Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Play Alongs ❯ Chocolate Cake ( Chapter 4 )

6. Chocolate Cake

Hey, it's me Vegetastan ☺ . Got a new play along for ya. Trunks: Hey Mom, can I ask you something? Mom: Sure, what is it? Trunks: How did you know you were in love with Papa?

Bulma momentarily stopped spreading the chocolate frosting over the cake she’d just baked for her husband and she looked at her son.

“Why do you ask?” She finally said, resuming her task.

“Well… Today is your wedding anniversary, right?”

“Yeah… And?”

“And… Every year I go to Goten’s place so you two can celebrate together…”

Bulma kept working on her cake, secretly wondering where her child was going with this. It was unlike Trunks to ask a lot of questions about her relationship with Vegeta, particularly about their early rocky years.

“So?”

“So, every year Goten’s mom asks me about you two. Like… I don’t know… It’s almost like she can’t believe you guys are in love or something…”

The hidden sorrow behind her son’s voice made her heart sink a little, and her anger at her discovery of Chichi’s nosiness didn’t help either.

‘Damn, Chichi…’

She was one to talk about love and romance…  

Her husband only married her in order to keep some stupid childhood promise he’d made without even knowing what marriage was really all about. Thankfully, it’d all worked out in the end for the two of them, but it wasn’t as if it’d been the ‘Romance of the Century’ either, certainly, not at the beginning.

For Dende’s sake! Goku even thought getting married had to do with food!

“Sweetie, come here. Sit down…” Bulma said softly, encouraging the boy to sit by her side. She guessed it was as good a time as any to discuss certain things with Trunks.

She quickly finished her work and she set the finished cake aside, peeking at the large bowl on the table, which still had some melted chocolate left in it.

“Wanna dip?” Bulma offered, playfully wiggling her eyebrows.

Trunks replied enthusiastically, without hesitation. “Yeah!”

Bulma chuckled, shaking her head as she walked to Capsule Corp.’s massive fridge to fetch some fresh strawberries. Living with a couple of Saiyans wasn’t always easy, but at least it wasn’t hard to figure out how to cheer them up: with lots of delicious food.

She set the strawberries on the table, quietly offering them to Trunks, who eagerly grabbed a juicy berry and happily dipped it into the chocolate as Bulma imitated his actions.

“So… Love, uh?”

“Yup!”

“Okay… Well…” Bulma started, taking another bite. “I’d say it wasn’t something that happened overnight, you know?”

The little boy scowled. “So, it wasn’t like in the movies?”

“In the movies?”

“Yeah…” Trunks shrugged. “Like, when the girl meets the guy and she knows she’s gonna marry him and stuff…”

The woman smiled knowingly. “You mean ‘love at first sight’, right?”

“I guess…”

“Mmm… No, Trunks. From my experience, love doesn’t really work that way.”

“It doesn’t?” Trunks asked, honestly surprised.

Bulma finished her strawberry, picking up another one and losing count of how many her son had already eaten.

“Nope. I think you have to get to know a person before you love them. I don’t believe you can really love someone you don’t know too well…”

There was a brief pause, and Trunks realized his mom was now deep in thought.

“I guess I knew I was in love with your dad sometime before I found out I was pregnant with you…” She finally concluded.

“Really?” The child enquired, raising his eyebrows. “So, you didn’t like him at first?”

“Oh, no! That’s not what I meant! If I hadn’t liked him I would have never invited him to live here! No… I guess… I guess what I mean is… You know your dad is a quiet man, right?”

“Uh-huh…” He agreed.

“So, that’s why it took longer for me to get to know him, I guess…”

Trunks swallowed a mouthful of berries before asking again.

“And why is that?”

“Why is what?”

“You know… Why is dad so quiet? Is it because he’s Saiyan?”

Bulma tilted her head to the side a little, knowing she had to be careful with how much information about Vegeta’s past she disclosed to her son. When Trunks was a baby and Vegeta finally agreed to stay on Earth and give their relationship and fatherhood a chance, she knew, even though her man had been too proud to discuss such things, that Vegeta was probably afraid of his son ending up hating him in the future, so she told him he’d only talk about his past with Trunks when the child was older and only if he felt comfortable discussing certain matters with him.

Interestingly enough, Bulma had never been truly scared of Trunks hating Vegeta when he’d finally discover his past. After all, if Mirai Trunks had ended up loving and respecting him so much without having spent a lot of time with him, she knew their Trunks, the one who’d actually been raised by a dad he fiercely admired, would undoubtedly forgive his father’s evil deeds when he was older.

“I think so, Trunks… I think a big part of it has to do with him being Saiyan. And, also… Well, your dad didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, so I guess it was hard for him at first to open up to people…”

“Papa had no friends?”

One look at Trunks’ sad frown told Bulma she’d just perhaps said too much…

“Hey! Come here!” Bulma asked invitingly, offering him a hug with open arms her son accepted greedily. She hugged him tightly and kissed his forehead, realizing that, even though Trunks wasn’t a small child anymore, he’d always be her little boy to her.

“Your dad grew up in Space, and it’s harder to make friends out there, that’s all…” She lied, after all, there’d be enough time for her son to discover how dark the Universe could be sometimes. Until then, she’d protect his innocence as much as she could, not that the child hadn’t already gone through hard times during the battle against Buu.  

“But then he came to Earth and we all welcomed him. And now he has lots of friends, right?”

Trunks smirked, so much like his father the resemblance was uncanny.

“He does…” He agreed.

Bulma held him closer, whispering in his ear. “And we all love him very much, don’t we?”

The boy blushed, embarrassed about disclosing his feelings towards his father in front of his mom.

Oh, yeah…

He was Vegeta’s child, after all…

“Moooom…” He whined as Bulma playfully ruffled his hair.

“We do love him! Now, be a good boy and bring your dad his cake, he’s been in the GR for too long and he needs to take a break anyway.”

Trunks cautiously held the massive chocolate cake his mom had baked for his dad, knowing just how much it must have meant for her since Bulma almost never cooked, always relying on their own private chefs to deal with all the cooking.

“Be careful, baby…” Bulma warned him tenderly.

“Mom?” Trunks asked again, already on his way out of the kitchen.

“Yeah?”

“Then when did you finally know you were in love with Papa?”

“Oh, right… Um… I guess I knew when I finally realized I’d be really sad if I ever had to live without him; that was also before I got pregnant with you,” she honestly replied.

It was the truth.

Despite the fact that it was their mutual physical attraction towards each other what started their sexual affair so many years ago, at some point around the time she discovered she was pregnant with Trunks, she finally had the courage to admit to herself she’d really fallen in love with the proud Saiyan Prince and, even though Vegeta was still in deep denial about their new, still very fragile relationship, she knew he’d already grown fond of her on some level even then.

All in all, Bulma liked to believe there’d been some kind of love involved during Trunks’ conception, and she unquestionably wanted her child to firmly believe that too.

“I see… Thanks Mom!”

“No problem, sweetie… Careful with that cake! And don’t drop the fork!” She cautioned as she saw the boy walking out into the garden in search of his father.

Once he reached his destination, Trunks knocked twice on the heavy gate of his dad’s beloved Gravity Room. Almost instantly, the buzzing noise ceased, signaling Vegeta had switched it off, and a very sweaty Saiyan opened the metal door.

“What is it, boy?” He asked, wiping off some of the sweat from his brow with a white towel and taking a large gulp of ice cold water with his other hand.

“Um, Mom asked to bring you this, she made it for you…”

One look at the sweet delicacy told Vegeta all he needed to know about what day it was.

“I see…” He replied, sitting on the stairs by the door and grabbing the cake, putting it carefully on his lap and picking up the fork his woman had also placed on the large plate. When he raised his gaze, he noticed Trunks still standing right in front of him, staring at him with intrigued eyes.

“Is there anything else you need, boy?”

“Uh? Um, no, that was all… I hope you like it, Papa!”

Vegeta assented in confirmation and just as his son was about to leave, he saw him turn around, asking him one final question.

“Papa?”

“Yes?”

“You have a lot of friends now, right?”

The Prince stopped chewing on his mouthful of cake for a moment, wondering what the Hell was the kid talking about now. Whatever it was, the expression on his face told him it was a serious question, so he pondered his words for a minute.

‘Friends.’

What a word…

He knew just how fond those damned earthlings were of their friendships and all of those strange, sentimental attachments and, yet, hadn’t he ended up becoming one of them anyway?

The closest thing to a ‘friend’ he’d had before he landed on Earth were Nappa and Raditz, and they were more like comrades to him, subjects of the Royal Crown, and if he was honest with himself, they basically stuck together because they were the only ones from their kind left.

Then, did he have any friends?

If the definition of a friend was someone who fought by your side and that you could rely on when things got ugly, then, much to his shame, he had to admit all these bizarre, ridiculous people had become his friends, so he assented.

“I do, boy. Now, why don’t you go to the kitchen and help your mother clean up?”

Trunks offered him the brightest smile, and he looked so relieved by his answer that now Vegeta knew he’d definitely have to ask Bulma what that whole friend questioning thing was all about later. He had the feeling she’d had a hand on it.

“Sure!” He yelled, running to the kitchen. “Have fun with Mom tonight!”

Vegeta drank some more water, paying close attention to the scene taking place now in their kitchen through its large glass windows. Trunks was, indeed, helping Bulma place all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher as she sat down, distractedly rubbing her belly. He noticed his wife had been doing that a lot ever since she’d found out she was pregnant again, and even though she wasn’t showing yet, she kept caressing her still flat tummy at all times. It was a miracle no one had noted her strange behavior yet. Bulma had insisted they kept it a secret for as long as they could, concerned about something potentially going wrong during the early stages. She was older now than she was when she conceived Trunks and he’d had a hard time convincing her about having another child.

He smirked, pleased to see his son was growing up to be a responsible young man, obeying him without question, though he knew Bulma had played a big role on Trunks becoming the kind-hearted kid he was. Without his mother’s presence around him, the child would have probably become the grumpy, miserable man he himself had been before the woman came into his life, smashing his barriers down and making him see and explore life in a way he never thought possible.

The warrior savored another bite of the delicious cake, secretly trying to imagine what kind of a surprise his mischievous little minx would have prepared for him tonight, and he wiped off his brow again with the back of his hand, looking at the summer’s bright blue sky and wondering how was it possible that someone like him ended up getting so damn lucky.

Yes, life was good for the Saiyan Prince…