Chapter Text
Vegeta was right, Goku did like the restaurant. It was old and large and wooden all over. There were other people there, but the tables were separated from each other with low beams and hanging plants. The lights were dim and muted. It felt like he and Vegeta were in a small cave.
Vegeta was talking while they sipped water from rough hand-made glasses andwaited for the food. Vegeta was wearing a soft blue sweater and around his wrist was a golden watch. He looked calm, determined and different somehow. And he was saying strange things. Things about family, and about priorities.
“Priorities,” Goku repeated. He knew that word. It was a Chichi kind of word. He felt like he had had this conversation before. With Krillin. “Us being together doesn’t mean we have to leave our families. ”Goku said. ”We can have both.”
“And be one happy family,” Vegeta said. He was clearly mocking, but then he met Goku’s eyes and shrugged apologetically.
“Vegeta…”
“I want to be a father now,” Vegeta said. “Now that…” He pressed his lips together and said with finality, “I can be a father now.” He leaned forward, closer to Goku. “Bulma want us to get back together again.”
Goku grabbed Vegeta’s wrist, across the table.
“I think,” Vegeta said. “I think she might want another baby.” He smiled. A smile that was small and fleeting and kind of silly.
Goku felt dizzy. He didn’t know how to argue, not against that silly smile.
“You said you wanted me.” He hadn’t meant to say that, it just slipped out.
“I do. As much as I want Bulma.” Vegeta looked down, where Goku’s hand was clutching his wrist. He raised his gaze. “More.”
Something within Goku soured, elated by what he saw in Vegeta’s eyes. Saw for just a moment, and then Vegeta blinked and it was gone. Vegeta looked back at him, dark and inscrutable.
“I don’t understand.” Goku heard the plaintive note in his own voice.
---
Kakarott looked miserable. Vegeta wished he could say something to reassure him, but really, he didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. As usual it was all bunched up with Frieza. This time, the absence of Frieza. Who would have thought that being free of Frieza would have left him so bereft?
“It’s all about priorities,” he repeated. “Trunks and Bulma… the baby – if we have one – they have to come first.”
Goku nodded, a single firm nod, as if that part was easy to understand.
“But Vegeta,” Goku frowned. “Can we still spar together?”
“Of course!”
Of course. Try to stop them.
Goku’s frown lifted. He gazed at Vegeta behind lowered eyelids, a smile slowly growing on his face.
“Can we still eat together?”
Kakarott’s grip had slipped from his wrist and was resting on top of Vegeta’s hand, fingers lightly curling. What was it with Kakarott and holding hands?
“Sometimes…” Vegeta said, the word trailing off into silence. This was no good. He was losing… He was losing his focus.
“Can I kiss you?” Kakarott said. “Sometimes?”
---
Goku lost his smile when Vegeta looked away, when he wouldn’t meet Goku’s eyes.
“I don’t know,” Vegeta said.
“Because of Bulma?”
Vegeta pulled his hand out of Goku’s grip. Still he wouldn’t meet Goku’s eyes. Ignoring him, avoiding him. Goku could feel it, how close Vegeta was to leaving. Leaving, or punching Goku in the face. Soon, he thought, Vegeta would get angry and call him a fool.
“Once, on Namek…” Goku spoke at the same time as he remembered. “I put my hand on Krillin’s head and I could see what he was thinking, what he was feeling, all his memories…”
Vegeta looked at Goku then, a look of horror.
“I wasn’t going to do it to you,” Goku said hurriedly. He wasn’t. “I don’t even think it would work. I could only do it with Krillin because he let me. He didn’t mind me looking around in his brain.” He shrugged, and gave a little laugh.
Vegeta was silent, looking thoughtful. He raised his chin, strangely soft, very present suddenly. “You’d be surprised,” Vegeta said. “At what I’d let you do.”
Goku blinked. This was… he’d never imagined Vegeta saying something like that. He had been afraid that Vegeta would draw away, like he had done yesterday after… after the kiss. Goku had been so sure he had done a mistake, kissing Vegeta like that, not even asking first. And now Bulma had said that she didn’t want to be broken up with Vegeta anymore. And a baby! Goku had started to suspect that Vegeta was saying that they couldn’t be friends anymore, but that wasn’t what Vegeta was saying.
Maybe Vegeta was saying that they shouldn’t sleep together yet?
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Kakarott.”
Yes, that did seem to be what Vegeta was saying.
“Not in a good long while,” Vegeta added, low, and still strangely present.
“But...”
“And you’re not going to scan my mind.”
“But…”
“Probably never.”
“But Vegeta…”
“Were you planning on cheating on your wife, Kakarott?”
Again he was back to the talk he had had with Krillin. Cheat? Goku didn’t like that word. It didn’t feel real, not like a word that he could ever use. It made him feel irritated. And uneasy, deep inside.
“I just want to be close to you, Vegeta.”
Close. Yes, and close in that sex way too. More and more he’d been thinking about Vegeta that way. He’d been thinking about Vegeta’s skin, about his chest, about the curve of his hipbone and how soft the skin would be right there. He wanted to be close to Vegeta with his mouth.
“Answer me, Kakarott. Have you forgotten about your woman?”
“I fought for Chichi,” Goku said, and he was sure he saw recognition in Vegeta’s eyes.
Fighting, that was valid. He could remember, with a force that went straight to his gut, how he had fought for Chichi. How the thought of her hurt, of her being dead, was the thought that had driven him beyond – above – his limits and made him that much stronger, that much more determined.
“Of course I haven’t forgotten about Chichi.”
He remembered what he had said to Krillin
(“I’m not happy with Chichi.”)
And it occurred to him, for the first time, that maybe he’d been asking too much of her. It wasn’t Chichi’s job, was it, to make him happy?
And why would that thought make him feel so guilty?
“I’ll always fight for Chichi.”
Vegeta had started to look amused.
“That’s a yes then, about the cheating?”
“Will you stop using that word!”
Vegeta laughed. Oh yes, that was old and familiar, Vegeta laughing at him.
“Cheating is a stupid word,” Goku said. A stupid word. Goku didn’t know how to express the irritation he felt, but it was there and real and very large.
Vegeta laughed again, with evident amusement this time.
“We’re Saiyans,” Goku said, angry and loud. “Why should we care?”
“Oh,” Vegeta smiled. “Because we do.”
The world had spun and tilted and he and Vegeta had switched places. Goku was using Vegeta’s words and Vegeta was looking at him, smiling like he was delighted and maybe smug and what was so very funny anyway?
“I want to fuck you,” Goku said, and watched Vegeta flinch. Goku leaned closer, hands on the table. “I want it to be good, and I want you to be happy. It could be simple, but you’re making it hard! You’re making it hard because you’re scared. I don’t need to put my hand on your head to see it. You’re scared!”
Goku closed his mouth. Oh. He was on his feet and he was loud too. Heads turned from the other tables, but Goku paid them no mind. He sat down, not taking his eyes off Vegeta, not backing down. This was a fight. He’d rather be fighting with his fists.
Vegeta was silent for a long moment. Goku felt some of the fight drain away, and he got more and more apprehensive. Sometimes – often – Vegeta was… he was a pool of black water, black like ink, and Goku had tossed a rock right down there. He had no idea the things that might surface.
“You’re wrong,” Vegeta said, voice low and hoarse. It was hard to listen to him, because Vegeta had made himself defenseless somehow, like he had done yesterday when he had said those astonishing things about Frieza. “I’m not scared. Nothing about you scares me, Kakarott.”
Nothing about you scares me. Once, Vegeta might have said that as an insult. Now Goku heard something else. “You trust me, Vegeta?” He had to whisper.
A brief nod. “It…” Vegeta struggled to speak. “This,” he gestured between them. “It doesn’t scare me. It makes me weak!” He hissed the last word, forced it out, it seemed, between his teeth.
“Vegeta…”
“Do you wish to own me, Kakarott?”
(“He used to own me.”)
“No!”
“It could happen.”
Goku shook his head.
“You have always defeated me,” Vegeta said.
“Come on. Come on, Vegeta. Stop being silly.”
“I will.” A huff, like a laugh, though Vegeta’s mouth turned down at the edges, like he was really sad. “As soon as you give me what I’m asking for.”
“Time.”
Vegeta nodded, his face tense.
“A long time.”
“I guess.”
“Yes. Fine,” Goku said. “If that’s what you need.” Maybe he was back to fighting with words.
“That’s what I need, Vegeta said, sharply. “And I won’t cheat. It’s not honorably and not dignified. I won’t do it.”
“Got it, Vegeta.”
The food came then, plates with little dishes sprinkled with sauces like lace. It tasted very good and it was different from the food in any restaurant that Goku had ever been to before. It was, he thought, the kind of restaurant that Bulma might visit sometimes.
Goku slowly relaxed. Vegeta, he was the one that made him relax, by losing that strange defenselessness, by just sitting there in front of Goku, occasionally casting a glance his way that was friendly and not much else. Vegeta seemed peaceful now. Goku could understand that, because Goku felt it too. He’d been worried, hadn’t he, about overreaching, about doing something very wrong. But now they had established the limits, and that made things clear and easy to see.
By the time the waiter came with dessert, Goku felt everything settle.
(“We have time, Kakarott.”)
Goku never did count on the future. Whatever he had now, that was all there was. And this… it was pretty good. A large slice of chocolate cake on a square, white plate, getting to know Vegeta more and more and neither of them fighting. And the guilt he had felt – it was gone. This was all it took. Things were simple again. Goku smiled. He hadn’t realized how out of balance he had been, not knowing the limits.
Not knowing the right amount of force to use.
“Vegeta,” he said, finishing off the last of his cake. “Is kissing cheating? Just… that once?”
Vegeta fell still, the spoon with a piece of chocolate cake halfway to his mouth. He seemed to consider the question for a moment, and then he shrugged.
“Not for Saiyans,”Vegeta said. He put the spoon in his mouth, upside down, and grinned with closed lips. Grinned like they were sharing a joke.
Goku laughed.
Vegeta paid for the food with a card, and then they left.
The end
AN: Yes, this is seriously where I’m ending this story. Except…you know my fic A Taste of Salt? You can read that one as a continuation. (Because it actually IS a continuation. I wrote it back when I first realized how this fic was probably going to end, and I’ve always thought those fics belonged together. And now I can say that they do.)