Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Story Of You And Me ❯ Part Ten ( Chapter 16 )

Blue white starlight filters in through the big windows of the loft, robbing everything of any color but blue. I'm not sure what woke me and I listen to hear if the baby needs me.

The loft is as silent as a grave as I pad downstairs on bare feet. I barely sleep anymore, and I know he doesn't either. Too many times in the months since his birth I have gone to care for our son in the still of the night to see the shine of his open eyes on the other side of the room, staring at the ceiling.

Not for the first time as I pass Toran's crib to check on him, I steel my heart for the painful stab I feel every time I look down at his little face and see him. Gotenks. Toran looks so much like his father that it's almost like I had nothing to do with him at all, but he's still my son. The only proof Gotenks ever existed. It's been over a year since that fateful night, but I still wait for the day when it doesn't hurt to look at my own child. I look down expecting to see his small body sleeping peacefully, but the crib is empty. I gasp in surprise and panic, my eyes flying over the shadowed apartment looking for my child, but I don't see him.

I cross the room at a run, intending to shake Goten out of the stupor he's always in to help me find our son, but I pull up short when I reach Goten's bedside. Goten is asleep for once, his body curled around the much smaller form of our son. The starlight highlights the chiseled muscles of Goten's torso, but it also shows me how gaunt he still is. How much farther he still has to go to be the man he was before Trunks died.

The blueness of the starlight makes the strange intricate pattern of the fusion symbol that adorns Goten's shoulder and arm look deep purple. Tentatively I reach my hand out toward him, not sure why I'm doing it. In my mind I can see the complete pattern, the exotic design that had graced the smooth flawless flesh of a living dream.

Slowly, I sink to the edge of the bed beside them, my fingertips hovering over the incomplete pattern. I don't notice the tears that are running down my face until one drips off my chin to fall on my chest, running under the edge of my nightgown. I'm sure just more postpartum depression, but I have to choke back a sob when I at last rest my fingers on Goten's fusion marks. His skin is cool from the room, but my fingers remember hotter. Like touching fire... that's what Gotenks was.

But Gotenks can never be again. I gave my body and my heart to a lie. Now I have to live with the consequences. We both do.

Circumstances have thrown Goten and I together. In the dark silence of the middle of the night is when I most often feel our future together yawning open in front of me like an endless chasm and I wonder if we can truly make this work. Or are we blithely closing our eyes and denying that we are little more than strangers now, the common denominator of Toran tying our futures together. Goku talked about destiny, but destiny feels like a cold hand around my heart that this is the best it will ever be. That despite the fact that there are three of us, I am alone.

Toran stirs in his sleep. He's a restless baby; always moving, even in the womb he never gave me a moment's peace. Leaning over I carefully remove him from Goten's embrace. I don't want Toran to wake him, not now that he is finally asleep. As I stand, my sleeping son cradled in my arms, Goten's sleep becomes troubled. I can hear him moaning softly.

"Don't leave... please don't go." Goten murmurs. He sounds so lost.

After tucking Toran back into his crib, I hesitate before turning back to the stairs, my eyes falling on the big bed across the room and the figure that slumbers there. He's even more restless now, as if nightmares plague him. And before I know what I have done I am at his bedside again. Before I can consider all that happened to me in this very bed, I pull back the sheet and slip in beside Goten.

The moment he feels me beside him his arms go around me, just like they did with our son. I lie on my side letting him hold me, gazing at his handsome gaunt face. There was so much of Goten in the way Gotenks looked. The eyes were Trunks', but everything else - chin, nose, lips - were Goten's. It's obvious to me now as I look into his sleeping face. How can I still be in love with and mourn a man who never really existed? How can I be in bed with a man that I share a son with and yet have never been intimate with? How can any of this be real?

Our faces are so close that I can feel Goten's soft sleeping breath on my cheek. He's like a child now. A child in a man's body, and I know that he needs me as much as my son does. But what does that leave me?

Goten has me held so tightly to him, like I was a teddy bear or some other means of comfort, that I cannot even get my arms free. One of my hands is curled under my cheek and I slide it free to gently touch his cheek while he sleeps. We're both so lost, so broken, I sometimes feel that we will never mend. The piece of the puzzle that was Trunks is gone now, leaving us with edges that don't fit together. Maybe I am doing us both a disservice by being here. Perhaps Toran's and my presence is hurting Goten more than helping. How can he ever get better if he is constantly reminded of what he has lost?

I lift my eyes from where I have been staring at Goten's chin to see his dark eyes are open and gazing into mine. Heat flushes to my cheeks as I wonder what he must think of me for just climbing into his bed with him uninvited. Neither of us says a word as our eyes hold each other's.

Embarrassed I start to pull back, to withdraw from the pain and longing I see in his eyes. There is so much need there it overwhelms me. I can never be to him what Trunks was. I couldn't even begin to try. Goten's arms tighten slightly as he feels me pulling away. But it is a gentle pleading motion, not a rough command and I still.

"Don't go. Don't leave me."

I look up at him, almost imagining I heard those softly breathed words. His eyes are wet, liquid and shining in the starlight. I haven't seen him cry. I know he must have, no one can have their heart ripped out while they are still living like he has and not, but until that moment I haven't seen him shed a tear. A crystal drop sticks a moment to his eyelashes and then slides down his cheek to his nose.

Goten shifts his arm under mine, pulling me even closer until our chests are pressed together. The thin cotton of my nightgown is the only thing that separates us. I can feel the warmth of him, the beating of his heart against mine, sounding stronger than it has before. With nowhere to put my arm I wrap it around him. I feel like I am caught in a memory, as Goten holds me it's almost like I can feel Gotenks with me again.

Only once, only one time in my life was I ever with a man and it changed me forever. Gotenks took my heart with him that night. I'd barely known the touch of a man and I was already a mother. I trembled slightly to be in Goten's arms. I should have felt comforted, or comforting. But being this close to him only made me feel hollow. It reminded me of everything I didn't have. Everything I would never have with the man I had loved.

"I need you."

My startled eyes meet his. I know the softly whispered plea came from Goten's lips - I felt the soft caress of his breath against my cheek as he said it. But the echo, the echo is there in my mind. Gotenks saying, 'I need you so bad, Marron'… Would I never be free of his ghost? Fat tears of my own fill my eyes at last and I shake with silent sobs. It's hard, so very hard to have to be strong all the time for him, for our son. To pretend that something fundamental hasn't been torn from my soul as well. I know that it's worse for Goten, but the tiny hurtful - selfish - part of my heart wants to know, what about me? This wasn't the future I envisioned for myself, my destiny entwined with that of a man who may never love me. I admit that I'm still young and naïve enough to want to be loved. Like a woman. Not like the nurse and mother I've become.

"Shhhhh..." Goten exhales, his breath still a soft whisper against my cheek. We're so close now I can't look him in the face and focus. Tears blur my vision and I can only close my eyes, but the memories live there. There's no place to go. I shake harder in his arms, not wanting his comfort, yet soaking it up like a sponge. I don't need to be reminded; yet I crave it like water or air. When his hand slides up my back to gently cradle my skull in his palm, pressing my face against his neck it's the final crack. Like shattered glass the façade I've been holding together falls apart. The most mournful and agonizing wail tearing itself from my throat, muffled in Goten's neck thankfully. I can't handle Toran at the moment if I wake him up with my cries.

Hot tears scald our skin as they pour from my eyes onto Goten's neck, and I can feel his tears as they wet my hair behind my ear. His broad shoulders trembling with emotion too as we unleash our grief on each other like we never have before. And it is that moment that I realize... I need him too.

"Don't you die on me, Goten," I whisper to him fiercely. "Don't you dare leave me too. I'll never forgive you."

I realize that is the most I have said to him in days. All I have been doing is treating him like a child, cajoling him to get up and start living again. Taking every miniscule improvement in him in stride and pushing for - demanding - more, lest he regress. Trying to get him more involved in the care of his son. Toran is the only thing that brings the spark of life back to Goten's eyes. I realize how very much I have missed that spark. It makes me remember the days when I first lived with he and Trunks, and what a gentle and caring person Goten was. Despite everything that has happened, Goten was my friend, and I want my friend back.

Goten turns his head so he can look into my eyes and the motion nearly makes our lips meet. His wet eyes meet mine for a moment before they slide closed again. "I won't, Marron, but it's so hard. So hard without... him."

"I know," I breathe back, our lips nearly touching. Even though we are speaking of very different hims. "I feel like a big part of me is gone." I confess. Goten's dark eyes slip open again.

"We're only half now. But we can be whole... together." He says softly. His voice is shaky, rough from grief and disuse. I don't know how to respond to that in any other way than to tilt my chin up to meet his lips as he presses them against mine. The touch is so gentle, so tentative and fragile, like a wrong breath could tear the gossamer connection between us. This frail bridge we are building between desolation and hope.

Again and again we lightly kiss, and with each touch of our lips I can't help but feel as if I am somehow pouring life back into him. Like I am wearing away at the rock, to expose the thirsting desert within him. That place within him where Trunks lived, now so raw and empty, and yet so needing of what I can give him. It would be cruel to turn away from him now. And I have never been cruel.

My unused lips are soon swollen from Goten's gentle, yet insistent kisses. I remain soft and pliant in his arms, yielding and non-threatening as I let him do what he needs to feel whole again. He moves back from me slightly, enough to take the hem of my short nightgown and pull it over my head. I bite my lower lip at the feel of Goten's warm chest as it presses against my bare breasts. Trying with all my might to forget that night with Gotenks. I remind myself that I can't live in the past, to do so robs me of my future. I tip my head up to share that insight with the other person who would most benefit from it, but before I can speak Goten lowers his head to mine again. Drinking of my mouth deeply like a man dying of thirst.

The palms of his hands are feather light on my skin as he skims them slowly up and down my spine. And tentatively I place my hands on his chest, touching him too as my fingertips caress his smooth skin - flawless save for a ragged scar over his heart. I slide my hand over his shoulder and realize that my fingers are again on his fusion symbols; only this time I trace them with a fingertip. There are still tears in my eyes as I finally accept that there is no way I will ever see the completed pattern again. A truly grievous loss.

"They were so beautiful…" I say softly, my voice cracking slightly as I lean on my elbow beside him so that I can see the marks. I feel Goten's fingers in my hair as he cups my face with his palm.

"I never saw them," he tells me.

And like they have a will of their own my fingers finish the pattern, drawing Trunks' part of the design onto his skin from memory, my fingernails leaving a ghost of a mark behind.

But when Goten pulls me toward him to kiss me again, I can tell that something has changed. Comfort has alchemized into a gentle and insistent passion. It's not the all-consuming inferno that burned me to the core the first time I knew a man's touch on my body. But I still feel myself responding to Goten's slow and tender caresses, awakening in me a smoldering coal of desire. I answer in kind when he rolls me onto my back by arching my body to offer my breasts to his soft slow burning kisses. Twining my fingers in his dark unruly hair as he kisses my belly above the edge of my panties. He doesn't seem to care that it's no longer concave like it had been before Toran was born. I still haven't lost that last little bit of padding from when I carried him.

"Soft…" Goten murmurs against my belly, resting his cheek against it. I pet his hair as best as I can reach as he lays there motionless for a minute, letting him dictate the pace. Not just because I don't know what to do, but also because I don't know what he needs... I can only follow his lead.

Just when I think that perhaps Goten has decided to fall asleep on me, I feel his fingers hook in the sides of my panties. I gasp soundlessly in surprise, but I raise my hips for him, letting him draw them down my legs and off. He drops them off the side of the bed near my nightgown and I make a note of where they are, for when I will return to my own bed. As if he knows what I'm thinking, Goten cradles my face in his hands.

"Stay with me," he whispers. He kisses me again, and this time I feel the first hesitant touch of his tongue against my lips. I open my mouth to receive it even as I part my thighs to let him settle into the cradle of my hips. The heat of his body is incredible, even through the cotton of his pajama bottoms. "I want you to stay…"

His tongue stroking mine, the hard hot length of him that presses against my belly through his pajamas, the contrast between his languid pace and the raw raging need I can sense in him make my own body ache with longing. I may be inexperienced, but evolution has made sure that my body knows what it wants, even if my brain doesn't. Goten groans softly against my mouth and my body responds to the sound with a rush of dampness between my thighs.

All my questions: Is this right? Will we regret this? Is this really what you need? Are all conveyed in his quietly whispered name. His eyes hold mine as he raises his hips to pull down his pajama pants and kick them to the snarl of blankets at the foot of the bed. Giving me his answer without words.

"Oh!" I gulp when he lowers his naked body to press against mine. That hot, hard, persistent part of him nearly branding me as it brushes between my legs. I swallow nervously, wondering if it will hurt the second time I accept a man into my body, or if giving birth to Toran has remedied that. Before I can wonder too long, Goten reaches down between us, taking himself in hand to guide his way to my wet and waiting sheath. He kisses me slowly, his tongue flicking gently against my lips and teeth as he pushes carefully into my body, not stopping until he is buried inside me to the hilt.

"Marron…" Goten hisses under his breath, his eyes closing briefly against the pleasure. A pleasure I thankfully share as there is no pain this time, only a stretching that quickly subsides. I feel deliciously full of him, where before there was an empty void within me, and I wrap my thighs around his hips as Goten starts to slowly thrust into me. A gentle and luscious friction building between us as we leisurely rock our bodies against one another. "God, yes…" Goten breathes again, his eyes still shut and his face contorted in pleasure. I wonder what he is seeing behind his eyes as we make love. But I am too lost in the moment, in the feel of having him inside me... so like Gotenks and yet so different... to care overly much. I bite my lower lip against the soft cries of pleasure I can feel at the back of my throat, afraid of waking our nearby son. I don't want anything to ruin this moment.

The bed rocks gently as I lift my hips to his, and he answers my instinctive plea with more pressure. Thrusting deeper into me. I don't know what to do with my hands so I let them fall to rest on the pillow beside my face palms up. I feel completely open and vulnerable to him. So close and yet a million miles away from him too. He opens his eyes and looks down on me from where he is propped up on his arms. The starlight touches him with silver and shadow, half his face in light, and half in darkness. But both of his eyes shine as they stare into mine. I reach up with one hand to brush it over his lips softly, before raising my shoulders off the bed to kiss him.

Lowering his body to rest on me, he laces his fingers with mine on the pillow beside my head. His face equal with mine as he locks gazes with me, pumping into me with slow deep strokes. Rubbing that neglected part inside of me that makes the need start to build. My breathing comes faster as I can feel the muscles of my sheath squeezing him, wanting to milk him of his climax even as I reach my own. A smile touches his lips and he squeezes my hands in response, his hips still pistoning against mine steadily as we glide together in perfect rhythm.

He lowers his face to my throat and I can hear him whispering my name over and over as he picks up his pace. I can feel the pressure building in me unbearably, like a balloon with too much air. I need to burst. I can't hold back my cries any longer and Goten covers my mouth with his, letting me sob my release into his kiss. My fingers and sheath squeeze convulsively against him and I clamp my thighs tighter around his hips as I climax.

Goten groans loudly against me, his breath sawing against my neck as he thrusts quickly to his own finish, filling me with his warmth. He collapses on top of me, his face buried in the crook of my neck as he stretches his arms up straight, taking mine with until I am pinned under him, my arms over my head and my legs wrapped around him as we remain joined.

I can feel the throb and pulse of him against the mouth of my womb, softly countering the pulse in my own ears. I stare past his shoulder to the ceiling above, counting the shadow panes from the window. The occasional passing car throws up a reflection that crawls across the blueness with soft white light. As our breathing slows, mine remains shallow; I cannot take a full breath with his weight on me. His softening member slips subtly from my body, but he doesn't move.

"Goten." I gasp, my ribs aching. His hands squeeze mine in acknowledgment and he reluctantly rolls onto his side, keeping me with him. Pressing me ever tighter to his body.

"I don't want this to end... this moment." He tells me softly. "I haven't felt so close to anyone in a long time... not since…" he swallows, "I didn't think I ever could again. Please, Marron. Let me just stay like this." He pleads, and I acquiesce. Rolling onto my back to let him curl his body around mine. Holding his dark head to my breast as he wraps his arms around my waist.

"Thank you, Marron," he whispers softly a few minutes later, and I rest my face against the top of his head. His coarse dark hair is tickling my cheek as I look across the expanse of the loft to our son's crib. Our reason for going on, but now I have hope that it'll be together from now on. As partners... lovers... friends.

Neither of us has to face the future alone.

"Thank you, Goten…" I reply.