Chapter 9: Road Trip
His phone was dead by the time he woke up, but outside the window, the eastward shadows that stretched beneath the mangled trees and busted branches said it was well past noon. Thankfully, none of the thick limbs had landed on his car, but there were plenty of dime-sized craters indented across its roof and hood—one more lousy dilemma to add to his growing list of atonements.
Vegeta packed his belongings and left Tarble to sleep, open-mouthed and swaddled inside a roll of blankets. The folksy theme from Adventure Time played from the living room where he found Kakarot watching television through one eye, the jug of peanut butter clamped between his thighs and a spoon in his hand, licking the substance like a popsicle. The meager acknowledgment he offered Vegeta with a split-second flick of his head prompted a tangle of blue hair to pop-up from the adjacent wing of the couch. Bulma peered at him over the back with a worried, expectant interest, as if hoping he'd relay both the reason and the outcome of his brother's blowout. It wasn't the kind of thing he was prepared to explain, much less lie about, especially not in the presence of his cousin.
"Are you packed, Kakarot? I was instructed to have you home before dinner."
"My stuff's in the treehouse," he said without removing his eyes from the glowing rectangle.
"Shit. Well, do you need it? I'm not going back out there today!"
Kakarot's disinterested shrug, fortunately, said no. Vegeta ordered the dolt to rouse Raditz and be ready to leave in ten before he slipped out the porch door to bring his own bag around the house and stuff it in the trunk of his car.
Seeing the storm's destruction in the light of day, while it wasn't certain that a tornado had actually formed, it was clear that whatever they'd experienced last night was dangerously close. Debris was thrown across the Briefs' lawn like a next day battlefield with branches up to twice his size, and a scan of the forest's perimeter proved just how lucky they had been. The perfect, vertical columns he'd admired the first day were now tipped at every angle. Gigantic mounds of dirt and tangled roots, many of which were at least ten feet in diameter, displayed the underbellies of massive, upheaved trees. The heiress's precious jet ski was missing, likely banging against rocks a mile down the coast, and the speedboat was tipped halfway of its lift. At least the house was intact, but even that, like everything else, the Briefs had both the insurance and the means to replace.
Though the same facts were true about his car, he couldn't help but fear he'd be blamed for the damage, as if his father would've expected him to lay across its roof to absorb the hail himself. Nothing he did was ever quite right, hard as he tried; there was always something the old man could unearth to criticize. Even getting his cousins home ten minutes late for dinner, if Gine mentioned it, would be enough to earn him a scolding string of texts, or a phone call if the timing was right.
Vegeta meant to hasten the parade along, knowing the kind of putzs he was dealing with, but as the backdoor snapped shut behind him, his eldest cousin's voice carried down the hall with a remark so vapidly senseless, it fanned the embers of his smoldering rage, threatening to reignite it.
"Holy shit, Kat! The hell happened? Ya get in a fight or somethin'?" The question was endowed with enough enthusiasm and wonder that Vegeta felt his sentiments quickly careening down a steep, fast slope, a boulder aimed at the ultimate source that had set last night's disaster into motion.
Kakarot's goofy giggle responded without explanation, likely too tired to doctor a tale worthy of his exorbitant daydreams.
Blood rocketed into Vegeta's head with a kind of pressure he was sure would fracture the plates of his skull and explode them across the pinewood floor, and he stopped himself at the mouth of the living room to breathe and count his way down to a base level of self-control. Familial love had nothing to do with holding back from his baser instincts. And while Kakarot and Bulma's presence provided some measure of restraint, what he feared more was the hole he'd already dug for himself thanks to the weekend's earlier drama. Retaliating against Raditz, as much as he deserved it, would only ensure that crater was deep enough to bury his corpse once his father was through with him. He couldn't send both cousins home with black eyes, his brother in a cast, and Yamcha with a face that, quite frankly, was more suited to his level of intelligence.
As much as he wanted to prove a point through means Raditz would understand, only hosting enough brains himself to make sense of his fist, he was forced to confront the reckless fuckwit with words alone, words that he hadn't managed to properly formulate before they came screaming out of his mouth. "Goddammit, Raditz! You fucked him up! You took them out there, and then you left them!"
Raditz spun toward the direction of his voice but darted his eyes about the room and squirmed between his feet, clearly fearful that he was about to suffer Vegeta's infamous reputation firsthand. "I was gonna go back! My phone died, just like I told you it was gonna, and I came to charge it and fell asleep. It was an accident! It could happen to anyone!"
The whiny string of excuses had barely tumbled from his cousin's lips when a thought miraculously popped into his thick skull to transform his disposition. Vegeta watched the lightbulb flicker on to energize the gears and pulleys that could descend Raditz's balls back down from where they'd jumped up his abdomen. The smirk with which he met Vegeta's wavering hostility was a smoking gun.
"Even if I was supposed to be on baby watch, which I technically wasn't for the record, it's not like I drank a fucking handle of tequila and passed out at the post."
The comment stung in more ways than Vegeta was willing to admit, the most unsettling being the fact that he'd become so drunk he blacked-out and couldn't remember retreating to bed. In the last patches of memory he hosted, he was alone, pacing circles outside the campfire pit. But now, a part of him wondered if Raditz had returned to witness a stupor that he couldn't recall. Had they talked? Oh dear god… Had Raditz helped him to bed? He refused to let his anxiety show, much less admit to his cousin's accusation without hard evidence to back it up. If Raditz did, in fact, know what he'd done, Vegeta's hand in the blame game was effectively folded. It was out of desperation that he played dumb, unwilling to let his cousin make him the scapegoat for Kakarot's face as he let his mouth continue to run.
"So help me god, Raditz, there's no way in Hell that I'm taking the fucking fall for this! And if I so much as catch wind of you trying to pin it on me, I'll make sure you don't have eyes to see through. I'll rip them out of your thick fucking skull and hang them from your neck as bait for the fucking bears to come and eat the rest of you!"
"Damn, cus. That's super dark." He seemed almost wounded by the ridiculous threat the way his head tipped like a dog, all pouty and droopy-eyed like he'd been returned to the pound.
In a strange way, Raditz had warmed up to him over the weekend, only thanks to taking out Yamcha. His cousin was a sucker for displays of strength, and the moment he witnessed the quarterback wailing pathetically against the pavement under Vegeta's knuckles, his loyalty abruptly shifted. He was on his side, or at least he was trying to be. Antagonizing the moron certainly wasn't helping matters. And if he was being honest, Raditz wasn't going to be the one to throw him under the bus unless he felt threatened. It was Kakarot, the little psycho, who they both had to fear. The kid would be too happy to deliver some far-fetched story to his parents that was impossibly worse than reality if they couldn't pocket their pointing fingers and come together to divert him.
Vegeta discharged whatever remained of his pride through a long, drawn-out sigh. "Raditz, you can't tell your parents that I had anything to do with this. I'll talk to Aunt Gine myself if you both promise to keep to a story so none of us gets in trouble. I'll tell her we were both there, and a storm popped up, not on the radar or anything we detected, and the boys slipped. Nobody abandoned anyone. Can we agree to that?"
When Raditz only stared back dumbly, lips popping open and shut like a fish, Vegeta found himself resorting to a tactic he'd never thought he'd be forced to use, begging, "Raditz, please!"
"Of course, yeah, yeah. We were both there," he nodded, trading looks with the others in the room who were just as confounded by Vegeta's request.
"Kakarot?" Vegeta looked to his youngest cousin whose left eye was a ripe plumb yet still somehow managed to exhibit his suspicious reluctance.
"Why?" The boy asked.
"Why? Because I'll burn all your action figures, and because I'll tell mom you're the one that broke her LaMonte sculpture."
At his brother's threat, Kakarot bugged his good eye and was quick to touch the tip of his thumb to his forefinger and agree, "Ok," before he gestured a zip across his lips.
Tarble, as if he could sense from a room away that he was being left out of the familial ruse, summoned Vegeta to collect him. As he helped the sleepy, sullen boy to brush his teeth and wash his face and dress, he found it hard to ignore Tarble's repeated pleas that they stay. It wasn't like he didn't want to, but on top of bringing their cousins home as promised, there were plenty of loose ends to be dealt with before they could disappear for an indeterminable amount of time.
The upkeep of their house was his responsibility, not the lawn, thankfully, but the rest of it. And even the outer estate he oversaw and ensured their contractors were paid. But that was nothing compared to the gym that he was anxious to return to. Without a viable coach at the academy, they outsourced the job to a private mixed martial arts facility with a trainer who was so lean and prim and proper that at their first meeting, he'd been skeptical of the man's abilities. But his credentials were on record, not just in boxing, but MMA too, with his pupils deriving titles from amatuer and professional rings in nearly every weight class. And being at the gym, with Whis's unending praise and attempts to sway him into a professional career after graduation—though Vegeta wasn't planning to take the sport up professionally, as much as he wanted to—he was flattered nonetheless. He flourished under the light of Whis's pride in him, a feeling that dwindled every night on the drive home as reality sunk in to remind him that it was a pipe dream. If he stuck around, his father would place him somewhere within his cabal to groom him for public office, and if he wasn't, he'd be hiding, working as a bartender at a VFW under a fake name in some rural, bumbfuck town.
Vegeta carefully set his brother in the backseat of his car where Kakarot was already buckled and embraced with the heiress in a goodbye hug. Raditz's gaze loitered on the bottom crests of her ass that peeked from her shorts as she bent over. She almost caught the pervert when she spun around to hug him briefly.
But with himself, the heiress's farewell wasn't quite as familiar. She hovered near the hood of his car with her arms crossed like she was cold, despite the heat, twisting her body back and forth nervously, as if waiting for him to approach her. The second Vegeta stepped into her radius, she dropped her overcautious posture and used both hands to wrap around one of his.
"When are you coming back?"
"The weekend. I dunno… Friday?"
"How 'bout tomorrow?" She combatted his eye roll with one of her own and continued to deride him with a yank on his hand. "Why the hell not! It's summer break, so what the hell do you have to do?" As if she could read him, she pressed him further, "The gym? This place is a mess! You could spend all week here dragging logs out of my lawn! That's a workout you don't have to pay for! Come on."
"Thursday," he conceded.
It wasn't good enough, and she clenched his hand tighter and repeated, "Tomorrow."
"It's a four hour drive one way."
"So? Tomorrow."
"Wednesday."
"Tomorrow!"
"Why tomorrow? You don't want to be alone?"
"I've been alone my entire life. So no. But, if you need me to spell it out for you, I've really fucking missed you, Vegeta. You've avoided me for five years, and at least now I understand why, that it wasn't entirely my fault. And I meant what I said about helping with him. Don't take this the wrong way, but you could use help. And he doesn't want to leave either so… Tomorrow!"
His weight shifted beneath him as her insecurity over their past was so plainly stated. He did avoid her after New Years, for five years, but not because he didn't like her, it was the opposite, and as she said herself, because of Tarble. But he wanted her to know that it wasn't her fault, at least not in the way she imagined; only he couldn't find the means to explain how he'd felt back then, much less how he felt about her now. Instead, he deflected to ask, "When are your parents planning to be back?"
"Does it matter?"
He shook his head. The Briefs were decent people, a little flighty and selfish, but good people at heart, like their daughter.
"Then what's the problem? Tomorrow, or tonight even. I know it's a long drive, but–"
Vegeta surprised himself when he used his hand that was solidly clenched within her grip as leverage to pull her toward him and kissed her quiet. It was quick and chaste and over before his mind had even registered that it had happened at all, but it explained his thoughts better than words ever could, even had those words been available and not lost in the twisted depths of his head.
The heiress seemed just as stunned as he was and stared back at him blinking. The moment she came to, she leapt at him, wrapping her arms around his neck to pull his face into hers, looking at him intently as their foreheads met before she sealed her lips against his. Vegeta's eyes fell shut, and his hands found their way around her back trying his best not to overthink the act, at least not until Kakarot let a woop ring from the backseat of the car that had them both pulling away to glance awkwardly at the three faces that stared back at them, each with wildly different expressions.
"Guess I'll see you when I see you," Bulma said, and despite that she was smiling at him now, there was a defeated undercurrent in the way she'd said it, like she didn't believe he'd come back and that kiss had just become the pinnacle of a relationship that never was and never would be. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. He wanted to explain everything, settle her anxiety, make her believe that he had every intention to return once he'd had the time to think and plan exactly what he'd be willing to divulge, both to her and his father. It wasn't like he could just up and leave for an extended stay at the Briefs' summer house without drawing the man's suspicions or worse. This had to be plotted and perfectly phrased in a way that his old man would find mutually beneficial.
"You will. I swear," he told her and squeezed her hand before he backed toward the open car door.
"Duuuuude," exclaimed Raditz, his mouth hung open and eyes popped wide, darting between the heiress in the driveway and himself.
Before he could follow up such an eloquent expression with thoughts, Kakarot's giggling turned into a childish mockery. "Geta and Bulma sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g."
"Oh you can fucking spell now can you, Kakarot?"
"Yes?" the little turd responded, clearly not understanding that he had spelled anything at all in his repeating a nursery school taunt. "It means you're girlfriend and boyfriend."
Vegeta ignored him, not in the mood to explain the complicated nuances of relationships to Kakarot, of all people. As he turned to back down the drive, he could see Tarble leaning between the seats, straining his neck to observe the heiress through the windshield. His thoughts on the matter weren't so easily readable as either of his cousins. He didn't appear distressed nor happy about witnessing his brother kiss a girl, but his mind was clearly running circles to determine just where his feelings landed on the matter. As much as Tarble wanted to escape and come back to this place, he wasn't the heiress's biggest fan, and he was most definitely not a fan of sharing his brother's affections. Where his opinion would eventually settle was a crapshoot, but the drive would at least serve as time to let Tarble digest his thoughts.
"Holy shit, if I was a betting man, I'd have lost my ass on that one. You and fucking Bulma Briefs? Nobody's gonna believe me!"
"Oh hell no!" Vegeta slammed the brakes at the top of the driveway to nab the cell phone from his cousin's hands and throw it in the storage pocket on the inside of his door.
"What the hell, cus? Give it back!"
"Naw, there's no fucking way I'm letting you turn my personal life into clickbait. Maybe you can have it back if you promise you aren't gonna be a gossip-mongering jackass."
"I won't!" he whined, not all that convincingly.
Less than an hour into the drive, they'd barely made it to the first gas station before Vegeta would rather pull the car into a guard rail and kill them all than listen to Raditz's ceaseless gripes over not having a phone to paw at. He tossed the stupid device on the seat as he filled the tank while his cousins were inside buying snacks.
Raditz's complaints were quickly satiated; though Vegeta didn't know what was worse now that their drive was filled with the noise of crumpling chip bags, chomping teeth and smacking lips. He flicked on the radio to tune them all out, letting the droll voices of NPR reporters cut through the nonsense of Raditz's expletives as he began to scroll through social feeds.
"No fucking way! Oh damn… dude, you're so fucked."
"What? Why?"
"Uh… Well, word on the feed says the academy is gonna hold a disciplinary hearing before summer's over on whether or not to expel you."
"Fuck that! Who said that?"
"Everyone's saying it. Both Yamcha and Launch's moms are on the PTA."
"So? I didn't hit him on school property. It doesn't count. It's summer break! They can't expel me for that!"
"Repeated acts of violence is how they're spinning it for the school board. Are you really surprised? Come on man, you know our pops have political rivals at that school and they'll look for any excuse to take you down. And besides, you fucked with the wrong darling. The QB? He gets the crowds, the cheerleaders, the ra-ra let's go Dragons. You can't get that kind of school spirit at boxing matches. You're the only one on the team now!"
"Yeah, but I fucking own. I'm undefeated, and not just in state or regionals like their precious football team. I have a national title in that fucking case. And it's the first and only national in Shenron's sad excuse of a display for as long as that pathetic establishment has existed. And I'm the fucking valedictorian!"
Above everything else, that at least should matter, but from the sounds of it, the school only cared about one dumb sport that they were only modestly good at. That they were willing to expel their smartest pupil over an extramural spat with their quarterback drove home the sad reality that the academy cared little about the very purpose it was meant to serve. The small pool of scholarships they gave to students of lesser means each year were obviously skewed toward the sport, as more and more morons were admitted with barely functional brainwaves to tackle a pigskin. Why the fuck did they even bother with academics? At this point, they might as well turn the whole goddamn institution into a training camp for witless thugs.
"God fucking dammit, does intelligence not mean anything to a fucking school anymore? If they even try to expel me, I'm petitioning that they change the name of that asylum to Shenron Prep School for Smelling Your Own Leaking Ass."
"Damn cus, there's kids here!"
"I know there's fucking kids here! Don't pretend that they haven't heard and seen worse."
Fuck! 'Repeated acts of violence' wasn't exactly off the mark, but rather quite an apt description of his reputation at the academy even on school property. If the PTA managed to convince the school board to hold a disciplinary hearing, the only soul on Kami's green earth that could save him from expulsion was his father. If not through his clout alone, he'd succeed through the same vile means he got his way in everything—through money, bribes, and threats, the price of which, in this case, Vegeta would end up paying for.
The rest of the drive he spent ruminating over his shit situation, and knowing he'd brought it on himself thanks to his inability to smother his temper only made it that much worse. Nobody, not even Yamcha, could excuse the behavior he'd forever been unable to contain since he was a kid. It was his father's own behavior that, whether through biology or environmental circumstance, had become his own. He wasn't a bully like his old man, but hard as he tried, he could never reign in his rage if provoked. In many ways, he was worse, because at least his old man checked himself publicly and dealt in other forms of persuasion, ignoble as they were.
Brute force, as far as Vegeta knew, was reserved just for his family. Day-in and day-out, the stress of his profession—navigating between flattery, negotiations, and threats with a litany of politicians, government officials, businessmen, lobbyists, and his own staff—left his fuse shorted. By the time he came home to indulge through bitter vices to 'unwind,' the slightest aggravation was worthy of the full extent of his fury, left him shouting at them as if they'd forgotten what a big shot he was in the world. Kami-forbid they treat him like a common family man.
At the same time, his father deluded himself to think he was. It wasn't just the bullshit lines he fed the press, claiming his public service was inspired by his desire to forge a better world for his children. At least that, his father gritted out with a smile that anyone who knew him privately understood as political, pandering bullshit. More disturbing was the commentary around the dinner table among their relatives, where after a few glasses of scotch and a line or two he'd sneak from the bathroom, he'd derail into a speech that was meant to inspire Vegeta, his brother and cousins to buckle down, work hard, and make their family proud, with Gine all the while smiling and nodding through a second bottle of chardonnay.
Bardock was the only one whose face ever broke during these impromptu dinner rallies. Vegeta had caught on to his uncle's mild resistance, watching his face turn at some ridiculous line his father delivered at Christmas years ago, and ever since he'd discretely tuned his attention on the man whenever his father felt the need to monologue. Sometimes he wondered if Bardock was a spy because his body language was in stark disagreement to whatever convoluted filth came out of the senator's mouth, so much that it was impossible to imagine Bardock working with the man every damn day and not exploding.
In the past few years, as Vegeta became more convinced that he needed to run away, he imagined that Bardock would reveal himself and prove to be an ally. He followed his uncle around at every opportunity, hoping that behind closed doors, if they found themselves alone, Bardock would be man enough to impart his knowledge and clue Vegeta in as to exactly how he could get himself out of this family, discreetly, without unleashing a nationwide press scandal. Nothing ever surfaced. Bardock always played dumb to Vegeta's subtle hints, and that's when he came to the conclusion that Bardock, as much as he clearly disagreed with the senator's vision, he was still a complicit, neutered stooge. Either his uncle truly couldn't see what was happening, or he did and just chose not to act. Neither conclusion inspired much respect.
Gine was an entirely different beast. She was his father's sister and the resemblance showed. The PR company with which she managed his affairs was brutal. The contorted ways Gine spun scandals would shame the devil himself. In a big way, Gine was the reason he was so popular, despite that every campaign promise was instantly thwarted in the dark. Every shitty decision, every vote he made, every bill he backed was spun to the public by her firm through a lens so purposefully convoluted that even the most educated patriot couldn't effectively explain up or down in a way that was clear enough to convince the public at large that they'd voted against their own best interests in supporting him. He took advantage of their ignorance. He was a pretty con man, a charmer, and he'd convinced an entire state of people, real people, into believing that the public services he stole away from them were actually the wrongdoings of opposing party rivals.
There wasn't any adult in Vegeta's vortex to trust. All of them were self-interested, delusional showmen that undermined the health of their family in the name of it. And as Vegeta steered into the gated community where Raditz and Kakarot's estate resided, he hoped Aunt Gine was too busy to come out to the drive. Despite promising Raditz that he'd explain Kakarot's black eye, he wasn't so sure that he could stomach the conversation. He only wanted to shoo them out of his car and head home to sleep off the weekend's miserable hangover.
But as he pulled into the driveway, the taxpayer-subsidized Cadillac his father hated was parked off to the side with its driver inside typing absently into his phone.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Vegeta's stomach wrenched so violently that he fought the urge to pop the door wide open before he'd even parked his car to hurl. His father had never, not once, set aside his career for anything. Even when his mother gave birth to Tarble and passed away, even while the kid was in the NICU fighting for his life, he hadn't postponed a day from his grueling schedule save for her funeral, which of course was publicized. Why the fuck was he here?
"Yo, your pops is here," said Raditz, the moron, like Vegeta didn't have eyes.
Tarble kicked the back of his seat. As much as the wordless fuck you was warranted, his brother had enough sense about him now not to open his mouth.
A part of Vegeta wondered if he'd just driven himself to meet his doom. His father was dangerous not just because of his temper, but more so because of his connections. He'd already covered up the cause of his mother's death, and that was six years ago almost to the day. There wasn't any doubt in his mind that if the man was angry and messed-up enough, he'd kill him accidentally and find a way to sweep the act under the rug. It wasn't a new thought, but one he'd ruminated on the same way his mother had for all those years, and her fear was realized. That fact, however, wasn't the most terrifying part. Worse was that, should her fate become his, it would leave Tarble without anyone to be a wall between them. Tarble wasn't strong, and everyone knew it. He needed Vegeta to protect him.
"Does that mean daddy's home?" asked Kakarot excitably.
"Probably… Dude, you gonna pop the trunk or what?" inquired Raditz, trying to pull Vegeta from his frozen state, his fists wrapped the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.
The hand he moved to pull the lever felt unlike his own, like a prop or prosthetic that betrayed him to shorten his window of escape. The moment those two fools stepped out of the car, if he had any balls, he'd have used them to peel out the drive and away from a routine course of events. It certainly wouldn't be the first time he'd encountered his father's party face before a group, knowing the man was internally fuming. That's exactly how this would go down, except worse once his aunt saw Kakarot's face.
As if on cue, Gine came striding from the estate's front doors. She fanned herself with a dramatic wave of her hand and curled her nose at the summer air as she crossed the drive toward his car to meet her children. Though before she wound her way around to the back where they both rummaged inside of his trunk, she stopped at Vegeta's window, knocking at the glass even as he lowered it.
"You're late, again, hotshot. Can you at least humble yourself to get out of the car and give me a hug? Or would that insult your delicate masculinity?"
"That's not–"
"Honestly Vegeta, you need to find a way to rid yourself of this toxic behavior. You've made quite a job for us. Find yourself a girlfriend, something to distract you from this senseless violence you seem to attract."
"Yeah, I'm working on that."
His aunt stepped aside to let him out and immediately hugged her arms around him, if only to gauge whether or not he was some testosterone-ladened psychopath that was unwilling to return the gesture. There was a grey zone. He sure as hell didn't like her, but that was due to her personality, not her gender, as she weirdly assumed. Kami, did everyone think he was some gnarly incel? Maybe those fools could have succeeded somewhat in their revenge if that's what everyone secretly believed about him already.
Gine's hug was short-lived, both fortunately and not, as she removed her talons to cry out, so close to his ear that it was left ringing, "Kakarot! What happened? Who hit you?"
Kakarot smiled as his mother bounded toward him. He had some fantastically erroneous story bubbling in the back of his skull, but being unable to use it when it counted, his smile faded as he grumbled, "Nothin' much. Raddy'll tell ya." The bland explanation left him looking painfully constipated as she turned to wait for Raditz to relay the events that bludgeoned her precious baby.
"Got caught in the rain in the treefort. Wasn't on the radar. Tarble slipped and kicked him in the face trying to climb down. Accident, nobody to blame. Couldn't be avoided."
Nailed it. Vegeta gave a mocking thumbs-up at his stupid ape of a cousin from behind his mother's shoulder. If Gine didn't catch on to that idiot's piss-poor spin of events, she didn't deserve her job. Kakarot seemed to agree. The abhorrence his little cousin donned as his mother pulled back his hair was downright offended by his brother's shoddy relay of their agreed-upon fiction, as if it was an insult to every storyteller that ever lived. It was a little funny to see him squirm, unable to provide his own account and forced to agree with Raditz's pathetically meager report.
Tarble's expression, however, as Vegeta flipped the seat back to retrieve him, wasn't quite so amusing. He pulled the seatbelt against his chest and held the clip in silent protest, shaking his head.
"Tarble, come on." As Vegeta leaned inside the cab, Tarble's good leg shot into his stomach, not once, but repeatedly, the futile effort of which reactivated his tears when Vegeta caught his ankle and held it in place. "I'm not asking you. Get out."
His brother was losing his damn mind, as if his first glimpse of a different world allowed him to realize that the one he'd been living in was horribly abnormal, a nightmare he was flat out refusing to return to. He wailed against Vegeta's neck as he carried him inside the house.
Gine's shrill admonishment, decrying his reckless care of her children, was already in full effect, bleating from two rooms away. He should have known that plotting a story would be a wasted effort, because everything was his fault, always, even when it wasn't. His aunt paused her lament long enough to shout, "Vegeta, we've been ready to eat for over an hour. Do you mean to make us wait until breakfast?"
The adults were seated at the dining table with his father and aunt at each end, all of them staring intently at him and the boy crying in his arms. Only Bardock found the means to smile and say hello. Neither of his cousins had managed to join them, but their tardiness it seemed was a forgivable offense.
"I thought you were traveling," he said as he slowly made his way to sit, putting a chair between himself and his father.
"Wouldn't that be convenient for you?"
Vegeta didn't know what to make of his father's dry response, which suggested, even if it wasn't true, that he delayed his trip back to the capitol to deal with the threat of his expulsion. The man was going to play this game where at face value he seemed calm and collected, but inserted just enough suggestive commentary to leave Vegeta tilted off his axis.
"What's wrong with the little one?" Gine directed toward Tarble through the noise of her sons as they swarmed on the table like a pack of wildebeests, barely restrained to wait for the cue to eat as they stared at the platters of food set in the middle practically drooling.
"He's just tired," Vegeta lied.
The glass of scotch his father had been sipping hit the table with a thud and rattled the ice cubes. "For Kami's sake, Vegeta! He acts like a baby because you treat him as one. Put the boy down. He can sit at his own chair."
It took some effort to untie Tarble's reluctant arms from his frame, and he slid into the empty seat next to his father, placing his brother on his opposite side. Tarble sniveled and stared into his plate that Vegeta loaded with mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, and a dinner roll as they were passed around, skipping over the meat.
His father was far too observant and never let anything go, especially once he was on a roll. "Vegeta, has your brother no manners? Your aunt has generously provided a meal."
"He's a vegetarian," Vegeta reminded, for what felt like the tenth time.
"He can be a vegetarian on his own time. It wouldn't kill him to put some meat on his bones. The boy's awfully frail."
"Oh stop. Let the child have his principles." Gine said, diverting what would certainly become an argument. Whether she believed what she claimed or not, Vegeta was grateful that she had the sense to see a shitstorm brewing and could divert her brother's instigations.
"Why is that? Are you an animal rights activist?" Bardock asked with genuine curiosity. His question was directed at Tarble, having enough respect to speak to the boy rather than about him, as everyone else seemed to do.
Tarble nodded at his uncle meekly as he tried to find his voice. "I don't want 'em to die."
"But you understand the food chain, right? Predators and prey–"
"I know!" Tarble managed to interrupt whatever line of wisdom his uncle assumed he didn't understand. "But we don't hafta to eat 'em. We just like the taste."
His father shook his glass as he stood, as if to signal that he was bored by the discussion and slipped outside the dining room to refuel. Bardock carried on, gently debating his brother in a way that Vegeta appreciated, listening to his perspective, complimenting points he agreed with, yet still challenging him when he didn't with more questions to make his brother think. Tarble was on his toes, all his earlier weeping forgotten as he gained confidence and found the words to express his views.
"I think this one is going to be running for office before long," Bardock chuckled when his father returned.
"If a five-year-old has convinced you to be a vegetarian, perhaps he can be my chief of staff too," he mocked, turning the man's compliment on its head. He resumed his position at the head of the table, pushing the plate away to make room for his drink, having lost his appetite after his little adventure. "At least one of my sons may be capable of not spoiling his reputation."
"Don't give yourself a stroke. The school board will cave."
"Of course they'll damn well cave, Gine! But the petition isn't going to miraculously go away! It can and will be recalled in the future to use against him."
"You're getting ahead of yourself. So long as there aren't any more incidences, even if the petition is scrounged up by the press, and we're talking two decades from now, he's seventeen. The public would see it as a desperate smear campaign. He's a spitting image of you at that age. And besides, he's a boxer, and a good one, which tilts the lens quite a bit in my opinion."
"Not anymore he's not."
Vegeta shot his head toward his father. "What! You can't–"
"Oh my dear derelict of a son, I don't believe you're in a position to test me. You're done with that vile sport, and I won't hear one more word about it. It's distracting you from college applications. Summer's halfway over, and I've yet to see one. Don't think I'm going and pull strings at Salada without you proving your worth."
Blood pooled inside Vegeta's ears and burned as if they'd been filled with molten wax. As much as he wanted to pitch a fit and shout the truth, that the vile sport in which he participated was a solution, not a problem, and the only thing he gave a damn about, he couldn't say a word.
"It's a lesson for all of you." His father used the tip of his steak knife to point at each of the kids. "We might have paved you a pretty path, but don't think for a second it means you're worthy to walk on it. If history has taught us anything, it's that the greatest dynasties die at the hands of their spoiled offspring. Our legacy will not be squandered by your insolence. Raditz, Kakarot, are you listening?"
Kakarot's rapt focus shot up from the bloody hunk of meat he was sawing into pieces to nod, and Raditz rubbed the back of his head where his mother had cuffed him as he set down his phone.
"Bearing our family's name is a gift, one that was provided to you on the backs of our hard work. You didn't earn it; you don't deserve it, and I promise that you will gain nothing from it unless you put in your time and prove yourselves. That means your academics, your extracurriculars, your reputations all align with our brand." He focused on each of them with an intensity that perhaps only Vegeta understood the full extent of, his pupils dilated to shroud his rich brown eyes in pitless black. "No more detentions or so-called sports meant for lowlife bar brawlers; no more fragile, feminine ideals meant for suburban housewives; no more tall tales and delusional fantasies meant for hapless con artists; and no more dimwitted social distractions meant for second-rate celebrity bloggers. We've provided you with the genes and resources to carry our legacy. The rest is your responsibility, your duty to accomplish yourselves. I promise that the rest of your lives will be very hard should you fail to uphold your end."
The threat wasn't just about inheritance, but even that notion struck a chord with Raditz whose features visibly slackened, likely assuming he'd ride his parents' fortune like a Kardashian, straight into a privileged, adolescent retirement. Tarble, unfortunately, could read the undercurrent. While he had no conception of money, certainly not the long string of numbers that sat in his trusts, he could recognize that hard meant viciously, dangerously impossible. Kakarot was the only one who seemed confused on the whole; his inability to conceptualize anything outside of the black and white conventions of his comic book stories left him pinching his brows together trying to imagine in what world he wouldn't be a hero.
As Gine attempted to spin her brother's uncanny ability to turn an already sour family affair into an ominous shakedown—holding up her wine glass to toast to the Saiyan family dynasty, a name only she still carried within her nuclear division—Vegeta glanced up at Bardock, who was tilting the tines of his fork against the table, frowning much like his youngest son. His lips flattened as he looked to his wife and slowly traded the utensil for a glass of whiskey, hanging it in the air with a dull flick of his wrist.
It wasn't the first time his brother-in-law and employer used his position to discipline his sons, to cut them down and fill their heads with extortionate nonsense and ultimatums outside of his control. As obvious as his uncle's resentment showed, at least to Vegeta, the man did nothing. He swallowed his dissent in one long gulp, and with a shake of the ice cubes in his glass, he departed in search of a refill to drown it completely.
Vegeta would have left the table too had he a viable reason to take Tarble with him. No sooner had he made the wish, did he realize that his brother's bum foot was just the excuse he needed. He poked Tarble's thigh beneath the table and said, "You're squirming. Do you need to use the restroom?"
Tarble nodded and set his fork in the field of mashed potatoes he'd raked across the plate like a therapy sandbox.
"May we be excused?"
His father waved them away with a look that said he was stupid for asking, and better get the kid to the bathroom before he wet himself at the dinner table. If he hadn't asked, he'd have been berated for having no manners. It was a lose-lose a hundred percent of the time.
"You don't really have to pee, right?"
"No. But where are we going?" Tarble was back to himself, it seemed—sharply observant and mostly collected.
Vegeta knew where Bardock would be and crossed the open living room toward the grand staircase to the second floor. The balcony where his uncle often retreated during social events hung off his and his aunt's bedroom, which was so sterile in its daily upkeep, it felt more like a museum exhibit. Whenever he trekked through, he imagined it was—that it was a hundred years from now, and he was passing between velvet ropes at the foot of the bed, feigning a hum of interest at some nerdy curator as she rattled on about the quaint, romantic qualities embedded in this century's private luxury. Not a loose sock was ever left on the floor, nor a wrinkle indented in the comforter, nor book left out on either nightstand. His father had fired their housekeepers half a decade ago, save for a monthly cleaning service, and Vegeta was glad for the fact because Gine's idea of living space was more akin to a mortuary.
Bardock didn't turn around when Vegeta opened the door, being the only one to routinely track him down. Instead, he remained propped against the balustrade, staring across the expanse of lawn at the horizon, the cherry of his cigar glowing like a reflection of the sun that touched it.
"Rough weekend, kid." His uncle's tone danced halfway between statement and question.
"Is that why you're both still here?"
"Naw, you're dad's rolling absent through tomorrow's infrastructure vote. Can't piss off the oil lobbies or the voters. You made it easy, though. It's not often you get an excuse delivered and packaged in such a neat little bow." Bardock turned to grin at him. "So… how'd it feel?"
"What?"
"Taking out that pansy-ass pretty boy? Heard you didn't even throw weight. Just popped him and dropped him."
Vegeta only shrugged in reply as he sat down on one of the iron, entirely impractical and uncomfortable patio chairs and adjusted Tarble in his lap.
"Can I ask why you did it?"
"Same reason as always. He was asking for it."
"Nuh-uh!" piped Tarble. "Raddy said it was 'cause of that girl."
Goddammit. Vegeta flushed with self-consciousness at his brother's comment that instantly piqued his uncle's interest. Bardock straightened his posture, smiling crookedly as he asked, "What girl?"
"Geta kissed Bulma."
"No!" His uncle practically danced the few steps across the balcony to scrape out a heavy chair and sit across from them at the table. He bypassed Vegeta's dismayed expression to ask Tarble with the point of his cigar, "You're telling me this one not only fought over a girl but won and kissed her?"
The baffled skepticism his uncle portrayed at Tarble's affirmative nod was more frustrating than the fact that they were having this discussion at all. Everyone, apparently, thought he was some deranged, asexual recluse, incapable of drawing interest from the opposite sex, much less returning it.
"Briefs, huh?" Bardock mused, puffing his cigar as he sat back to digest the news. "Well, it makes sense. I don't know how far back kids' minds go. Hell, I barely remember high school. But let me tell you, when you were elementary, maybe early middle school, you two were inseparable. She'd drag you around always holding hands. That girl had a leash on you. Panchy Briefs was planning your damn wedding."
He did remember, though his perspective back then wasn't quite so cutely, amorously painted. Even now, despite his newfound infatuation with the heiress, he was reluctant to make it known. The moment it was exposed beyond his own wary head, it would snowball toward ruin, whether by his family or hers or their peers. Everyone was chomping at the bit to make a big deal out of something that he didn't hold a solid enough grapple to understand himself.
"Can we not make a thing of this? With my dad or Aunt Gine?" When Bardock's brows twisted quizzically, as if he really believed that those two would be supportive—maybe Aunt Gine would be, but not from genuine interest—Vegeta added, "You know what they're like. They'll get too involved and ruin it. My dad already thinks I'm distracted."
"Are you?" His uncle's question was sharply pointed, like he bought into his father's rhetoric. "I'm a little surprised that you haven't started your college applications. You've always been on top of this shit. What's the hold-up? Crank a few out, and he'll back off."
While that might prove true, and a part of Vegeta seriously considered going through the motions to buy time, he could never bring himself to sit down and fake his way through the personal essays and long tests and recommendations those applications required. Bardock was perhaps the only adult to whom he could explain the gist of his post-high school plans, or at least an abridged version still heavily couched in lies.
"I'm uh… You can't tell my dad… But I don't plan to go to college, not right away at least. I'm going to take some time off after graduation and figure some things out."
Bardock choked on his cigar, or Vegeta's statement rather, and began coughing wildly, banging his palm on the table as if it could help. "Kami, kid! You need to get your ears cleaned, 'cause if you heard that same speech I just did, you know that's not an option. This family doesn't take breaks. There's no way you're not going to uni. Shit, there's no way you're not going to his! Why the hell wouldn't you want to?"
Though his uncle's reaction wasn't what he'd hoped for, it was what he'd expected. Vegeta dropped his face in Tarble's hair, without a defensible answer that he was willing to share.
"Listen, kid… Your pops is a sonofabitch, and–" The sound of the patio door snapping shut below halted his uncle's words, and he swiveled his seat around to peer between the banisters.
"Tell my sons to come downstairs. It's time to go." Vegeta's heart sank as his father's voice carried from the lawn in a cold, measured clip.
"You got it, boss." Bardock looked back at Vegeta sorrowfully and waved the tip of his cigar at the door. "Good luck, junior. I hope you'll reconsider. Until then, your secret's safe with me."
A nod of gratitude was all Vegeta could manage, feeling his chest and throat squeeze as he prepared to return home to meet a fate that was routinely certain. After he put Tarble to bed, he'd be called downstairs to talk, then scolded, berated, and goaded into a snide comment or insolent look. Even an eyeroll provided the catalytic justification his father sought to make himself sleep better at night, as if Vegeta had earned it.
His brother had gone quiet as they retraced their steps to meet his father and aunt in the foyer.
Gine clasped Tarble's arm, shaking him gently. "Can you say goodbye, little one?"
Tarble moaned into Vegeta's shoulder as he shook his head no.
"So moody! Did you have too much fun this weekend?" No sooner had Gine asked the question when she interrupted herself, turning to his father to ask, "What's the plan for next weekend? We haven't gotten an invitation."
"For what?"
"The boy's birthday. Surely, there's a party."
He shrugged with disinterest as he shimmied the heel of his foot into his shoe. "Ask his nanny. I'm not on the party planning committee."
Gine turned to Vegeta expectantly, as if some grand affair with clowns and pony rides and inflatable bouncy castles were reserved for the occasion. They weren't, and not because the kid didn't deserve a blowout, but because for the past two years, his brother was strangely melancholy on his birthday, like he was feeding off both his and their father's mood. The duel significance the date held for Vegeta and their father was something the kid could never understand in quite the same way, but he certainly felt it. As much as Vegeta tried to suppress the myriad emotions Tarble's birthday always conjured, the subtext was there and impossible to push aside with smiles and party streamers and chocolate cake.
The last one which Gine graciously offered to host, Tarble cried through its entirety. The cheery attention that was suddenly served to him was overwhelming, and on top of it, conflicted by their mother's ghost, as if Tarble worried he wasn't a worthy trade and that both of them, if they'd had the choice, would have wanted her instead. From Vegeta's perspective, as much as he mourned his mother, he wouldn't degrade himself to even speculate on some unwinnable Sophie's Choice. It was painfully stupid to even consider, and both Tarble, existing here and now, and his mother's memory deserved a hell of a lot more respect than a cheap game of 'Would You Rather'.
Vegeta met Gine's question with the truth. "Actually, the Briefs invited us back up to their lake home next weekend. Tarble wants to do that. He's hoping Kakarot can come."
"The Briefs? Two weekends in a row?" his father questioned.
Gine looked at him narrowly too. "I'll think about it. That family is abhorrently unreliable, and I refuse to leave my children unsupervised. Fool me once."
"Why the hell do they want to host his birthday party?"
"Not a party, just hanging out at the lake."
"Ah, I see... and this would have nothing to do with their daughter?" the old man's refined palate for bullshit called him out.
Gine's mouth rounded in a silent 'ooh' to match the surprise in her wide eyes before it morphed into an evocative smile. "Oh my gods, Vegeta! The Briefs' girl? Really? She's very cute now from what I hear. Thank gods that grease monkey phase is over."
It felt as if his knees would melt out from under him the way his aunt was grinning, half in shock with her hands clasped at her sternum like she wanted to clap.
"A girlfriend will do you some good, soften you up a bit. And that one's smart, well-bred, perhaps a bit wild like her parents, but nothing you can't temper. She's a good match. Don't you think it's a good match?" she asked her brother.
"Mmm," his father hummed and nodded in a way that read no, and over his dead body would he let Vegeta date the heiress or anyone ever. The reaction went over Gine's head as she grew more animated by the prospect of Vegeta being a normal teen with a normal libido and not some morbid recluse who got his rocks off instead by beating the shit out of everyone.
"Well, I think it's great, practically predestined! We saw it coming since you two were in training pants. Honestly, I'm more surprised that it didn't happen sooner."
"It's not a big deal. We're just friends."
"Uh-huh," Gine wagged her eyebrows. "You're not as clever as you think, dear nephew." She tipped her head to the noise of her sons whose laughter could be heard all the way from the kitchen, which from the sounds of it said they were both immersed in some fail video compilation on YouTube. Her insinuation was right though, the second she pressured either of them, they'd cave. Hiding his newfound romance with the heiress wasn't a part of the agreed-upon compromise, and neither of his cousins, even if he'd demanded it of them, would understand the reasons why he wanted to hide it, especially Raditz who acted like Vegeta won the lottery.
The consensus on his aunt's side of the family was certainly swayed in the direction Vegeta hoped for, but his father was his own beast, and he'd balk them all on principle. That Gine or anyone lent approval to the heiress was enough to ensure his father wouldn't. He was petty.
He held the door open with his back looking rather peevish as his sister prattled on about the heiress in chirrupy tones. An exaggerated sigh signaled that he'd had enough, and Gine placed a wet kiss on Vegeta's cheek, ruffled Tarble's hair, and shooed them outside before the senator ruptured an aneurysm.
"Were you planning to ask my permission to take my son for a weekend getaway with a teenage girl?" questioned his father.
It wasn't the train of thought Vegeta expected he'd use to start an argument. He didn't answer as he settled Tarble in the passenger seat, not until he closed the door to face the man. Fighting his voice into a calm, plausible confusion, he asked, "Last weekend you demanded I take him. Now I need permission?"
"Of course you need my fucking permission! You're a child!" The statement, like everything the man did and said, was inverted in his perfect hypocritical fashion. He couldn't help himself. And it didn't matter whether Vegeta gave in to his instigations or not, he was always left staring at the ghoulish negative. At this point, he was going to lose either way.
"Today I'm a child. And when I was eleven and left in charge of him, what was I then?"
"Don't get smart with me," his father warned, pointlessly threatening an outcome that was already carved in stone. Why bother pretending it wasn't?
"What do you care if we're here or not? You didn't even remember it was his birthday!"
Suddenly, his father lunged at him. Grabbing a fistful of his t-shirt, he slammed him backward against the car, his public restraint slipping precariously out-of-bounds as he shouted, "Didn't remember? How the fuck could I forget!"
His eyes were wild, all whites and wide pupils; he looked pained by the accusation. Vegeta meant it as a point of fact, not to intentionally hurt him. Though he'd be lying if it didn't feel good to know there was a conscience hidden somewhere inside the bastard, and he hadn't forgotten the woman completely.
When a light flicked on upstairs inside the house, attracted by his father's commotion, he reigned himself in, brushing the front of Vegeta's shirt back into place. "We'll discuss this at home. I will not have you making a scene for your aunt and her neighbors."
Him make a scene? Vegeta ground his teeth in an effort to remain silent, but with every click of the man's shoes against the pavement striding toward his car, he felt the threads of his composure snapping apart.
"Afraid to show them all where my talent for that vile sport really came from?"
The words left his mouth in a rush, and he regretted them instantly. When his father pivoted back, slow and calm, he was smiling—the kind of smile that said Vegeta was out of his league, just an uppity amateur, foolish enough to go all-in when his would always be the winning hand.
"Vegeta, if I really wanted to hurt you, I wouldn't need to lay a finger on you to do it," he said with a subtle flick of his gaze to the passenger door behind him.
The old man was right. In one simple, almost invisible gesture, he ripped open the very fabric of the universe, exposing a great black hole. Even as Vegeta stood rooted to the solid ground watching his father's car back down the drive, it felt as if the entire cosmos was collapsing around him, sucked toward an event horizon that would, at any moment, blip away his existence. He couldn't breathe. As he scrambled around to the driver's side door, his limbs felt weighted by gravity, and his vision spun about his head with his thoughts in a dizzying smear. There was no mistaking his father's threat. Should Vegeta dare to step out of bounds, he could and would ensure that he never saw his brother again.
He was beginning to feel lightheaded and forced his lungs to inflate through a sharp, shaky breath before he attempted to drive home.
Fear and frustration couldn't begin to describe how he felt, and listening to his brother shift in his seat beside him was only making it worse. The noise of his distress, he swallowed, felt it cut against his throat on the way back down, but his tears burned and broke down his cheeks in a thin current. At least it was dark. As soon as they stopped at an intersection, he wiped them away with a dull hope that Tarble hadn't noticed.
Of course, he did. His brother was hunched down in the passenger seat, watching him warily.
"It's okay, Geta," he said, his tiny voice attempting a show of comfort. But it wasn't okay. It was unfair and fucked-up. He was supposed to be the protector, not the other way around. Instead, he was chickenshit, afraid to stand-up, afraid to run, afraid to do anything but return home with his head down and take his punishment.
Vegeta stared defocused at an oncoming car that whizzed past them, then the red glow of its taillights receding down the dark, county road. As he watched them disappear completely, his helplessness suddenly shifted into anger. His jaw clenched. His grip around the wheel tightened, and in a sudden burst of impulse, he twisted it recklessly and jumped on the gas, peeling out into the northbound lane.
The engine rumbled as he shifted gears, and the needle on the speedometer climbed steadily, ten, twenty, thirty miles over the limit. He had no fucking idea where he was going except away. Adrenaline coursed through his body, lighting his blood on fire and setting his ears to ring. He didn't notice Tarble shouting his name at a frightful pitch until they'd caught up to the car ahead of them, forcing him to slow to a reasonable pace.
"Where are we going? Geta please turn around! You're gonna get in trouble!"
"What else is new, T? I'm already in fucking trouble."
"You're gonna get in more trouble. Where are we going?" his brother repeated.
He hadn't thought that far ahead. He hadn't thought at all and wasn't about to either, or he might just do as Tarble asked and turn around. But to do that would only solidify their futures within their miserable family. There wasn't going to be a second lapse in cowardice. This was it. If he didn't leave now, he never would.
"Put on some music, will you?" He tossed Tarble his phone from the cupholder.
They hadn't been on the road for more than twenty minutes before the device began to buzz in his brother's lap with texts, temporarily muting the music and mood of their escape with the hard reality that their father was at home fuming over their whereabouts. Once texting turned into phone calls, Vegeta pulled the car into a gas station and shut off the cellular network. He filled the tank with gas using his father's credit card and pulled three-hundred dollars from the ATM, the maximum the machine would allow, before he tossed the cards in the trash.
They continued north, despite that the Briefs was an obvious destination, one that his father would easily guess. But they weren't exactly flush with options. It wasn't like a seventeen-year-old could book a hotel for the night, and certainly not for long with that kind of cash on hand until he traded in his car. Besides, he made Bulma a promise. Irrational and short-sighted as it was, he meant to keep it, if only to say goodbye.
It was well past midnight by the time he pulled down the dirt drive. Tarble was asleep with his head against the door, and Vegeta opened it carefully before he lifted him from the car and carried him around to the front porch. The lights were off, but the glow of the television illuminated the room enough to see that she was awake watching some fashion reality program with her hand stuffed inside a bag of pretzels.
When Vegeta found the sliding door was locked, he rapped his knuckles against the glass, a move that jumped the heiress from her skin with a scream and sent a spray of pretzels into the air. As they rained down across the coffee table, Bulma seemed to grasp her senses. Her fright morphed into a giddy sort of puzzlement, and she bounded across the room with round eyes and a smile so bright, Vegeta felt his self-consciousness flare-up in a flush.
Hasty as she was to open the door, she said nothing and stared at him blinking. For the first time in the history of Bulma Briefs, the heiress was rendered speechless.
Vegeta's mind spun through a Rolodex of possible explanations for his late-night visit, but failing to come up with even one that would suffice to cover the actual circumstances, he blurted dumbly, "You said tomorrow. It is… technical–"
Before the words had completely left him, she'd thrown her arms around him, around them both, holding on with a force, like she meant to wring every doubt and despairing thought from his body and replace them with warmth. It was the kind of hug that could. It radiated with heat, like the sun had come up in the middle of the night and embraced him in its rays. And as he wrapped his arm at her back, hugging her close, he wished that the Earth would stop on its axis and let him stay in this place for longer than a moment.
Author Note: Thanks so much for reading! I have a few other fics floating around out there. One that's DBZ canon divergen-ish is on here called GUNSHIP, and on AO3 I have a very long in-progress emo band AU that is very emo called Cut From The Team, and a long one-shot called DIVE that's more of a dark comedy. Anywhoo! xoxoxo