Red Roses2: Hi. This is a one-shot for now. I might make a longer fiction after my Family Portrait story.
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball Z. If I did, there'd be Piccohan, and Truten. ;)
That Look
Stop looking at me like that, Goku. It's not my fault. How was I supposed to know Nameks weren't asexual like everyone else, including me, thought previously? How was I supposed to know how human and Saiyan puberty worked?
What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry I puked out the egg your grandchild is incubating in? That I'm sorry I tried to help your son with what he thought was keeping his body under control?
Who should've told him about puberty, how babies were born? You and that harpy you call a wife, Goku. Not me. I knew just as little as Gohan did, Goku. So stop looking at me like that, like it's my fault.
"Goku, that's getting really annoying." I finally snap at him.
Goku sighs and finally redirects his gaze to the living room floor. The sounds of the harpy yelling at Gohan reach our ears. I grit my teeth together. It wasn't his fault! Who was the one who tore out all the reproduction chapters in his biology books, you wench!? The harpy ranted on about something about waiting before marriage. I grunt. Stupid woman.
"Piccolo . . . ." Goku starts. I glare at him, daring him to condone me. I have the perfect retort in the wings. "Why? I mean, I thought you didn't have a sex drive."
Oh. That's his question. I feel the heat rushing to my face. I can just imagine the purple hue that is probably on my cheeks this very moment.
"That's . . . a little . . . complicated." I lie. It wasn't complicated. It was just . . . something I don't feel like talking about. To anyone. Unless it was Gohan, but Gohan already knows.
"Piccolo, please. I just want to know why. I mean . . . you do love him, right?" Goku asks, looking . . . I'm not entirely sure. I can't really place it. I'm not good with emotions; anyone could tell you that. But Goku Son looks so . . . lost, I think.
I don't answer his question. I feel his ki rising, and anger makes its way into his eyes.
"Answer me, damn it!" Goku yells at me.
I grit my teeth again. The harpy's yelling falters a little. She obviously wants to hear what Goku is saying. She probably thinks he'll rip me a new one. Not that I had one to begin with.
"I don't have a sex drive in the sense that you think of it . . . ." I say, mentally adding I don't think. Goku raises an eyebrow. I sigh. "I didn't . . . realize I had one . . . until Gohan . . . did this . . . thing with his tongue in my mouth." Goku's eyebrows fly up, obviously surprised by that answer.
"Rewind," Goku says, holding up his hands. I hold back a smirk; at least he was acting normal now. "Start at the beginning. How'd it start?" I sigh. This was going to be extremely awkward.
"Look . . . . The Cell Games are coming up really soon . . . . He was talking and I was listening, like we usually do. Then he asked if . . . if I had ever . . . kissed anyone." I look up at Goku's face. Goku seems to be understand what I'm saying so far, or at least understood what Gohan was going through enough to not question my story. It was true, of course, but that didn't mean anyone would believe it. "Of course, I said no. I mean . . . anyway . . . . He then asked if I wanted to know what it was like . . . and . . . ." What am I doing? There's no way I could possibly describe what happened after that. How those feelings overtook me, controlled me like a puppet. Scared the shit out of me. How they made me want to hear Gohan make those sounds more . . . and louder.
"Piccolo?" Goku says. I look up. He looks concerned. I grunt. If we were talking about anything else, he probably wouldn't be worried about the moody look that's no doubt on my face. Faintly, I hear the bats outside. Was it already night time? The harpy must've yelled herself hoarse by now. "Was that when you . . . um, figured out you were more like the rest of us than you previously thought?"
I snort; I can't help it. "Unfortunately. How you humans and Saiyans live with it is beyond me."
Goku frowns. I twitch my ears for a second. I don't hear anything. I suddenly realize I'm holding my breath. I let it out. For once, there's a feeling that I recognize that's not a negative one: relief. I think Goku and I had the same fleeting thought. What if Gohan heard that?
"What happened then?" Goku whispers. I look down at the floor, suddenly overwhelmed with images of what happened. Me grabbing Gohan's hair roughly, pushing him as close to me as possible, trying to get Gohan's tongue in deeper. The sudden heat in the back of my throat yet somewhere else, something that I didn't realize had been back there. Gohan straddling my waist, his crotch touching my stomach . . . .
"After . . . a while of . . . that activity you people call 'kissing' . . . Gohan . . . . Apparently, he didn't know much about his own sex drive, okay?" I find myself becoming angry, digging my nails into my biceps. That fearful look Gohan had in his eyes when he realized I knew about his . . . problem. "He looked at me like I was going to leave and never come back. He thought I was going to think of him as some kind of – of freak just because he had the same kind of heat I was feeling, only in a different place." I glare at Goku when he looks like he's going to cut me off with a question of my last statement. "He thought something was wrong with him, Goku! He looked so – so - !"
I find I can't say anymore. I just let out a shout of frustration, ignoring the spurts of blood my nails just let loose as they dig deeper into my arms.
"I acted irrationally, okay!? I tend to do that around the kid! You do it all the time! I just wanted him to feel like he wasn't a freak of nature! I wanted him to know I wasn't going to just vanish and never return, like I hated him!" I can't believe I'm telling Goku this. Weren't we enemies once upon a time? And now I'm justifying myself on why I fucked his son with my mouth. "Maybe it wouldn't have happened if someone had just told him what it was going to be like when he hit puberty!"
Goku looks down at the floor.
"Piccolo . . . Gohan loves you, you know that, right?"
"Yeah."
"Do you love him?"
I don't say anything. I just don't know how to answer that. I know I care for Gohan. I just don't know if that means I love him or not. How is a demon king supposed to know the answer to that, anyway? Besides, according to the many contexts that the humans used it in, weren't there different kinds of love? Which one was Goku talking about?
I find myself getting a headache.
"Goku, you've known me for a long time." Goku nods, but I know he doesn't understand where I'm going with this. "You know that I was born only knowing hatred and anger." Goku nods again. I breath deeply, and I'm not sure why. Maybe this conversation is getting to me more than I thought it was. "You know the only other feelings that I've ever had are all caused by your son. What you may not know is that I don't know what half of them even are. I don't know how to identify all these emotions." Goku actually looks sad about that. "So how do you propose I answer your question? To the best of my ability, and take the risk that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about? Or let you be the judge?"
Goku looks up at me, determination in his eyes, but tears roll down the Saiyan's cheeks. The combination takes me off-guard.
"Just please promise me that you won't hurt him," Goku says. I stare back at him.
"Why would I hurt him?" I ask. I wince at how clueless I sound. Despite the fact that I have no idea how to go about these kinds of things, I thought I had done pretty well until just now, letting my confusion shine through like sunlight. I mentally growl at myself.
Goku doesn't answer me, or rather, probably doesn't know how to answer me. I look at the egg that's tucked securely into the homemade bassinet that Gohan had crafted out of things he found in the woods. The egg was wrapped in blankets that Gohan himself had been wrapped up in as a child. My stomach churns as I look at it. I didn't even want the stupid thing. It just popped out of my mouth, constricting my windpipe temporarily, making Dende freak out and then making the frightening transition to a Namek-version of a giggly school girl, scaring Gohan momentarily, and causing all the others to stare almost-horrified at me. I growl as I remember what Krillin had said: "So . . . Piccolo's a mommy!?" I still don't regret throwing that energy ball at him, sending him off of the lookout.
"What should I do with it?" I question, looking back at Goku. Goku blinks at me, looking honestly confused. "The egg? And what the hell do I do with it if it hatches?" I shiver at the mere thought. What if it inherits Gohan's former cry-baby habit? I think I just turned a pale green color.
Goku stares at the egg and scratches his head.
"Um . . . ." the Saiyan says unhelpfully. I look back at it.
"Would anyone miss it if I crushed it?" I say, glancing back at Goku. Then I see who's standing behind him. Now I know I'm a pale green color, the palest green anyone has ever seen. Gohan and the harpy are standing right behind Goku. Gohan stares at me. The only emotion I can discern is hurt. There's another emotion, but I can't identify it. Goku notices the probably-horrified look on my face and turns around to see what caused it. His mouth formed an 'o', and he starts that annoying habit of laughing nervously.
"Ah, it's not what it looks like!" Goku sputters, waving his hands around uselessly. I bite back my own comment, which would not exactly help my situation one bit.
Gohan swallows, tries to say something, then closes his mouth again. I look at the egg again.
"It was hypothetical, Gohan." I say. I mentally punch myself in the gut. Oh yes, that helps a lot. Not.
"You don't want him?" Gohan asks. I blink.
"Him?" I say. Then I realize how stupid that sounds.
I am being incredibly STUPID tonight. S-T-U-P-I-D, stupid.
Tears roll down Gohan's cheeks. He looks like I just shot an energy beam through his stomach.
"All Nameks are boys, so even if an X chromosome of mine matched up with one of your chromosomes, our baby would still be a boy because Nameks only have Y chromosomes," Gohan says. All of that probably makes sense to him, but both Goku and I probably have dumbfounded looks on our faces.
Then I register how Gohan keeps referring to the egg. He hasn't called it an "it" ever since I vomited it. I, however, have been referring it to either "the egg" or "it". I've never spoke of it like it was going to be a person someday.
I suddenly realize how much that probably has been hurting Gohan. I also remember that I haven't answered his question. On whether I wanted it or not. I wince. Even in my thoughts, I don't recognize it as a real being. It's just a problem to me. A problem that's not going to go away. Unless I do crush it. But that would hurt Gohan.
"You don't have to take care of him," Gohan starts rambling. "I can raise him on my own." The harpy looks like she's about to object, but she seems to think better of it. Gohan looks like he's going to start sobbing any moment now. I can't seem to say anything to contradict what he's obviously thinking. "Just please, don't kill him."
Gohan and I just stare at each other. I still can't say anything. I don't know why. My throat just feels like it's trying to choke all the air out of me. Goku and the harpy are also looking at me, waiting for my response. I swallow, hoping that will make it easier to talk.
"If it means that much to you."
That wasn't what I meant to say. At least, not the way I wanted to phrase it. Or, was it? Did I really not want the thing?
Suddenly I have Gohan on top of me, the eleven-year-old burying his face into my chest, his arms encircling me. His tears stain my gi, and I hear strained sobs. His shoulders shake. Scratch that, his entire body is shaking.
"Thank you," the boy whispers.
I don't know what to do. I want to hold him, tell him everything is going to be okay, but the moment I move to do so, the harpy glares at me. I'm not afraid of her, or what she thinks, but Gohan . . . he seems so fragile right now. And her approval has always meant a lot to him. So I keep my hands to myself.
I glance at the egg one last time. Why would he possibly want to keep something that was going to hatch and give him something that cried and wet itself all the time?
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Red Roses2: And that's the end of the one-shot. laughs evilly Want more? Read Family Portrait, leave lots of reviews, I'll write more chapters for that one, I'll finish it faster, then I'll turn this baby into a full-fledged fiction!