Saiyan
Enlightenment

Went
to Capsule Corp first and found Goten doing laundry (spent a moment to be
concerned for the child’s health and wonder if somehow that Chichi woman had a
good trait, considering the kid definitely didn’t get his willingness to clean
his clothes from his father.) But
Kakarot was not there. So he went in
search of the oversized one. Found him
in a hammock, not very far away from their home (and his nest) swinging idly in
the breeze with his eyes closed and his arms behind his head.

“Hey
‘Geta,” his lover said, didn’t open his eyes, but just swayed there.

“Hello
Kakarot,” he replied. He was not a fan
of hammocks, so he stayed standing, watched Kakarot open his eyes just enough
to look at him, and then saw him smile.

“Was
she pretty?”

“She
looks like her mother.” Which meant
yes, of course, because Bulma had always been attractive. Kakarot shared this belief with him, said
that Bulma had always been better looking than Chichi, but he had never liked
his friend like that. Which was hardly
a surprise to Vegeta. Kakarot sought
out people to tell him what to do. Then
he relied on them to tell him when he screwed something up. Which would have to change.

“So,
what are you going to do now?”

Dress
in drag and dance the Macarena, he thought dryly, eyed that hammock with a
sigh. Because there was no way he was
going to get caught in that thing. So
he just stood there, waited for Kakarot to get out of the hammock or say
something or for him to just walk away and go find something to eat. He was too unfocused for them to fight out
this Saiyan instinct side today.

Kakarot
did finally get out of the hammock, with a strange sort of ease—because Vegeta
knew that if he had been in that contraption he would be tangled up in it
cursing and blowing it to stringy bits—and stood next to him. “I made food!” Then he marched off in the direction of this alleged food.

Vegeta
followed. Sniffed the air cautiously
and hoped that this food didn’t taste like that damn boar. Found that it smelled very nice, and when
they made it all the way back to Kakarot’s nest he found himself looking at a
rather delicious looking roast. Kakarot
stood next to it and grinned proudly.

“Its
been cooking for a long time. Should
taste really good.” Then he pulled off
one of the legs and offered it to Vegeta.
(Bless the Saiyan distaste for table manners.) He took it and after the first bite decided this was no time to
be elegant. It tasted too good for him
to eat it prettily. The fact that he
hadn’t eaten since the day before sometime helped with this decision
considerably.

“Must
be good,” Kakarot said. Gave him a
grin, and looked like he was appreciating this fact immensely. Too much really, and Vegeta ate the food and
wondered if this were some sort of bizarre earth mating ritual whereby feeding
the animal somehow meant you were going to get sex.

Not
that he minded. Just as long as he got
to finish eating before the overly large one attempted anything. Because sitting in a room with a pregnant
woman wearing a shirt that stank of your lover (the very same one that you left
the pregnant woman to be with, mind you) and trying to explain to her that you
weren’t going to be around for the first few months of the baby’s life because
you had to train that spastic Saiyan lover to behave himself did not make
Vegeta very happy with anything. (Especially
since that fucking nurse kept coming in and pouting about how Kakarot had
disappeared.)

~~~***

Watching
Vegeta eat (of all things) was gratifying.
He liked it. It made him feel
all tingly and warm to know that he was the one that fed Vegeta, that he was
the one to catch and prepare the food that was making his mate all happy. (Plus, there was the way that Vegeta was
swallowing the food nearly whole that made him tingle in other ways.) He found it only slightly odd, because
Chichi had watched him eat all the time too.
Mostly she just shook her head and mumbled something about how he never
did learn table manners. He ignored her
when she did this.

He
had left Goten (and his unending talking) behind much earlier that day and set out
to hunt. Had hunted most of the day,
closely following the prey as he tried to reason out in his head if this thing
he was doing was because of his instincts or his human-raised side. Had finally caught the animal, killed it
without making it bloody and set about cooking it. Actually made it the whole day through without homicidal rage or
sexual thoughts. (Well, that wasn’t
entirely true, he had thought of Vegeta.)
But for the most part, he had spent the whole day as himself, as the
Goku he remembered. It was a rather
comforting thing. Doing nothing,
enjoying the time not spent second guessing himself. Spent part of the day wondering what a female Saiyan was
like. (Came up with no answers for that
one, and thought that perhaps the baby would be the first one to let them
know.)

“More,”
Vegeta said. Tossed the bones back into
the fire and waited while he was served.
Pushy Prince. That’s what he
was. Spoiled and pushy. (Not that Goku had any problems with him
remaining that way. He rather liked
Vegeta being all Prince like.)

So
when his royal highness had been fed to his pleased satisfaction, Goku killed
the fire by burying the pit. Found that Vegeta was using his shirt to clean off his hands and
face and knew that if it had been Vegeta’s own shirt that he was wearing it
would never have been used for this purpose.
Grabbed his hands before the end of the shirt could be brought to his
mouth, and bent down, licked the mess off Vegeta’s face and sucked the taste—he
was right, it was very good—off his lips.

Vegeta
just gave him a look of questioning, shrugged this off and turned to go into
the house. Doubtlessly to get the
shower he had not gotten that morning.
(He was a creature of habit, it seemed, or else one that liked to be
clean.s"> Either way, Goku had already
taken a swim in the lake.) So he went
over to the nest and flopped down, looked back up at the sky and watched the
clouds roll by. Thought back over the
course of his life and the things he had done. spanspan>Had said. Things he had left
undone and how it never really failed that something he had left unfinished
came back to bite him in the ass. Like
Gero and the stupid red ribbon army (and the androids) or Freiza. Those things that bugged him, because if he
had just finished them off in the first place he wouldn’t have had to put
people in danger the second time. There
would have been a second time.

Still. It wouldn’t have been right to kill them
like that. Well, it would have been
okay, he guessed, to kill Freiza, because Freiza was trying to kill him. But he kept thinking that everyone would
turn out to be basically good people in the end. And really, he still thought that. (Wasn’t happy with any of his so-called friends, but he still
felt that basically they were good folks.)

Vegeta
re-emerged from the house, dripping water from his hair down his neck and
shoulders, and he stood (wearing only pants) in front of the nest with his arms
crossed over his chest, giving Goku that look that meant he had obviously not
been thinking the same thing that Vegeta wasnkinnking. Which wasn’t necessarily true, because he
had every intention of ravishing the Prince, he just figured a nice shower and
a chance to let the food settle was in order before he carted the Prince off to
their bedroom.