Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/19298227. Written for the Vegebulocracy 2019 Summer Prompts.

Chapter 1: Sunbathe

The A-line frame of the Briefs' cabin came into view. Small and simple, with stacked logs and reflective panes of glass, it was almost camouflaged with the surrounding wood and was far more rustic than Vegeta expected from the richest family in West City, whose estate was an abstract, modern monstrosity—an organic dome structure that swelled up from a flat, grassy plot in the middle of the metropolis and was often mistaken by tourists for a museum of contemporary art. And that, at least every time he'd been there, was bustling with a team of staff and a never-ending stream of guests. Anyone who was anyone, from politicians to corporate shareholders to celebrities, attended the Briefs' frequent parties. Their lakehome was so paradoxically normal by comparison. Its private road wasn't even paved. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of his car as they slowed down a long tree-lined drive.

The car hadn't yet shifted to park when Kakarot bounded outside to meet them, a little bull released from his gate with the screen door snapping shut, almost nicking his heels behind him. Tarble hurriedly unbuckled his seatbelt, squealing for Vegeta to unlock the door and let him out to meet his cousin. The kid was going to be a brute like his older brother. At seven, he wasn't that tall, but he was dense as a bowling ball, nearly knocking Tarble off his feet as he lunged at him, wrapping his thick arms around the smaller boy's neck.

"Kakarot, take it easy, man," Vegeta warned.

The kid was too wound-up to acknowledge him directly but released his grip to take Tarble's hand instead and drag him toward the front door. "Come on! You're staying in my room!"

Vegeta dropped Tarble's backpack to the rug inside the bedroom, a modest space with just a queen-size bed in the center that faced a knotted pine dresser. The walls were decorated with Northwoods paintings of moose and bears and fiery lakeshore sunsets, and the whole space smelled like it was freshly constructed from the very trees where the house now stood.

"You're sleeping with Raditz," Kakarot stated. A fat finger dismissed Vegeta across the hall as if to say they no longer required the seventeen-year-old's assistance, and it was time he moved along.

Vegeta groaned. The couch seemed far preferable to sharing a bed with that pubescent, sweaty jockstrap.

Until yesterday, this visit to the Briefs' cabin had been written into his summer calendar as something far different. Technically, Tarble was the one invited to spend the weekend on a playdate with his cousin, and Vegeta, as anxious as he was about letting the kid out of his sight, had been eager for a few days to be alone at home—for once completely alone and free to stay up until the wee hours of the morning binging on action films, free to eat meals when he wanted that were more riveting than grilled cheese or mac and cheese or anything to do with cheese, free to spend the afternoons in open circuits or spars at the gym, and binge Vonnegut novels in the evening, then online gaming until his eyes burned for sleep.

The shitstorm that raged in their kitchen after he'd put Tarble to bed was unexpected, but only for his part. Vegeta tried to be the bigger person at first, never one to test his father's rage. The old man's temper was turnkey, easy and full-service, all his truths forever hidden behind expensive scotch that he consumed with pathological measure and breakable dishes that were flung at Vegeta's head, and where normally, he'd give in, do anything to quiet his old man's predictable fury rather than chance Tarble waking up to hear them, he didn't this time. Vegeta threw back, just the lid of a pot pan like a frisbee, nothing serious. It rang like a gong against the cupboard behind his father's shoulder, and it was enough to find the skin of his cheek breaking beneath the hard edge of the man's knuckles.

All of it was so petty and selfish. Their father was rarely home, and of course, of all the weekends Vegeta and Tarble spent alone, this was the one he chose to commandeer at the last second—his plans having suddenly changed thanks to a new woman of the week. Vegeta was evicted, forced to tag along to this place until Sunday when their father would be gone again on the opposite side of the country with Congress back in session. Good fucking riddance.

Crossing the hall to the opposite bedroom, he was relieved to see that it was twice as big as the younger boys' with separate twin beds and two dressers made from the same rustic decor. Raditz's bag was already exploded over one of them. He'd no more than sluffed his own bag against the mattress when the two kids darted past the doorway and down the hall in a blur of clamoring voices and bare feet that slapped against the hardwoods.

Vegeta trailed them into the main living space and watched as Kakarot hefted open the sliding glass door that led to a covered porch facing the lake just wide enough to squeeze himself through.

As humble as the abode appeared on the outside, the panorama of plate glass windows that stretched wall-to-wall from the kitchen to the adjacent living room were tastefully elegant. Privacy wasn't much of a concern with a thick canopy of trees that parted just enough to frame the glassy water.

Vegeta made a small lap with his head cocked up to trace the knotted beams of the coffered ceiling. The main floor where he stood was a single, bright open room. A big screen TV hung above the fireplace like a dark portrait opposite the kitchen, and a sectional couch sat against the staircase and jutted toward the porch as the only medium to separate the spaces.

Raditz was propped against the porch railing unflappably still with his chin braced on his knuckles when Vegeta stepped through the door Kakarot hadn't bothered to close and sidled up to him. Though silent indignation was a treatment he expected from his cousin by now, as he followed Raditz's concentrated gaze to the dock, he realized he wasn't being ignored so much as sidelined by the true source of the teen's unbreakable study. The fifteen-year-old was ogling the Briefs' daughter who was laid out on the sundeck at the back of the speedboat in a yellow string bikini. Her posture suggested she knew she was being watched as one long, glistening leg bent up on pointed toes and an arm stretched out behind her causing the small of her back to arch just slightly off the flat, vinyl bench.

Even from a distance, it was obvious that much about the heiress had changed over the years. While she always strove to be the center of attention, she was a far cry from the tomboy of their youth who ran around fancy parties in grease-stained coveralls, her blue hair unbrushed and frizzed around her head like some mad scientist. Now she was quite uncovered… all curves and legs, and greased-up skin, with those blue locks tied back at the top of her head in a long ponytail.

"I'd hit that," his cousin said without blinking.

"Tch… You're a pervert. And she's out of your league."

"Yeah, no thanks to you. Besides, some women like younger men."

Vegeta ignored the accusation. With Raditz entering high school in the fall, his distaste for Vegeta and his reputation had become more contemptuously blatant, to the point that Raditz was denying their relation to his prospective football team in an attempt to distance himself and get in good with the douchebags from the start. Not that he wouldn't anyway; those idiots were practically pining after the thick lug, who, at a guess, was six-foot-one and pushing one-sixty. He'd skip JV and end up a varsity lineman out of the gates, which made lying to them almost as pointless as it was dumb, considering that Shenron Academy was a small school attended by the children of the city's elite whose pedigrees were public record. Not to mention uncle Bardock was his father's chief of staff, and they were together in almost every mandatory familial appearance.

The younger boys had cut down the lawn to the lake's edge, shrieking as they dipped their toes to test the water. Their incoherent shouts of jubilance and splashing feet caught the attention of the bathing beauty, who sat up, carefully holding the undone straps of her top to avoid flashing them. She smiled, an expression he recalled so vividly, as it was Bulma's default, that his mind rerendered the gap that time and distance had created to make it seem as if she was standing right in front of him. His stomach clenched and his mind flooded with such confused dread and longing that he half considered hiding in the house before she could spot him. Maybe they'd been friends years ago, or at the very least acquaintances of a similar age and similar disgust on his part, ambivalence on hers, toward the slimy tender in which the adults around them exchanged favors, but it was different now. With his mother gone and with Tarble, everything had changed, leaving Vegeta vulnerable to a person who'd once been somewhat of an unpredictable ally. Not that he needed or wanted to reacquaint himself with Bulma Briefs, but nonetheless, as he watched her make her way down the dock, he found himself mildly curious to learn who'd she'd become.

Bulma worshipped the sun with an almost religious fanaticism. She was a summer child and was, therefore, dependently composed by the celestial body and required it as much as air to truly thrive; at least that's what her mother always asserted, trying to soothe her in diaphanous, daydreamy tones whenever winter came around and Bulma came undone. Ridiculous as she believed her mother's mysticism to be, it was impossible to debunk. Everything about the sun stirred her mind and body in congruous, spiritual fervor. The way its heat hugged her skin at high noon provoked every cell to energize or, depending on her mood, subdued them to peaceful laziness. The way its aura painted the sky in a brilliant spectacle, whether it was coming or going, stoked a kind of romantic sentimentalism that was levitating. The sun was her longest and most beloved friend, her only one for that matter.

As it beat upon her closed eyelids, even through the dark lenses of her shades, she was content. She loved the silky texture of sunscreen slathered over her skin and lifted a leg to trace her toes along the smooth calf of the other.

That's when the excitable voices of children in the yard stirred her to wake from a hazy stupor and convert the condition almost instantaneously to meet them. Tarble had arrived, the younger sibling of her childhood crush. Through roundabout logic, the idea of him being in her care for the weekend felt like a chimerical drawstring that tethered her to his older brother, who she hadn't seen for more than five years but cooked up more fantasies about than she could fit in an entire bookcase of locked diaries.

Many wistful sunsets were spent in elaborate daydreams where Vegeta would appear below her bedroom balcony to beg her favor, his deep voice rumbling up from the yard in desperate, yet perfectly iambic measure to express his undying love, and she'd be so taken by his poetic decrees and the way the sun's orange glow cast handsome shadows across his face that she'd hastily, foolishly climb over the rails to reach him. She'd always slip, a dramatic chance of death, but, of course, he'd catch her in his arms and hold her tightly against his chest, scolding her with passionate lament, and only when she'd swear that she was unharmed would he set her to her feet without loosening his grip around her frame. Just as her toes felt the brush of grass beneath them, his nose would nudge her face, tipping it toward him just so. His dark gaze would hold hers with longing, and he would drop any chivalrous pretense, overcome by raw need to take her lips in the deepest, most beautiful, heart-wrenching kiss.

The habitual scene played out in her mind as she held the straps of her bikini with one hand and unglued herself from the boat's vinyl deck to greet the tiny boy at the opposite end. He was so small and skinny, less than a year younger than Kakarot, but half his size, which should have confirmed the sickly rumors if he weren't bursting with wild energy, chasing his cousin through the shallow water.

"Hello, Tarble!" Bulma called.

"Hi!" the boy absently shouted behind him before manners stopped his chase and he spun around to offer his attention. "Do you live here?"

With his thick black hair, sharp cheekbones and an impish smile showing his straight, white teeth, he looked like Vegeta, but the cheery way his voice pitched as he greeted her gave an impression of gentle friendliness that was a complete inversion of what she remembered of his brother.

"In the summer, I do. I'm Bulma."

"Oh!" A spurt of recognition that she didn't quite know what to make of passed over the kid's face, and his follow-up confused her further when he said, "Thank you for inviting us!"

Us? The connotation of the word alone was enough to trigger her heart to race, and it's confirmation as she looked across the lawn to see Vegeta staring back from the porch all but collapsed her legs out from under her and left her struggling to contain the stunned, almost breathless fit that was quickly stealing her composure. She raced up the lawn in wide, bounding strides, only slowing her gait the last few yards to repress her excitement, not wanting to appear too eager.

The last time they were together was New Year's Eve more than five years ago, the night her wild crush on him tipped toward obsession. Without the smuggled glass of champagne, she wouldn't have had the nerve to pop an unsuspecting kiss on his lips at midnight. Chaste and innocent as it was, Vegeta came completely undone, his usually stoic features slacked as he stared back with wide open eyes, pupils saccading back and forth in panic. His entire face blushed with such severe discomfiture that he fled, darted down the hallway and disappeared. She hadn't seen him since and assumed he'd had been avoiding her, until now.

She climbed the short steps to greet him, unable to crush her idiotic grin when Vegeta took her in with an almost imperceivable flit of his pupils over her frame. Even being caught in such a modest appraisal caused a pinkish tint to suffuse across his face with the same distressed look he'd given her at the party, and he quickly turned his gaze toward the boys in the water.

He was more attractive than she remembered. Though he hadn't gotten any taller, he was all compact muscle underneath a tight Shenron Academy boxing club tee that strained around his biceps as he crossed his arms. A fresh gash across his cheekbone and reddened eye somehow lent validity to this new, broody bad boy image he'd adopted. He'd always been shy, but now that he was cut like a Roman god, his shyness seemed a bit orchestrated. His posture was stiff as one of those Renaissance statues, the twitch of his biceps against the fabric of his t-shirt being the only discernible difference between himself and one of Michelangelo's sculpted ornaments. There was no way in hell Vegeta was the same scared boy who ran from her lips like a Medieval prince fleeing the plague. She imagined he had dozens of Shenron Academy debutants flattering his every move, or even a girlfriend, the fresh thought of which made her only more determined to try to reignite their prepubescent flame, feeling a strange ownership over the guy, like they were destined.

"Help a girl out, will you?" Bulma stepped toward him and spun around to wag the straps of her suit. "Come on now, don't be shy! Wouldn't want this thing falling off to flash you guys."

"That'd be fine with me!" said Raditz.

The perverted teen's comment wasn't acknowledged with more than a scrunch of her nose.

She shook the straps again, and still a long, almost soul-crushing moment passed before she felt them pull and the rough skin of his fingers brush against the nape of her neck as he tied them.

Bulma swung back to quickly hook an arm with his, tightening her grip around the crook of his elbow when she felt his muscles tense in an attempt to pull away.

"Come on, I'll give you the grand tour," she said, trying to march him into the house, but after two reluctant steps, his feet ground to a halt.

"Raditz, watch them!" Vegeta spat over his shoulder. His voice still held a rasp, but had fallen an octave since she'd heard it last; less hollow, it was now rich and soulful.

"Remember the last time I saw you?"

"Not really," he said; though the blush that returned to his cheeks belied the claim.

"My parents New Year's Eve party ring any bells?" Bulma grinned, goading him. "Your father was hitting on my mother all night."

"Tch. It was the other way around."

"Was it? Well, who can blame her? You're dad's a DILF."

"Egh!" He yanked his arm from her grip, and an expression of the utmost indignation twisted across his face.

The sudden shift in mood diverted her plan to bring up their own kiss. He hadn't unwound any over the years, especially where his father was concerned. Calling the man hot was a mistake, like salt in a gangrenous wound, though she never understood why. The senator was a charmer.

Bulma changed the subject, absently flapping a hand around the open living and kitchen area where they stood. "I assume you've seen this all already. I'll show you upstairs."

The large wall of windows in the master bedroom met the peak of the house's A-frame and overlooked the lake. Vegeta watched Raditz wrestle the kids playfully in the shallows, their shrill squeals permeating through the panes as he pretended to play the predator.

"Your brother is really cute. He looks like a miniature version of you."

"He's alright," Vegeta said.

The girl's punishing, extrovertive nature was the same as he remembered, except now that she'd physically matured, it had taken on a libidinous flavor. Even casual conversation was marked by the proximity with which she stood brushing against his shoulder.

As he stepped back and glanced around the room once more, the vacancy of the space suddenly became apparent, like an unused hotel suite. No suitcases were belched open in the corners or personal items littered across the dressers.

"When are your parents arriving?"

From what he understood, the Briefs would be supervising. There was no conceivable way his Aunt Gine and Uncle Bardock would let their kids spend the weekend alone, solely in the care of the Briefs' feckless daughter. Perhaps that's the real reason he was forced to tag along. Or more likely, Aunt Gine and Uncle Bardock simply had no idea that the Briefs' cut town, being the type to do so on a whim.

Doctor and Mrs. Briefs were self-absorbed and mostly absent; though it didn't seem to bother the girl. Raised by housekeepers and homeschooled by expensive tutors, Bulma had essentially been on her own, left to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. The Briefs' daughter had a reputation for being a genius like her father, but supremely spoiled and a bit on the wild side, not to mention a gregarious flirt.

"They were invited to a soiree at Councilmen Ox's estate in Fire Mountain. Looks like you and I will be playing house this weekend."

Vegeta stifled a groan under the weight of her unctuous grin, knowing that the unpleasantness of the weekend had just been upgraded to a babysitting endeavor where he'd be responsible for four souls instead of one since Bulma was far too reckless to be helpful and likely needed supervision herself.

"Come on, last stop." She wrapped her arm around his; incapable of directing him down the hall with words alone, she sought an excuse to touch him.

Unlike the master bedroom, her own room was well lived in with clothes and toiletries strewn about the floor and an unmade bed. Vegeta stepped over the debris toward the same large, triangular windows that faced the back and stared out across acres of tall pines, spruces, and larches, an endless forest on the edge of the wilderness. He ignored the heiress's aimless prattle behind him over which bikini she should sport next, until he turned around to see that she was untying her current suit right in front of him.

"What the hell are you doing?" His hands jumped to cover his eyes as his mind calculated the probability that he'd make it out the door without tripping over something.

"Oh my god! You're such a prude. Just turn around for a second. I'll need help tying it up again."

A nervous resentment churned in his stomach as he waited for her instruction, affronted by the fact that she'd assume he was comfortable with such an obvious, lewd display. Was she really going to undress in front of him? With shaking hands, he tied up her bikini—some hot pink push-up piece that she wore to flaunt her breasts. Kami, she was like an exaggerated caricature of the girl he'd once known, who by his measure, had always been intolerably forward. Now, it was unbearable, all sexualized, like she thought him some dog that would woof at the way she pulled the straps to test the buoyancy of her boobs against the knot he'd just been forced to fasten.

"Go get changed. We're gonna take the boat out to the sandbar. It's shallow, so the boys can swim."

That, Vegeta was surprised to comment, actually sounded like a good idea.

After he changed into swim trunks, he found Bulma in the kitchen rummaging in the fridge with her backside tipped out in his direction. Vegeta distracted himself, circling the kitchen island, tracing his fingers along the shaved stone countertop that, while it looked like the pebbly bottom of a creek bed, was surprisingly smooth to touch. A note was left by the coffee maker, penned to Bulma by their housekeeper, explaining in superfluous detail the extent of her grocery shopping, the location of household utilities and cleaning supplies that the heiress wouldn't bother to use, and a long list of emergency phone numbers.

"Are you allowed to be drinking?" he asked, observing her pour an ample amount of tequila and splash of orange juice into two large cups.

"Don't see anyone around to stop me." She glanced around the room mockingly. "Here," she said, thrusting a cup with a swirly straw at him.

Vegeta tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned away. "I don't drink."

"Never?" Bulma blinked and then rolled her eyes in a way that was expressly bothered when he shook his head no, like it was one more prudish mark to add to his list of hangups. "Fine. More for me, then!"

The four cousins and Bulma boarded the speed boat, and at just the moment Vegeta clicked the last buckle on Tarble's life vest, the idling engine shot to life and tore across the water, flinging the boy backward off his feet. Tarble stumbled up, groping Vegeta's arm for leverage; a smile lit across his face as the wind swept back his hair. Kakarot howled from the opposite bench like it was some theme park ride, the straps of his undone vest lashing out behind him. Vegeta shouted at the boy over the headwind to demand he secure it.

Raditz sipped on Bulma's extra tequila drink from his periphery, and though Vegeta knew he should scold him too, he was tired of hollering and resolved to pick and choose his battles. Caring for the two kids, hoping they didn't fly out of the boat at every wake Bulma crashed into was enough of a job at the present moment.

A line of boats dotted the distance, anchored off the shore of an uninhabited island in the middle of the lake where tree branches twisted over the water's edge. As they glided in among them across the shallow water, it didn't take more than a cursory glance at the other boats that were filled with high school and college-aged kids shouting over booming bass beats with drinks in their hands to understand that the heiress had, at the very least, misinformed the scene.

The anchor he dropped into the shallow water displaced a rusted beer can in a cloudy plume of sand. Why Bulma thought this would be a good idea with small children, besides the water's depth, Vegeta was left to wonder. Despite her genius reputation, Bulma was never known for her common sense, and apparently, nothing had changed over the years.

Vegeta's appetite for swimming was immediately soured, and a part of him debated whether to allow the boys to dip in this filth at all as he imagined the taint of piss and beer that stirred within the water. But he couldn't say no, not with the way they impatiently squirmed as he lathered them in sunblock, instructing them to raise their arms, trying to not miss any skin. He helped the kids down the ladder at the back of the boat before he made himself comfortable in the captain's chair with his book, watching them splash around from the corner of his eye.

A large cruiser pulled up to anchor alongside them, which in this crowded space was only a few feet from their boat. There was a whoop of riotous voices, and Vegeta recognized, even in silhouette against the late afternoon sun, the boat's three occupants. They attended his academy. Tien and Yamcha were on the football and baseball teams, Yamcha being both a star quarterback and pitcher. Launch, Tien's girlfriend was the most popular girl at their high school, and Vegeta hated her most of all. The girl was a life-size Barbie, tall and thin with flowing blonde hair, a snobbish bitch who bemused herself with brutal, often carefully plotted debasement of those around her.

Vegeta's jaw slacked in shock when they cheerily shouted Bulma's name, waving her over to their boat. They were friends?

"Are you coming?" Bulma asked.

"Not a chance in hell."

"Oh come on, Vegeta! Don't be a party pooper," she leaned over him with her breasts expertly squeezed between her arms.

"Go ahead. I'll just be guarding the lives of the innocents."

An amused, incredulous expression smirched across her face, as if she thought he was making a joke and would eventually follow. Bulma shrugged before she disembarked, drink in hand, and waded through the water to climb up the ladder of the other boat, where she was helped aboard by Yamcha. Raditz followed, a dimwitted puppy at her heels.

Bulma took Yamcha's hand and stepped onto the woven vinyl flooring of the deck, feeling her mood lighten at the welcome of her newfound friends.

After sixteen years as an only child—discounting her older sister who was nearly twice her age and lived on the opposite side of the world—she'd never had much opportunity to meet peers her own age. She was homeschooled by world-renowned tutors, who despite their credentials were exhaustively, humiliatingly vetted by her father. The man was the smartest person on Earth, according to his accolades. If his big brains weren't enough to bloat his head, that every scientific journal begged him to cover stories and every accredited institution bestowed him awards certainly accomplished the job. He wasn't going to let just anyone educate his children. It took years of groveling, hissy fits, and cold shoulders to wear him down. But finally, her father surrendered, and this fall she would be attending an actual high school.

It was just her luck that she'd encountered Launch, Yamcha and Tien a few weeks ago out on the sandbar; she never went back to the city and resolved to spend the whole summer at the cabin, ecstatic that these kids were the very same that would be her classmates when school started in the fall. The well-to-do teens whose families also owned cabins on the prestigious lake where the Briefs' spent their summers would ensure that she was popular and well liked among the student population from day one. After meeting them, her anxiety over enrolling in school had somewhat faded.

She suppressed the flicker of guilt for leaving Vegeta behind to care for the kids, but didn't have long to grapple with the fact when, before she'd even found her footing, Launch yanked her roughly by the elbow.

"Question sweetheart. What is Vegeta doing with you?" the girl inquired in a tone overwhelmingly laced by shocked contempt.

"He's staying with me." Bulma grinned, pretending not to catch the air in which Launch spat his name, and instead tried to flip it with a coy wag of her eyebrows. He was ungodly hot, and Launch of all people had to recognize the fact… right?

"Oh honey, please don't tell me you like him," said Launch pitifully, pouting her bottom lip.

"Why not?"

Yamcha bounced into the conversation. Popping a cap from the two beer bottles that were entwined between his fingers, he handed one to Bulma. "Let me give you a little lesson on Shenron Academy's resident asshole. Dude is a royal prick. Thinks his shit don't stink because his daddy is a senator."

"He's the val-DICK-torian," Tien added.

Raditz snorted up his drink, and Bulma shot him a cold glare. Was there something wrong with being smart? She wasn't so sure she could hide her intelligence to avoid becoming a social outcast if that was the measure by which popularity was dolled out at the city's most prestigious academy. "I've known him for years. The senator's a family friend. He's always been a little shy."

"Shy!" Launch reeled. "He's not shy, he's a psycho! Beats the shit out of people just for making eye contact. He's been suspended so many times, I'm actually impressed he's still top of the class."

"Probably just threatens nerds into doing his homework," Tien added.

"He doesn't have any friends, except for maybe that gorilla, Nappa. But Nappa graduated last spring, so I guess Veggie is all alone next year. Unless you'd like to join his corner." Launch tipped her gaze to Raditz, who shook his head adamantly in the negative.

"Raditz, he's your cousin!" Bulma whacked the dolt. "I think this is all just a misunderstanding. You guys just have to get to know him. He's really nice to me."

"Probably just wants to get in your pants," Tien said.

"That's not true! Hold my beer." Tien's assertion was so laughable that Bulma felt obligated to prove them all wrong. She climbed down the ladder and waded back to the boat. If he'd just come and hang out for a bit, they would see it. As prickly and aloof as Vegeta was, in equal measure, he was just as sweet and darkly funny, if they would just give him the chance and get to know him.