Chapter Text
“Kakarot, do you realize what time it is?”
Coming out to the sudden pause of fingers tapping a keyboard, Kakarot rubbed his face and looked around for the first face of a clock he could find—straining to read the numbers. The position of the sun would easily have left him vaguely aware of the general time, but to see the exact minutes might actually shake him out of the haze of sleep and get him moving a little faster...To think he’d slept until the very last minute… Not exactly unusual, but he’d thought perhaps Kakarot would be a little more alert, knowing he had to be at the school early to handle the dealings with the guest speaker being in the gymnasium. That was his domain, after all.
“Uh, shoot, yeah, I gotta get ready to go—Let me go wake the boys up—” The lights finally came on behind his eyes and he started to clamor for clothes, throwing himself together without much pause to check and make sure he didn’t look like he literally just untucked himself from the sheets. He always looked that way, anyhow.
“I already sent them. You do not not even have time for breakfast, because you overslept.”
A big frown came around the corner and faced him at the doorway to the bedroom. “Vegeta—Why didn’t you wake me—” Kakarot pouted steeply at him, more heartbroken about missing breakfast than the idea of being late for anything important. He was fumbling around with pants and a belt, trying to tuck a shirt in at the same time, while kicking shoes on and Vegeta was almost impressed by his method of multitasking his attempt at dressing himself. Almost, because it wasn’t quite working out for him.
“I did. You rolled over and said five more minutes. I proceeded to give you five more minutes. Ten more times.”
“...I like sleep—”
“More than breakfast?”
The pout deepened, but he couldn’t say anything in retaliation, when he’d clearly made his choice. “I’ll just hope they have stuff in the break room...S’not like anyone even likes guest speakers—the kids don’t even listen at eight in the mornin’—” He whined, all the way into the other room and Vegeta raised a brow and continued with grading his papers. Kakarot’s involvement in the subject and being in charge of the gymnasium itself, placed responsibility on him that Vegeta was pleased to not have himself. He had enough responsibility being the adult monitoring Kakarot.
“Hey listen—after classes are up, you wanna hit the gym today or you got more papers to grade?” Kakarot stuck his head back out the door, with a toothbrush half stuck in his mouth.
“I have been up early this morning, so most of my work is caught up, Kakarot,” he cast him a condescending look, which earned a toothpaste covered tongue stuck out at him.
“I guess I’m just gonna have to give you a reason to not want to get out of bed every now and then, huh,” Kakarot tilted his head up and cast a half-lidded look down at him that made him bristle defensively at him. Defensively for the sake of it being far too early for Kakarot’s suggestive nonsense.
“You… You are….You’re an idiot, go to work, you savage,” he curled his nose, tripping over the faint remnants of the accent he still had. Kakarot had never been anything but a giant fool, but he had signed up for this at one point and he was hard pressed to back down from his own decisions. Sinking with the ship, as he could call it. He was also an idiot for having been swayed by the bigger idiot.
Kakarot had been one of the first people he’d met coming to this new school as an instructor and his first impression had been nothing short of….how the hell was this man an educator? But Kakarot had some kind of charm about him that did something and it also helped that he didn’t have a book heavy subject matter. Physical Education was without a doubt, this man’s place. This had made Vegeta certain that he wouldn’t be bothered by him, given his own subject was so far removed from him. The Foreign language classrooms and the gymnasium weren’t even on the same side of the campus. But evidently, Kakarot had telescopic vision for well built bodies, and that had been enough to make him forcibly introduce himself at length.
And then have to spend three weeks attempting to continue trying to talk to him after being ignored heatedly, because Vegeta couldn’t understand his damn country slang. When it took him four minutes of staring at him, trying to identify his “y’all’d’nt’ve”s—as another teacher later called them—he decided he couldn’t deal with it, and he just snuffed him repeatedly. The idiot never took the hint.
He’d had the audacity to outwardly invite him to the weightlifting room with him after being blatantly turned away several times and Vegeta made every effort to ignore him once again. But he found out quickly that this idiot was also some kind of manipulator—that he only recognized in hindsight. When Kakarot reiterated his invite by telling him, that it was, “okay if he couldn’t lift as much as him”, he’d inadvertently suckered Vegeta successfully in one shot. It maybe took a while before he was willing to actually show himself—being reclusive and new still—but he was blazing with the competitive edge to knock Kakarot over for even attempting to suggest he couldn’t lift as much, if not more.
When he did show up, he slapped weights on the damn bars and kept a straight face while internally relishing in the stunned face of the man who probably couldn’t believe that he could bench the absurd weight he was shoving on the bars. He’d actually even tried to stop him from putting that much on at first. Only for Vegeta to sneer, tilt his head and condescend him. What, Kakarot, you can’t lift this?
Unintentionally, they started an extracurricular activity of competitively outdoing each other; and Kakarot was so fired up to lose to someone for once, when Vegeta out lifted him the first time. The students who stayed behind after school to use the equipment ended up standing by to watch their teacher get his ass handed to him by a man a whole head shorter than him and Vegeta felt validated for indulging his antagonism. Maybe that would shut Kakarot up. It would be worth just how damn sore he was the next day.
The problem with that, however, was that Kakarot was more encouraged, not less. The more pressing issue came with Vegeta being unable to just let it go and learn to ignore him. When he got the damn note on his desk, with a sloppily scrawled, “is that all?”, he fell right for it.
If he hadn’t fallen for it again, he thought—closing his laptop, to start preparing for work himself—then he wouldn’t be living with him now. Their stupid back and forth wouldn’t have gotten as intense as it had, if Vegeta had just been smarter about it and let it go. If he’d ignored him like a responsible adult, they might not have gotten into the fist fight in the locker room after everyone else was gone.
Kakarot might not have shoved him up against the lockers. He might not have bitten him. They might not have kissed. Nothing would have spiraled out of control if Kakarot wasn’t an obsessive idiot... And if he wasn’t also just as obsessive, really. Once he had it in his mind he had to top his opponent, that was all that mattered. Sensibility be damned.
If he had any real sensibility, he never would have moved in with him. He didn’t come to this place to get into any sort of relationship with a stubborn country boy, but he watched Kakarot hurry his way through his ten minute attempt to get himself together and realized Kakarot’s gravity was inescapable. Because, for all his dumb fumbling and rushing around, he still managed to find enough time to come over and waste it leaning over him to kiss him—even knowing he was going to get bitten for it.
“Moron—Go to work—I will see you again in ten minutes or so—I do not have time for your tomfoolery.” He flustered at him and pushed his face away.
“Okay, okay,” a deep yawn followed and Kakarot shook himself to wake up. Grabbing for his keys, Kakarot made for the door, only briefly turning back to him, giving a short wave and a cheeky smile that Vegeta knew he had to be on defense for. “Workouts today, ‘Geta. Or you’re forfeiting and I win,” Kakarot announced, not giving him a chance to retaliate before tossing the door open and slipping right on out and running out to his truck to try and beat the clock that he was already on a losing race against.
Vegeta sat straighter and hissed, caught blindsided, “that fucker—”