Work Text:
Oh, shit, are the first two words that materialize in Trunks’s mind as he kneels at the toilet in his office bathroom and promptly retches everything he’s had to eat today—which isn’t much, now that he’s thinking about it, I’m really screwed this time. He slumps over the toilet bowl as he chokes the last bit of sustenance completely out of him, and then summons the strength of all his ancestors to slam the lid closed before flushing. His head is spinning, and his stomach is painfully empty, now; though it feels like he’ll just puke all over again if he tries to eat anything. The gut-wrenching hunger does absolutely nothing to invoke his usually ravenous appetite. Trunks groans pathetically as he counts the throbs of his migraine in his temples.
“This is just fucking great,” he grumbles, tearing a piece of toilet paper off the roll and swiping at his lips with it before balling it up and chucking it into the garbage bin. “The hell ’m I supposed to do now?”
He debates calling his secretary, and then immediately backtracks on the plan—he doesn’t want to be seen by her in all his post-throw-up-session glory. He kind of doesn’t want to be seen by anybody right now, actually, but his body is so stupidly numb and he needs to be in a bed immediately. Expeditiously. Another achy wave courses through him and he hangs his head low between his knees with a pitiful sound, belatedly remembering his father’s insistent nagging on how he should be keeping up with maintaining his training—no slacking just because he’s half alien and a superhuman hybrid.
“Fucking sucks when the old man is right,” he says under his breath, groping for his cellphone in his pocket. It’s one in the morning, and he’s pretty sure his mother is fast asleep. He’d feel bad about bothering her—it’s important that she gets her rest, these days. Bulla is also crossed off the list of his potential saviours, because she would probably take selfies over his passed out body. That leaves…
“He’s never going to shut up about this,” Trunks mutters, punching his father’s phone number into his keypad and putting the call on speaker. The odds that Vegeta actually answers is split clean fifty-fifty, and if he does, he’s no doubt going to be pissed about it. Whatever. Trunks can put his pride aside for one day; an ability he triumphs his father in completely.
Vegeta actually ends up picking up on the second ring, which is the biggest surprise of the day, honestly. And Trunks has had to deal with a lot of surprises today. None of them were pleasant. “Trunks?” Vegeta’s voice comes out like it always does: gruff and solid, perpetually accusing. “What do you want?”
“A hello would be nice,” Trunks gripes, but he can hear the obvious relief settling heavily into his voice at the fact that Vegeta had actually answered.
“Yes, yes, spare me your sarcasm. Now what is it?” Vegeta demands. Then: “Do you even know what fucking time it is, boy?”
Boy. Trunks is pushing twenty-five, and Vegeta still calls him that, like a broken record. “Yeah, whatever, sue me. Were you asleep? Sorry if I woke you.” He’s met with jarring silence on the other side of the line. “Dad?”
“You don’t sound good,” Vegeta says, and then Trunks hears rustling in the background. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I was getting there,” Trunks interjects. His eyelids are beginning to feel so heavy. “I’m kinda… like I just threw up? And now I can’t get up.”
“Where are you, exactly? Your office?” Vegeta’s voice is deceptively cool, but Trunks can hear the slight quaver of his panic behind his front. Funny old man. “Trunks, answer me.”
“Calm down, I’m—fine,” he coughs, nearly gagging through the lie. “Uh. In the bathroom at my office, though.”
“You sound anything but fine,” Vegeta hisses. “Foolish boy. I’ll be there in less than a minute, so stay put.”
And then he hangs up. Trunks drops his phone into his lap and decides the floor tiled floor looks really, really comfortable, so naturally, he collapses forward and lays down, using his forearm as a makeshift pillow. His ears feel like they’ve been stuffed full of cotton and the back of his throat is beginning to sting, and all he can do is whine like a kid into the sleeve of his suit and curl up into a ball. He flinches when the door swings violently open, blaring the harsh lights of his office right into his face. His father is staring down at him like he’s furious enough to kill him, wearing his work out shorts and probably the first shirt he’d pulled out of the drawer—baby blue button up—and then his expression softens when Trunks wheezes.
“Why the fuck are you—?!” Vegeta’s voice is haggard, like he’s just run a marathon. “Why aren’t the lights on in here?!”
“Too bright,” Trunks answers intelligently, resisting the urge to bury his face in Vegeta’s lap when he crouches down to his level. “You really came…”
“Obviously,” Vegeta grits out, eyes raking all over Trunks and assessing the damage, clearly out of his depth. Gashes and bruises and other similarly brutal wounds earned in doing battle are Vegeta’s forte, not the cough and cold, feverish and faintish, human type of illness. Vegeta’s large hand comes down on Trunks’s shoulder. “You cannot walk?”
“No,” Trunks says hoarsely. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, it’s pissing me off,” Vegeta says, using his fabricated anger as a guise for his concern, but his hands are shaking as he cups Trunks’s face like he’s made of porcelain. “You need water.”
Trunks’s eyes are starting to droop closed. “Maybe.”
“Damn it, boy, stay awake,” Vegeta mutters, slapping him lightly on the cheek. “Water and food. That’s what you need, first.”
Trunks makes a pained sound at the very mention of eating something, and Vegeta looks so horrified it’s almost comical. “Don’t wanna. I’ll just throw it up again.”
“Don’t be childish. A Saiyan who does not eat is a dead Saiyan,” Vegeta scolds him, feeling for his waist and then hefting him up with a strong arm, tilting in unison with him when Trunks’s head drops onto his shoulder. “Can you hold your head up?”
“No,” Trunks wails, burrowing his face into the nook between Vegeta’s neck and shoulder, breathing in his familiar, woodsy scent. “Ughhhh.”
“This is all because you keep”—Vegeta hoists him up so he’s properly wound around his back, standing up and walking out of the bathroom, kicking the door closed behind them—“holing yourself up in this damned office without giving yourself a break. You come from a warrior race. You must keep yourself sharp if you want to survive.”
Trunks tightens his arms around his neck. “Please stop lecturing me, my head hurts too much.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, imbecile. What have you had to eat today?”
When Trunks is suspiciously quiet, Vegeta squeezes the underside of his knee hard enough to actually hurt and maybe crack the bone.
“Ow!” Trunks yelps.
“Answer me,” Vegeta persists, unsympathetic.
“I don’t know. A bagel,” Trunks says, and he actually feels the spike of his father’s ki with his unbridled rage at the response.
“A bagel, he says,” Vegeta sneers. Trunks’s jaw drops when he shatters the glass of the window near his desk open with a precise kick.
“Holy shit! What the fuck are you doing?!” Trunks screeches, meeting his father’s monotonous stare.
“This is the quickest way out,” Vegeta says, plain and simple. “Your mother can have someone fix it later. Now hold on tight.”
Trunks surrenders to his father’s one a.m. logic with a halfhearted shrug and buries his face in the back of his neck, locking his ankles at Vegeta’s front as they fly like that. Trunks can feel his head spinning again with the sudden altitude, swallowing the nausea as he tries to pace his breaths. He doesn’t complain out loud—he hasn’t ever complained to his father about anything, really. His oldest memories of Vegeta are an imposing figure, towering over him in the Gravity Room, large as a mountain and uncaring, at least outwardly, if he hit him too hard in training. Trunks has long outgrown him, surpassed the threshold of his height, but that feeling of being smaller than him will never fully go away, he thinks.
… Oh. They’re going slower, now. Considerably slower. It’s less than half the speed that Vegeta usually flies at, and Trunks can feel his stomach settle itself with the relaxing change.
“If you need something, just say it,” Vegeta grumbles, and Trunks’s lips twitch into a meagre grin.
“Soft old man,” he retorts. The fact that his father doesn’t shoot anything back is a clear sign of how true the statement is.
They’re back home within seconds, and Vegeta’s yanking his suit jacket off, pulling his shoes off his feet as soon as they’re inside. Trunks doesn’t have any control over himself—it’s as if Vegeta is walking his legs for him when he steers him to the living room and shoves him to rest on a couch. Trunks closes his eyes and only opens them when something cool presses against his cheek.
“Drink it,” Vegeta barks, not moving an inch until Trunks takes the glass of water from his hands. “Finish it.”
“Ugh,” Trunks says for what must be the millionth time today, but he obeys anyway.
Vegeta sits down on the sofa’s arm rest as he takes the empty glass from Trunks’s hand. “Ready to eat something?”
Trunks whines into the velvet cushion. “No, please,” he whimpers, sounding so much like a little boy he should be ashamed, but he can’t find the energy to even muster up the feeling. “Can’t.”
“Stupid boy,” Vegeta chides, voice oozing gentleness as he cards his fingers through Trunks’s hair. “Fine. But I’m making you eat a full breakfast tomorrow, and you are to stay home from work for at least a couple days. However long it will take to get this sickness out of you.”
“What?” Trunks squeaks, ducking his head up. “No, dad, I can’t—”
“You can, and you will,” Vegeta growls, eyes flashing in the dark, a lethal reminder of the steady power gap between them even now. “Do not defy me.”
“You don’t get it,” Trunks groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It’s— they need me, there’s so much shit they can’t get done if I’m not overseeing things—”
“Those incompetent fools can learn to handle it themselves,” Vegeta huffs, hand curled protecively around the curve of Trunks’s head. “You won’t do them any good if you’re fainting left and right, anyway.”
Well. That’s—yeah, that’s a good point, actually. Trunks will chalk the cause for his lack of desire to argue up to being that his father is saying something he agrees with for once, and not to the lulling, comforting drag of those blunt, ki-singed nails across his scalp, making him drowsy like a spell.
“M’kay,” Trunks slurs, taking a breath. “Can you carry me to bed?”
“What, do you want me to hold your hand when we cross the street, too?” Vegeta scoffs, even as he’s gathering Trunks and all his long limbs to his chest expertly anyway. “Overgrown idiot. How did you get this tall, anyway?”
“Gee, thanks,” Trunks mumbles, letting himself melt into Vegeta’s familiarly warm chest. That feeling of being smaller than him will never fully go away. It really is true. Trunks is eternally grateful for it, now. “Must have been mom’s superior height genes.”
“What did you— you know what, I’ll let that slide for today, you brat,” Vegeta grunts, trudging up the stairs and cruising right into Trunks’s room. Trunks feels incredibly ridiculous, being tucked in at his grown age by his herculean beast of a father, but Vegeta doesn’t seem to mind it at all. He even draws the covers up to Trunks’s chin the way he knows he likes it.
“Hey,” Trunks starts, as Vegeta is smoothing over the wrinkles in the blanket.
“What,” Vegeta hums. His gaze is so uncharacteristically soft and a little unsettling to meet. Trunks isn’t really used to being the target of that thawed-bare stare.
“Thanks for picking up the phone,” Trunks mutters, blinking slowly like a cat. “Didn’t think you would.”
Vegeta is hovering over him and giving him the same look he used to when Trunks would writhe in pain at his feet, laced with guilt and ever ready to help him stumble his way back up. “Well, I’ve been—” Vegeta rolls his shoulders. Looks away. Works his jaw. Looks back. “I figured this would happen eventually. You’ve been working too many late nights, so I…”
Trunks’s eyes go wide. “You—you’ve been waiting up at night in case I needed you to, like, come rescue me from the office? ’Cuz you knew I’d get all faintish like a lame-o?”
“Don’t put it that way,” Vegeta mumbles, sighing harsh through his teeth, the tips of his ears flaring telltale red. “Quit smiling. I’ll slap you.”
“Aww, you are such a sap,” Trunks teases. “Love you too, dad. You know, since I know you’d rather die than say it first.”
“Shut up.” Vegeta’s turning around, but not before he pats Trunks firmly on the chest over the comforter. “Go to sleep. And don’t even think about sleeping past noon.”
“Yes, sir,” Trunks giggles, eyes fluttering easily closed when Vegeta glides his calloused fingers right over the lids. “G’night.”
“Goodnight, son,” Vegeta chuckles, and the sound of his heavy footsteps is almost like a lullaby Trunks falls right on asleep to.