Sweet Charade
Chapter 3 - Fever
"I - I think you should look at the road! " Goten finished somewhat hysterically. Trunks turned his head sharply and his blue eyes widened as he saw a pole in their path. He breathed in and turned the steering wheel hard, only to have it come off in his hands. Trunks sighed and held on loosly to the dashboard in front of him.
Damn it all. This piece if shit always crashes. Was his last thought before the pair crashed head long into the deadly wooden cylinder before them, and the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass was all that filled their saiyan ears.
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Trunks was in his element. He thrived in the stressful pounding of the bass, the throbbing tempo and the crazy lighting that made things seem surreal. The close knit bodies dripping sweat and the ki's raised to dizzying hieghts. He was master of this kingdom and frequently became high and giddy off the power he posessed here.
Once, It had been Goten's element too. But not now. Not tonight. The lights and women who pressed themselves closer to him were simply trying to dissuade Goten from his current thought pattern. He wished he could lose himself like Trunks. Surrender and let the glittering and enticing little women with their supple bodies crush themselves against him, press their lips and almost bare breasts to his arms and face.
To not become Goten, but a slave to the music.
But the newly awakened Goten was stronger and less able to completely abandon conciousness to that sort of primal urge.
He simply sat at the table, tracing the rim of his glass casually and watching the frenzy on the dance floor. The tables were a bit back from the active area, so the right beams of red and purple and the vision-clouding smoke didn't touch him, only the weak flickering of a single candle in the center of his table li his face, making his eyes appear to be pools of darkness, uncaring and cold.
This apparently made him more desireable to the painted women. The women who wern't real. They approached him frequently, batting their plastic eyelashes and brushing their feather soft tapered fingers over his exposed upper arm, hoping to cause a small tingle of desire within him, hoping to spark some passion for them in the depths of his eyes with their throaty purss of affection.
All were turned away coldly, unfeelingly.
Now that he knew what it was, wha the needed to spark that desire, it made it easy to turn the others away. Especially here. He treated nothing here like it really exsted. It felt to him like a floating dream.
He could see a bobbing lavender head in the crowd. It made it's way to the edge of the group where Goten could see it. It was letting the supple vixens press against it.
Trunks was lost in the dream as well, just with a diferent sort of abandon. Even from here he could see the reaction the brush of fingers made on the other demi-saiyan. They sparked something in him, but Goten had known Trunks so long he recognized the spark not as the awe the women hoped to spur in him, but as the love of his own manpulation.
Goten knew Trunks loved that. He loved that one word or carefully choreographed gesture that could be used to control these bobbing, personality-less drones. And they didn't even seem to know they were being manipulated. Trunks was in love with this waltz of deciet. He cared less for them then Goten himself, but probably for different reasons.
Trunks was now feigning exhaustion and leading a pretty doe-eyed brunette back to Goten's island of solitude. Trunks sat and placed the girl on his lap, pressing his palm enticingly flat right above her navel, earning a blush and a hiccup from the nervous girl.
Trunks winked at Goten as if to say You see how easy this is? Both could see through the girl's meek act, could see the cunning behind her eyes as she glanced at them, the calculation. This made Trunks' game more enjoyable. She couldn't see she was being duped because she was far too involved in her own deciet.
"So what have you been doing Goten?" Trunks asked, letting his fingers trail down a bit, brushing the girl's exposed abdomonen.
Goten lifted his eyebrows with a bit of a sly smile. "Oh just watching all the different way people like to mess with each other's minds." He said, dropping his eyes cunningly to trace the rim of his glass again.
He didn't have to watch to see Trunks' eyebrows drop low over his eyes. One didn't speak so plainly in this savage garden.
Trunks chuckled lowly. He was still plying the game.
"You want to shake this scene?" He asked.
Goten nodded. "I'm only in awhile. Don't want to waste time playing a game I'm not up for."
Trunks pushed the girl off his lap as Goten stood and tossed an arm around his shoulder. As they started out the door, the throaty purr of the brunette followed them.
"Arn't I coming too?" She asked with barely concealed vhenomence.
"Sorry, but your part of the scene. Trunks called back mischeiviously over his shoulder. "Consider yourself shaken."
And with that, he pushed the door open and the cool night air rushed to embrace both friends.
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Goten was acting wierd tonight. All aware which was not like Goten at all. Sure, Goten was smart, but he rarely applaid said smarts to life outside of work. If Trunks had noticed one thing about his best friend it was that.
Goten had something on his mind. Something important. He always acted un-Goten-like when it was something big.
Or, maybe he was acting Goten like now and the other oblivious yet well meaning one was the false Goten. This was giving Trunks a head ache.
The furrowing of the darker-haired demi-saiyans brow beside him revealed that whatever was bothering him was having a much more profound effect then a mere headache.
They had been wandering aimlessly for about an hour now, and it was late. Or, early. I t all depended on how you looked at it. Trunks was just waiting for a sign from Goten for them to head home.
Trunks had to admit, he hadn't been up to playing the game tonight. That's how both saiyans reffered to it as, the game.
He hadn't been up to it, but he had slipped into his role flawlessly anyway. Goten deserved to let go a little after all.
But he'd been acting wierd. That was the only way to describe it.
Goten normally refused the girls in the game. After all, he'd been attached. There was reason not to look. The lavender-haired Capsule Corps president had always been in secret awe of Goten's control. His eye never, ever srayed from Parisu. That boy could commit.
Or could he?
Now that Trunks thought about it, Goten's eye had never strayed to Parisu. Was it coincidence or was Trunks just reading too much into it?
He might have thought, yes, he was, if not for tonight. Goten still didn't look, didn't accept glances from the pretty girls. This might be normal if he was getting over a bad break up, but Trunks would be surprised if Goten had thought of Parisu once in the last twenty-four hours.
So there was only one explanation.
Goten had a love abroad, he'd met some girl on his travels and was hopelessly devoted to her.
And damn, Goten was holding out on Trunks. Not giving him the juicy details.
Part Three |
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