A Heavier Burden
Disclaimer: Dragonball Z is not mine. The only characters in this fic who belong to me are Ox Junior and Girdle.
Pairing: Lets just say a lot, and run with that, okay?
Summary: The saiyan mating drive is most urgent when the species is in the most danger. A lot of implied sex, but if you're looking for smut, you won't find it here.
A/N: A common plot device in Dragonball Z fics is to have the saiyans pairing off, or going into 'heat'. And yet somehow these fits of uncontrollable and sometimes violent lust always end with the characters finding their 'one twu wuv'; an idea which I find problematic at best.
Alright, I said, what if the saiyans did go into heat, but wished to stay with their human spouses? What if they were genuinely in love with their respective husbands or wives, but were driven by biology to find another saiyan every month or so and make like bunnies? The personal effects of this would be devastating. Love and lust would be constantly at war, and the saiyans would be incredibly unhappy, which means – angst! I am so there.
Pan doesn't look at Trunks as she gets up.
There is a ritual to this, as neat and precise and ordered as the past few hours have been frantic. It's how she takes back control, step by step, making her way back to her real life.
Trunks lies on his back, arms folded behind his head. He might be looking at the branches overhead, or he might be looking at her. She doesn't know: she doesn't look.
She puts her shorts back on first. No panties: they were ripped to useless shreds within the first ten minutes. Next, she finds her bra, thankfully still intact. It is simple and plain white. No fancy lace or filmy negligee to tease Trunks. It is enough that they go through this – what does Trunks call it? Necessity – every few months. She won't degrade them both further by pretending that it's something it's not. Lacy nighties and black stockings are things she dons for her husband. If she wears them for Trunks, it would feel like cheating, as if she was giving him something she should save for another. Nevermind that the prerequisites for cheating have already been filled to quota.
"How is Uub?" Trunks asks suddenly. The inane politeness of the question, enquiring after her husband as if they were at family dinner, makes Pan want to either laugh or cry.
"Good," she says. She clears her throat. "Very good. He's keeping busy with his village."
"Ox?" Trunks asks. His voice is very casual.
"Fine." She searches about until she finds her shirt. "He started pre-school last week. His teachers say he's doing very well."
"Good." Trunks rolls over and props his head up on his elbow to watch her as she buttons her shirt. There is no guilt or love in his eyes as he watches her bra being covered by the white material. He watches her with the casual interest he might show to an apple he is contemplating having another bite of. "You know if you'd like, I could talk to the principle of the school Girdle is attending…"
"I know." Her voice is perhaps a tad too sharp. She tries to modify it. Trunks tends to take offence at her spikes of temper, and will spend weeks giving her the cold shoulder. "I like the local school. I went there when I was a kid."
He gives her a devastatingly beautiful grin. At that moment, her heart melts and she thinks how easy it would be to fall in love with this man. His next words, however, remind her why she does not.
"All the more reason to get him into a good school soon," he teases. "We don't want him to become a high school drop out like you."
The muscles in Pan's jaw clench, and she fights the urge to remind him that the reason she dropped out of high school was because she was touring the galaxy with him, and she'd completed it later externally, probably doing better than if she'd done it the normal way.
"Hmm." She finishes buttoning her shirt and begins searching for her shoes. "You should get dressed. Didn't you have a dinner party tonight?"
She doesn't have to look around to know the distracted look is settling over his face, as he returns his attention to things like schedules and dinner dates and the wife and family waiting for him at home. She knows him so well. She thinks they could have been great friends – had beengreat friends once – until sex came along and screwed it all up.
It would all be so simple if they could just fall in love. If only she could decide that it is Trunks, not her husband, that she loves, and if only he could decide he wants her, not the sweet woman waiting for him at home. But neither of them can. That is the awful, tragic truth of the matter. They genuinely love their respective partners, with such intensity that the thought of losing them is almost physically painful.
And thus this charade.
"Have you spoken to Goten recently?" Trunks asks this in a distracted tone as he loops his tie about his neck. He must talk to Marron this same way in the mornings, as they get dressed. Pan feels like a peeping tom, as if she's looking through a window into the little intimacies of Marron's marriage. It's strange how that feels more of a betrayal than the sex.
"Not recently, no." She finds one shoe underneath a bush and begins hunting for the other.
"Bra says he hasn't been meeting up with her."
That gives Pan pause. She knows as well as any other saiyan that once the urge has you in it's grip, gender becomes irrelevant. Even the body beneath you becomes nothing more than an instrument of relief, and only the smell – that rich, overpowering saiyan scent so different from the bland human odour – matters.
But Goten has always had… issues when it comes to sex. If he's desperate enough, he'll let Trunks help him out, but by and large he likes to think of himself as a ladies' man. Sex with a man casts too many implications on his sexuality for him to handle. He'll do it with Bra, but no one else. If he's not meeting up with her, he's not meeting up with anyone.
"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Pan hisses. She's utterly, absolutely furious.
"Now, now." Trunks is the picture of cool, rational logic. "He could just be going to someone else…"
"Like who?" She says sarcastically. "Vegeta?"
Goten's issues aside, he wouldn't be stupid enough to go to the full-blooded saiyan.
Pan did it with Vegeta once. Just the once. He was angry and horny and she was the only saiyan in the area. It's not something she wants to repeat. He gripped her hair and bent her over a mountain range, using her body with a brutal lack of regard for its owner. He frightened her badly and left bruises she had a hard time explaining to her husband.
Trunks' expression is infuriatingly calm as he answers.
"Or Gohan."
Pan clenches about her shoe, and she has to exercise restraint not to crush it.
"They're brothers."
It is the only taboo in their world. Pan doesn't screw her uncle or her father, and Trunks doesn't screw his sister or his father. It is the one last unbreakable rule, the one thing separating them from animals in heat, rutting anything that smells right.
"I think it's for Perasu," Trunks says. "They're getting pretty serious. Maybe he wants to straighten out for her."
"If he wants to keep her, he'd better start un-straighten and fast." Pan finally finds her other shoe and shoves it on. "That complete and utter baka. Doesn't he know what he's risking? What we are? If he screws up –"
"He won't."
"Like hell he –"
"He won't screw up." There is a cold, frightening resolve on Trunks' face. He shrugs on his jacket, smoothing out his lapels. "We're not going to let him."
Pan calms down. Vegeta-sei might have been destroyed and its class structure rendered irrelevant, but in their little band, they all turn to Trunks for guidance. He is the prince of their small world, the protector, the one who cleans up their messes and indiscretions and ultimately keeps everything as it should be.
"What do you need me to do?" She asks.
"Talk to him. Make him see that he's making a mistake."
"And if I can't?"
"Vegeta and I will have a talk to him."
Pan thinks of Ox and nods. Their world is a precarious one, based on lies and deceit. If one of them falls, the rest are endangered as well. If Goten is exposed to Perasu, the other humans may begin taking a closer look at their saiyan partners as well. Of all of them, Pan and Trunks have the most to lose. They are the ones with spouses and young children. In this at least, they are of one mind.
"How's the formula coming along?" She asks.
"We're working on it. I think we're close to a breakthrough."
"You've been saying that for two years now."
"Get a degree in genetic engineering and then we'll talk." Trunks looks annoyed and harassed. "It's not exactly easy. The saiyan biology –"
" – is unique from anything on earth, meaning we have no basis for comparison, blah-blah-blah. I heard you the first fifty times." She drops the sarcasm. "Trunks, we need this formula. It's fine for you guys, but sooner or later either Bra or I will screw up."
What neither one of them say is that she might have already screwed up. Trunks' enquiry after her son had not been casual or incidental.
"And what about the kids?" She says. "What about Girdle? In ten years time, she's going to be going through this exact same thing. How are you going to protect her then? Kami knows it's hard enough to stop teenage girls getting pregnant at the best of times…"
"I know," Trunks says. "I know." There is a tight expression on his face that she knows is pain. It pains her too, thinking of all the explaining they're going to have to do on that day. Each day of reprieve they manage now just adds to the cost they'll eventually have to pay somewhere down the road. There will be a day of reckoning.
"It would help if you had more kids," Trunks adds. It's meant only as a small barb, but she's never been one to just shrug insults off.
"Ex-cuse me if I don't rely on your half-baked theories."
"It's a good theory," he argues. "Vegeta says the saiyan mating drive is most urgent when the species is in the most danger. Logically, it should level out when the population reaches more stable numbers."
"And how many babies is that from now? Nine, ten? A hundred? For kami's sake, Trunks, I'm not going to pop out babies just because it might make my itch stop."
"I'm not saying –" He forces himself to stop and takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Can we not do this now?"
She shrugs and turns away.
"Fine."
"And about Ox."
"Trunks."
"I know you don't want my help –"
"I don't need your help."
" –But think, for his sake. Maybe the kindergarten is adequate, but what about next year? I can get him into any school you like. Any school."
"And what will you tell them?" She turns on him, challengingly. "That you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart?"
His expression doesn't change.
"I'd tell them that his mother is an old friend of mine.." He touches her shoulder. "Just think about it, Pan. That's all I'm asking."
She looks away, clenches her jaw.
"Uub is his father," she says quietly, and pretends she isn't hoping to see the flash of pain cross Trunks' face. "No matter what his ancestry or genetics might be, Uub is still his father."
"I know that," Trunks says.
"Do you?" She says. "If I were to die tomorrow, would you hesitate a moment to sue for custody?"
He evades the question, as she knew he would, and manages to make her sound unreasonable in the extreme.
"I would do what was best for Ox. Honestly, Pan."
That is all that he can promise, Pan knows. She knows Trunks, and knows that he is just as arrogant as Vegeta in his own way. He always assumes he is in the right, that he knows what is best, and will act according to his own judgment, even when it is against your wishes.
"Uub is his father," she says. "I need you to respect that, Trunks."
Because she is listening for it, she hears the beat of hesitation before he answers.
"I do respect that, Pan."
"Good," she says. "Then stop trying to take his place."
She takes off before he can come up with a rejoinder. She flies into the wind, and pretends that the tears slipping from her eyes are due to the wind and not anything deeper.
Pan and Bra bear a heavier burden than the other saiyans.
Doubt.
Marron's children have Trunks' beautiful eyes and their grandmother's hair. There is no question of their paternity.
Pan can never be so certain. Her son – her beautiful, sweet son who has just turned four years old and was named for her great-grandfather – has Goku's spiky hair, and Videl's stubborn mouth. But while his skin is a shade darker than hers, like Uub's, Pan looks at him sometimes, fretfully wondering if that complexion might come from some more distant ancestor of her own. If she lets herself, she can imagine in her son's face Trunks' elegant features, or the harsher cast of Vegeta. Trunks has offered to discretely perform a paternity test, but Pan refused.
She is sure.
Mostly.