Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Chi Chi sees first (and approves)
Two weeks after the fight against Kid Buu
A sunlit clearing, warming their faces as they both lay panting on their backs, limbs pleasantly heavy post-spar. Goku basked in the familiarity, the warmth, the safety of it all.
“Hey, Vegeta. I’ve been meaning to say. Thanks for taking care of Goten while I was gone.”
" 'Gone' is nice little euphemism for 'being dead for seven years', Kakarot." Vegeta didn't seem fazed in the slightest by Goku's seemingly random turn of thoughts. Perhaps he’d gotten used to it because they'd spent so much time around each other lately.
"Hehe. While I was dead, then." Goku conceded the point, but then pressed his own. "Thanks anyway, Vegeta. For looking out for my family."
A grunt, a slight flush, a turn of the face. "You're being ridiculous as always. I didn’t do anything of the sort, idiot. I couldn’t care less about your spawns. You should thank the Namekian, maybe. ”
"Naw, come on, Vegeta, I know that’s not true!" A cheerful laugh, a careless dismissal of the harsh words. Goku wondered why Vegeta always insisted on showing and making others see the prince's worst sides. Making it seem like he didn't care. “Even if you’re a jerk most of the time, I know you have a good heart.”
Vegeta twitched irritably. Whoops. Goku was starting to push some buttons here. “Name me one time that made you believe so," the prince challenged him. Always looking for a fight, this fierce one. Goku smiled fondly. Maybe others found it offputting, but he found it rather cute. Vegeta was like the Briefs' household cat, always hissy, never mind his smaller stature.
But Goku didn't back down from fights either. "Well, that time you fought against Fat Buu, and made sure both Goten and Trunks were safely out of harm's way, not just Trunks.” Goku threw the challenge right back. Answer that, prince Bad Man.
Said prince scowled at him. "I was going to blow up the whole place. There's no sense taking anyone else with me, whether he was my son or yours."
Goku frowned, realising the turn of their topic and not liking it. There was a strange little tightening in his chest whenever he thought about about the then Majin Vegeta’s suicide play in that fight against Fat Buu, even if the death wasn't everlasting. Goku wasn't someone who thought too deeply about things in general, but Vegeta was always a special case.
Despite the move being ultimately futile against Buu’s regenerative capabilities, Goku recognized how momentous that sacrifice had been for Vegeta. Piccolo had told the Earth-raised saiyan in private, how Vegeta had gone in and blown himself up anyway, fully knowing that he would be erased in the afterlife because of his sins, never to see his family again. Ceasing to matter, to even exist. Reborn maybe as something else none of them would recognise or see again, here or in the afterlife.
How lonely must it have been for the prince to realize what lay after death for him. How brave of him to proceed anyway... but courage was something Vegeta never lacked. Even with Goku being absolutely ready to head there with him, the prince had chosen to fight alone.
The way he had knocked Goku out right before going to martyr himself against Buu was something Goku was still smarting about, though. But that was a topic for another day.
To think that all the complexity, all the wounds and strength the proud warrior prince carried, could have been gone in the space of a second, written off to oblivion.The idea made dread rise in Goku’s gut to the point of nausea. The strength of the emotion rather surprised him, but maybe it was because he and Vegeta had gotten closer over the time since.
Goku shook his head. His thoughts went too deep in there. But he had to say this. "Nah, Vegeta,” he insisted. “I know what you’re doing. You can pretend when we’re around others, but I can see- you."
Goku knew his words might sound non-sensical. He wasn’t the best with words, anyway. But he meant what he said. He always could see Vegeta as who he actually was. That potential and honour he had seen in Vegeta from the moment of their first battle; the glimmer of a heart he had seen on Namek as Vegeta lay dying at his feet. That heart had been so mired in tragedy and cruelty both endured and inflicted, but it was still there. A lesser man would have fallen, their very personalities and soul dissipated by violence. But Vegeta's spirit burned strong, and so did the good in him.
And that was the good Goku stubbornly chose to see, whatever else Vegeta tried to pretend to the world.
Vegeta looked stricken, vulnerable in a way Goku rarely ever saw him to be. The proud prince looked fragile then. “Kakarot.” A moment of quiet, a breath. A rare admission of guilt. “It was my stupidity that led us there. I wouldn’t have let the two become casualties for my mistakes. There’s nothing more to it.”
Goku would give way today. Pretend to agree with him, without really agreeing. “If you say so, Vegeta. Thank you, still.”
Months later
Goku paused in frustration, his chest heaving as he stared down in consternation at the tree stump he'd been attempting to pull out for some time. Not too far away, his tractor glinted in the sunlight.
He had been trying to plow the fields of turnip he had planted some weeks ago. Since coming back to life and spending a good few years with his family after the Buu ordeal, he’d learnt some conventional skills that helped him earn a modest income, and one of them was farming. It was all due to Chichi. She had sat him down one night and they had had a serious conversation about the years that were missing between them.
Goku had felt guilty, of course, but not enough to be able to promise that he was going to significantly change: Saiyans were made to roam, to battle, and he, Son Goku, who was neither fully Saiyan nor fully earthling- more hybrid at heart than his hybrid sons could ever really be- was made to seek challenge. If there was another fight, another adventure, he would be there to meet it.
And somehow, Chichi understood and accepted that of him. But sweet, patient, stern Chichi, who had put up with a lot from him over the years and was still somehow there, had made clear that earning an income was important to her, so it was the least he could do to keep her happy. After all foraging for food came naturally to a saiyan and to him, this was just a more industrialised form of it.
That day Goku had been doing perfectly fine with the aged tractor until he’d come across a particularly large tree stump that refused to budge and got in the way of the tractor’s merciless groove. He had spent the next half an hour trying to uproot the large stump with little success.
Finally, he sat back. “Man! This tree stump is as stubborn as Vegeta!” And just like that, a smile bloomed on his lips as his thoughts turned to the other saiyan, and his mind began to wander.
Goku knew something about his relationship with Vegeta had changed during the fight against evil Kid Buu. Outwardly the prince’s demeanor had not significantly shifted, but there was less anger in his eyes, and perhaps, Goku liked to think, a bit less bite in his words, a little more warmth in his smirk when they interacted.
But there was also something a little sad- a sort of resignation and acceptance that set Vegeta's shoulders a little lower, a little more uncertain, as if his self-realised status as second fiddle had lost him a sense of purpose now. It made Goku unhappy too, somehow. He didn’t like to think or analyse others too much - action always brought on more results than thinking- but he didn’t like to see Vegeta more imbued with self doubt and fragility than his harsh past had already given him.
In the early days after the Buu fiasco had settled, whenever Goku allowed himself to think about it a little deeper, he worried about Vegeta’s mental state. Was Vegeta okay? Did he feel out of place, did he lose his self worth? The prince being the endearingly prickly porcupine he was, asking directly wasn’t likely to yield any useful answers and probably get him punched through a mountain, not that Goku minded that, but it would defeat the point. Goku wasn’t the smartest or most tactful person, but he was selectively smart when it came to things he was interested in. And Vegeta was definitely on that list. So he resolved to try alternative ways to approach his friend.
Despite his resolution, caught up with the pure wonders of being in the living realm again, Goku had little time or correct space to seek the answer to his question. Between Chichi’s cooking and patient reprimands; the mystery of adult Gohan, firmly a scholar yet still sharing the desire to save the world in the form of Great Saiyamen; and getting to know the miracle that was Goten, his second son(!) - all his facial expressions, cute little pout and likes and dislikes… making up for lost time… all of this kept Goku occupied. Before long days had turned to seasons, never a right time to bring up the matter.
However, as he slowly settled into the motions and routines of daily life, Goku had found himself growing restless again, a storm lurking under his skin, craving a good fight the way humans craved connection. And who better to seek than Vegeta, who gave him exactly what he needed, the challenge he craved! It took all of Goku’s focus in every single spar to make sure that the prince couldn’t jump over him.
What Vegeta believed was a strength gap between the two saiyans was more than made up by everything the prince was: his raw power, his quick cunning, his stamina, his unique fighting style, his undeniable skill, the sheer force and ruthlessness of his strikes, the pigheaded toughness in taking a hit and getting back up, the grace in the way his lithe body and muscles moved, his magnetic eyes - Goku could really spend all day rattling off a list of all the things that made Vegeta amazing.
Perhaps someone else might have found something strange there, but he couldn’t help it, he was just being honest- Vegeta was beautiful when he was fierce, was his equal and rival, the power gap may as well not exist. All the thrilling fights his saiyan blood craved, the challenge his body sang to find, the prince delivered, and far more, each and every time.
The sand clock in the corner ticked by, sound magnifying suddenly as they called an end to their spar. Chest heaving, Goku allowed his body to collapse onto the white tiles, aching back soothed by the coolness of the floor. “Well Vegeta, you sure don’t make it easy on me! " he heaved, laughing with the exhilaration only a magnificent spar with his rival could bring out. "Every time we fight, you find flaws I didn’t even know I had!”
“Tch.” The obsidian eyes looked away. “The same is true for me, much as I hate to admit it," he heard Vegeta mutter. Goku choose not to comment. I nstead he let out a delighted laugh, gaze overhead. “Can you imagine how much stronger we’re going to get?” A little pause, a fond glance that the other missed. “I’m glad you’re here, Vegeta. I’m glad we have this.”
“... Whatever, Kakarot.”
Ironically and fortunately, it was this: their spars, the unique space they had carved out with each other in their otherwise quiet lives, that had restored the set in Vegeta’s eyes and the way he held himself, more than anything else Goku could have thought to do or to say.
In every exchange of punches, Goku somehow managed to convey without words that there was a special space for Vegeta in Goku’s life, and that it was right at his shoulder, together as equals, and wherever he was climbing, Vegeta was coming too. And if Vegeta was the one scaling the ship, Goku would be right there rigging with him.
Vegeta seemed to pick up on this… whatever they had, as time went by. Slowly the uncertainty in his eyes and the tight set of his mouth was replaced by something a little warmer, something a little surer. His uncertainty about his place and purpose had been erased. All without the need for confusing words.
“Hey Vegeta,” a little fidget, “could you... teach me how to say something in Saiya-go?”
Goku could see that Vegeta was completely taken aback. He wished he could take a picture and frame it. He treasured every time he saw the warmer side of the other saiyan’s personality, under the prickly mask.
The complete utter shock in the Vegeta’s eyes melted into default irritation. “...Why? You’ve never been interested before.”
A shrug, a rub of the neck in quiet embarrassment. “I’m just... curious, I guess? Feels silly to be part of something and not know anything about it. And hey! It’ll be cool if we can talk to each other in our own language! Like a secret code!”
A huff, a glare without heat. “Forget it, Kakarot, I am not starting some juvenile secret club with you. I don’t need more reason to have to talk to you any more than I do now.”
A pout. “Aww, but I like spending time with you!” Goku noticed Vegeta flushing, but took no further note of it. “And who knows, maybe it’ll be useful in a fight!”
(Once, after the ‘Mistletoe Incident’ which everyone had deemed would never ever be spoken of again for as long as anyone lived and the Dragonballs existed, Vegeta had ranted to him about the Earth’ strange and idiotic customs. Goku had listened to the tirade mindlessly, not sharing the same vehemence, but agreeing that some Earthling rituals that were thought of as normal were confusing for him, and he was raised on Earth. Poor Vegeta probably found some things completely perplexing.
It had naturally segued to a rather difficult and painful conversation about their home planet and its customs. Goku had learnt that saiyans didn’t have as many words in their native tongue as any of the Earthling languages had, and that there were regional dialects but by and large words remained similar. It made sense: for saiyans who craved fighting the way humans craved connection and interaction, a fight was a conversation, a battle was connection. In that case, he and Vegeta talked a whole bunch, given how much time they spent together sparring, Goku mused.)
Beyond the subtle undercurrents of their spar though, Goku genuinely looked forward to their time together, and he knew enough of Vegeta’s tells to be confident that Vegeta did too. It became the highlight of his week, something to get excited about between the tedium of planting turnips and securing at least a small modest income for his family. He couldn’t deny: As much as he loved being with his family, knowing everyone was safe and happy and where they should be , in times of peace the spars with Vegeta were the rare moments in which he felt truly alive.
Their spars were where he was able to just take delight in movement, with no fear of losing life or pride, the familiarity and comfort of a friendly fist, the awareness that they were a match and could finish each other, yet the safety of knowing it would not come to that. It was an odd form of trust, knowing that they could let loose their innate aggression without malice, fight and break each other to make each other stronger. It was precious and fragile and Goku didn’t think he could ever go back to a time without this, without what they shared.
The result was them spending more and more time together, creating fertile ground for something new to grow, like a little bud hesitantly testing out the first whiffs of spring. Gradually Goku had gotten to know Vegeta, who under the prickly exterior had a sense of humour dryer than sandpaper, with the deadpan delivery to back it up; Vegeta who was cold and calculating and stingy with his emotions, except ironically when he needed his walls the most - that was when it all spilled out to the point where the prince literally wore his heart in his eyes. Vegeta who was smart and curious and (sometimes) considerate and actually pleasant to be with when he wasn’t actively trying to be difficult for the sake of it.
Though, Goku smiled to himself in amusement, to be frank, he enjoyed that side of the prince as well. It was really a lot of fun to tease Vegeta sometimes by playing up his own simpleness in order to see Vegeta’s exasperated, but somewhat resigned face as the prince either attempted to explain something. He was sure Vegeta was on to it too, and was humoring Goku's antics in his own way. It made Goku feel warm, and maybe a little special, that the usually short-tempered prince would allow such things from him.
“...Goku?”
Goku was so startled at Chichi’s voice ringing out of the blue that he nearly fell off the tree stump he had somehow wound up sitting on as his mind wandered. “Chichi!” Hastily, he got to his feet, trying to make it look like he had been working and was taking a break instead of daydreaming for the past half hour. “I didn’t notice you there!” Which was actually kind of weird, her ki was one of the few he could pinpoint anywhere in the world, anytime, right alongside his boys and Vegeta’s, especially since their fusion.
She looked at him strangely, an exasperated smile on her beautiful lips. “I’ve been calling you for the last ten minutes, Goku. Lunch is ready.”
As if on cue, his stomach let out a ferocious growl, making them both jump. Goku laughed, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. “Man, I’m starving! Food sure sounds good right now,” He grinned at his wife fondly. “You’re the best, Chichi!”
She caught his arm gently before he almost flew past her into the house where he could now sniff out amazing scents that made his mouth water. “Goku,” she looked at him sternly, but her voice was patient, “you promised me that you would finish ploughing the field before lunch.” She looked at him pointedly. “Even at the most, you should have been done half an hour ago.”
Goku slumped a little in shame. “Sorry, Chi…” he mumbled. So much for a quick (and yummy) escape. “I just… got a little carried away with my thoughts, is all.” Belatedly he realised that he maybe should have said something else. Goku wasn’t exactly known for being a deep thinker, except when it came to fighting.
Chichi couldn’t help a smile at that, clearly thinking along the same lines. “Goku, the only thing you ever really think about is fighting. At least, to the point of daydreaming about it.” She looked him in the eye. “You’re getting restless again, aren’t you?”
Goku started a little guiltily. Of course Chichi would catch on quickly. She was smart, like Bulma and Gohan. Like Vegeta. He was surrounded by smart people, all of them people he held dear.
“... Just a bit, Chichi.” An impulsive idea came to mind, it was worth trying to ask. “Once I finish lunch, maybe I can go bash Vegeta around a bit?” he asked hopefully. “Then I’ll be perfectly good to finish off the field!”
Goku knew he didn’t technically need her permission, but he’d learnt the hard way that some things should be approached with courtesy, e.g. letting your family know where you plan to be instead of disappearing for months on end without a word and freaking them out into another form of hell. He and Vegeta were both still learning this with their respective families. Perhaps it was a saiyan thing.
“Vegeta, hm?” Chichi looked at him for a bit. Her normally expressive black eyes were unreadable, right then. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with him.”
“Well, of course! He’s the only one who can fight on my level,” Goku said, a bit confused. Her statement seemed to hold more meaning than words, but he was never good at parsing through such things, except when it came to some very specific stubborn prickly people. With Chichi, she was usually more upfront about what she said and wanted. It was one of the things he liked about her.
Chichi continued to look at him strangely. “... and that’s all it is, isn’t it.” Her eyes held curiosity, understanding, and something like… amusement?
“Huh? What do you mean, Chichi?”
His wife looked like she was about to say something else, but then visibly gave up. “You won’t get it if I have to explain it to you,” she said, which sounded completely nonsensical to Goku, and he was usually the one people couldn’t understand. His expression must have screamed his incomprehension, because she looked at him and laughed a little. “Oh Goku, it’s okay, it’s not you or anyone’s fault.”
“Are… we talking about the field?” Goku asked hopelessly.
Chichi just shook her head at him. “It’s okay, Goku. I’ll pack you your lunch. Go find Vegeta and spar, if he’s not doing something else.” As Goku started to brighten, confusion easily dismissed, her tone turned stern. “Then you have to come back and make sure the fields get turned over today , okay? If you can, maybe even start on the next patch.” Her hands went to her hips, every inch the warrior-princess-turned-strict-mother in her stance. Goku loved her for it.
“I promise it’ll all get done! Thanks Chichi, you really are the best!” he cheered, spinning her around and giving her a big hug. She smiled up at him and patted his cheek.
“But not the only best.”
“Huh?” Did he mishear her? For the second time that day in the short span of their conversation, Goku felt that his wife was speaking more than she was saying.
“Never mind, Goku. We will talk about this another time. You have a spar to get to, remember,” Chichi said, as if Goku would forget. He shrugged and decided to let it drop. She’d speak to him when she wanted to. He was a simple man, with a simple approach. He preferred to deal with directness and uncomplicated things, with some exceptions.
Like a saiyan prince with barbs a mile wide and walls so high they would suffocate all the life and light out of an unsuspecting visitor. Good that Goku was wilfully dense enough to ignore the warnings, bright enough to bring his own sunlight, and thus the perfect counter to such defensiveness.
“Okay Chichi, see you later!” He grinned, putting two fingers to his forehead. His senses extended, locking on to the bright, proud little life force that was always a soothing familiar presence in his mind, a point of reference he could place anywhere in the universe. He was looking forward to seeing that too-familiar smirk turn angry.
“Wait Goku! Your-”
-he blinked out-
“-food…” Chichi trailed off to empty air.
Of course she had known.
Of course she had noticed that there was something more than platonic that existed between the two last saiyans in the universe, something a little more than stringent rivalry or simple brotherhood.
Perhaps it was the way they had looked at each other in the immediate wake of the Evil Buu fight*, all the way back to that time at the Lookout. Chichi had seen her husband’s relaxed stance completely brighten up and his cheerful smile turn utterly free, in a way she had not seen before as he gazed towards Vegeta. Vegeta who to her shock had looked back over his shoulder with his own little smirk, one softer than she had ever seen him. It was only a heartbeat of a moment, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but it somehow felt more intimate than if she had caught them kissing.
Well, that was a rather… interesting image. Chichi coughed, feeling her cheeks heat up slightly.
She had been unsure what she had seen and suspected at the time, and even less sure how she felt about it.
Did her husband have feelings for his rival? Was it a saiyan thing, or was it a Goku and Vegeta thing? Did either of that make it okay?
What did she feel about it?
Over time, though, Chichi had come to realise that somehow, in the long seven years of Goku’s absence, something between her and Goku had changed. Maybe it wasn’t there in the first place. Somehow, she had made peace with the strange marriage she had.
Her expectations had been all formed by human standards of marriage, fidelity, and even sexuality. Who knew what saiyans accepted as the norm of their partners? The only one who could even possibly have an inkling was Vegeta, and it seemed clear he would carry all the traditions and culture of his home planet to his third grave, something which Bulma felt was a real shame but Chichi privately thought was a blessing, given the saiyans' predisposition to violence. And from what little she understood of Vegeta’s history, having been very young when he was taken away to serve Frieza, his information might not have been all that accurate anyway, or at the very least tainted with another’s malice.
The point was, no one knew how saiyans conventionally approached partnerships…
...and love was never conventional anyway, whatever culture or background one came from.
She could share Goku. Chichi knew he loved her and their family, and would always come back, even if with the same unreliable schedule he had. Nothing would change, except possibly his happiness might increase. Maybe even Vegeta’s, who for all the evil he had done, had become one of the good guys in her eyes (at least lately, by pure virtue of being a good father)
And she truly loved Goku and wanted him happy. She was selfish enough not to want him to leave her again, and she knew that she tied him down to her sometimes when he would really rather be roaming and searching for adventure, as his saiyan blood called him out to do. But share him? She could do that, at least with someone who could care for him and provide him with the things she couldn’t.
But first, Chichi had to make sure that her theory about this possible growing romance between them was correct. Because it was like playing with fire, except the fire was inferno in the form of two unearthly titans of the universe and their minefield of emotions.
So in the last few months, she had caught onto and collected more little pieces of evidence, little things that confirmed her theory.
The fact that her normally socially-challenged husband somehow knew exactly what buttons to push to get Vegeta to react as he wanted, whether to comfort or to provoke. And while she didn’t know Vegeta too well, certainly not enough to call him a friend, she knew enough to guess that the proud saiyan would not have allowed himself to be played by such strings unless he secretly wanted to go along with it.
The amount of time her husband spent thinking about fighting and inevitably Vegeta, whatever his reasonings were. Sure, it was true the prince was the only one to come close to Goku’s level, despite Chichi’s vehement insistence that Gohan was the biggest potential among them all (something which Vegeta, perhaps in a particularly amiable mood, had surprisingly agreed to one night, shocking everybody in the process.)
However, her devotion to feeding and caring for Goku when he was alive meant that Chichi knew her husband. She may not understand his saiyan side: the slight wildness and hunger in his eyes when it was peaceful for too long; the way he looked at serious opponents like they were an adventure rather than a death sentence... but she knew him enough to understand his cravings. To understand how he was when something grabbed his attention and held it. To understand, also, when it was some one .
There were other little tells, of course. The way they gravitated towards each other whatever the occasion, but never fully crashed in, like two celestial bodies on an orbit destined to circle around each other and never truly meet in the middle. The long-postponed (and, she privately believed, eternally so) final all-out battle, now taking shape in the form of much-anticipated spars. The fact that they had fused, become one person for a supposedly permanent time, bonded to fight and live and die together as a union, which sounded like a marriage to her, honestly.
When pressed for more information of what they retained from the fusion, both kept mum. Goku did not have much to share, but whether that came from being careless as ever with details and feelings, or using purposeful obliviousness as a shield, was hard to tell. Vegeta’s fierce blush and obvious discomfort whenever the topic was brought up all but confirmed to her that there must have been side effects to the fusion that neither of the two were spilling.
Clearly, the two emotionally-dense saiyans clearly had not realised themselves, but many of the people around them had come to notice, as time had passed by. Some of them made light of it (Chichi had an inkling of some form of betting going on around the inhabitants of Kame Island, but was too wary to pry into the details given Master Roshi’s tendency towards perversion.) Some of the others took it more seriously by considering a more active role in orchestrating the two saiyan into some form of confrontation for what they were both too blind to see.
Chichi was a romantic at heart, and enjoyed playing matchmaker - she was doing a grand job with her eldest baby boy and charming, strong, sweet, financially secure Videl, she reckoned - but even she wondered what the protocols were when trying to matchmake your husband with his past would-be-murderer-turned-rival-turned-best-friend-slash-sparring partner. Even if she turned to trusted ones for advice, well, the people around her weren’t exactly genius with emotions themselves. Gohan’s extensive book collection (what a darling little scholar he’d become, she was so very proud of him) yielded nothing even close. Asking Piccolo who was also technically Kami of the past might have been a smart move, but she was sure it would only trigger a facial spasm for the poor Namekian. And then there was her precious baby cutie Goten, whose simplicity and mannerisms reminded her of Goku’s innocence when he was younger, was too little to know anything of love just yet (as he should be, of course.)
Then there was the flip side. While she suspected that she was correct about Goku's possibly-more than platonic feelings towards Vegeta, she had initially been both worried and angry that it was unrequited. With Vegeta’s past loud proclamations to surpass and kill her husband , of course she had been fiercely protective. Who cared if the guy was a super saiyan prince who could squish her like she could squish a bug with even less effort, she would still beat him over the head with a frying pan if he dared make real on his threat to her Goku- or worse, hurt his heart!
But Chichi had relaxed as she saw that over time, Vegeta’s harshness and hostility towards her husband had faded to the point that Goku was really one of the rare ones he would willingly spend time with, outside his immediate family. Something had changed. Even Chichi knew her husband could be a bit much sometimes, with his careless invasion of personal space, his selective obliviousness and his cheerful disregard of social norms (well, given that Vegeta was just as bad in the latter, in hindsight, the two socially incompetent saiyans made the perfect pair.)
But Vegeta seemed to take it all without much… well, with a lot of complaint and grumbling, but no real threat or heat behind it. Chichi knew enough to know that Vegeta was the kind of person who if he truly wanted to leave Goku on his own, he would have. And in time, she’s seen or heard little snippets that added to her curiosity about the two: the way Vegeta was always watching her husband’s back and coming to his aid during their big battles, whatever excuse he was using that particular time; the apathy and depression he had fallen into when Goku remained dead those long seven years; the way he had protected her Goku when they were trying to buy time for the Spirit Bomb to build against Evil Buu; the way he had caught Goku to prevent him from freefalling straight through the ship they were on, holding him almost tenderly in the fight against Beerus…
She could possibly think of more times the other saiyan was sweet on her husband if pressed, but if she was to be pragmatic and rational like her smart Gohan sounded when he talked about his beloved ‘scientific method’, she would have to admit that most of her thoughts about the possibility of the two saiyans beings sweet on each other were just that, assumptions without substance. Many of her observations were also one-sided, more of Goku’s reactions towards and with Vegeta, as she obviously never spent time with Vegeta alone except when her husband was there. Bulma handled that side of information…
...And they were due a sharing session soon. Smiling almost evilly for such a proper and dignified lady, Chichi picked up the phone.
*the pic at the top is the secret smile moment Chi chi referred to. Look at how happy these two look, Goku seems positively glowing while I've never seen Vegeta look that relaxed XD *fans self*