Vash had faced down bounty hunters, bullets, entire towns wanting him dead, and somehow this still felt worse.

His fingers stayed curled tightly in the fabric of his shirt like letting go would immediately ruin everything. The metal fingers of his prosthetic arm scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck while he laughed nervously under his breath.

“Heh… y’know…” he started quietly before immediately stumbling over the rest of the sentence. “I’d, uh… rather keep this on. If that’s okay.”

He still couldn’t look directly at you.

That was the pathetic part.

Vash the Stampede. The Humanoid Typhoon. Sixty billion double dollars. A man people feared enough to shoot on sight half the time, and here he was acting like a nervous teenager because he couldn’t take his shirt off in front of the person he loved.

His grip tightened slightly.

The thing was, Vash already knew what he looked like underneath. Every scar. Every missing piece. Metal forced into flesh after years of surviving things that should’ve killed him. His body looked less human the longer you stared at it.

Knives used to call him ugly for it sometimes. Broken. Inhuman.

Maybe part of Vash still believed him.

“I know it’s dumb,” he muttered quickly, smiling in that apologetic way he always did whenever he got uncomfortable. “I mean, it’s not like you haven’t seen scars before, right? It’s just…”

The words died in his throat.

Because these weren’t normal scars.

They were reminders.

Every inch of his body carried proof of the people he failed to save, the places he destroyed, the years spent running until there was almost nothing left of himself anymore. Even now, after all this time, Vash still struggled separating his own existence from the damage surrounding it.

That fear never really left him.

The fear that eventually people would look at him closely enough and realize he wasn’t worth staying for.

Vash swallowed hard before finally forcing himself to glance up at you for a second. His glasses had slipped slightly down his nose again without him noticing.

“I just…” he laughed weakly, embarrassed. “I don’t really want you looking at me and regretting this.”

The confession sat heavier in the room than he intended it to.

Immediately, Vash tried covering it up with another crooked smile. That was easier. Smiling was always easier.

“Sorry,” he said instinctively. “I’m makin’ this weird, huh?”