Disclaimer: Dragonball Z/GT and all its likeness does not belong to me. No profits are being made off this story.
Only Stop When I Say When
Chapter 1
"Pan!"
Gohan called from the main room of his capsule home, his voice carrying up to the bedroom of his daughter. "Come down here, we're going to be late!"
"Daaad." The girl's annoyance was tangible before she even set a stomping foot into the foyer. "Please rethink this."
Gohan raised an eyebrow at his daughter's dishevelled appearance as she slouched into a chair at the modest kitchen table. He'd already put her favourite cereal in front of her neatly placed bowl and spoon. She poured almost the entire box of sugary morning nutrients out and then doused it with milk before digging in with a sleepy - but more likely grumpy- sigh.
The retired warrior and now scholar cracked his newspaper into a crisp sheet and nearly clucked his tongue in reprove. He stopped himself though, uncomfortable with the idea of imitating his mother in even the smallest gesture.
As a result of his laxness, Pan gained even more stubbornness and ground a brightly coloured socked toe into his knee. She gave him that familiar teen-aged girl aggressive glare.
"I think I'm coming down with the flu!" She produced some very fake sounding coughs. "Guess I'll have to stay home."
Gohan almost lowered his reading material but his wife Videl walked into their small kitchen with her nose in her ever present notebook. Even after all these years she was still hard at work with the justice system and being a lawyer took up a lot of free time. Now that she'd broken off on her own and started her own firm, Videl was even more pressed for time than ever before.
Gohan had thought about suggesting she settle down and relax some more; her father had all the money they could ever need to support a good quiet lifestyle, but he could never actually do that. He wasn't about to step on his wife's goals, especially when he believed in justice and fighting for what was right just as much.
The long-haired woman placed her hand on their daughter's forehead without missing a beat of her reading. "You're fine, Pan. School is still in the forecast for today."
She poured out the old coffee in her mug and refilled it with the new batch Gohan had just made.
Pan groaned and her spoon clattered uselessly into her now empty bowl. Suddenly, she was a flurry of activity as she jumped over the couch in the television room and pulled her book bag out from underneath Goten's feet.
"Hey!" The younger Son man complained. "That was my footrest, gremlin!"
Pan stuck her tongue out and made a face. The two started to argue like they did every morning, ever since Goten had decided he needed his space from their mother and moved in with Gohan and his family. Never mind that the two homes were right next to each other on an isolated mountain.
Gohan finished the sentence he'd been reading and put down the paper. He knew he should push Goten to sort himself out and find a job, but he didn't like the sound of those words even in his own head.
He pushed his chair back instead, and neatly cleared the table because Videl had disappeared up to her office again. He passed by the hallway closet and picked up Pan's favourite shoes, hiding them behind his back. He quickly exited the room to gather his book bag from his bedroom and when he returned, Pan was fuming by the door.
He smiled and handed her the shoes, which she angrily shoved her feet into. He knew she'd try to make a break for it when his back was turned.
Gohan patted his daughter on the head and ignored her squawk of protest. They would just have to get used to this situation.
Because it was Pan's first day at Orange Star High School.
And it was Gohan's as well.
Gohan sat in the long line of chairs at the head of the auditorium.
Further along the row of chairs sat other teachers, the principals, academic advisors and members of the West City school board who made up the staff of Orange Star High School.
Before them stretched a vast expanse of chairs filled to the brim with the student body.
As a scholar, his role in the world was not as well defined as one would think. For a long time after the destruction of Buu, when they'd been piecing their lives back together and figuring things out, Gohan had found nothing else but to continue on the path his mother had started for him.
So he had learned.
Being a scholar meant having a vast amount of knowledge and, most commonly, becoming an expert on many different fields of study. In turn, he used his knowledge to augment other people's jobs. He was kind of like a call-man. Companies or institutions who needed his involvement contacted him and he followed the call.
"Now students," the speaker was saying, his slow boring voice magnified through the little microphone on the podium. "I'd like to welcome you all back to Orange Star! I see many new faces. If you look up, you will see suspended on the walls around you the various rules and regulations our academic institution is proud to adhere to…"
The same call for the share of knowledge had led him back here, his old high school. He was needed to pick up the role of the new English teacher.
A soda can sailed through the air and splashed sticky liquid all over the Vice Principal's papers in the middle of his speech.
Gohan grinned nervously. "What in the…"
"Alright, who threw that?" The older man wailed, shaking his small podium in a fit. There was purple soda dripping down his arm.
The energy of the student body and the volume of the crowd rose. Another can zinged by with deadly precision and clocked the Vice Principal in the head.
Outraged, the rest of the staff stood, trying to calm the students.
Gohan quickly scanned the darkened room, worried about his daughter. He noticed her ki signature in the section primarily made up of first years. She sensed him and their eyes met.
His face fell at the sight of a pop can in her hand. She innocently brought it to her lips and took a sip.
Things were off to a fabulous start.
Gohan wrote on the large blackboard like he had all the other times. It was about a week into the school year now and he'd stepped into his duties with ease.
Pan still sent him daggers over the kitchen table at home, but she'd get used to it. Ever since the black star dragonball adventure had come to an end, and his father had left on the back of Shenlong…
Well, needless to say, Pan had some growing up to do and was determined to do it by herself.
He supposed that was why his daughter did not take English.
Gohan didn't mind.
He finished writing the rest of the lesson plan on the board. Gohan was used to being in the professor's role, but it was a little different in a high school setting. For one, it felt like every time he turned his back, baleful teenage eyes just like his daughter's were multiplied by a hundred, all boring into him, trying to make him burst into flame on the spot.
Gohan shook his head with a little sigh and had to smile a bit. It was just another day in the life of a scholar.
"Afternoon, class!" He greeted his last period of the day with a genial Son grin. He dusted his chalky hands off and straightened his cardigan. "Today we'll cover some literature done by one of my favourites…"
He droned on appropriately with good cheer, taking in all the faces. He paused, staring at one student in particular for a little too long. He blinked and shuffled with his notes, trying to erase his little indiscretion from his mind.
Bra Briefs was the only set of eyes who stared at him with something completely different.
There were good students and there were bad ones too.
Today Gohan was going to let them know who was who.
It was a few minutes until the end of the period and he smiled benignly, the class lesson wrapping up. He took a seat, looking up at the cinema-style seating, and the students filed down towards his desk where a plain piece of copy paper lay. It was a print out of their names and marks.
The students of the second year class groaned and beamed depending on what rested on that innocent little paper. Gohan could feel the penetrating eyes of the failing students already and he couldn't help laughing quietly to himself.
And then... then there was a different kind of bad that laid eyes on him.
Bra Briefs was fifteen years old and entirely too young to be wearing that outfit.
She was slim, very slim, and her dark red PVC outfit was all long lines and small patches of pale skin. She bent over his desk.
He swallowed.
Her eyes flickered up to him and there was a slight smirk stretched across her lips. "Later, Teach."
Gohan couldn't help but think she'd found her mark.
He shook his head and blinked his wide eyes behind his glasses. He was appalled at himself. He almost couldn't articulate what was running through his mind – the barest flashes of ideas he refused to believe he'd even think.
What was he doing, entertaining thoughts like that? The girl had barely said two words to him and somehow he was losing his mind.
He looked up again, and Bra was nowhere to be seen. Instead Cabinetta, another of his students, was standing in front of him with silent tears streaming down her red cheeked face.
"A fifty-nine?— M-Mr. Son…" She stuttered uselessly and Gohan nervously chuckled, making the girl burst out into histrionics.
"Ah, now don't worry! There are plenty of opportunities to make this grade up." He fell straight into comforting her, forgetting the thoughts that had crossed his mind…
…Until a few weeks later as he exited the staff room.
"Gohan." Bra called out with a grin. She shut her locker with a loud clang and he jumped slightly. A blush immediately came to his cheeks from surprise. His mind went back to a place that seemed far away now. This was where he had met his future wife.
She was peering at him curiously, on the verge of laughing at his discomfort. "Are you okay?"
"Bra," He said her name and for the first time was embarrassed. "E-Er, it's past school hours. What are you doing still hanging around here?" The handle of his book bag slid nervously around in the palm of his sweaty hand.
A regulation Orange Star badge was attached to the strap of her purse, along with other smaller accessories like tiny pins that said "Cute" and "Heart" and "Sexy."
The Briefs heiress's lip quirked up and Gohan's eyebrows rose high as she leant in.
"Extracurricular activities." Bra whispered in a conspiring voice. She tugged at the edge of her short skirt.
His eyebrows lowered with almost vicious speed. Gohan frowned behind his large rimmed glasses, but just barely, because he wanted to be polite.
Bra smirked slightly, as if she knew what he'd been looking at. "Go on."
"What?" Gohan asked, a bit caught off guard.
The teenage girl shrugged, and the slack strap of her top slipped easily down her thin shoulder. She swept her long blue hair away from her neck, tilting her head in an arrogant expression that firmly reminded Gohan of her father.
No, that wasn't completely true. The comparison didn't stop at their being father and daughter. Gohan couldn't help his frown deepening. He pushed his glasses up in a needless gesture.
He knew what that look was now.
Bra looked at him as though she had power.
The half-Saiyan girl blinked those large blue eyes, and her expression transformed into something softer. "Go ahead, Mr. Gohan." She lilted. "Give me the advice I know you're itching to give."
He was the adult here. He should say something.
The half-Saiyan man opened his mouth to do just that before he paused abruptly. He wouldn't be baited by a teenager; someone barely older than his own daughter.
"Give it to me." Bra said again, lower, a hint of laughter colouring her words in a very attractive way. That sounded completely inappropriate.
"I could use some tips for the next assignment, after all." She winked.
Gohan broke their gaze, feeling his cheeks burn in a deeper embarrassment he hadn't been expecting.
He could feel Bra's defiant eyes on him, and his starched white cotton shirt felt like it was made out of three layers of wool. His skin prickled and fizzled as if he was building his ki.
Angry teenage eyes he could deal with. Kids at that age were always searching for something to hate, something to have power over – something they could control. He could understand that and he was more than capable of ignoring it.
But the way Bra looked at him now was not the same. It felt like something he hadn't felt in a long, long time.
Bra nodded her chin down, and it was almost touching her collar bone as she looked up at him through her bangs. "Gohan?"
She tugged on her skirt. In the wrong direction. He wasn't imagining that.
He swallowed and shook his head. Gohan began walking briskly down the empty hallway. The sound of his dress shoes clacking against the linoleum floor was loud and final, because she wasn't following after him.
Gohan sighed as he sank lower into his favourite chair in the television room of his home. The trend was the same. By the time he arrived home after the school day, Pan would already be hauled up in her room doing Kami-knows-what and Goten would be on the couch, blasting the TV.
The channel switched to an obnoxious reality show and the chattering voices on the screen made the ache in Gohan's head pound a little more.
"Goten… Did you even leave the house today?" He tried to be good about what he said, but one look at his little brother's face made him retreat that line of questioning.
"Of course I did." Goten replied with humour but just the tiniest sense of betrayal. "What do you take me for? After I slaved over that hot oven for that dinner you're barely touching, by the way!"
Gohan looked down at his plate sitting innocuously on his TV tray in some guilt. He'd been shuffling through some more assignments from his students.
"You're right." He picked up his fork and took a bite.
"Where's Videl?" Goten asked off-handedly.
The front door opened, letting in a gust of the cool night air. Gohan looked over his shoulder and his wife walked in, carrying a wad of file folders in one hand and an overstuffed briefcase in the other.
"I'm here, I'm here." She sighed out and dropped her burden down on the kitchen table, immediately spearing the dinner plate Goten had left out for her with a fork. She ate while she walked over to her husband and was chewing as she gave him a quick tight-lipped peck on the forehead.
"How was your day?" Gohan asked her, rubbing the spot on his head.
The hair in her long braid was coming undone and frayed from a hard day at the office; he noticed it as she turned her back, already finished devouring her dinner.
"Still going strong," She replied and sank her plate into the kitchen sink. "This case file just doubled in size. A new suspect was added and I…" She stopped and gave him a smile, "I'll use the guest room again tonight, okay?"
Gohan felt the lines in his forehead deepen but let it relax out again with practised ease. "If you need help just ask!" He offered, but his wife was already up the stairs.
Goten whistled low to his right and raised an eyebrow. "Your wife's married to her work."
The elder Son just took another bite of his dinner. "We all bring our work home with us sometimes."
He swallowed and it tasted fizzy and annoyingly hot in his stomach. A pretty girl on the TV was giggling, the sound echoing in his ears. An essay was sitting on top of his lap; on the very last page was a phone number scrawled in girlish challenge.
Gohan was worried he would eventually bring his home too.