They had three years to prepare for the end. He also had three years to watch his girlfriend slip through his fingers. A short three-year piece. Yamcha's POV.
...
"10 years," he said, with a calculated cursory. "That's the diamond anniversary."
The woman across the room sat at her workbench, soldering some device together she'd explained but he hadn't understood. Bulma didn't bother lifting her head from the microscope before replying, "They've changed them. Aluminum is the traditional ten year gift."
Yamcha sighed. He was told she was one of the smartest women on the planet. It was conversations like these that had him questioning that fact. "Yes. It used to be aluminum. But now it's diamond." There was a pause. The sound of his girlfriend's soldering iron and then silence again. "Do you want a diamond?"
She shrugged. Shrugged. And said, "Sure. I like diamonds, but you know you don't have to buy me one, Yamcha. I'm perfectly capable of buying myself a diamond."
He fought the urge to slam his head into the smooth surface of her workbench. A normal guy might just go pick up a ring and drop down on one knee in some romantic, embarrassingly simi-public manner. A normal guy wouldn't date Bulma Brief.
And since, after almost 10 years he wasn't always, completely sure how she felt, he wanted to make sure. If he'd proposed before she was ready, it'd be all his fault and she'd probably scream at him. So he took a deep breath, and asked,
"If I bought you a diamond for our tenth anniversary, would that be okay?"
Finally, Bulma lifted her head and looked at him. He looked… nervous. Her brow creased. He'd certainly been doing well money-wise since his baseball career had taken off. She'd been so used to him having no money, but it hadn't bothered her. She'd had enough money for the both of them. Perhaps he wanted to buy her things now, to make up for lost time. She grinned. Bulma rather liked being spoiled.
"Of course that would be okay. You know I like presents."
Yamcha sighed and took a few steps in her direction. "Let me try this again. I want to buy you a diamond, more specifically a diamond ring. And I want to know if that's okay with you."
"O-kay?"
"And not just if the diamond ring is okay, but all the stipulations that come with it."
Bulma's grin evaporated. "Did you just propose to me and call marriage a stipulation?"
"Uh." In a very Goku-like gesture, Yamcha scratched the back of his neck. "Yes?"
Her jaw shifted to one side. "You want to get married?"
"Yes."
"And live together?"
"Normal adults who've been together for 10 years live together, Bulma."
"I don't want kids."
"I know."
"And I'm a difficult person to live with."
That got a smile out of him, at least. "I know."
"Well I don't know," she replied. "I'll have to think about it." Then she went back to soldering and ignoring him and he stood awkwardly in the center of the room, watching her. After some thought, she spoke again,
"If you decide to go aluminum instead, I'm in the need of a new wrench set."
…
After practice, the hoard of women wearing his name on the back of their jerseys pressed themselves against the chain link fence. Some waved pens, wanting autographs or a phone number, some simply shouted his name. Yamcha grinned politely and tried not to blush.
"Your harem awaits," one of his teammates joked. And even though Yamcha still got damp palms at the thought of women, he'd mostly gotten over the bashfulness of his youth.
And so with what he hoped was a charming grin, he accepted the headshots extended in his direction or the cheap, store-bought baseballs. With a word or two, he'd scribble his name and maybe offer a wink if the girl warranted one.
One of the women had the audacity to blush. It was adorable, so perhaps he flirted a bit heavier with her. But it was all innocent; he'd never cheat on Bulma. There was paparazzi staked out in each direction, just waiting to catch him in a compromising position. And then there was the small matter of his loyalty.
But for a moment, he thought about it. He was famous, at the height of his career. And wouldn't it be so easy...
Instead he met Puar and Capsule Corps and kissed his girlfriend on the cheek. She smiled and led him through the living area and out onto the patio where Krillin and Oolong sat. On the way Bulma chatted about everything from lunch options to the magazine article she'd been reading. And then, in the same beat, she mentioned having a dream about Vegeta.
"What?" he snapped, more surprised than upset. "Vegeta? You had a dream about him?"
Bulma shrugged a single shoulder and fluffed her blue curls. "You know, actually, he was pretty nice to me in the dream. And a good kisser to boot."
"What?" He felt a bit like a record on repeat. "You kissed him?"
His friends from the team would've said that was the first sign of their inevitable fall-out. Or the second. Her turning down his proposal was probably the first. But it wouldn't be the first time Bulma confessed to having a sex dream about another man, and it wouldn't be the first time she'd admitted so with flippancy of a weather report.
It was the way it had always been. He couldn't look sideways at a woman but she could go off spouting such, because it didn't mean anything. Her head was too full of science to hold a lot of couth.
"It was just a dream Yamcha!"
Oolong took a moment away from stuffing his face with food - courtesy of the Briefs - to laugh at Yamcha's expense. "You poor sap. You're jealous, aren't you? Admit it."Yamcha could only frown. Was he jealous? He wasn't sure. Should he have been? Probably.
Bulma was high maintenance, sure, but after being at her side for 10 years he knew she was worth the extra effort it took to make her happy. And when Vegeta returned later that day and Bulma bossed him about and Vegeta took it because, well, Yamcha and the others were dumbfounded as to why, Yamcha wouldn't overthink it. Bulma was as strange as the rest of his friends. Krillin might've had a girlfriend from time to time, but Yamcha reasoned he was the only one who could really blend in the outside world. And perhaps that was part of the problem.
…
He found the third sign of their demise waiting for him upon his next trip to Capsule Corps.
"I hear you're cheating on me," Bulma said, tapping one accusatory foot and perching her right hand high on her hip. A telltale sign of her frustration.
Yamcha saw in her other hand a rolled up magazine, and with a sigh he extended a hand to see what had his girlfriend in a tiff. Instead of handing it over, Bulma promptly whacked him aside the head. Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Yamcha proffered the magazine and glanced at the cover. It donned a photograph of himself in his practice uniform, grinning down at one of his adoring female fans.
He raised a brow at his girlfriend, still glowering at him.
"Well?" she snapped.
Yamcha swallowed audibly. Bulma was way too smart to believe the claims of some tabloid, which meant she just wanted to be mad at him for a bit. Her wanting to fight for no reason was far worse than her wanting to fight because he'd done something wrong. Because this meant he'd never win.
Taking a step back, he raised both arms in surrender. "Look, I'm sorry Bulma. But you know this isn't anything."
"Isn't it? I'm here, slaving away all day trying to help us beat the androids, while you're out there living it up."
Halting the remainder of her speech, he excused himself to the bathroom where he sat on the toilet lid hoping to buy enough time so she'd calm down. She'd probably been ready for a fight long before he'd gotten there, so there was no telling how long he'd have to stay put.
Perhaps he could leave on the claim of diarrhea.
But then he heard her voice, shouting from somewhere in her parent's mansion. With caution he left the sanctuary of the bathroom and tiptoed across the first floor.
There, in the kitchen, stood Bulma. Fire in her eyes, poison on her tongue, and just the barest hint of a smile on her lips as Vegeta quipped back,
"Blame me, but it's you who've proved useless."
"Oh, fuck you Vegeta."
"Wouldn't you like that."
Yamcha stood still, eyes bouncing back and forth between the pair. Effortlessly they volleyed insults back and forth in some sort of verbal tennis match. And both seemed to be enjoying themselves. Surely Vegeta wasn't the sort to want to fight for no reason?
Who was he kidding… Vegeta lived for the opportunity to beat the shit out of somebody for absolutely no reason. He got off on it. But Vegeta had better things to do than engage in verbal warfare with Yamcha's girlfriend.
Yamcha could only frown. What had happened after she'd pulled him from the wreckage of that gravity chamber? Surely he'd missed a piece of the puzzle. He glanced down at the table where the forgotten tabloid lay. His own face grinned back at him, and for a moment Yamcha wished Bulma was still pissed at him.
…
The fourth sign was that she started sticking up for Vegeta.
"He's on our side, so of course I'm fixing the chamber."
Yamcha sucked his upper lip between his teeth. "But you still hate him."
Her brow scrunched in an endearingly confused manner he'd once found cute. "Of course I still hate him, Yamcha. But he's our ally too and this is the only way I can help."
"By giving him enough training equipment to eventually beat Goku?"
"No one can beat Goku, Yamcha." And she smiled as she tightened a screw on some mangled scrap of metal that had once been a training bot. "He's going to help kill the Androids, and we might need him."
"Maybe. But we also might regret letting him hang around."
Catching the bitterness lacing his tone, Bulma asked, "Are you jealous?"
"Maybe I don't like him spending so much time around my girlfreind."
She laughed. "You're insane. Besides, you're always running around with baseball groupies, and you don't hear me complaining about that."
Actually she did. Quite often. But pointing that out would only further give her reason to be mad. Fighting with Bulma was a vicious cycle - so he kept his mouth closed.
Instead, he watched as she removed the control panel from the bot. A tangle of wires were jostled free and she began twisting some of them around with a copper-tipped tool. He guessed she was checking the charge, but he didn't ask. He just watched her work. The way her brow furrowed. The way she bit down on her plump lower lip.
From the yard he could feel Vegeta's power level steadily rising. It was emasculating, really. With the earthlings he was special. The greatest baseball player of their generation, and that was with him half-assing it most of the time. To them he was strong, fast, important. But to Bulma he wasn't any of that anymore. Surrounded by Saiyans and Namekians and evil alien threats he was weak, slow, and useless.
She wasn't even doing a good job of hiding it anymore.
…
The fifth and final sign that his ten year relationship had gone stale was when he'd come over to Capsule Corporation unannounced and found Bulma in her lab surprised to see him drop by. He'd been busy with baseball and training, and maybe he'd purposely made himself scarce.
Because he knew when he showed up, even barring a gift, it would happen.
"Maybe we should spend some time apart." She'd said it with no preface, no fanfare.
"You like him."
She didn't look at him. Bulma wasn't a coward, but in that moment she couldn't face him. There was replicated Saiyan armor stacked neatly on her workbench and she fiddled with the spandex sleeve of one of the suits.
"Yes."
"You've slept with him?"
"...No" But 'not yet' seemed to hang in the air.
And the air wouldn't come into his lungs like it was supposed to. Suddenly it was fucking hard to breathe. Yamcha might not've been surprised, but he was definitely still angry.
"He tried to have me killed."
"You tried to have me killed, at first." Her smile was sad, but not forced. "People change."
"Vegeta hasn't changed," but even as Yamcha spoke the words he knew that Vegeta had changed. Just a bit. Here he was, living with Bulma's mother and he hadn't gone and blown the whole planet up. So he settled with, "I don't like it."
Bulma shrugged and released her hold on the spandex. "You don't have to."
"I don't know if I'll be able to forgive you after this."
"I'm not asking you for forgiveness. Or permission. I'm just letting you know."
Yamcha wasn't sure what else to say, so he handed her the packet in his arms. It was poorly wrapped. Puar had given him a hard time before leaving their flat. Bulma toyed with the corner of the crinkled paper before sliding her finger along the edge, freeing a shiny new set of aluminum wrenches. Her face crumpled.
For months there had been signs. Signs that the girl who had always been there wasn't for him. Instead, he'd stood by, waiting for the inevitable slip-up that would land she and Vegeta in bed together. And even though she and Yamcha had been together nearly ten years, Bulma had obviously made up her mind.
And in the end, he knew she'd never wanted to marry him anyway.