The fact of the matter was that Vash was and had been holding everything tightly contained because he could not get the comfort he absolutely needed. Well, and because he knew he did not deserve it, but it had been granted to him, once upon a time, and a part of him never did forget that, try as he might to avoid wishing for it.

So, in short, yes, it had been forever since he got a proper hug, and the closest he had had in recent memory had been knives pinning him with his blade tentacles and that was. Something else entirely. Holding and being held had been a part of his early childhood, and since then... he'd missed it beyond words.

Even so, right now it was something else. It was Vash drowning in his own mind in ways he could not easily express, and needed the anchor, the stability that was Wolfwood. Even if it disturbed him a little that he would lean on either of them at a time of this, and one was not there, and was that fair, but that drowned under the tide of everything else.

And Wolfwood's words. Instead of helping, they made him hunch his shoulders a little more. "It's so easy, you know. For me to be all right, and everyone else to be suffering. If I could exchange that... if everyone could be all right, even if I was suffering, I'd prefer that. But... it never works like that." Then he winced at how his own words sounded.

"Sorry. Sorry. I'll be fine. I'll be all right." Great, now he had ruined this also. Could he just be how he was normally be so they could get this resolved in some way?

The answer was pointing to a tentative no.