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The thing about supposed rock stardom is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The bar looks like any of the dives they used to play: dark, dingy, and with shitty acoustics. Maybe it’s what defined their sound, Raditz has no idea, but he’s glad to be playing venues where they can at least hear themselves. Not that it matters tonight because they aren’t playing. For the first time in a long time, they actually have time to go a show. It’s not his usual scene or crowd, but he’s here to support his fiancé and so dragged everyone else to mix in with the black clad masses milling around after Sadistic Dance’s set.
He’s a bit drunk, beer in hand, slumped at the bar with Kakarrot and Vegeta who are systematically tearing through a plate of nachos meant for six people. Turles is somewhere in the crowd, trying to score some drugs. He doesn’t see Broly at first until he spots his head above the crowd, at one of the pushed aside tables, leaning against it while he and 16 talk. The sight of 16 buoys him because he knows that if he’s out and mingling in the crowd, that means--
“Hey.”
Raditz lets a lazy smile spread onto his face as he turns around to greet Lapis.
“You were amazing out there, babe,” he says, hearing his voice come out as a more-than-a-bit-past-tipsy drawl.
“I know. But thanks.”
Lapis presses his face, still warm and a bit sweaty from being onstage, against his arm. Even damp, his hair feels silky against him. There’s a smidge of disco dust in it, some of it smudged near his mouth, and he wants to kiss it off.
“I’m going to get wasted,” he says after a moment. “I can find you here?”
He raises his brows and Raditz nods, lifting his own drink. They’re drinking for free because they’re Apetail and he doesn’t mind these kinds of perks. Randos on the street asking about his dick size, he’s not terribly fond of, but bartenders giving him free booze? That’s good. Lapis rises up on the balls of his feet for a kiss and he holds him there for a moment, tracing the outline of his lips with his tongue before teasing the tip of it between them.
He pulls aways while the kiss is still technically PG-rated and goes to the end of the bar where the lone bartender is dealing with everyone coming up and demanding drinks post-show. Knowing that he’ll be a minute, Raditz turns his attention back to his companions. The plate of nachos is probably about half-gone and he knows better than to try and take some, inebriated though he is. Kakarrot and Vegeta have
both
been drinking and they’re protective over their food sober.
“How’s Chi-Chi?”
Kakarrot looks up at him, a bit of refried bean clinging to his lower lip. He swipes it into his mouth with his tongue and swallows before answering.
“Okay. I don’t think she let herself really process it until she told me.” He pauses to run his finger through some of the liquid cheese on the plate and lick it off. “I still don’t think she’s processed it.”
There’s a lot more going there but, even drunk and more loose-lipped than usual, Kakarrot shuts himself up with another handful of nachos. Raditz knows better than to press. Despite assholes like Cell running their mouths about it, her miscarriage is her business. Hers and Kakarrot’s. He’s not going to continue to bug him about what he meant.
“Where’s the bartender?” Vegeta grumbles, mouth full. “I want a shot.”
Raditz gestures down the bar where he’s filling orders. He’s lost Lapis in the crowd of people at the end of the bar but he’ll come back. He drains his drink and leans back on the stool. Shit, he can’t wait to take him home after this. Seeing him onstage is always electric. The dark synth and the moody lighting, the way his voice is hauntingly beautiful, floating out over the crowd like he’s casting a spell.
Fuck. I’m horny.
Drunk and horny is never really a good combination but Raditz counts himself lucky to never have suffered from whiskey dick.
One of the guys from the opening act lurches by, holding a bottle of something in his hand. Raditz only passingly knows about the band: The Pride Troop. Kind of annoying and he knows Turles made out with one of them--even though he claims it was dark and he was drunk so he didn’t know who it was. He doesn’t think it was this one, with his pronounced front teeth and dyed purple hair. It was the big one who looks like Stallone. Whatever. Their music is kind of boringly generic so he tuned them out until Sadistic Dance came onstage. The guy moves into the crowd of people and a few stragglers break off and he can see fans’ eyes lighting up as if the guy’s magic. Raditz rolls his eyes. Please. He plays the drums way too fast for whatever sound Pride Troop is going for. He knows that he himself is wild behind his kit, but there’s a purpose behind it. This guy just wants to see how fast he is as if Jon Bonham’s ghost is there watching and would be impressed.
He’s being mean, but he doesn’t care either. Pride Troop isn’t even on their label so he doesn’t owe them shit. He curls a lip at his empty cup. He wants another drink.
He pulls himself off of the stool, almost over correcting and toppling to the floor, and makes his way down to the end of the bar. He spots Lapis, drink in hand, talking to that purple-haired drummer, looking bored and a bit tired. Raditz figures that he’ll order his drink before he rescues him from that conversation. He watches the guy, then, with all the ease as if he’s done it before, slip his hand under Lapis’s hair and pull him in for a kiss. His order dies on his lips and he feels his tipsiness give way to something he hasn’t felt in so long.
Raw anger.
It’s the same way he would feel during his fights with Turles, especially after their last breakup, like there was a fire in him, leaking out through his mouth and nose. Everything was hot and his mouth tasted like copper. Even before, when he was little, and he would hear people call him and his family trailer trash. How, without even thinking, he would ball his hand into a fist and punch people in the stomach. Seeing his mother’s parents, his grandparents he never knew because they disowned her for being pregnant, in the grocery store and laying into them. He’s been past that. He’s an adult. But seeing this guy kissing Lapis as if it’s
regular,
as if he does it,
all the time,
makes his blood boil. An image slips into his mind, unbidden, of Turles and Kakarrot in bed--his bed--naked and wrapped around one another.
With a snarl of anger, he surges forward and grabs the guy by the back of the shirt. He sees, as he does it, Lapis has his hands braced against the guy’s chest but he can’t tell if he was in the middle of shoving him off or gripping the material.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demands, all but spitting the words.
The guy blinks at him blearily, clearly drunk, and then widens his eyes.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, I--”
“Didn’t know I was here?”
He drops him before slamming him into the bar. He sees Lapis staring at them, mouth dropped in shock. He sees the way his lips glisten, wet from this fucker’s lips, and sees red.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“What?” Lapis shakes his head, back to normal. “You think I--you have got to be shitting me. I barely even know this guy’s name.”
“I-it’s Dyspo, by the way.”
“I don’t care,” Lapis says, without even looking at him. “Raditz, you can’t honestly believe I’m, what? Sleeping with this guy?”
He knows it’s not true. He trusts him--he loves him, but he trusted Turles too, didn’t he?
“Well you were doing something!” he snaps, too angry to make much sense. “What about Z? You fuck around with him?”
Lapis slits his eyes in a glare.
“Excuse me? Where do you get off? Last I checked, Z kissed
you,
and it wound up on everyone’s Instagram story.”
“Against my will!”
Lapis gestures at purple hair, Dyspo, whoever still backed up against the bar.
“And what do you think this is?” He shakes his head.
“You didn’t seem opposed!”
Shit, he’s really not making sense now, but the words are coming out like vomit. Someone comes between them, then, and puts both hands on his chest. He doesn’t register who it is at first, staring at the tattoos on the backs of those hands, until they speak.
“Radi, calm the fuck down.”
Turles, his best friend. His ex. The guy who slept with his brother. He’s over it, he’s forgiven them, then why is he so mad? Why is that image still in his head?
“Calm down?!” he snarls. “I see some guy making out with my fiancé and you want me to calm down?”
“Making out?!” Lapis demands, voice kicking up to a volume he’s never actually heard him hit before. “One kiss. He laid one on me and I was in the middle of shoving him out when you came barreling in like a fucking moose.”
“I did not!”
Turles presses both hands against him, trying to get him to take a step back.
“Dude, you’re sounding like you did back in high school. This is not a good look.”
He wants to bite something out, but Lapis beats him to it.
“We’re getting married,” he seethes. “That you’re pulling this is--”
“Time to go.”
16 has reappeared from where he had been talking to Broly and has Lapis around the middle.
“I’m not--”
“We’re going.” Lazuli is there, too, glaring at her brother and then at him. “Work this shit out when you’re sober.”
He knows she’s right, but the anger is clouding his vision. His judgment. He opens his mouth to say more and Turles actually puts his hand over it.
“Don’t,” he says warningly. “Whatever you’re going to say, just don’t.”
Raditz isn’t sure how to react to this so he bites his hand. Turles recoils, holding it to his chest.
“Ow! What the fuck, dude? Did you just fucking bite me?!”
He feels a tug from behind, rough, and then two pairs of arms each wrap around his arms. He looks at one set of arms, at the dim lights of the bar reflecting off of the wedding band and the other set, wrapped in worn denim. The rational part of his brain pings at the sight of them.
You’re so far gone that Vegeta is stepping in to get you out…
He looks at Lapis, still held back by 16, and how angry he still looks. His shoulders slump. Lazuli’s right. They need to talk when he’s sober, he’s drunk and mad and...it’s a bad combination. With his head hung, he allows Vegeta and his brother to haul him out of there.
--
Bulma misses everything fun. She’s always heard that Raditz used to have a shitty temper, but she’s never seen it in action. Usually he’s the one who defaults to being the dad friend because he’s so used to his brother being one step away from a trip to the emergency room.
“And he bit Turles?”
Vegeta nods. He’s sitting on the couch with Trunks next to him. Their son is asleep on his side, wrapped up in his blankets. Bulma looks at his flushed little face and almost doesn’t want to go out tonight. When she had addressed this before getting ready, Vegeta just waved a hand and said it was fine and he just had a cold. Even so, she didn’t like leaving when Trunks wasn’t well.
“Yikes.” She shakes her head and then makes her away around the couch. “Anyway, how do I look?”
Bulma puts both hands on her hips and cocks one to the side. She’s only going clubbing with a few of the girls, but why shouldn’t she impress? Her black vinyl dress zipped all the way up and she feels like a proper girlfriend of a rockstar with her heels and fishnets, which is a far cry from her usual job as an engineering professor. Vegeta rises up from the couch, smirking, and puts his arms around her waist. He fiddles with the hem of her skirt that hits the tops of her thighs.
“It makes me want to bend you over right here and--”
“Loud reminder that your little brother is over!” Tarble calls.
He’s in the kitchen, making Trunks soup. Bulma’s fairly certain that it’s the first time their stove has been used in quite some time since neither she nor Vegeta is adept in the kitchen. It smells good, whatever he’s making, and part of her hopes that there’s some leftover for her when she comes in tonight after the club closes.
Vegeta’s fingers pluck at the wide holes in her fishnets and he cocks his head to the side.
“Where are you going?”
“Club Ginyu.”
He arches a brow. “A gay bar?”
She nods, presses a bit against him. Bulma likes this casual intimacy. Vegeta’s been getting really good at it lately. Just being around her, stealing little touches. She craves it.
“It was Caulifla’s idea. Her exact words were: ‘I don’t wanna deal with heteros tonight,’ so to Ginyu we go.”
He nods in understanding. The girls are all meeting here first before taking a cab over. Bulma wonders if they should pre-game or if they’re too old for that. Truthfully, she’s pretty sure that the bar is having a fifteen dollar all-you-can-drink special, so it isn’t really worth it to pre-game, especially when you only need three drinks and then price is covered.
“They should be here soon,” she says. “Or should start to arrive, I mean.”
As if gifted with some kind of sitcom timing, a knock comes to the apartment door. Bulma peels away from Vegeta and walks to the door. Chi-Chi predictably stands on the other side in the hallway, coat draped over one arm. It’s not at all surprising that she’s the first to arrive since the only reason she’s ever late is because of Kakarrot.
“Girl, you look hot!” Bulma exclaims, stepping aside to let her in.
She thinks she’s never really seen Chi-Chi in makeup and the effect is luminous. She’s dressed in a flippy-looking black skirt with matching tights and ankle boots with a burgundy velvet top that reveals a strip of midriff below her bust and above her waist.
“Do I?” she asks nervously. “I wasn’t sure what to wear because I haven’t been to a club since...hmm. I guess before I was pregnant with Gohan.”
“Definitely.”
Bulma takes her hands and pulls her arms out so she and see the full look. Chi-Chi looks gorgeous and she wants her to have a good time. With everything going on with her lately, she wants her to just relax and have fun.
“Gine did my makeup,” she says. “It should say something that my mother-in-law knows current trends better than I do.”
“Whatever. You look amazing.”
She leads Chi-Chi into the living room where the other woman immediately kneels at the couch to check Trunks’s forehead. Bulma has an immediate flash of her doing that tonight--being an actual mom of two means that Chi-Chi is probably more ready to fall into the role of mom friend. She remembers her earlier thoughts about Raditz and pictures them as the ultimate parental duo--except when he drinks and sees other men kissing his boyfriend anyway.
“He has a cold,” Vegeta says. “Tarble’s making him soup.”
Chi-Chi looks up into the kitchen and gives a way, which Tarble returns with a wave of the wooden spoon he’s holding.
“Poor thing,” she says. “Goten was a little feverish tonight, too.”
“They probably gave it to each other,” he says. “Their weird psychic soul connection.”
Chi-Chi laughs. “You’ve noticed that, too? It’s like they practice reading each other’s minds.”
Bulma watches the exchange and realizes, probably for the first time, that Vegeta and Chi-Chi have known each other for years--longer than she’s known him. It doesn’t anger her or make her jealous but she sees the way they talk to one another. Vegeta is almost nice and Chi-Chi has certain mannerisms that she’s only seen from her boyfriend. It feels...familial.
“Or that they share food all the time,” Bulma chimes in. “Anything Trunks doesn’t like, he’ll give Goten--”
“Who eats anything,” Chi-Chi finishes with a laugh. “Except vegetables.”
Trunks lifts his head a little and blinks at them. “I like vegetables.”
He drops his head back down on the couch and Vegeta pats his back. A frantic knocking comes at the door and Bulma turns to answer it. The first thing she’s noticed is that Kale is dressed how she always is in combat boots and a floral-print sundress but tonight she’s gone a bit wild and thrown a denim jacket over it. Caulifla, meanwhile, has an unbuttoned silk shirt tucked into a pair of trousers, which is a far cry from her usual punk style. Just like Chi-Chi, both girls have heavier coats draped over their arms.
“I am ready!” Caulifla whoops. She cranes her neck towards the kitchen and yells, “Hey Tarbs!”
Tarble, his hands full of a soup pot, nods back.
“Hey.”
“You look fancy,” Bulma says.
“I feel weird,” Caulifla admits, shaking out her messy head of teased hair. “But I also feel hot so...we’ll try this look out tonight.”
Kale bites her lip and rubs the toe of one boot over the toe of the other.
“I Iike it…”
Caulifla grins wolfishly and Bulma nearly rolls her eyes, just
betting
what the two of them are going to get up to when they get home. Not like she’s one to talk considering that, minutes ago, Vegeta was outright talking about fucking her in their living room.
Caulifla settles on the couch to rub Trunks’s back while they wait for the last member of their group to arrive. At long last, there’s a slow, seemingly disinterested knock on the door.
“Hey,” Lazuli says flatly once she’s let in.
They don’t know each other that well so Bulma holds back her comment that she isn’t dressed like a sixties fashion model for once and is wearing a high-waisted skirt and black turtleneck. When she walks in, Bulma notices Tarble has started staring down into the soup pot despite the steam emanating from it. She wonders what that’s about until she catches the glare Lazuli is sending his way.
Oh, right.
Considering Lapis was the one who tried to start a fight with him (in public, no less), she had forgotten that Lazuli would also be pissed about why and how Tarble and 16’s relationship fell apart.
“He’s staying here,” she tells her. “Obviously, since it’s a girl’s night thing.”
Lazuli nods, tearing her icy gaze from him. Bulma shivers from the crossfire. She would
not
want to be on the opposite end of
either
twin’s ire. How Raditz isn’t just actively shitting his pants after getting into a fight with Lapis is beyond her.
“Let’s get going,” she says loudly, to everyone else. “It’s free cover for twenty-one and older until ten.”
Kale lowers her head. “I’m still twenty.”
Caulifla bounces up from the couch and wraps both arms around her girlfriend’s waist. “That’s not what your fake ID says!”
Bulma rolls her lips in to smother a smile. This is going to be an interesting night.
--
The club isn’t terribly crowded since many people don’t seem to care about the free cover rule. Bulma’s glad. She hasn’t been here before so she wants to at least scope out what it looks like before she gets too incomprehensible to remember where the bathroom is.
“Hell yeah!” Caulifla exclaims. “I can dance with my girl without straight dudes creeping!”
She spins Kale around and kisses her, making the other girl giggle. Bulma is impressed. She’s never seen Kale so happy. Usually he kind of stares at her feet and speaks in a low, shy voice. But seeing her look at Caulifla--someone who is practically her sister-in-law--it warms her heart.
Bulma opts to make her way to the bar to pay for her wristband and get started. As she approached the bar, set in the center of the club, she recognizes someone sitting there.
“Hey.”
Lapis acknowledges her with a lift of his chin.
“How you doing?” she asks.
He decides to answer by lifting his wrist to the bartender. “Another tequila sunrise.”
“That good, huh?”
Bulma isn’t sure why she’s trying so hard, because it isn’t like she and Lapis are especially close. The most interaction they’ve had was when he came with her and Yamcha up north to get Tien from that farm co-op.
“Is 16 here?”
She hadn’t heard Lazuli come up behind her and she nearly jumps. Lapis shakes his head.
“Z?”
Another headshake. Lazuli frowns.
“I don’t want you drinking by yourself.”
Lapis pulls a face. “You’re five minutes older. And anyway, I’m a big boy. I know how to call for an Uber.”
They stare at each other and Bulma is convinced that they’re having a silent twin conversation through microexpressions and minute gestures, but she doesn’t catch it. Instead, she turns to the bartender and pays for her own wristband.
“I’ll take one, too.”
Chi-Chi’s appeared behind her, holding a ten and a five out.
“You?” Bulma blurts out.
The other woman bites her lip and gazes to the side. “Well, even if I only have a couple, it’s more cost effective than having a tab.”
It makes sense, but Bulma has never really seen Chi-Chi drink more than a glass of wine with dinner and even that’s only when she goes out. She isn’t going to stop her from having a good time, though. The bartender puts each of their wristbands on and Bulma studies Chi-Chi carefully. Her face isn’t betraying much, but Bulma thinks they’ve grown close enough over the past two years that she knows her fairly well. Something is up and she doesn’t know if it has to do with residual grief about the miscarriage or something else. Whatever it is, a loud and increasingly crowded club pumping techno music isn’t the place to bring it up. Maybe later, if she isn’t too drunk, she can bring it up in the restroom or outside while they’re waiting.
Satisfied in this decision, she orders her first drink.
The night begins to pick up as more people filter in and the music gets louder. Bulma feels the tequila sweats coming on as she dances against Lazuli in a crush of people. It turns out that, despite playing the sickest eighties horror synth music she’s ever heard and looking like a lo-fi indie singer, Lazuli can get down. Caulifla and Kale mostly dance with each other, the normally inhibited Kale moving flush against her girlfriend as they move to the music. At one point, Chi-Chi has one arm around Bulma’s neck. In her other hand is a cup and she wonders if she’s still nursing her first drink.
She isn’t that drunk, but the atmosphere and music makes her feel like she is. The world is tilting and the lights are shining and everyone around her looks so beautiful. Chi-Chi’s back and this time the liquid in her cup is a different color and she’s swaying on her feet. Bulma almost laughs. The thought of her being drunk is so bizarre, but it seems to be the case. She wonders what kind of drunk she is.
“I think I’m drunk!” she yells in her ear.
“I think you are, too!” Bulma calls back.
She watches Chi-Chi drink through the thin black straw and then disappear back into the crush of the crowd with a twirl of her skirt.
The night stretches on and she decides that it’s time for another drink. At the bar, she sees Chi-Chi, pressed against it, her legs moving slightly out of beat with the music and her bangs matted to her forehead. Bulma cocks a brow and approaches her.
“You okay, Cheech?”
That’s apparently the wrong question to ask, because the other woman bursts into tears. She slides down the bar and winds up sitting on the floor, which is thankfully far enough from the dancefloor that she doesn’t risk being trampled. Bulma bends down as much as her dress will allow that won’t end up with her flashing someone and leans in.
“What’s wrong?”
“I shouldn’t be able to drink,” she cries, hiccuping a bit at the end of her sentence. “I should be...and I...I shouldn’t still be upset! I should be fine. I should…”
Her words, already not making much sense, run together into an incomprehensible wail. Bulma puts her arms around her and strokes her back. Carefully, she gets to her feet, taking Chi-Chi with her. Caulifla walks by, heading to the bar, and she snags her arm.
“I’m going to call Kakarrot to come get Chi-Chi,” she says back, loudly so she can hear. “She’s not feeling well. Let the others know.”
She nods and gives a laconic salute. Bulma bustles Chi-Chi first to the coat check and then outside. The night is cold but still, with little wind whistling through the buildings. Chi-Chi’s phone is more easily accessible in her cross-body bag so she quickly unlocks it to get to the contacts.
Chi-Chi is leaning against her, still crying, but less wailing. Tears are running down her face and she keeps lifting her hands to wipe them away. Bulma bounces from foot to foot, the cold air cutting through her fishnets, as the phone rings.
Please pick up. I know you sleep like the dead, but please pick up…
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, there’s a voice on the other line.
“Hello?”
Bulma breathes a sigh of relief.
“Kakarrot,” she says, forgoing formalities. “I need you to come get Chi-Chi. She’s had a bit of a breakdown at the club. She’s wasted and emotional.”
There’s a pause on the other line before he speaks.
“Bulma, I don’t care how drunk you are but I
just
got to sleep so this joke is kinda--”
“No joke. I need you to come get her.”
Chi-Chi lifts her head. “Is that Kakarrot?”
Bulma nods, and she lets out another cry.
“I miss him!”
She doesn’t know if Kakarrot heard that, but he seems to realize that it’s not a joke, because she can hear rustling in the background that must be him getting out of bed.
“Text me the address, I’ll come right--crap!”
“What?”
Kakarrot swears, this time more fluently. “I can’t come get her. The boys are asleep and I can’t leave them here.”
“Right.” She tries to think, wishing that she herself wasn’t as buzzed as she is. At least the cold air is bracing and getting some logic in her. “We’ll call her an Uber or something. Stay up?”
“Of course. Like I can go back to bed.”
This is, hands down, the most serious and responsible she’s ever heard Kakarrot be.
“Cool. Okay. I’ll schedule it now.”
“Thanks.”
They say their farewells and Bulma rubs Chi-Chi’s shoulder.
“I’m calling you a car, okay, babe?”
She bobs her head in understanding.
“Want me to come with you?”
Shakes her head. “I don’t want to ruin your night.”
“You aren’t.”
In her state, Chi-Chi really shouldn’t be in a car by herself and Bulma is willing to take one for her best friend.
“I’ll go with her.”
Bulma turns to see a morose-looking Lapis has followed them out. In one hand, he holds a pack of Djarum Blacks and she had had no idea he even smoked.
“Really?”
“I’m sick of my own pity party so. Yeah.”
He mumbles something under his breath that she doesn’t catch. Carefully, Bulma passes Chi-Chi over to him and she looks a bit worse for wear: face waxy and eyes rimmed with red. She finds an Uber close by and schedules it.
“Thanks,” she says to Lapis.
He shrugs in return.
--
Feeling sorry for himself was getting him nowhere. Being angry isn’t either and so Lapis just feels numb. Chi-Chi keeps letting out little sobs in the car and he doesn’t know what to do except pat her shoulder because no one ever taught him how to comfort others.
In the club, Dyspo had come up to him as if he knew he was there to apologize, but he’s not even the problem. Raditz blew up on him because...why? Does he not trust him? That’s what gets him, and why he just told Dyspo to fuck off. He feels rotten, like there’s something in him that’s seeping out and he can’t stop it.
The car pulls up in front of Chi-Chi’s apartment building and Lapis pushes the thoughts out of his mind as he helps her out and into the building.
“Is this home?” she asks, leaning against him as he struggles to get them both upstairs.
“Yes.”
“You aren’t Bulma.”
“No, I’m Lapis.”
“You took me home?”
“Yes.”
Chi-Chi hugs him, squeezing him tightly around the middle.
“You’re a good brother-in-law.”
As if that’s not a loaded statement at this point. He gets to their apartment and knocks on the door. As soon as his knuckles leave the surface, it flies open to reveal Kakarrot.
“Chi-Chi!”
The sight of him must trigger something in her, because she starts crying again, throwing herself into her husband’s embrace.
“I should go,” he says.
Kakarrot looks at him with an expression that’s eerily reminiscent of Raditz even though the two of them don’t really look that much alike.
“Thanks,” he says. “For taking her home.”
He nods, acknowledging it, and turns to go.
“Hey.” Kakarrot stops him and he turns back around. “Not to seem like I’m guilting you, but my brother is really cut up. Just. I dunno. Maybe talk?”
Lapis doesn’t know what to say to that so he just nods again and leaves. He’d asked the Uber to stay out front to take him home and he’s programming his own way home into the app to send it to the driver and make everything official, but he pauses at the address. He should put his own apartment in. He’s gone from being drunk to realizing he was getting too maudlin to drink more and now, with everything that’s happened in the last hour or so, he feels nearly sober. So this is a clear decision. Go home. Crawl into bed. Figure things out in the morning.
He puts Raditz’s address in instead.
Lapis doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s standing outside his door, fist raised to knock. Hell, they all sleep so soundly he doubts they’ll even hear him, but he does it anyway. Why? Because of Kakarrot’s words? Because he wants to find out why he doesn’t seem to trust him? He has no idea, but he’s here and it’s cold and he hopes to God someone answers the fucking door.
He hears shuffling on the other side and he realizes that he doesn’t think he’s prepared for Raditz to answer the door. What he’ll say or do. They’ve never fought like this before. Since the incident, he hasn’t texted him, but Lapis hasn’t either. Since moving closer, he’s used to seeing him nearly every day, especially with wedding planning, and this...over some drunken moron after a show.
The door opens and he doesn’t have to worry just yet, because it’s Broly.
“Sorry for waking you up.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” A pause. “Raditz is in the bedroom.”
He doesn’t know what else to say to Broly so he nods and walks past him. Walks past the sleeping Turles, dead to the world on his futon, and goes into the bedroom. He expects to find Raditz asleep but he’s up and staring at his phone. When he comes in the room, he raises his head and widens his eyes.
“Lapis.”
He shuts the door behind him, unsure what else to do.
“Hi.”
Lapis waits, unsure for what, and then Raditz speaks.
“What are you doing here?”
Isn’t that the million dollar question?
“I was nearby. I dropped Chi-Chi off after she got wasted at the club and caused a scene.”
His disbelief is evident on his face.
“You mean, Bulma got wasted at the club and caused a scene.”
“No. Chi-Chi.”
“Caulifla.”
“Chi-Chi.”
“Your sister.”
He sighs and Raditz gives a smile that looks more like a cringe. Whatever it is, it fades away and he exhales. Another moment passes between them before he speaks again.
“I’m sorry. The way I reacted was...super out of line. I know you would never, and…” He sighs.
He rises from the bed and is close to him, so close that he can smell him and feels the heat radiating off of him, when he’s cold. So cold.
“We were both angry,” he says.
“Yeah, but you were in reaction to me, because I just freaked out, I.” Another sigh. “I thought I was over it, y’know? Like when I saw that guy kiss you, I saw Turles and my brother in bed all over again.”
It’s about that? Raditz goes back to the bed and slumps on the edge of it. Lapis follows him to sit next to him. He’s hot under his coat, but he doesn’t take it off.
“I forgave them,” he says. “Like I thought I moved on, because I’ve forgiven them both, but. I guess I never really unpacked everything wrapped up in it. Even though it’s been years and I should be over it.”
Lapis listens to his words, and then stands again. He faces him and holds his fingers up.
“Seven years,” he says.
Raditz cocks his head to the side. “What?”
“Seven years,” he repeats. “It was seven years ago that Cell raped me, and I thought I was over it. I thought I had moved on. And then I saw him again and it all rushed back to me...an I realized that I hadn’t. So I get it.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “For that and...for me being a dickhead.”
Lapis looks at him, sheepish and contrite and his anger, what’s left of it, melts away. He takes his coat off and lets it fall to the floor.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I forgive you.”
He lets himself fold into Raditz’s embrace and kisses him softly. They break apart and he allows himself a smirk.
“You know...we’ve never had makeup sex before.”
Raditz grins back.
“Let’s see what that’s like.”