back to himself, Vash was working the straps of the Punisher, one arm wrapped around Nicholas’s waist to hold him steady. Nicholas hung limply in her hold until Vash released him, then he collapsed into Vash’s arms. Vash swept him up easily and rounded the Punisher to lay him on the soft sheets of the bed. Compared to how rough the Punisher’s wrappings had been, Nicholas might as well have been floating on a cloud.
He certainly felt like he was floating.
Vash moved around the room. He unhooked the Punisher from the footboard and set her aside, rearranged the space around Nicholas—apparently he’d made a mess in his desperation to find the lost tech strap—and bustled into the bathroom to get water and a wet cloth.
“Drink, baby. You lost a lot of fluid.”
Blinking and not yet entirely present, Nicholas accepted the water that Vash lifted carefully to his lips. He tried to take the glass to hold himself, but his limbs were too shaky to move, so he gave up and let Vash take care of him.
Vash kissed him on the forehead as he took the glass away. Nicholas turned his face into the pillows.
The wet cloth moved between his thighs, over his stomach and hips. Vash cleaned him slowly, lovingly, almost ritualistically. Their roles had reversed again. Vash had become Jesus, stooping so low as to wash the feet of his disciples in an act of both humility and love. Nicholas rarely felt so precious as he did in that moment.
“Love you,” he mumbled.
Vash kissed his hip, likely the closest bit of skin he could reach. “Love you, too, Nico. Feeling good?”
“Mm.”
A chuckle. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Nicholas grumbled wordlessly. He was too tired for conversation right now.
“You know, I thought tying you up might help you calm down a little. If I’d known it would leave you this blissed out, we’d have done this ages ago.”
Nicholas stirred enough at the amusement in Vash’s voice to grouse, “Shaddup.”
Vash laughed, pretty and pure. Nicholas could have lived in that sound. “Go to sleep, sweetheart.”
Nicholas did.