Welcome to DBZ Love Garden

“What happened to your face?!” Bulma asked, eyes wide as she looked over her son from the future. His bottom lip was enflamed and cracked with dried blood; though it was obvious he tried to clean it once already.

“Gohan was so happy to see me that he kissed me,” Trunks replied in a deadpan tone, flopping face down on the couch. Bulma sat by his legs, crossing hers, and took out her cigarettes.

“Must have been one hell of a kiss…” she muttered as she lit one up and took a long, satisfying drag. With a sigh, she watched Trunks’s inner turmoil come out in the form of a disgruntled groan.

“I saw stars,” was the growled response. “Thanks for telling me about Videl, by the way.”

Bulma cringed visibly as blue eyes identical to her own cut at her. “Met her, did you? She’s really a nice girl… Called me old once, though. But are you really surprised he has a girlfriend, son? Gohan’s a handsome boy. He’s smart and sweet – girls have been chasing him since his first day of school. Videl just happens to be one of the nice ones.”

“That’s the problem. She’s nice. She fights crime, Gohan’s family likes her, she’s clever, and she obviously cares about Gohan and trusts him…” He groaned again, turning over onto his back so he could glare at the ceiling. “I wouldn’t feel as bad about this if she were a bitch, but she’s not. She’s going to get hurt. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Gohan was the only one who was supposed to get hurt, but it would have been okay because I’d be able to correct it… But I won’t be able to correct it for Videl. I’ll be taking away someone she loves and never giving him back.”

“Well I guess you’re going home then? If you leave now, it’ll be almost like you were never here. The Band-Aid hasn’t been ripped off completely for him – …”

“No way!” the hybrid interrupted, sitting up abruptly. A little smile crept across his mother’s face. She hid it by taking another puff of her cigarette. “Hurting her or not, I’m not leaving! I came here for a reason and I’m not stopping until I get what I came for!”

Bulma never expected her son to show up again – no one did. 7 years ago, she mourned the loss of him after he left for his world. He recovered from his encounter with Bojack, said goodbye, then up and left, never to return. But, there he was this morning, sitting in the kitchen with her mother as she stuffed him with tea and morning cakes.

Of course, she was thrilled to see him, and even more thrilled to introduce him to his younger self. But, after everything settled down, after Trunks left for school, after Vegeta left to train, and after her father left to work in the labs, Trunks told her why he returned.

Grinning, she agreed to give her help however and whenever he needed it. She filled him in on everything that had happened to them since Bojack, where Gohan went to school, when his school day was over, and how they could probably get the boy to spend time with Trunks.

“He’ll probably hate me as soon as he sees me,” Trunks admitted, ashamed.

“Well, you did break his heart. He may be Goku’s kid, but he’s definitely got some Chichi in there, too. You’re going to have to work hard at this to earn his trust back. He still loves you, Trunks, I know it. But he’s spent almost a decade with Chichi alone, and you know how she is… That kind of brainwashing would get to anyone, eventually.”

The next day, Trunks prepared himself for his tutoring. Having not had a lesson for years, he wasn’t really sure what to expect from someone who has had a formal education. His mentor, Gohan, had only ever been homeschooled up until age 10, but his new tutor has spent the last year in real, structured classrooms.

As it neared 4 PM, he ran a hand through his hair and touched his lip. It didn’t look quite as bad as the day before – it wasn’t red or swollen anymore, but there was a still prominent, yet healing, wound and a bruise surrounding it.

4:30 PM and his younger self came home from elementary school. He asked to play together, but Trunks refused, saying he was waiting for Gohan to show up for tutoring.

5 PM and Bulma asked him where Gohan was. He had no idea. Class let out for the teen 2 hours ago, so by this point it was obvious he was being intentionally late. Chichi called his mother earlier in the day to accept the offer on her son’s behalf and got the details for Trunks’s tutoring, so Gohan knew what to do. He should have gone to Capsule Corporation right after school.

“Want me to call Chichi?” Bulma offered, waving her cell phone.

“Don’t,” Trunks stopped her. “If Chichi knows he’s this late, then he’ll only get in trouble, and that’ll just make things worse.” He sat back in his seat, staring down at his empty notebook and pencils with nervous desperation. “He’ll come…” He repeated it in his head, he’ll come. He’ll come.

He’ll come…

“Gohan?” Videl poked her boyfriend curiously and propped herself up on her elbow. The boy in question opened one eye, and glanced at her, not otherwise moving from his comfy position on her soft, fluffy mattress. After class, it was Gohan’s insistence that they hang out together that made them end up in her bedroom with the door locked.

“It’s 6 now. Shouldn’t you go to Capsule Corp. and tutor Trunks?” she wondered. As her boyfriend sighed, she glanced at the darkening sky through the white, French doors that led out to her own, personal balcony. “He’s probably wondering where you are.”

“I’d rather stay here with you,” he replied as he rolled over and leaned over her, trapping her beneath him. She giggled as he leaned down and kissed her cheek and neck. Still, she pushed at his shoulders and gave him a playful smile.

“Your mom will get mad if you skip out on this,” she reasoned as her boyfriend kissed down her bare shoulder until his lips reached the soft fabric of her bra. The two of them had been fooling around earlier, thanks to Gohan’s strange eagerness to advance their relationship, though they still hadn’t gone all the way. The time wasn’t right, Videl insisted.

“She can yell at me all she likes.” An impatient hand trailed down her soft body, landing on the cute patterns that covered her panties. Just as his fingers slipped underneath to touch the curly, dark hairs beneath, a small hand grabbed his and pulled it away.

“Gohan,” Videl said firmly, running her free hand through her boyfriend’s thick hair. He sighed against her shoulder. He knew that tone. It meant playtime was over. “You need to tutor him. He came all this way just to get your help – besides, he’s your friend, right?” She eyed him curiously as he lifted off of her, humming a vague response.

Handing him his glasses, she noticed his sudden distance. Was it because she rejected his advances, or was it because she told him to go and tutor Trunks? Maybe it was a combination of both?

After they dressed, she took his arm, stopping him from exiting through the French doors.

“Did something happen between you two?” she asked, noting his behavior with a practiced eye. Suddenly tensed muscles, subtle intake of breath, quirk of his brow… Anyone else could probably be fooled, but Videl was an expert at reading people. Something happened between those two.

“No,” he lied.

He met her eyes with firm devotion to his lie, his heart picking up speed as she stood straight and analyzed him with a leveled gaze.

Then, she smiled and released his arm.

“I’ll find out eventually, Gohan,” she promised. He released a breath and turned toward the doors, opening them so a cool winter breeze could blow inside. After he left, she let her smile drop. Gohan has spilled his life to her – every secret he had. Every facet of his being was an enigma, from his godlike strength, speed, and abilities that seemed like magic, to his inhuman DNA, which was alike to only two other beings in the entire universe.

Except now, he was alike one more; someone from a different universe.

Gohan has told her all of that, but he hid this person from the future?

What happened?

Cold, she shut the doors and drew the curtains.

She’d find out, for sure.

Trunks jumped when the doorbell buzzed, nearly throwing his notebook out of his hands. It was 6:30 and the sun was long gone, so he’d almost given up hope. It took all of his self-control not to sprint to the door, but he was still unable to take the giddy, nervous edge out of his step. As he passed his younger self, the boy rolled his eyes and took a swing from his water bottle.

“Oh come on, it’s just Gohan. You’re not scared of him, are you?” he jabbed before going back to his handheld game. The boy earned a sharp glare, but he ignored it. He received glares from his mom and dad all the time – one more couldn’t be any more effective. Right now he was more concerned with beating Goten on their fighting game – that and arguing with the other little boy through his headset.

The time traveler’s face started to heat up when he opened the front door, despite the snowy air that floated in. Gohan stood there in a soft, yellow sweater and black slacks, his hair and clothes sprinkled with snowflakes. His pale cheeks and nose were flushed red from the flight over.

A little smile crept across the older hybrid’s face. It wasn’t the clothes or the redness or the snowflakes that made him smile – it was the simple, black frames that sat perfectly in front of the boy’s dark eyes.

Gohan didn’t see the grin, as he breezed by Trunks wordlessly, toting his backpack filled with books on one shoulder. As he entered the warm house, his glasses began to fog, so he took them off and started cleaning the lenses with the edge of his sweater. Noticing the older hybrid’s silence, he quickly glanced up at him and felt his face flush darker. Trunks was beaming at him like a dog whose master just came home.

“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized without depth.

“It’s okay,” Trunks replied warmly, walking up to the boy, who immediately stepped further into the living room. The younger version of the annoying man waved at him distractedly from his spot on the couch. Surely Trunks wouldn’t try to say or do anything stupid as long as the kid was in sight, Gohan wondered.

When he turned back to the man in question, his heart nearly leapt out of his chest. Trunks was directly behind him, leaning in so their noses were nearly touching. Gohan was frozen, hands gripping his backpack’s shoulder strap so tightly his knuckles were turning white. Sky blue eyes were focused on his dark greys, staring with intensity.

Trunks suddenly leaned back, smirking.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses.” It was a simple statement, and it was said just as simply, as if they weren’t inches apart just moments ago.

Stammering, Gohan recovered slowly, “I’m-I’ve need-needed them since I was 8, but we couldn’t afford them until a few months after that intergalactic tournament. My vision sucks – I’m extremely nearsighted, so I can’t see very far away without them.”

“Really? You weren’t wearing them yesterday.”

“I wear contacts instead, for my Saiyaman costume. I used up my last pair and I can’t afford to buy any more for a while.”

“Can’t you just wear your Saiyaman costume with your frames?” Trunks wondered, noticing his younger self cringe noticeably at the mention of the uniform.

“No, because it needs sunglasses to hide my face. I can’t wear frames under sunglasses. Not that it matters anymore…” he muttered the last part, heading towards the kitchen so they could set up at the table.

“Why doesn’t it matter anymore?” the older hybrid asked, bringing his notebook and pencils along eagerly and watching Gohan pull books from his backpack.

“Because someone knocked my sunglasses off my face yesterday while he was rescuing me,” Gohan snapped, his face flushing again. “And I can’t afford to buy anymore!”

He expected Trunks to sigh in mock relief – a stab at his alternate ego, as the boy sitting in the living room would – but instead, the time traveler paused and watched the teen with a sincere frown.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized softly, brows drawn low with concern and worry on his handsome face. Gohan’s face turned even darker until he could feel his ears burning. “I didn’t know. I’ll replace them for you, I promise.”

“It’s-It’s not a big deal!” Gohan claimed, flinging his book open to hide the shakiness of his hands. “I can’t dress as Saiyaman again until I order new contacts, anyway, so it doesn’t matter!”

Trunks frowned again, not believing him. Still, he took a seat next to the younger hybrid and watched as he fumbled through a math textbook.

If Gohan’s vision started to decay even as a child, did that mean the Gohan he grew up with also couldn’t see well? Exactly how far away was ‘too far’? Judging from the thickness of his lenses, the boy was practically blind. Trunks’s heart twisted at the newfound information, imagining how often his mentor must have wandered around in a blurry world.

Gohan’s heart was racing as he mindlessly thumbed through his textbook. Trunks was staring at him, and it was unnerving him. Has anyone ever told this guy he’s not supposed to stare? What the hell is he looking at, anyway?!

Taking a deep breath, Gohan focused on his subject, slowly slipping into a zone of comfort. Once he was ready, though still not making eye contact, he began, “I guess before I throw you into calculus, I should figure out where you stand in math. How advanced do you think you are?”

Trunks blinked before turning his eyes up in thought. He leaned back in his chair, going back through his mind. “Um… Well…” It was obvious he wasn’t sure. Gohan frowned and thumbed to an early chapter in his textbook.

“Have you ever studied calculus?”

“No,” Trunks laughed, crossing his arms loosely over his stomach. “Not even close.”

“How about trigonometry? Do you know what sine, cosine, and tangent mean? Do you know how to use pi in an equation?”

“Uh…”

“Alright. Do you know what a hypotenuse is? Or how to find the area of a circle?”

“Mm…”

“Geometry’s probably shaky then. How about solving for variables? Do you know functions?”

Trunks gave him a blank look, finally meeting Gohan’s eyes as the younger boy gave him a bewildered look.

“Okay… Does ‘order of operations’ ring a bell?” Another blank look. Gohan drew his lips into a thin line. “Did he teach you how to add?”

Trunks frowned back, sitting up in his chair again. “Of course he did. I know how to subtract, multiply, and divide, too! I just don’t know what that other stuff is!” Was Gohan getting frustrated?

A small sigh, “Okay. Your math is elementary at best. Before we go into physics or chemistry, you’re going to need to have a lot stronger foundation in mathematics. I think we’ll need to review the basics, too, so let’s start with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division…”

As the two of them worked, the youngest hybrid in the house watched with shameless curiosity from his place on the living room couch. He could barely hear them, even with one side of his headphones pushed away from his ear, but he heard them still. With a soft growl, he adjusted his headset so it sat properly on his head.

“Goten,” he said softly into the microphone, looking back down at the handheld game. His friend replied with a concentrated hum, connected to him through the game. “Goten, I think the me from the future – I think he’s an idiot.”

“He didn’t sound like an idiot when he was over last night,” Goten replied distractedly, obviously more absorbed in their game than the conversation. From the Son home, he rapidly tapped the controls, doing his best to take Trunks’s character down. “He was really interesting, and Daddy says he was a really good fighter.”

“But he’s in his 20’s and he barely knows how to divide!” Trunks growled back, glancing up at the two elder half-Saiyans studying in the kitchen. “He hasn’t even wanted to play with me since he got here! All he’s talked about is your brother! ‘Gohan this, Gohan that, no I can’t play, Trunks, I’m gonna wait for 3 hours and do nothing until Gohan comes over!’”

“I don’t know how to divide, either,” Goten giggled back through the headset. Trunks sighed and glared down at his game. “But isn’t that guy from an apocalypse? I guess all the schools were destroyed, so it’s not like he had teachers like we do or anything, you know?”

“Yeah. All he had was your brother from their world. Him and my mom. Or his mom. Whatever.”

“Guess that’s why he’s so excited to see Gohan again. If I didn’t see Gohan for a long time, I’d wanna spend as much time with him as possible when I saw him again, too!”

Trunks frowned, glancing up at the kitchen again. There was a concentrated look on the face of his older self as Gohan walked him through working some problem – probably one that would be entirely too simple for the 9-year-old, himself.

“But to study…?” Trunks glared at his older self hotly. Trunks just wants Gohan to teach him things, then he’s just going to go back to his world. Sure, the dork loved studying, and he especially loved studying sciences, but if this was all the time traveler wanted Gohan for… “What a jerk.”

A loud, high-pitched beeping rang through the boy’s ears, making him jump. Alarmed, he glanced back down to his handheld. With one last strike, Goten’s character finished him off – having the upperhand since Trunks was distracted. A loud cackling came from the youngest Son as a string of curse words came from the lavender-haired boy’s mouth.

“…Good job, good job…” Gohan mumbled, checking over Trunks’s long division. All except the last one were correct, and as he lay the sheet down on the table for Trunks to see, all while explaining the minor problem, their arms brushed. His voice hung in his throat, as he hadn’t realized how close they’d moved together over the last two hours.

Trunks didn’t flinch as he leaned in to erase the mistake he’d made, filling it in with the correction.

“Is that better?” he asked, sliding his eyes over to his tutor. The sudden tension in the younger boy wasn’t lost on him. He’d been steadily sliding closer so Gohan wouldn’t notice, but it looked like he was caught now. “Gohan?” he called when there was no answer.

Dark eyes trailed from the worksheet, up a toned, tanned arm, to his collarbone. Trunks waited eagerly as onyx smoothed from his chin to his lips to his nose, almost afraid…

They made eye contact. Trunks’s heart leapt to his throat at the deep, vulnerable expression on the boy’s face, even from behind the thick frames. Finally, a real moment of contact with the boy he left behind years ago – one untainted by anger or hate or feigned indifference. Trunks took a good look at that boy, memorizing every detail of his heart, so open and available. He saw pain.

It was fleeting, however, because a familiar voice piped up from the entrance to the kitchen. Just like that, the walls were back up.

“Oh, Gohan! Good to see you. I’m glad you could make it,” Bulma said with a wink, making the boy’s nerves fray at the ends as he began to comprehend where he was and who he was with. Trunks leveled a steady gaze on him, smiling gently.

“U-Um,” he stammered, “sorry for being late. I was caught up at school.”

“Of course. Listen, it’s getting kind of late, I think your mom might be worried about you. If you want to stay, that’s fine, but I think you should call your mom first – …”

“Um – no, it’s okay. I think we’re at a good stopping point.” He stood suddenly, shakily putting his books away. He’d been so at ease with the time traveler – how could he let his guard down without so much as a fight? He’s supposed to be angry at Trunks! “I should go home. Mom will be worried.”

Trunks stood as well, giving his tutor space to put himself back together as Bulma chatted with him about their study session. All he had were his pencils and notebook, so his cleanup was quick and simple.

Before Gohan could escape, Bulma pushed $40 into his palm. Gohan stared at the money in awe, as if he’d never seen it before.

“What is this?” he asked dumbly, looking back at the blue-haired woman. She laughed in response.

“Your pay, of course. You get paid $20 an hour, and you’ve been teaching Trunks for a good two. What, you didn’t know how much your pay was? Didn’t your mom tell you?”

“…Th-This is too much, here,” he insisted, pushing the money back at her, but she crossed her arms.

“Okay, I see why she didn’t tell you.”

“All I did was review basic operations, take it back.”

“You’ll accept it and you’ll like it.”

“I didn’t do enough to deserve this.”

“Oh my God Gohan just take the money! You’re distracting me!” the 9-year-old snapped from the couch. Gohan shot him a glare, but he was only met with the frustrated tapping of little fingers on a poor handheld device. “And hit your brother for me when you get home!”

Eventually, the silent time traveler was able to walk his tutor to the front door. Gripping his backpack nervously with both hands, Gohan couldn’t meet those sharp eyes again. They’d just tear him to shreds.

“Tomorrow we’re going over fractions…” he mumbled, pretending to fumble with the clip on his bag. “There’s a lot to do with them, so it might take a while. After that, we’ll start exponents and then order of operations.”

“Okay.” It was said with an easy smile. “Thank you for coming over.”

Gohan stood awkwardly, keeping his eyes lowered to at least Trunks’s chest, though trying his best to not really look at it. Finding it difficult, he instead slid his eyes to the side, opting to stare at the pottery. What would he do if Trunks tried to touch him again? Tried to grab him again, like last night? …Tried to hug him? Gohan was supposed to be angry at Trunks, but he found himself unsure if he could resist.

“See you tomorrow,” Trunks said then, still smiling, once he realized Gohan wasn’t going to reply. He walked away, leaving Gohan to see himself out. Gohan stared after him, eyes wide.

His heart sank to his stomach. Turning to the door slowly, he walked out into the frozen air.

As he flew home, the feeling wouldn’t shake off or go away, even as Gohan’s face went numb from the cold.

Walking through his living room, he greeted his mother without enthusiasm and vaguely answered her questions about his day. As he passed Goten, who was sprawled out comfortably on the couch with a headset on and a video game in his hands, he thumped the boy hard on his forehead.

“Ow! Gohan! What was that for?” he whined, listening to Trunks begin to laugh maniacally through the headset.

Locking his door, Gohan dropped his ice-covered backpack on the floor with a hard thump. Clothes hit the floor as he stripped while trudging toward his bed. By the time he flopped down onto the familiar mattress, he was down to his underwear, ready to sleep the rest of his life away.