Oceans

The training room was very quiet for several minutes after Goku made his announcement. Most of that silence was full of Piccolo trying to wrap his head around what had just happened. And far from rushing him, Son Goku seemed content to wait for him to fully appreciate his position. He remained straddling his hips, his arms neatly folded across Piccolo’s chest, his chin resting on those, and grinning down at him as if to say “gotcha.”

Piccolo did his best to work himself up to a REAL glare – one like he used to give in the old days, the kind that had never failed to send grown men cowering under whatever heavy piece of equipment they could find. Son, as usual, didn’t seem to notice. If anything, he seemed more amused. Like it was some kind of joke Piccolo was telling without realizing it.

It was downright unsettling, but he kept glaring anyway. The former demon king wondered which of them would break the stare-off first. Normally, he would have won hands-down, because Goku had the attention span of a gnat. But the situation was not normal, and his usually-great patience deserted him.

“I don’t…believe it,” Piccolo growled at last, arching his shoulders into the floor of the gravity room, trying to get enough space at the small of his back to rock forward.

“Don’t believe what?” Son asked. He tugged lightly at the V of Piccolo’s gi with one hand, parting the fabric a bit more over his chest. His fingertips were soft where they traced the slight bump of his sternum, following the line of it as if he were panting it.

Piccolo stilled. He wasn’t accomplishing anything by twisting around – he could at least be dignified. “You…set me up,” he said.

Goku actually chuckled. “Well…yeah, I guess I did.”

“When did you start planning this?” Piccolo asked.

Goku winked at him. “Soon as you invited me in,” he said. Then, with deliberate slowness, he unfolded his own hands from Piccolo’s chest and brought them down past his waist. “It just…popped into my head, you know?” he continued, taking hold of either of Piccolo's wrists. Piccolo tensed immediately, automatically.

“Since when do ideas pop into YOUR head,” he muttered, pulling back as much as he was able under the intense gravity. But of course it didn’t help, and Son didn’t seem to take any notice of it. He just moved his hands from his side to over his head, pressing his wrists into the metal floor, where Piccolo had no choice but to keep them.

Piccolo growled, to which Son grinned, almost nose to nose with him. “Don’t be such a grouch,” he advised, and nipped Piccolo’s nose lightly. “You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.”

“I’m nothing of the sort,” Piccolo huffed, jerking his head away, and then rolling his eyes when his cheek came to rest against his bicep, and he couldn’t pick it up again. “Damn it, Son, this is embarrassing.” It was the closest he’d come to begging in a while.

“You shoulda thought of that before,” Goku said, sitting up a bit. “S’too late now.” His hands were splayed on Piccolo’s chest now…warm and solid, and slowly trailing their way over the wrinkles of his gi top.

Piccolo glared down his nose at his Saiyan antagonist. “When I get even for this,” he said, “and notice I didn’t say ‘if,’ Son…”

“Oooh,” Goku said. He looped his fingers under Pic’s sash, gave it a light tug, making for gentle, firm pressure against Piccolo’s lower back. “Scary. But it’d be more effective if you were…I dunno, upright.”

“I think I’m starting to remember why I wanted to kill you,” Piccolo said, deadpan. He balled his hands into fists.

“Aww, and here you were doin’ so well with the whole ‘good guy’ thing.” Goku gave that sash another tug, a little harder, and Piccolo felt it give…a sensation that inexplicably sent a shiver up his back. “You tired of saving the world already?”

Piccolo huffed. “I’d be doing the damn planet a service.” He closed his eyes against the bright lights as he felt the other remove that sash fully, felt the ends trail over his waist as he pulled it away. And he tried very hard to ignore the voice in his head that was on near-frantic repeat, growing gradually in volume, that this was very, very bad. The voice borne of years of training that told him that being at his enemy’s mercy would lead to the very worst kind of death, no matter how soft that enemy might be. That he would pray for death until it came, even though he did not pray, and even though it would not come for a long time.

But Son Goku was different.

It wasn’t hard to remember examples. They came in nightmares sometimes… never sequentially, but in bits and pieces, images and scraps of sound. The stomach-lurch he felt when he saw Son Goku’s expression soften, saw Raditz’s tail slip between his relaxing hands. The salty, bitter taste of a senzu pressed between his own cracked lips at the 23’rd Budokai. The easy grin, and, “Well, what good am I gonna be if I lose my rival? I’ll get lazy.”

Piccolo had yelled at him both times. Not just yelled. Flat-out screamed. Would have picked him up by the front of the uniform and shook him like a rag doll if circumstances and dignity had permitted it. Because they were just such damn stupid things to do. And Piccolo didn’t understand. And not-understanding made him madder than damn near anything else.

And now this. He didn’t understand this.

Goku’s fingers brushed the underside of his antennae lightly, and Piccolo clenched his eyes tighter. Steady now, he told himself firmly. Don’t be stupid. He’s not going to hurt you. And even if he is, going to pieces won’t help anything.

He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

He noticed, much to his disgust, that he was trembling, just a little. He couldn’t have said why. So he growled instead, lower than usual, and willed himself to wake up, just in case he was dreaming again.

“Hey.” Goku’s voice, soft, as if the other sensed his confusion. His hand cupped his cheek - the gesture somehow more intimate than the caresses earlier – and the thumb trailed gently over his skin. And Piccolo’s chest suddenly felt much too small for all the organs crammed in there.

“Son, I…” he didn’t know what to say.

Goku seemed to understand anyway. He lowered himself against Piccolo’s body slowly, letting him feel where he was, and brushed his lips lightly over the other’s exposed ear in a way that made him growl again, quietly.

“Sou,” the Saiyan whispere, his breath unexpectedly warm on Piccolo’s earlobe. “I know it’s not easy.” And, damn him, he closed his lips just around the outer edge of Piccolo’s ear in a way that made him arch whether he wanted to or not. “And I know you’re scared.”

Piccolo’s whole body tensed at that. “I am NOT s…”

And Goku covered his mouth with his hand, lightly – Piccolo could have bitten him if he wanted to, but he didn’t yet. “It’s alright,” he said, as if Piccolo hadn’t protested at all. “We can go as slow as you need me to, if you’ll trust me that far.”

He almost bit him. Went so far as to part his lips and settle his fangs against the other’s skin, feeling it dent. But Goku didn’t jerk his hand back like he should have, and Piccolo kept on not biting him. Even when the other removed his palm, traced his lips with a gentle finger, pressed on the bottom lip as if it were a button.

“You’ve come a long way, haven’t you, Pic?” he asked. And there was something in his voice that Piccolo was not used to hearing. Like the Saiyan was proud of him or…something equally weird. And it was messing with his head.

It was just too much. So he took the clearest route he saw out of it. “Damn it, Son,” he growled. “Don’t you ever shut up?”

Goku responded predictably. “Huh?”

Piccolo made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “Can’t we just fuck already?” Because that made it better. Made it more impersonal. Drew a line.

And it finally shocked Son Goku out of his rhythm, which was plenty damn gratifying in its own right. The Saiyan stared down at him in a manner that could best be described as dumbfounded for something like a minute. Then he grinned. Then he laughed. “Fine, fine. Never much one for the sentimental stuff anyway, were you?”

“As opposed to you,” Piccolo said, adopting his best bored look. “You get any sappier, we’re gonna need a mop.”

“It’s not that bad,” Son said.

“Oh, please,” Piccolo said. “You’re like a one-man…” and it was about that point that something cloth dropped over his eyes, only to be tied loosely around his head. A second later, he recognized his sash. And that the other had just blindfolded him.

“…That’s very funny,” he grumbled. And he struggled a little, just a little, in case the gravity machine had magically broken in the past ten seconds. And he pointedly ignored the tightening in his stomach. Because he wasn’t scared. At all.

“Yeah? I thought so, too,” Son remarked casually. And Piccolo felt the Saiyan's hands sliding his shirt up slowly, until it was almost to his arm pits. And the cool air on his torso was…he dug his fingers into his palms, trying to keep still.

This venture was not helped when he suddenly felt the other’s palms gliding over his stomach. Or his body, as it slid down, or the sudden, wet feeling of the other’s tongue flicking over the smooth, pink skin on his abdomen. Or an unexpected nip, not anywhere near breaking the skin, right there…right above his hip.

And of course, that blindfold was making it very hard to ignore exactly how it felt. He ground his teeth together as he felt the other’s mouth moving over his stomach, sometimes just like wet velvet, sometimes little nips or just the grazing of teeth.

He would have kicked him square in the face if he could have moved his legs. But he couldn’t. He felt his stomach muscles contract involuntarily as a tongue flicked over the skin just above the waist of his pants, bit down on a groan, and reflected sourly that he’d been wrong all those years. Son Goku did, in fact, have a vengeful streak. 'And trust me to bring it out of him,' he thought.

Then he felt the other tug lightly at the material on his pants, slide a hand under to the small of his back to lift him a little. Piccolo realized that the other was going to undress him like a doll, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. And on the tail end of that realization, he had another: his body wasn’t NEARLY as upset about this as his mind apparently was. And discipline be damned, he felt himself blush hard when he realized just how visible that was going to be in a second or two.

He wished he could see. Be it the other’s reaction, or anything at all. But he couldn’t – and just had to focus on the sensation of fabric sliding down his legs, the little snag at the ankles…and then the sensation of the other putting his right leg back down on the floor gently. The left one, he didn’t.

Piccolo wondered what in the Hell the Saiyan was up to…as his grip shifted on his leg, one hand cradling his ankle, the other moving up to behind his knee. Piccolo tugged his leg just a little, to see what would happen – the answer was, predictably, nothing, save that he felt Son’s hands tighten just a little. And then Son lifted his leg a little higher…Piccolo found himself wondering of the other intended to stretch him, which made little enough sense…but then the Saiyan settled Piccolo’s leg over his own shoulder, so that it could rest there.

Piccolo had never been good with suspense. “Son,” he growled. “What are you…”

He felt a tongue slide across the inside of his knee, so unexpectedly it made him jump, and then he knew. And bit his lip down on whatever else he was going to say. Having his voice break in the middle of a sentence was, after all, very un-demonic. And Son would never, ever let him live it down.

Son didn’t even comment. He kissed him instead, right on the soft skin behind the joint…Piccolo jumped again at the sensation of fingertips sliding up and down the inside of his thigh, then groaned before he could stop himself as the other nipped right at the side of his knee, and he’d never experienced such a powerful urge to wrap his legs around someone’s neck and choke the life out of him.

Of course, he couldn’t do that, because he couldn’t move. And Son was just so damned patient, all those light touches, tickles almost, hands ridiculously careful. He was getting the feeling that the Saiyan just liked touching him this way. That he could do it all night.

But Piccolo couldn’t. He was starting to almost hurt – an itchy, deep ache that kept him fighting back growls and even less dignified sounds. “Get ON with it already,” he gasped at an unexpected flick of the tongue to the arch of his foot.

Goku chuckled. “No, sorry – don’t think I will.” He gave Piccolo’s hip a light pat.

Piccolo curled his lips up over his fangs.

“Now that’s no way to act. Aren’t you the one who’s always preaching control at me?” Goku asked cheerfully. “Think of it as training, right? Working on your discipline.”

“…hate you,” Piccolo gasped, as the other’s hand cupped him, but nowhere near hard enough to give him the friction he needed. And he couldn’t move against it. At all. “Damn you, I really do.”

“Temper, temper,” Goku advised. “Y’know, given your position, you should probably be a lot nicer to me.” His hand curled around him, still gently, and he slid his thumb…

“Oh, fuck you,” Piccolo snarled, more explosively than he actually intended.

Goku chuckled. “Well…eventually, anyway.” And he set Piccolo’s leg down, still with that surprising gentleness – laid it out on the floor as if it would break, trailed his fingers down his calf, and then moved his hand away entirely.

Which was not good. Because suddenly, Piccolo didn’t know exactly where Son was, and the room was much too cold. Had he left? The former demon felt a brief moment of panic before he forced himself to take a deep breath, focus on his directional hearing…maybe the Saiyan hadn’t gone far, or gone anywhere. If he listened he was sure he’d hear him breathing…

Something warm and wet brushed up along the bottom of his antennae, prompting a sudden attempt at movement. Taken aback by the touch, Piccolo actually groaned before he could stop himself – a low sound in his chest.

Son chuckled again, and then that antennae was surrounded by warm and wet, and Piccolo realized that he’d taken it into his mouth. With the most threatening growl he’d ever made, he tried to turn his head away. Of course, that would have been too easy – the gravity in the room made it next to impossible anyway, and he always felt so damn weak where those appendages were involved. He actually parted his lips and panted a little when he felt a tongue move up against the bottom side…

He honestly wasn’t sure he could take much more of this. Too warm, too cold; he felt like a stranger in his own body, and he was very aware that his usually-tight grip on his control was slipping. He felt like he could split right down the middle and crawl out of himself –a weirdly abstract thought, one he didn’t know if he liked. “Son,” he hissed, and he hated how weak he sounded.

“Hmm?” the other asked around his antennae, the vibrations completely killing Piccolo’s thought process for at least another few seconds. He squirmed, or tried to, his hands clenching and unclenching.

Piccolo was a little alarmed at how close he’d come to giving in entirely, and just begging the other to either go the rest of the way or kill him straight out. But by all the gods, he was NOT going to let that happen, no matter how uncomfortable this was getting. “Son,” he gasped again, voice a little steadier. “Don’t…don’t make me ask you.”

Goku removed his mouth from Piccolo’s antennae, which was at once a tremendous relief and a disappointment. “Ask me what?” he asked. He blew on the tip.

“For…damn it, Son, you KNOW…”

Son kissed him. Hard. Shoved his tongue practically down his throat, a hand holding his jaw so that he couldn’t bite down. Piccolo closed his eyes behind the blindfold, breathed in and out harshly through his nose, and remembered, incongruously, how it felt to drown. He felt the tension leaving his body as he became lightheaded, not quite able to get enough air, and he thought for a moment he might pass out.

But then Son broke the kiss, and he could breathe again…chest heaving under the pressure of the gravity.

He wasn’t going to be able to take it. He was going to spaz out, he was going to whimper, he was going to…

Piccolo moaned out loud when he felt light fingers between his legs, and he was beyond even caring too much about the indignity. By means of alleviating his dignity, he found himself envisioning the other’s death in a variety of increasingly-less-probable-and-more-painful scenarios as the other explored him with his fingertips. Tickled, almost. Over a variety of places that are not normally tickled.

“You’re so pretty like this,” the other murmured, as if a little surprised, and Piccolo felt his face heat up again without knowing why.

Just when he thought he wasn’t going to be capable of any MORE nervousness, though, he felt those fingertips brush his opening. Immediately, he tensed, feeling a brief surge of real alarm. He knew it was irrational. He did. Son wouldn’t hurt him – if he’d wanted to, then he would have, and Piccolo would surely not have been able to stop it.

Much to his surprise, though, the other actually paused. Said, “No…y’know, I don’t think…”

“Don’t. Think. What.” Piccolo said between gritted teeth.

“You wouldn’t like that, would you?” Goku asked. “You’d let me. But you wouldn’t like it.”

Piccolo didn’t answer. He didn’t know *how* to answer that, though the thought in his head was, how did you know? And just under it, of course, was, why would you care? I’ve done it to you.

Son, he decided, was never going to make any sense to him at all. And on the tail end of that thought, he felt a very warm, wet flick against his erection, and even under all that gravity, his hips arched up suddenly. “What in th…”

He got his answer quickly. The Saiyan was licking him. Slowly at first, hesitantly, as if he were wondering how he was going to take it.

Piccolo had so far been good about dignity, at least as good as he could be, but this was too much. His wrists, still over his head, rotated, muscles tensing suddenly as he tried to writhe out from under the other. He tried to throw his weight one way or another. He tried to move up, move down, or even push his hips up, but nothing was working. The other was still doing it, and it was just too much…but not enough to get release. “Son,” he gasped out, when he’d come near to exhausting himself. “For the gods’ sakes, I can’t…”

He stopped. Piccolo didn’t know if that was a relief or not. But he felt the other’s hand on his cheek – a light, soothing kiss to the forehead. “Shh,” the other said. “Alright.”

Then he got up and was gone. Piccolo bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood as he heard the other walk away. And he decided then and there, that if the other left him like this for more than a second or two, then he really would find a way to kill him. His whole body was thrumming; he could feel his own pulse in his hips, his elbows.

There was a heavy, mechanical woosh, and suddenly, he could move. Immediately, he tried to lift his hands enough to rip that blindfold away, but they were sluggish, hard to lift…

Son hadn’t turned the gravity off. He’d just turned it down. And before Piccolo could even sit up, he had him back on the floor, put his hands back where they were.

“Not yet,” the Saiyan said cheerfully. “No sense being in a hurry.” He gave the corner of his blindfold a light, playful tug, moving Piccolo’s head a bit with it. “Did you want this off?”

Mutely, Piccolo nodded.

“Good. That’s the point.”

Piccolo was just giving serious thought to trying to kick the other’s legs out from under him when he felt Son straddle his hips; warm, smooth insides of legs against the outsides of Piccolo’s, and he suddenly didn’t care about anything but what the other was about to do.

“Hold still,” Son cautioned. And then, slowly, he started to ease down onto him. He took his time, using a hand to guide him in, and Piccolo clenched his eyes shut behind the blindfold.

Then, they were together, and the room was filled up with pause, and waiting.

It felt like forever before he heard Son’s voice, low and breathy. “Okay.”

Piccolo didn’t need more encouragement than that. He started to rip that blindfold off, but thought better of it – instead, he brought his hands down slowly, slid them up the other’s legs, dug them into his hips harder than he meant. And started to move. Dug his heels into the floor, pulled the other down, and just pushed, again and again.

Someone must have flipped them. Piccolo was pretty sure he did it, but not completely; to tell the truth, he was having a hard time telling who was who right now. What he did know for sure was that he had the Saiyan on his back underneath him, and he was driving into him almost mindlessly, and that the other was gasping and growling and clenching his hands against the back of his neck to pull him down, and it for damn sure served the little bastard right.

Piccolo found himself nipping and biting lightly at whatever skin he could reach…shoulder, neck, anything in between. And tasting a little blood, just once, and not even caring beyond the way it rolled across his tongue, or the way that the other made that little sound that seemed to wrap all the way around him.

When the end came, it was explosive, and he didn’t know for sure which of them screamed, but his ears were ringing. More exhausted than he could ever remember being, Piccolo collapsed against the tangle of limbs under him, panting harshly in time.

Almost gently, Son Goku’s fingers hooked on the cloth around Piccolo’s eyes and tugged it away. The first thing the Namekian saw was a rather skewed view of the floor – part of a shoulder, and then metal – but that was because his cheek was resting on the other’s shoulder. He put his elbows down on either side of him, raised up a bit to gauge his expression.

Nearly nose to nose with him, Son smiled. “Still mad at me?” he asked.

Piccolo thought about that for a minute, his eyes narrowed…his forehead just a scant inch or two from the other’s.

“Go on, Pic – say something,” the other encouraged, sliding light hands across his back.

Piccolo huffed, finally. “I’m not speaking to you,” he growled at last, adamantly. But he lowered his forehead to rest it on the other’s shoulder, that nice spot just above the collarbone, and he inhaled his scent deeply just over that damp flesh.

Son laughed softly and patted his shoulder; it made a soft skin-on-skin sound. “Sou, you shouldn’t complain. At least you got a workout in.”

Piccolo was a little alarmed to feel the corners of his own lips turn up. “Got everybody fooled, don’t you monkey.”

“Thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

Piccolo huffed again. Spat out a word in Namekian.

“That means “asshole,” doesn’t it?” Son asked.

“I didn’t think you spoke Namekian,” Piccolo murmured. He let his limbs relax, gradually, until he was resting on the other, only just now starting to feel the faint ache of being all-over tired.

He felt lips brush the top of his head. “I don’t. But I speak pretty good ‘Piccolo’ anymore.”

“Tch, don’t be so sure,” Piccolo murmured. Brushed light fingers through his hair, smirking a little to feel faint beads of sweat there. So at least he wasn’t the only one who was tired. He wondered if the other wanted up, and then decided he didn’t care about that, either. If Son was going to start something like that, he was going to have to deal with the consequences. Which included him lying there for as long as he damn well felt like it.

Of course, that would’ve been a more satisfying decision if the other seemed to mind at all. Son didn’t. He just lay there, his hands smoothing over his back, his shoulders, the back of his neck – light, reassuring touches that Piccolo was gradually getting used to. He found time to wonder just how much he was going to miss that when they weren’t spending as much time together…when Son went back to his wife, he went back to the forest, and they put this whole trip out of their heads. Because that’s what was going to happen. And he knew it, even if Son didn’t.

Things wouldn’t be the way they were before. Piccolo couldn’t delude himself into thinking he could take over the world now. He could see in his head the way the other would look at him if it ever came to a real fight again, and he didn’t think he could deal with that.

But things wouldn’t be the way they were now, either. They would be close, sure. Piccolo doubted he’d ever be able to stop reading the other, stop seeing things in faint movements of his hands, stop catching the little changes in the eyes that signified so much before he hid it behind that big damn stupid grin of his. But they would not be…whatever they were. They would, he realized with a slow, strange smirk that he didn’t quite recognize from himself, be “friends.”

“Piccolo?” the other asked softly. One of those damn light hands came down, rested on his cheek.

“Hm?” he asked, shaking off his thoughts like dark clouds. No sense acting like some overly-emotional human teenager, after all. What would happen, would happen, and there was no sense thinking too much about it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before,” he said.

“You’re thinking too much,” Piccolo advised. He closed his eyes, settled down fully against the other’s body.

“Never thought I’d hear that from you.”

Piccolo chuckled in spite of himself. “Yeah, well – you should know by now there’s a first time for everything.”

“Yeah…I guess so.”

Piccolo was nearly asleep when the other spoke again. “Hey, Pic…”

“Hm?” he asked, opening one eye.

Son was peering down at him with a strange expression…eyes a little wide, head tilted some, almost like a child asking an adult to explain some mystery to him. “Piccolo…is this what being in love feels like?” His voice was barely a whisper.

Piccolo was awake then, and swallowed harshly, feeling suddenly disoriented, lost, same as he had in the water, when he’d reached out to… “Son,” he said, his voice just as soft, but more full of intensity. “Son Goku,” he said again, a little stronger. “Don’t…don’t you ever ask me that again.”

Son seemed…surprised. Taken aback, even. Blinked down at him as if he hadn’t seen that coming.

“I mean it, Son,” Piccolo growled, feeling briefly, irrationally angry. “I don’t ever want to hear that word come out of your mouth again. Not *ever,* Goku. Do you understand?”

Son averted his eyes, and instantly, Piccolo wasn’t angry anymore. Just…sorry. And he couldn’t have said why. “Alright,” Goku said. And he wasn’t angry, either, though Piccolo almost wished he were. “Alright,” he said again. “I understand.”

“Damn it, Son,” Piccolo sighed. And then Piccolo eased up off the floor a little, dragged himself up, and rolled off the other some, so that he was lying on his side, right next to him. “I didn’t…” Piccolo didn’t know what else to say.

But Goku, of course, knew what to do, which was to curl into him, an arm around his waist, and tuck himself under his chin. It saved them looking at each other. It almost made it go away, almost as if none of it had happened, except that Son hadn’t ever held onto him that tightly before, and he was holding him back almost hard enough to bruise. They held on like that until they fell asleep, Piccolo’s hand tangled in the Saiyan’s hair, the Saiyan’s arms wrapped tightly around his waist.