Inspired by the super-quick shot of Tom Branson carrying the Crawley kiddos out of the house in the trailer for the fifth season of Downton Abbey. An engagement gift for my tumblr buddy Niteryde!
Enjoy!
He came to the waking world slowly, unwillingly, teeth already grinding at whatever had pulled him from his blissful and dreamless sleep. After hours in the gravity room, sleep wasn't a luxury—it was necessary to digest his meal, stockpile calories, and knit the fibers of his muscles and bones back together.
The acrid taste of smoke rested at the back of Vegeta's tongue, and his ears picked up the crackle of live embers somewhere nearby. But when he opened his eyes, he didn't see a stretch of purged earth, but only his pillow and his bloodless hand resting on his sheets. He lay there for a half moment, sleepily confused and blinking into the hazy and grayish air of his bedroom. Then the box on his ceiling started shrieking in alarm and its red lights spun, lighting up the smoke in the room.
Fire.
Vegeta swung his legs off of the bed and snatched his training shorts from the floor. He crossed to the window and snatched the curtain open; the sun shined merrily a good hands-breadth above the trees and let more light into the room. The smoke was only getting thicker in Vegeta's bedroom, and he cursed and banged his fist on the glass as he remembered that it didn't open like the other sliding contraptions on floors closer to the ground.
Quickly, Vegeta rummaged in a drawer and then ducked into his washroom. He let out a rasping cough and ran the tank top he'd grabbed under the faucet, wrung it out, and pressed it to his face.
The smoke billowed into his room from under his door and the knob was hot under his hand, but Vegeta turned it anyway and pulled the door open. The heat hit him in a searing wave and he felt his ears all but sizzle until he tugged the wet fabric to cover them. Out in the hallway, the Briefs' bots whizzed and screeched, ran into walls and over each other as the heat melted their circuitry.
"Useless, as usual," Vegeta muttered and kicked them out of his wall as he moved down the hallway and towards the flight of stairs that he would have to use to get outside.
He knew that Bulma was at the lab with her father; she'd told him so this morning over the video screen, coffee in hand, while he did his first thousand push-ups. And her mother was on vacation with Bulma's aunts somewhere called Bali. So Vegeta headed straight for the stairs without a second thought, looking only to get outside as soon as possible.
The wailing, so covered up by the shrieking alarms was it, nearly passed completely through his ears, until the alarms hit their down-note and the baby's cries carried on just as loud. What the hell? The bots were supposed to care for the brat while Bulma worked—Vegeta realized his logical mistep as he kicked aside yet another pile of white-hot metal to get to the nursery door.
A well-placed kick opened the door right up, taking one of Bulma's Baby Bots into the wall with it. The bot's eyes fritzed and attempted to speak to Vegeta in a mechanical garble. The other Baby Bot twitched on the floor in front of Trunks' crib, arms flailing like an upturned beetle. That one went into the other wall so that Vegeta could get to the half-cage that served as the brat's sleeping enclosure.
The boy was only six months old and screamed indignantly at Vegeta from his back. Having just been awakened from his own mid-afternoon, after-lunch nap, Vegeta knew the feeling. Bulma took the brat to the lab with her in the mornings, brought him back for their midday meals, and then left the Baby Bots in charge of the boy while he napped off his healthy serving of milk so that she could have meetings without her hair and work yanked on and batted about.
The brat's eyebrows were drawn down over his eyes, his fists clenched and legs kicking, purple hair darkened by sweat and swept downward over his forehead. Vegeta was struck with the unbidden memory of Frieza's files full of images of "young Prince Vegeta." Trunks took a breather from screaming to cough, his entire body convulsing with the movement, bringing Vegeta back to the present.
He tossed the damp shirt over his shoulder and reached into the crib, rearranging his grip as the brat wriggled and he tried to remember how Bulma had picked him up. He'd never held the boy and was struck by how…real he felt. The weight of him, the plushness of his little legs and the softness of his skin. Up until this harried moment in a smoke-filled room, Vegeta's concept of his son had been just that—a concept, two-dimensional and distant, something he let himself see and hear but not touch, never touch or think about other than his location at one particular point of time or another.
He was small but heftier than Vegeta had been expecting, and Vegeta set the brat on his hip like he'd seen Bulma do, each leg on either side of his father's waist. Vegeta gripped his leg and walked them out of the nursery, noting that the muscle tone under the skin felt particularly dense for a brat who had never taken a step on his own before. He's half-Saiyan, his mind reminded him, but Vegeta pushed that thought aside as they reached the stairs.
The brat hacked again, the force of it nearly sending him back over Vegeta's arm. Vegeta pulled the shirt from his shoulder and draped it over the boy's face, taking care to tuck it up under his chin. The smoke was only getting thicker, and everything took on a hazy sheen as Vegeta's eyes watered.
They had five flights of stairs to take—ridiculous invention in a time like this, Vegeta thought. He rocked forward on his toes and lifted his knees, taking low flight and carrying the two of them down the stairs at a faster clip than running them ever would have. Trunks bobbled in Vegeta's arms; Vegeta pressed a hand to the brat's back to keep him steady against his chest.
By the time Vegeta kicked the front door open and pulled his shirt from Trunks' face, fire trucks were screeching into the driveway. Vegeta took great gulps of fresh air and turned to look at Capsule Corp's building. Flames roared upwards against the clear afternoon sky, topped with a column of dark grey smoke stretching upwards until it thinned into nothing. Firemen tumbled out of the vans and unspooled long hoses. Vegeta had seen enough movies to know that water would come spraying out of them soon enough, so he backed away until a fireman waved him down.
"Is there anyone left in the house?" he shouted.
"No." Vegeta shook his head, distracted. Trunks was wheezing in his arms, his little lungs struggling to expand even in the smoke-less air.
"Where are the doctors Briefs?"
Vegeta jerked his head towards the back of the property. "In their lab on the other side of the woods."
The fireman nodded shortly, and signaled for his colleagues to start hosing down the source of the fire. He ran back to his truck and reappeared a minute later with a green cylinder with a clear tube attached. "Put this over his face," he instructed, passing the attached mask to Vegeta. "The ambulances will be here soon."
He gave no more instructions, just turning a crank on the cylinder. Vegeta sniffed at the mask when it started hissing out gas but all he smelled was clean oxygen. So he shifted the brat in his arms and held the mask to Trunks' nose and mouth. The boy swatted at the mask, crying out in annoyance.
"Stop that immediately," Vegeta instructed, giving his son a sharp bounce or two until Trunks followed his father's orders. Or at least seemed to. In either case, he settled down and inhaled in the oxygen emitted from the mask without complaint. Within a few minutes, he seemed to struggle less with his breathing and the wheezing lost its harsh edge.
"Trunks! Trunks!"
Vegeta turned at Bulma's voice and saw her heading towards them on the path stretching between the house and the detatched lab at a full sprint. It was a strange sight, because Vegeta had never seen her do more than what he would call a trot. But there she was, arms pumping, white coat flapping, feet barely tapping the pavestones in her race towards them. She barely took note of the firemen milling around the house, and they jumped out of her way, what with her screeching announcing her presence among them.
As she came closer, he could see the tears streaming from her eyes, and even as she took in Trunks' open eyes and smile at the sight of her, she didn't slow down for a minute. Vegeta had to drop the mask and stretch out his arm to break her impact into his side. They stumbled back a few steps, nearly tripping over each other's feet, arms wrapping around each other's waists to find their balance, until they righted themselves.
Bulma continued to take hitching sobs in lieu of breaths, kissing Trunks' forehead and cheeks, then the backs of his hands when he lifted them to push her away. "Trunks, my baby, Trunks, I was so scared, so scared, my baby boy, I'm so happy you're alright…"
"Let him breathe, woman," Vegeta said, sure that enough coddling had taken place for one day. But her attention just shifted to him and she cupped his cheeks in her hands.
"Are you alright?" she asked, eyes still bright and heart pounding with adrenaline. She turned his head this way and that, searching for burns or cuts and finding nothing more than the acrid smell of stale smoke.
"I'm fine." Vegeta turned his head out of her grasp. "I woke up and got us out before the fire trucks—"
The rest of his sentence was caught in Bulma's mouth. Her hands, so recently shucked from his person, clutched at the back of his neck, nails scraping pleasantly across his skin. Vegeta had sworn her off back when her belly had barely even started to swell under her coveralls, but her mouth was wet, soft, fervent, and Vegeta turned into it, tightened his fingers' grip at her hip.
She swallowed heavily and moved a hand to Trunks' head. "I got the alert at the lab," she murmured against his lips. "I was so worried…"
Her voice started to shake. Vegeta knew that the adrenaline would fade soon and turn to histrionics if left unchecked. In his peripheral vision, Bulma's hand stroked through the baby fine hair on Trunks' head, nearly reverent. "We're fine," he replied, and tilted his head to press a lingering kiss at the corner of her mouth. "The boy needs oxygen, but he's unhurt."
Nodding and taking a deep breath, Bulma reached down and picked up the oxygen mask, holding it to Trunks' face again. She made no move to take the boy, but Vegeta didn't even think to shift the burden back to her. With sirens squealing in the background and the hiss of water meeting flames, the three of them stood together in near quiet.
He felt Bulma lean her head back moreso than felt it, and their mouths came together again with more measure this time, more finesse. Bulma was warm and soft against his side, her tongue tasting of the mints and the cigarettes she smoked when Trunks wasn't nearby. Her hand curved over his shoulder, palm smooth against his bare skin. He felt the press of each finger and the brush of her hair against his arm. He'd missed this. He'd missed…her.
The thought twisted in his gut, and all he could do was pull her tighter against his side and suck on her tongue when she slid it into his mouth. He wanted to do more, but it would have been undecent in front of so many strangers, and because their son was still wedged between them. So, he satisfied himself with the taste of her mouth and the sweet smell of her hair for the time being, while firemen slowly subdued the fire that had once threatened to overtake the house.
Later that night though, after Bulma took Trunks back into her arms, after Dr. Briefs gaped at the near-destruction of the home he'd raised his daughter in, after Bulma took them all out to an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet, and after Trunks had gone to sleep on an improvised pallet on the floor of Bulma's office, surrounded by pillows to keep him from rolling too far away, Vegeta bore Bulma back onto the un-capsulated bed.
He wanted to believe that he'd nearly forgotten the arch of her neck and the dip of soft flesh below her sternum, but he knew he hadn't. They'd haunted his dreams for a year now, sneaking in where he couldn't guard against them. Still, he refamiliarized himself with them, along with her sighs and moans, the taste of the sweat that pooled in her cupid's bow, the sound of her throaty laugh. He let her lace their fingers together while she rode him, reveling in the sight of her tossed-back hair and the play of her muscles under the skin of her stomach. And when they rolled over, he tugged her arms up the bed, arching her back so that he could nip at her breasts. Her knee caught in his elbow, then her ankle on his shoulder with his mouth at her knee, even better with his hands pushing her thighs all the way back because that was when she stopped moaning and started groaning, and that's always been Vegeta's favorite Bulma sound.
And later, when they were done and lying twined together, he let Bulma run her fingers over his scars and along his jawline and down his nose, sucking on her thumb when it dropped to his lip. He returned the favor even later, nuzzling at the divot of her clavicle, lapping at the centers of her palms, mouthing her breasts till they peaked in the moonlight, slowly sending her into a quivering puddle as he nipped at her hips, her shoulders, dipped his tongue into her navel and along her last ribs, until he mouthed his way up her thighs and buried his face where they joined.
When sunlight caused Vegeta to blink into wakefulness the next morning, well-rested and well-sated, he rolled over in bed to see that Bulma had brought Trunks into the bed at some point in the night. The brat was awake, playing with his toes with quiet coos, while Bulma breathed slow and even on the other side.
He could have turned out far worse, Vegeta decided, as he and Trunks eyed each other with matching furrowed brows and mouths that naturally turned down at the corners. Still, "You'd best start walking soon," Vegeta informed the boy. "I'm not going to carry you out like an invalid next time."