The One
The Second Song of the /Anthology/
A TrunksxGoten Songfic Set to /The One/, by Limp Bizkit

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Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball Z. I hope this is rather obvious. I do not own /The One/ or Limp Bizkit. I hope this is likewise obvious. I am using both without permission. I am making no profit of any form.
Warnings and notes: This piece is a songfic. The lyrics are /The One/, by Limp Bizkit (from their CD /Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water/). It is the second in the /Anthology/ series and the previous part should be read first. It contains angst, yaoi, explicit language, the naming of sexual actions, and generally dark subjects. You have been warned. I appreciate reviews (swiftskyes@hotmail.com), be they critiques or a general good/bad word. Enjoy.
Begun 9.10.01
Completed 1.0.02

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Irony is a twist of fate, an event that defies logic or goes against what has been predicted. Irony is deciding not to call Trunks but to do homework instead and then opening up a word processing program to find my writing about him as a recovered document open on the screen.

I know I won't get any homework done now.

Did I reread my words? Yes. Just seeing the first page made me remember it all and I didn't need to reread it but I did anyway. It's strange to see our past, written out like that. Like a little novel, a little vignette. Things are really different now. A great deal has changed since then. So I'll tell the story, of course. The continuation. The sequel. The next episode. I've got to, because the moment is just too perfect not to. He's on my mind, good rhythmic slow music is coming through the speakers below my wrists, and my laptop is here and open and waiting.

So I'll begin where I left off.

//I'm dead from all the loneliness
And this is how I feel
Understanding everything has never been my deal
Maybe you have crossed my path to live inside of me
Or maybe you're the reason why I'm losing all my decency//

I didn't understand the full extent of how lonely I was until Trunks arrived to help me pack. Seeing him – hair wild from flying, ratty blue jeans, white shirt with a faded Bokoukai logo printed on the front – standing there at the apartment door made my gut wrench. He said my name and kissed me, so chastely, and I wanted to cry. He packed. I couldn't. All I could do was stand there and stare at him. I felt alive again, filled with the emotion that had been lacking in our time apart. I had always known I loved him but at that moment I felt it as well, stronger than ever before. I know how awful, how dramatic that sounds, really I do, but that overly sentimental description is the only one I can come up with.

Time flew by. Within moments, it felt, Trunks was taking me home. He went with me to my parents and I told them I had decided to return. They couldn't question me about it because they had never found out why I left in the first place. I got my room back and soon everything began to fall into place just like I had known it would. My social group accepted me, my family was glad I was back, and Trunks, of course, was Trunks. Sure, there were a few changes. I didn't return to high school but instead enrolled at the local community college. I got a part time job just to have something to do – not for the money, of course, because Trunks paid for anything I wanted. Some people in my social group had left and there were a few new members, including this one girl I slept with two or three times, just to relieve the pressure of being around Trunks again. There were more small changes, but it didn't matter – I was home.

I didn't notice anything was wrong for a good long time.

I've known Trunks my entire life. My first memory is of him, leaning into my vision and prodding me, his face asking, "What's that?" I've known him as young and insolent, as an insecure teenager, as a male Aphrodite, as a shell without a spirit. It wasn't a certain one of these that took away my soul. I gave it as soon as I was able. No single one stole my heart. As soon as it formed he grabbed it from my pried-open, inviting chest. All I had belonged to him as soon as I was able to have it. My self-worth, my decency, my everything.

It was his soullessness that frightened me away. His shell brought me back when he made me believe he could change and that he would. I came home with him because of that.

Obviously, however, he didn't change. If he had then this story would be short: "I came home and he became normal and it was perfect and we lived happily every after." Nope. There was no change. Just Trunks, the same as ever, still perfect, still distant, still the one I had run from. I began to wonder exactly what I had expected – miracles? I began to doubt what I thought – what consisted soullessness? I became aware that I would not know when change occurred because I did not know what it would look like when it did. Gray came down over my eyes – the range between black and white, the area of indistinction. Everything was a maybe or an if, a could be or a sort of. Nothing was certain and everything was unsure. Needless to say, I was very confused.

//But I believe that you and me could be so
Happy and free inside a world of misery
And I believe that you and me we could be so
Inside of you inside of me
Cuz this could be the one
This could be the one
This could be the one
This could be the one//

What I said just now was wrong. I didn't really come home to change Trunks. I would have come home on my own, I think, eventually. What Trunks said made it happen sooner. Weeks sooner, months sooner, I don't know. He gave me hope while we talked on the phone. I called him just after I broke from my writing, like I said I was going to do – stop wishing and act, that shit – and we talked. He told me things that made me believe that he could change. I came home to do this, I reasoned, but in truth I came home just to be with him. He gave me life and without him I wasn't living.

I know this as of, well, just now. I didn't know it then.

A number of weeks had to pass before the most obvious of facts became clear – that Trunks had not changed with my return. Still distant, still omnipotent, he watched the rest of humanity like a god. I really hadn't changed either. I still worshiped him, I still served him, I still remained exactly who I had been before. I was happy. Quite pathetic. Anyway, I did realize there had been no change, eventually. I realized it not long after the dreams began.

The terror that made me run had been numbed by time and separation and then veiled by the joy of reunion but it was there. After things had resumed their old pattern, after that initial euphoria of seeing him again him had passed, I began to dream. Didn't I say, last time I wrote, that even if I returned and things became perfect again I would still dream of what I knew? Vengeful ghost, I believe my words were. The vengeful ghost of what I knew. Turns out I was right.

I don't know what I dream. When I awake – to the ringing of my alarm in the morning or gasping and sweating in the dead of night – the dream escapes me as if I'm trying to hold on to a cloud. At the beginning they were innocent, harmless even, but as the days progressed I began to have nightmares more and more often. I would awake, clutching the sheets, victim to a phantom horror that I couldn't name. They're part of me, inside of me, and when I'm part of the outside world I can't access them.

Damn, I'm so over-dramatic I can barely stand it.

Well, I began to avoid sleep. When I fall to the nearest suitable surface after days awake I don't dream.

Never have I remembered a single one of my dreams, but I did eventually come to realize what they meant. My subconscious refused to let go of my terror and would not allow me to repeat history. So I became intent on discovering Trunks' soul. I believed it was the only way to save, rescue, salvage the man I loved and that it was the only way I could keep my double-fisted grip on sanity. I do love Trunks and I always have. But love, as I've said before, is selfish. Especially mine. I wanted to be at peace with myself. I wanted to end the fear I felt. I wanted my love returned. I wanted to have the same intense emotion directed at me. I wanted perfection not only in him but also between us. I wanted my happy ever after.

Things took a while to get started because I didn't know where to begin. I needed information, needed help, needed support. So I went to someone who I thought could provide it all. I went to my brother.

If you – who ever you, nonexistent reader, are – think I explained the situation to him you're damn well wrong. I did it the coward's way. You know, "There's this guy I kind of know…" and that kind of bullshit. I knew of this guy who acted removed from the rest of the world. "As if he has no soul," I told him.

Gohan interrupted me. He was too smart to buy the friend-of-a-friend deal, of course. If he had been the type of person that would have, I wouldn't have gone to him. "Do you want my help?" he asked me. When I said I did he went on, "So tell me the whole story. Don't use names if you don't want to, but don't pretend you don't know this person."

So I did, kind of. I didn't drag a knife down my stomach and spill my guts to the floor. I only said the least I needed to. I told him that I had begun believing it was just a shield, just a protection. I told him how I had wanted to see below that shield and that I had fought my way closer. I told him how, eventually, we had had sex. Gohan's always known I was bi so this didn't really disturb him. All he did was raise his eyebrows, as if he hadn't expected I would be attracted to whoever he thought I might be talking about.

"He looks beautiful," I said. "He acts beautiful."

Gohan nodded. I continued. I told him that afterwards, waking up in his room, I had found out the truth. Soulless was the word I used, again, the only word I could use. It's the only word I've ever been able to find. He didn't understand. "There was nothing there," I said. My voice was shaking. "Like a mannequin. Like his face was molded by a machine and not by nature, like it was made of a plastic instead of cells. Without expression. Without emotion. Not even real."

He said that his face had been relaxed. He was sleeping, he said. As if it explained it, as if it made everything make sense. It didn't. Of course it didn't. I tried to tell him how it all clicked then, how there were other clues that I hadn't seen before. Violence didn't bother him. How other people felt didn't affect him. He watched everything without any sorrow. His tone of voice was so perfect that it made others worship him. His eyes showed nothing and never reflected the movements of emotion his body made.

He asked what happened after I found out. I told him I had left the city, it had scared me that much. I told him I returned home because I thought there might be something I could do to make his soul come back. I told him that was why I had come to him – maybe he could give me some help. Something.

I wonder if he had any clue who I was talking about.

When I finished my story there was silence. Then Gohan muttered something about knowing bugs better than people, sat me down and said, "I don't know what to tell you." Not what I wanted to hear but he continued, "I'll always see you as my little brother, Goten, and I don't think anyone's kid brother should be in this kind of mess. You are, and you need my help – I get that. Still…

"I'm not an expert on the human mind. Everything I'm going to tell you is little more than an educated guess. This is what I think:

"I wouldn't call it soullessness. I think he's retreated into himself and stayed there and, no, I don't know enough to say why. For some reason or another he created a shield to protect himself from life and then he kept it, either by choice or because he was incapable of shedding it. What you saw on his face while he slept was an extension of this shell. It is embedded so deeply that he wears it even while sleeping and in sleep it's vacant. However, I doubt it's his lack of soul reflected on his face. I don't believe that's possible."

I wanted to yell, to scream that he was wrong, but I said nothing.

Gohan went on, "You want to know how to bring him back to normal? Shake him out of it. It's a rut he's fallen into and he doesn't know how to climb out. Someone has to help him. I can't tell you what will work – something drastic, something emotional or frightening. Something to shock him back into the world."

He stopped, nodding his head for a moment. Then he said, "I think." He shrugged.

I thanked him, he walked me to the door, I was about to leave, and then he asked, "Do I know him?"

I refused to respond. Because no one knows Trunks, not anymore, no one but me.

I went home.

//I've been lookin'
Lookin'
Lookin'
I've been lookin' for my Mrs. Right but she don't exist
Chemistry is everything and we're anything but this
Maybe I have crossed your path to sweep you off your feet
Or maybe I'm the reason that you cry at night before you sleep//

Gohan hadn't given me the answer I had been looking for. It was too uncertain. I wanted assurance, an absolute, some directions to follow telling me what to do and how to do it. All I had been given was another "maybe" and another "I think." But what other options did I have? None. There was nowhere else to turn for help. Gohan's words were all I had. I might as well try it, I decided. There was no reason not to. There were no disadvantages and no possible harm could result.

Or so I thought. But I'll get to that part soon. I won't rush ahead.

Anyway, then I had to come up with just what I would do. At first nothing came. I was going through my collection of music, just something to do, trying to think. Randomly, without looking, I put a disk in the CD player, set it to shuffle, and pressed play, still tossing Gohan's words around in my mind. The song began.

The same damn song that I'd written to before. The song that played in the background when I typed the first part of this pathetic little saga. I hate that song. It's not sweet, cutting, heavy, whatever I called it before. It's melodramatic, the beat is overemphasized, the singer's voice is grating. I tried to listen to it a few times after coming back home but I couldn't stomach the sound. Memories, probably. I bet that's why.

So I slammed the stop button down and as the music died the idea came to my brain: sex. I decided on it as soon as the word had formed. Sex – why not? Emotion. Action. Physical, oh yeah. Mental. If we did it right, it would be perfect. I smiled and my hormones did a happy little dance. Trunks does look very beautiful.

But then I paused. Our first time, his only time to the best of my knowledge, had been amazing. Mind blowing. Post-orgasmic bliss enough to last a week – except that I had fled in terror after I woke up.

It had been wonderful. Like our bodies were created for it. How I had surrendered, so quickly, to that pure animal instinct and action, and how even frozen Trunks had acted to please me. To please me – to think that he did anything for me is a rush even now. But at the same time, it was unnatural. It was strange. Trunks' eyes, even as he came – again and again – remained unresponsive glass. There was a lack of emotion that first time, on his part.

For me, well, just to see him was love. To touch him, everywhere, in every way, was a different level. It's like – it's like the way that we can't describe God because our descriptors, great, loving, powerful, so forth, just can't apply. For the same reason, I can't describe the emotion I felt when Trunks and I … were together, had sex, fucked each other senseless. How can I even begin to describe something I don't even understand?

I love him. I have always loved him. I think that is the only definite thing in my universe and the only thing I will ever understand.

I wanted to save him, you see, I wanted to fix him and protect him. I thought I had found my opportunity to do so. I knew the odds were against me. It was likely I would fail. That scared me. Failure was and is still frightening. The feelings I felt then were overwhelming. Hope, fear that my hope would be crushed, and of course the good old fear of failure.

But even my fear didn't stop me – not for long, at least. I wanted Trunks. I wanted his love. I would do whatever I had to do to get both. I could make him change. I could make him love me. I had a plan for doing it. The fact that sleeping with him was part of that plan was just a lucky coincidence that I celebrated.

Yeah, uh huh, right.

//But I believe that you and me could be so
Happy and free inside a world of misery
And I believe that you and me we could be so
Inside of you inside of me
Cuz this could be the one
This could be the one
This could be the one
This could be the one//

I really did think happiness was possible. As you – nonexistent reader, to use the phrase again – have probably guessed, things didn't work out. Obvious, isn't it. If it had worked out, I wouldn't be here writing this – I would be with Trunks. No, things didn't turn out right. No, things didn't go as planned. There was no victory. No.

In retrospect, I was stupid. Idiocy appears to come easily to me. I wasn't certain things would turn out right, I can give myself that much credit, but I did continue to think in absolutes. It would or it wouldn't. I didn't expect complete perfection, even then I doubted that. But a partial, damn-well-good-enough perfection, I believed that could happen. That was "would." "Wouldn't" was nothing, no change, just the continuation of the status quo. Those were the absolutes that I predicted – I thought one of them would happen.

But in real life there are no absolutes. I know this now. Inside of everyone, especially myself, it seems, there is uncertainty. In this messy, impossible, uncontrollable world there is nothing but uncertainty. There are so many uncertainties.

Maybe
If
But
Could
Clouded
Gray
Confusion
Unknowns
Randomness
Exceptions
Change

Just think about it. Just think.

This is not a world of black and white. This is a world of gray and there is no black and white. Even my black pupils are clouded and stormy. Even the whites of my eyes are shot though with red. In real life there are no absolutes, there is no perfect no and there is no perfect yes.

I believed Trunks could be the one – my one. Maybe, just maybe, he could have been. /Could/ have been. It was a big could. An unlikely could. Because anything /can/ be anything. The absolute /can/ exist. The possibility of that absolute was small, minute, nearly non-existent. In the end, it didn't happen.

//Well what do you think
We could give it a try
Cuz you never know
Maybe we could be soulmates
But maybe not (maybe not)
Or maybe so (maybe so)
If you never try
Then you'll never know//

Anyway, back to my little story. Before I went on that tangent, I said I had decided to sleep with Trunks in an attempt to bring him back. I knew that much. So what to do? I knew I had to involve Trunks somehow – he was necessary, after all – but I didn't know how I would. I began the way I've begun with almost every boy and girl I've ever slept with: seduction.

There are two general types of attractive guys: manly men and pretty boys, as I call them. Muscles and maturity for the first, slim beauty for the second. Most females and the submissive guys tend to like manly men – they want someone to protect them and to dominate them. The rest of the girls and the dominant guys tend to prefer pretty boys – someone to understand them or just take a good thorough fucking. I know how to appeal to both tastes. I can be strong, I can show off my muscles and act dominating. I also know how to look vulnerable, quiet and beautiful. I like it both ways: I'd like to throw you down on the floor and fuck you right here or why don't you just rip off my clothes and take me where I stand.

Trunks does top and bottom equally well – I knew this from experience – and from that I decided I had to advertise both sides to him. Dominant and submissive. Depending on his mood at the time, show him what he wanted to see. Become the opposite of what he was being.

I felt so damn proud of myself and the fact that I was actually /doing/ something. But, of course, it didn't work. There was no more than the usual response I get from Trunks – just another request and the sort of smile that should be concealed but, by Trunks, never is. Because Trunks isn't like the others I've slept with. Trunks doesn't get seduced. Trunks can't be seduced. He's like a futuristic robot from the anime that everyone watches: its body is beautiful and functions perfectly, its mind is a high-speed computer, but is has no real self or soul or personality. You can't seduce that robot.

I noticed Trunks wasn't responding to the obvious come-ons and I figured out it wasn't working. So I changed my plan of attack. How do you propose the idea of sexual intercourse to someone like Trunks? You ask him, "So, you wanna have sex?" No, those aren't the exact words I used. I beat around the bush for a while first. I sat him down and recounted the facts. I had returned, on his request. I had come home and moved back and returned to my life just for him. I had fulfilled my side of the bargain but his side was still incomplete. I told him he hadn't even begun to change. He needed to. Then I tried to come frankly to my point, but there was no polite way to say it. Make love didn't work for all the obvious reasons, have sex seemed to dry and blunt, fuck was vulgar. So I stumbled between phrases. Eventually I just said, "Sleep with me, Trunks."

Trunks raised an eyebrow at me, a faint mockery of real surprise. He asked me why.

I told him half a truth and half a lie. It could do something. It could be what he needed to change him. It may have some affect – I wasn't sure what, exactly, but I knew there was no harm in trying. I loved him and I wanted him to become himself. I didn't tell him Gohan had recommended it. I didn't tell him I had a hard-on just thinking about it there, alone with him in his living room, but I think he knew that. "You told me to correct whatever problems I needed to. I think this is the way to do that. I want to try. If we don't, we'll be passing up an opportunity and wasting more time." That was what I ended with.

"Ok," he said.

Wasn't it supposed to be harder than that? He should have put up a fight and I should have had to convince him and do something more, say more. That would have felt better. He just gave me a simple yes and there was nothing more I could say. "Just don't leave this time," he told me. Then the conversation ended and we went out to see a movie with some other guys and their girlfriends. No, it was too easy.

//The grass could be greener (could be)
And it'll always be greener on the other side
But you just never know
(This could be the one)//

What we have – or had, or whatever – isn't normal. No romance, no sweet words, very little of anything from him at all. I love him but his expressions, his gifts depend on what I do for him. It's not perfect. He may be, but the relationship's not, and I didn't even try to kid myself about that.

But it could be better, that's what I thought. We could gain at least some of what everyone else had. So what if we never got the perfect romance. It would be better than nothing and it would be better than what we had. I reasoned myself to oblivion and back again, so sure that what I was doing was understandable and supported and right.

I love him so, so much. Love burns. It makes my skin burn when he's nearby. It makes my retina burn when I see him. It makes my fingers burn when he's close enough to reach out and touch. There was no relief for that burning, nothing I did stopped it. I wanted anything other than that. To hell with perfection. To hell with never compromising. It would never reach perfection, I knew that, and I didn't give a damn. There is nothing perfect in this world except Trunks.

I continued to believe in these absolute outcomes: imperfect change or no change at all. I didn't think anything tangibly, realistically wrong would come from my failure. I really thought that I had nothing to lose. I thought nothing bad could come from it. Love made me a blind, bumbling, stupid idiot. But then, things are always so much clearer in retrospect, aren't they.

Bulma and my mother went out shopping at a mall an hour away by car, then Dad and Vegeta secluded themselves in the Capsule Corps complex to train. Trunks came over. To spar and just hang out, was our excuse, but we never needed to use it because no one ever asked.

We stood in the living room, me staring at him and him watching me. "Well," I said, "let's try."

//I do believe that you and me we could be so
Happy and free inside a world of misery
And I believe that you and me we could be so
Inside of you inside of me
Cuz this could be the one
This could be the one
This could be the one
This could be the one//

Of course it began awkwardly. But as we kissed, my hands traveling and his on my neck and in my hair, my passion overtook my cowardice. The foreplay was so leisurely, so wonderful, moving slowly down the hallway and leaving clothes in our wake. Teasing, leading, until we were both anxious.

Our first time together was all my built up passion finally finding a release. The second time was less desperate. There was more to it. It was a deeper kind of penetration – no pun intended – and not as frantic. Through the whole thing I was overwhelmed. I put all my energy into my actions – he came even before his jeans had come off from what I did to his tail spot and through his unzipped fly.

But you didn't know a saiya-jin can keep a hard-on even after his orgasm.

But for all it was, I knew even as it went on that it wasn't perfect. He was still emotionally unresponsive. It was still stunted. He acted, yes. He teased me, he tempted me. But still, his eyes were cold. I tried to ignore it and to continue and believe that something soon would create change.

We took it all the way, then. Not as many positions this time and not quite as many orgasms, but very different and so much more powerful.

Halfway through our first round, I think it was, he took the initiative for the first time. That time, for the first time, he didn't follow my lead. I was sprawled on my bed, my arms above my head, my legs spread, limbs hanging off. Trunks was on his knees, between my legs, looking down at me. We were both panting, his light and controlled, mind more ragged. And then, still watching me, Trunks smiled. It was a frightening smirk – worrying in its own right but even more so coming from him. Then he bent his pretty head and did the most amazing things to me, things I won't even try to describe, things that make me grip the bedsheets until my fingers ripped through. Anyway, that little bit of emotion was the first I had seen from him in years. How terrifying and how out of place it was over his features. It thrilled me to see it. I thought it was the beginning. I had started it, he was changing, and with a little more time I would succeed. I celebrated.

What an idiot I was.

Trying to encourage more emotion and action I gave him more of what he had reacted to. I prostrated myself, spread myself open for him, begged and exhibited and invited. He took what I offered. My God did he. I came the way they write about it – seeing stars and then losing my vision, crying, calling his name, clutching anything I could reach. Most definitely mind-blowing – again, no pun intended.

There was another surprise waiting for me. At one point, controlling me the way he was doing at the time, he tore my anus. Not a small tear, I wouldn't have noticed that, but a fairly good one that made some blood flow. It didn't hurt that bad. I'm a saiya-jin, after all, with a high tolerance for pain and plenty of experience in it. But Trunks has the same type of heritage I do, so he's capable of hurting me – plus, that's a very sensitive area. He hurt me, and I growled – I was nearly incapable of words by then – and even bared my teeth at him. Trunks laughed down at me, a dry and amused chuckle. Then he began to push in harder and it hurt more, so I responded, but he kept at it until the pleasure became stronger than the pain. Such a fine line separate the two, you know. When he broke that barrier I swear to God I nearly lost my mind.

By the end of it, I was dead tired and full of the feeling of being with him. I could take no more. He held me and I curled up against him, together on my small twin bed, and I began to drift off to sleep. Just then, for a few moments, I felt fear. I was afraid of what I would have to face when I awoke. Sleep, however, was inevitable.

Trunks was up before me, sitting in my chair in a pair of my drawstring pants, holding a closed book, watching me. "Get dressed," he said, "your mother is on her way." How strange it was. Dressing with him staring at me, picking our clothes up off the hallway floor, cleaning up my room and opening the window to let in some clean air. He left just before Mom came home. When she arrived I was at my desk, sitting in the same chair he had used, pretending to do homework. She asked me how I was.

There's only one part of this story left to tell – the aftermath. Not much to say about it because there was very little change. For the most part Trunks remained identical to how he had been before. As I've said, I was wrong, it didn't work, I didn't achieve happily-ever-after. I waited, let a few days pass, anxious for that magical change to occur, waiting to see my result. Nothing changed, really. Nothing really has changed and it's been two weeks. I'm not angry with him about it. I'm not capable of that, at least I can't sustain it for long. I'm angry with myself. I feel like an idiot. I was an idiot.

There was, however, one small and minor change. It's still going on and I still don't understand it or know what it means. He's become more active. It's as if that rather passive mask of his has been multiplied again and again in a rather twisted way. We used to flirt, light touches and a few kisses and little more. Now he'll grab me, push me up against a wall, and explore my body from mouth to groin until I pant with need. The girl I was sleeping with has disappeared, spending her time with a new group, and I'm sure he caused that. He's controlling now. He acts. To be honest, I don't know if I like it. I mean, my freedom has always been important to me, especially because I find my needed physical release through it. But I've always wanted the kind of attention from him that he's giving me now. It's not love, I don't think. It's only the expansion of his shell into a powerful controller and abuser, one who may slam my head against the wall while he makes out with me and not give a damn, one who loves it when I fight back.

Confusion, it seems, is again all I have. It's the result – not success, not a lack of change, but confusion. Sure as hell I'm worse off than I was. I have no plan and no hope and no clue what's going on or what I should do. So I wonder where it's going to go and I think about him and now I'm going to end this pathetic excuse for a piece of writing and go out somewhere with Trunks. The phone is ringing and I know it's him.

//Maybe so (maybe so)
Maybe not (maybe not)
Who knows?//

"It's beautiful out here."

"It is."

"You know, I think I could get used to this."

Silence.

"Trunks?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just sitting out here, with you, not worrying or thinking."

"Yeah."

"You know, maybe this is how it's supposed to be. I don't mean just this – I mean all of it. You've changed a little since I came home."

"I have."

"Yeah. I'm not sure how, exactly, but you –"

"Goten. You're lying."

"Yeah, I guess I am. Anyway, you have changed, a little, and that's more than nothing, right? I think I could get used to this, if it was all there was going to be."

"Don't bet on it."

"Huh? Trunks? What do you mean?"

"I meant what I said. Don't get locked into anything just yet. Things are only getting started."

"Oh."

Silence.

Birdsong.

"You know … no matter what happens, as long as you're around I think I'll be ok. You told me once before that I would be happy just to be with you, remember? I think you were right. I do love you, Trunks."

Silence.

Wind.

"Does the offer for sex still stand or was it just for that one time?"

"Shit, Trunks. What do you mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like."

"Out here? Someone could come by. We haven't seen anyone else out here before, I know, but that doesn't mean people don't know where it is."

"I don't care."

The sound of movement.

"Hey!"

"Shut up, Goten. Stop complaining. You know we're alone."

Rustle of clothing.

"God, Trunks…"

"Make some noise for me, chibi-chan, little Goten."

"Fuck – whatever you want."