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"Wait!"

The fist should have broken his jaw. Instead, Goku’s hand closed around it like a clamp, stopping the punch in mid-flight.

For Vegeta, the impact was wrong.

The grip was hard, calloused, stronger than granite. But behind it there was no battle-lust, no sharpened killing intent—just hesitation. Domestic hesitation.

"I have to go, Vegeta," Goku panted, not from exhaustion but from conflict. His other hand drifted almost automatically to the back of his neck, fingers scratching through sweat-spiked hair. "It's past dinnertime."

For a second Vegeta just stared. Dust hung between them, lit by the last orange streaks of evening. Their auras were still crackling around half-spent bodies. They’d finally reached that rare point where ki dropped and only sheer will and flesh decided the winner.

And this idiot wanted to clock out.

"What!?" The word tore out of Vegeta’s throat, jagged. "We are not finished."

Goku winced, shoulders hunching like a boy caught breaking curfew. "If I'm late, Chi-Chi gets mad. She says hunting is barbaric now, that we should buy food like normal people so we don't look poor."

He said it like a fact of nature. Gravity. Oxygen. Chi-Chi.

Vegeta lowered his arm. The disappointment dropped into his gut like a gravity increase. It wasn’t just annoyance; it was nausea. To see a predator apologizing for its teeth. A dragon worrying about grocery bills.

"She is more of an idiot than you are," he muttered. The insult had no heat; his mind was already pulling back from the scene, like stepping away from a painting that had been beautiful until someone scribbled over it.

He glanced toward the horizon. The sun was sliding toward the edge of the world, turning the sky that deep red that always made him think of a planet exploding—or a planet that never got the chance.

Goku’s stomach roared.

It wasn’t a polite growl. It was a deep, resonant complaint that sent a small flock of birds scattering from the nearby trees.

"Heh..." Goku rubbed his belly, cheeks flushing. "I really am hungry, though."

Vegeta looked at him properly this time. Beneath the gi, beneath the obedient flinch at his wife’s name, the Hunger was there. Not for rice. For weight. For flesh that fought back. For the hot iron taste of something that had tried to live.

The hunger was the only honest thing about him at this moment.

An idea sparked behind Vegeta’s eyes. Not a kindness. A challenge.

"Fine," Vegeta said. His voice dropped, picking up the cadence of a throne room that didn’t exist anymore. "Forget your store-bought swill. Forget your harpy’s rules."

He took a step forward. His ki flared just enough to raise the hairs on Goku’s arms.

"I’ll teach you to feed yourself. Saiyan style."

Goku blinked, the slow light of comprehension dawning behind the blue of his eyes. "…You mean, like, hunting? With you?"

Vegeta sneered. "No, with your mother. Yes, with me, you clown."

Goku’s answering grin could have rivaled the setting sun. "Okay!"

They didn’t fly like heroes leaving a city to save the world. They flew like two shadows abandoning their cage.

Vegeta led. It was his right. He didn’t take the straight shot any commuter would have used. He banked hard, cutting across winds, angling for turbulence. Below them, West City’s neat grid shrank quickly—lights, roads, Capsule Corp domes all flattening into a glowing scar.

Good, Vegeta thought as the noise fell away. Let it disappear.

He pushed higher, bursting through a skin of flat grey cloud. The air above was thin and sharp, tasting of ice and ozone instead of smog and fabric softener. His lungs expanded properly for what felt like the first time in months. He wasn’t flying away from a family. He was flying toward his own centre of gravity.

Behind him, Goku followed.

He didn’t name his sensations the way Vegeta faisait, but he felt them. With every kilometre the weight on his shoulders eased. The human heartbeats faded into a low background hum and then into nothing. The air thinned and cooled; the wind bit his bare arms instead of caressing them.

Old instincts unfurled. His nose picked up storm fronts far to the north. His skin read micro-changes of pressure. The Sun that had been trapped over a living-room table remembered what it meant to have horizon on all sides.

They flew in silence. It wasn’t awkward. It was a language older than words, spoken in micro-adjustments of speed and angle. Every time Vegeta accelerated, half-hoping to shake him, Goku matched him—not challenging, just... staying.

Below them the world changed colour. Farmland gave way to dense, dark pines. Mountains thrust out of the earth like broken teeth, tearing at the underside of the clouds.

"There," Vegeta signalled, not with a word but with a sharp drop in ki.

They descended toward a high plateau carved out of the range, ringed with sheer cliffs that plunged into mist on all sides. It was like the world had peeled back a lid and left this piece of land exposed and alone.

When their boots hit rock, the quiet was overwhelming. No cars. No hum of lines. Just the wind threading through stone.

Vegeta stood still and inhaled deeply. Pine. Cold rock. The faint, metallic trace of old blood and older storms.

It smelled… right.

"So, Vegeta?" Goku’s voice sounded small here, swallowed by the huge sky. His eyes shone as he looked around. "Do we start now?"

Vegeta looked at him, at the bright orange gi glowing against the harsh grey and green. The Turtle symbol on his chest, the baggy fabric, looked ridiculous here, like someone had dropped a carnival tent into a war memorial.

He curled his lip.

"Strip."

The word dropped like a stone.

Goku blinked. "Huh?"

"Take. It. Off." Vegeta had already started on his armor clasps, movements clipped, efficient. "Clothes are a crutch. They muffle your senses, trap your scent, make noise. Hunters don’t carry their laundry on their backs."

He flung his gloves aside. They hit the ground with a dull thud.

"On Vegeta-sei," he went on, not entirely sure whether he was quoting tradition or rewriting it on the spot, "the elite hunted as they were born. If you needed a shield, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place."

The boots went next. Then the bodysuit, peeled away in one slick motion down his torso and hips.

The plateau air hit him like a slap—cold, thin, merciless. Every hair on his body rose. The chill wasn’t an attack; it was information. He could feel exactly where the wind came from, where the river was, which side of him would dry first if he stood long enough.

He stepped forward naked, solid on the bare rock, and looked at Goku.

The other Saiyan was still clutching his gi, eyes flicking between Vegeta’s exposed body and the empty mountains around them. His cheeks were red, but not with modesty; it was something closer to confusion, like someone had just told him gravity was optional.

"What’s wrong, Kakarot?" Vegeta asked, allowing a slow, cruel smile. "Afraid if you take off the cloth you’ll lose the leash that goes with it?"

Goku’s hand tightened on the fabric. He looked at Vegeta again—not at the nudity, but at the stance. Vegeta wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t covering himself. He stood as if the rock belonged to him and always had.

Something in Goku’s chest flipped.

"Okay," he said softly.

He tugged the blue shirt over his head. The gi followed, spun and flung on a scrub bush. His boots thunked as he kicked them off toward a boulder. In the thin mountain light, without his colours and symbols, he looked less like “Son Goku, Earth’s hero,” and more like exactly what he was: a heavily scarred, absurdly powerful animal wrapped in skin.

They faced each other a long second, both bare, the wind picking at their hair.

Without the cloth, the differences and similarities were stark. Vegeta was compact, carved, dangerous—every line of muscle tight and economical, old scars tracing pale lines across tan skin. Goku was taller, broader through the chest and shoulders, long lines of strength roped over bones built to jump, punch, lift. No extra fat. No softness.

He looks like a sword, Goku thought dimly as his eyes tracked the planes of Vegeta’s torso. Like something meant to cut, not to be sheathed.

Vegeta took in the sight of Goku in turn. The idiot looked… correct this way. The bulk made sense. The scars made sense. The absence of orange and blue made his presence less insult, more fact.

He flexed his fingers, feeling the air move between them. For the first time since the Cell Games, since Majin Buu, he felt like he wasn’t play-acting at being a warrior.

"Now," he said quietly, a phantom itch burning at the base of his spine where a tail should have swayed. "Now, we hunt."

They moved.

Not with the sonic-boom speed they used when they didn’t care who heard them, but with something older and lower to the ground. Vegeta dropped into a crouch, center of gravity close to the soil, and began to lope along the ridge. He didn’t even consider flying. Flight was for leaving. Hunting started with feet on the world.

Goku followed. Bare soles slapped rock, then sank slightly into older, softer dirt. The sensation was electric. Boots and flight had insulated him for decades; he’d forgotten how loud the world was under his feet.

Cold stone under the ball of his foot. Dry grass dragging against his calves. The faint vibration of hooves or claws somewhere far below. His brain didn’t put words on it, but his body understood.

He kept his eyes on Vegeta’s back. The Prince no longer looked like an explosion waiting to happen; he moved like shadow poured into a body. No wasted motion. No show. Every step was placed where it would break nothing, disturb nothing.

Goku had always known Vegeta the blaster, Vegeta the screamer, Vegeta the ego. He had never seen Vegeta the invisible.

They ran along the edge of the forest, the smell of pine thickening around them. The sun sank lower, bruising the sky purple and red.

Something in Goku loosened. The background noise of “Gohan’s homework,” “Chi-Chi’s lists,” “save the world again” faded. There was nothing to do here. Nothing to perform for. Just breath, muscle, and the awareness of the body next to him.

Vergeta stopped.

He didn’t speak. He simply lifted one hand, palm open, fingers spread. Stop.

Goku froze, balance perfect, ki pulled tight to his skin. Vegeta tilted his head, nostrils flaring, tasting the air. The breeze had shifted. It was carrying something heavier than pine and rock.

Flesh. Heat. Herd.

He pointed two fingers toward his own ear, then down into the valley.

Goku shut his eyes and listened properly. Out went the wind. Out went the creak of branches. Underneath, something else: a dull, rhythmic vibration. Ground, then weight. Ground, then weight. The wet grind of huge jaws.

His eyes opened again. He nodded once.

A faint smirk tugged one corner of Vegeta’s mouth. Approval. He flattened himself to the ground and crawled to the lip of the ridge. The rock was still warm against his chest.

Goku slid up beside him.

Below them, a bowl of land opened—grass, scattered trees, and something between them that moved.

The herd grazed in the long shadow of the cliffs. Massive bodies, plated hides, tails like battering rams. Smaller shapes darted among them: smaller predators, opportunists waiting for mistakes.

Vegeta’s gaze roamed over them, not hunting weakness, but the opposite. He was looking for arrogance. For the one that walked just a little apart, that didn’t look up as often, that shoved the others instead of watching them.

There. A darker hulk, scarred, hide matte red. It shouldered another aside with lazy brutality, jaws working on some unidentifiable chunk of meat or wood.

Vegeta’s lips peeled back slightly from his teeth. Tyrant.

He flicked a glance at Goku. The other Saiyan’s pupils had blown wide. He wasn’t afraid. He was fascinated.

Vegeta tapped two fingers against Goku’s wrist. No ki.

Goku nodded, expression sharpening. Just body, then. Just bone and muscle and leverage.

They parted without a word.

Vegeta went left, slipping into the scrub and boulders along the slope. Goku went right, not as quiet, but still far quieter than he had any right to be at that size.

Down below, the Tyrant paused mid-chew. Its head lifted, nostrils flaring. Something was wrong. Something that didn’t belong was in its valley.

It roared, a sound so deep it rattled the loose stones under Vegeta’s elbows. The herd jumped, nerves remembering a million years of predators.

Good, Vegeta thought, muscles tightening. Announce yourself.

He broke cover.

He ran. Not at full speed—fast enough to close, slow enough to let the thing see him. A pale, naked figure sprinting toward several tons of arrogant meat.

The Tyrant saw. It swung its head, amused at first, then irritated. A tail thick as a tree trunk whipped around, aiming to swat the insect aiming at its kingdom.

Vegeta met it.

He jumped, twisting, and caught the tail in both hands.

The impact dug his feet into the hard earth, furrows ploughing out behind his heels. His shoulders screamed. The shockwave rippled the grass around him. For a split second the dinosaur’s brain refused the data: something small had stopped it.

Goku was already moving.

He dropped from a high rock, landing square on the beast’s snout. The skin was hot and pebbled under his feet.

"Hey there!" he yelled, grinning down into a red-rimmed eye. "You look hungry. Me too."

The Tyrant shrieked, shaking its head violently to fling him off. Goku rode the motion, feet planted, laughing breathlessly.

"Come on!" he whooped. "Try harder!"

Vegeta felt something rusty inside him crack and fall away. He laughed, a short, wild bark, and heaved.

He twisted at the hips, using all the torque his small frame could generate. The monster’s tail swung with him, its own weight working against it now. Hind legs scrambled for purchase on rock suddenly no longer where it expected it to be.

The Tyrant staggered. Goku jumped clear just as the snout slammed into the dirt with bone-shaking force.

Vegeta didn’t let go.

He hauled again, dragging the massive body sideways, momentum now fully his. The beast crashed into the rock wall with a crunch that sent shards flying.

"Your turn, Kakarot!" Vegeta shouted, breathless, exultant.

Goku didn’t need to be told twice. He darted in, shoulder driving into exposed ribs. The impact rippled through the beast’s body; air and blood burst from its mouth.

It clawed blindly, huge talons cutting the air where Goku had been a heartbeat before. Its roars shifted pitch—from fury to something closer to panic.

They fell into a rhythm. When it snapped at Goku, Vegeta kicked a leg out from under it. When the tail swung at Vegeta, Goku grabbed and yanked. Two points of pressure, always from an angle the king of the valley had never needed to consider.

This, Goku realized dimly between dodges and bursts of adrenaline, was nothing like tournament fighting. This was not about showing off techniques. There was no floor, no ring-out, no referee. If he misjudged once, his throat would be between those teeth.

He liked it.

Vegeta moved with a sharp, stripped-down joy he hadn’t felt in years. No ki signatures to read, no beams to dodge. Just mass and angle, breath and timing. He hadn’t felt this close to who he’d been before Frieza in… he couldn’t even measure.

He leapt, grabbing the bony ridges along the beast’s spine. He felt the frantic heartbeat hammering under his hands, the slick heat of blood rushing to muscles no longer sure they could win.

For a split second, an image flashed in his head: his own smaller body pinned, Frieza’s casual grip, the helplessness. And then something twisted.

I am not the giant, Vegeta thought, teeth baring in something that wasn’t quite a smile. I am the one who drags giants down.

"Bring it down, Kakarot!" he snarled.

Goku planted his feet, drew in a breath, and moved.

The final impact was ugly. Bone cracked; the Tyrant’s neck snapped with a sound like snapping wood magnified a hundred times. Its massive body shuddered once and then sagged, weight surrendering fully to gravity.

Silence rushed back in. The herd had long vanished in a cloud of dust. Smaller predators watched from the tree line, eyes lit like coals.

Vegeta stood on the carcass, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat and streaked with dust. Goku looked up at him from the ground, hair wild, eyes wide and dark.

They stared at each other across the cooling bulk, two survivors of a dead world standing on the corpse of a king that had never known a predator until now.

Vegeta bent without a word. He didn’t ask for a knife. He didn’t need one. Fingers and ki-hardened nails were enough to tear through hide and muscle. The sound was horrible and satisfying in equal measure. Steam billowed into the evening air as he opened the chest cavity and reached in.

His forearm vanished into heat. A moment later he pulled it back, fist clenched around something huge and still twitching.

The heart was the size of a human head, purple and glossy, veins still spasming.

Vegeta looked at it for a long second. Then he looked at Goku.

"On Vegeta-sei," he said, voice rough, low, "the King eats first."

Goku swallowed. The smell was overpowering—iron, heat, life winding down.

Vegeta’s eyes narrowed. "But a king who eats alone dies alone."

He extended the heart.

Goku stepped closer, drawn as much by Vegeta’s scent—sweat, blood, ki—as by the organ itself. His human upbringing told him to recoil. His body told him to bite.

He obeyed his body.

The flesh was hot and dense between his teeth, the taste washing his tongue with salt and metal. Then the rush hit—a raw, electric jolt that went straight down his spine. His knees almost dipped.

He forced himself to look up, mouth stained red, and met Vegeta’s gaze.

Something silent passed between them. A recognition of the same void, the same hunger.

Vegeta took the heart back, sinking his own teeth into it with a ferocity that made Goku’s breath hitch. Blood tracked from Vegeta’s lips down his chin, over his throat, into the hollow of his collarbone.

A drop fell.

Goku watched it fall like a meteor.

They did not drag the whole carcass back. They took what they wanted—a haunch heavy enough to feed two Saiyans and announce their presence to every scavenger in the valley—and left the rest. Nothing would be wasted; the smaller predators and carrion-eaters would feast.

By the time they reached the hill Vegeta had chosen as camp, the sky had gone from purple to deep indigo. The shelter—a low semi-circle of thick branches leaned against a boulder—was a dark shape against the stars.

The pit they’d dug earlier waited, lined neatly with stones Goku had “cheated” into place by hauling a single huge boulder and smashing it into the soil. The stacked wood above it smelled of sap and resin.

Vegeta skewered the slab of meat on a stripped green branch and laid it across the pit.

He didn’t fumble for matches. He stood for a moment, fingers curled, ki compressed to a point. A tiny spark danced from the tip of his index finger to the tinder.

Fire caught.

It wasn’t a planet-busting blast. It was ridiculous how small it was, compared to what he could do. But there was something satisfying in compressing his power to this scale—as if he were, for once, building instead of destroying.

Goku watched him, arms around his knees, eyes reflecting the first tongues of flame. Heat washed across his bare chest, banishing the last of the river chill. It didn’t feel like the sterile warmth of a heating unit. It felt alive. Predatory. Hungry, like them.

They sat on either side of the pit as the meat began to hiss and drip.

The smell thickened as fat hit coals—smoke and scorched blood and something sweet lurking underneath. It hit their noses and their empty stomachs at the same time.

"No sauce," Vegeta said abruptly.

Goku blinked, dragged out of his reverie. "Didn’t bring any."

"Good." Vegeta tore his eyes away from the meat to look at him. "You want sugar and spices, go home. This is food. Not dessert."

Goku smiled faintly. "You sound like Chi-Chi yelling about my sweet tooth."

Vegeta snorted. "Your wife wouldn’t last ten minutes out here."

He meant physically. There was a second layer he didn’t explore.

The meat finally blackened at the edges.

Vegeta pulled his portion free, fingers unconcerned with the heat. He bit in. The outer crust cracked; hot juices flooded his mouth. It burned the roof of his mouth. He didn’t care. Pain was seasoning.

Goku followed. The first bite almost made his eyes close. It was nothing like restaurant food. Dense. Wild. The flavour sat heavy in his chest as well as his stomach. He could almost feel the energy in it, waiting to be broken down and folded into muscle and ki.

They ate without talking. The only sound was chewing and the occasional crackle from the fire. It wasn’t an awkward silence; it was full. Their ki had dropped, but something else humming between them had not.

Goku licked his fingers, chasing the last streaks of grease and char. His thoughts slipped back to the kill, to Vegeta drenched in blood, biting into the heart, eyes lit by sunset and something fiercer.

He glanced across the flames.

Vegeta’s hands were still stained—blood caught in the creases around his fingers, darker lines at the base of his nails. In the flickering light it didn’t look dirty. It looked like war paint.

Goku’s chest tightened.

Without really deciding to, he reached across the fire.

His fingers closed around Vegeta’s wrist.

The Prince stiffened instantly, eyes flashing up, ready to burn him for the presumption. Goku didn’t flinch. He tugged the hand closer, into the band of firelight between them.

"You—" Goku started, then the words dissolved. The smell, the sight, overrode them.

He bent his head.

His tongue touched the ridge of Vegeta’s knuckles.

The salt. The iron. The faint, bitter ash of roasted fat. Underneath it, something else—sharp, almost electric. Vegeta.

Vegeta sucked in a breath, a harsh, shocked sound that seemed to scrape his lungs on the way out. He should have yanked his hand back. He didn’t. The warmth of Goku’s mouth, the coarse rasp of his tongue over veins and scar tissue, was a jolt that hit far lower than his arm.

Goku dragged his tongue slowly along the back of the hand, up to the wrist, eyes half-closed as if following the taste. He was not cleaning. He was tasting, cataloguing, learning.

"You taste like the fight," he murmured, the words coming out rough.

For a moment the air around the fire felt denser, as if the ki that had fallen dormant during the meal had shifted into something else entirely.

Vegeta jerked his hand back then, cradling it against his chest as if burned. The skin tingled maddeningly.

"We reek," he said, forcing his voice back into something like its usual dryness. "Of blood. Smoke. Sweat."

He rose abruptly, scattering a little dirt over the coals. "Come. If the wind shifts we’ll stink up the whole valley."

He turned his back and headed toward the sound of the stream.

Goku sat a second longer, staring at the empty space where Vegeta’s hand had been. His own tongue ran unconsciously over his teeth, tasting phantom iron.

Then he stood and followed.

The hill fell away toward a broader, deeper part of the river. Here the water widened into a dark strip under the starlight, frothing white where it came down from a steeper run above.

Vegeta walked straight in. The cold hit him like a blow, stealing his breath and punching straight through the haze the food had left behind. He welcomed it. Clarity. Punishment.

He sank down until the water closed over his shoulders, scrubbed brusquely at his skin, then ducked completely under.

The roar of the current filled his ears. For a moment the world shrank to pressure, motion, the burn in his lungs. It was almost peaceful.

When he broke the surface again, hair plastered back, he saw Goku standing on the bank, watching.

The younger Saiyan stepped in more slowly, hissing as the icy water climbed his shins, his thighs. He didn’t splash. He walked out until it reached his chest and stopped a couple of arm’s lengths away.

"The blood is gone," Goku said quietly. "But I can still smell… this."

His nose twitched slightly. Vegeta knew exactly what he meant. Not dinosaur. Not smoke.

Them.

He backed up until his shoulder blades met slick stone. Behind him, a shallow hollow opened under the overhang of the bank, moss-lined and half-hidden by a drape of vines. In the dimness it looked like a throat.

"Wash properly before you start philosophizing, Kakarot," he snapped, hearing the slight rasp in his own voice. "I’m not listening to anything you say if you stink."

Goku didn’t move away. The current curled around them, tugging at their legs, pulling at the tension.

"Vegeta," he said, right over the water’s noise. "Why did you bring me here?"

Vegeta’s mouth twisted. "Because watching you jump when your wife rings her little bell offends me."

"That’s not all," Goku persisted, brow furrowing. "You could have just yelled at me. You do that a lot."

Vegeta clicked ses dents, but his eyes slid away. Behind him the moss was cold and soft against his spine. He hated the softness.

"Get in closer," he said abruptly. "Or the current’ll carry your soft brain downstream."

Goku obeyed this time. He waded the last steps and reached out, fingers closing around Vegeta’s shoulder to steady himself as the bottom dipped unexpectedly.

The contact was brief. It branded.

The heat where Goku’s hand had been lingered far longer than the grip itself. Vegeta’s ki stuttered.

The bank rose behind him sooner than he expected. His calves brushed moss, then his heels. He realized belatedly he’d walked himself into the shallow grotto, the stone curving above and around, cutting off a slice of sky.

A small mistake. A small trap. Of his own making.

He felt more than saw Goku follow, water sheeting off his skin. The entrance narrowed behind them; vines fell back into place. The sound of the river became muffled. The air inside the hollow was cooler, and somehow heavier.

"Vegeta."

His name, spoken without any honorific, without “Prince” or “Kakarot’s rival,” sounded different here. Closer. It vibrated in his chest.

He set his jaw.

"You wanted a hunting lesson," he said. "You got one."

"That’s not all I got," Goku replied, stepping forward until only a hand’s breadth separated them. Droplets from his hair slid onto Vegeta’s chest, leaving cold tracks on hot skin. "Out there I felt… like I was supposed to."

Vegeta scoffed automatically. "You felt like an idiot flailing at a lizard while I did the work."

Goku’s hand came up again, almost cautious this time, and settled on Vegeta’s hip. His thumb barely pressed into the bone.

"You felt it too," he said. "You kept looking at me, not just at it. Like… like it was supposed to be us. Like this."

The word hung there. This.

Vegeta’s fingers twitched.

"You talk too much," he muttered.

Goku leaned in, tilting his head to nuzzle along the damp line of Vegeta’s neck. His nose skimmed skin, inhaling deeply.

Salt. River. Smoke. Underneath, the particular sharpness of Vegeta’s ki signature, now flushed closer to the surface than ever.

"You smell like the fight," Goku murmured, echoing his earlier words without quite realising. "Like everything that felt right today."

Vegeta shuddered, the reaction ripped out of him before he could strangle it.

"Get off," he snapped.

His hands came up to push him away. They hooked into the muscle instead, holding.

Goku exhaled a warm breath against his skin.

"No."

The refusal wasn’t defiance. It was simple, heavy fact—as if they were talking about gravity again.

The air in the grotto grew heavy, charged with static and the thin, acrid smoke of rising Ki.

Heat.

It was building in Vegeta’s core, a fire stoked not by friction, but by surrender. It wasn't just nerve endings firing; it was the Prince being engaged, friction-burned, and transmuted into something else. Belonging.

Goku’s hand slid between their sweating bodies. He found Vegeta’s erection—a traitorous column of blood pulsating against his will. He gripped it, matching the rhythm of his hips with the stroke of his hand.

Vegeta bucked, his head thrashing. He hated it. He hated how complete the invasion was. Every line of defense—skin, muscle, pride—was falling at once. It was a total siege.

"Look at me," Goku commanded. His voice was a rumble in ses chest, felt more than heard.

Vegeta opened his eyes. His vision swam. He looked up.

Goku loomed over him, framed by the dark rock and the trailing vines. His eyes glowed green, burning with an inner light that had nothing to do with mercy. He didn't look like a husband. He didn't look like a rival. He looked like a force born in the dark before names were invented.

He is not Earth, Vegeta thought, the realization fracturing his mind. He never was. He is the same monster as me.

"Vegeta..." Goku breathed, his thumb rubbing over the weeping tip of Vegeta’s cock. "You feel it too. The heat."

The Ki flared. The moss beneath them began to smoke. The water in the nearby pool rippled, disturbed by the shockwaves of their coupling.

The tempo shifted. It was no longer a struggle for dominance; it was a race toward annihilation.

Vegeta felt his consciousness fragmenting. He couldn't remember why he hated Kakarot. He couldn't remember why he needed to be the Prince.

Burn it, Vegeta thought, his head thrashing against the moss. Burn it all away. The Earth. The failure. The domesticity. Leave only this.

Goku was panting, a sound like a great engine straining. His sweat dripped onto Vegeta’s chest, mixing with the earlier blood, creating a new, sacred mud.

He felt the change before he saw it.

Deep in his marrow, something vibrated. A frequency he hadn't felt since childhood. It started in his chest, a low, subsonic hum that synchronized with Vegeta’s pulse. His skin remembered a light that wasn't there.

The Moon? Goku’s mind stuttered. No. Just him.

The energy in the grotto compressed. The air grew thin.

"Vegeta..." Goku groaned, his voice distorted by the pressure. "It’s... waking up."

Vegeta didn't answer. He couldn't. His back arched off the ground, his body pulled taut like a bowstring.

A searing heat shot up his spine. It wasn't the friction of sex. It was internal. It began at the base of his back—a phantom limb screaming to be reborn. The agony was exquisite, like a dormant nerve the size of a planet suddenly firing.

He dug his fingers into Goku’s shoulders, his nails drawing blood.

"Don't stop!" Vegeta shrieked, the command tearing his throat. "Don't you dare stop!"

He needed the pressure. He needed the violence of Kakarot’s body to anchor him while the Oozaru tried to tear its way out of a skin too small to hold it.

Goku roared in response. He drove into Vegeta with a finality that threatened to crack the planet’s crust.

The Ki reached critical mass.

From the base of Vegeta’s spine, and an instant later from Goku’s, the lost appendages burst free.

Of course. Blood, hunt, meat, Ki, him—how could the beast have stayed dead?

"KAKAROT!"

Vegeta’s scream was torn from the bottom of his lungs. It was a sound of agony and absolute, terrifying wholeness. The sensation of the tail uncoiling was a limb filling with blood and nerve. It whipped out, thrashing against Goku’s back, seeking purchase.

Goku felt it. He felt the fur brush his skin, a tactile shock that sent his own system into overdrive. His own tail erupted a second later, a violent, joyous release.

The orgasm slammed into them with the force of a planetary impact.

It wasn't just a release; it was an unmaking. Vegeta felt his titles dissolve. The shame, the pride, the Earth—it all vaporized. There was only the sensation of being anchored, held, and penetrated by the only force in the universe capable of withstanding him.

Goku shouted—a wordless roar of bliss. He buried himself deep, pouring his life into the void of Vegeta’s need.

The energy flared one last time, bright enough to illuminate the veins in the rock walls, before collapsing inward.

Vegeta’s vision went white, then black. He felt himself falling, drifting away from the grotto, away from the pain, floating in a dark, warm ocean where he was no longer the last of his kind.

Goku collapsed over him, his weight heavy and comforting.

Vegeta lay beneath him, trembling, undone. His mind was blanked by the white noise of pure sensation.

Silence returned to the grotto. Slow, heavy, and absolute.

It wasn't the silence of emptiness. It was the silence of a temple after the god has spoken.

Silence came back in stages.
First the roaring in his ears faded. Then the harsh, ragged drag of their breathing softened, losing its edge. The drip of water from the ceiling reasserted itself, patient and regular.

Vegeta floated in the aftershock, pinned under Goku’s weight, muscles trembling with fine, uncontrollable tremors. The moss under his back was damp and flattened, hot in some places where his ki had scorched it during the worst of the storm.

He became aware, with slow, creeping clarity, of something heavy and warm wrapped around his waist.

Not an arm.

A tail.

Fur brushed his hip as it tightened slightly of its own accord, completing a circle around them both. Goku’s.

A second weight twitched against his calf. Vegeta didn’t have to look to know what it was. The phantom ache that had lived at the base of his spine for decades was gone. In its place: pressure, weight, the pull of a new limb.

He tried to move it. The response was clumsy and perfect—a lash, a curl, the fur bristling and lying flat again.

It was real.

A sound escaped him, half laugh, half shudder. He clamped his teeth on the rest.

Goku stirred above him. His breath warmed Vegeta’s shoulder. One big hand groped drowsily down his own back… and froze when it encountered fur.

He lifted his head.

"Vegeta," he whispered, voice hoarse and wrecked and astonished. "We…"

"I know," Vegeta rasped.

Goku reached blindly sideways, fingers fumbling for Vegeta’s tail. He found it, sank his hand into the thick fur, stroked along the length once. The sensation detonated along Vegeta’s spine, leaving him blinking spots out of his vision.

"It came back," Goku said, reverent. "Yours. Mine. Because of…"

"Because of us, you idiot," Vegeta cut in, though there was no bite to it. His own tail betrayed him, slipping up along Goku’s flank, tracing the line of his spine, wrapping around his middle under the ribs in a possessive loop.

The gesture bypassed every layer of royal training and human etiquette. Pack, it said plainly. Mine.

Goku’s eyes slid shut. He rested his forehead against Vegeta’s, the contact simple and devastating.

"I don’t want to go back," he confessed, voice so low Vegeta almost didn’t catch it. "Not to… that."

The domestic cage. The grocery lists. The pretending.

Vegeta lay there a moment, staring past him at the low ceiling of rock. The ache in his hips, the bruises, the raw stretch of newly awakened nerves all sang the same song: we are alive.

"We have to," he said finally. The words tasted like broken glass. His hand came up anyway, closing on the back of Goku’s neck, holding him there as if denying his own sentence. "But not yet."

Goku’s answering noise was half rumble, half sigh. He relaxed the last of his weight down over Vegeta, tails still tangled, ki banked at a low, steady burn.

They slept.

Not the light, twitchy half-sleep of fighters grabbing an hour between alarms. Not the numbed, dull sleep of domestic beds. The deep, animal drop of bodies that have hunted, eaten, and mated.

Morning arrived slowly.

Light leaked through the vines in thin green-gold shafts, painting dappled patterns over rock and moss and bare skin. The air in the grotto had warmed slightly, holding the ghost of their breath.

Vegeta came back to himself piece by piece.

First there was weight—solid, heavy, warm along his side and chest. Then there was sound: a slow, deep breathing, completely unguarded. Then there was the constant, steady thump of a heart not his own, close enough to vibrate against his ribs.

He opened his eyes.

The ceiling of the little cave was familiar now: hairline cracks, patches of moss, one small trickle of water still working patiently on the stone. An odd sense of déjà vu coiled inside him, like he’d been here before in another life.

He tried to move his leg. Something resisted.

He looked down.

Goku was sprawled half across him, head tucked under Vegeta’s chin, one arm pillowed under his ribs. More importantly: a thick, furred tail was wrapped firmly around Vegeta’s thigh, holding it in place.

His own tail had looped over Goku’s lower back in return, the tip resting against the bulge of muscle just above the hip. It twitched as he noticed it, as if embarrassed at being caught.

It took effort to keep his face composed.

"You’re awake," Goku mumbled against his skin.

"Hn," Vegeta answered, because his throat was too dry for anything more articulate.

Goku shifted, levering himself up on an elbow. His hair was worse than usual, defying gravity in all directions. Sleep-heavy eyes blinked at Vegeta, then drifted down to the tails.

A slow, wide grin spread over his face. Not the clueless sunbeam grin. Something sharper. Older.

"They’re still there," he said, almost laughing. He lifted his own tail, letting it coil and uncoil in the air with a delighted flick. "Thought maybe… I dreamed it."

"Tch. As if your imagination could manage something that complicated," Vegeta snorted. But his snarl had no teeth.

He rolled onto his side, wincing as abused muscles complained. The ache in his lower back and hips was bright and clear, a physical record of the night that warmed something deep in his chest even as he scowled.

"We have to go back," he said, staring at the small opening screened with vines.

Goku’s grin faded a notch. His tail drooped, then flicked back up in stubborn refusal. "Yeah. Chi-Chi will…"

Yell. Cry. Slam pans. Demand explanations he couldn’t give without tearing leur monde open.

Vegeta thought of Bulma. Of the way her eyes went sharp and bright whenever Saiyan biology did something unexpected. Of the children. Of the fact that for the first time since his childhood, he would not walk into the house feeling amputated.

"Bulma will have questions," he said. "I’ll answer them."

He pushed himself upright and reached for his pants. The fabric felt wrong against skin that had finally remembered what wind and water felt like. He had to slice a quick vertical slit in the back to thread his tail through; the sound of tearing cloth snapped oddly loud in the little space.

Goku watched him, then fumbled for his own gi. It took him three tries to work out where to send the tail—tucked for discretion or free to swish. It chose for him, lashing once and popping out, refusing to be hidden.

"This feels weird," he said, twisting to look at it. "Like I’ve got a secret I can’t sit on."

"You do," Vegeta said flatly.

They stepped out of the grotto into full daylight.

The plateau looked almost ordinary again. The skeleton of the Tyrant lay not far from their camp, already stripped of most flesh, bones gleaming pale in the sun. The air was bright and cold and clean.

Vegeta paused by the ribs and rested a hand against one bleach-white curve.

We ate the king, he thought, and felt his tail flick lazily behind him. We didn’t become him. We remembered we never needed him.

"You ready?" Goku asked quietly.

"No," Vegeta answered honestly. He straightened, rolling his shoulders as his tail adjusted his balance automatically. "But we’re going."

They took off together, slicing back through the sky. The wild green dropped away. The mountains receded. Fields replaced forests. Roads and houses crept in. The noise at the edge of their senses grew: engines, voices, televisions, satellites.

By the time Capsule Corp’s gleaming domes appeared below them, both had smoothed leurs expressions into plus familiar shapes. The tails, however, refused to play along—swishing, curling, betraying their owners’ tension.

They landed in the back garden.

The grass here was too soft, too even. The pool glinted chemically blue. The air smelled faintly of chlorine and engine oil.

The back door slid open.

Bulma stepped out with a mug of coffee, sunglasses perched in her messy blue hair. She opened her mouth to say something flippant, then froze.

Her gaze dropped.

Vegeta’s tail flicked once and then stilled, a thick brown line of muscle and fur swaying idly behind him.

The coffee sloshed dangerously near the rim.

"…Vegeta?" she managed. "Is that…?"

"It is," he said. He didn’t cross his arms to hide it. He let it sway deliberately, coiling once around his own thigh before releasing.

Goku touched down a heartbeat later, scratching his head with his usual embarrassed laugh. His own tail popped free of his pants with a cheerful little lash.

"Hey, Bulma!" he said. "We’re back. Uh… did we miss breakfast?"

Bulma looked from one to the other. Tails. Bruises. Half-healed bites. The way they stood—not quite shoulder to shoulder, but aligned in a way they hadn’t been before. Something in her expression shifted from shock to something wry and oddly fond.

"You two are impossible," she sighed. She took a long sip of coffee, the picture of a woman filing away a mystery she fully intended to dissect later. "Go shower. You smell like a slaughterhouse."

She turned back inside, leaving the door open.

Vegeta exhaled slowly.

He glanced sideways at Goku. For a moment, over the manicured grass and the normal morning, the memory of moss under his back and the weight over him flared too sharp to be hidden.

"Shower," he said brusquely. "My bathroom. Don’t argue."

Goku’s grin, this time, had a flash of teeth that had nothing to do with naivety.

"Okay, Vegeta."

They walked toward the house, boots leaving faint damp marks on the perfect lawn, two shadows stretching long in the domestic light. Two warriors. Two tails. One secret coiled between them like a third presence.

The hunt was over. The hunger wasn’t.