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It’s hot, as it always is during the day but rarely is at night. Star date: 21-07. Milly sits across from Vash, a few too many empty bottles of alcohol on the table between them, and smiles.
She is a deadly combination of being able to drink anyone under the table and extremely perceptive. She knows both of these things, even if she’ll never admit it out loud, and knows exactly what she’s doing as she asks, “Have you had enough, Mr. Vash?”
She has known what she’s doing since Dragon’s Nest. Well, before that too, but now they have enough double-dollars to get three rooms, a shared one for her and Milly, separate ones for Wolfwood and Vash. Her room is empty, with Meryl out, and Vash’s was silent. There is a bandage on his forehead, covering the cut that was bleeding sluggishly yesterday.
‘How else am I supposed to look?’ Vash had answered, smiling every color at once while Milly swallowed ash.
Not like that, she wanted to scream. But she held Meryl, she didn’t move from the crowd, she watched Vash and Wolfwood walk away and tightened her grip on Meryl’s shoulders. Come back.
‘You’ll wear yourself thin one day,’ Meryl had said once when Milly dropped a glass and cried over the shattered pieces on her desk, ‘not everyone wants to be saved.’
But Milly can try, she has to try.
Wolfwood’s room is as empty as Vash’s eyes. Milly checked before she came. Meryl tightened her grip on the sheets and whispered ‘Not now’ when Milly asked. So it’s just her and Vash. And that’s alright, Milly thinks, for now. It’s hot anyway.
She rests her chin in her palm and smiles, feeling cocky. Vash glares at her with flushed cheeks and he looks very cute, she must admit she can see the appeal. Wolfwood is a very lucky man, even if he doesn’t know it or want to be.
“No,” he snaps, tossing back another shot of vodka with a grimace before pouring himself more, “Never.”
It’s another bottle down before there’s a knock at the door. She sighs and answers it as Vash nurses another shallow glass of whiskey, drinking each sip and nearly gagging. Meryl cocks her head and frowns.
“Really Milly?”
Milly shrugs. “I figured we should do something fun once in a while.”
Meryl pokes her head around Milly to peer into the room. Vash curses silently and hides his glass behind his back, spilling drops onto the floorboards behind him. He smiles guiltily and waves. Hides the arm that had held a gun yesterday, covered in feathers. Still covered in some fluffy white down, wrapped up in that coat he never takes off and now Milly knows why. Meryl stares at the spot where that arm is, she debates.
Because it’s Vash, because they are where and when they are now, Milly will not press. Meryl wakes up silent in the middle of the night and stares at nothing and holds Milly while feeling nothing and words that mean nothing fall from her lips. Sometimes, I’m fine or it’s ok . During the worst nights, it’s an apology that doesn’t belong to her, sorry.
She doesn’t share her dreams and Milly doesn’t need to ask because she takes over driving whenever they’re a few iles out from whatever remains of July that they can see on the horizon, and when it’s out of view Meryl slides her hands over Milly’s, pressing kisses to her knuckles and murmuring thank you’s into the skin and drives the rest of the way without another word. Feathers and faces of people she’ll never meet and screams of the same word, sorry sorry sorrysorry sit behind Meryl’s eyelids, so many colors it swirls into something dull and void.
But right now, Vash sits in front of her, a whirl of red. Milly puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. She tugs her shirt back, an offer to leave.
Meryl huffs and puts her hands on her hips. “Well, are you two gonna drink alone or what?”
Milly beams and wraps Meryl in a spinning hug before planting a fat kiss on her cheek and then on her lips. Thank you thank you I love you! Meryl squawks and blushes hard while Vash slams back another glass, pours one for Meryl and himself, keeps a decent distance between them which isn’t enough, it needs to be more right now but it’s fine for now, and it’s 21st July for Pete’s sake, and they get back to it. Milly peers out the windows, slightly tinted pink, repurposed from the stained glass of the old church—
“How ‘d ya know tha?” Meryl slurs, already bright pink and swaying from just two drinks.
“I asked the nuns,” she replies simply, glazing over the rest of the process of sweet-talking the nuns with a true but maybe reinterpreted story of a man who’s just looking for his long-lost brother and yet took the time to help out two meek insurance women who were lost in the desert and desperately needed help that they didn’t find until they heard the voice of God coming from this very fine hospitality establishment and no no they didn’t even notice the pleasure house across town which is also church sanctioned and did she forget to mention they’re traveling with a priest too?
“Anyone ever told you you’re scary?” Vash asks, two questions in one.
“All the time!” Milly grins, answering both, then continues. “They were more than happy to tell me the history of this place. It all started 30 years ago when an angel came with an idea for a sweeter world starting with a bakery—“
“Gah! This stuff hits the spot, Milly,” Vash grits out, eyes a little glassy but he knows. Don’t push. She won’t, not now with Meryl here, not yet. “Where the hell’d you get it in a church-run town like this?”
“Mr. Wolfwood got it a few iles back in Greener Pastures, I’ve been holding onto it for him.”
“And you’ve been carrying it all this time?!”
“You wouldn’ believe all this girl can carry Vash,” Meryl hiccups, turning to Milly and wiggling her eyebrows, “she’s very strong and smart and sooooo nice~”
“I know that,” Vash groans, apparently having forgiven her for trying to get him colorful, to talk about anything that matters, “maybe not that last part.” But not forgiven for the whole ploy. Yet.
There’s no knock at the door this time. It swings open and with it, a half-drunk Wolfwood still hauling his cross, but it’s in front of him, between his arms as if he were dancing and it sends Meryl into a fit of hysterical giggles and maybe some of the 5 bottles of alcohol is starting to get to Milly because she bursts out laughing too. Vash can’t even catch his breath when Wolfwood starts smooching the thing.
“Please— please I can’t!” Vash wheezes out.
“No can do Needle Noggin, I got me a pretty~ lady, and Imma—“ he cuts off and glares at the table that’s moderately overwhelmed with bottles of various whiskeys and rums and vodkas. “So that’s how it is, huh?”
“Oh shut up!” Meryl bops the back of his head and Wolfwood reacts far more dramatically than he needs to. “Don’t act like you didn’t go off to drink on your own and only just now remembered Vash. Only ever Vash.”
“But everyone’s here,” Wolfwood replies, trying to gloss over that last part that he knows is right, “must be the lord’s doing, right?”
That earns him another slap to the head.
One, two, three more, and Vash is gone, Wolfwood’s been gone, and Meryl is halfway to passed out on the floor, laughing and playing with Kuroneko. Milly’s got a bounce to her step and fire in her blood, but she can still see a haze in Vash’s eyes and feel the cold in the air between him and Wolfwood. She watches them watch each other between sentences, mostly nonsensical and entirely unimportant. They never talk about anything important. Milly sighs. Pours herself another glass and slides the bottle away from Vash when he reaches for it.
“Happy birthday, Vash,” she smiles, then tips the liquor onto her tongue and swallows. “Does this taste like starfire?”
Vash blinks, something turning in his head. “I… don’t remember.”
“Let me know when you do.”
“Wait.” Wolfwood holds up a hand and shakes his head. “Wait wait wait, did you just say birthday? Is she shitting correctly Spikey?”
Meryl manages to slur something along the lines of “that’s not a phrase” from her spot on the floor, followed by a “Happy birthday?” As Wolfwood leans forward way too far in his chair to be safe, Vash tips back just the same, distance between them even as they teeter on the brink.
“Is it your fucking birthday?!”
“Uh,” Vash says intelligently. He frantically looks to Milly for support but she shrugs. “Yes?”
“The fuck,” Wolfwood breathes, and they’re so close that Milly thinks if she nudged a little more, pushed forward, or pulled back…
Wolfwood swallows. His sunglasses are on his head, pushing his bangs back from his sweaty face. Something complicated passes over, and Milly pins it. Guilt, fear, joy, love. Ah that last one.
Wolfwood dips his head, inches closer, rakes his gaze over Vash’s face, and lands on his mole, his eyes. He cracks a smile, warm.
“Happy birthday,” he prays, “Vash.”
Vash blinks, then smiles back and they look very much like puzzle pieces slotted together upside down. “Thanks.”
They teeter on the brink for so long that Milly can’t help but laugh when they fall. Vash crashes backward, Wolfwood on top of him, and she’s laughing so hard she’s sure the nuns must be praying that God smite her for being the worst guest but she can’t help it.
“Was this your plan the whole time?” Vash grumbles as he shoves Wolfwood off with too little force, so he only readjusts with his arms wrapped around the preacher and face glowing pink. “Get us supremely drunk so you can laugh?”
“No, it was to finally get you smiling with some color for real on your birthday!” Milly exclaims because, for all that she is a dangerous schemer, she can’t lie to save her life.
“Aw isn’t that just sweet,” Wolfwood coos, bopping Vash’s nose, “she really cares!”
Vash rolls his eyes, but stops and tilts his head consideringly when he locks eyes with her. “Starfire is cold.” He points at her half-empty glass. “It tastes like meteorite dust and supernovas.”
Her tongue prickles pleasantly in her mouth as the universe dances across it.
Milly picks up Meryl and excuses them from the room that’s apparently gained another occupant for the night, probably for the duration of their stay. She turns off the light and locks the door behind her.
Their room and bed welcome them with cold sheets and yawning darkness that has Milly’s eyes drooping as soon as she sets Meryl down on the mattress. Milly lies beside her, staring at Meryl’s snoring face, then wraps her arms around Meryl’s shoulders and tugs her against her chest. She’s warm and even though it’s hot, Milly doesn’t want to move so she closes her eyes,
And doesn’t.