Author's Note: this was for a fic swap on Tumblr. The other person requested Chi Chi/Piccolo or Picconail, and I went with Piccolo/Chi Chi.

Thanks for reading and thanks even more for leaving a comment! :)

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It was somewhere in the seven steps that carried Chi Chi from the table to the open window that she realized.

Gohan was standing in the grass, staring with those big, wide eyes of his, at a butterfly balanced on Piccolo's nose. His face was a stony cast of concentration, and his entire body was still and rooted to the rock he had chosen to perch on.

Gohan tugged on the leg of his jeans, and then looked at his mother. "He's asleep," the little boy said, and Chi Chi started her arduous journey of seven steps to come closer and see.

As if on cue, Piccolo slowly lurched forward and towards the ground, and then jerked himself awake just before he slipped off the rock. The butterfly fled the scene as he whipped his head around, alarmed, and found Gohan. Then, he turned again, and his dark eyes found Chi Chi. He blinked at her for what felt like an eternity, and she smiled back at him. She couldn't help it, despite her best efforts.

Falling in love was supposed to be magical, and huge, and larger-than-life, not a paltry gust of wind that danced in her house on a whim and stirred nothing but the leaves of the flowers her son had picked for her. She had dreamed of a prince, and a palace, and a fairy tale wedding and a happily ever after, and of being the damsel in distress to a man all too eager to save her and then spend the rest of his life with her.

She'd had the wedding, true, but she had lost the palace, had lost the prince. They lived in her ex husband's old childhood home, left to him in disrepair from his grandfather, and then left to Chi Chi in shambles when he died in a car crash. Chi Chi had been in shambles before she knew about the house, though. She learned of her husband's death after the fact, after the funeral was over and done with and his possessions divided out without so much as her input.

Piccolo's expression was steady, as always, dark, as always, and just slightly out of place, just as he always was.

Father and son had been missing since the day Goku died- since the day he had gone to meet some friends and show off their little boy. Chi Chi had called everyone and everything in a panic after the first day, but the truth was some great secret kept from both herself and the authorities until Piccolo mysteriously showed up at the beginning of last winter with her son and a series of terse, ugly explanations.

"Dead?! How can Goku be dead?!"

"Car wreck."

"How could that be?! He can't drive! And he wasn't even in the city! He was-"

"His brother."

"What?!"

"His brother took your son."

"Why?!"

"Drugs."

"Excuse me?!"

"He wanted your husband to help him in a turf war over drugs and human trafficking, or something. I don't know all of the details on his end, but your husband died trying to stop it. Is that good enough for you?"

"...Oh, my God."

"God's a joke."

"Shut up!"

"Hn."

"And why the hell do you know about all of this?!"

"Hm."

"Answer me!"

"I'm sorry, you told me to shut up."

"Dammit! Don't play this game with me!"

"Stop shouting. You'll wake up the kid."

"Then start talking!"

"I was there."

"And?!"

"And?"

"Details, you shady sonofabitch! You can't just leave me with that and say it's good enough! What were you doing there?! Are you a drug dealer, or, o-or a human trafficker? Oh, God, did you do something to Gohan?!"

"No. The kid's fine. He was fine the whole time. Mostly."

"Mostly?!"

"I did was consider holding him for ransom, or making him work within my family, out of spite for his father. But with Son dead on the front of my car and out of the picture, that wasn't so appealing anymore."

"You killed my husband?!"

"I got his brother, too, if it makes you feel better."

"...You're the devil."

"...Heh."

"Get out of my house."

"Oh? Or what?"

"Or I will make you get out of my house."

"There's no need to go that far. I'll leave by myself, no problem, and let you live here in your wilderness retreat all by your lonesome. But, tell me, what are you gonna do when the people working with Son's brother show up looking for his little wife and baby boy?"

"...You filthy, lying, extorting prick!"

"I thought I was the devil, not a prick."

"I hate you!"

"It's just as well."

"I'm going to report you, you know. For child abduction, and- a-and God knows what else!"

"Exactly. God knows, if he's even up there, and nobody else. Everyone else who might know is dead. Or, they just can't wait to learn where Son Chi Chi and her son are hiding."

"When you're on the right side of the law, you don't have to stoop down to recruiting other criminals to cover for you."

"Because the law was so very helpful in bringing your son back to you these past few months. Very reassuring."

"I…"

"Your husband made a lot of enemies, which means that they're yours, now. And they'll come crawling out of the woodwork and blindside you, just like I did. Traffic accidents can only solve so much."

"Oh, yeah? Well, what's it to you?"

"...Simply put, I need a place to hide."

"And you think I'll just let you stay here because you made a few thinly veiled threats?"

"I think you're smart enough to know you need money. Unemployed, dead husbands don't make a whole lot more than unemployed living ones, or so I am told."

"Oh, so now you'll pay me since your little persuasive tough-guy act didn't work."

"You're no good to me dead."

"Good to you? Good to YOU? Well! I'm sorry I didn't get the memo about how I'm supposed to be concerned with you. So what are you supposed to be to me?"

"Another inheritance. And that's all you need to know."

Sometimes, Chi Chi wondered if Piccolo really was part of what her Goku left to her, for good or for ill.

She leaned onto the windowsill and rested her cheek on her palm. Piccolo fidgeted under her gaze, but barely.

She gave him a little wave and watched him mull over what to do about it with a quiet laugh.

"You were asleep," Gohan said suddenly, monopolizing Piccolo's attention again.

"No, I wasn't sleeping, kid." Piccolo's dark, dry voice carried over the distance and the breeze. "I was meditating." He crossed his legs and arms in indignation.

Chi Chi laughed to herself in tandem with her son's louder giggles. Piccolo was lying- and terribly, since he knew that both of his witnesses were very aware of his sleeping habits.

In the beginning, Piccolo spent the night in the shed apart from the main house, except for the days he went missing and returned in the dead of night, sometimes bruised and suspiciously pensive, but always with a manila envelope of money that he left on the kitchen table.

Chi Chi hated it- and in some ways, she still did- but she stopped questioning it and started letting him sleep on the couch in the main house. This crisp fall was due to turn to bitter winter soon, after all.

Now, both she and Gohan were very accustomed to finding him passed out in the living room, either with his arms ramrod straight at his sides or sitting upright, his feet planted squarely on the floor, like he might open his eyes and start scolding them both at any moment.

Once, he had come home covered in blood. He'd hid his injuries under the living room afghan until Gohan was asleep. Chi Chi hadn't let him hear the end of it for two weeks.

(The next week, he also taught Gohan how to fish, and how to climb trees, and probably a myriad of things Chi Chi would rather her son not know. They brought her back flowers, a bunch of fish, and a whole two loads worth of dirty laundry.)

"That's what you always say," Gohan told Piccolo, his giggles subsiding.

Piccolo ruffled his hair. "With that kind of attitude, I might just decide to leave."

"But you'd come back," Gohan argued. "Right?"

"I was kidding," he said. "I'm not going to leave."

Gohan was insistent. "But you would come back."

"Yeah, sure. Probably." Piccolo turned around to look at Chi Chi again. "If your mom lets me."

She gave him the cheekiest grin she could muster, and Piccolo looked away with a barely noticeable widening of his eyes.

Chi Chi escaped from the window and out the door, and took seven more steps onto the grass and rocks of the mountainside, and then another seven steps, and another.

It was such a stupid, arbitrary moment on a stupid, arbitrary day for her to fall in love with someone, especially compared to everything else she had been put through in the past year, but it was her moment and hers to make magical. She had been mourning long enough, and she had been hateful long enough, and even if she couldn't be completely trusting of Piccolo just yet, there was always time to learn, and to start, and to grow into it.

So, seven sets of seven steps for seven groups of stars, for seven golden orbs, like in the stories that her ex husband used to tell, and she could have a wish granted.

She sat down next to Piccolo on the rock and pulled Gohan to her. "I might let you come back, if I'm feeling generous," Chi Chi said, smirking. "But mostly, I wish you'd just stay put here, with us, and didn't leave at all."