Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ or the characters.
Merry Christmas everyone. Okay, I just spent the last three hours in my grandmother's kitchen making gingerbread men and it was like a warzone by the time I left and the whole time I was over dramatizing what was going on in my head and got this idea. Bulma and Vegeta, making gingerbread men. Sound too OOC, well, not when you see that madness unfold XD
Also, to anyone who's interested, I have a poll going on right now about which story I should update first in the New Year. So if you don't mind taking the time to vote…please and thank you ^_^
Bulma looked like she was about to pass out when her mother asked a favor of her.
"You mean you want me to make all the gingerbread for the banquet tonight alone. Are you insane?" Bulma asked.
"Well, darling, your father has decided to take me out today to get ready," her mother said cheerfully.
"I guess I could always just use the bots," Bulma stated earning her a glare from her mother.
"Oh no, young lady. They should be made by a person with all the love they can offer. Hey, why don't you ask the nice, sweet boy, Vegeta. I bet he'd be willing to help you."
Bulma nearly died laughing. "I highly doubt he'd be interested. Besides, I bet he doesn't really get the concept of family togetherness during the holidays."
"Nonsense," her mother said. "Besides, I bet he's just waiting for us to include him in all the festivities. It would be rude not to ask him."
Bulma rolled her eyes. "Yes, mother, whatever you say."
Her mother nearly squealed with joy before leaving the compound to meet her father in the car. "And now for the moment of truth," Bulma muttered going out to the GR. She knew this wouldn't end well.
Vegeta was training harder than ever at 500 times Earth's normal gravity. The upgrade from 400 times had been a "Christmas present" from the woman and her father, whatever that meant. Humans certainly had some strange customs. They piqued Vegeta's curiosity but he would never admit it out loud.
A knock on the metal door caused him to stop his training. He growled a bit. What does that infernal woman want now?
He turned the simulator off and opened the door.
"What do you deem so important as to interrupt my training, woman?" Vegeta snapped.
"Well, good morning to you, you ass," Bulma retorted. "If you must know, my mom asked me to include you in the festivities. I'm going to go bake gingerbread men for a party tonight. I could really use your help. And who knows; you might actually enjoy something for a change. What do you say?"
"You are an idiot if you think I would help you with something like baking. That's a woman's job."
The fire of fury lit up in Bulma's eyes. She was used to him being an ass, but a sexist ass was something she would NOT tolerate.
"Oh, really? And why is that? Because we're not muscle-headed meat heads?"
"One, that made no sense; and two, us men have more important things to worry about like training. We don't have time for such trivial things as baking," he emphasized with disgust.
Bulma smirked and decided to turn everything around on him. "I think you just admitted that there's something a woman can do that a man can't do," she said smugly.
He turned his head slowly to face her. His shock was evident. "You better watch yourself, woman," he warned. He was not in the mood for the human to say that she was better than him at something.
Bulma couldn't conceal the joy she felt at irritating her Saiyan houseguest. "You know, you're just not man enough to bake with me," she replied knowing that she was treading in dangerous territory.
His shock turned to a glare in an instant. "Are you challenging me, woman?" he whispered darkly.
She turned to face him. "You bet your Saiyan ass I am."
He smirked at her. "Oh, you will regret this, woman."
The two of them ran back to the kitchen. Bulma took out all of the ingredients and the recipe.
"Okay, we have to go by this recipe my mom left us," she explained. "No addition of anything. You also have to take the time to READ the recipe and do everything it says. The one who makes the most gingerbread for the banquet wins. Now let me turn on the oven and set up sheets on both sides of the kitchen where we'll place our finished cookies."
Vegeta smirked. "You will regret this, woman. I promise you that."
Bulma laughed. "I can't wait to make you break that promise, Vegeta." Bulma finished setting everything up. "Alright, we start baking now."
Vegeta read the recipe and saw that he needed shortening, but he didn't know what that was. Bulma looked over to him and saw his confusion. "Okay, time out. We won't time getting the ingredients in the bowl. I'll help."
"I can do this on my own, woman," Vegeta snarled.
"Not saying you can't, but this is supposed to be fun, okay," she told him. "Let's get past the technicalities and have a good, clean bakeoff, okay?"
Vegeta watched everything she did and listened to her explanations of what everything was and how to know how much to add. It wasn't like he was going to do this again anyway, but it was interesting to know.
"Okay, now we have to add the mixture of ingredients to the creamy mixture of the shortening and molasses. This part is annoying because it gets really tough. I doubt you'll have a problem though with how strong you are. Just don't overdo it."
"Don't tell me what to do!" he exclaimed as the two off them began smashing the ingredients together.
Bulma was doing a great job of keeping everything in the bowl but Vegeta was getting everything covered in flour.
"Vegeta!" she called. He looked over to her as if to ask "what now?" "You can't do it that fast."
"How am I supposed to beat you if I don't use my speed to my advantage?"
"Well, you won't win if half of your batter ends up on the floor. Don't worry; you'll still probably get done with this part before me anyway. If that happens, what you do is wrap the batter up in this paper," she said holding up a piece of wax paper, "and then we have to chill it in the fridge for two hours."
Vegeta looked at her like she was nuts. "Two hours? That's a ridiculous amount of time to waste. Not that I care, but don't you need a lot to be done for tonight? How the hell is that EVER going to happen?"
Bulma thought about it for a minute. "My God, you're right," she said. "Hey, I have an idea." She left only to come back with some machine. "I invented this not too long ago. It's supposed to chill beer and stuff like that instantly. We can use this to chill the batter."
Vegeta just gave her a funny look. "You are a mystery," he told her.
"Likewise, Vegeta."
They both finished mixing the batter and wrapped it in the wax paper. Bulma put it in her machine and, like she said, it was chilled instantly.
"Alright, now that that's done," she said getting the flour sifters out, "we put flour in these things and sprinkled a ton of flour onto the table. We then put the dough down and roll it out with a rolling pin." She showed him everything her needed to do. "Then once it's flat enough, say a quarter inch, we use these cookie cutters to make them look like little men and women."
"Hn, you use the woman one, I'll use then man one."
Bulma rolled her eyes. "Fine by me. Anyway, then we use these miniature spatulas to get them off the table and pray they don't stick or lose arms or else we'll have more batter to do next time around. We keep doing this until the dough is dry and virtually useless. You ready for this?"
He smirked at her. "I was born ready."
"Alright then…GO!"
Vegeta started kneading into the dough with the rolling pin.
"Not so hard, Vegeta, or else it won't be even."
"Watch what you're doing woman. Your dough is going off the table."
She looked down to see that he was right. "Oops, oh well. Next time around, I guess, for this part." She ripped the overflowing part off and started a pile for the broken dough.
Vegeta was mad when the woman started cutting into her dough with the cookie cutter. He eventually got there but she was still ahead of him. When he finally could start cutting the dough, he knew he screwed up somewhere because when he tried to get them off the table, they were sticking and breaking.
"You didn't add enough flour, Vegeta. It's going to stick it you don't." Vegeta rolled his eyes, but added more flour the second time around.
Bulma made her first tray and set the oven timer for eight minutes and wiped her brow. Bulma 1; Vegeta 0. She smirked, but went back to her dough to start again.
Vegeta was getting frustrated, but he had to admit that this was highly entertaining. The two of them were really taking this "competition" seriously, yet it was so completely pointless. Even so, he was sort of happy that she decided to challenge him this way. He even cracked a grin.
Bulma noticed this and smiled. Her mother was right. He just needed someone to include him in something. Sure, she had to make it sound like a fight, but it still got him in here and now he was having a good time.
Bulma looked down and realized she used more flour than was necessary. Then she got an idea.
Vegeta was shocked when he was hit by flour. He looked over to the woman who was stifling a laugh. She had blown it over to hit him. He grinned and took a handful of flour. Bulma's confident and cheerful face fell instantly.
"Don't even think about it," she said.
Vegeta chuckled. "Don't start something you don't intend to finish, woman."
He blew the handful and she got covered in it. She stared at his smirking form blankly for a moment before smirking herself. They both started throwing flour at each other, both laughing which surprised Bulma. They stopped, though, when the timer went off alerting them to Bulma's finished tray and the competition at hand.
Hours later, Vegeta was finally getting the hang out it. Neither could tell who was in the lead but it didn't matter. For the first time in his life since Frieza destroyed his planet, Vegeta was having fun doing something that didn't involve slaughtering races.
He was brought out of his thoughts by Bulma laughing. "Veggie, I think this one died." Vegeta couldn't help but laugh.
"She can join my ranks if you want. All full of dead soldiers."
"That's what we get for not using enough flour," she said.
Vegeta smirked. "I think we used plenty of flour," he said motioning to the floor.
"Huh, I guess you're right," Bulma replied. "Still, we had to have gotten at least a hundred made and it's only been a few hours. This is fun."
"I must admit that you're right," he told her.
"Told you so," she teased sticking her tongue out at him.
"Don't get used to it," he growled.
Little did they know they had company.
Yamcha was standing outside the kitchen door. He could barely make out what was being said, but he knew Bulma was in there alone with Vegeta.
"Vegeta, not so fast!"
"I told you, stop ordering me around!"
"Oh my God, Vegeta, how can you do that to a woman?" Bulma shouted when Vegeta accidently broke of one of her cookie's heads. Yamcha had no idea what was going on, though, and to him it sounded like something R rated was happening between his ex-girlfriend and a homicidal Saiyan.
"Just shut up and take it!" Vegeta shouted handing Bulma the cookie. Yamcha got pissed and decided to stop that madness. When he opened the door, he saw the two of them running around with trays of cookies and trying to make sure none broke. He was beside himself, not only for the fact that they didn't even notice him, but also for the fact that the Saiyan prince was laughing and covered in flour.
Yamcha left Capsule Corp. with only one question on his mind. What the hell did I just see?
Another hour passed and Bulma and Vegeta were completely worn out. Somehow they managed to make what they estimated to be another thousand gingerbread for a banquet that would be seating four-hundred.
Bulma looked between the two tables and said, "There is no way I'm counting how many we each have. Screw the competition. I'm done."
They two were panting and laughing between breaths while lying in the flour on the kitchen floor.
"Whatever. It doesn't matter now, anyway," he replied.
"Why is that?" she questioned knowing there had to be a good reason for him not to care.
"I had fun." There, he said it, plain and simple.
Bulma smiled and rolled to her stomach. "Well, now that we know you like baking so much, we should do this more often."
Vegeta frowned. "No."
"No?"
"That's what I said."
"Why?" Bulma asked.
"Because I can't," he told her.
"Oh please, you just proved that you can," she scoffed.
"No, wo-Bulma. I don't mean I can't bake. I mean, I can't. It brings back too many memories."
Bulma could see the sadness behind his onyx eyes. "Memories of what?"
Vegeta rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. "My home planet, Planet Vegeta, was different from Earth in a lot of ways, but similar in some. Sometimes a child's mother would see the kid needed a break and sneak him into the kitchen in order to help her cook a meal or bake without alerting the father." He sighed. "If I were to bake more often, I would just be reliving painful memories."
"Is that such a bad thing?" Bulma asked. Vegeta moved to look at her so quickly that his hand slipped and he fell, face first, into the flour. "I mean, it sounds like you really liked spending time with your mom. Sure she's gone, but memories like that are what keep people alive. That's why we tell family stories and have family traditions. It keeps everyone you love alive in your heart and that's what matters. And who knows; maybe you'll make even more memories."
Vegeta's face portrayed how confused he was, but he eventually smirked. "Maybe I will bake with you more often, if only to see you look this ridiculous again."
Bulma playfully smacked him in the shoulder. "Oh yeah? Well, hate to tell you, but you don't look much better."
Bulma took a wet cloth and started cleaning the flour off of Vegeta's face. For a moment, when the cloth touched his face, it felt like time had stopped for the two of them. Bulma didn't know what possessed her to do it, but she soon felt her lips on his. Vegeta kissed her back and soon they were making out while rolling around on the flour-filled floor.
Then Bulma unexpectedly broke the kiss with a gasp.
"What's wrong?" Vegeta asked her, sounding slightly hurt.
"I forgot something!" she exclaimed.
"What?" he asked.
"We still have to frost them."
The two of them stared at each other blankly, blinking as if to register what she just said. Then they smirked at each other.
"Get the guns ready," Vegeta joked.
"Always," Bulma laughed.
Needless to say how the rest of their day went.
A/N: Anyway, I hope you all liked it. Pretty much everything happened like that except the flour fight and the cool machine that would have saved me two hours XD I have to frost those suckers in the morning. Wish me luck XD