Cooperation - Sifl - Dragon Ball [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter Text

Professor Gohan Son sat on a bench on the far side of the playground, his nose in a book, and unobtrusively supervised his daughter and her friends as they played. He did so every Friday afternoon from whenever he and his trio of little girls arrived - usually four o’ clock - to six on the dot.

Sevoya knew this because she had looked him over many times as she scoped out the fathers lingering on the outskirts of the local playground, but had never approached him before. At least, not here, though she’d never really approached him in the short time she had been enrolled in his class, either. The most she’d ever done was pay rapt and wordless attention to him as he lectured about biology simultaneously to eavesdropping on the group in front of her gossiping about him: his youth, his appearance, his marriage.

There was a lot to whisper about when it came to Professor Son. Almost as much as there was to whisper about Sevoya herself - except the things they said about the professor were sometimes flattering instead of wholly incriminating.

But even after Sevoya had left the classroom gossip behind, she found herself in familiar deja-vu: staring at a man she barely knew and asking herself what the hell he was doing there. For her once-professor to cross life contexts from distant display in the sterilized-yet-center-stage podium of the lecture hall and into the ground-level lineup of potential marks in the anonymous city was jarring the first time she’d seen him. And the second. And the third. And the fourth. And the fifth. And...

The strangest context she knew him from, though, was as her high school classmate. He was the same age as Sevoya. They’d been in the same high school class their freshman year, and then, suddenly, he was entering martial arts tournaments and testing out of grades and gaining a job at a local university and getting married - and then getting divorced. He had a daughter at some point in that time. The rumor mill spun the timeline out in a messy blur that only became more convoluted when the real-life national tabloids put their speculations in print in pursuit of gossip about the real life and times of the Satan family; the family of the man who single-handedly saved the world. But those were the big bullet points.

God. “The man who saved the world.” The whole thing was the planet’s most widespread scam and cruelest joke. That Sevoya knew it when everyone else didn’t was proof that her life was a living hell. She hated them. She hated Mark “Hercule” Satan, and she hated the world - which she was fairly certain hated her, too.

And, as it happened, the ex-husband of the daughter of the fraud himself was close. So close. Always had been close. Inescapably close. Week after week, so close.

She let her eyes drift to him again, like she didn’t care if he noticed her staring. Maybe she didn’t. Whatever.

Professor Son was handsome, maybe, or at least he could be, potentially, in an unassuming way. He hid his face behind thick-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses and let his hair fall in the plainest haircut imaginable. His sweater vest paired with his standard khakis completed the archetypal scrawny-academic image. How he had enough charisma and individual appeal to meet, marry, and then subsequently divorce the Videl Satan was beyond Sevoya. She couldn’t pick out a single exemplary thing about him.

Well, that was a lie. His eyes. There was something about his eyes: black, like night. Black like space when she looked up at it from the fields of the countryside in the absence of light pollution. They were the most striking things about him by far - otherworldly; haunting in the sense of indescribable familiarity and uncomfortable captivation she felt whenever she caught herself dwelling on them. Sometimes, her stomach would turn with the convincing and terrible suggestion that, yes, she knew this man from somewhere else besides the playground; university; high school. But she pushed it down the same way she kept down her lunch; her despair in her loneliness; the death of her mother.

She ignored him. Usually. Sort of. Pretended to ignore him.

And it was just as well. Professor Son seemed like he would be uninterested in what Sevoya was interested in regarding him in any context. Instead, she kept her advances single-minded in their focus and likewise single-minded in their preferred target: the actually married men who were much more obviously receptive to Sevoya’s charms.

Why did Sevoya choose to mess around with this particular demographic?

‘Cause good daddies who just want the adventure of a tryst but don’t actually want to lose their wives are not only clean, but also don’t tend to talk. To her or about her. That’s why. Sevoya peeled her eyes from the professor and surveyed her options.

The day was foggy and grey, and not many parents had shown up to let their kids play. And worse, the majority were mothers, not fathers. Mothers were a higher risk. They tended to be less receptive to her advances and more prone to wonder who else Sevoya might have pursued, or look to pursue. They grew suspicious of their husbands, and then started coming back to give Sevoya grief.

But there were two men. She looked them over like a farmer grimacing at underfed pigs: the newcomer silver fox pushing his daughter on the swings (probably a grandfather. Probably had ED) and the seated Professor Son reading on the playground’s outskirts.

Professor Son. The divorcée. The only clearly morally wholesome choice. The one who was also, amazingly, in a position to help Sevoya enable her pettiest and most unfairly-attributed revenge fantasy. She’d considered it before, and then tossed the thought away.

But maybe… well. Professor Son had never approached her before, but he’d also never gone out of his way to avoid her, either. Right?

Her feet started to move with purpose the same way they always did when she had an overwhelmingly bad idea. She hated herself; she must hate herself. This man with the dark eyes she both knew and didn’t know - he couldn’t have anything to do with her beyond coincidences. She should leave him alone.

But her feet were moving, just as they had the day her mother’s body refused to rise from the dead like every other victim had in the wake of the Cell Games, and they had no intention of stopping.

Sevoya chuckled darkly as she made her unconscious-deliberate walk of shame towards him, and then plopped down at his side before she could change her mind. She stretched her legs out into the rich brown mulch beneath the bench when they wouldn’t keep from shaking.

This was stupid. This was stupid! This man was a bomb wrapped in bubble wrap: he looked innocent, but he was high-profile. Oh, but she’d done it. She was here now. The choice was made, and like hell would she back down now.

She cleared her throat.

Professor Son kept his black eyes on his book and his daughter in alternating passes.

“You should not be doing this, Miss Anillo,” he said.

No sh*t, thought Sevoya. No sh*t; no sh*t; no sh*t!

His voice was quiet, but convinced. Had he known what she was doing all along? Had he been silently judging her from afar? Laughing at her?

Asshole. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to puke. She wanted to cry and say she was sorry, and then throw both him and herself in front of a bus from how pathetic this was. And yet.

Had he told his wife? Rather, his ex-wife? Would it piss Videl off? Cause her grief? Cause her father grief on Videl’s behalf?

Oh, Sevoya hated herself even as she stoked the ember of gross, vindictive delight in her stomach at the thought.

“Doing what?” Sevoya asked. “Sitting here? On this bench?” She grinned. She felt chatty, suddenly. She’d never said more than maybe twenty words combined to this man before, but now that she had opened her mouth, she found she couldn’t stop.

This is why she did this. She remembered now. She did it to feel something - alive, afraid, furious, powerful, pathetic. She did it to feel something. A game. It’s a game. Her fingers twitched in her gloves.

“Oh, wait, I know. It’s how improper my posture is. Right.” Sevoya straightened up on her perch and put her legs in front of her with knees properly pressed together. “Is this better, Professor? Do I pass?”

“Please don’t pretend like this,” Professor Son said. “It isn’t right of you to act as a catalyst for a marriage’s dissolvement, and you know it.” He turned a page of his book. “Why do you keep doing this? I know you know it’s wrong. You’re hurting yourself. Your hands are shaking.”

Apparently, Sevoya’s past professor had been watching her as much as she’d been watching him. Sevoya balled her fists and stilled them by sheer force of will alone. A fevered outrage tangled with the existing nervous thrill twisting in her stomach. This part was normal. Well, closer to normal. It beat feeling nothing at all. She was a flower blooming even as it rotted from the inside: sickened and ready.

“Oh, so I’m the problem?” Sevoya said. “Not the men with so little self-control that they actually take me seriously?” She crossed her legs, and then uncrossed them. “Oh, I see. Their marriage is my responsibility. Not theirs. Got it.”

“It’s not good to prey on someone on whom others are depending just to satisfy your own whims,” Professor Son said.

Oh, yeah? What about your marriage to the most famous family in the country? Sevoya wanted to ask. Didn’t you get your job and degree with their money?

Getting through the system took capital, and a lot of it. He could put in the work, but without connections and funding, he wouldn’t get far. It didn’t matter how smart Professor Son was. It didn’t even matter how hard he worked. The bottom line was the bottom line. Period.

Tell me that again when you’re stuck working at the family restaurant because everyone in town you’re a conspiracy theorist, she thought.

“So,” Sevoya said, flipping her dark hair so it fell around her shoulders, “it’s my job to make sure that I never, ever put myself in a position to even maybe jeopardize someone else’s wants and needs, in any circ*mstance? Just go along and be a doormat, with no interest and no spark, no drive for anything, ever?”

She smiled even as her clasping and unclasping hands gave away her nerves. When the professor failed to answer, her fake cheer popped to leave only her normal, glum glower in its place.

“Hypocrite. I know you’re into the sciences and not so much philosophy, but I expected you to be a lot smarter about breaking it all down. Professor,” she added.

Professor Son turned the page of his book with unbothered leisure. He was so goddamn tranquil Sevoya thought to throw him in a zen garden as an ornament and leave him there. Maybe a bird could sh*t on him. Karma.

“This is hurtful and wasteful in so many ways, and you know it,” he said. “Stop.”

Sevoya rolled her eyes over her flushing face. “Really? Well.”

She’d made it this far. If she couldn’t wriggle into his life like a worm into an already-rotting apple, she could at least draw some blood in this singular collision. Sanctimonious ass.

“If you were still married, and somebody came along and picked you up - no blackmail, no strings, no diseases, no nothing, and took you home and made you feel good for a little while with absolutely no consequence or expectation, would you really pass it up?”

“Yes.”

Professor Son’s voice was a little meaner and more passionate than she had ever heard it. Sevoya actually jumped in her seat, though that may have also been her own nerves over the whole ordeal.

She waited for him to continue - maybe give her a lecture like this was class - but that was all he said on the matter.

Fine. Make her do all the work. Sevoya bit the side of her thumb.

“Uh-huh. Well, I got news for you: the rest of the world isn’t as pure of heart as you are.” Her nose rankled. “And a lot of it is also still married.”

Professor Son glared at her. With a real glare. Finally, anger. Finally, emotion. Finally, attention; investment; control. Sevoya preened beneath those black eyes even as something inside of her screamed to run away from them. She’d manage to piss off the mildest, sweetest man she had ever met and she was going to enjoy it, dammit.

She grinned for him to see; a sore winner.

“So. Now that we’ve established that somebody threw away the only good man on the playground, what do you say? You’re,” she faltered, “c-cute, kind of, when you’re not busy being so straight-laced that it makes me sick.”

His answer was quick and low. “I have a daughter. I am responsible for her and, today, her friends.”

Sevoya sneered. “You mean, ‘I can’t risk the school finding out I slept with a former student who dropped out because I gave her a failing grade. It’s bad enough that the media and my workplace both gossip about me and how young I am, and how it impedes my daily life.’ Right?”

Professor Son didn’t answer.

But he didn’t look away, either. Sevoya flushed. Her sense of control slipped that much farther away from her.

“Wh-which, really, how old are you? I saw you in high school at Orange Star. Before the professor gig. Before you failed me. I-I remember you. Your face hasn’t changed at all.”

She cleared her throat of her stutter. She shouldn’t be stuttering. She couldn’t be nervous anymore. She’d found the crack in his armor. Couldn’t be nerves getting to her. Shouldn’t be.

Do you remember me? she wanted to ask, but didn’t.

“Only your hair has changed, and that’s suspicious even if we are, um. Even if we are still barely, uh, babes who know nothing of the cruelty of this world.”

Professor Son tilted his head.

“You failed most of your tests, even after I added a curve,” he said.

If Sevoya wasn’t convinced he was belittling her, he might have sounded curious.

But who cared! He responded with something besides her playground agenda! She was getting somewhere!

“Oh, I know. And that’s not actually why I dropped out.” Sevoya’s smile lit her eyes maliciously. “I’m not mad.”

Not mad at you, anyway, she admitted to herself. Not that it matters. f*ck you.

She relaxed on the bench like a cat finally comfortable on its perch.

“What I’m saying is, those are the only real obstacles standing in your way: you know, the opinions of the people who pave your way through academia, and the paparazzi who sometimes like to give bad PR and write about Videl Satan’s ex-husband when it’s a slow news day. And yet,” she said, a finger pointed in the air like a baton and a nasty chuckle in her throat, “you didn’t even think about either of those things. You have a daughter, and that’s great. But so what? You don’t have a wife.”

“Please stop,” Professor Son said, looking back at his book.

“Oh, but is Videl coming back?” Sevoya asked, leaning over to catch his eye.

She didn’t get it - the thick side of his tortoiseshell eclipsed his dark irises in totality. It at once made her both relieved and completely furious.

“Well, your talk about morals today has certainly made me see the light, ‘cause that changes everything.” She stood, all flustered nerves and knocking knees once more. “It sure would be bad of me to try and get between that reunion nobody but the National Enquirer has mentioned for a whole year.”

Sevoya laughed, but it was humorless. Of course they’d do this — of course the Satans would just throw a lot of money at the problem and then have their perfect lives and images in one piece like it was nothing. Her nose scrunched as she sniffed.

“I’m sure her dad’ll throw a big hullabaloo about the whole thing. The town’ll probably even celebrate the affair as much as when it changed its name to Satan City. Won’t that be fun?”

Sevoya slipped a piece of paper with her number and an address on it into the pages of his book. She didn’t think he’d take it, but it was a matter of course — and of spite. Secretly, she hoped he’d thrust it back at her and make a scene rather than sit there and look so unaffected. But he didn’t do anything except sit there, face serene. Pensive.

“Congratulations,” spat Sevoya. She turned on her heel to stomp away across the waterlogged mulch. “I’m so happy it’s gonna work out for you.”

Sometimes, even investments made in insincerity pay dividends. Or, in this case, professors called upon in passing pay surprise visits. Two weeks after Sevoya’s humiliation at the playground, Professor Son was standing in the doorway of her tiny apartment with his hands clenched at his sides.

Sevoya was still in the same clothes she had gone to work in. They smelled like the restaurant’s catering special.

She stepped back. He took it as an invitation to come in.

Dark eyes, dark hair. Nervous hands and a tiny frown above the collar of his dress shirt. He was there, in her apartment. Closer than ever and looking twice as unnerved as she felt.

“Most people call first, but delivery is always good, too,” Sevoya said.

“...Krillin and Yamcha encouraged me to come, and I knew if I called instead of just showing up, I’d never— um.” Professor Son looked at the ground like that was enough of an explanation. “They said that I should try the life of a single guy for a while.”

That was her cue.

Sevoya shut the door, locked it, deadbolted it, and unzipped the back of her dress. It was the one she always wore to catered events because it fit the dress code and made her not feel so much like she was a twentysomething college dropout still working at her dad’s restaurant.

“Cool,” she said. “None of that means anything to me, but cool.”

The beginning caught her by surprise, but this, this part, she could do even in a bewildered haze. Nothing to disguise the feeling of being caught with her pants down quite like actually being caught with her pants down.

“Um,” Professor Son started with a shy duck of his head, “Shouldn’t we—?”

Sevoya wrapped her arms around Professor Son and kissed him before he could keep running his mouth.

He backed away into the closed door.

“I-I’m,” the professor said, stammering, “I shouldn’t have come. I-I’m sorry.”

He reached for the doorknob, and then broke the door when he forced it to turn despite the deadbolt. He snapped the lock off of the wall when he pulled it towards himself.

Sevoya raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t thought her apartment to be rundown enough for everything to break so easily.

This might as well happen, she thought.

“I’ll, um, I’ll pay for that,” Professor Son said. “I’m so sorry!”

He tried to close the door, but it fell open as soon as he moved his hand away. Dumbass.

But maybe an awkward icebreaker and a moment of self-reflection was something the Professor needed. Sevoya could certainly take a moment to change clothes and wash her face.

Sevoya shrugged and dragged one of her heavier living room chairs over to the door and used it to prop it closed. No use seeking out another solution when the stupidest one did fine.

“You want something to eat first?” she asked.

Sevoya brought home food from The Lucky Egg every day. Sometimes, she had even been the one to make it.

Sevoya was basically every position all at once — when she was not the shift manager.

Meanwhile, Professor Son was still doing his best interpretation of a deer caught in the headlights.

“I,” he looked from the door to her. “Um.” He swallowed. “N-no, you don’t need to do anything for me.”

His stomach growled in opposition.

Sevoya walked to the refrigerator and pulled out the first of many styrofoam boxes.

“I’ve got pork roast, potatoes, rice, a vegetable medley, uh…”

She threw it all on the table and went to find more while Gohan deliberated over seating himself in acquiescence or finding some way past the chair blocking the door.

“Eat whatever you want and compose yourself. Most of it I wouldn’t get to eat anyway since it’s,” she looked at the date written on the to go box shoved into the most remote part of the refrigerator, “three days old. Food is like the only thing I’ve got in surplus, so don’t worry about it.

“That’s very kind of you, but it really isn’t necessary-”

Sevoya poured a glass of water and set it on the table. Professor Son sat like a particularly bewildered but beautifully obedient dog. Sevoya almost smiled. Almost.

“I’ll be back. I’m going to use the restroom.”

Sevoya closed the door to her bathroom, took a deep breath, and let the realization of who was in her house pierce through her.

Professor Son. Son Gohan. Videl’s ex-husband. The ex-son-in-law of the man who told the world that ki wasn’t real; the man who, by implying that only those wrongly targeted by Cell were resurrected, started the lie that anyone who didn’t come back to life after the incident didn’t deserve to do so. That they were liars, cheats, and conspiracy theorists.

That Sevoya’s dead mother and baby sister, who never came back, were an enemy of the world and the rest of their family must be the same. Hercule Satan never targeted Sevoya directly, but the lies he told began a wildfire wave of gossip that burned her alive and left her and her father outcasts in their own community.

Sevoya retched over the sink under the supervision of her own reflection, and then brushed her teeth and changed into her robe like this was any other hookup and not out of the ordinary in any way.

When she returned to the kitchen, Professor Son was stacking her entire armada of empty styrofoam boxes into one another.

“I, uh,” he swallowed. “I suppose I’m a stress eater?”

f*cker probably tossed it. He probably thought it was too old and he was doing her a favor. Asshole. Not that it mattered - Sevoya would have the last laugh.

“Leave all of the mess. It just means the kitchen table’s not an option.”

The Professor changed color so quickly she thought for a moment that he’d burst every blood vessel in his face. She snickered despite herself, and then turned to the bedroom.

Professor Son didn’t follow. She whipped around. Her hands were shaking, she realized. Her legs were shaking. She was shaking.

“Well?” she asked.

Her old professor frowned and shook his head. “This might not be such a good idea after all.”

Pity. This was pity.

Absolutely not.

Sevoya strode over to him with a whirlwhind burst of energy. Her white-knuckled hands were fumbling his belt before he could say anything about it.

“Your goody-two-shoes routine is getting really annoying,” she spat.

“Miss Sevoya, you don’t—!”

Sevoya pulled his hands into her robe and kissed him. When he froze up, she kissed his neck instead.

“You act like this is some binding thing. Believe me, that’s a fantasy. It’s not.” Sevoya nipped at his neck and started unfastening the buttons of his shirt.

Everything you believe in is a fantasy, she thought. Hercule Satan. Your academic prowess. Your stupid ex-wife. It’s fake. It’s all fake. I’m sure your marriage was, too.

Gohan Son gasped as she bit his ear and pulled his shirt all the way open. Sevoya changed tactics to guide his hands over her breasts and hips.

“It’s not worth it if you’re not going to be any fun,” she told him, and made him start to squeeze wherever he touched. It might be sensual if it wasn’t so violent. Sevoya willed herself to slow down. Made herself smile and look up at him.

His face had gone from pink to red, but he was just as shy as before.

“Are you such a wet blanket that you can’t even enjoy this kind of thing?” Sevoya looked for a weakness. “It’s no wonder Videl left you.”

Professor Son looked like he’d been slapped.
Sevoya was ready to actually slap him, but she refrained.

In fact, he made the next move. His hands gently wrapped around her shoulders - when had he wrenched them from her grasp? - and tilted her to look at him.

Why are you doing this?” he asked. His questioning black eyes peered into her green ones.

Black eyes. Like his hair. Like the color of a suit at a funeral; like the color of a black umbrella holding back the unfortunate rain the day of a funeral. Familiar.

No. No way. Sevoya rankled and tossed his hands from her shoulders.

“Shut up. Come on,” she said, and dragged him over to the armchair propped against her front door. “Because I want to,” she snapped. “Do you or don’t you? Because you’re the one who showed up here.”

“...It’s just that you’re not Videl,” Professor Son said, even as Sevoya led him across the room. “I don’t even really know who you are. And seem like, well, like something’s bothering—”

Sevoya pushed him into the chair before he could say another word.

“And I don’t really know who you are. And that is exactly why Yamaha and Villain told you to come,” she spat before sitting in his lap and kissing him.

He made a sound like a surprised animal on contact. She kissed him again, and again, and again until he closed his eyes and relaxed into it.

Then, she pulled back. The Professor took a moment longer to open his eyes and shut his lips so he didn’t look so much like a fish. He kissed like a nervous schoolboy.

“See?” Sevoya said.

Professor Son bit his lip.

“But earlier, your hands were sh—”

Sevoya kissed him again. With teeth.

“I’m a chick who is going to screw you and then you are going to walk away. That is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. It’s not hard.”

She kissed him harder and thrust a hand just under the waistband of his pants. Professor Son squeaked.

Stupid, she thought. Was Videl’s daughter even his, or had she gotten knocked up by someone else?

“You can pretend I’m Videl for all I care, but just don’t ask me to roleplay that situation with you for real.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Professor Son. “I wouldn’t do that. That’s not fair to you.”

“Good. I couldn’t do it. I hate pigtails, and I hate her family legacy.”

Her tongue slid deeper into the professor's mouth this time, and stayed longer. When she pulled away, she flashed him a mean smile.

“Her father is a fraud, and I don’t give a sh*t about your feelings on the matter, or what the news says. For all I know, everything she ever claimed and claims to be and do — even you, professor — could be a big lie!”

For a second, Sevoya thought she might have gone too far when his face drew into a blank mask. But then Professor Son actually laughed. It was an odd sound, considering his expression. Completely genuine. Self-deprecating.

Knowing. It sent a chill down Sevoya’s spine, but she couldn’t tell if it was from fear, surprise, or something like happiness. She swallowed and waited for him to throw her off his lap.

He didn’t. Instead, he tilted his head and stared at her from over the tops of his glasses like he could somehow see her better that way.

Her stomach squirmed under the influence of his uncannily dark eyes. She pushed it down. She was in control. This was her apartment. This was her act of rebellion. This was her bad decision to make.

Her comment was supposed to hurt him. Instead, it had — well, maybe it had hurt him, if his sad smile was anything to go by, but not in the way she had thought it would!

“W-whatever,” Sevoya said. She took off his glasses and tossed them on the floor like a challenge. “This is my apartment and I’ll say what I want.”

Professor Son only nodded. Whatever it was in what Sevoya said that made him laugh had changed his mood considerably, because in a surprising show of initiative, he gingerly moved Sevoya’s robe open a little more and timidly explored her body without her prompting.

Sevoya let him, stunned.

“Okay,” Professor Son said. “Of course. You can say whatever you need to.”

He moved his hands to the back of her neck, and then her back. He massaged circles into her shoulder blades, and then moved to her waist. It was soft and sweet. Intimate, even, in a way that had Sevoya flustered beyond what she’d signed up for.

And worse, Professor Son’s hands were incredibly slow to accelerate the mood and give her a different kind of escape. Sevoya valiantly avoided his eyes to occupy herself with his mouth and nipples until she felt his interest finally grow from within his pants.

Professor Son traced the contours of Sevoya’s inner thighs and then cast one splayed hand to her lower stomach and the other around to her back. He pulled her closer as he kissed her, and slid the hand on her stomach up to play with her left breast. When she ran out of breath, he sighed as she panted and then buried his face in her neck.

“You smell nice,” Gohan Son said, unpinning her hair from its claw to play with it. Then, he kissed the side of her jaw. “And you’re soft.” He breathed in Sevoya’s scent and wrapped one arm around her to pull her close.

The other one pulled her right hand away from his groin so he could lace their fingers together.

“I like just being able to be close to you,” he said, and kissed her cheek before pressing his nose into it. “Would you like to get to know each other as people before we do anything more?”

Sevoya panicked.

She pushed him away and held him down by the shoulders against the chair. He shyly smiled back at her and moved his hands to her waist.

“Can you just not do anything right?!” She squawked. “You don’t get all sappy lovey-dovey with a one-night stand!”

Professor Son’s smile dropped from his face. “Who says this is a one-night stand?”

“I did!” Sevoya said. “Me! That was the whole point!”

Gohan Son blinked and searched the floor as if for answers. “But,” he said, looking back up at Sevoya, “why?”

That was the million dollar question. Out of spite. Out of loneliness. Out of a maladaptive need to cause trouble. Because her mother and sister were dead and her life a mess and everyone thought it was a reflection of Sevoya and her father’s value as people. Because she was angry. Because she could. Because Professor Son was an easy target. Because she could pretend he was a worthy and useful target.

“Because people leave. That’s a fact. I don’t like to pretend it isn’t going to happen, so I set it up like this so it’s all up front.”

Sevoya could not believe herself for answering. “I don’t bullsh*t people, and I don’t use them unless they are also getting to use me, too. It’s fair.”

Professor Son smiled beatifically. “Sometimes, people come back, you know.”

“Is Videl coming back?” Sevoya taunted.

Professor Son’s smile turned into a grin and he pulled himself closer to her face. Sevoya startled and leaned back even as she squeezed his shoulders in bewildered surprise.

“Why are you so concerned whether she is or not?” the professor asked.

“That was supposed to hurt you, not encourage you.”

The professor’s dark eyes smiled knowingly.

Sevoya looked away and tried a different approach. “So you’re just,” she swallowed, “immediately over her now that you think you’ve got someone else. Just like that. This is how cheap your love is?”

Professor Son shook his head, and Sevoya hated that she knew he was telling the truth.

“No. Not at all. Please don’t mistake my efforts and affection for flippancy.”

He sighed.

“I’m trying. I’m supposed to enjoy this, right?”

It dawned on Sevoya that “lust” on its own was not a subject her ex-professor knew anything about. This was like trying to hold a conversation where both parties spoke two entirely different languages.

“Take off your pants,” she said, simultaneously humiliated and unenthused.

When the professor only furrowed his eyebrows and uttered, “Why so soon?” Sevoya jumped off of the chair and did it for him, underwear and all. Then, she tossed them across the room and got on her knees.

“Y-you, uh, you don’t have to do that!” Professor Son said, flustered. “You said you wanted this to be fair, right?”

Sevoya paused, one hand on each of his thighs. She’d done this to cause trouble. Right?

Right?!

“Someone’s got to teach you what it means to be selfish,” Sevoya finally said, feeling more a fool with every word. “Or in this case, how somebody conducts a fair trade, or when you bang somebody and it doesn’t mean anything.” Her eyes snapped to his. “And if you sit there and start thinking, “Oh golly gee I’m in love with this girl maybe we can get married!” That means that I have to deal with all of your bullsh*t.”

Didn’t matter that she’d initially done this in order to stir up said bullsh*t, though admittedly only in the face of Videl and Hercule rather than the whole public eye. Maybe she wanted trouble. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe. She felt like a top constantly spinning without a clue on what side it should fall. It was liberating. It was nauseating.

Meanwhile, the Professor frowned uncomprehendingly. Sevoya wanted to slap him.

“What, you can’t imagine the headlines? Videl Satan’s Ex Courting Anti-Savior Satan Conspiracy Theorist! How He’s Gone to the Dark Side Since His Wife Left Him! Exclusive Pictures of Gohan Son’s Personal “Lilith” Inside!”

His eyes grew into almost perfect circles.

“Yeah,” Sevoya said. “Yeah, you idiot, yeah. Like that kind of bullsh*t. And worse, you have a kid. So I’ll do this for you, and you’ll do this for me after you wake up: you’ll leave, and you won’t come back.”

Professor Son co*cked his head. “People think you’re a conspiracy theorist?”

“S-stop caring enough to ask!” Sevoya hissed, and licked his base.

Professor Son stiffened in surprise —in every sense — and Sevoya used her hands and tongue to massage him so that he could not form sentences anymore if he wanted to. She heard his fingers dig into the arms of the chair and heard him moan every time she reached his tip with her tongue. Then, once he was ready, she took a deep breath and swallowed him.

He gasped and she ran her fingers along his thighs and up to his chest while she held her breath and kept going. Soon, he sank lower into the chair and moved his hips deeper, deeper, deeper. Sevoya pushed on his waist with one hand to halt his thrusting and used the other to tweak one of his nipples.

She heard the sound of fabric ripping and then of wood splintering as she grew more aggressive with him. At first, she had thought it was her imagination, but as the noises grew louder and more consistent, she knew there was nothing else they could be. Sevoya spat the Professor out and grimaced in his face.

“What are you doing?”

Professor Son gasped from where he leaned back in the chair, heat waves practically rising from his body, and she realized his clenched hands had dug into her armchair hard enough to not only claw through the upholstery between his fingers, but to break the arms themselves off of the sides of the piece.

“Why did you stop?” he complained, panting.

“You broke my chair!” Sevoya said with a disbelieving shriek. “This was the sturdiest piece of furniture in the apartment! How did you do that?!”

She looked up into his face and then — the broken doorknob. It hung loosely to the right of his head. Something was strange about it. She stood up and leaned over him to take a closer look.

Professor Son reached up to stroke her stomach and try to gently pull her back down on top of him, but Sevoya brushed him off and stared hard at the doorknob in disbelief. It was deeply indented everywhere Gohan Son’s fingers had touched it, like it were a piece of aluminum foil he had crushed in his hands. The door had indeed not been falling apart before, Sevoya realized; Professor Son simply possessed an inhuman strength.

Oh, god. Was this how he knew Hercule was a fraud? Was this why he’d married Videl?! Was he not just some Poindexter divorcee?

When Professor Son put his hands back on Sevoya’s hips and tugged again, more insistently, she slapped him away and scrambled across the room.

“Y-you, you! Uh!”

She swallowed in vain to soothe her sore throat and gain some semblance of composure.

“If you had been holding onto my head, you would have crushed me!”

Sevoya began to wonder if Videl Satan, and by extension, her father, really did have the capability to consider someone like Cell a magician if she could withstand conceiving this man’s child. Oh god. Oh god.

Professor Son sank even deeper into the chair. “I wouldn’t have crushed you. I’m careful about that kind of thing when I’m holding someone else.” He shook his head. “I don’t let myself get rough.”

Sevoya grimaced. “…Some of the rumors are true,” she murmured. “Great Saiyaman. You’re the Great Saiyaman, aren’t you?”

Gohan Son nodded and sat up. “Um,” he tried to cover himself with his hands but instead winced and pulled away as he brushed up against himself, “p-please don’t tell anyone.”

Sevoya gave a dry chuckle. The world was mysterious, indeed. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe her mother had been crazy for the reasons people say. Maybe ki didn’t exist and Cell had been a magician. Maybe Hercule Satan really did save the world.

“Um—” started Son Gohan.

“Get out of my apartment,” said Sevoya, dark and low.

“I… Oh.” Professor Son looked down between his knees. “Um, are you not going to, um…”

He had stopped panting, but maintained his rouged glow. It brightened as he looked down at himself, and then at her.

“No,” Sevoya said. “I’m not going to finish you. For all I know, my head could explode or something when you’re satisfied. Deal’s off.”

“That, um, that wouldn’t happen,” Gohan Son said, trying his best to hide himself with his knees. “Will, um, you please bring me my pants?”

“I’m not coming near you.”

Professor Son smiled tightly in answer. “I see. Well. Um.”

Suddenly, he disappeared from Sevoya’s sight and then reappeared with his back towards her, his pants inexplicably back on, adjusting his belt.

“H-how did you do that?!” Sevoya said. “In fact, what did you just do? What— what the hell is going on?!”

Professor Son simply ducked his head and opened the door out from behind the ruined armchair.

“I’m so sorry for troubling you,” he said from the doorway, and then quite literally lifted into the air and flew away.

Sevoya stared after him. Traced the empty space where he’d been with her eyes. Looked down at the ruined chair and broken locks. Collapsed to her knees. Gagged. Let her vision fog over into soft white and then sparkle with ragged bits of darkened color as it faded back. Stared at the floor. Argued with herself whether she needed a stiff drink, a CAT scan, or to lay down and never get up again.

---

The next morning, a soft knock on the door awoke Sevoya from her place on the floor and, after struggling with the ruined furniture holding it closed, opened it to find Professor Son, a new chair, a set of locks and hardware, and a stack of bento boxes.

“I told you not to come back,” Sevoya eventually said, after fighting a long battle with herself over whether or not she should close the door back up and scream until she blacked out. Again. “That had been the deal.”

Professor Son nodded. “Yes. You did.”

He smiled.

“But then you said the deal was off.”

Timidly, he produced a bouquet of flowers from behind his back. They were about the same bright color as his face. As he carefully pressed them into her hands, he closed the front of her robe with a gentle hand. She hadn’t realized she’d left it hanging open, but couldn’t bring herself to care, either.

“And, um, I wanted to apologize to you in person. Besides, um,” he winced and kept his eyes firmly rooted to his shoes.“I couldn’t think of a service that would carry all of these things to your doorstep on such short notice. And I, uh, I left my glasses here.”

When Sevoya didn’t answer, the professor cautiously glanced up.

“Anyway. Um. For you! From your friendly neighborhood Saiyaman and Delivery Boy,” he whispered, fidgeting even as he smiled.

“Delivery,” murmured Sevoya. “Deliveries. Ha. Ha!” she snorted ungracefully, unthinkingly, belatedly, like she was drunk and punchy. “Saiyaman. Doing deliveries. Super.” She giggled even as she teared up and pressed fingers to her temple.

She was definitely still asleep. She was dreaming. She dreamed this, definitely. She would close and re-open her eyes and her door would not be broken, her chair would be whole, and Professor Son would not be standing in front of her in his green gingham button-up and pressed jeans like this was some kind of first date.

She closed her eyes. She opened them. Professor Son was still there, wringing his hands like he’d just finished washing the dishes.

“A-actually, see, the thing is,” he said, “I was the Delivery Boy first.”

“Excuse me, professor?”

Professor Son twiddled his thumbs. “Gohan. Please just call me Gohan.”

“Gohan,” said Sevoya lamely.

“Yes! Yes. Just Gohan. Please.”

Sevoya his her face behind the flowers so she could just barely see Gohan over them. They were pink and yellow, like happiness. Not at all like white lilies. Not at all like a funeral bouquet from her memory, but still.

Dark hair, dark eyes, flowers. Her mind was stuck in a spiral connecting the past to the present in uncanny flashes, but she could not quite marry the pictures into something cohesive.

In front of her, Gohan kept babbling.

“And, um, you, um. You’re right. Hercule Satan never defeated Cell. I did. I’m,” he nodded to himself, like telling Sevoya this was somehow a good idea, “I’m the Delivery Boy.”

Sevoya pushed him away and slammed the door in his face.