Author:              Kiarene

Pairings:           Vegeta/Mirai

Disclaimer:        Don't own DBZ

Published:         12th October 2003

Archive?            Please ask first

Sons

3st Scrawling

Chibi Trunks' POV

I slam against the floor, carelessly caught by a stray blast. For a moment, I didn't want to move. My body couldn't move, I'm sure; I ache all over, my back hurt and burns and I'm sure it's a weeping, bloody mess and oh dammit I just want to pass out so fucking badly.

Then that moment passes and the sting subsides. My reflexes kicks in and I roll away, wincing as my back hits the floor, but I've been well-trained. Squinting through sweat-laced lashes, I ready myself in a defensive crouch, feeling as if I simply cannot take another attack, but knowing that I must and I can and that I won't have a choice in battle.

We've been moving, sparring for hours it seems. I don't know – there's no clock in the training room and anyway, it's useless to think about the time. But I hurt all over and it feels like an eternity, it always does. It's like all sensations have been compressed so each second feels heavy and aching and intense and so gloriously real. I want to collapse and yet I feel like I can sprint on; it's like I'm on freaking drugs.

"That's enough for today."

Startled, I stare at my father, my hands still held defensively in front of me. Once, when I was very much younger, I had been caught off-guard. Only once though, and since then, I'm always wary. But Dad's already walking towards the gravity console and I relax with a wheezing sigh.

That seemed like a relatively short session, I muse to myself as I stretch upwards, easing the tension in cramped muscles. Perhaps I am getting better, so much so that it doesn't seem as torturously long now. 

As the gravity winds down, I walk towards Dad, coming to a stop behind him. Already he is talking, giving me his usual analysis of our training session, usually what I did wrong, often what he wants me to focus on in subsequent sessions, and rarely, what I did right. Those grudging words of hard-earned praise, I savour like the sweetest wine.

Endrophins are coursing through my body and I'm still feeling high. Dad is still facing the console, his meticulous attention on the replay of our spar. Greatly daring, I lean in, closer, nearer.

I periodically nod, making sounds of agreement or abashment. My attention is only half on the generous-sized screen and my father's words; instead, I was focused on him. My father.

His deep voice washes over me, smoky and rich and exotic, with just the slightly hint of a foreign lilt. He speaks with the clear ennunciation of the educated, the smooth cadence of the cultured and the slighty sneering drawl of the elite. It just drips confidence and power, nothing at all like the squeaky, excited voices of the other sensei that often drop by Capsule Corps.

My eyes rove boldly, memorising the bulge of still-pumped muscles through the soaked navy fabric. There is a dangerous leaness about him, all steel sinew and whipcord. My father never struck me as just a fighter like the rest of the sensei; there's a dark, bridled bloodthirstiness to him. A killer, a predator. Controlled, but never tamed. I've heard rumors and snide gossip, but they only served to intrigue me. While never malicious in training me, he can be ruthless, and I like that. Powerful, deadly, and so very, very erotic.

And most of all, his scent. It's ambrosial and heady, and it softens my knees and hardens my cock. Right now, it smells like the salt-lashed gales of a stormy sea; sweaty and powerful, the singed air around him still thrumming with the sharp ozone from the energy we had thrown around. Dad explained it me once, how Saiyajins have heightened senses as compared to the Ningens. I'm not sure whether to be envious or thankful that I'm only half-Saiyajin; I would dearly love to experience the world as a full-Saiyajin, to know what Dad really smells like, but I don't think I can function otherwise.

My stomach gives a loud growl and my father stops in mid-sentence. Mortified, I mumble an apology but he brushes it off. "It was time to eat anyway." We Saiyajins don't really say that it's 'time for lunch', not when there's lunch-part-one and lunch-part-two and then just-a-bite-to-tide-us-over-till-tea.

Dad seems pleased as he turns off the gravity console, almost approving at my growing appetite. No, not just growing; it was as if my appetite had exploded after I hit puberty and even now, at fourteen, I'm easily eating five times as much as other Ningens boys my age, though I still can't handle the amount Dad can eat. Mom is alternately amused and exasperated. I can't beat Goten though; must be the 'third-class Kakarrot' genes.  

As we step out of the room, my eye catches the clock and I almost stop in surprise. We've only been in there for two hours! Normally we take at least twice as long. Immediately, my good mood vanishes. I've learned that there are very few reasons for Dad's willingness to end a training session with me early, and coupled with Dad's almost pleasant demenour the whole day, there can only be one reason.

HE is coming.

Mirai Trunks, myself from the future, an alternate time-line. He doesn't come by often, maybe once every month or two, and only for a couple of days each time, but everyone looks forward to his visits. Particularly Dad, even though he doesn't show it openly.

But I can't stand him.

Trying to conceal the undercurrent of irritation and envy in my voice, I asked casually if Mirai is coming to visit.

"Yes." Dad shoots me a sharp look. He is always puzzled by the unease I have towards Mirai, though I've tried hard to conceal just the depth of that animosity. The adults laugh it off as 'sibling rivalry' and Mirai had tried hard to win me over. Occasionally, Dad would want us to spar together and that, I could and would. I can barely manage to hold a civil conversation with him, but to fight, to have a chance to punch and hit him, that is easy.

I was initially curious and fascinated by him, of course, but that positive feeling quicky turned to resentment when I realized that he was taking Dad's attention away from me. Still, it's hard to resent somebody who doesn't have a father in his own time-line, somebody who doesn't have the luxuries of life that I do, somebody who practically lives in a war-zone, somebody so pathetic.

Then when I was about six, I found out that Mirai wasn't so damn pathetic after all; he had something I don't.

A special kind of attention from my father, the kind I've seen between couples like Dad and Mom, or Gohan and Videl. But it wasn't exactly the same; while Mom and Dad are fond of each other, what Mirai had with Dad seemed deeper, as if they had something that Mom and Dad lacked. It wasn't as goosebumpily-mushy as the disgusting puppy-love between Gohan and Videl either; it was a kind of secret, quiet affection.

I had been shocked and angry and so horribly envious, and yet I had also been desperately curious.

I know what it is now, of course. Nobody knows about them except me, I'm sure. And the thought of telling anyone has never seriously crossed my mind even though I know that it was wrong, that it would be the fastest, easiest way to get Mirai away from my father.

Because I wanted it too. Because I wanted Dad too.

"How long is he staying this time?"

"Two, three days." He looks at me, dark eyes searching, as if he wanted to say something.

An awkward pause. Everytime, I would ask the same question, and it was almost always the same answer. I try to remember; was Mom away on a business trip again? Somehow – I don't know how – Mirai seems to time many of the trips to coincide when Mom's away. Dad's cheating on Mom but I know I should be angry – any normal boy who loves both his parents would – but I don't. Heartless? Hn. I don't care. I'm my father's son.

Thankfully, Dad remains silent. That another thing I like about him; while Mom's always trying to force me and Mirai to get along better and everyone's giving me those nauseating cheery grins and reproachful looks, Dad will just ignore this coldness between us. He doesn't think everything has to be sunshine and peaches, and I have a laughing suspicion that he thinks the situation between us is like the rivalry between him and Kakarrot, and that's fine. Power rivalries between Saiyajin males is normal and healthy, I heard him tell Mom once.  

We sit down at the kitchen table, finding platters of food already prepared and wrapped. Dad pops them into the microwave while I get cold water from the fridge. And then we get down to the important business of eating and the subject is pushed away again.

~

I'm obssessed about my father. I've always been -- since young I've worshipped him, always hanging around him. He's so different from the rest, an engima I've taken upon myself to solve. Mom told me that from the first time I saw him when I was a baby, I was fascinated with him. Despite his attempts to ignore me, I clung to him like a bad virus and eventually, he accepted and warmed up towards me, especially after the battle with Buu.

I know he isn't the Ningens' idea of an ideal father – I've no idea about Saiyajins – but he has always been perfect in my eyes. I love him, and somewhere along the way, I've realized that that love somehow became something more than a son's normal love for his father.

Should I have been shocked? Aghast? I wasn't.

Did I try to repress it? Forget about it? No. Why should I?

I'm sure there're lots of logical reasons, ethical issues and moral dilemmas and what-not, but frankly, I don't care. 

I sit on the branch of a large tree, and from my vantage point, I can see into my father's room. Mirai's in there with Dad and the two are talking, kissing, touching. Jealousy gnaws me from inside out but I can't look away.

If I can see them, they most assuredly can see me – but I'm feeling reckless today, swinging my legs as I stare pointedly into the room, almost daring one of them to look up and discover me. Over the years, spying on them was first a curiosity and later a habit, and I've gotten rather adept at it.

But nothing happens – they are too engrossed with each other – and I wonder morbidly what would happen if they did look up. Would Dad get angry? I can almost guarantee it; Dad's temper is well-known. Would he try to pretend that nothing's happening between them? Or would he see it as nothing wrong?

My fingers dig into the bark angrily. What does he have, that I don't? We look the same, except that he's older, but soon, I'll be old enough too. And scruffier. His clothes are always frayed and patched, and he always has this dusty, dirty look to him. Suddenly, I feel uncertain, my right hand going up to run through my neatly-trimmed short hair as I look intently at his hair. Sometimes he looks better groomed but today, it is long, falling past his shoulders, and ragged.

Perhaps Dad likes this rugged look? I mean, Saiyajins are a warrior race; so maybe this rough-hewn, just-got-out-of-a-war-zone look appeals to him? I know I look a bit of a pouf with my limp, purple hair and my branded clothes. But I can't help being rich! Maybe if I look more like him

The lights turn off and I can just make out the shadowy figures as they tumble into bed. My overactive imagination fills in the rest and I sit there for a very long time into the night.

Thinking, wondering, dreaming as I lean back against the broad trunk of the tree, fingers fumbling with the ties on my pants.

Hissing as the night air cools my overheated cock; scowling, whimpering as I stroke myself, pleasuring myself physically, torturing myself mentally.

Wanting.

Vowing that one day…. My hips cant up at that thought, that promise, and I find temporary relief with a quiet groan.

Once I thought him pathetic, but really, the only one here who is pathetic is me.