Welcome to DBZ Love Garden

Author's Note : This is my first and perhaps only songfic, done in response to a challenge on The Vault. The song is "Deep" by Nine Inch Nails. It's from the Tomb Raider soundtrack, which means that only I and about 5 other people have ever heard it. Trust me to pick the obscure ones...

*******

blank stare
disrepair
there's a big black hole
gonna eat me up someday
someday
fades away
like a memory -
or a place that you'd rather be
some place
lost in space
an itch in my head
that's telling me somewhere
somewhere out there
anywhere I don't care
get me out of here

I'm cold. It's fucking cold on this miserable planet, all the time. Even their hot seasons are cold, since that single pathetic star is all they have. No double sun. No splendid humid heat taking your breath away in the middle of the night.

But who am I kidding? I haven't been home in years and years.

'Home' doesn't even exist anymore. The creature I served all those years killed it. Vegetasei. My inheritance. It's gone, and there is no home. I don't belong any place, not anymore. I merely exist. I am here on this planet now, and it's cold, and there's only one other of my kind left, and that's all there ever will be.

I wonder idly if I should kill myself. Surely there are others of my kind in Hell. Maybe I can find them again.

Or maybe I should turn that around and go back out into space to kill everything I find. There's no one and nothing to stop me, really. Everyone I knew who was stronger than me is gone. There's still icejins left lurking but the universe is large, and I'd have time to grow stronger before facing them. It's not a serious challenge, but it would take up my time.

Kakkarot is gone, wherever he went to, and I doubt he'll ever leave this planet again if he even makes it back.

Unlike me, the moronic bastard thinks he has a home to come back to.

I want to tell him it's all a lie. He's no less adrift than I am. We are saiyajin. We have no home. He doesn't get to claim otherwise while I'm alive.

Except that he's not here. He wouldn't return. I don't even know where he is. If they even know, no one is interested in telling me. I won't lower myself to ask.

I don't understand myself anymore. For a brief moment, a few weeks, a year and more, it was all so clear in front of me. Immortality. It was the end goal, the blinding light I pursued at the cost of everything that had ever mattered to me, even my life. Radditz and Nappa, my companions for my whole life, the only ones I had to validate the title I carried, the only ones to treat me as a prince... I had neither grief nor pity for their deaths. I killed the bodyguard who had been with me since the hour of my birth. I wasn't the same Vejiita once the possibility of eternal life loomed before me.

Who am I now?

I could kill every living being on this planet. It wouldn't take me more than a day, if I took my time. I could gather the dragonballs, or whatever the hell they're called, and wish myself immortal.

For what? I have nothing. I belong nowhere. Forever.

So I train. I go out into the wilderness and destroy it. I keep my discipline. I let the blue-haired onna feed me and flirt with me, and she doesn't notice the emptiness in my eyes. I let her go on because it doesn't matter.

I don't feel a fucking thing anymore.

Except cold.

Am I really waiting for him?

if I could feel
all the pins and the pricks
if you were real
I could take what's apart
and put it back together

He's my son.

I know it. His scent tells me everything. My son by the onna. His existence annoys me.

Furiza overstayed his welcome in the universe again. My son killed the monster that I thought Kakkarot had killed. Is my savior not my savior? Wherever shall I bestow all my gratitude?

I don't care that much either way, I find. I don't really want to delve into the mysteries of the boy's presence here, or how he can have ascended.

But if he can, I know I can. It's what I was bred for, after all. Pride of the saiyajin race. Hard to remember that now, but I will. I am my people's only memorial.

I wait, my eyes narrowed. I hear the onna joking with one of the ningens about the shirt I'm wearing. It's somehow funny to them, though I hardly know why. Who the fuck cares, anyway? Clothing, speech, belongings... these are the toys of the fat, safe creatures I've spent a lifetime exterminating. Elaborate niceties that mean nothing, and yet they cling to them so closely. Maybe these things makes the fear go away for awhile.

I could slaughter our little welcoming party before the boy could so much as blink. For the moment that's all the knowledge that I need to soothe my unease.

Kakkarot's coming home. His home. Here.

He's not very far away now.

It fucking well matters, I've realized.

I have this reflexive urge to hate him. I don't know what else to do with him. I have been trained to keep every weak emotion hidden and to express all the rest through violence. I don't even know what this feeling is inside me right now, much less how to classify it. It would be far fucking easier just to hate him. I'm meant to hate everybody. Everybody was below me once. Then they were just separate from me.

I'm good at hate. Even better at being alone.

I feel the earth shudder under my feet as his ship lands. The living god steps forth. The worshippers rush to meet him.

He's beaming and happy to be home, laughing and embracing them as they chatter. He looks up at me and I see his dark eyes glow with recognition before he turns back to them.

I want to tell him it's all a lie. I want to tell him it's all life and death and none of this foolish adulation and emotion is worth anything, but he's gone off with my son now, and I stand in the distance.

I want to tell him that... I think I was waiting for him all this time.

My senses shriek as they suddenly ascend.

Flare of power: the boy. Flare of power: Kakkarot.

Fucking gods, I'm so weak. I flee at the first opportunity, and despise myself.

It was years before I saw him again, for such a brief time, the span of a fight, and then he was dead.

I understood by now how the universe warped itself around him, and without ever admitting it to myself for a second, I waited for him again.

this will come true
help me get through
into you
deep...
all I can do
driving me through
into you
deep...

She moans and cries. She tells me I'm everything she wants, that I'm the best. I watch her orgasm overtake her, and then I finish weakly and roll her off me.

It's better this way. If I leave her unsatisfied, she won't shut up. This way, she turns over and falls asleep and leaves me to myself. She curls up to her pillow and sighs, happy. A foot reaches out and slides down my calf, as a thank you, or a reminder that she's there, but that's all. Like me, she's self-contained.

I don't wait for her to fall asleep before I get up to wash her scent off me. Blue eyes might be slicing into my back as I walk into the bathroom, but even if I knew, I wouldn't care.

I don't feel anything but the need to wash off the latest failed attempt.

I'm a male saiyajin in my early prime. Just breaching true adulthood, really. Of course I want to fuck everything all the time. I come inside her, but she has to do the riding, or else I'd kill her without thinking about it. It makes her feel powerful, maybe even dominant, to fuck that way. Maybe it just makes her feel like she has my full attention.

She doesn't.

It's never enough to make me forget that there's supposed to be more. More connection of the heart and mind, more passion. I've never experienced anything more, but I know it can be. I scrub under the cold water, washing her off me as if I could prove I hadn't been with her. As if my dull, creeping disappointment leaves a stain on me I can't quite lose.

It's not all pointless. I have an heir now. Surprising and unlikely, but true. He's young and fierce and like me, just like I would have been. In some other life. Other than his youth, there's no real reason I have to stay with his mother. I can take my boy and leave. The way has always been open for me. I've kept the 'gravity room' functional as a ship all these years. I could have left a long time ago. Before Kakkarot died. Before I died.

I should have.

The hero died a noble death, but it went wrong. No one appreciated him for staying away. In their eyes, he transmuted over the years into a failed father, a selfish man. I know his heart bled when he found that he had a small son. I know him. I could still smell the distress on him when I met him again after all those years.

I died a heroic death, but it was useless. I went down into the dirt for my woman and my child, and, supposedly as an afterthought, for the saiyajin lying unconscious somewhere miles away. Pointless. The freaky abomination lived, and so did I.

Dieing for her didn't make me love her. I shouldn't have put it to the test.

And fusion did nothing to make me stop thinking about him.

one track
got you on your back
your skin speaks up
but your lips couldn't say it

I can't seem to acclimate to this stupid planet. After all these years, every winter sits in my bones like the promise of death.

I watch Trunks chase Goten across the yard, both of them running on top of the thick snowfall without leaving a footprint. They aren't any more at the mercy of gravity than I am, so this is a game, this skimming across the delicate surface without breaking through. You have to admire the skill it takes, but it's moronic. They have such strength and power, and yet they play with it instead of honing it into fighting skills. Both are home from college for the winter holidays, and as inseparable now as ever.

Goten scoops up snow as he runs and turns to fling a snowball over his shoulder. I snort and start to turn away when I see it knock Trunks back several feet. Very clever. The brat masked a ball of ki inside his snowball, like a ningen child would a stone. I didn't even see him do it.

Maybe there is hope for them yet, I think, hearing their laughter as I turn to go inside. It will be warm in the gravity room, I thought, as if I needed an excuse to go there. I keep the heat up high enough to chase the cold from my flesh in a few moments.

If I'd made another choice, or if it hadn't been so cold...

He is sitting against the far wall, his arms and legs loose and awkward, as if he was suddenly a boy again. He looks up at me and smiles, and I realize with sick surprise that he's crying. Not in great, gaudy sobs, but in a constant stream of gentle tears rolling down his cheeks.

"What are you doing here, Kakkarot?" I ask gently. I want to be gruff and affronted that he would do this in my gravity room, the one place on this planet I belong and call mine. But I can't quite manage it, somehow.

Kakkarot should not be weeping. It isn't right. It's not how the universe believes him to be. I knew better, once, but even I had forgotten. I feel mortified, suddenly, for having forgotten he's just a saiyajin underneath the mantle the others make him wear.

"Chichi's dead," he says simply enough.

What do I say? I hated the bitch. She made strong saiyajin spawn and then terrorized them. I honestly think he's better off without her.

"I'm sorry," I say for some reason, walking over to crouch down awkwardly near him. What am I doing? Why did I say that? Ningen habits, infecting me?

"No, Vegeta, you're not. You never liked her," he says bluntly, meeting my eyes unflinchingly. He continues to weep, but it does nothing to dilute the power of that black gaze fixed on mine.

"You're right," I say, shrugging. "Why are you here?" After all, why come to me? Even if I knew how to offer comfort, would I give it to him?

He doesn't flinch when I ask that, even though I'd thought he would. He just stares down at his hands.

"She didn't want the boys to know, so I lied to them to keep them away. They should have been there, but I said she was fine, and they didn't come home for their vacations. I lied to them, and they'll never see her again. They don't even know," he said, looking up bleakly at me.

"And I lied to her," he said dully. "I told her I wouldn't know what to do without her, that I loved her, that I'd always loved her, that I needed her more than anything. I'm not sorry I did it. It made it easier for her," he said, rambling a little as his eyes searched my face. I was frozen, wondering what he wanted from me. Were we enemies still?

"I've been lying to her for so long, but she knew it. As long as I stayed there and dutifully made the effort to lie to her, it made up for not loving her, somehow. And now it's all done. I am so tired..." he sighed deeply, his head falling forward. Unfathomably dark eyes look up at me from under the fringe of his hair. He's silent for awhile, looking at me, and then he says only "You've never lied to me, Vejiita."

I suppose not, but why...?

Suddenly he crashes forward into me, knocking me backward. My instinct is to fight, to kick his body off me, but something's off here. Aggression is my forte, my medium, and it's missing here. I don't know what this is. We come to rest with him sprawled across the floor between my legs, his arms tight around my waist as I sit up, staring down at him. His face is buried in the space between his arm and my side, and he says nothing at all. He just lays there and holds on to me like a drowning man. I can feel his breath warming my skin through the cloth of my training suit.

I don't know what to do, or to say. No one, not even Trunks, has ever turned to me with such need for solace before. He holds on to me like I'm the only anchor he has in the world.

I want to throw him off. I don't know how to do this. I'm not meant for it.

But somehow my body knows what to do. My arms are around his shoulders now, and the fingers of one hand have slipped into his hair, running through silky strands to calm him. He begins to sob finally, and I watch with a kind of fascination as my other hand moves in circles across his back. I feel... numb, disconnected. Yet I move slowly, backing up a couple of inches until the wall supports me, supports us. Suddenly he's in my arms somehow , his head against my shoulder now as he cries, and I hold him, doing what I can to bring comfort to my enemy, my rival, the last of my kind.

We sit there for a long, long time like that, intimate in the space between grief and comfort, and neither of us says a word.

right now
I know somehow
we could take the chance
and we could make it
make it
right here
make it all disappear
everything that we've been missing
missing

A wedding day.

I know that Kakkarot disapproves, but Pan is his granddaughter, and he has a hard time denying her much of anything. Gohan certainly won't tell her no. She has him twisted entirely around her fingers. Her intended mate is a ningen, a scientist, who probably hasn't ever lifted a hand in anger in his entire life. I'm sure she has to be careful not to kill him when they fuck. Kakkarot loathes him.

I personally don't care enough to have an opinion on it. Trunks, being his usual thorough self, did a genetic scan on her chosen mate, and he's acceptable. He can get her pregnant, and the genetics are compatible. Another generation of almost full-blooded saiyajins will be on the way. Trunks says the degradation rate is so far undetectable; according to him, the demi-saiyajin model should hold true through the next thirty generations. I think his sample's too damned small, but I indulge him.

My hard-core son. Determined suddenly to see me rule a kingdom. With all his research, he finally stumbled over something that Kakkarot or I could have told him: the saiyajin lifespan is much longer than a ningen's. He'll outlive any female he takes.

He realized we could be gods here. It's made him rather... feral.

He killed Bura's first serious boyfriend almost three years ago. She had meant to marry him, and the ningen couldn't have even gotten her pregnant. Weak genetics. She was in love and didn't care.

I smelled the blood on Trunks when he came home. He was proud of himself, even asking for my blessing. I laughed, but like I said, I indulge him. My daughter will not be mated to anyone so inferior. Pride takes its toll from every generation of my family.

She trains now, building her powers. It began as a quest for revenge on her brother, but that's gone now, I think. She knew it was him, of course, and knew I wouldn't allow her to kill Trunks. Time might not heal all wounds, but we get used to the pain.

Bura's been a great help in planning this wedding that Kakkarot disapproves of.

I'm only nearby because it's being held outside my back door, down near the lake. Bulma wouldn't hear of it happening anywhere else. There's a flurry of feminine activity down there right now. I watch it from the balcony outside my bedroom. White banners, white tents, a white dreamland is being set up down on the shore, all as a prelude for a brief ritual which means... what? That Pan and her toy can legally fuck now? The only difference between today and tomorrow will be the rings they will wear. No ki changes, no scent changes, no pelt changes, and their minds won't touch as with a saiyajin mating.

I'd ask what the point is, but I know.

They do what they can against the loneliness of life.

I watch them scurry like ants as I lean on the rail of my private balcony. My thoughts shift from what has been to what could be, and I know I'm scowling at them all.

There's a tap-thump sound on the deckboards behind me, and I know he's there. It's been over a year since that day, and we have seen each other often since. We rarely speak, but we spar sometimes, and we attend to the rituals that concern our families. I stood next to him at Chichi's funeral. His sons held on to each other, but not to him, so I stood next to him, saying nothing, simply being a body at his back. Someone else should have been there. No one seemed to understand that he'd needed anyone to do it.

I think about him all the time now, and often he turns up to talk to me. He talks. I listen or look like I am. Sometimes I don't remember a word he says. He knows it as well as I do. It doesn't seem to make any difference.

I hear Bulma down at the lake, her voice rising into that familiar howling screech, making certain that everyone is driven crazy before the ritual. Everything must be perfect at a single moment; by dawn, the whole edifice will be torn down.

Pan and her mate will wake up in the morning exactly the same way they always do, except this time they'll tell each other everything is different.

Baka ningens.

I turn away, dismissing the endless meaninglessness of the lives the people around me choose to live.

Kakkarot is watching me patiently.

I take in the sight of him. He's slowly dropping the conventions of the life his wife pushed him into. A decade ago he would be dressed up and ready to play his part at the lake, despite his opinion of it. Today he doesn't seem to care. Instead of the absurd costumes the others are in, he's wearing a tight black t-shirt and jeans, with an old pair of boots. Unless he plans on a quick change, it's obvious he's not going to the wedding.

"Won't you be late?" I say by way of greeting, gesturing absently at the distant fluttering, and smirking.

"Don't care. I'm here to see you, anyway," he says, smiling. It's not that goofy thing he flashes indiscriminately at friends and enemies alike, but a smaller, genuine thing. I doubt many people have ever seen it.

"You know I'm not going," I say, my lips quirking. I don't know why it matters that he's come to me instead of his family, but it does.

"Me neither," he says, coming to stand not far away from me. He leans against the rail too, and tilts his head to look at me. His hair flutters in a sudden breeze that I know will cause havoc by the lake, but I can see a sort of happy gleam in them.

"Your oldest will be pissed off."

"I know. They hate it when I surprise them."

His laughter is genuine, but also wry. He has the look lately of a swimmer coming up from deep water, and even if I did hate him, I'd have to stay just to see what happens when he surfaces. He's always done what pleases him, really, but somehow his family started thinking of him as domesticated again since he came back to life. This happy spiteful defiance of expectation is another of the ripples on his surface.

"Hn."

We stand together in comfortable silence for a few moments. Long enough for me to wonder when, exactly, I started being more comfortable with him than with anybody else. I must be losing my mind.

"Anyway, you want to come with me? I think I found the perfect sparring grounds. You want to have a look at them?"

He's not dressed for fighting. He just wants to get out and get away from this nonsense, this pretense. Gods, so do I.

"Yeah. Let's go."

We leave their joyous day behind us without another thought.

you
make me feel
like there's a part of me
that I want to get back again

Did I know what was going to happen? Was it inevitable?

The sparring grounds aren't bad. It's a long way to go, about as far away as anything can be on a round planet. I wonder if that was most of its attraction for him. There are trees and rolling hills, and a vast lake nearby. To the north are hills almost entirely of barren rock. There are many environments here to test oneself against. But it's not overwhelmingly special. On a day with nothing to get away from, I doubt either of us would be here.

We land and he chatters, telling me why he thinks this is a good place for beating the shit out of each other. I barely listen to his words, but his voice is oddly soothing. There's a strange tension underlying it, but I realize at some point that I could listen to him all day. I wonder if any god would dare marking the miracle of me wanting to listen to Kakkarot by make the earth shake or the heavens part, as in stories. Since I've met many of them, and they didn't strike me as overwhelmingly stupid, I'm not surprised that nothing happens.

Nothing except that he turns to look at me just then and there's suddenly a tight, warm feeling across my face that can only be a blush. I scowl and look away, and Kakkarot laughs, and I wonder what he was talking about before he looked at me. I didn't hear a word of it.

He only falls silent as our feet crunch loudly over a carpet of dry grass before we cross under the shade of the trees. I feel restless now, wondering why I came here with him in the first place. There's such an odd tension between us now that we're on the ground again. My tail scar keeps prickling, reminding me that the tail I lost years ago would be trying to bush out by now. They used to say that you could tell everything about a saiyajin by watching his tail. That was true enough; I'd been schooled in controlling my tail since I could walk. Of course, marvelous as they were, a tail couldn't tell one kind of tension from another.

A few moments later and my tail would have been twice its size.

One, two, three, four long strides inside the woods, and I'm suddenly pressed up against one of the trees. Kakkarot's long body is holding me still so his mouth can plunder mine.

It is sudden. It is unexpected. But that's no excuse. There is no excuse for kissing him back. Like I need him or something.

I don't need him. How could I?

I push him back and look into eyes bright with excitement and confidence. How can he be confident of this, of me?

My body knows what it wants.

What do I want?

He pushes me up against the tree and bends down to kiss me again, one arm holding me against the trunk and one leg pressing between my thighs. I allow it. I allow all of it.

Why not?

I should hate him. I know I should. There's an old, tattered list in my mind of reasons why I hate him. But I like kissing him. His mouth is soft and warm, yet his body is hard and strong. Some part of my mind keeps wailing that this is Kakkarot, Kakkarot, but I don't care that much; it only adds to the excitement.

Of all the things I have forbidden myself over the years, of all the pleasures foregone in the name of power, he is the most forbidden. Breaking the ban excites me.

And yet, is that true? Is he the most forbidden thing, or this, this pleasurable, vulnerable companionship, this mutual confession of need?

I don't know.

But there is one fact: he's warm under my hands and in my mouth, the most truly warm thing on this accursed planet.

Warm.

I don't hesitate any longer. Not after so many years.

I push him back a little bit, enough to break the kiss. He wants more and leans forward to get it, but I'm licking his lips now, and his chin, and the soft, delicate skin under his jaw. He tilts his head back for me, easing my path as I lazily taste and explore him.

I've only touched him before in violence or in comforting his grief. There should have been an entire span of touch between those two poles, something to lead us here, to ease the way. The void between them should make this impossible.

Yet it's easy to touch him. I feel like I'm re-learning an old lover. And his hands on my shoulders, my arms, and brushing down the muscles of my back: they have no fear behind them, no tentativeness. He touches me like he's done it for years.

Maybe he has, if he dreams like I have.

I want him now, and he reclaims my mouth. He's being oddly dominating, and yet I don't mind. It's alright. It doesn't mean the things that it would mean on Vegetasei. There are only two of us left in the universe, maybe. I don't need to know anything that a fight for mating rights would tell us.

I pull and the shirt splits open over his chest and is gone. He smiles and looks at me with those wide eyes, then smirks, and my shirt is delicately removed by one set of deft fingers, while the other slides underneath, the warm palm worshipping my skin. He's teasing me, but it's gentle, as he is. He's learned different lessons from his strength than I have.

The cloth is gone and he slides his fingers down my sides before casually ripping the waistband of my pants open. I run my fingers through his hair as he bends to suck and bite at my nipples, bringing them to the point of pain before licking them in apology. He'll learn in time that pain and pleasure are all part of the palette that saiyajins enjoy. I want to teach him everything.

We kiss and we touch. Warm skin presses and is pressed, while slick tongues roam. I pull his pants away and slide my hands over the round flesh. He laughs and licks at my ear. No one has ever quite touched him this way, I can tell. That woman should have been worshipping his body every time she got a chance to lay her hands on him. Such a waste.

He's a little shy of my cock, and minutes pass before I feel myself taken tentatively in hand. He's a quick learner, though, and I realize my always-pathetic patience has run out. I pick him up and find a place, soft with years of fallen leaves. It's hardly the royal bedroom of a prince, but it will have to do. I'm not waiting long enough to fly back to the relative luxuries of Capsule Corp. I'm not waiting another minute.

There is a blur of flesh and we are there, on the forest floor, naked and together. I couldn't keep my hands off him if my life depended on it. He kisses me and twines his body around me, seeking to make us one. Hard flesh rubs against silken curves, and I could lie to him now. I could tell him I love him, and chain him to me forever.

But I won't.

Already, in our daring, we have crossed lines and brought together what was never meant to be joined. Commoner and prince. Hero and villain. Beloved friend and distant lover.

His gaze is full of such tender affection now that I cannot look away. I remember this closeness, from my father's steadfast love, from the hurried and clandestine couplings of my earlier life, from Radditz' trembling mouth on mine, and even from Bulma and Trunks, seeking my calm strength when the house was rocked by a storm one night.

I want it all back.

make this come true
help me get through
into you
deep...
all I can do
pushing it through
into you
deep...

He hisses, and I wait, the sweat rolling down my brow with the effort not to thrust again and harder into that lush body. He is such perfection, such a feast of the senses spread out for my pleasure. Strong, sinewy thighs are lifted as legs wrap my waist, spreading him wider for me. A sculpted belly and a chiseled chest are evidence of all the work he has put into perfecting his body. He is the media for the art of war; his flesh and his spirit are his weapons. Like a true warrior, he has tended them well.

I have driven inside his heat and I move slowly now, making him accept me. I could cause him such pain and humiliation now that our war would never end. I think about that for a moment, and then the soft touch of his lips against mine as I lean forward drives all such thoughts out. It's too late now to hate him, or imagine that our rivalry and hatred have been real since the day his grief brought him to me.

So I'm gentle and I wait, like a considerate lover would, until he's ready for me. Then I ram my cock into him, already addicted to wet heat, to the softness inside and the hard muscles guarding his gate. His chest has prickled with sweat and I lean down to taste it from him with long strokes of my tongue. He looks confused and delighted, utterly pleased, before his eyes dip shut and all I can see is the quivering fans of dusky lashes. He's beautiful like this, so open, so vulnerable, so trusting...

He can hardly believe the things I'm doing to his body. It's supposed to be dirty and wrong to do this, but the ningens are as stupid about this as everything else, and they've filled his head with foolishness. Pleasure. That's what I'm bringing him. Each ramming thrust of my cock is sending sparks of purest pleasure up his spine from a spot inside him that only I can reach. Only I have brought him this.

Sweat pours down my back as I make him howl, each punishing stroke making him writhe and plead with me for more. He's begging me, and I know I should be feeling some sort of victory, but I'm not. What matters now, while I'm fucking him, is that I'm the only source of the bliss he feels gathering for him like a storm. Right now he needs me for this, for this moment between us. Later on... I can't think about that.

Right now he's a dream in the flesh.

Beautiful. Scalding. It's bliss just to run my open hand up his thigh, and to lick at the soft warm place at the base of his throat. These are intimate places only a lover touches. I glide my fingers through the soft wetness at the tip of his cock and he makes the loveliest throaty sound of pleasure. I have to hear more of that. I have to have more of everything.

I move, changing the angle, still taking him hard. I'm breathless with the wet, hot feel of him. His hands are clawing my back, marking it with fire. His head falls back as I free a hand to stroke him roughly, and he moans my name. My name... He does need me. Needs someone to take him like this, not holding back, not being so frail that being on top is the only way to save my life.

He reaches up and gently lays his hand on top of mine, so that we are stroking him together. His hand is trembling.

Fire is pooling low in my belly and lazily arcing up my spine. But I have to see him first...

His final cry is so soft, a fluttering thing, but his body is violent in its release. He shudders and bucks, a hand clawing the earth as his legs tighten around my waist. He thrashes his head from side to side as he comes with a musky spray between us, our joined hands suddenly slick around his pulsing cock.

Now a different feeling of victory shoves me over the edge into bliss, and I shout, bruising even his tough skin as I wrap my free hand around his thigh and pull him to me. One thrust, two, and the world explodes around me, leaving nothing but the sweet reality of him beneath me and the rush as I come deep within him.

all I can do
driving on through
into you
deep...
you're slipping through
I'm coming, too
into you
deep...

He stretches out across the red sheets and smiles at me. It's a lopsided sort of smile, and I know he's humoring me. Stubborn brat that he is, he means to go ahead with his plan now, just to spite me.

Fate has a sense of humor, throwing me together with the only saiyajin I've ever met who takes pleasure in rubbing my fur the wrong way.

It's alright, though, somehow. Forcing my tolerance is his way of showing me how close we are now. Either that, or he's just a bastard. I can't really decide.

"He's been reborn by now, you idiot."

"We won't know until we try, will we?"

"Hmph," I say, shoving him out of bed with one foot. He blinks up at me from the floor, then laughs.

"What's the big deal, Vejiita?" he asks, smirking at me. "If he's still there, we can bring him back. Then we'll know."

"Kakkarot," I say, folding my arms and scowling. "I am not going to bring your brother back from the dead just so you can see if you have a bigger cock than he did."

"C'mon, Vejiita! You were the one who brought it up in the first place!"

"I did not."

He stands up and crosses his arms, scowling at me now. He's gloriously naked, of course, and I'm afraid I'm too distracted to be much impressed by his display of temper.

"You did too," he says sulkily. "You said he was bigger than me."

"I said he was better than you."

"Hey!!!" he squawks with furious indignation.

So it goes. We squabble, but never really fight. Strange, that. There is such violence in our training, our play, that the world could hardly survive if our attention slipped for a few moments. Our never ending arguments, though, don't seem to carry much heat behind them. Or, if they do, the sting left behind by unkind words is just enough to need soothing touches. Touches we're always eager to give.

I lean forward now and kiss his outrage away for the moment. I had to learn those small gestures of affection all over again with him. Maybe I never really knew them, not like this, but know I understand the need for them. They tell us that we're home.

We part for the moment, to tend to the needs of the morning, but he pulls me back for a deeper kiss before letting me go.

I shrug on pants and go outside on the front porch. It's a beautiful morning, something I am beginning to appreciate these days, and I sit down on the steps. I watch the ocean roll towards the shoreline below the house. White lines of surf creep in as birds wheel overhead, playing and catching food. The ever-present breeze plays with my hair as I sit and listen to it hiss through the long grass. It's almost winter here now. These are the over-ripe days of summer, when the fruit should have long ago fallen from the trees.

Not that there are trees here. In fact, after we're gone, I don't even know if there will be a winter. But I like to think that this place will cycle on and on through the years just as it is, waiting for us to return.

There are many doors in the Guardian's palace. Foolish me, I never took the time to look through any of them. Kakkarot did, though. That's how he knew about this place. It's not unlike the old one we used to train in, really; one year inside still equals a day in the outside world. On the outside it will be spring, with winter clinging only here and there to the edges. On the outside, no one will have given any special notice to the day we were gone.

On the inside, this is nothing like the old Room. This is an island, a green, hilly island surrounded by an endless, endless ocean. Nothing lives here but birds and fish and plants and, for now, a pair of full-blooded saiyajins, maybe the last of their kind. A sun moves overhead, but there are no stars at night, and no moon. The house in the midst of the island is well-stocked with food and lit with oil lamps. It is a primitive life, but we have been happy here. All in all, we have been happy.

In a few days we'll step back out the door and go back to our other lives. In our real world, little will have changed.

Except that for us, everything is different now.

Even here, I can hardly stand to be away from him longer than a few hours. Of course we will be together out there. He cares what our families will think, but I know it doesn't matter. Even if they hated it, there is nothing that could make me leave him.

He is my home now, everything I needed.

As for him, he told me he loves me, but I don't know what that means, really. I've heard the same definition as everyone else, of course, but I don't understand it the way the ningens do. I don't think he does either. He's just trying to put a name to something which didn't need a name on Vegetasei. We are saiyajin. We are together. We will always be together. The choice has been made. I don't think there even is a word for that.

Truth, maybe. Reality. Who cares? Things are how they are.

We doubted, at first. After that first coupling, we tried to go our separate ways. Fear moved us, I think. I hate fear, especially my own.

We failed. So we came here, as warriors will, to put it to the test. A year together would tell if we should be apart.

I smirk at the world around me.

He comes up behind me now where I sit and slips his arms around me. He nuzzles my hair lightly, and I don't have to see him to know what look is in his eyes. He has a great capacity for happiness.

He doesn't apologize for the little fight. It was worth a kiss, but not an apology. I smile, pleased, as always, that he knows the difference. It's hard to remember, sometimes, how much I hated him, thinking he was ignorant.

"Breakfast is ready."

"Mmmnn..." I run my hands up his arms, feeling the silky hair move under my fingers. He's such a pleasure to touch.

"Vejiita?"

"Yes?"

"There's something else I want to wish for."

I roll my eyes, huffing melodramatically. "What now?"

He cuffs me lightly even as he nuzzles closer. No wonder ningens find us mysterious.

"I want to wish our tails back."

I turn to look at him, wondering. He's never talked about this before. "Why? We're far stronger than oozaru."

"Because we're saiyajins, and saiyajins have tails. And because it would make you happy."

I smile. Yes, it would make me happy. He's right. He's usually right, about me.

"Alright, Kakkarot," I grumble, and he kisses the back of my neck before jumping up enthusiastically.

"Let's eat breakfast and go find the dragonballs!" he says, grinning down at me mercilessly.

I climb heavily up the steps. "You're the most irritating person I've ever met," I say to him, feeling the weight of destiny across my shoulders.

The kiss that follows is perfect.

Perfect.

we could become
two into one
leave this behind
over and done
everything new
I'm getting through into you

deep...

~the end~