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On the car ride back from Goten’s high school graduation and cleaning out the all you can eat buffet they’d gotten dinner at, Gohan takes up their father’s offer for his family to stay the night back at their house. Goten just barely makes out their hushed adult conversation where he’s half-asleep in the very backseat of the van, still in the whole get-up, Pan drooling all over his graduation gown as she snoozes with her head in his lap. Goten’s cap slips down his forehead and half of the way over his fluttering eyelids. The humid summer air flitters in through the rolled down windows.
“Why don’t you and Videl just sleep over at ours?” Goku hums, cruising through the country roads with one hand on the steering wheel. They’d made it out of the city around fifteen minutes ago. “Pan’s already fast asleep. You’d wake her if you tried to fly her out.”
Gohan laughs softly, leaning back in his seat. The two of them seem to be the only ones who are still fully awake—Videl is practically out cold next to him and Chi-Chi is starting to nod off in the passenger seat. Goten remembers this atmosphere well; all of a sudden he’s ten and bone tired after a weekend training session, and Gohan’s piggybacking him home as he and their father speak in low voices so they don’t wake him about anything ranging from what was for dinner that night to matters they still don’t think Goten is grown up enough to understand.
“I’ll take you up on that offer, dad. I know I tell you every time, but that guest bedroom you built in a couple years ago is nice…”
“Your old man still has a few tricks up his sleeve. I’ve only gotta give the best to my son and daughter-in-law, y’know.”
Time warps and bends in Goten’s sleep-muddled brain. He only fully blinks himself awake when his body recognizes the steep turn up into the hill their house is on, sniffing through a yawn.
“Don’t move,” Gohan chuckles, turning to him with a smile after he’s unfastened his seatbelt. “You’ll wake the princess.”
Goten glances down at his sleeping niece, and then out the windows at the starry sky. “Man, am I tired…”
“You’ve had a long day,” Gohan says, stretching out his arms for Pan. Videl rouses in her seat next to him. “Give her here, buddy.”
Nodding, Goten carefully picks Pan up, cautious not to move her head as he hands her over to Gohan. He reaches for his schoolbag at his feet and slings it up over his shoulder, rubbing at his eyes as he climbs out of the car. When his feet touch the ground Gohan’s already taking his backpack from him, swinging it over the arm that’s not cradling Pan’s sleeping form.
“Saving the city and graduating high school all before bedtime?” Gohan teases, pulling the zipper of Goten’s bag fully closed where his Saiyaman 2 cape was sticking out from inside. “Impressive, squirt.”
“Shove it,” Goten snickers, taking off his graduation cap and running a hand through the mess of his hair. Gohan strings his backpack up over one of his shoulders like he used to when Goten was tiny, smiling at him softly.
“But it’s great that you’ve kept it up by yourself this year even though Trunks is away,” Gohan hums, stepping into stride with him as they all pour into the house. “I wouldn’t have been mad if you quit. It’s a lot for one guy. I don’t know how I would have managed fighting crime on top of school if Videl hadn’t been helping me out back then, especially when we were in university.”
Goten rolls his eyes. “Who cares about Trunks? Besides, it was my older brother who was the original Great Saiyaman. I had to, like, carry on the legacy, and shit.” He punches Gohan in the arm. “No matter how lame it is.”
Gohan sighs, big and dramatic, entirely unserious. “Where did the little guy who used to think every single thing Big Brother Gohan did was so cool go? I want him back.” He shuts the door behind them. Goten sticks his tongue out at him and takes the mild shoulder slap he receives in return with dignity.
They both toe their shoes off on the rug. Out of force of habit, Gohan picks up Goten’s sneakers to line them up neatly next to his own dress shoes on the shoe rack. Goten pads past him, finally stretching his arms over his head with a yawn now that he’s free of the miniature calamity that is Son Pan. Their mother had already ushered Videl into the guest bedroom, and Goten can make out the sound of their father clicking the backyard door closed behind him. Probably to go check on the fields a final time before they all go bed, and mercifully feed any little animal he finds while he’s at it.
“You can shower first,” Goten says, rubbing at one of his eyes with the heel of his palm. “I’m gonna go upstairs and change.”
Gohan smirks. “Sure me and mom can’t convince you to pose for one more picture?”
Goten grimaces. “You’ve got enough pictures of me in that get-up to fill a whole album,” he says dryly, over the sounds of Gohan’s stifled laughter. “It’s bad enough you got me on video eating ten burgers in public while wearing the entire cap and gown.”
“Hey, it got you a free meal, didn’t it?” Gohan winks at him, following him up the stairs. Pan drools into his sweatervest. “Dad made sure of that.”
Goten snorts. “Someone always gets a discount when dad’s around… I think I’m still gonna have to pretend I’m sixteen at restaurants with him when I’m thirty.”
Say what you will about Goten’s ability to act like life is good as long as he’s got a full belly and clean bedsheets—as soon as he steps into the darkness of his room the weight of loneliness comes down on him twenty tonnes upon each shoulder. He peels off his graduation robe and leaves it in a puddle around his ankles on the floor, left just in the suit his mother had stuffed him into as he puts his cap down on his nightstand with a sigh. Moonlight filters in through the window and casts a dim glow across the floorboards and his bed. Goten stares down at his mismatched socks.
But it’s great that you’ve kept it up by yourself this year even though Trunks is away. Goten clenches and unclenches his fists. Trunks.
It’s hard to believe how inconsequential an entire lifetime can feel in comparison to the array of months in a school year. Goten wishes he could say it feels like just yesterday when Trunks left on the final day of last summer, but in truth it feels like it’s been an eternity since then. The time they’ve been apart somehow feels longer than the decades of growing up they’ve done together. It’s not like Goten spent his senior year of high school a loner, or anything; he has other friends, and Trunks always kept in contact. But at some point it started feeling unbearably shitty to feel like he was only worth around five texts back per day and not a single visit, not even during the holidays, or his birthday, or…
“I can’t believe I really thought he’d show up for my graduation,” Goten mumbles to himself, smirking bitterly. “I’m so stupid… he’s obviously way too busy, he even had to take extra classes for his double major in the summer…”
Still, for some inconceivable reason, it hurts. Goten swallows the ache in his throat and he’s just barely blinking back tears he’s annoyed with himself for producing when his phone vibrates in his pocket. When he fishes it out to stare at his screen in the dark, he can hardly believe what he says leering back at him beneath the time.
Trunks (now)
look up. :)
An incessant tapping from the window comes next. Goten lifts his head, and the world freezes mid-rotation.
(Trunks.)
There he is, hovering outside of Goten’s bedroom window with the stupidest grin on his face. Goten’s body is moving of its own accord and he phases through the steps it takes to get to him.
(It’s Trunks.)
Goten nearly throws the window off its hinges with how abruptly he tears it open. He has no idea what his expression looks like at the moment, but if the way Trunks erupts into those peels of laughter Goten has only heard in his dreams and the scarce static of the occasional phone call is any indicator, he’d have to say the jig is up and he’s making a face like he wants to burst into tears.
“Hi,” Trunks says, leaning down into Goten’s space, his feet soundlessly touching the windowpane. His arms are tucked behind his back. He tilts his head, still grinning. “Miss me, ’Ten?”
The nighttime wind pours in and touches Goten’s skin, the speechless quiver of his bottom lip. Goten stares at Trunks’s face, the backdrop of the starry sky against his lilac hair as strands of his bangs sway into his ice blue eyes. “You…”
Suddenly all the feelings he thought he’d gotten over come rushing back through him tenfold. Goten’s always known that he’s never thought of Trunks as just a best friend. There’s never been a time when that term didn’t seem to shallow to him, but Goten was quick to realize why as soon as Trunks’s voice started dropping and his training started showing through in his muscles. He’d spent three years of high school smitten, and just when he’d assumed those emotions had dilated into just missing his best buddy, they seem to have multiplied at the core of him; become him in the most troublesome way.
Now, Trunks’s gaze softens. “Come on,” he says quietly, his voice dropped low, at a pitch so intimate it makes Goten’s skin warm. “Don’t make that face, Goten.”
It’s only when Trunks reaches one of his hands out to cup Goten’s cheek that Goten realizes the tears are falling. He supposes seeing Trunks like this now, out of the blue, after he’d gotten so used to just shrugging the loneliness off—it’s catching up to him all at once. A sniffling, snotty noise escapes him and before he knows it he’s being pulled up against the sturdy warmth of Trunks’s chest.
“Hey, buddy, shhhh,” Trunks says softly, his arm dropped around Goten’s waist, his voice a ripple through Goten’s hair. “Haven’t grown out of being a crybaby, huh?”
Goten squeezes his eyes shut. He’s nearly been hiked up onto his tip-toes with how flush Trunks has pulled his body close. “Shut up,” he gurgles, punching Trunks in the shoulder, sniffing through another shaky breath. “Ugh, shut up… you’re still so annoying. Guess you didn’t do much growing up.”
Trunks pulls away from him, but only slightly. He smirks down at Goten, the quirk to his lips so faint it could be a trick of the moonlight. “And you’ve still got a good right hook,” he teases, catching Goten’s fist and swinging their hands down together. Slowly, he brings his other arm out from behind his back, and reveals a bouquet of pink and orange lilies. “I couldn’t make it in time to be there when you actually graduated, so…”
A still-snivelly laugh bubbles past Goten’s lips. “You got me flowers, dude? Real romantic.” He chalks up the heat rising in his cheeks to the faulty air conditioning in their house and takes the bouquet from Trunks’s hand, setting it down carefully on his bed. The back of his neck burns. His hand is fire in Trunks’s. “Ahhh, man, is this awkward as hell. First time I see you in months and I’m bawling my eyes out…”
“Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” Trunks rags, his grin growing teeth at the teary-eyed glare Goten angles him. He squeezes Goten’s hand. “Here, hold up, I also got you some new wristbands.”
Goten blinks. “Wh— No way, you didn’t have to get me anything!”
“Come on.” Trunks flaps open his jacket and reaches into a deep inner pocket, producing a small bag with an athletics store logo on its plastic crinkle from its depths. “I couldn’t even make it for your birthday or Christmas… or your graduation. What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t even get you a few presents?”
Goten bites his lip as he takes the bag, looking inside for the contents. A sleek pair of dark navy blue wristbands stare back up at him, high quality and fuzzy to the touch. Goten’s cheeks flush, but he still just lowers the bag in his hands and averts his eyes. “Why didn’t you come back at least once to visit?” he whispers quietly, his voice raw with hurt he wishes wasn’t so obvious. He can feel the physical pity in Trunks’s gaze, doesn’t even have to look at him to know that handsome face of his has fallen. Goten’s fingers white-knuckle the handles of the bag. “I thought you’d at least come home on a weekend to see your folks, but even Bulma said you never did…”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Trunks grabs ahold of both Goten’s hands this time, squeezing his palms so hard his fingers leave little white spots that disrupt blood circulation. “You wouldn’t believe how busy I’ve been… and also maybe I just…” A tiny laugh dissolves the steadiness in his voice. “Maybe I thought if I came back saw you I wouldn’t be able to leave.”
Goten’s eyes widen. He flushes, huffing and averting his gaze. “You thought if—? Oh, come on, I’m not falling for that, man—”
“It’s true!” Trunks squeezes Goten’s hands tighter, with a raw urgency he doesn’t show many people. His face is so intense he doesn’t look real. “It’s true, Goten.”
Goten stares at the flicker of Trunks’s pupils. “I…”
Actually, Goten’s staring at a lot more than that. Even in the lowlight, it’s obvious Trunks has changed. Physically. Goten always notices the physical about Trunks later. After he’s confirmed Trunks is still the dumb little boy who stuffed himself and Goten into a dumb disguise when they were seven and eight and competing in the adult division of the World Martial Arts Tournament was all they ever wanted. The sudden wideness to Trunks’s shoulders and the sharper cut of his jaw, the few inches he suddenly has over Goten’s height and the way he’s actually starting to look like he won’t get carded at the bar; Goten’s heart flutters at the thought of having to get to know all these new parts of the same old Trunks.
And then he exiles those indulgent thoughts. Goten’s always known his place. The fact that they’re best friends family friends childhood friends friends friends friends is an absolute truth of the universe. There won’t be any changing that for as long as they live.
Turning his head, Goten’s skin prickles at how he feels Trunks’s eyes follow his every move. “I missed you,” he finally just says, the words making a dent in his breath. His heart races in his chest when he dares to look back up at Trunks. “I really missed you, Trunks. So much.”
Trunks’s eyes fall half-lidded. “So did I. You think I didn’t? I thought about you all the time.”
Goten just holds his breath and examines him, balancing all his tears on the precipices of his lashes. He wonders, bitterly, if he lets this slide now and just melts into Trunks’s arms, how many more partially empty I thought about yous he’ll have to endure years from now.
“Trunks,” Goten starts, but he can’t hold his ground. His throat constricts and he gets lost in the ocean of Trunks’s eyes, afraid he’ll never find his way out. An exhale drops Goten’s shoulders and chest. “You’re here for the entire summer, right? My summer, at least. What’s left of yours I guess.”
Trunks bobs his head in a nod, his smile resurfacing teeth and all. “I’m all yours. And when you start uni I’ll crash at your dorm a bunch, and you can come up to mine. We’ll hang out all the time.”
The just like we used to goes unspoken. Something flutters the inside of Goten’s heart, half unsure of the future and half excited for it beyond repair. “Well, I don’t know about all the time—”
The sound of his bedroom door creaking open puts a dent in their reunion. Goten’s father sticks his head in, obviously without having knocked a single time, and it’s only then that Goten remembers that he and Trunks are still holding hands in the near-dark smack dab in the middle of his room.
“Oh, Trunks, you are here,” Goku says, his tone tinged with a suspicion he makes a little too obvious on purpose. “I thought I heard voices.” He steps fully into the room, and Goten can see Gohan behind him making an unimpressed expression at the both of them over Goku’s shoulder. The lights are still on in the upstairs hallway, and they pour into Goten’s room in a golden-warm puddle on the floor and wall. Trunks laughs in this nervous dying animal way and drops Goten’s hands instantly, throwing his arms up in surrender.
“Hi, Goku. Gohan,” Trunks says sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck. “I... hope I’m not intruding.”
“No, no, not at all,” Goku muses, leaning against Goten’s doorframe with a knowing smirk playing on his face. “Trunks, it’s been so long I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“His habit of sneaking in through Goten’s bedroom window certainly hasn’t changed,” Gohan grumbles. “Trunks, if you want to sleep over you know you have to get in that bath first.”
Trunks groans. “Would you believe me if I said I already had a bath before I came here?”
“Not good enough,” Goku chimes, holding open the door as if to say Trunks has no choice but to walk through it. “Off you go. Goten, you’re gonna have to wait until Trunks is done, kid. Guests first.”
Gohan snickers. “Unless you wanna take one with him the way you guys did when you were little tots.”
Goten’s ears flame red. “No way!”
“Aww, really?” Trunks leans back from where he’d started padding towards the door, his hands in his pockets and his grin stretching the full width of his face. “You used to hate taking baths without me, ’Ten! Don’t you remember?”
“No, can’t say I do.” Actually, Goten remembers it perfectly. He pushes Trunks by the shoulders. “Get out and hurry up or you’re sleeping on the floor.”
Trunks’s eyes grow darker with something Goten can’t place as Goku and Gohan shuffle out of his room. Something that he’d brought home with him after all his time away, maybe, or something that’s always been there grown concentrated. Thick with hot shivers that curl their way down Goten’s spine. Trunks tilts his head, and his fangs pronounced in the canine rows of his teeth.
“Oh, yeah,” Trunks drawls, reaching back to tug on Goten’s dress shirt collar, “nice tux, man.”
He’s gone by the time Goten takes his next breath. The shower is already running, and so is Goten’s heart in his chest.
.
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Before Trunks left, it was practically ancient tradition to break into Gohan’s house if they had jackshit to do just to annoy him for hours on end and maybe also force him to make them food. After graciously giving him his work week and spending their days baking alive under the summer sun, sparring in each other’s backyards and playing video games until their eyes hurt, Goten and Trunks choose the weekend to infiltrate.
“Just because it’s Saturday doesn’t mean I don’t have things to do!” Gohan says exasperatedly for what must be the millionth time since they got here, his thick-rimmed glasses discarded somewhere in the papers strewn across his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Go… watch a movie or whatever it is teenagers do these days!”
“Pshh, yeah, maybe teenagers who were losers like you,” Trunks snickers, picking up one of the stapled together page bundles off the corner of Gohan’s desk. “What is this, anyway?” He flips through a couple of the pages, whistling through an open-mouthed smirk. “Lab reports, huh. Sloppy work.”
Goten blinks as he looks over Trunks’s shoulder. “What the heck, I don’t get any of this stuff.”
“Don’t be rude, that’s one of my first years’s reports!” Gohan huffs, levelling Trunks a chiding glare. “Not everyone’s a boy genius, Trunks. Most people have to retake first year organic chemistry in the summer because of how hard it is… And I happen to only have one TA for this class this semester, so I have to do some of the grading myself.”
Goten sits on the edge of Gohan’s desk. “You really are busy, huh, Gohan?”
Gohan squints at him. “What, you didn’t believe me the first twenty-five times I told you that?”
Trunks raps his knuckles along the back of the page stack with a grin. “I could TA for you. Not like I can’t get between my own university and yours within a second. And alsoooooo, this stuff is a piece of cake. I can teach it no problem.”
The hairs on the back of Goten’s neck raise, prickle straight across his forearms. He’s always envied how put together his older brother and Trunks are; they make succeeding at human greatness look painfully easy. Even if Gohan often talked about how much of an irresponsible troublemaker Trunks was, it was always with a careful amount of affection, and Goten knew Gohan recognized just how freakishly smart Trunks was deep down. Maybe he was even a little afraid of it.
“You know, that’s not a bad deal you’re making me,” Gohan muses, putting his hand on his chin. “Would you be able to make it once a week at—”
“I also actually have a really urgent problem that I need to bring up, uh, right now,” Goten interrupts him, rapturing Trunks’s attention immediately if the snap of those blue eyes right to him is anything to go by, feeling a little too self satisfied. “Or I’ll die. Yeah.”
Gohan leans back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. “Well, do tell,” he remarks, raising both of his brows. “Since it is, allegedly, a matter of life or death.”
Trunks puts a cocky hand on his hip. “Hahahaha… you got summer homework even though you graduated or something, ’Ten? You want us to do it for you?”
“No, uh,” Goten coughs, trying and failing to school his voice into the shape of something casual and noncommittal and knowing prematurely he is about to fail completely (seriously, how does Trunks do it? Has he already sold his soul to the corporate slaughterhouse in exchange for a degree in the fine arts of nonchalance?), “last week, a… guy asked me out.”
He’s not lying. But he also knows there was no reason to bring that up. Watching the colour completely drain from Trunks’s face is worth it, though.
Gohan just blinks. “Okay, so? What’s the big deal? Was he nice?” He pointedly ignores the way Trunks trips over an academic journal he left laying around on the floor and falls on his ass. Goten, on the other hand, savours every second of it.
“No, that’s not— I mean, it’s only my second time ever getting asked out!” Goten says, waving his arms frantically, only really acting like he cares about it enough to be torn up. “I told him I’d think about it, but it’s already been a week! What do I do?”
Trunks is still lying on the floor. “Where the hell did you even meet this guy?” His voice gets muffled into the floorboards and his cheek smushes against carpet. He seems to be doing his best impression of a rock at the bottom of the ocean.
Goten clears his throat and attempts his least-smug expression—key word attempts—as he looks down at Trunks. “While waiting for the train to school.”
Trunks scrambles onto his knees. “Since when do you take the train? What happened to the Son Family Express?”
“Mom was using Nimbus that day, so I had to! And I didn’t feel like flying,” Goten snips back at him, huffing exasperatedly. “Anyway, he said he always sees me at school, and he thinks I’m really cute…” He doesn’t even know why he’s saying all this. He hadn’t thought anything of it when it actually happened, but now that he’s figured out he can use it to make Trunks squirm he’s suddenly very interested in relaying every detail of the affair when two days ago he couldn’t even remember the guy’s hair colour. Goten guesses that Trunks isn’t the only one who’d changed in the last ten months.
“Gahh! I’ve heard enough! Kill him!” Trunks gets out all in one breath, sitting cross legged on the floor and crossing his arms over his chest. “You can’t trust guys like that, Goten… He doesn’t even know you and he’s never had a conversation with you, but he wants to go out with you? On what basis? You know what my mom always says, men are animals.”
“Woof,” Gohan deadpans, typing something up on his laptop boredly. He frowns at Trunks over the top of his screen, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting, Trunks? It’s about time Goten met someone nice, anyway.”
Goten nods sagely. “Yeah, someone nice.”
Trunks barks out a scoffing laugh, sounding more like his father than Goten will ever tell him. In fact, there are times when Trunks embodies so much of Vegeta’s likeness it’s almost a little uncanny. “Fine, then, what do I care… just date him if you’re so set on it. You need to experience this stuff at some point, ’Ten.”
Gohan puts his cheek in a palm and furrows his brow. “Well, I don’t know about going that far right off the bat… shouldn’t you get to know him first?”
Goten blinks, fishing his cellphone out from his pocket and staring at the river of notifications that glare back at him. “I dunno. He’s been texting me all week, but I’ve got no idea what to respond with.”
“You gave him your number?!” Both Trunks and Gohan shout at him in unison, and Goten swears the sheer magnitude of their volume nearly pushes him back a couple inches.
“I mean, yeah?!” Goten squawks, finally flustered for real and no longer just pretending to be unsure of the big wide open world in his purposefully oblivious farm boy way, having dug himself a foot too deep. “He asked for it, so I just—”
“You can’t just give that to anyone, Goten,” Gohan lectures him sternly. “I know you’re not used to having to be careful of normal people, but anyone could be dangerous in other ways besides physically.”
Goten purses his lips. Physically. He tries not to think of the brand new corded thickness to Trunks’s biceps, and then he’s gasping when he abruptly feels the pressure of Trunks’s slightly larger and definitely calloused to the grain hand grabbing his wrist.
“Gimme your phone,” Trunks grunts, suddenly standing before Goten. Goten balks.
“Huh? Why?”
“Just give it.”
Wordlessly, Goten hands it over. Mostly because he can’t think of doing anything but what Trunks tells him to right now. Trunks scowls at the screen and his thumb flies over the glass, his scarred knuckles still brushing Goten’s hand even if he’s dropped his wrist. Within a second, Trunks plops the phone back in Goten’s palm.
“I blocked his number,” Trunks says, even and level. There’s no room in his composure for either animosity or glee, any discernable emotion. Businessman butter smooth. The intensity of his stare pins Goten right in place. For a moment Goten forgets all about the cozy familiar universe of Gohan’s study and the presence of Gohan in itself, blipped into a dimension where only Trunks exists in front of him between the bends and there’s no looking back. Snorting at Goten’s slack-jawed expression, Trunks lifts his hand to flick him in the forehead with his thumb and his middle finger. “Starting from tomorrow whenever a no good guy like that hits on you say you’ve already got a boyfriend and show him a picture of us.”
Goten is pulled from the body of water right then. He scoffs and punches Trunks in the shoulder, payback for the pink bruise starting to splotch between his eyebrows, trying not to think about how it nearly matches the blush-burned nape of his neck. “You? My boyfriend? Yeah, right.”
As the two of them stand there going back and forth over everything they’re not really saying, neither of them hear Gohan mutter under his breath as he gets back to his own work: “Not yet, at least.”
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Perched up on the ledge of a skyscraper with a bird’s eye view of the bustling city is where Goten finds out Trunks has developed a brand new nasty habit. As he watches Trunks drag a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth and then click open a lighter Goten doesn’t remember him even being in possession of, Goten wonders just what kind of life Trunks could have possibly been living this past year that smoking comes as naturally to him as breathing. That certainly wasn’t the case back in high school when they stole one of Bulma’s packs from her purse, the expensive kind imported from Europe in velvet-lined boxes, and Trunks had nearly thrown up his entire lunch after taking a single drag.
“You want one?” Trunks asks, already lit up as he holds the pack of cigs up in Goten’s direction. A string of smoke steams from the cocky slant of his smirk, bright white against the pitch black nighttime sky as he rolls his cigarette between his teeth. “I’ll only charge two zenni a smoke.”
“That’s a rip-off. You cheapskate.” Goten wrinkles his nose. The scent of acrid nicotine melting together with Trunks’s cologne makes his head spin. He bites his lip and ducks his head, avoiding Trunks’s stare. Trunks’s eyes are so blue anyone would start believing they’re all-seeing after looking into them for long enough, but Goten is well-aware Trunks doesn’t really know shit about anything. Huffing, Goten pulls his Saiyaman 2 visor down over his eyes. “And it looks totally bad that you’re smoking on the job, man.”
Trunks erupts into peels of laughter, stowing his pack of cigarettes back in one of the sleek little compartments that line the utility belt of his Saiyaman 1 costume. It’s been ages since they did nightshift patrol together; since they did anything together, actually. For some reason Goten feels like it’s his first time in his life wearing the Saiyaman suit. He feels overgrown, stuffed into the skin of adolescence. Trunks’s elbow knocks against his. “You been managing the streets okay without me, ’Ten?”
Goten holds his breath, staring down at the basin of rush hour traffic. His sinuses stall and he tastes something salty in the back of his throat, blinking back the sting. Drawing his knees up to his chest as if to guard his heart, he refuses to let the tears fall for a second time. Giving Trunks that leverage over him again—viewing it as leverage at all, it’s dangerous. The smell of Trunks’s cigarette floods Goten’s mind, turning the emotions behind his fluttering eyelids into silvery smoke. “Yeah, it’s been just fine. Who needs you, anyway?”
“Aww, so mean. Goten’s so mean to meeeeee.” Trunks ducks into Goten’s space, the slope of his smile all in Goten’s face. “You’re cute when you pout.”
“I’m not pouting!” Goten sputters, already red to the hairline when Trunks’s helmet bumps against his. Their visors are just short of a smooth silicone kiss, and Goten’s skin grows warmer from the smoke off of Trunks’s cigarette, condensation atop of the blush. That balmy-warm summer night’s humidity drips down the back of Goten’s neck. He challenges himself not to look away from that cocky expression on Trunks’s face. “Ugh, just focus on doing your job, will you? You’ve already been slacking on the justice payroll this past year.”
“Hey, what would it have looked like if Saiyaman 1 suddenly started popping up in the same city Trunks Briefs moved to for university?” Trunks snickers, dragging his cigarette out from between his teeth with his middle and index fingers so he can breathe out a puff of smoke that collapses his shoulders. “Give me a break. I’m already in the papers at least twice a month.”
Goten snorts. “It’s your own fault. ‘Billionaire playboy heir to Capsule Corp strips and dances half-naked and drunk on the bar counter’ was my favourite headline, though, for the record.”
Trunks gawks at him, his composure finally torn to shreds. “Who’s showing you those?!”
Goten bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t giggle like a maniac. “Your mom, dude. She always calls me over whenever she’s about to purge an article from the net or the press.” He tilts his head, grinning at Trunks as if to cement his tiny victory. “You should’ve seen Vegeta’s face, this one time—”
“Wahhh, enough! I don’t wanna hear it!” Trunks hikes his scarf up to his nose, bundled up like a baby tiger cartoon mascot. His cigarette goes on burning between his fingers. Apparently despite all outward appearances, he still hasn’t outgrown thinking he’s way too cool for that lame ass cape. “I always end up embarrassing myself in front of you, ’Ten…”
Goten’s stomach tingles with the reprises of first love. He falls to the side until his shoulder presses up against Trunks’s, enjoying the sensation of sharing his body heat. “But that’s what I like about you,” he whispers softly, staring ahead at the technicolour sea of city lights, a warm breeze slipping beneath his helmet so it can ruffle his hair, unstick the sweat from his forehead. “You’re untouchable all the way out there, but you can always come home and be your real embarrassing self in front of me.”
He chooses not to look at Trunks’s face when the silence tides over them. Whether or not Trunks has successfully picked out Goten’s true feelings in a crowd of vaguely affectionate words—that’s for the gods to know only. Sighing, Goten kicks his legs until he hears Trunks draw in a breath, the audible kind that means he’s opened his mouth to speak. Goten knows. He’s hyper aware of this boy who’s always been there since as long as he can remember being sentient.
It’s only really been a second before Trunks’s voice breaks the sound barrier of Goten’s heart. “Goten, listen, I—”
They’re interrupted when the sirens of a bank alarm cuts clean through their slow banter. Far away, certainly, but close and loud enough for their heightened Saiyan hearing to pick up the terror in the frequency. Immediately, Trunks gets to his feet and stamps out his cigarette beneath his foot on the roof’s floor. Goten’s right behind him.
“Check it out,” Trunks hums, jerking his chin down below at one of the banks wedged in a plaza almost near the highway entrance. One of the employees gets thrown through the revolving doors, and a man in a ski mask steps over her to get to his car with a hefty bag of cash. Oh my God that’s such a cliché, Goten thinks. Committing a bank robbery like you’re a 1950s cartoon character and falling in love with your best friend... we are sad, sad creatures, man. Solidarity! Trunks sighs. “Well, that’s our cue, partner.”
Goten nods, taking off after him. Dipping around buildings and torpedoing down into the urban core, they’re moving too fast for anyone to make them out clearly, morphing into gray and red blurs. Goten’s eyes narrow as they close in on the car within seconds, flying just above the stream of traffic. “Let’s trash his car to hell?”
Trunks grins. “I thought you’d never ask,” he muses, surging ahead and dropping down so he’s eye level with the car, putting a fist right through the passenger window. The glass shatters upon contact with his skin instantly. Predictably, the car swerves and tires screech; adrenaline rushes through Goten’s veins. Before the car can crash into anything Goten touches down right in front of it, putting his hands down on the hood and stopping it right in its tracks as it buffers against the sheer force of his existence.
Some people stop to watch, but most of the traffic in the lane they’ve stopped the car in just bypasses them and zips along with the rest of the stragglers. Apparently working a nine to five dulls your interest in anything other than getting into bed. Goten can’t blame them. The robber rolls his window down and sticks his head out to gape at him.
“You—!” He looks at Trunks on his shotgun side and then back at Goten in front of him. “What the hell?!”
Goten clears his throat and summons forth his Hero Voice [insert copyright symbol here]. “Give us the money or we’ll take it by force!”
Trunks tears the the car door halfway off its hinges just to watch their perp’s eyes go wide as dinner plates. “Maybe we’ll just take it by force anyway.”
“There’s two of you again!” the guy exclaims, almost sounding a little excited. He points at Goten and his ski mask creases with the impression of his hidden grin. “For a while it was just you doing all the work around here, wasn’t it? The other guy was gone!”
For a moment Goten stalls. Miraculously, the traffic lights all flare red at both intersections. Projecting their stoplight gleam down on them at an exaggerated angle and submerging them from head to toe in a crimson shower. Goten hears the sirens of an ambulance from somewhere faraway. A baby crying in its stroller. He slides his eyes over to Trunks and finds him unaffected, untouched by the bloodbath. As if the entire city is flaring its nostrils and saying INTRUDER! OUTSIDER! IMPOSTER! Catatonic, Goten lets it get under his skin. There’s two of you again.
Trunks rips the passenger seat door fully off the car like he’s peeling a mandarin and the spell breaks. The industrial creaking roar of capitalism’s finest mode of transportation being slaughtered brings Goten out of his trance.
“Well,” Trunks says, his voice low and threatening. “I’m back in town now, punk.”
He grabs the car by the roof and throws it into a line of parked vehicles that fill the shoulder. Their robber is promptly knocked unconscious, but a quick sense of his ki reveals all of his vitals in order. The car smokes from the hood. The mountain of money that was hastily shoved into a reusable grocery store bag explodes from the open window and the gaping maw where the car’s missing door once was, cold hard cash raining down upon the streets like a blessing. Through the scrambles of people who jump out of their cars or from the sidewalk and into the road to salvage their cut of the fortune, Trunks appears at Goten’s side and grabs Goten’s hand.
“Let’s get out of here,” he chuckles in Goten’s ear, squeezing Goten’s fingers, “partner.”
They take to the skies before the cop cruisers arrive and fly home holding hands the entire time. Goten’s heart grows three times its size in his chest. Benevolently, the city opens all three of her eyes to the two of them dancing circles around each other. The slow roll of rush hour traffic miraculously dissolves when it hasn’t even hit seven p.m. yet. A stray dog finds an opened bag of kibble thrown away still three quarters of the way full. The moon rounds out when it was supposed to be crescent tonight. And Goten and Trunks ever stop holding hands.
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Purgatory is a burger joint that’s open twenty-four-seven. Goten and Trunks had dipped from the crime scene and then stripped out of their Saiyaman suits in record time, picking the first place they saw lining the street strips to sit down and eat. Goten’s cheek smushes into the diner table. Trunks is sitting across from him and poking his head with an unopened straw as they waste away waiting for their food to arrive.
“What’s up with you?” Trunks asks, sipping at his cola. “You melting on me, man?”
Goten narrows his eyes at the black and white tiled wall of their booth. “Yeah. I’m melting. Fuck you.” He means it. I feel like such a kid. You make me feel like such a fucking kid and you’re only a year older than me, asshole. His hair fans out along the table, black curls on cherrywood. Why am I even upset about this…?
By the time he’s over it there’s only room left to be hungry. Their food seems to have magically appeared before them on the tables when he ducks his head up, and he’s faced with the enchanting sight of Trunks chomping off half of his burger in one bite.
“So how was school without me?” Trunks is dipping three fries in his ketchup mountain atop a napkin. He shoves them in his mouth. “You still hang out with Rulah and Faira?”
“Well, yeah.” Goten nibbles on his burger, watching the salt shimmer on his own stack of fries. “I don’t know. It was the same, I guess, just Trunks-less.”
Trunks grins at him, kicking him in the shin under the table. “Come on. You weren’t even a little lonely?”
Goten’s ears pulse with an indignant wave of heat. What does Trunks want him to say? Actually, I was lonely all the time. No one else understands me the way you do, but sometimes I wish the one person who got me WASN’T you. But who else would it be if it wasn’t you?
He doesn’t say any of that. He just shoves his burger into his mouth and steps on Trunks’s sneakered foot. “No wayyyyy. As if I’d be lonely without someone as annoying as you.”
Trunks isn’t falling for it. He leans in with a smirk, biting at the fry Goten has halfway to his mouth and tearing off the edge for himself. “Yeah, really? Is’sat why you bawled your eyes out like a baby seeing me for the first time all year the other day?”
“Be quiet!” Goten squeaks, flushed to the tips of his lashes. “You crappy—”
“Hey, you two.”
Both of them look up at the stark interruption, blinking up at the two police officers who are standing at their table. One of the cops holds up his phone, and Goten’s eyes nearly bug out of his skull when they’re shown footage of what is definitely the wreck they’d left that robber and his car in. He and Trunks clearly got caught making a run for it on the video, but they were moving so fast they only appear now as kinetic shooting stars on that tiny screen.
“You kids know anything about this?” a cop asks. Goten and Trunks share a look.
“Nope,” they chorus without a shred of doubt in their voices, lying so comfortably their mothers would be disappointed. The policemen shrug off. They forget all about it.
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Actually, Goten doesn’t forget about anything.
“That reminds me.” Trunks isn’t looking him. He wasn’t looking at him back then, was he? Goten can’t remember. The ice in their sodas melts noisily and the dim-lit walls cave in on them. Quickly, the restaurant turns into a black hole time-suck. Trunks’s eyes stay downcast. “Guess this’s our last summer as Saiyaman 1 and 2, huh?”
Goten blinks. He doesn’t register the statement fully, at least not at first. “What?”
“I mean,” Trunks hums, taking another bite of his burger like this is just another one of their pointless conversations about nothing. “You’re gonna start uni soon, and you’re not gonna be living at home anymore. Plus it’s gonna be busy. Way busier than high school, trust me.” He lifts his gaze, leaning one of his arms back on top of the booth. “There’s no way we’re gonna keep it up, right? Well, maybe during our summers, but that’s only if we come back home to visit…”
Goten’s still stuck back at our last summer. Their last summer? He didn’t realize they had so little time left. He didn’t realize they haven’t been kids for a while now. The time passes differently when he’s with Trunks. An eternal childhood summer, with popsicles melting stickily on your fingers and making weird noises into the fan. Immortal cicadas that never shut the hell up. Goten swallows. “I… guess. ”
“Even Gohan had to hang up the cowl,” Trunks hums, wiping his greasy fingers off on a napkin. “You know, I’ll miss it… it was fun back in high school, you know? When after school meant becoming somebody else entirely, and becoming that person with you.”
Goten’s eyes crowd with a hot surge of wetness again. He hates this. He hates how every time he’s with Trunks he wants to burst into tears, and he what he hates the most is how he wants Trunks to be the one who wipes them away and holds him after. “Yeah. You’re right.” His lips fight against the gravitational pull of his own despair to pull into a smile. “It was fun, Trunks.”
Trunks smirks at him. “Everyone has to grow up eventually, right?” he chuckles. Goten just chews on a French fry. It’s cold. He wants to cry.
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Of course, it wouldn’t be summer without doing what every biblically accurate eighteen and nineteen year old do at some point: breaking into a parent’s alcohol stash and getting sloshed. Bulma is the usual victim of their shenanigan stupidity, and tonight is no different. Trunks cracks open her liquor showcase and whistles as he goes straight for a bottle of vodka that looks like it costs more money than Goten’s entire house. He twists the cap off in this way that makes his bicep flex—and makes Goten feels like he’s going to faint.
“Now this is the good shit,” Trunks rags, pouring himself half a glass, which is half a glass way too much, in Goten’s opinion. “I’m gonna mix it with juice… do you want the same thing? Or a shot?”
Goten scrubs a hand over his face. “If Vegeta catches us doing this you know he’s gonna kick our asses.”
“Already been taken care of, my dar-ling,” Trunks sing-songs, dislocating the syllables in the word on purpose, padding over to the fridge. “He and my mom are out for the night and I mean out. As in they’re not coming home until it’s three a.m. and my mom’s wasted, and he’s gotta hold her hair while she throws up.”
Goten squints and bites back a smile. “Where’s Bulla?” He’s giddy with a foolishness he’ll look back on one day with distaste, sure, but he still doesn’t like the idea of getting drunk with a little girl in the house. He should probably trust Trunks to be more responsible than that, but he kind of doesn’t.
“At Gohan’s. She’s having a sleepover with Pan,” Trunks explains sunnily, pouring the fruit punch in until it completely drowns the vodka, masking the poison. He’s got one of those fancy fridges that make ice, and Goten watches him trot over to his kitchen limbo to plop a few cubes in his glass. “Good enough for you? We’ve got the entire place to ourselves tonight.”
Goten’s fingers tremble. He has no right to first crush nervousness. He could navigate Trunks’s house walking backwards and blindfolded with the number of times he’s been here. Still, the idea of being alone with him at an hour past what his mother would call decent makes the back of his neck burn.
Without missing another beat, Goten pours himself half a glass of vodka and knocks it back raw. He regrets it immediately, but the way Trunks makes a low sound that means Oh, I’m vaguely impressed makes his stomach warmer than the alcohol should.
“He shoots and he scores,” Trunks murmurs, both of his brows raised when Goten slams his glass back down on the table and stares him down with his best under legal drinking age tipsy conviction. Trunks’s eyes don’t waver as he watches Goten lick the vodka-drip off his lips, like he’s looking at something he wouldn’t miss for the world. He raises his own glass to his mouth, his gaze smoldering over the glass rim. “Well, here goes nothing.”
The world keeps on turning and they end up in Trunks’s bedroom before Goten knows it. Goten licks the condensation off one of the fruity coolers out of the pack Trunks had bought for them at the gas station, lazing on his belly across Trunks’s bed. He can feel Trunks’s stare tracing the line of his spine. His toes curl and his heart pounds in his ears. He’s barefoot—he’d worn sandals when he came over earlier and now he feels a fraction more naked than usual. There’s an increasing interest rate on his vulnerability. A beaded bracelet Pan made for him dangles off his ankle.
“Truuunksss,” Goten slurs, putting his foot in Trunks’s lap. They’re supposed to be playing video games and talking about the dumbass shit two guys who have been buddies since the playpen should have to talk about, but instead they’re just loafing around acting like they don’t notice the heat in the air against all odds; their forever friendship and the full blast of the good AC at Trunks’s house. Goten’s eyes fall half-lidded. “How drunk were you get gettin’ off at university? Drunker than this?”
The question seems to breathe arrogant life back into Trunks’s constipated-serious poker face. He grins. “Way drunker, buddy,” he boasts, squeezing Goten’s calf. “What? Can’t keep up?”
“Like hell I can’t,” Goten grumbles, sitting up just so he can chug his cooler, his eyes tearing up from the fifteen percent alcohol aftertaste and the brush of Trunks’s shoulder against his own. He could slip right into Trunks’s lap… His teeth sink into his bottom lap and he blinks back those recurring baby tears. He’s getting real fucking tired of this theme. Yeah, or I could hang myself from the ceiling, too. A squeaky exhale leaves him when he extracts the hollow can from his lips. His breath puffs out in clouds that may only be visible to those also suffering from lovesick hysteria. Unfortunately, Goten doesn’t have the guts to ask Trunks if he can see them too. “See?” he chuffs, holding up his can. His mouth still dewy. “All done.”
Trunks leans back against the headboard. He looks too fucking grown up for his childhood bed, out of place with his sharp jaw and the slightest shadow of pale stubble Goten wishes he hadn’t noticed, because now it’s driving him crazy. “Atta boy,” Trunks hums, his voice nothing more than a deep buzz of imaginary friction, and Goten is too wasted to know for sure if he managed to suppress the whimper that’s climbed up his throat. Smirking, Trunks just lifts his own cooler to his mouth and finishes it to the tin. He tips the can over upside down in a teasing challenge. “Think you’re up for another one?”
Goten is restless with a nasty energy he’s not used to being possessed by. “Fuck that, I wanna’nother shot,” he huffs, smacking his damp lips as he crawls right over Trunks’s legs to swipe at the bottle of vodka on the nightstand. He kicks his legs when he’s thwarted before he can get his grabby hands on that bad idea, whining as Trunks grips him by the waist and holds him right in place over his lap.
“Whoa, whoa,” Trunks says, suddenly too sounding sober for Goten’s liking. Like this level of intoxication and all the whirling confusing emotions that come with it is just a child’s game to him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why don’t you wait it out for a bit before you go for it straight again?”
Goten makes a frustrated noise, looking up at Trunks with his glossy eyes and his entire heart in his mouth. “Whyyyyyyy?” he demands, with a specific brand of brattiness he’s always surprised he’s capable of around Trunks. He squirms his hips against the pressure of Trunks’s strong hands, wondering why he’s suddenly panting like he’s out of breath. He’s oblivious to how Trunks swallows harder than he ever had when he was downing scotch straight from the bottle a couple hours earlier. “Trunks, c’mon, I thought we were gonna—”
“Goten.” The rasping, helpless quality to the way Trunks says his name makes Goten flick his eyes back up to him. Trunks has his the back of one of his hands pressed to his mouth and there’s the slightest hint of a flush submerging his cheekbones. His eyes are heavy with something Goten’s not experienced enough to name. Even though Goten’s the one practically laying stomach-down across Trunks’s lap. Only one of Trunks’s hands presses down into the small of Goten’s back to keep him docile. The outline of Trunks’s palm is so much larger than Goten remembers. Those tears crowd Goten’s eyes once more. His body is no longer a useful container. Trunks groans, low and husky in his throat. “Fuck, Goten…”
Goten’s tired of letting it all slip through his fingers. “What?” He sits up like a puppy called to attention, getting right in Trunks’s face. Moving to straddle Trunks’s lap, foggy-headed when Trunks’s hand follows the roll of his back perfectly. “What is it, huh, Trunks?”
Trunks opens his mouth. And then they’re kissing.
Goten knocks Trunks down with perfect form. Oh, so this is what all that training was for… He makes good use of his martial arts knowledge as he pins Trunks in place with nothing but the hands cupping the older boy’s face, grinding his hips down against Trunks’s hard enough to make the bed creak when they’re both still fully-clothed. Moaning louder into Trunks’s mouth when he feels Trunks’s hands squeeze him by the hips, rocking and rutting and doing whatever he can to make it possible to live under Trunks’s skin.
“Goten—” Trunks grunts into the clumsy wet smooch Goten piles atop of his lips, groaning when Goten licks at his teeth. “Goten!”
Goten tears away from him then, but only just barely. He’s still aching to pounce. His thighs squeeze around Trunks’s hips. The inside of him is inexplicably sore. His organs are made of fleshy déjà vu. “Yeah?”
Trunks makes a troubled expression. He’s still so handsome when he’s pretending to be uncertain about shit he already figured out before anyone else. “Goten, you’re so fucking drunk.”
“So’re you,” Goten barrels back, kissing the flex of Trunks’s jaw, that hard angle tense with some chivalrous kind of restraint. Goten readies his ultimate weapon. “Don’t you remember?” he giggles, liquid courage coursing through his veins as he rubs himself against Trunks’s irritably zipped shut fly. Yeah, he’s totally hard. My ego just grew two shoe sizes. Goten’s lips are the centre of Trunks’s attention, and he knows it. “We used to do this in high school all the time.”
That gets Trunks to snap out of his morality-induced episode. He snarls as he flips their hierarchy, slamming Goten down into the mountain of pillows and kneeling between Goten’s parted thighs. Kissing Goten on another level of desperate, wet and messy, his calloused fingers slipping beneath the hem of Goten’s shirt and earning himself more than just a few moans.
“Trunks,” Goten mewls, and he’s never been more sure of something in his entire life, he’s positive. His fingers spread through Trunks’s hair, admiring the texture difference in the silky long top half and then the buzzed nape before he ceases to think about anything period when Trunks’s lips find his again. “Mmmmphhh—!”
“Goten,” Trunks rumbles, a man crazed, his hips bucking blindly between Goten’s legs. “Goten, Goten, Goten—”
Goten’s knees press into Trunks’s back and he cinches Trunks’s middle tighter between his thighs, whimpering as he moves his hips and grinds back against Trunks’s erection through the barriers of their clothes, bolts of pleasure zinging through his bones. “T-Tuh—Trunks—a-ah—!” Goten digs his nails into Trunks’s biceps when those vampire teeth sink into the side of his neck, moaning at the way they flex beneath his fingernails, aroused at the strength he’s always known was there. Letting Trunks draw his blood as he licks and sucks and bites a trail beneath the crewneck of Goten’s t-shirt, down south towards his heart. “Mmmm—Trunks, I-I want—I want more than just—”
Take me with you to that faraway place you’re going to called adulthood, Trunks...
“Don’t tell me,” Trunks croaks against the side of Goten’s throat, hitching his hips hard against Goten’s clothed cock. “I’m too— you’re too drunk. You might think you want something that’ll make you sick when you wake up tomorrow morning…”
Goten bites his lip and shudders. He tips his head back and stares at the ceiling light, the halo his blurry vision bestows upon its ordinaryness. No, he knows what he wants. He’s known it since he realized he was himself. Maybe before then. How many past lives have he and Trunks known each other in? How many Saiyans have they been, half or not?
Trunks holds him close, mouthing at his neck. Nibbling on the lobe of Goten’s ear. “Not like this. Not like this, Goten.”
One of Goten’s many past selves pinches the shell of his Trunks-bitten ear and whispers to him: Seize it now. Take it all. You deserve every last bit of it and more.
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Pre-nut clairvoyance aside, Goten still snuck out of Trunks’s window in the early hours of the morning to do his more or less just hungover flight of shame while Trunks was still snoring into his pillow. Hearing Trunks’s parents coming in through the garage and what was definitely the sound of Bulma throwing one of her heels at Vegeta’s head had little to do with it. Not being able to look Trunks in the eye was probably the more relevant crisis.
All the same, by the time the sun starts to set Goten feels as if he’s just walked in a circle. He’s been ignoring Trunks’s texts all day just to send him a single ominous I’m coming over for the night half an hour ago, and now his hands are shaking as he packs the overnight bag his mom nagged him into taking. He can’t count the amount of times he’s taken pyjamas and a toothbrush over to Trunks’s house for sleepovers, and now all of a sudden the ritual has become foreign to him. Goten thinks once you start trying to remember what the toothpaste in a guy’s bathroom tastes like, you’re probably in over your head and screwed for life.
As it just so happens, the world hasn’t ended in one single day. Trunks’s bedroom still looks the exact same when Goten slips in through the window, and it hasn’t been turned into a bottomless portal to all of Goten’s worst fears overnight. Great. Amazing, even.
“You could’ve come in through the door?” Trunks says, an amused smile playing on that mouth Goten wants to eat off of his face. “My mom said she would’ve loved to have you for dinner. I told her your mom wanted you to eat at home before you came over.”
Goten raises his brows. “See, you even know how to lie and make it sound like me. Should we switch lives and see how long it takes other people to notice?”
Trunks’s grin dampens. Goten’s heart wilts. The seriousness of their two-man island climate makes him want to run away.
“Goten, about last night,” Trunks starts—it’s never good when he sounds this sincere. “Listen, I should’ve known better. I’m sorry I—”
“No,” Goten just says flatly, ripping the agency from Trunks’s hands. Trunks blinks at him.
“No?”
“What’re you even apologizing for?”
Trunks sits on his bed and crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, so, if you haven’t fuckin’ noticed, I was getting there—”
“It’s still no.”
“Okay, fuck you.”
“Yeah,” Goten says, letting his bag fall to the floor with a pronounced plop!, walking forwards until he sees Trunks’s pupils dilate, “fuck me, Trunks.”
Trunks’s jaw drops. “What—” He makes a surprised noise like he’s being flattened by an sledgehammer when Goten straddles his lap and shoves him down to the bed again. “Goten, are you trying to fucking kill me?!”
“Someone’s gotta do the pinning down,” Goten retorts, breathless. Splaying his hands all over Trunks’s chest and only knowing for sure that he wants. “Since you’re too chickenshit to get it done, Trunks Briefs.”
It’s like Trunks remembers exactly who he is in that moment. Goten sees the expressions on his face go from HELL-YEAH-BACK-FROM-THE-FUCKING-DEAD-BABY to WHAT-IN-THE-FUCKING-FUCK… They engage in a staring match—whose brow will wrinkle first? And the changing landscape of Trunks’s features finally ends in a primal snarl as he just grabs Goten by the hips like he means business. “Alright, alright, you know what, Goten, I was trying to be the fucking good guy, okay, I was trying to have some decency—”
“What the hell do you need fucking decency for?” Goten spits back at him, dizzy as Trunks dips him over onto his back. His legs spread wide open and he’s lightheaded when he feels Trunks’s hard body press between them, panting so hard his chest rises and falls in his peripherals. “That’s not who you are. You just take the things you want.”
Trunks is still determined to play the fool even when they’ve got their dicks rubbing against one another through their pants, apparently. He smirks and it unleashes a swarm of butterflies in Goten’s belly. “And you’re something I want?” he bluffs meanly, but Goten knows he’s just giving him one more chance to back out of this, one last chance to say Nevermind, I don’t want this. Goten won’t take it.
“What else haven’t we done together?” Goten hums softly, lowering a hand between their bodies to tug at his waistband, squirming his pants down his hips. He very much likes the way Trunks’s eyes size up the pale of his bare thighs. He didn’t bother with underwear on purpose; they both know he’s not the lazy type. “Why stop before this?”
Trunks visibly shivers. The pillars of his arms tremble where they’re boxing Goten in, threatening to topple the structure they make slotted together. “Have you ever…?”
“No.” Goten’s burst of audacity runs out. Suddenly shy, he enjoys the weight of Trunks’s body atop of his. “You’re my first.” His lips curl into an unknowing smile when he sees Trunks’s jaw clench hard. It isn’t like he’s trying to be tantalizing.
Trunks exhales heavily through his nose. He pulls away but Goten can’t tell if it means he doesn’t want to do this anymore or something else, so he reels Trunks right back in by the sides of his face. A panicked “What the fuck” manages its semi-safe passage out of Trunks’s mouth before Goten gets his lips on his, and then they’re back to making out so sloppily Goten abstractly wonders if Trunks’s bedroom door is locked.
“You’re not allowed to change your mind,” Goten whimpers, just as Trunks’s tongue slinks out of his mouth. “I’m not gonna let you.”
Trunks watches Goten watch him, and then he just laughs. “Chill,” he advises, sage with the one year he has over Goten. “I was just grabbing lube.”
The colour of cherries displaces Goten’s skin. The word lube makes it all real. It’s little things like that, how easily Trunks can say such a nasty sentence, that makes Goten remember just how different their upbringings were.
Trunks reads his mind. He sits back on his knees, one of his hands rubbing Goten’s thigh in comforting circles. His eyes are soft and his cock is hard, making a bulge you’d have to be crazy not to notice through his gray sweats. “Goten, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
Goten takes that in every way but the right one. “You don’t wanna do it with me?”
“I don’t want”—Trunks leans back in, maybe just to comfort him and let him down easy with proximity, kissing him between the brows—“to do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”
Goten shakes his head. He inhales the smell of Trunks’s laundry detergent, kicking his hand-me-down track pants off his ankles. “I want it,” he says, between the kisses Trunks peppers down his cheek. “I want it to be you, Trunks.”
Here and now. Maybe always. That’s the scariest part. Goten doesn’t think about it. He just sinks into the pillows and lets Trunks slip his hands beneath his trembling thighs, preparing himself to accept it: the here and the now.
“But I’m surprised you thought I might have lost my virginity while you were gone?” Goten can’t resist the urge to be just a little annoying even when he’s got Trunks’s fingers inside him. Those thick sticky knuckles making his inner walls tighten and squirm. Goten grips the pillow and squeezes his thighs tighter around Trunks’s middle. “Or even—ah—considered it, I guess.”
Trunks works diligently. Pumping in and out of him, hitting this spongey-soft spot that feels impossibly deep inside the twists and turns of Goten’s body. “What’s so ridiculous about that?” he mutters, gripping Goten’s hip until it bruises purple in the shape of his palm. Scissoring his fingers just right inside him so Goten arches his back and moans. “If you don’t lose your morals in university you lose them in your senior year of high school.” He pauses to grin, and Goten knows immediately he is going to be eaten alive. “Maybe not a good boy like you. Huh?”
Goten’s head whips back and he squeezes his eyes shut. Immediately, he comes to the conclusion that he’s incapable of having meaningless human sex, even though he’s never done it before to begin with. Hook up culture is a scam in which he will never participate. Unless it’s with Trunks. Trunks makes him a hypocrite. Goten’s toes curl into Trunks’s back and he sucks a deep breath from the inside of Trunks’s mouth, moans jumping from his lips in the cadences of syllables and not actual words. “Tuh—Trunks—”
The bedframe creaks and Trunks stretches him out so good on his fingers it makes Goten leak all over his belly. “Goten, you’re so tight…” He smiles into Goten’s whining. Doesn’t even tell him to be quiet, because he knows he’s got a big enough house for none of his family to hear down the acres of hallway. “You really think you’re gonna be able to take my cock at this rate?”
Goten’s mouth is wide open but he still can’t answer. “T-Trunks, oh my God, Trunks—” He recognizes this freefalling sensation, riding his bike down the steep climb of Mount Paozu as a kid and tumbling right off the seat. “Ah—aaahhhnnn—!” His eyes flutter back shut; his twitchy-hot entrance puckers around Trunks’s thrusting fingers like he’s trying to heal the open wound and trap him inside; Goten remembers Trunks kissing his skinned knee as he cried for twenty minutes straight, Goten’s blood all over his lips as he bandaged it up. He’d never forget it. “Trunks, please, I-I’m gonna—”
Trunks doesn’t let up. He spoils Goten rotten with this new type of climax. He shuts the fuck up and makes Goten cum so explosively it’s violent, pumping his fingers in deep-slow and hard.
“Trunks—!” Goten wails, and the dam breaks. He spills all over himself, all between their bodies. A single drop lands on the satisfied curve of Trunks’s smirk. Through the haze of his high, Goten’s appetite roars. He’s hungry in a way he’s never been before—starving in a way that made him skip dinner for sex. “Trunks, please…”
Trunks takes a breath like he’s the virgin. “Keep your legs open… I need a condom.”
Goten isn’t too fond of that responsible suggestion. “You don’t wanna feel all of me?”
Trunks looks like he is in physical pain. There’s a furrow between his brow. “Goten, I mean, I obviously don’t have anything, but—you don’t care where I’ve been?”
Goten chews on his lip. He thinks about what one of the characters in this teledrama his mom watches at seven o’clock on Friday evenings where everyone cheats on each other always says: You know where home is. Suddenly he wants to laugh and cry all at once. He does neither.
“No. I only care that you’re here now,” he whispers, his shirt riding up his stomach. He lifts it up over his head and tosses it on the floor so he’s naked. Horniness touches the edges of his feelings and makes him delirious. And also, Goten doesn’t know who Trunks thinks he’s fooling—the guy obviously wants to hit it raw so badly he’s drooling. Goten just parts his legs, and smiles his best angel smile. No teeth. Trunks is all over him in seconds.
Their emotions are how they justify it. Trunks sinks into him slow and bare, centring the whole of himself inside Goten’s aching grip. Goten reaches under Trunks’s tank top and drags his nails down Trunks’s back, breaking skin and drawing blood as Trunks starts to piston harder into him. Goten’s insides flutter and squeeze, tighten up for Trunks and only Trunks. He slides his spitty mouth across the side of Trunks’s face, deliberately mewling in Trunks’s ear.
“Goten…” Trunks groans, already sounding ruined. His cock twitches through Goten’s heat and Goten nearly loses it.
“Yeah…?” Goten whimpers, holding Trunks’s face in his hands. He grins, sticking one of his thumbs under Trunks’s top lip, feeling out the bend between the gums and the teeth. “You’re so serious…”
Trunks shudders. “You’re not exactly anyone else… you know that.”
He kisses the slope of Goten’s shoulder, licking at the film of Goten’s strawberry-scented body lotion and sweat. Goten feels Trunks’s strokes in his spine, moving his hips clumsily, unbearably needy at the way Trunks makes his body sound. Trunks makes these little low noises that fall on Goten’s skin like cool silk. As if he’s melting. They’re both melting into a puddle of Fuck Yes Don’t Stop. The world is their mattress. The headboard hits the wall, over and over again.
“Trunks—” Goten’s leaking dick gets crushed between their oneness. The bedroom walls sneer at their overt LIKE for each other. “Trunks, I-I’m close—”
Trunks’s silence says volumes more than his words do. His tongue is centuries more sensitive when he isn’t talking, swirling over the buds of Goten’s nipples and sucking on them until they perk and bruise. Goten hardens the urgent roll of his hips and outpaces Trunks’s rhythm as his orgasm catches up to him. His calves wind up in a tight criss-cross across Trunks’s back and his jaw drops in a silent scream as he cums for the second time, splattering himself white up to his chest, the cupid’s bow of his top lip. And Trunks keeps going, never stopping as Goten’s orgasm tears through his body.
“T-Trunks—ah—!” Goten sees stars behind his eyelids. The shock activates his Super Saiyan, and he sees everything. It’s all so beautiful. The tears in his temporarily-turquoise eyes show him an x-ray through the ceiling and he sees the stars flickering hot in the sky above Trunks’s head. Those massive reserves of ki Trunks has mundanely stored in his muscles scorching Goten’s skin—like he’s laying naked right underneath the sun. Goten shivers into himself, hot and cold and everything all at once.
Trunks sits up on his knees and brings Goten with him, holding him steady by the hips, his fingers digging into the upper flesh of Goten’s thighs. Goten arches his back and gasps as he sits all the way down on it in Trunks’s lap. Out of instinct, he brings a hand up to cover his Super Saiyan enhanced eyes, irrationally afraid he’ll burn a hole right through Trunks’s face. Growling under his breath, Trunks jerks into his body hard, and the slap of his hips against Goten’s ass interrupts any lucidity Goten had managed to hold onto. Somehow, screaming Trunks’s name, Goten manages another scant orgasm right after the one he just had, and he doesn’t give Trunks any other option but to spill inside him when he clamps his thighs down around Trunks’s hips.
“Fuck…” Trunks sighs like a spiritual weight has been lifted off his shoulders as he finishes inside Goten’s seizing openness, painting Goten’s insides with those thick spurts of semen. He finally slows down, but only because he doesn’t want a single drop of himself to leak out of the red-pink squeeze of Goten’s hole. Goten’s hair bleeds black and drops back to normal, and his eyes darken when he lets his hand fall from his face. His body is liquid when it relaxes, and he doesn’t protest when Trunks pulls him off with a wet pop! and lies him down.
They breathe heavily on their backs next to each other, coming down from the crazy. Goten can feel himself dribbling dollops of Trunks’s warm seed. He squeezes his knees together. His first time isn’t overwhelming, because it was with Trunks.
“Is this gonna change anything?” Goten asks the question to the bedroom ceiling. He’s too scared to look at Trunks’s face, but he sees him turn to look at him out of the corner of his eye.
“Do you want it to?” Trunks’s voice is a gentle nudge. He fills in the gap of Goten’s silence with a soft laugh, and then he sits up so Goten can no longer see his face at all. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Goten is relieved at having the responsibility plucked from between his legs, but he has the nagging feeling that procrastinating now and letting the vortex between them accumulate cosmic karma is going to come back to bite him later. Still, he’s pin drop quiet as he watches Trunks pull his sweats back up over his hips. If Goten wants to feign the kind of cool-guy-facade that comes in a packaged deal with fucking your best friend, he can’t afford to open his mouth right now. If he does he’ll start crying and then he won’t stop for days. And this time, there will be no skinned knee for Trunks to kiss better.
“You wanna get something to eat?” Trunks asks, already grinning with his hands in his pockets. He reaches for a granola bar he left lying around on his desk and rips open the packaging, taking a bite as Goten tries to remember how they acted around each other before he had Trunks inside him.
“Yeah. I’m fucking starving.” Finally finding it, Goten watches the tense of Trunks’s jaw as he chews. He wants to catch the crumbs that fall out of Trunks’s mouth and eat the mushy rolled oats right off his tongue. Goten thinks he wants to take a chance on being in love with him.
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