Archive of Our Own

I

Lately, the waters have been mellower, like they know nothing is pulling at them now that the moon has been destroyed. Like they know they have no master, no lover, no home anymore. It’s a bittersweet parallel to the way things feel on the planet of the lord of worlds— muted. Unworried. Underwater. Or maybe that’s just where Yamcha is, water rushing into his lungs and reality rushing into his head. Where is he? Where’s Bulma? Where are Tien and Chiaotzu? Where’s Goku? What about Vegeta, is it to be believed, he’s on Earth and he’s going to be living in the compound, where’s Bulma’s heart, being waterlogged his arms don’t want to move, to push against the persuasive clutch of the water, a lover, he can hardly breathe, he can’t believe he did that!! on King Kai’s planet, and he was dead, he was dead, he died, God the things Gohan’s had to see—

He pulls himself up out of the water and onto shore. Lays there, lungs heaving.

When he finds everyone else, they cheer.

__________________________

733 was one of the warmest years on record. People consoled themselves in that heat by dripping into one another, hot, wet, sweat and exhaustion, a warm, warm love. Yamcha was born under that unforgiving sun, a strange curse. The sting of the desert heat, the sand in a wound. Yamcha crying loudly, and an open mother crying too.

He knows that now no one would believe that their dear friend used to be a desert bandit, and a good desert bandit. Their city boy pretty boy, baseball playing failed martial artist weak willed, too-kind-for-his-own good friend, stealing to live in the desert? And with Pu’ar no less? Well, no surprise why he gave up on that life, at least!

But nothing has ever beaten the vision of the desert at sunset, or the dizzying number of stars in the sky at night, or the heady wine of pulling off a heist without being hurt, without Pu’ar getting hurt. Not for Yamcha. Sometimes he still dreams about that provincial life. But he never did go back.

He never did go back. Even in the messiness of their parting— when Bulma started to show— he never went back. On again and off again as they were. As much as he had learned to keep looking ahead, to never disrespect the small miracle of his life, he couldn’t— he couldn’t return with his tail tucked between his legs. He couldn’t do that to Pu’ar. Not after fighting for civilization, his desperate clawing for a comfortable life.

So when Bulma kicks him out for good, he knows that his only option is to find another place to live in West City.

Yamcha’s legal last name is Briefs. Let it be known that children have no foresight. It had been necessary to enroll in school and Bulma, in her genius, had said so casually, “Why don’t you just take my name?” It’s helpful now in finding an apartment. Yamcha doesn’t allow himself to dwell on the way he didn’t have his own to write down, the shadow of that relationship filling in the space on the application, and instead reminds himself of his birthday. 320733. Six numbers. Not many fighters even have that.

__________________________

There were bugs in Kame house all summer, small moths and sweet beetles attracted to light, too little to bother anybody. It was much more bearable than Kung Pao Rock but still made Yamcha’s gut ache with remembering. His home in the desert didn’t have windows or doors and sometimes he’d wake up with a scorpion on the wall over his bed, his reflexes waking him up before it skittered into his sheets. Sometimes other, larger things, birds or lizards or snakes or animals looking to burrow.

Krillin’s memories of the place are full of endless food, much of it to keep up with Goku and all of it so indulgent, cream top milk and beer and cheese and eggs and fish and rice and meat, all sorts of meat. It had felt awfully different from the shrine but still fed Krillin the satisfaction of being with people all day every day; having a schedule and helping people, doing milk runs and delivering mail and tending to the earth; and his first real connections with people in a life of his own, being with Master Roshi and Goku.

The only thing that’s the same when they come back is the endless sound of the waves and the dampness of the house. After Frieza there’s this coldness that hangs in the air. Yamcha thinks flippantly that it’s just the realization that being able to come back from death doesn’t mean it’s actually fun to do. That’s the thought that’s burrowed into a corner of his mind when he lands on Master Roshi’s island. Night has fallen. The waves should bring peace. He doesn’t have to knock anymore.

“Oh, hey!” Krillin smiles to him from his place at the table in the living room, where Goku is already sitting and eating peanuts. Krillin smiling, Goku waving to him, beer cans on the table— it almost feels good. But that’s a feeling that’s been harder to hang onto, and when he sits down next to Goku he feels that cold wave again. Krillin’s eyes don’t quite meet anyone’s and Goku’s smile is a new one, one Yamcha hasn’t gotten used to yet. Yamcha looks at the table and takes some peanuts.

“It’s good to see y'all,” he says, eats a peanut. “What were y’all up to before I showed up? Started partying without me?” He jibes, nodding to the few empty beer cans on the table, and Krillin chuckles. It’s one of the few times they’ve been able to get together since Goku came back to Earth. They invited Piccolo— not interested— and tried to invite Tien— couldn’t reach him. Krillin shot down Vegeta before Goku could even suggest it [“He’s still… weird,” was all Krillin could offer, eyes not meeting Goku’s, unaware that Goku wouldn’t deny him this small thing].

“Just warming up,” Krillin says, grinning. “What you been up to, Yamcha?” Yamcha fills his mouth with peanuts just as Krillin finishes his question. What has he been up to? Trying to be normal. Trying to remember what it’s like to be a person. Trying to train. Trying to ignore what’s been happening right under his nose. Not as if he’d ever truly had any control over Bulma, or the compound, or any of Capsule Corp. He supposes the answer is that he’s been very busy being a lingering guest. But he doesn’t feel like this kickback is the place to lay out all of his everlasting relationship woes.

“Ohh, I’ve just been training, trying to get ready for the end of the world,” Yamcha says, and the humor he attempts must not land because Krillin chuckles nervously and his eyes shift to Goku for a moment. One of his tells for as long as Yamcha has known him.

“Yeah, we’ve all been training, can only hope it goes well. Goku and I were talking about what happened with Frieza, actually,” Krillin clumsily changes the subject, but luckily Yamcha is very interested.

“Yeah? Well loop me in, what the hell happened out there?” Yamcha asks, leaning in with his elbow on the table. He had only gotten bits and pieces from King Kai when the lord was feeling generous.

“Actually, I didn’t get to see the best part!” Krillin says proudly, and Yamcha is struck by just how much he believes in Goku. They both look at Goku then, who looks a bit embarrassed.

“Hehe, well as you know I can go further than just Saiyan now,” he starts. “That happened when Krillin died.”

It hangs in the air.

Goku breaks the silence to amend, “Well not died, but was killed. By Frieza.” Krillin goes to laugh it off but can’t, his eyes trained on Goku’s face and a bit beyond, his mouth open stupidly. Where do we go from this? It’s all been laid on the table but also nothing at all.

“How did you feel?” Yamcha blurts before he can even think about it. He has the wherewithal to be mortified, but there’s something about the night. About the house. It’s made him bold. He reaches for a beer, pops the tab, takes a swig. “… About Krillin dying, I mean,” he clarifies, then adds, “and going Super Saiyan, I guess. Defeating Frieza.”

Goku’s quiet, his eyes focused on the table. He’s in a gi, looks like an earthling. His expression is all human.

“It… felt… you called my name,” Goku finally says, and looks at Krillin, then looks away. Krillin looks hurt, but like he doesn’t want to tell him something very Krillin-esque, like You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Looks like he couldn’t say it, looks like he needs to know, too. “I just… I couldn’t keep you safe again. I had failed to keep someone I care about safe again. I felt like I had to make it right. I had to fix it. But how do you fix someone dying, without the dragon balls? I felt like…” like there was nothing I could do. Who needs telepathy when it echoes so often in Krillin’s and Yamcha’s minds.   

You get all the time in the world to think about life in the moment of your death. It’s not that time slows down, it’s that your brain speeds up — your adrenaline spikes — your blood rushes when you die like this — in the middle of a battle — in the middle of an explosion — your body filled with oxygen from your desperate breaths — your heart pounding — your body expanding — your eyes can’t see. Your mind takes over and you might see your loved ones, or just all your regrets. For Yamcha, it was one and the same.

He had been with some of his loved ones. That was a regret, knowing what death does to a person and not wanting to imprint that on the people he cared about. Yamcha saw his loved ones. He thought of Bulma, he thought of Pu’ar. He regretted not saying goodbye. Then he didn’t regret anything at all.

He didn’t regret anything at all because every thought that was lacing tension through his muscles melted away like butter over chicken. He was dying, he was standing in a lobby. Suddenly his worries felt worlds away, and he would’ve supposed they were if he could hold onto a thought for more than a few moments at a time. King Enma processed him and he stood there. Then, in not a blinding flash of light but rather a small glowing wake, Chiaotzu was there. And that was death.

In his waking life Yamcha remembers saying something to Chiaotzu but he doesn’t know what it was. Then Tien appeared and Yamcha was hoping for something, something he couldn’t pin down in death with his thoughts trapped in some clouded sphere, but which he now knows was comfort. He was looking for comfort. But Tien had raced to Chiaotzu, folding him into his arms, weeping. Then. Nothing. Tien had pulled away and looked around like he couldn’t remember why he was crying.

That’s what draws Yamcha to the question now. How did it feel? How did you process it? Sometimes he doesn’t recognize himself. He knows that Bulma doesn’t know what to do. There’s a certain glue that comes with dying together and saving the world together, or maybe it’s even just searching for the dragon balls and making a wish together that does it. But is it strong enough to withstand death? Is the soul elastic enough, are the tenuous ties humans make to one another enough?

Maybe if he had known that that night with Goku and Krillin would be the last time they would all feel so close, so equal, maybe he would have savored it more. The taste of salty peanuts and flat beer, the tiredness of spending a night with your friends, exposed.

__________________________

“I forgot to tell you before but cool scars, Yamcha!”

They’re at the Sanctuary. The sky up here is endless in a way that he’s never experienced before, surrounded on all sides. The air is cool and they’re resting between bouts of sparring, him and Krillin and Tien and Yajirobe and Chiaotzu. Yamcha grins at Krillin. He’s trying to keep this new air of cockiness about him. It’s been years since he got the scars on his face but it’s true, no one besides Bulma has really mentioned them before now.

“Did you throw a tantrum about your ‘beautiful face’ gettin’ all fucked up?” Tien digs at him from his seat on the cold tile, then catches his tongue between his teeth, hiding a smile. Krillin howls at that and even Yajirobe chuffs, and Yamcha hates to admit that Tien’s shy mischief is charming. He’s clearly still unsure about his position within their group, even though he’d like to feign the same disinterest as Yajirobe, or maybe more accurately Piccolo. But Yamcha recognizes a bone when he’s thrown one, so he bites right back, “Oh, so now the egg with eyebrows has an opinion?”

Then Krillin’s rolling on the ground with laughter and Tien’s cracked a small smile, most of it gleaming in his eyes. Yamcha feels safe to push a little more. “You know, if you wanted to call me pretty you could’ve just said that.” Tien’s smile falls away and then he’s blushing furiously, and Krillin can’t catch his breath, and then Yamcha’s laughing too. 

__________________________

A generic, single God has been easier to beg to because they know Kami, they know Dende. Nobody wants to embarrass themselves by transmitting to either of them their weakness, and worse is knowing they wouldn’t hear it and even if they could, they couldn’t do anything about it. Sometimes a little unknowing is good, a little feigned cluelessness about the unlistening nature of the universe.

It’s easy to agree with Kami when he says “the world doesn’t need a God, it needs a warrior” when Goku surpasses him and then some humans do the same. But Yamcha still begs in that last moment. Krillin still begs. Then what is the difference between a warrior and a god? Goku wouldn’t know. Krillin had said his name, not Kami’s.

Goku’s surpassing everyone he knows while Tien, Yamcha, Chiaotzu, and Piccolo are training on King Kai’s.

“How did you get those scars?” It’s asked quietly but comfortably. Yamcha and Tien are sitting under the tree and tossing questions back and forth.

The truth is that he got the scar over his eye in an avoidable accident while he was training for the 23rd. “I couldn’t use my eye for a while. It was all puffed up and gross, it hurt to try to open it. I thought for sure I was gonna lose it but no, it’s just this little scar, that’s all that’s left…” Yamcha trails off, watching Chiaotzu and Bubbles chase each other. “…It’s funny. Sometimes something happens to you and it leaves you physically changed, sometimes something changes you and you feel so different but you don’t look different at all… it’s funny.” He doesn’t see Tien’s eyebrows raise, doesn’t see his eyes sweep Yamcha from his long hair and scars down to his training boots.

“Your scarred eye droops a little compared to the other one,” he says finally, pointing at his own right eye. Yamcha is embarrassed and grateful all at once.

Tien had moved like he had an itch under his skin during his entire short stay at Kame house, after the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai. Uncomfortable, antsy, unsure of how to position his big body or how to interact with the other people in the house. It’s not a wonder that he left so soon, then. He’d seemed especially turned off by Yamcha, by all his isms and also his dramatic relationship with Bulma. Inappropriate to bring that kind of thing into a space meant for training men, he probably thought.

But they had found a pace when they were training at the Sanctuary, Yamcha finally able to give Tien a run for his money with his leg fully healed. Yamcha’s grateful for how far their friendship has come, things feeling relaxed on King Kai’s planet. Although he’s also noticed how he can’t seem to hold onto tension up here and is sure that that’s smoothing their path. He tries generally to not be someone who pleads for another person’s attention, but he can say that there’s something about Tien that intrigues him. It feels like Tien is a body of water, pushing people away while pulling them into his tide all the same.

Yamcha asks Tien how he met Chiaotzu.

“I met him at Crane school,” Tien says, then not much else. How is he to explain that feeling of a kindred wrongness,  his horror at the innocence of a perpetual child being swallowed by that place? Chiaotzu was the first and last time he felt like someone truly needed him. He is his brother and his child. How does he explain that? How does he explain to someone like Yamcha, so laidback and lovesick, how does he explain the sacrifice of being human?

He’d felt that at Kame house, too. He had been amazed at how much a house could reflect its inhabitants. So cute, small, almost toylike, and definitely a place where a bunch of carefree, kinda stupid, and unbearably kind martial artists could waste away days, eating watermelon and laying on the warm sand with their feet being kissed by the water. Or at least that’s what he’d imagined them doing in their free time. He never really got over feeling like an outsider there, a slow-paced environment he’d never been able to indulge in before. But it’s easier elsewhere. It was just that house that made it hard. A place that had never held someone like him before. But he’s moving farther away from the question, caught up in his own roiling waves.

Yamcha’s used to the short answers but is waiting for Tien’s question in return.

“How’d you meet P… uh, P—“

“Pu’ar?” Yamcha asks easily, meeting Tien where he is like he always does. “I met her when I was living in the desert. She tried to steal from me! A bandit!” He laughs. “She’d transformed into a kid and had tried to trick me out of my hard-earned zenni. But I… I dunno, I took pity on her. She was so young and trying so hard.” He falls away then, lost in memory. He misses his friend. But the thing that stands out to Tien is “You were a bandit?” Yamcha laughs.

“Yeah, and a damn good one at that!” Yamcha stares into the unchanging sky. “I left it behind for Pu’ar,” he starts, then, after a breath, adds, “for me too, to be honest. It was a hard life. Not fun!” And there it is, his unwillingness to linger in a challenging moment. But the moment washes over them both and dissipates.

“What about Bulma?” Tien asks before he can stop himself. He can’t lie, he has been curious. Romance was never something offered to him, something within his realm of possibility before, and he’s been watching Yamcha and Bulma’s affairs from a distance like watching something on TV because someone else is watching it.

Yamcha is quiet for a long while and Tien wonders whether he should repeat his question or let it go when Yamcha says “It’s been… hard,” not quite answering Tien’s question but offering something more than it. “It’s been cold for a while.”

“It’s been cold or she’s been cold?” Tien asks.

“It’s,” Yamcha says with finality, side-eyeing Tien like he doesn’t appreciate his words. “From both of us. Probably since I went off to train for the 23rd, but… maybe even earlier than that.” Yamcha leans back like whatever tension he might have felt about it had been sucked from him until he’s laying in the grass, quietly assessing the purple sky.

Cold is not a word Tien would’ve used to describe whatever Yamcha and Bulma had had going on. Wet, messy, maybe. He catches a thought about how pathetic it is to stay in a relationship you don’t really want for years, putting yourself through that— then he remembers his time with Taopaipai and Tsuru-sennin and shuts his brain right up. It’s hard to focus on the conversation anyway, the thought of women and relationships and all that light years away, literally. In a different dimension, or at least it feels like.

Neither of them will ever get to know how she cried for him when he was gone.

Tien decides to sate his curiosity, to take advantage of the openness that Yamcha always seems to meet him with. “Then why stay?” He asks. They both look at the clouds.

“She’s rough, but she’s beautiful and so tenacious. She just goes for what she wants and that’s… I think that’s amazing.”

“Even when it hurts you?”

“Even then,” Yamcha says, and laughs. “Am I pathetic or what?” And he doesn’t get an answer, but he wasn’t expecting one.

__________________________

Yamcha wishes he could be so fearless. It’s very funny. He’s fought battles for the planet’s existence, but even then he was shaking, he was scared. He still did it, though. It’s upsetting to know that in so many ways life is much, much worse than death— and to still be afraid of both. Some warrior.

All he is when he’s on Earth is fear these days, just a little trembling ball like a child or a dog. He’s biting people who try to get close. When he first came back to life, his feet were light on the earth in a way that was disconcerting. It was because he’d trained on King Kai’s planet, but it felt like he couldn’t get his bearings. Couldn’t become all the way real.

He didn’t miss how Bulma’s eyes had shone with tears and he’d rushed to kiss her.

“I missed you, you big lug,” she’d murmured, a wet smile, feeling so small in his arms. It was picture perfect and he didn’t miss his cue to be the good boyfriend.

“You did?” he asked, smiling, looking into her eyes like nothing else existed. “I missed you too. So much.” And he kissed her again. Wove one hand through her hair and tilted her head.

Back at the compound, he’d pulled her to his room, closed the door. That was the first time in a year that he’d shed his clothes for this purpose, touching her pale skin, remembering still how to move, the room hot, her mouth a quivering oh, their bodies fixed for lovemaking. His body repurposed for this, briefly, his large, darker hands on her sides, her small hands on his shoulders, then his neck, the bed sheets tangled and stale from lack of use, yet he still knew how to do this and thank God, thank God, thank God.

Bulma found him later in the week when he’d just finished cutting his hair. “What do you think?” he’d asked, spinning to face her, scissors still in one hand.

“It looks good!” she’d said, but on her face was something strange, something he couldn’t place. She’d moved to come into the bathroom but he urged her back.

“Ah, don’t come in. There’s glass everywhere, I gotta clean it up.” He had broken the mirror, but not on purpose. Sometimes, lately, these things seemed to just happen.

“Okay,” she had said, then looked at him again and walked away. But as long as she was willing, he was willing to continue this dance in peace. He hadn’t acknowledged Vegeta sulking around the place, eating at their table and sleeping in one of the rooms. He was willing to make this work.

But some days were harder than others. Some days he couldn’t get out of bed, some days he just didn’t want to. He couldn’t go train with everyone else like this, with his brain pushing against his skull and feelings he was afraid of living white-hot behind his eyes. He could hear, on those days when he stayed late in his room, Vegeta berating him and stomping around like he owned the place, arguing with Bulma.

On good days Yamcha could eat at the table. On his best days, manic days, he could make love and would find Bulma and smother her with kisses and she would giggle and swat at him, ask “What’s gotten into you?” and get carried away in the moment, and he could hang out or even train with Krillin and Pu’ar and he could crack jokes and he could look Vegeta right in his eyes.

On bad days. He’s standing at the stove, trying to focus on making an egg. Pu’ar’s there. She’s been worried about him, he knows. She’s hanging over his shoulder, tutting at him. But she’s seen this. And she’s always been there. Always been there for him, even when he didn’t deserve it. Oh, he was making an egg. He’d wanted it runny but it’s cooked all the way through now. He reaches for the spatula but it drops to the floor. He bends down to pick it up. He hears Vegeta get out of the shower and start walking toward the kitchen. He can’t stand up. He tries again. He can’t move. He’s braced on his knee and has one hand on the spatula and he can’t move.

“Feh, idiot,” he hears, then he hears the fridge opening. Visions of King Kai’s place come to his mind unbidden. Passing the days by under the perma-sunset sky with Piccolo, Chiaotzu, Tien. He wonders if he could take Pu’ar with him this time. He wonders if heaven is like the flying done in sleep, endlessly light. He wonders if hell is like filling your pockets with stones and walking into the ocean. Endlessly heavy. He stands up and turns to the stove. The edges of the egg are crispy.

He’s scaring himself. He takes the spatula and slides the egg out of the pan and over his rice.

On bad days. “I don’t know how Yamcha can stand to live with you,” Tien had said to Vegeta, and Yamcha’s face had burned with shame, but Tien never had to see the fights, had never had to see Yamcha at his most pathetic, lashing out from his deep well of insecurities, his rage and crying and hurt. He did all of that alone or at Bulma and sometimes even Vegeta, who was only ever held back by Bulma’s mercy.

“I wish I was fucking dead!” He’d screamed at her. They were in the living room. The windows were open, a breeze lifting the sheer curtains around them. Her face crumpled. He had the sense, somewhere, to be sorry, but she was the only one he could say it to, even if it was like this. She was the only one he could be honest to, even if it hurt like this, hurt because of him, and he wondered if maybe this was what having a mother would have been like.

“God, you can’t just fucking say shit like that, Yamcha! Fuck you!” She turned and slammed the door behind her as she left the house.

__________________________

Bulma had once been tired of not being seen but she quickly grew bored of Yamcha’s yearning to “see” to some real her. It seemed obvious to everyone but him that his yearning had more to do with him and less to do with her. She knew she was difficult, and never felt understood when Yamcha fawned over everything she said and did and was. And yes she had never really learned how to pull her punches, but it seemed all he responded to. At least Vegeta never pretended that he was, or they were, anything more or less than what they really were. That was refreshing. It was as simple as that.

She did appreciate, though, Yamcha’s dedication to beauty. And for some time all she’d wanted was someone who wanted to be everything she wanted. For some time that was all she hungered for. She’d brought him into civilization and he drank it all up. She gave him everything she took for granted: schooling, food, a roof over his and Pu’ar’s head. Safety. At a point she just began to feel responsible for him. She was so worried about what it would do to him if she broke up with him that she couldn’t even be herself. That was the thought that terrified her. That she could lose herself to this, lose sight of her own desires. She practiced her words to say all of this the next time she saw him, but all he could focus on in his self-destruction was how it was never him. It was never him, it wasn’t his baby, it wasn’t his heart to break, it wasn’t his home or his place and it was never for him to carry. But still he couldn’t look back and this was the sacrifice of a woman, too, when Bulma finally told him, “You have to go. You can’t stay here.”

__________________________

When he moved out he stayed at Kame house for the season. He didn’t take much with him because he didn’t have much that was originally his. Master Roshi looked frail to him in a way that he never did before but badgered him about his training all the same. He walked up the stairs to the second floor and fell onto his old bed, always a little too small for him. He didn’t have energy for much more.

“Yamcha,” Pu’ar said softly, one of the few times that she’d dropped the honorific, and curled around his head, warm and soft, small heart beating.

__________________________

When they had lived in Diablo Desert, he’d swiped a hoi poi capsule so small that he didn’t feel guilty about keeping it for himself instead of selling it. It had had a few pieces of art and calligraphy and some other goods, toiletries and books and the like. A travel capsule. He’d always been a tidy guy and had lived those years no-nonsense, a necessity when every day was a fight to live. But there had still been things he had chosen to keep for himself and Pu’ar, even when it meant not selling them and buying more useful things for themselves. Still trying to live, to offer a comfortable life, a full life, to Pu’ar, who had come to him when she was 7 and he was 14.

He’d read books and scrolls, would try to commit them to memory and then sell them, and had a deep network of information— a given for any bandit. He always had loved learning new things. He’d collect agave nectar to satisfy Pu’ar’s sweet tooth and to sweeten teas, failing to ferment it when he’d try. They’d dust over the sand hills in Mighty Mouse, Yamcha snatching up cactus fruit for them to eat, luxuriating in the heat or trying to.

Sometimes he would sneak into theaters with Pu’ar to watch old movies when they could live a little. His favorites were the ones with dashing men and delicate women, living in big cities with twinkling lights and going through the drama of life. Those movies nursed his love, grew him up into the idiot he is. Fighting so hard for a comfortable life. And yet so unprepared for it to fall into his lap. What kind of upending is this?

In his landscape of broken things, he does still feel some relief. But it’s overwhelmed by his despair at having lost the only fight that he’d been truly been hoping to win since he was young, watching scratchy images of beautiful people kiss. He’d never even told her about those memories— Bulma had never seemed interested, always living in the future in a way that reaffirmed his own anachronism.

__________________________

Being a good desert bandit also meant knowing when to cut your losses. It meant that sometimes on a bad week you attack and rob a man and leave him bleeding out in the desert, hot sand burrowing deep into all his wounds, where he’ll be ripped apart by hungry dogs and vultures, and it meant turning Pu’ar away even though she already knows. It was knowing that death is your bed mate, death follows, it was knowing that the only way to not be driven crazy by the desert heat so hot it’s almost wet, the only way to not be driven crazy is to be always pushing forward. It’s to never look back.

__________________________

The first time Krillin realizes he could kill someone is when he approaches Vegeta, sword in hand.

In the beginning Goku had had a moral code that if a person was bad, he was allowed to hurt them. Maybe even kill them, although he did try to avoid that when possible. But somewhere along the way, death and violence and destruction were the things that became abstracted to him, strange temporaries in his even stranger life. His own decisions became abstracted to him, the craving for anything and anyone who could compete with him becoming more and more real. A physical need.

But Krillin isn’t abstract to him. The thing he asks for, when he begs Krillin to spare Vegeta, isn’t abstract to him. When Krillin throws down the sword, Goku feels relieved, for Krillin’s soul, for Vegeta, for himself.

__________________________

Something that repeatedly sets Tien apart from the rest of these touchy-feely unsure simpering fools is that he’s ready to kill and he’s ready to die, and he goes into battle with that knowledge. But for him, death had been one unwavering pillar of regret erected in his mind, him curled up in front of it, fading, gone. 

Master Roshi had pulled him aside shortly after the 22nd. “You haven’t become truly evil yet,” he had repeated, and held Tien’s gaze steadily til he swallowed his knee-jerk reaction to scoff. “You’re a warrior. But this world isn’t kind to fighters anymore.” And Tien had to beat back his urge to yell at him, or maybe cry. He hadn’t felt that in years. If only he’d been able to pick his master. If only so many things.

It makes his conversation with Yamcha at the Sanctuary feel uncanny. He’s still going easy on Yamcha, a punch to his chest not throwing him far, blocking more than sparring, no techniques to speak of. When they’re eating dinner that night, Yamcha’s throwing him strange looks down the dinner table. When they’re dismissed, Yamcha lays a hand on his arm and says into his ear, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” He waits for Tien to take care of his dishes, then leads him out to the open night. It’s cold and beautiful. He’s never seen so many stars.

They sit on the edge of the Sanctuary, legs dangling over the side. There’s the strangeness of their silence, Tien not sure but with a little idea of why he’s there, so the conversation waits for Yamcha.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Is how he leads, not bold enough to look at Tien when he says it.

“I’m gonna need a little more than that,” Tien says, but he also doesn’t look at Yamcha, instead staring at the sky. This high up he can see the dome of the Earth’s atmosphere, the stars painting its lid.

“You know what I’m talking about because you’re the one doing it,” Yamcha hisses, finally looking at Tien. It startles him into looking too, Yamcha’s eyebrows drawn down low over his brown eyes. “You don’t fight me like you mean it, and only me. You fight hard with Krillin. You fight hard with Yajirobe and Kami. So why not me?”

They both know why, but Yamcha wants to hear Tien say it. But he can’t say it. That they had spent time sparring together at Kame house, where Yamcha tried to not show that his leg still bothered him. That Tien had stopped saying “I’m sorry” because it gets old hearing it over and over and Yamcha doesn’t want his apology. That Yamcha’s so good, waving it off like he’s not a human and didn’t break like a human. That that gut-churning snap of the bones in his leg had been loud enough that day to say otherwise.

“I’m not what you think I am,” he says instead. Yamcha laughs at that.

“You’re an idiot,” he says. “And I’m not a damsel in distress. I’m a fighter. Treat me like one.” Tien would be wise to keep his mouth shut but he feels the need to clarify that it’s not that he thinks of Yamcha as weak. It’s what he’s afraid he could do to Yamcha regardless. But the best that comes out of his mouth is “It’s not that— it’s— I don’t think you’re weak—“ but Yamcha is tired of listening, takes pity on him all the same.

“Listen. That time, you could’ve killed me, but you didn’t. I feel safe around you, Tien.” And it’s the same lesson again, so loud that Tien feels he needs to take heed, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. He feels like it has more to do with who Yamcha is than who he’s proven himself to be.

He was trying to convince everyone of his hunger for cruelty at the 22nd, but of everyone, himself most of all. Yamcha had dared to meet him toe for toe outside of the ring and he had punished him for it. The enormity of maiming Yamcha in that way sits squarely on his chest, what it could’ve done and what it was meant to do to him and his career as a fighter. Yes, Tien could’ve broken it worse, but Tien would’ve killed Yamcha if he had known before their fight that Goku had killed Taopaipai. Now he must repent, and just “acting normal” doesn’t feel like enough, if it’s even something he can do. He only knows extremes, holding something til it breaks or placing it in a box. He’s been opened up to so many new possibilities, roads he could’ve taken if he was 10 years younger, but what good do they do now? His third eye crusted over by evil, a problem no kind words can fix.

“… I’ll work on it,” is all he can promise, and it is a promise. Yamcha pats his back and gets up, walks away without offering Tien a hand. He has always known how far to push, when to pull back. Tien appreciates him for that and stays outside for a long while.

When he dies, it’s with these memories in his pocket, and he wonders who the simpering fool really is. Is it the people he’s come, haltingly, to truly care about? Or is it just him? And he leaves behind nothing, Chiaotzu dead before him, both of them completely useless. He leaves behind nothing.

He was furious at first to find that death was what it was. He had always comforted himself with the thought that death would be nothingness, his reward for a lifetime of service to others in so many ways. When he saw Chiaotzu he reached for him, shocked that they ended up in the same place. Then came the quiet rushing over him, a bliss he only attained through meditation. Something about being so far away from earthly woes muting the worries his heart carried. When Piccolo tells them they won’t be going back he feels safe. 

__________________________

“You’re as sweet as a banana roll,” Tien said, quiet, playful— only person Yamcha knows who could sound so serious when he’s being playful, like there’s a lesson he still wanted Yamcha to learn— “You’re as sweet as a cocktail bun. As sweet as chao hong go.” His hand was warm on the dip of his back. “As sweet as qiēgāo, as sweet as red tortoise cake, as sweet as watermelon, as sweet as doufuhua,” his cheek was to Yamcha’s cheek, breath warm as skin. Casually not looking at Yamcha’s face but third eye infinitely staring. “As sweet as rock candy, as sweet as tanghulu, especially tanghulu, as sweet as white rabbit—“ Yamcha kissed him before he could finish. And it felt different from the numb fear he felt around girls, the pure embarrassment and shock he felt around them— this was overwhelmingly warm, enough to make him sweat, just from words, just from that hand sliding up too calm to be calm to rest on his neck.

“Come on, Yamcha,” he hears King Kai from outside the house, “you gonna sleep the whole day away?” Yamcha wakes up. He’s embarrassed, glad he was woken up then— he knows how those dreams continue, not the first time— and he feels something a little sharper than shame every time, even at his big age. He hides himself under the covers and stays in til noon.

Tien had said he was as sweet as a banana roll once at Kame house but he’d looked uncomfortable saying it, as if it bothered him to admit to his warrior friend’s softness. As if it was something to be ashamed of— an insult.

__________________________

Their first couple of weeks with the lord of worlds reminds Yamcha of Tien’s fight with Taopaipai. Yamcha had felt a pressure, then, to do the right thing, or more specifically to not do the wrong thing. He had chosen then to give Tien room for how he was feeling, leaving him alone. On this tiny, tiny planet, he has to avoid falling into a pattern of doing the same overcorrecting.

It’s difficult. He has this urge to confess to all of his mistakes when he’s with Tien, the way the tongue gets loose around people more powerful than and farther away from you. “Yeah, I know, it’s my fault that I was humiliated like that at the 23rd, I shoulda kept my guard up, I shouldn’ta taken him as a joke. Yeah, I got too cocky with the Saiyans, I knew we couldn’t relax but I was proud for once, my own fight and I had helped, well I’d thought I helped, but pride kills, right, I know. I know what people think of me and I hate it because they’re right, I don’t know what I’m doing a lot, it feels like I’m just drifting, just floating along and hoping to be accepted, to be taken care of, to be good. And if not good then at least useful. But yeah, I know that for the most part I’m not.” The only thing he can think to do, besides biting through his tongue, is keep quiet around Tien. Not speak unless spoken to. But he’s not particularly good at that, especially not when he wants to know so much more about Tien. Where was he born? Yamcha bets the ocean, or the mountains. Or a field. What about his masters, what kept him tied to them? What had his fight with Taopaipai felt like? Success? Failure? Or just overcoming love, beating it back in a way Yamcha doesn’t know how to do?

Tien tries to work something out with Piccolo first, which Yamcha notices and is stung by. They meditate, not quite together, not quite apart, after the lord of worlds agrees to train them. Tien still talks to Yamcha, still spends time with him sparring, but it doesn’t feel as purposeful. Feels like he’d be gently set aside if Piccolo would agree to train even once. He knows how Tien feels about his relationship with Bulma, how he’s tied up in messy feelings about his leg. But even through the haze on his emotions that the planet brings, he feels the distance acutely. He never could handle being alone.

Piccolo won’t talk much, but he will listen. He prefers Tien to the other human and says as much once. “He’s always been too vain,” Tien starts, then trails off. Tien tries to berate Yamcha in his head but can’t help but feel wrong for it. He always ends up going back to the sunset and warm air of that day, Yamcha forgiving him for breaking his leg only a few days after he’d done it, a clean break, the gauze of the cast still fresh and Yamcha sitting with crutches and in a suit too big for him. Would Yamcha speak of his comrades, his friends, like he is now?

Yamcha had said, on that day that they talked about their pasts and their friends, “This world does good by thieves and assassins, but I wanna try the harder challenge of… connecting with people, you know? And honoring those connections. Showing people they matter. To me.” Carefully chosen words. A murderer and a thief. Not like a boy who got bullied in a temple, or a rich genius girl. But not like an alien race of destroyers or a demon, either. Just two anachronistic men shaped by human violence. Yamcha learned how to fight from having to choose himself and Pu’ar over others. Yamcha learned how to fight because he had to. Tien can respect that; Tien can understand that.

Tien had almost bowed to him in apology at the Sanctuary for not taking him seriously once he had figured out how to be almost normal about it and found Yamcha able to keep up with him. But he felt an awareness around Yamcha’s own awareness of how unseriously he was taken. Beyond it being pointless to reassert those thoughts, he had wanted to honor what Yamcha had seen in him. And how does he repay him as soon as he’s out of earshot? But then the feeling seems to wane as soon as it should crest.

Later, in a moment of many revelations, with Tien’s eyes on Yamcha on Dr. Gero’s hand, his dangling gushing body made silent by encroaching void, Tien thinks about how careless he had been about Yamcha’s first time dying. About how they didn’t really know each other well when they died but Yamcha had already extended warmth, forgiveness, and kindness to him. They got closer on King Kai’s, but at that beginning point they were only acquaintances, hard to extend to conversations as heavy as death. Yamcha’s death had rung a bell in Tien, sure, but then Chiaotzu died and truly nothing else mattered.

But his thoughts in this moment, being forced to watch blood soak into Yamcha’s socks lest he get murdered too, are a jumbled mess of Is it wrong? To be sweet, to be kind? Is that what made him so weak? Is it so wrong?

__________________________

The sky is rolling clouds. The grass scratches against his back, pokes him through his clothes. He can’t stop crying. He can’t catch his breath. Maybe he is mourning all loves.

__________________________

“Tien, what are you doing hair?” Yamcha says with a grin. The lord of worlds guffaws while Tien blushes from his place on the ground. It’s lunchtime but he’s still doing pushups with Chiaotzu sitting on his back. Yamcha hands Chiaotzu a meat bun the size of his head. He sits down next to Chiaotzu and Tien doesn’t even groan at the extra weight.

“Go on, impress me,” Yamcha goads and Tien does. He pushes up so forcefully that Chiaotzu bounces right off of him, floating upside down. Yamcha laughs, delighted, but gets up after only a few pushes— it can’t be good for Tien’s back.

“You’re gonna have a bruise in the shape of my ass,” he says at the same time that King Kai chides, “When your back hurts tomorrow, just know that you deserve it.”

“Come on, it’s time to eat,” Yamcha says, and Tien stands up to join him. Yamcha already knows to not bother Piccolo with mealtime, but wishes he could offer him some chilled water or something. They sit under a tree and Yamcha reveals lunch, a scant serving of meat buns and plain congee. Still, Tien seems grateful, immediately digging in. 

“How you doin’ today, big guy?” Yamcha tries, and gets a distracted “Hm” for his troubles, so he contents himself with leaning against the base of the tree and eating quietly.

When Tien finishes eating, he leans back too and says, “Better, after that.” The posturing makes Yamcha’s cheeks puff up with a laugh that he forces himself to swallow down. They sit quietly for a while. Few things change here, the sky a constant grapefruit hue, the weather always mild. A humid breeze picks up through the leaves of the trees.

“Hey, can I ask a question?” Yamcha asks.

“You already have,” Tien says, but there’s no bite to his voice.

“When’s your birthday?” Yamcha forges on, and looks at him. There are no seasons on this planet but on earth it had been spring. Yamcha realizes his own birthday must have come and gone.

“… I dunno.”

He’s not very surprised by that. “Yeah? Where were you born?” He asks instead.

“The mountains,” Tien answers solidly, as if to make up for his inability to answer the other question. As if reminding himself. The mountains. A steady, cold place. Chiaotzu is still floating, but now on his stomach.

“I can see that,” Yamcha says, then “Maybe I should start calling you snow cap.” Tien jabs him with an elbow and Yamcha laughs. He teases Tien because it’s easy. Being there, on King Kai’s planet, they’re a little gentler with each other. He knows it’s because of their shared humanity and what they’ve experienced that’s so far beyond it, but it’s also that fuzzy, bubbling lightness that comes with death, with this haven. Not quite heaven, but safe and away from all pain and fear, like an air dance. He can’t help but wonder what it’ll be like once they go back to earth, wishes this change in their relationship was permanent. But he won’t be selfish.

“Alright, lemme get out of your hair,” he says a little while later as he goes to stand up, but Tien tackles him for that and they’re rolling around in the grass, punching each other, laughing.

__________________________

Krillin had met up with Yamcha before the 23rd, surprised but unsure what to say about his new, wild look. Then, before he could find his words, Tien and Chiaotzu had approached. They all awkwardly shook hands, holding something back. It was careful, reserved. Things he couldn’t be when he saw Goku, rushing to him and hugging him, suddenly crying.

Goku had gotten taller. His warm strength was different, the way he bowed his head over Krillin and smiled down at him was different. The smile itself had changed. But he hugged Krillin all the same.

Krillin sees Goku changing like he’s on the outside looking in. After Frieza, his smile becomes quieter again. More knowing. Krillin can feel that he’s being gently placed into a box by his best friend, and why? Because he had died? He’d already died before, so he’s not sure why it feels like something huge has shifted now, coming back a second time. He had also helped to collect the dragon balls on planet Namek, among other things. He had been helpful, not just a burden. Had made sure of it. So why? Why was Goku pulling away from him?

__________________________

“I’m worried about Goku.” Tien looks over at Yamcha from his futon. He’d said it so quietly, as if running away from the words. There are a million and one reasons to be worried about Goku in this moment, his heart eating itself and the earth trembling under a new superpower. But Goku is wide awake and Tien believes in him, and he gets the suspicion that this isn’t about Cell or the Androids or anything easily perceptible. It usually isn’t with Yamcha, the way he worries, so Tien stays quiet, hoping he’ll continue.

“… I remember when he was a kid,” Yamcha says, staring at the ceiling, “I remember when he was like, my little brother… sometimes when I look at him I still see his baby face—“ and Yamcha chokes up then, stutters out half a breath, grits his teeth against the emotion. He breathes deep to even himself out.

Tien doesn’t want to ask him how he feels about Goku getting married, having a child— leaving him behind? Is that it? But he doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to clarify Yamcha’s feelings around this, around Goku. Instead he asks, “Why did you cut your hair?”

There’s a windchime on the side of Kame house and the high, delicate body of it is the only other sound over the crash of the waves. He knew immediately that it was the wrong question to ask, it’s so obviously a knockoff of Vegeta’s own high stack, of the powerful Saiyans and half-Saiyans who get everything in the world including the world. Yamcha doesn’t respond at all. He keeps staring at the ceiling, frowning. Sometimes when he’s like this Tien gets scared for his friend. Yamcha so often wears his heart on his sleeve, his openness and nonjudgement having made life easier for Tien many times, but when he’s like this Tien can feel the wall. The secrets of feeling that he doesn’t want, or know how, to trust Tien with. And Tien wouldn’t be sure how to hold it, either, so he supposes Yamcha’s intuition is right.

So instead of waiting for an answer Tien decides to keep digging a Tien-sized hole. Knowing that he’s probably the last person Yamcha wants to hear these words from, he says, “She made the wrong choice.” Yamcha rolls over to face away from him and Tien pretends not to know that he’s crying.

__________________________

The jungle boasts of a different, more concentrated life force. The air thick, the foliage a blanket. The sun dapples the soft earth. This is where Yamcha channels his ki for the first time, far away from civilization.

Over the years, he’s found that his yearning has become more desperate. The loneliness eats at him until, suddenly, it doesn’t. His mind locks into place and he finds he can focus beyond that, his self and his want. Here, he is not alone. Here, he feels the blood of the earth, water, flowing through all things.

He’s 22, the energy of the world surging through him. His own youth, his own blood pumping heavy through delicate veins, so, so human. He focuses on the people he knows, Bulma [can feel her faintly], Krillin and Master Roshi [can feel their ki, can pinpoint them]; his mind finds Goku, unbelievable child, and stutters over Tien. Then he moves beyond them to just the feeling. Love and frustration, his body is getting warm. The jungle boasts of untold power, things living in its trees and under its floors. He hears, distantly, the roars of dinosaurs. He feels the crumbling of mountains. In his palm he concentrates his experience of the world, reduces it down until it shines. His palm is hot, scorching, then it’s holding light. So warm, so beautiful. It sends his heart fluttering. He invents the Spirit Ball and isn’t that a thought, spirit. He can’t wait to share it with everyone.

__________________________

Feeling rage and then all other emotions later. Pushing beyond the envelope of Saiyan sucks all the warmth from the air around him, but he feels like he’s on fire. Fire so hot it’s cold, ice so cold it’s hot.

Krillin is dead, and every time it happens, every time he’s hurt and screaming Goku’s name Goku’s thrown into that first time, his best friend’s corpse face down in his own blood. And who can he tell this to? Who can understand that it’s not just aimless guilt when he feels the weight of everyone’s lives on his shoulders? Their worn out souls being rewashed, stopped and started over and over again, the way no soul is ever meant to. His friends, his family, his children, people he hasn’t met and never will. It always comes down to this, to him.

The most animal part of him wishes he could eat everyone he loves to keep them safe. Devour them, so that death could never get to them in some way he can’t control, in some way he can’t protect them from.

Instead he does what is possible and braces himself for what comes next. He will tear Frieza limb from limb.

__________________________

“You don’t have to worry about any of that, since you’re not going back.”

Tien reaches out, hugs Chiaotzu to him. Yamcha has nothing to say.

__________________________

His life has felt kind of pointless, like a dim, wavering light. He would love for it to go somewhere, to become so bright even briefly that it illuminates an inescapable path, for him, for the ones he loves.

_________________________

“I bet you could become a sennin.”

Tien has no idea what to say to that. An unbelievable compliment. He can feel his mouth hanging open with no point. The night envelops them, another moment stolen from the canon of their lives, a night at Kame house after good food and good company and good conversation about anything other than the road that lay ahead of them. With Goku not talking about it, it becomes impossible to look at the threat of Cell head-on.

Yamcha mistakes Tien’s silence for confusion. “I think the main thing is discipline. I think you have that,” he says, and takes a sip of his beer, lets his eyes wander off.

“No, I…” Tien starts, then pauses. But Yamcha lets the moment breathe, gives him room. He always does. “There’s… there’s a real human element to it. I think you’ve got that more than me,” he tries, but it feels clumsy coming out. Yamcha just huffs and rolls his eyes with a quirk of his lips, long-suffering. But Tien’s not one for frivolous or unnecessary kindness. He hopes Yamcha knows that.

__________________________

“If you’re gonna stay here, then as far as I’m concerned, so am I—“

“What are you saying? You have Bulma waiting for you, don’t you?”

Yamcha’s taken aback by the coldness in Tien’s voice. He’s seen him like this before, his face closed off to Yamcha, to outside probing. It was after his fight with Taopaipai. It hurts him to be treated like this too, even with the mistakes he’s made recently, feelings and half-formed confessions and everything Tien seems to hate. Even through the haze of the planet, he can feel this worry. What if his impulsiveness has ruined their budding friendship? What if it’s all his fault, again?

When he’s brought back, it’s to lungfuls of water. He crawls ashore, coughing and aching. When he finds everyone else, they cheer. He hugs Bulma, he kisses her. Aching. He makes love to her. Aching. He does his best to ignore Vegeta’s presence, to live the life that has been laid out before him. And in those one-hundred-and-thirty days, he thinks to himself more than once: Maybe I’m destined for this or nothing at all.

__________________________

It’s one of those nights at Kame house, times when they’re all together with nothing more to do so rare that they have to take advantage of it. They’ve trained all day, and unlike the androids they must rest. They’re only human.

Yamcha, Krillin, and Tien are laying in their futons in the living rooms, chins propped up on hands and talking, or trying to. The night encourages their anxieties. The future is uncertain.

“That’s what was scary to me,” Yamcha says quietly. “You never know what life is gonna be like, and at least being dead was consistent, you know?” But the other two are silent. Tien rolls over onto his back, hands folded under his head, staring at the ceiling. Krillin just looks at Yamcha.

Yamcha doesn’t understand this. Is he truly just alone in these feelings? He knows he can’t be, feels it. Pu’ar’s always so open about what she’s feeling. She’s even a bad liar. He got used to that. Took it for granted, he supposes, because talking to his other friends feels like pulling teeth.

Sometimes Yamcha thinks about dying, about killing himself, about getting to go back to that place and that dizzyingly good feeling of being unable to hold onto anything dreadful for more than half an hour. But when the thoughts start to crystallize, he’s struck with the fear of feeling death again. There’s something animal in the human yearning to live. He feels it then. Sometimes he gets shaken out of the present by the sudden pain of his body memory, and he knows it happens to his friends too. It has to. He’s seen it on their faces, the grimace that passes over them for only a second, then. Gone.

Before he can fall any deeper into humiliation at his honesty, Krillin speaks. “I think… I think dying was different for y’all than it was for me. I didn’t go to King Kai’s, or Snake Way or anything. I just…” He looks down then, picks at the floor. “It was basically nothing.”

“That’s what I thought it was gonna be,” Tien finally says, and Yamcha is surprised at how his voice washes over him. With Tien engaging too, it feels like he’s finally reached the thing he was looking for. “I thought it was gonna be nothing, and it was…”

“Was what?” Yamcha eggs on. He needs to know.

“… It was disappointing. I was disappointed.” Tien says, staring at the ceiling. Then, realizing his words, his head snaps to Yamcha, his three eyes wide. “Not! Not to say it didn’t end up being fun, and good training, but—“

“I think I understand,” Yamcha says. He runs a hand through his short hair, then tucks it between his cheek and his pillow. “You wanted to rest.”

Tien scowls at that but doesn’t deny it.

“It didn’t feel like rest,” Krillin says, turning to Tien. “It was scary. It…” but he doesn’t say more, pulled into his body memory, his skin and heart memory, meat and tendon and bone being ripped from each other. He’d died twice, Yamcha reminds himself, and he reaches out to soothe his hand down Krillin’s back. Krillin hangs his head then flops back, and Yamcha lays back too.

They all stare at the ceiling.

__________________________

It melts through your skin first. He wished he had taken a chance that night with Krillin and Tien to compare notes. How does it feel? How does it leave you, when you’re brought back to life and averse to even the heat of a hair dryer? How does it leave you? To know what it feels like to have no consciousness, no body, nothing, so different from sleeping. Yamcha’s soul ripped from his body, stripped from his bones. To come back from that. He had been overheated to death. It had seemed like it went on forever. Krillin had been unwoven, made into something unrecognizable from human.

He feels bound by the social contract to not talk about it. To not describe, in detail, what losing his life had felt like, what it had felt like to know that he would never see his loved ones again, how in that moment it was impossible to tell himself that there was a wish that would bring him back, how he couldn’t think at all, only feel as his eyes cooked from the inside, only feel all of his disappointments and sorrows, only feel his skin peeling under the arms of the Saibamen. And now nothing remains, not even the faintest scar.

__________________________

The days run into each other, the only demarcation of time being the small changes in their bodies, the bits of news fed to them from King Kai.

But today feels markedly different. Maybe it’s the way Tien— no, it’s definitely the way Tien has been looking at him all day. Observing him. Yamcha feels dissected by him, vulnerable in a way that skitters up his spine. So he approaches him.

“Wanna spar?” They had been eating breakfast but Yamcha can’t ignore this or wait anymore. There’s an itch under his skin from the weight of Tien’s eyes on him. Tien licks off his finger and nods, still holding his stare.

They walk halfway across the world. Yamcha crouches into position while Tien is slower to choose his stance. His eyes never leave Yamcha. Yamcha laughs, a giddy thing. “Did I do something weird?” he asks, can’t stop himself. Tien just shakes his head. Yamcha shrugs, then lunges at him.

He can’t get into it. There’s something wrong, the perfunctory touch of Tien’s fist, the way it feels like they’re really just fighting. Usually there’s a camaraderie that underpins it, banter and warmth, but this… he feels like he might as well just be a training dummy. It’s no surprise when Tien sweeps him to the ground. He falls without a fight, breathing hard on his back and watching Tien watching him, stalking a wide circle around him.

“It’s obvious you’ve got something on your mind,” Tien says.

“I could say the same to you,” Yamcha spits back. Tien stops his slow circling, standing near Yamcha’s feet. Yamcha looks at the sky. Its unchanging hue was off-putting to him when he first got here, but now it feels comforting, the sameness of it. Reliability.

“You told me you love me last night.”

Stability.

What?

Yamcha forces himself to laugh, but he can feel his body tensing. Tien walks up to stand by his head, looking down at him. He can’t keep looking at him. Just looking, like he has a right to know what’s going on in Yamcha’s head. Yamcha turns his head away, laying in the grass.

“Dude, of course I love you!” he says, hopes he sounds even, unsuspicious. “Do you think I don’t love you?”

“You didn’t say it like that.”

Yamcha’s still grinning, can feel it frozen on his face. The pull of his lips. The silence stretches on and his smile falls, frowning at the grass. He knows that they’re both waiting for Tien.

“Yamcha, I can’t return your feelings.”

Yamcha buries his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry.”

He scrubs his hands over his face, pushes them into his hair. His eyes are closed, but he’s smiling again. “That’s fine,” he says, “I didn’t even mean to say anything last night. Can you just forget it?”

Tien hesitates. A low wind rolls over them to stir the grass.

Yamcha’s smile wavers.

“Yamcha—“

“Could you just… leave me alone for a little while?” His voice is thick and wet. Tien pauses in his instinctive step toward Yamcha, recognizes this as an opportunity for mercy, a practice that Yamcha himself is so good at, and that’s the thing that makes him turn and move indefinitely away.

Yamcha wishes he could scream with his sobs but all that he can get to come out are shuddery little gasps. It’s too little air into his lungs on a planet with an already thin atmosphere. How unfair, for Tien to reveal him and then reject him. How unfair, for him to need the way he does. How unfair, how unfair, how unfair.

__________________________

Tien can see Yamcha in his mind’s eye as a bandit, his long, flowing hair, his sword [which Yamcha had promised to show him], Pu’ar at his side, the both of them operating from a strict moral code. He’s someone Tien has trouble imagining covered in someone else’s blood, bloodthirsty, hungry for violence — revenge — comfortable around death.

It makes him feel ugly and confused, then, that he wants to protect that part of Yamcha. It’s like looking at Chiaotzu and wanting to keep safe the best parts of him; the deepness of feeling comes from the same place. It’s wrong, he knows, to not deal with a fellow fighter’s contradictions. He’s just as weak as Yamcha every day that he allows Yamcha to keep those soft spots instead of ripping them from his fucking hands.

But what’s the real problem? The real problem is that his open expression of his emotions leaves Tien feeling scrubbed raw, exposed. If Yamcha loves everyone, how can Tien know that Yamcha loves him? What does Yamcha want?

One-hundred-and-thirty days later, Tien and Chiaotzu are brought back to earth. Tien holds Chiaotzu tightly to him as if he might be stolen away, as if this could all be a cruel joke. He opens his eyes slowly. In the crowd he sees Yamcha, arm around Bulma’s waist.

__________________________

II

His fight with Shen marks the beginning of the end. When his mind becomes dark, he tells himself It’s okay, I’ve got baseball. And when that doesn’t work, I’ve got to take care of Pu’ar. He babysits Gohan and, when Gohan’s older, Trunks and Goten. They pull him out of his head, make him remember the feeling of the wind whipping over Mighty Mouse as he crested sand dunes: freedom, the endless potential only children seem to have.

His apartment in West City is quiet and empty. He wants to create a home for Pu’ar but finds it hard to imagine what he could add that would feel authentic rather than cluttered and pretentious. He finds it hard, sometimes, to do much when he’s finally alone at home. He tries to fill his time with baseball, with friends and their kids, but all of it must melt away eventually, leaving him in the middle of a room with cracked walls. The window overlooks the city, and sometimes he feels like he could just sit there and watch the lights for hours. 

__________________________

It would’ve been easier to be surprised by the sound of somebody touching down gently outside of his camp if Tien hadn’t noticed the familiar ki signature moving closer for the past hour. He lifts the flap of their makeshift setup and his eyes take in the short hair. A new cut, more reserved than his previous high-stack.

“Hey,” Yamcha says shyly.

“Hey,” Tien says back.

He moves to the side to let Yamcha in. “Woulda called ahead if it wasn’t literally impossible,” Yamcha says with a chuckle, ducking his head to get inside. He looks incredibly out of place, even dressed down in his gi. It’s cramped, just the bare necessities and enough room for Tien and Chiaotzu. It’s cold in the mountains, no longer farming season, which had meant that it was time to move. Chiaotzu had been sleeping in their shared cot, but a short message to Tien lets him know he’s awake.

“What’s the occasion?” Tien asks. They had just seen each other several months ago at the Sanctuary, where Tien thought he had made his intentions clear of never being seen again. Yamcha shrugs, looking around the tent.

“Just bored,” he says. “Thought I’d pay you a visit!” He grins at him, and Tien smiles despite himself.

“Well you’re just in time for dinner, if you wanna stick around,” he says, then turns to Chiaotzu. “Chiaotzu?”

“I’m awake,” Chiaotzu says groggily, rolling out of the pile of blankets that makes up their cot.

“Put me to work, boss!” Yamcha says, then “What are we having?”

“Nothing fancy,” Tien says immediately, “just some things we have lying around that we need to eat.”

‘Some things’ turns out to be a whole rabbit, lap cheong, mung beans, hong dou tang, pork blood soup, and stewed winter melon. Yamcha helps skin the rabbit. There are still things he remembers from his time as a scavenger— different from Tien and Chiaotzu’s excellent foraging skills— things like how to tell if the rabbit is sick, to check its paws and ears to see how young it is, how gamey the meat will be. Tien guts and debones the rabbit and they gently cook it while Chiaotzu prepares dipping chilies. Chiaotzu also scoops the seeds out of the winter melon and cubes it before putting it over the fire with some mustard greens and other plants Yamcha doesn’t recognize. Yamcha tries to not make too much of a big deal about the level of hospitality, especially because Tien is pretending that they just needed to get rid of all this food. But he eats and he’s warm.

They talk.

“So what’s next for the formidable Tien Shinhan?” Yamcha says, slurping at his sweet red bean soup. Tien blushes and shoots him a look for his teasing voice, then looks down at his bowl.

“I… was actually thinking about opening a dojo.”

Yamcha almost does a spittake. “Wow! I— that would be incredible! You would be such a good master,” he settles on instead. He claps Tien on the shoulder. Tien’s shoulder tenses under his hand. He lets go. “Congratulations, man. Do you know where yet?”

Tien shakes his head, then pauses, then nods. “I’m thinking the mountains.”

Yamcha can’t help it. He laughs. “I should’ve guessed!” he says. Tien looks away, abashed.

It’s pitch black when they finish dinner and clean up, but the sky is full of stars. It reminds Yamcha of that night years ago at the Sanctuary, confronting Tien. He’s struck by how distant that all feels now, their relationship so different. In some shallower ways, closer. In some heavier ways, much farther apart.

“Can you get home safe? Do you need to spend the night?” Tien asks, but when Yamcha looks at him all three eyes are staring up at the starry sky.

What would that be like? He imagines accepting the offer, them staying up late talking, catching up, impossibly close inside that little tent. But he can’t help to think that their distance was facilitated by his own mistakes. Would this just be another one?

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” he finally says, and with a friendly hug for Tien and Chiaotzu, he heads off for home.

__________________________

When Yamcha gets kicked out of Capsule Corp, he finds his new home on the outskirts of West City. Rent is cheaper there, and he does odd jobs to keep up. He’s embarrassed about some of the behaviors he’s picked up: sleeping in all day, or even waking up but not getting out of bed. Unbalanced food. Not training enough. His friends don’t come to visit and he doesn’t invite them.

Three years are a blur. He trains some, but not as hard as he should have, caught up in the emotional affairs of his own life. When he sees Tien, his breath stutters. He feels like everyone can smell it on him, his want, his inconsistency, his shame. But they all warmly welcome him into the fold, and then he feels bad for having already let them down in ways that will make themselves known soon enough.

Kame house becomes their stronghold. Yamcha remembers training here, healing here, doing milk runs and learning how to fly before Tien had left them. Now fear hangs heavily over this place, unspoken things carried on the wind that shakes the windows. Goku and Gohan are at the Room of Spirit and Time while Yamcha’s coming back from a supplies run.

“Here,” he says to Tien and Krillin when he comes in, handing them rice pudding ice pops, “the cousin down at the store gave me extra.” He puts away the rest of the groceries, stacks the gauze and bandages and other medical supplies on the counter. He grabs his own ice pop and joins the others on the couch.

“So,” Krillin starts, “what do y’all think the Room of Spirit and Time is like?”

“Probably super boring,” Yamcha goes for, then regrets it. He’s reminded acutely of how much time he lost to feeling the weight of his heartbreak and loneliness when he should’ve been training, but the others don’t say anything to him about it.

“I wish we weren’t just finding out about it,” Tien says, clearly frustrated. “Would’ve been a great thing to know about three years ago.”

“To be fair, I don’t think Goku knew about it then,” Krillin says carefully, always prepared to defend him.

“I wonder how much difference four years would’ve made instead of three,” Yamcha scoffs, remembering his friends littering the barren battlefield. “We probably still would’ve gotten our asses kicked!”

He’s been too honest about his feelings, he can tell. Tien slams his fist down. “There’s only one way to know, Yamcha,” he says, glaring at him, “not that it makes a difference now. By the way, what’s your training regimen been in the three years you did get?”

Yamcha recoils at that, genuinely hurt. “Fuck you, dude,” is the only thing he can think of to say, turning away in disgust.

“No, fuck you, Yamcha,” Tien spits, and Yamcha is shocked, shocked that he’s not letting it go, shocked that he’d say that to him, shocked that he’s standing up like he’s preparing for a fight. Krillin is trying to look everywhere but at them, clearly uncomfortable. “We’ve all been working so hard and you knew you had three years just like the rest of us. So why is it that you’ve made so little progress?”

“Fuck you!” Yamcha shouts, standing up then, too. He feels just like he did when fighting with Bulma. Lost at what to say, how to hurt someone he loves, not even wanting the challenge of doing that. Just wanting to be understood. His eyes feel hot. The experiences he’s had, hosting and playing baseball and just trying to survive again on his own, the most human struggle, have reminded him how abnormal his closest friends are. “You don’t know what I was going through!” is all he can think of to say.

“Oh yeah, because a breakup is more important than saving the fucking planet, Yamcha!” And he says it like he’s talking to a petulant child. This is when Yamcha realizes that Tien has no idea what he’s felt, how wholly he’s felt the weight of death on his shoulders, even in times of peace. Tien doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care, that what they’re chasing after is impossible, gods and Super Saiyans and more than even that. “You had three years,” Tien repeats, “and yet the first thing I see when I come back is my friend dangling from a fucking arm!”

Yamcha’s too far gone to recognize the fear in Tien’s words, the honesty. All he can feel right now is that Tien is angry at him, is that of all the people he was worried about disappointing it’s Tien who’s yelling at him right now, who’s holding him to a standard he’s honestly tired of, afraid of.

“We hang out with gods, Tien,” he snaps, “how long are you going to play pretend? That we,” and he gestures to himself, Tien, Krillin, “can be anything like them?!”

Tien storms out then, letting the door slam behind him. Yamcha is breathing hard. Too hard. He walks to the door, then back to the living room, then back to the door several times before he realizes he’s pacing, unable to catch his breath. He collapses onto the couch before the tears come, Krillin’s warm hands on his shoulder and back.

Less than 24 hours later, Tien slams Cell with a wall of Kikoho.

__________________________

King Kai makes room for some liveliness after Frieza is defeated. He’s a guy who’s easy to win over, and is just as easily convinced of a good time. With no need to eat to sustain himself, the lord of worlds has only been able to offer slim pickings. But he calls in some favors and ends up with enough food and drink to sate even Goku, elderflower wine and soup and breads and some meats, and they celebrate for several days and nights.

Although night never falls, they still go to bed when they’re tired— more out of habit than need. Piccolo turns in early, then Chiaotzu and King Kai. Although Tien would normally turn in with Chiaotzu, tonight he chooses to keep an eye on Yamcha and— while he still would not himself admit it— lean into the excitement and lightness he’s feeling.

“To think… to think that he could do it!” Yamcha says loudly, grinning and holding a cup of wine that he’s been refilling all night. He’s had way too much to drink and normally Tien would feel a pang of worry but tonight it’s hard to hold onto. Tonight they’re dead and there’s a joy in the freedom it brings— for the first time, there’s a joy.

“I knew he would, he had to,” Tien says simply, hiding a grin in his own cup. Yamcha swats at him with no finesse and pouts in his chair.

“Well yeah, I knew too!… But, yanno, what if he… what if he didn’t? It was so close, that would have to be a… a possibility!” Yamcha says, stumbling over the last word.

“What do you mean? Of course he would, he’s Goku!” Tien says and under other circumstances would be embarrassed by his pure belief that has burned him more than once. But Yamcha looks at him then laughs, full-hearted and happy.

“Ohh Tien you’re so great, believing in your friendssshahahaha,” he falls back into laughter, then stands up very suddenly, circling Tien.

“Tien loves his friends,” he singsongs, poking a finger into Tien’s cheek. Tien slaps it away halfheartedly, feeling good. When Yamcha drapes himself over his back, Tien doesn’t know what to do.

“Your friends love you too, you know,” Yamcha murmurs, resting his cheek atop Tien’s head and wrapping his arms loosely around his shoulders. Tien breathes out hard but can’t stop himself from leaning into Yamcha a little, his incredible warmth fascinating and comforting. Yamcha holds him tighter.

“I love you,” Yamcha says, lips against Tien’s head. Tien goes cold. The words fall between the two of them, to the ground almost a palpable thing, and Yamcha thinks of when he would see the stinking corpses of animals baking in the desert sun as he swept over dunes in his ride. Blood rushing between his ears, the heat of being alive.

__________________________

“What if we wished for everyone on earth to be immortal,” Tien says, laughing, and Yamcha’s laughing too.

“Some aliens touch down on earth and try to blow up a farmer and he’s just unbothered,” Yamcha says, then they’re off with new peals of laughter.

“I bet we could just sic Chichi on Frieza and be done with it. I think Gohan gets his weird power quirk from her,” Yamcha says, and Tien’s laughing at the thought of her beating Frieza to a pulp for hurting her baby.

“Yeah, I bet that’s all it would take,” Tien says, leaning back against the grass, hands behind his head. Yamcha lays down next to him in the grass, staring at the grapefruit sky.

Gohan’s relationship to his parents is so strange and particular. It makes Yamcha wonder what it would be like to have parents, then regret wondering.

Years later and he’s seen how Goku’s relationship has strained with his son, Gohan’s resentment and sense of duty warping his childhood. Chichi thought she could tame Goku into something resembling a human father, and she was wrong. That’s not to blame her, though. What she wanted, for herself and for Gohan, Yamcha found admirable. To build love, to raise a child not eaten alive by war.

He wonders what kind of dad he would be. The things he would excel at. The ways he would fail. By the time Cell is dead, Yamcha has finally reflected on how he tried to do and be everything Bulma wanted, even at the expense of himself. How that’s not a badge of honor. That’s not a positive attribute. He was just so desperate for happiness that he convinced himself that he had found it. But now, seeing Gohan forced to carry the mistakes of the adults around him, he finds himself grateful for the second chance at his own life.

Goku had been such an amazing kid, too.

__________________________

Yamcha’s visits become more regular after that first visit in the mountains on that cold winter night. So far he’s the only one who’s attempted to find Tien and, if Tien leaves his ki spiked on quiet afternoons like a warm lighthouse, well, that’s between him and Yamcha.

Yamcha always shows up in his gi, sometimes having to borrow Tien’s clothes for farmwork, Yamcha swimming in big green pants rolled up to his knees. They farm, they cook, they clean, they do laundry. One day Tien looks up and his world has become jarringly domestic.

“What’s on your mind, bud?” Yamcha says, glancing at him from where he’s clipping wet towels to the clothesline. Tien startles at being noticed, and Yamcha chuckles. “You get this look on your face like you’re constipated when you’re thinking about something you probably shouldn’t be worrying about.” He puts down the clothespins and comes over to Tien, who’s sitting on the steps in front of his house, taking a break from his own housework. It is a beautiful summer day. Yamcha sits down next to him.

When did time slow down? He feels as if he’s been swimming in syrup.

Is this what happiness is? Contentment?

He remembers when he first landed on the little island that carried Kame house on its back. Master Taopaipai always had a soft spot for kids, had said as much when he decided to take Tien and Chiaotzu in. So it made sense that as Tien got older, Master Taopaipai’s instruction became harsher. To teach him discipline. To never let his guard down. Sure, Master Roshi would hit his students for lack of concentration, of seriousness. Of course. But he never beat them, never made Tien feel like he needed to put his body between him and his students. So then it’s no surprise, the way his students would just… turn their heads. When they would look around at their surroundings, when he’d go with them to pick up groceries or to a festival, they would just turn their heads and look around, their only goal to take in the beautiful twinkling lights and stalls with their chipped paint. Not map out exits. Not consider danger.

Decades later, Tien is wondering if that was actually a lesson from his training, or just from his life. Sitting next to Yamcha, he gives himself permission to just turn his head. To just look around.

Off in the distance he can see their small farm. He’s still in planning stages to open a school, no structure built for that yet. He sees a sea of sky. Then he sees Yamcha, sitting next to him, a quiet, confused smile on his face.

“You wanna go in for some tea?” Yamcha asks, letting go of his curiosity about what Tien was thinking about. He’s always been so gracious. Never pushed. Tien nods and they go inside. Yamcha starts talking about a recent trip to the aquarium with Pu’ar, but Tien would be lying if he said he was paying attention. It’s like his head is underwater, and he’s familiar with this feeling. Knows that he’ll realize several things from this moment, but later.

“—And Bulma’s birthday is coming up, and I have no idea what to get her! I try to outdo every year, to connect the gifts somehow, but last year I got her a photo album and I don’t know what to get this year to—“

Yamcha sets two cups on the table and pours them their tea, still talking. He sits down across from Tien, huffs, then folds his arms on the table and lays his head on top of them. The window is open, and a warm breeze flows in.

“Tien, am I a fool?” He’s looking at Tien. His hair is getting long again. Tien reaches out and tucks a strand behind Yamcha’s ear.

“You may be,” he says fondly. The cicadas are chirping.

__________________________

“Hey Bulms.”

“Hey Yamcha, what’s up, how are you? Also, thank you so much for babysitting Trunks the other day, I can’t tell you how much Vegeta and I needed to get away for a while!”

“Ha, it’s no problem. Trunks is great. And I’m doing, uh, okay. I just thought I’d call, it’s been a minute since we just talked, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, it really has been, hasn’t it? Well I’m doing well, Vegeta’s still training like a madman and he keeps trying to take Trunks with him, which— I feel conflicted, you know? On one hand, he’s spending time with him. On the other, now I know how Chichi feels!” Her laugh crackles a bit in the receiver, and Yamcha smiles to himself.

He still loves her, although that love has changed, and for the better. It’s a steady, unwavering love, a love that wasn’t there when they first got together— a dedicated and solid thing, something that’s been eroded down to its core to reveal a beautiful stone. That stone had been washed up and down along the beach with the tide, carried by whims of the water. That had been their relationship. He didn’t feel, sometimes, that he deserved even that beautiful little stone. But it’s here now, warm, in his palm, in her voice.

“— and now that Goku’s gone, he’s always talking about how he has to train, but that day you babysat we went to this lovely restaurant, and he hates getting dressed up but he loves the food,” she says, then chuckles. “So I can usually convince him to go.”

“Good,” he says, and he finds that he means it. He pauses, then pushes forward. “So I know this is probably coming out of the blue, but I’ve been thinking, and I want to say that I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” She says, and even though it’s been almost a decade since they broke up, he knows she knows what for, and he knows that he deserves this.

“I’m sorry for how I acted… what I said to you.” He pauses, chagrined. “What I put on you. You didn’t deserve that.”

A pause, then “Finally!” she shouts, catching him by surprise. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for that apology?” There’s a smile in her voice. Still being strong in this moment, still assuaging him, and he wishes he could tell her that she doesn’t need to but he knows that she knows that. It’s just her.

“You know, I feel like you’ve really changed, Yamcha,” she says quietly. He’s surprised by that. Maybe he’s not able to see what she’s talking about from the inside. It’s not that he feels like the same old Yamcha, it’s that he feels like nothing. Like every time he tries to pin down who he is, it slips away, in the overturning of the world, or just the overturning of his life, sometimes by his own hand. But it makes sense. He doesn’t think Bulma would choose to still speak with him if he had stayed the same.

“Thanks,” is what he settles on saying.

“So what’s up with you? How’ve you been? And a little more than ‘uh, okay,’” she teases.

He tells her the truth.

__________________________

Yamcha and Launch bandage Tien up at Kame House. He feels warm hands on either side of his body, moving his arms and turning his head this way and that, applying antiseptic and gauze, but he can’t seem to become fully present. He hears voices— Yamcha’s deep voice to his left, talking to Bulma, Launch tutting to his right. Now that the fight’s over, now that he’s back at Kame house, he’s so exhausted. Now that he no longer has anyone to protect. Chiaotzu, Goku. Chiaotzu’s gone. Chiaotzu’s gone. Chiao—

“Tien, buddy, did you hear me?”

“Huh?” He says, turning toward the voice. It’s Yamcha, expression on his face like he’s worried but doesn’t want Tien to know he’s worried.

“Do you know where you are?” Yamcha asks gently, and normally Tien would scoff at him for being an idiot but he doesn’t even have that much in him, so he just says “Kame house.”

“Okay,” Yamcha sighs in relief. “I was just saying that Bulma checked the radar and the dragon balls are back! So we’ll be able to bring back Chiaotzu and everyone else.”

Tien stares at him, then feels his eyes prick with tears. “Really?” he says, and his voice is small and far away. Yamcha stares back at him, surprised, then smiles.

“Yeah. Really.” Tien can’t stop the tears that come then, and Yamcha leans in to hug him, rubbing his back. Tien leans into his warmth and then his eyes catch the edge of Yamcha’s cast. His stomach turns over.

He wishes he could feel some pride at not being to recognize his younger self anymore, but he just feels confused. If it was this easy to regret who he was, then how was he so able to do the things he did? Was it just his unwavering belief in Master Taopaipai, Master Shen? He can’t convince himself so.

Yamcha had told him not to die. Had demanded it. What has he done to deserve such concern? What is he? He tries to remember what he had felt when he decided to break Yamcha’s leg. He hadn’t decided it before the match. All he had known then was that he wanted to shame Yamcha as much as possible, and Yamcha only. Had he felt any regret? No, Yamcha was an enemy. That’s who Tien is then, who he must be. Someone who decides it is okay to unnecessarily harm a person because they are an enemy. He finds it impossible to not believe in what he believes in with his whole heart. He must, he must have conviction. But if they can change so easily, then what are his convictions worth? What good does he bring into the world? He failed in his fight with King Piccolo, was just a burden to Goku, he—

“Tien, honey,” Launch says next to him, and Tien realizes that Yamcha has moved back from hugging him. He turns his head to Launch, his movements sluggish.

“Can you stay with us?” She asks, holds his face in her hands. He’s not sure what she means [stay with them at Kame house? Stay with them in this moment?] but he nods. She smiles and kisses him right above his third eye, then rubs his back. He wishes he could be there with them, in this room, between their warmth, but the walls feel like they’re closing in. He’s suffocating, this cute little house with its cute little inhabitants, the danger they’re all in, what he himself has done to them… he takes in one deep breath, holds it. Lets it out through his nose. He has to calm down. Can’t put this on them, too.

Yamcha watches him carefully. He’d never told Tien, but the doctors at Papaya Hospital had said that his broken bone was transverse. The easiest break to heal.

__________________________

“What the hell was that about?” Krillin asks softly, still rubbing Yamcha’s back. It’s rhetorical but Yamcha wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, trying to regain his breathing.

“Hey, hey, shhh, look at me,” Krillin says, then, holding eye contact with Yamcha, goes “In… hold it… out…hold it….” They do that a few times before Yamcha is able to breathe easily.

“Thanks,” Yamcha says, averting his eyes. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Krillin says, leaning back. Giving Yamcha his physical space. “He didn’t have to say all that.”

“It’s fine. It’s what he really believes,” Yamcha murmurs, and then it’s quiet.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Krillin finally says. “It’s not like any of us did any better with the androids!” But at least they saw the androids, at least they fought them, Yamcha doesn’t say.

“… It’s a lot, isn’t it,” Krillin says, leaning forward again. “I think we’ve all still got a lot of room to get stronger, but… to tell you the truth, I wonder, too. Sometimes.” Yamcha looks at him. He’s looking down at his hands.

“I think about…” Yamcha starts, pauses. “…I used to be so ready to head into danger when one of y’all was in trouble and now… I just feel like… things feel different now after dying.”

“Yeah! That’s it,” Krillin says, looking at him like something’s clicking into place. “I felt different after dying, too. It felt like it took too long to get my footing back, and it’s… sometimes I still don’t feel all the way here, you know?” He looks back down at his small hands.

“Yeah,” Yamcha says, “I do know.”

“You know,” Krillin starts, still looking at his hands, “I think… Tien’s feeling the same thing. I don’t know what it was like for y’all on that planet, but I think Tien’s just doing what Tien does.” He chuckles at that, and Yamcha cracks a small, sad smile.

“I guess I just wish he felt like he could talk to me about that, then,” Yamcha says before he thinks better of it. Krillin looks at him for a long moment before clearing his throat.

“Listen, I… can I ask you something?” The way he says it puts Yamcha on edge, knowing it’ll be personal. But this is Krillin. And maybe he doesn’t want to have secrets any more.

“Sure.”

“Is there… you know, like… something… going on? Between you and Tien?” Yamcha looks at him. Krillin’s face is a brilliant red and Yamcha barks out a laugh despite himself. He’d already prepared to tell Krillin the truth but seeing him like that lets him know he’s safe.

“No, I… I kinda wish,” he says, “I… did say something to him while we were dead but… he rejected me.”

“What?!” Krillin says very loudly, then covers his mouth before leaning in unconsciously. “Why? I mean, to be honest, I felt like something was going on for a while now, but… well, now that I think about it, I can see him doing something like that.”

The words surprise and hurt Yamcha. Apparently he was the only one who thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell. Krillin sees Yamcha close off and rushes to amend, “That’s not what I meant! I mean, wouldn’t it be just like him to think that love is scary?”

The thought gives Yamcha pause. He hadn’t thought about it that way, that love might look like fear on Tien’s face. Tien had said it so quietly, so matter-of-fact. And he knows that maybe this is all conjecture, pointless and useless, but it does make him wonder.

“Well, regardless of what he secretly thinks, he said no,” is what Yamcha says diplomatically, numbing himself to his own words, “so that’s that, then.”

Krillin frowns. Yamcha’s hackles raise at his expression.

“Listen. We all want love to work out or whatever,” he says sharply, “but sometimes that just doesn’t happen. You know what I’m talking about, right?” And he doesn’t want to say more, to hurt Krillin with his own observations about friendships that echo Yamcha and Tien’s, but Krillin seems to take the hint.

“It’s so weird to hear you talk like this,” Krillin says, laughing nervously.

“…Are you judging me?” Yamcha asks, playful. Krillin raises his hands in mock surrender.

“No! No! I just think it’s weird is all!” And Yamcha pulls him into a headlock and they’re laughing.

Later, when Tien says his final farewells at the Sanctuary, Yamcha can feel Krillin’s eyes on him.

But what can he do?

__________________________

It’s when Goku drops Tien’s pants at the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai that Yamcha realizes. He physically takes a step back, then forces himself to stay still in a facsimile of acting natural. It had hit him over the head like a frying pan. It’s not just the thought of how sexy Tien looks that scalds him, but the sight of Tien bashful and human turns something much deeper in Yamcha, and he feels it like someone’s twisting his guts.

He respectfully shoves the realization into a drawer and locks it away. He’s genuinely happy with Bulma right now, and even if he wasn’t he wouldn’t want to risk the shaky foundation of his friendship with Tien for something that might burn out as fast as a sparkler. He doesn’t realize the sign that that is in itself, his want to keep Tien connected to him as much as possible betraying the easy way he always addresses him.

Like now, decades later in Tien’s home. Construction on the dojo has begun. Tien’s preparing for lunch, and it’s still so strange to see him in a kitchen like this. The last time had been at Kame house, when he would collect something from the fridge or make tea. Tien uses his kitchen’s icebox for fresh vegetables and meat, usually preparing a meal plan a week in advance based on what he already has. Not that much planning goes into it, Tien and Chiaotzu usually eating soups and rice dishes. Simple and filling.

Today is gaifan with whitefish and stirred vegetables. Chiaotzu is still out helping other farms, so Tien only has to worry about himself and Yamcha for lunch. He plates the rice, then the vegetables, then the fish, and slides Yamcha’s plate in front of him on the table.

“Thanks,” Yamcha says, looking up at him with a crooked smile.

“Of course,” Tien says, and sits down next to him with his own plate.

They eat quietly, but Tien’s third eye stays on Yamcha.

Yamcha has his own theory about how Tien’s third eye works. He thinks it’s different from his other eyes, looking where his mind is focused rather than where he wants it to look. Yamcha’s watched him enough to see how the eye wanders, how it sometimes seems to focus on something completely unrelated to whatever Tien’s doing in the moment.

“…What?” Tien says more than asks, pulling Yamcha out of his reverie. Now all three eyes are on him, and he can feel his face heating up.

“Nothing!” he says. “Just thinking about your cooking skills. This is really good. I’d give it a nine out of Tien.”

The corner of Tien’s mouth curls in amusement, and he gently slaps Yamcha on the shoulder. “If it’s so good, then eat.”

They finish their meal and before Tien can get up to bus away the plates like he usually does, Yamcha gets up the nerve to ask. “Tien… how does your third eye work?”

Tien pauses, looks at him. Yamcha looks back.

“Like, does it see like your other eyes? How does it work?”

Is it his imagination, or is Tien getting red? Yamcha realizes he’s leaning in, pulled into Tien’s tide, then leans back, pouts.

“Are you not gonna tell me?” he says, then gets embarrassed. “Oh no, am I being weird? I’m sorry, Tien, just forget it—”

“It’s fine,” Tien says, looking down at the table instead of at Yamcha. But he makes no move to tell him. He doesn’t make any move to get up, either. Yamcha realizes that his third eye has never stopped looking at him. He reaches out to cup Tien’s jaw, tilt his face toward him. He feels like he’s floating, watching what he’s doing through backwards binoculars. Tien, though stiffening at Yamcha’s touch, turns his face to look at Yamcha.

His eyes are so dark. All three are staring at him, unwavering. Yamcha chuckles softly. Tien quirks an unamused brow at him.

“Sorry, it’s just… like this, it’s almost like you’ve only got eyes for me,” he murmurs.

“Yamcha,” Tien says, a warning.

“Yeah?” Yamcha whispers, so easy, with a smile.

It’s always like this. They’ll spend time together, Yamcha coming over unannounced every time, and they’ll clean, or do farmwork, or cook, and it almost feels normal until Tien sees Yamcha leaning on his hoe and staring at him, or their hands brush, or Yamcha touches his back, solid and warm and real. Always so warm, so inviting, so open, looking at Tien like that and using that tone of voice, like he’s letting Tien know he’s there for the taking, leaving it up to Tien to once again, like always, put his foot down, be the responsible one. Like now, Yamcha saying “Yeah?” like he’s not all the way open, like he doesn’t know what his eyes are doing, like he’s not throwing the ball into Tien’s court.

This time, Tien kisses him.

Yamcha stutters out a gasp against his lips and pulls him in, hands twisting in his shirt, the way it stretches over his back. Their chairs clatter to the floor as they stand up then fall, Tien slotted between Yamcha’s legs. No breath, no space exists between them, like any room would be room to think. Room to stop. Tien runs his hands firmly up Yamcha’s front, thumbing with purpose at his nipples. Yamcha gasps, unusually quiet, and opens his mouth and his legs up further, twists them up with Tien’s. His hips rise with the tempo of his breaths, and Tien’s hips push down.  

Yamcha swallows his moans, lips parted for Tien to come inside, lick him up. His own tongue caresses the underside of Tien’s, so gentle, so at odds with how his hands dig into the muscles of Tien’s back. Holding him painfully close, hips rolling into Tien’s, slotting their dicks together through layers of clothes. It’s warm, too warm, sweat dripping off of Tien’s brow and onto Yamcha’s, but neither of them can risk pulling back to pull off clothes. Each roll of their hips must mean something, each tug of teeth on a bottom lip. It’s either this or nothing.

When Yamcha cums, it’s with his legs tangled with Tien’s, his arms pulling him closer, his mouth crushed against Tien’s. Tien follows soon after, cups the side of Yamcha’s face with his hand. His cheek is wet.

__________________________

Despite their strength, their skin never becomes impenetrable the way a Saiyan’s does. Still soft, still pliant. Tien’s fingers dig into Yamcha’s stomach.

“I would dream of dying.”

It becomes a normal part of their routine whenever Chiaotzu is out. Yamcha stops coming over in only his gi, starts being honest about wanting to wear Tien’s clothes, to be wrapped in Tien’s smell. He teases more, holds himself more loosely. But he’s still silent whenever they touch.

“I would dream of quiet moments, you know… with you, then it would be replaced by you in that explosion, or you impaled, or Chiaotzu dying, but… I never had nightmares of my own death. Just yours. Just Chiaotzu’s.”

Yamcha tends to wait for another person’s cue and likens that to mercy. Tien never realized how tense he gets when Yamcha casually touches him until Yamcha stops casually touching him, clearly having compartmentalized it but saying nothing. To pretend like nothing happened, is that really mercy? Tien would have to say no. He leans over Yamcha’s shivering body and bites at his bottom lip. Yamcha arches and presses against him, grabbing at his ass.

“At the 23rd, you had gotten so much bigger, and then Goku dropped your pants! And yeah, it was hot, but the way you blushed and played right back was so…”

“So…?”

Yamcha finds it harder to hold himself quietly, to meet Tien only where Tien wants to be, when clothes come off. When Tien’s mouth is on him and his skin is against his, Yamcha’s voice comes out, unbidden, shaky. He can’t hide the depths of his wanting like this, but he doesn’t want to scare Tien with that ocean of feeling. The first time he’s naked in front of him, Tien’s third eye darts around like it doesn’t know where to look.

“I was always worried about dying and not being important enough to bring back.”

“…”

The skin of their hands is incredibly tough, but there are spots on both of them that are still so soft to the touch. Like the juncture of Tien’s neck, which Yamcha daydreams about biting but never does.

Sometimes, shortly after breaking up with Bulma, he’d still think of nights with her to help himself cum. It’d make him feel guilty but he’d remind himself that they were actual memories, that they were once real. Sometimes, suddenly, in his lovemaking, Tien would be there— fantasy overlaid on top of memory. What his desires have consistently, always been. Always fixating on what he can’t truly have.

These moments feel surreal. Yamcha doesn’t know what to think. Could Tien just not dismiss the allure of a warm body anymore? He feels like if he exposes too much of himself then the whole thing will collapse, a poorly built house. But he wants to take as much as he can while Tien’s feeling generous. The fucking, the laying around afterward til Chiaotzu is about to return home, the talking, the looking into eyes, the hands on his skin, the warmth of their bodies lying next to each other. He’ll take everything until there’s nothing left.

He wants someone more capable than him to treat him gently. He wants Tien. They eat, then they fuck. Tien’s mouth tastes like fish more often than not, and god he loves… he loves this man. This man who is so wholly real and warm against him.

It goes on for a year.

“The dojo is almost finished.”

“Oh?” Yamcha rolls over to look at Tien, to watch him pull his undershirt back on.

“Yeah. There are already a few students interested,” he says. He looks at Yamcha.

“Yamcha, what do you want?”

Yamcha knows what Tien means. He’s just been meandering, playing baseball and spending lazy evenings helping out with the farm. He knows Tien means in life; in his heart; in his soul. What does he want? He used to feel some pride about being strong, a small badge of honor, but “I don’t care about being stronger,” he says honestly. “I just wanted a family. And now I have a reason to live, in loving the people in my life,” he thinks of Goku Bulma Krillin Gohan Trunks Goten Pu’ar Chiaotzu Tien “but….” He rolls over onto his front, stares at Tien. He could ask the same of him.

“What do you want?”

“I want to live for something.”

Typical Tien. A fast, opaque reply. Yamcha rolls his eyes and falls back against the bed. Where does he factor into “living for something”?

“Yamcha,” Tien says admonishingly.

“You already know how I feel.”

Silence.

Well. He supposes that’s his answer.

Yamcha runs his hands down his face, then sits up. “I think I’m gonna go.”

“You—,” Tien starts, surprised, then grabs his wrist. “You don’t have to go.”

“Come on, Tien,” he says softly, smiles as kindly as he can, “maybe we’re just ruining things?”

“Don’t smile if you don’t want to smile,” Tien says, brows knitted together, hand heavy around Yamcha’s wrist.

Yamcha breaks.

His smile cracks and he snatches his wrist back. “What a fucked up thing to tell me,” he says, hates the warbling of his voice. He can’t stop the angry and hurt tears that escape but he can turn his back to Tien, get dressed in silence, and leave.

__________________________

”Come on, get up!”

Yamcha would, but it’s a beautiful morning. The waves are smoothing themselves up the beach, leaving behind kisses of white foam. He hears early birds floating in midair. Krillin and the rest of the world can wait.

But Krillin will have none of that. He jumps on top of Yamcha, carefully watching out for his leg, and starts punching him playfully.

“Come on, man,” Krillin laughs, slapping both sides of Yamcha’s face lightly now, “we gotta get up! Tien says he’s gonna show us something cool!”

Yamcha groans, then tackles Krillin in a surprising show of wakefulness. They roll around for a while, laughing, then get up and head downstairs, Yamcha a few paces behind Krillin.

Tien’s waiting in the living room for them, shifting his weight. It’s still fairly dark out, just before dawn. “Hey,” he says with a small quirk of his lips as they come down the stairs.

“Hey,” Yamcha says back.

“Tien says he’s gonna teach us how to fly!” Krillin says, excited.

“Oh, finally! But why did we have to get up so early?”

“You’ll see,” Tien says, cheeks a little red. The three of them head outside.

Even though it’s still dark, it’s already warm. Yamcha’s a bit worried about practicing with his leg still healing in its bandages but he knows that if anyone’s given consideration to that, it’s Tien. Tien turns to them.

“Okay, so the main thing is feeling, deep inside, that you can do it,” he immediately begins. He thinks to himself for a minute, clearly struggling with how to describe mastering the technique.

“How does it feel?” Yamcha asks.

“…Weightless,” Tien says, blinking, in thought. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Just,” and he takes a deep breath, “take a deep breath and try to feel your ki.”

Krillin closes his eyes. Yamcha does the same. He locates his ki in his center, warm and glowing.

“Imagine it floating up and taking you up with it… let yourself feel like your whole body is just your ki. Like you’re one and the same.” Tien’s voice is warm and close, quiet. “Let it lift you up.”

“Whoa!” It’s Krillin, and Yamcha opens his eyes to look and is surprised to see Krillin floating off-balance about two feet off the ground, hands stretched out— then he realizes he’s still eye-level with Krillin, and he’s floating too, and it’s like the realization pops the bubble because now they’re falling back down. Tien’s immediately at their side with an arm around each of them, and when Yamcha touches down he doesn’t feel it in his leg at all.

“Good— Good job,” Tien says, lets go of them, coughs. “But now it’s gonna be harder to do because you’re aware that you can do it.”

Practice goes on for about another hour because it’s true. Now that Yamcha knows he might float off when he closes his eyes to feel his ki, he’s anticipating the floating and keeps opening his eyes and cutting it short. He’s also still worried about his leg.

Krillin gets it about an hour and a half after they start.

“Look— Look at me! I’m doing it!” His grin splits his face as he floats higher and higher.

“Stay concentrated!” Tien calls after him. “When you’re ready to come down, do it gradually.”

Krillin gives him a thumbs up then zooms around Kame house, laughing. Yamcha watches him.

“You’re doing a good job,” Tien says, and Yamcha sighs then smirks at him.

“Thanks, teach,” he says, then closes his eyes.

“… Sorry. Don’t think about your leg,” Tien murmurs next to him. “If you go up, just know that I’ll help you come down.”

Yamcha shivers, then shakes out his muscles and re-sets himself to the job. This time, when he feels himself floating up and starts thinking about falling, he just sees Tien’s face instead and keeps his eyes closed. When he finally opens them, he’s floating above the palm tree, above the roof, and he’s sure he’s going to plummet when two hands grab his own. He looks up and Tien is in front of him, face serious, and the seriousness is reassuring. He focuses on that face, on the feeling of warmth from his ki enveloping him. And he floats.

“Hey, you did it!” Krillin says to his left. He smiles, lets go of Tien’s hands.

“Hell yeah I did!” But the banter is cut off by the sudden glow of pink. They all look out across the water, where the sun is rising, reaching its glowing halo out along the water.

Yamcha smiles at Krillin and Tien, who both smile back, and they shoot off over the water and toward the sunset.

Tien was right. It is unlike anything he’s ever felt before. The closest he’s gotten to it is in dreams. He looks down at his reflection warped by the rush of water, in awe of the world he gets to live in.

__________________________

When must he admit how deep Yamcha’s feelings for him are? When he never sees Yamcha with another lover after Bulma? When Yamcha stops visiting him? When he himself finally caves in? When must he realize that Yamcha has kept himself silken and warm for him, for the mere possibility of him, for years? Held himself so soft and easy for Tien in his own form of self-discipline for love.

Tien is scared of the depth of that quiet — modest — humble love. And Tien’s still scared of what he’d to with and to it.

Tien’s love wants to eat.

But, he thinks. But when does that concern become cowardice. But when does he accept that he’s trusted himself with others, he thinks as he looks over his students. But what about what they could’ve had. Being twenty again and rolling around in their futons, trying to be quiet for Krillin, trying to not get caught; being dead together as lovers, able to console each other more, be closer in their mortality and their pain. Tien immediately thinks ‘liability, burden,’ but wipes away the lie. Every connection is a liability. Every person in his life is a burden of responsibility, a weight, a potential mistake. And yet he must allow them in.

After all, has he learned nothing?

__________________________

III

Goku has people he must protect because of the danger he brings. He feels the need to fight like a scraping breath in his lungs. The Saiyan urge to destroy and dominate is a scary one, even in himself. His desperate search for someone who was strong enough to sate that desire in him ended up, in many cases, looking exactly like the destruction he was supposed to bring upon the earth anyway.

He’s not a child anymore. Becoming God would have been redundant when he has more power like this, more autonomy than he ever could in the Sanctuary. But it’s enough. It’s been too much.

Death becomes a shield the way Goku wields it, a protection for himself and his loved ones, no matter how misguided or useless. Death becomes something comfortable, something to be worn and taken off, a palpable, temporary item, a thing. That is what it means to master death in this world where the planes are warped and he can smell his grandfather again without being asleep.

Human beings can’t wield that without becoming something completely different from human. The more they fought to catch up to Goku, an impossible task, the further away they moved from humanity.

__________________________

Tien had had this conversation with himself before: what is farming? Tending to the earth. What is the earth? The container for all his sins, and also would be the container for all of his corpses, if that was how death worked. What are corpses? Bodies turned away from the water, no— bodies with their face in the water, no— bodies devoid of any water, not quite— and the locus was death, not rebirth, because even though he came back it wasn’t rebirth. He was still him, just stopped and started. And what is a corpse, if what a body is still eludes him? If death still eludes him, let alone rebirth? We have pearled eyes, and we have big deep dangerous hearts. And we have all the pain of man, all of it, but none of it at all because all of it is so much like the weightlessness of sleeping. It dissolves into the water of the body, becomes one with it so no one of them knows where the pain ends and the body starts. What is death?

A quiet moment stolen at Tien’s small house. They’ve finished for the day and are sitting in the field, eating watermelon, Chiaotzu floating above Tien and Yamcha with a slice as large as his head. The dojo is just an idea still, but Tien is starting to be able to see it in his mind’s eye. Yamcha’s grinning at him, slurping obnoxiously at his watermelon.

“Hey Tien,” Yamcha asks, leaning in, only for his ears, “what do you think an asshole is more like, a door or a window?”

“Ch-chimney,” Tien stutters out, and Yamcha howls with laughter.

“What’s funny?” Chiaotzu asks, floating over.

“Get back to work!” Tien yells at Yamcha harmlessly, red down to his shoulders. Yamcha just laughs and slaps his back. His hand is warm and solid. An anchor.

__________________________

Yes, 18 seems human, like how many people in Krillin’s life seem human, but she’s not human. She won’t ever be human again. But Krillin’s already had practice seeing beyond the human in his love for Goku. He reaches beyond it to invite her in, and she invites him in in turn.

__________________________

“Hey Yamcha, the weirdest thing just happened.”

“Oh, hey, Bulms. What was it?”

“You’ll never guess who was just at my door!”

Yamcha pauses and tries to think. Even feeling as raw as he does after walking out on Tien he still knows who he wishes it was, but he refuses to say it.

“I’m sure you’re right. Who was it?”

“Tien! He was asking for you. Did you not tell him where you live?”

Yamcha’s mouth goes dry. He hadn’t even told Tien that he’d moved, thinking it would be obvious. He always visited Tien at the dojo, not the other way around, so telling him he’d moved had never seemed important.

“Did… did you tell him where I live?”

“Yeah!… was I not supposed to?”

He can not tell her about everything that’s happened between them, so he just settles on “No, it’s fine.” He hears a knock at the door. “Whew, ah, speak of the devil. I’m, I’m gonna go, Bulma. I’ll talk to you later?”

“Okay, sounds good. Tell me what he wanted later! Bye!” He murmurs a bye and puts down the phone.

When he opens the door, Tien’s standing there in his changshan.

“Hey,” Yamcha says quietly.

“Hi,” Tien all but whispers. Yamcha steps aside to let him in. Tien doesn’t immediately take a seat, although Yamcha doesn’t really expect him to. He knows that when Tien’s nervous, he prefers to stand or be mobile, and if he’s here then there’s no way he’s not nervous.

“Your hair’s getting long,” Tien says, hand coming up like he wants to touch and then falling.

“Ha, yeah, I always seem to come back to this,” Yamcha says, awkwardly patting his own hair. A sense of self that seems to prevail.

Tien stands by the table. Touches the lip of the mug that sits there.

“Chiaotzu and I did a lot of talking on King Kai’s.” Yamcha isn’t sure where this is going, so he keeps quiet.

“We talked a lot about death, and about what we would do if we couldn’t go back.” Tien looks at Yamcha. “I’m realizing that I never really talked to you.”

Yamcha’s breath stalls in his throat.

When they had been dead, Yamcha had wanted desperately to confide in Tien. He had wanted to easily earn Tien’s depth, his intensity. He hadn’t realized, even for years after, how that desperation didn’t allow for Tien to have his own mistakes, didn’t allow room for him to be carrying his own pain. After their fight at Kame house, Yamcha had overcorrected to wanting Tien to confide in him, to allow Yamcha to support him.

Now, Tien stands in front of him, a man. And only a man.

“I was so scared,” Yamcha says, and Tien takes one look at his face and steps toward him, worried. But Yamcha can finally say, can finally share what he’d been swallowing for years. “I was so scared about what it meant to not want to come back, to be up there for so long that I never wanted to come back down, and when I did come back… I-I just… missed… you—“

Tien pulls Yamcha into his embrace.

__________________________

They end up collapsed in a pile on the floor, talking. Tien’s got his arms around Yamcha and their legs are all tangled up together.

“I felt…” Tien starts, then falls off. The truth is the words to describe the knowledge of death don’t exist yet, not the way Tien needs them, and “… well, I’ve never been good with words.”

“I seem to remember a very eloquent Tien at the 22nd,” Yamcha teases, then leans his head against Tien’s shoulder as Tien laughs.

“You were so… so beautiful,” Tien says, and when Yamcha looks at his face he’s looking away, blushing, but his third eye is trained on him. “I… I can’t forgive myself for what I’ve done but I think I was feeling a lot then, and— took it out on you.”

“Ha, it’s okay—“

“And you were so kind about it,” Tien says as if he didn’t even hear Yamcha, “I just remember you forgiving me, saying bones heal ‘like everything else.’ Like everything else.” He’s looking at Yamcha then and Yamcha has to look away, his gaze too intense. Tien just squeezes him closer. “I’m always amazed by how full of love you are.”

Yamcha has to wonder if he’s too forgiving, but he says, “Thanks, but I don’t know about that.”

“I mean it.”

Yamcha goes quiet, a sad but grateful smile on his face. “Ah, Tien, you always make me feel so good. And to think, you used to be such a shithead.” A silence falls over them, recent events heavy on their minds.

“Yamcha, I’m sorry.”

Ah.

“Look, it’s okay,” Yamcha starts, looking everywhere but Tien, “I’m uh. I’m glad that we became friends. I’m glad we’re friends.”

Yamcha feels a hand at his jaw, coaxing him to look at Tien. “Is that what we are?” Tien asks. Yamcha clenches his teeth, can’t look away. Doesn’t know what to say.

“Yamcha,” Tien says. “What do you want?”

“You,” he grits out, holding back too much, but Tien kisses him. It’s salty and wet but neither of them comment on it.

All the loving each other openly through the years that didn’t get to happen. Being twenty again and rolling around in their futons, trying to be quiet for Krillin, trying to not get caught. Being dead together as lovers, able to console each other more, be closer in their mortality and their pain. But none of that happened, the way the universe is caustic. The way hindsight laughs and laughs and laughs. Instead, this moment. What they have now is born from the chances they didn’t take when they were younger and more naïve, and this moment is molten instead of lukewarm and unsure because of it. What they have in this moment, tangled up on the floor of Yamcha’s apartment, is because of the mistakes they made and the right decisions they made, and it is ultimately so Tien and Yamcha, and that’s how Yamcha doesn’t regret it. That’s how Tien doesn’t regret it.

__________________________

It isn’t until Bulma’s “38th” birthday party and making Bulla cry that it fully clicks for Yamcha. What it is that Vegeta does differently for Bulma, what he couldn’t be. Trunks and Bulla were possible because of the love they built. Not because of an easy, empty love.

Tien is next to him.

“Tien, what do you think about having a family?” He asks, and Tien chokes on his tea. He’s not surprised by Tien’s reaction— they still don’t have a relationship like that, not living with each other or seeing each other as much as he’d like, although Yamcha’s certain something will burst soon.

“Wh-what? Why? Why is that on your mind?” Tien asks, and Yamcha dredges up his past experiences and gives them to Tien as lightly as possible. One lesson he’s learned from Bulma’s suffering is how to not force others to carry his pain. For his part, Tien listens meaningfully.

“Well what about good things that end? Are they bad because they end? Can they be good because they ended?” Tien’s carefulness makes it impossible for Yamcha to dismiss his questions.

“They can be, but I want…” but he can’t say what he wants, not to Tien. Not yet, anyway.

“So you’re not satisfied with things that end?”

“No! I want… I want a family.” Yamcha finally admits. Tien hums and looks to the distance. Yamcha follows his gaze and sees where Bulma is holding Trunks’s hand and talking to Chichi, who’s holding Bulla.

“When you think about that family, what does it look like?” And Yamcha’s quiet, thinking about his honest answer to that. He doesn’t know how to tell Tien about a family with him in it; he doesn’t know if that’s where Tien’s feelings lie for him. For the first time, he realizes how much his idea of family has changed. Instead of his wife and himself happy in the city with a few children, he sees himself and Pu’ar. And next to him is Tien, and there’s Chiaotzu, too. That’s when he notices that while Tien is looking off into the distance, his third eye is on Yamcha. Yamcha blushes and Tien smiles.

__________________________

constantly thinking too much about the people in his life / constantly not thinking about everything else / full of death / constantly in love with life as if he’d been deprived of it / constantly