Of Haircuts and Full Moons
---
Disclaimer: Dragonball Z is not mine. I make no profit out of this. Just a lot of fun and the chance to hone my writing skills.
----
Author's Note: Okay, I feel I should warn you right now. A great deal of this chapter deals with Gohan and Videl's relationship, and they get very physical at times. Why shouldn't they? They're healthy twenty-somethings with a lot of energy and much too pretty for their own good. Good for them. All the more power to them, I say.
However, they are not married at this point in the story, and probably won't be for a while. If that's not your cup of tea, then you should stop reading now.
BUT, if you're interested in a really good fic and want to send me lots of helpful feedback (hint, hint), then by all means, read on.
No, it's not graphic (in fact, I'd say it's pretty tame) and yes, it HAS A POINT within the story line.
I love feedback, so click that little button down the bottom of the page and tell me what you think. I haven't seen a lot of the Buu saga, so I'm interested to see how I did with Videl's character.
----
It had been Gohan's suggestion to cut her hair.
That was why Videl actually gave it some thought, rather than dismissing it out of hand. She'd always liked her hair, and it had never gotten in her way before. It took more than a cute guy to get her to make such a drastic change.
But the more she thought about the idea, the more she liked it.
Eventually, she went into the hairdresser's and flung herself into the chair.
"Take it off," she ordered.
Slowly, with each snip of the scissors, she relaxed. As each lock of black hair fell to the floor, her reflection seemed to come more and more into focus.
When she walked out of the hairdressers, she felt like a new woman. Or, more correctly, like she'd cast off some sham or illusion, and was now a step closer to her true self.
Although what that true self was, she couldn't say.
---
She kept her hair short for a couple of years. After the Tournament, with her shattering defeat, and that business with Buu, she went into the crime-fighting business with Gohan. Being a superhero was fun, what with the flying, and being able to beat bad guys up. And it kept her and Gohan's relationship fresh.
After thwarting a crime, they'd often grab a bit of privacy and make out like rabid weasles. Videl was sometimes embarrassed by her forwardness, but Gohan seemed pleased. He particularly liked the bite-mark she left on his shoulder oneday.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were a saiyan," he said fondly.
That comment disturbed her, for some reason. She put it to the back of her mind, but it would resurface at odd moments, rephrased, in different wording and different guises, but always the same.
…a saiyan…
She knew Gohan's father was a saiyan, and he was part-saiyan, and his little brother. Not to mention the husband of the owner of Capsule Corporation, and their son.
It didn't bother her that Gohan wasn't entirely human. Not much anyway. All it meant was that he was very strong, and he had a few odd idiosyncracies. Like the way he'd make that rumble in the back of his throat when they were snuggling. He swore up and down it wasn't purring, but they both knew perfectly well it was.
She wasn't bothered by it, but that didn't mean she wasn't intrigued by it.
She liked investigating the differences between them. That little spot behind his ear that he liked her to scratch. The enhanced sense of smell that told him as much as his eyes did. The odd, coin-shaped scar at the base of his spine.
One day while she was giving him a back rub (both of them naked after one of their post-battle rendezvous) she touched the scar with her finger.
"Where did you get this?"
She felt him tense up, the muscles in his back going rigid. She suddenly remembered her friend Wendy who had cut her foot open on a creek bed when she was twelve, and now couldn't stand people touching her toes.
She took her hand away and began rubbing his shoulders in big soothing strokes. Slowly, he relaxed.
"That was from when my tail was cut off."
She nearly fell off him. In fact, she actually did, taking half the sheets with her. He sat up with that endearing anxious expression, and peered over the side of the bed.
"Videl, are you okay? You didn't hurt yourself, did you…?"
She stared up at him.
"You had a tail!" She choked out.
She sensed him withdraw into himself.
"When I was little," he said reluctantly. "It had to come off. It made me… cranky."
He gave her a puppy-dog look.
"Are you okay with this?" He asked.
She shook her head wonderingly. It amazed her that Gohan could be so powerful and so smart, and yet be so modest. He genuinely had no idea how wonderful he was.
She stood up.
"I'm fine with it, Gohan. In fact… I'm kind of disappointed you don't still have it." She climbed into his lap with a naughty grin. " Just imagine all the fun we could have had with it."
He laughed between kisses.
"Not…mmh… the kind of…mmph…you'd like…ah…"
And of course, with an intriguing statement like that, she couldn't just let it lie. It took the better part of an hour, but she managed to coax the details out of him. About how his tail had meant that during the full moon he'd turn into a giant monkey and terrorize the world.
"I was lucky, actually. My family made sure I didn't hurt anyone – well no one that didn't deserve it anyway. My dad wasn't so lucky."
He'd been lying on his side, one hand stroking her hair. Now she propped up her chin up on her elbow so she could look him in the face.
"You don't think our kids will have tails, do you?" She asked worriedly.
This time, he was the one to fall off the bed.
"Our kids!"
"Oh, relax," she said disgustedly. "I meant our hypothetical kids."
"Oh."
He relaxed and crawled back into bed.
"To be honest, I don't know about the tail. Genetics are a funny thing." He smiled at her worried face. "But in any case, we don't have to worry. There's no moon, remember?"
"Oh, yeah."
The moon had disappeared when she was a little girl. She suddenly had a powerful yearning to see it again. To stand under a full moon, and stare up at that hypnotic white disk…
She drifted off, cradled by Gohan's warmth.
---
When she slept, her dreams were distorted. She sat under a full moon drinking cups of tea with Gohan who had a tail, trying to convince him to go see his son. The only problem was he was more interested in sifting through the tea-leaves at the bottom of his cup.
"See this?" He said. "This clump is shaped like the head of a Namek. This means fertility. It's good. It means the species will survive."
The dream ended when she got fed up and broke the teapot over his head.
----