A/N: Sorry, I seem to be just spewing complete and utter garbage lately every time I sit down to write. Its more then just not being able to get the words to flow right, it's like I can't think through my ideas, I can't see individuality in my characters, and I certainly can't seem to come up with any original plots. Bleh! I'm trying though. I want to finish everything I've started.
I'm thrilled to take suggestions for where to take this; anything. What other parts of their relationship would you like to see? Should they jump back into bed together right away, or let the sexual tension grow? I guess I'll have to figure out how to write in more tension between them. Prompts?
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He was aggressive today, cantankerous and acerbic. At breakfast no glance had been spared her way in the effort to transport food into his mouth. She'd departed before he'd finished and he could feel the roll of a growl in his chest. The bandages he still sported itched and his head still hadn't fully healed. The exterior wound, the one hidden just into the hairline was nearly gone, his fingers could only palpitate a slightly smooth line of flesh. Things still weren't processing properly for him, there was still internal damage under the pucker of the healing skin.
He was sneaking into her lab when he found her unexpectedly bent over on all fours, back arched, with her shoulders under a mechanical body, electronic guts scattered around. The overalls she wore were pulled tight over her backside. There was much to appreciate, and he was reminded again of how he'd come full circle in his time here, it was five, no, nearly six years ago now since they'd first taken up like this. With no understanding of how to link the sensation in his chest to the words he knew to describe nostalgia, he shrugged and veered away without the fresh bandages and a few secreted pills from her false-bottom drawer.
During lunch he couldn't seem to escape her yet again, this time when she came into the house it was still in her well worn coveralls. As he sat waiting for his meal he was duty-bound, as a man and witness, to watch as she pulled down the zipper, over her chest, down her ribs, past her hips and deep into her belly. The tank top she was wearing underneath was white. His eyes were forced to distinguish that it happened to be slightly sheer. Vegeta shifted in his chair when she slipped the top portion off and tied the arms low on her hips. He looked to the incoming food, and when he looked back the woman had left the room.
The boy was in her arms on her return, fussing and making mewling noises as she talked happily to him. His hands were grasping at the straps, tugging at them to keep him close to his mother, and sometimes down enough to expose significant clevage.
"Common Trunks, lets get something to eat!" She coaxes and persuades the boy to sit with her and eat. The boy is unusually sleepy, usually perking right up at the idea of food. She puts her hand over his forehead and then pulls the knit cap off his head. A kiss to the infants crown, and she rubs her hand on his back as she perches him on her thighs, careful to support him in her lap. The boy is facing his father who catches his eye and prompts the child to lean backwards into his mother using her breasts as a pillow. His blue eyes blink and he settles again sleepily against his mother, watching his father.
Vegeta watches the boy secretly, flicking his eyes up from his recently filled plate at casual intervals. The child grabbing at the soft fruit his mother is holding out for him to grasp. Inspecting it before crushing it against his face and lips and crying when the sticky juices and mashed pulp on his fists are enough to distract him. The mess that accumulates on the boy accounts for a good portion of his meal; all fruit, ripe, and varied. Any offerings of vegetables are tall turned down bluntly, mouth clenched tight against entry.
The woman talks quietly to the boy, speaking into his ears and trying to see if her son will eat a few more pieces for breakfast. He fusses as she cleans his hands and face with a cloth, whining again, on the verge of a melt down. The woman is soft on the boy he decides; it's simple to see, the boy is coming into his power, the ki pathways that each saiyan child is born with are coming alive. They're starting to fire randomly, the channels opening and closing unconsciously, a precursor to manifesting and manipulating ki.
The boy is sleepy again, sitting and staring straight ahead at his still eating father, eyelids drooping against the child's fight to stay awake and watch his sire. As he begins to lean forwards in semi-sleep his mother catches him effortlessly and turns him around to carry him from the table. The small blue eyes peek over the slope of her shoulder, and one arm lifts up and the attached tiny hand flops up and down. As the older man finishes his last dish the pair depart around the corner. The farewell gesture from his son was unexpected and unanticipated, the boy was becoming comfortable with him!
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The quiet of the large dome and the absence of the push to train inside him drove Vegeta to meditate, a mid-way concession to his drive to fight, and the plaguing exhaustion that still dogged at his heels. In the afternoon hours as the sun creeps across the floor, and up his stiff body, he is trying to center himself enough to enter the place of stillness that encompassed meditation. The plateau that one usually ascends to in mediation would not stabilize for him, a sign of lacking practice. His mind drifts aimlessly, focusing pointlessly on the heat on his skin where the sunlight touches him, then on a new warmth he finds in his chest. The rustle of her clothes give her away, she is oddly patient. Her quiet forces him to crack open one eye to reassure himself of her motives and purpose for seeking him out.
He realizes she is fidgeting, fingers flexing and twitching at the tips, so he arches a brow at her and opens his other eye. They meet and she opens her mouth to speak, but is somehow halted from getting words out by her bottom lip catching on her teeth. She rolls it between her teeth and something tickles at his lips; it should be him indenting her soft flesh. The words tumble out, "I think…I think you need to start training with Trunks."
He'd released the raised brow, and was now raising it once again encouraging her to go on. Instead she sank down to her knees and tugged up the edge of her shirt until he could see the underside of one breast and the shadow of the other. Two large blue-purple and green bruises showed, one appearing over her hip, and the other partially hidden above the exposed skin; both were fresh and still developing. The woman calmly tugged the shirt downwards again. As the seam of skin between her coveralls and tank began to shrink he resisted the twitch in his fingers that wanted him to stretch his is arm forward and touch those very marks, verify the proof of the boy's early development. He wants to share his observations of the boy, but can't claw together whatever he needs to push the words out into the open, so he gives a quick curt nod. Neither continues the conversation, and to avoid the self-conscious silence he closes his eyes and moves to return to his meditative practice.
He opens his eyes much later to breasts; high, rounded and soft looking, held in a lowneck shirt. They're invading his space, and for once he doesn't want to resist and fight off the invasion. The woman is leaning over him her face close to his, the expression on her face akin to the curious one she wears when discovering something new. He shifts, repositioning himself in his sweatpants to try and recapture his interrupted concentration, ignoring the ache that has arisen from nowhere.
"What?" He calls to her, disoriented by the evidence of her femininity.
"Its dinner, and I've called you twice already." She focuses her blue eyes and he can see she is looking to the site of his healing head wound. He was giving away his discomfort to her by lowering his eyes abashed at her inquiring look. Her concern made his cheeks burn. Her hand is next in front of his face, open palm waiting for his, and offer to help him up.
At the dinner table he observes the boy. He is advanced even by saiyan standards; communicating early non-verbally, pointing, grasping, pulling himself to stand using the strength in his muscles. He inherited his mother's propensity for loud screams, and probably her vocal cords as well. That much was certain. The boy fills himself happily with cubes of steamed or boiled vegetables from dishes in front of him. He is far more awake, willing to sit separately from the woman.
After the meal the woman gathers the boy and puts a hat over his head, "come for a walk with us Vegeta." His sensitive ears picked up the hopeful inflection in her tone and very clearly he is reminded of her admission that she'd like him to train the boy. He joins them walking down the path a few steps behind the woman hands in the pockets of the sweatshirt he's wearing. Eventually they fall into step alongside each other, Trunks in the woman's arms watching his father until he recognizes the entry to the indoor gardens, and then begins to squirm with excitement.
Bulma stops and lets the boy down, standing over him smiling while waiting for him to act. The child sits and claps his hands giggling and smiling to himself. Vegeta is uncomfortable; he doesn't know how to interact with the woman this way, or the boy. To him she is still the woman who argued with him, fixed his training machines, and let him slip between her thighs when she was feeling feisty. Here and now she does none of these things, which only serves to make the connection they'd once had more foreign and distant to him.
He wants to know why she has not invited him back into her bed as before. Yes, he sleeps on the same pallet and shares the same blankets however, he doesn't feel the wicked fire he used to feel for her. Instead of a popping cracking heat, it lays hidden, interred under the whispy ashes of their initial combustion. She is muted to him, and he knows that she has retracted herself the smallest amount, displaying a caution around him he'd never seen from her before, its insalubrious.
The child is thrilled with his new surroundings, and soon begins to explore. Bulma eventually has to pick the infant up again when he begins to transfer all he touches to his mouth to taste. "Silly boy! You shouldn't be eating that." She coos and they begin walking again through the garden. Eventually they come to a small clearing, on the ground is a square of rubberized bricks, soft and cushioning. There is an assortment of coloured blocks ranging from half the boy's size to twice as large. There are balls and other toys in boxes around the perimeter. In the center Bulma sits and places Trunks down between her crossed legs.
As the sky above through the glass ceiling turns dark the boy plays, climbing, swating and grasping at the shapes his mother pulled within his reach. She was teaching him, strengthening his muscles and helping to exhaust the burst of energy he'd gotten shortly after dinner. The Woman talked to him intermittently, she didn't expect any answers from him, and in her manner, and the topic itself he found an old piece of himself; rebuilding the gravity room. Her conversation is superficial, no longer dipping into the intensely personal areas she'd recently been inquiring after. He feels like he wants to be anticipating her pressing words to force him to verbalize his inner thoughts, anything to renew the sudden severance of an already tenuous relationship. He watches the boy crawl to his next objective while the talking continued.
The longer she talks, the less he feels the personal nuances he is used to from her in their communication. His boy is tiring now, movements slower, quicker to become frustrated with his environment. He wonders who cared for him as a boy this age. They're sitting nearly side by side now, she has remained on the spongy ground and he has sat on one of the blocks nearby. He could swear her breasts looked larger now then they had when he'd first sat down.
The boy crawls back to his mother making noises of displeasure, interrupting a perfectly good monologue on the room shape and design of the gravity room. She pulls the boy to sit in her lap and he rewards her with a slap to the chest that makes her squeeze her eyes shut and hold the boy away from her. Eventually she calms her face and opens her eyes, speaking firmly to the boy she informs him there is no hitting. Vegeta is curious and slightly awed at the distance the woman goes to avoid displaying her pain to the child.
The boy makes more noises and reaches out his hands. When she tucks him close to her body he pats at her breasts, softer this time, but still enough for him to watch her eyes flutter for a moment.
"Do you mind?" She asks him looking wary. Vegeta hasn't a clue as to her reference, but shrugs indifferently to protect his pride. The infant is wriggling in her grasp fussing and making mewling growls. Bulma is prepared, having learned her lesson when she'd had to dress Trunks in Yajirobi's scarf, and as such she pulls and tosses something from her pocket. The capsule opens a bit far from her, but without missing a beat she turns to him and asks him to pass her the folded green blanket that is just out of her reach. Without argument he does, and smiles at him when he hands it to her. She misses touching him, it's decided.
Blanket tossed over one shoulder he does not understand what is happening under the green shroud. Instead she starts talking again, the boy's plaintive whines silenced. "Tell me more about what you want changed in the room." She prompts, her eyes moving around blankly as she reaches under the cover to shift something. When he doesn't answer she is strangely unphased but picks up where she left off regardless, "I was thinking of upgrading the interface to something I've been playing around with."
Vegeta has been sucker punched and he didn't even see it coming. The unsettling feeling, the seemingly unending exhaustion was her, the Woman. The further she disengaged from him, the more disconnected he felt to this alien world, and it'd been manifesting and culminating from the moment their future son had lept back to his own time. The anger Vegeta had felt at the betrayed sense of shock and the painful feelings that came with realizing that he'd made emotional attachments on this planet. He'd sat out in the desert for days staring into nothingness until he'd decided he would forgo future ones, and remain to teach his son to be strong, proud, and brave. The unexpected twist, the gut clenching revelation, was that while he had avowed himself to no longer make those connections, the woman was simultaneously pulling further and further away from him, perhaps unknown even to her, and he disliked it.
Here he was sitting realizing that it could not go both ways for him, either he could continue as he was, holding himself above and away from it all as he used to be, or he could try to regain what he'd left in the wake of his actions in early May. Something honest in him surged upwards and decided quickly; regain, regain, regain. It overshadowed his doubts, and forced down the lingering question of what he could achieve with his newfound power if only he was not bound by the emotional connections he was returning himself into.
His eyes make contact with hers and she smiles at him again, something she's been doing a lot since they'd reached their own version of an armistice upon his return. She is asking him if he wants to see having misinterpreted his moment of reflection for staring at the blanket.
She pulled back the blanket and the mystery was revealed. The boy was watching him; mouth working at her hidden nipple and a hand between the valley of her breasts. Vegeta was stunned. He'd never seen the boy feed like this before, and that feeling of awe reemerged. Bulma'd pulled her shirt down, off one shoulder and under herself to expose half of her chest to the boy. "You know, I promised myself I'd wean him from this. I realized you were right when you told me I coddle him too much." The way she spoke to him reminded him of his earlier desire to have a reason to be anxious for her words. He nodded for once. They both watched the boy suckling with half-lidded eyes.
He surprised them both, "what else do you know?" His eyes were still on the boy whose face was relaxed in contentment. "Plenty." She replied and moved the boy to the shoulder and tapped him on his back, before manuvering again to switch the infant to the other breast without exposing herself to him. The boy could no longer watch them, so he watched her instead. The way she held the child, rubbing his back and legs as he ate, made his insides feel funny. Soon after the infant's body relaxed in her arms and she busily moved to wipe the boys face and pull her shirt back up to cover up.
"How's your head?" She questioned as she repositioned the sleeping boy and packing back up her opened capsule. She nods at his grunt.
"Are we okay Vegeta?" She stands and he moves to match her. In silence they walk back to the garden entrance. Before they emerged from the winding path and put themselves within the line of sight of the outside, he stopped and quickly turned to her pressing his lips to hers. Their chests concave to accommodate their sleeping son. It's brief and it sparks those coals buried under the first incarnation of themselves.
When she pushes further into the contact he knows its him she is reacting to, not a reaction to his actions in which she is just on the periphery. He recognizes her anger over his return from battle against Cell, while is the central tenant of their interpersonal conflict, however for him is just on the edge of the larger picture; he is once again the displaced prince, lost and without a home or purpose. In his drive to make sense of his initial decision to remain on Earth he'd separated himself from the one thing that had made the planet seem less alien, the woman, his intermediary to all things since his release from his mercenary life.
"Yes." He breathes it against her lips as they part and he steps back.