Bulma doesn't know which way is up or down, and that's just the way she likes it.
Maybe he was calling her bluff with that "Deal," maybe she is moving way too fast—she is, she knows she is—but she is just so giddy to have the opportunity to prove Vegeta wrong.
Bulma's whole being is being driven at break neck speed into the unknown, slurring the known universe around them. Every movement of hers is designed to get a rise out of him. Skimming her hand over those thick, delicious pecs underneath the knit of his sweater. Sliding her lips over his own before dipping her tongue in between them. She is architecting his demise in slow strokes. She is designed to undo him from the inside. She's been made for this; this is her weird destiny. She has trapped him between the bed and her body and the thought flits through her head that Vegeta, this uncompromising fighter, is letting her pin him.
Reversing last night's roles in her bedroom, she blazes with revenge. With every second spent straddling him, she is punishing him for leaving her.
And it's working. His head and body clearly aren't communicating right now. He isn't kissing back with confidence but being ravished. He wasn't expecting this assault against his defenses. He was never expecting Bulma at all, was he?
And she's a conqueror, reveling in her win. Because it's the little things. It's the way his breath goes a little ragged on the intake when her lace-cupped breasts brush his chest. It's the way his fingers strain at the back of her neck, like he wants more, but like he's trying to make do with less. She's turned his world inside out, but still he holds on to some measure of control. Her hand smooths down his delectable stomach. He doesn't stop her; he is not resisting the challenge she's issuing. And she is high on having him. She wants to eat him up. The taste of his skin is in her mouth; she could do this for the rest of her life.
She doesn't just want to make a deal—she wants him to lose his footing and fall. Pushing his sweater up, she works her way down his body, knees dragging against the comforter. His hand goes loose then fists in her hair, and she knows she's on to something.
Now nothing makes sense except the urgency to win this one, because this is the greatest prize of all. She lays the flat of her tongue at the center of his chest and trails it down, down, down, headed to the curve of the waistband of his jeans. Vegeta's stomach clenches under her mouth and she drags her smile down it, pressing her lips here, there, everywhere she's always wanted to lay claim. And then looks up to gauge his reaction. She's gotta know.
Her breath catches. Her neighbor's shrewd, dark eyes burn, but his face has gone slack with surprise. At himself, at her—doesn't matter, he's been turned upside down. One arm has been tucked under his head, but the other hand, the one that dragged her over in the first place, hovers, forgotten, like he doesn't know what to do with it. Which is bullshit, because a man like Vegeta, so physically aware of what he needs and what needs to be done, knows exactly what to do with that hand.
Imbuing Bulma with a mad, bad idea.
Her palm slides down the bumpy ridges of his abs to the waistband of his jeans. Fingers poise over his button as her open mouth settles at his ribs, and sucks, just as she knocks back his jeans button.
Vegeta, for once, doesn't immediately react. He is used to exploding into action, counter-acting, diving in and lobbing quick, brutal shots. But now he's frozen; he recognizes what's coming next. His hand hovers over her hair, lips parted, watching her with wide eyes. This may be the first time in his life he has no cutting comeback. This may be the first time he doesn't know what to do.
And it's currently what she lives for. She swirls her tongue around his naval as her fingers drag his zipper down.
All her hair stands on end as she does it, because she's been dreaming of this moment for so long. This tangible proof of her powers, this comeuppance! She is seizing fate by the back of the neck and laughing. It's not the bottle of wine—really!—which has since boiled down; it's all this time together, pent up! It's every time he opens his mouth to contradict her, like he's volleyed the ball into her court just to see what she returns. It's every time he gives her a look from across a room or the hedge, like he's about to teach her a lesson for talking back—like he's the only man that gets to do it, the only man that'll do it right.
He hasn't so much as moved since she started unclothing him, and she doesn't know if that's his approval or if, at any moment, he'll spring into action and disarm her, chiding her with his herculean, virginal self-discipline. Vegeta doesn't let anything happen to him that he doesn't want to. So how far will he let her go? How much of an impact can this nosy scientist have on him? She wants to leave a smoking crater. She's determined to try every weapon in her arsenal and find out.
She tucks her fingers under his waistband, and drags it down just enough to reveal the vee of his lower stomach. Putting her mouth on it is a must. Does this affect you, Vegeta? She asks with her hot mouth on his hard stomach. His head tilts back a little as his teeth grit. She can't help her smile, lips curling against his skin. Does this affect you, Vegeta? She wonders, straddling him as she sits up, arching back to pluck the hooks of her bra undone, and he pushes himself up a little to meet her lips.
"Does this affect you, Vegeta?" Against his lips, and he growls back, running that empty, poorly restrained, undecided hand from her neck down her bare back, to grab a handful of her backside, finally unspooling.
When, from across the room, her bag starts to emit a shrill, persistent beeping.
They freeze.
Nose to nose, blue eyes magnetize to black. Her skirt is bunched up around her hips, her bra hooks pinched between her fingers. The jeans of his thighs chafe persistently against her bare thighs.
And then she's bolting upright, distancing herself from the hot, hard mystery under his unbuttoned pants, because Bulma is jumping up from the bed and falling on her bag, wrenching it open.
She plucks the offending object out and snicks it open with her thumb. A pocket-mirror opens too-patiently on its hinges, and the domed radar blinks up at her, a red dot on a green field, cupped preciously in her hands. Bulma's eyes go wide with wonder.
A shadow falls over the screen.
Slowly coming back to reality, she cranes her neck up, coming eye to eye again with Vegeta's freed jeans button. Then he's squatting down beside her.
"What is this?" His voice is whiskey-rough. Their eyes meet again. He looks deliciously rumpled.
She made him look like this. Bulma is feeling pride from many different angles. "I kind of made a thing," she modestly replies, though the slanted smile creeping over her face undermines it.
By the looks of it, a person would assume it's just an over-sized compass or pocket watch. She rolls it in her hand, showing him. "Looks ordinary," she explains, "but it's the only system capable of tracking a very specific organic energy on a three-dimensional field in real time. I soldered it together last night." She dashes a glance at him. His brows are knit in a strong line: he doesn't get it. "It tracks my project," she finishes.
"What?" It's a forceful breath of air. He stands, suddenly uneasy, and she stands, too. "What's going on?" He's brisk, cautiously watching the radar.
And that's when the next round of bricks hit her. She goes slack-jawed. "It means it's here."
Bulma and Vegeta are shoving their shoes on and grabbing their shirts from the floor in a flurry. She manages to button most of her blouse buttons up over her cleavage before remembering her bra is half on, and by that time Vegeta is booking it out the door. Snarling, she hollers at him to wait, stumbling out the door as she shoves her foot into one taupe pump. His hand settles at the small of her back and, impatiently, he guides her to the elevator like some kind of chaperon straight to Hell.
"Where is it?" He issues out firm statements. He's back in the captain's seat.
Bulma's fingers are working the dials, zooming in and out at all angles as the elevator doors slide closed and it lurches slowly down. "First floor," she announces, and they fidget, ignoring the curious and judgmental looks of the tourists they're trapped with. To outside eyes, they're a sideshow attraction. Meanwhile, Bulma is counting down the seconds to save the world.
When, with unhurried, long-lived patience, the elevator doors finally slide open at the lobby, they spill out into the front foyer. Vegeta takes the lead as Bulma shouts, "Outside!" He is sprinting down the mint carpet and out the great brass doors as the fountains outside jet into the sky and tumble back down, making crystal light glance over their faces, a cascade of colors.
"In that car!" Bulma points to the blacked out windows of a sports car as it pulls away from the curb, and Vegeta only gets a second to peek into the tinted windows as he uselessly rips the door hinge off the door. And then the sports car is streaking past them around the corner, out of their sight.
Wildly, Bulma glances around them for a idling car to steal. There isn't one.
Gone.
From the street corner, he turns back to her, and they share a look.
They've lost it.
How low they've come. It's dismally sour. It tastes like disbelief and self-actuated disappointment. Bulma's lips pulls down, the radar hanging limply at her side.
Her eyes skirt to her neighbor. On Vegeta, it hasn't manifested quite the same. He's a fighter that's been knocked down unfairly and is simmering for another chance. She can tell he's upset they missed it. It was here; they should have had it. Something dark is gnawing at him, something like resentment. His chest rises and falls and she knows it's not that running out into the street winded him—he is just so tired of coming up short. She hates that he feels that way. She, too, feels like she's on a weeks long losing streak.
Bulma gazes down at her scouter. The red dot is off the map. It's no longer beeping.
Was this...was this her fault? Was there a fault in her design? She worries her bottom lip with her teeth. Had she been more clever, would they have been alerted sooner? She'd never been bad at something, not until now, not since the theft. And ever since, she'd been running up against her own limitations on every conceivable level. Was she not capable enough, smart enough, to find her project? The possibility guts her.
She looks up to find him pacing on the street corner, running his hand down his face in exasperation. Guilt lances straight through her. He was going out of his way to help her, and she'd...failed him.
What could she do, she'd thought as she screwed in the scouter face plate in her lab in the wee hours of last night, that would make sure she finds out something? Who took it, where they took it, why they took it? If they could just walk right up to it, because a map had just led them there, that would certainly answer some questions. She couldn't just wholly rely on an outside agent—a mercenary—to solve her problems. She wouldn't. She was an asset to their team. She could only positively augment their detective work. She could help!
The aforementioned mercenary was shrouded in secrets like it was his damned job to be.
If he only knew how much he didn't know.
That maybe, in order to truly combine forces, he should know. Because he didn't know she was just as guiltyof leading a double life.
Was it time to trust Vegeta with her secrets? She couldn't pretend to understand the mess that was their maladapted relationship, but she couldn't imagine Vegeta intentionally hurting her. It was weird, but she...trusted him. They might be wary allies, but they respected each other.
So...should she tell him?
Should she tell him that it was never really a plant?
That it's something far worse?
A shadow darkens her view again and Vegeta is at her side, watching her closely as if he detects her inner struggle.
She looks up at him. Heat is watering her eyes, and she takes a deep breath. "Vegeta," she starts.
Vegeta's brows pinch as he watches her. He is formulating some kind of opinion behind those guarded eyes, and Bulma is afraid of what it is. She's sure he sees now that she's not some kind of kickass, brilliant technological savant. She's not an equal part of this detective duo. She is the weakest link, and he's wondering how to back out of this, back away from her.
"I'm sorry," she bites off, bowing her head and fiddling the radar off to keep him from seeing how vulnerable she feels. His eyes pool with concern, but she doesn't see it as she stares down at the radar gripped in her hands. "I'm sorry, Vegeta. But you should know—"
"Oh, look! Hey! Hello! Hey!" A woman's voice rips through the moment from the other side of the fountain.
The front desk lady leads a group of their trivia night competitors toward a party bus that has just pulled up to the curb. She shuffles forward, waving wildly. "Oh, would you look at that!" Front desk lady's eyes narrow knowingly, and, grinning, she wags her finger. "You two have been getting busy!"
Heat suffuses Bulma's cheeks as she drops her head to get a good look at herself. Here she is, standing at the front of a luxury, beach-front hotel in a ritzy crowd with her half-buttoned work blouse buttoned wrong. She is all cleavage and gaping buttons, her hair a spill around her head. Bulma gets a look at Vegeta. His shirt is still cramped up around his waist and his jeans are unbuttoned. On a scale of sweatpants to underwear model, he's a mixed bag. Vegeta's lower half looks like he should be sprawled under flash bulbs on a beach for a fragrance ad, but his face doesn't have one iota of patience for it. Frankly, he is scary. A roughed up, prideful fighter staring down the opponent who'd embarrassed him in the ring. It's not pretty. It's not happy. It is very, unapologetically... Vegeta.
Bulma closes the distance between them and politely rights his clothing, tugging his shirt back over his hips. Wholesomely, she pats his back—there you go, all better—and turns back to their trivia night enemies, putting herself between them. It's a weirdly protective gesture. She doesn't care to examine it.
"Congrats, you two!" And the front desk lady winks right at Vegeta.
Vegeta, offended, blows air between his teeth and stalks back inside.
...
It's late. Real late.
Bulma doesn't bother engaging him when she steps inside their room. She heads straight for the bathroom and lets the shower sear her anew. It's been a long day, but an even longer evening. It feels like it's been a whole year since yesterday, when he handed her the hotel check-in papers in her kitchen, teasing her about watching him shower, and since they'd kissed, melting into her bed, before he'd turned her down.
It's well past midnight, and Bulma can't think clearly if she tried. Her brain has flat lined; the round-and-round chattering in her head is white noise. She is a walking shell. She needs to fall into bed. She can wonder about what's going on with her project tomorrow. Why do today what you can save for tomorrow? It's future Bulma's responsibility.
When she steps out of the steamy bathroom, he slouches against the wall at the head of the bed, flipping through channels absently. He's changed into some sweatpants and nothing more. He looks worn out, his mouth set in a grim line. Frolicking with Bulma is hard work.
Her robe slides off her shoulder as she seats herself next to him. She crosses her bare legs, wrings her hair with the towel and glances up at him. The tv chatter is dim and far away, small next to the oversized, pensive quiet. The curtains haven't yet been drawn. There's no telling where the night sky meets the ocean in the dark, only that it's there, omniscient.
"I'm sorry." Her head lulls against the wall as she looks over her shoulder at him. She sighs noisily.
He turns his head to her, an eyebrow cocking. "Why?"
Another sigh escapes her, deep and defeated, and she looks straight ahead wearily. The digital face of the clock blinks well past midnight. "The plant isn't really a plant."
There it was. She'd just kind of burped it up, and now it was out there, between them forever.
He blinks. Then his face twists in confusion, like she'd just said something in a foreign language. "What?"
"My project. It's not a plant."
"What do you mean, it's not a plant?" His rough growl betrays confusion, and he finally turns toward her. All that 100% Vegeta, focused on her.
"It's not even something I made myself. It's not my invention. I'm a goddamned engineer, and the moment they give me something to take care of that isn't mine, I lose it." Her voice strains. "That's the rub of it all. Vegeta, it's not a goddamned plant, ok?"
He is sitting up straight now, hands on his thighs helplessly curling and uncurling. "What is it then?"
She gives one more big gusty sigh and throws her head back against the wall. Her cool, damp hair curls over her clavicle. "When our team of anthropologists found it in the wilderness," she begins, "a plant had grown around it, the snarl of its roots providing a protective cage. Rather than risk separating the two, we brought it back here to the Defense Department, where they thought to analyze whether the organic material had any affect on the object itself. It doesn't, but it made convincing concealment. As in, I had a real nice houseplant for awhile." She looks at him then, because she owes it to him. Because she's about to dump it all on him. "When they stole it, they took the whole damned pot, Vegeta. They knew exactly what it was." She pauses. "There's a leak at the Defense Department."
His emotions are very near the surface. Anger, confusion, comprehension, ripple across Vegeta's face.
"This is classified," he finally says, turning the full weight of his gaze on her. "This is all very classified." His voice is tight.
She nods. He runs his hand through his long dark hair and exhales. "What is it?" He asks with a calm that his rigid posture betrays as fake.
"It's a ball." Her hands cup in her lap. "About yay big. Golden orange. Stars emblazoned on the side. Glows and hums occasionally."
She doesn't think Vegeta is any more relieved to hear that he is now off the list to find a houseplant and now on a quest to find a ball, because she can see his jaw clench as he grinds his teeth.
"This isn't a toy," she interrupts. "And this isn't just some artifact ripe with mystical significance." Her chest is about to burst with pent up emotion. "This is magic. This is a ball not made of any earthly matter and which is imbued with uncatalogued, unmatched energy. The Defense Department thinks it can manipulate time and space." She inhales, sets her mouth in an uneasy line. "I have a penchant for solving all kinds of atypical conundrums. So they assigned me to it."
Vegeta bolts out of bed and starts to pace. "Why in the hell would they let you take it home?"
She watches him walk left and right and back again and hazards a guess. "They underestimated the people who would want it for themselves?"
That doesn't seem to relieve him. Vegeta just five minutes ago was beaten, the wall propping him up in bed. Now he's a whirlwind, worrying the carpet into threads.
"I'm sorry I kept this from you," she gushes, but then she reels it all back in. She can't afford to have emotion right now. She doesn't deserve to feel anything, keeping something like this from him while he'd gone out of his way to help her on this wild goose chase. She doesn't expect anything to go back to the way it used to be. She lied to him, or at least, by omission. And will he even believe her?
Will he stay?
She moves to stand, tossing her towel in the hamper, and that laser focus lands on her.
"Our strategy changes," he says.
Bulma doesn't even register it, just continues morosely, like a deadman walking, back to the bed. She spills onto the mattress, arms spread out, and stares at the ceiling. "We're fucked," she just says, the curse dropping like a stone into the eerily still waters between them. "Totally, utterly screwed." The ceiling stares back blankly, yielding no answers. "I'm going to give up."
"The game changes," Vegeta persists, "so we adapt." She feels his weight dampen the mattress springs as he sits on the edge.
"Vegeta, this seems so impossible," she groans, pressing her palms into her eyes. "I'm no good at this. I'm no good at anything!"
And then the truly impossible happens.
Vegeta gathers her in his arms.
Bulma's hand splays against Vegeta's chest in shock.
He just holds her.
It's not a hug, because it's horizontal, right? This isn't something they've ever done before. A hug is much too sentimental, and much too telling. It would change everything. Her baiting him with unclasped buttons is still enough of a game that they don't have to look at it straight on. But a hug performed upright would demarcate clearly that things had changed, and thus, the rules had, too. They had only one tenant: anything is fair game. But if something wasn't a game anymore, it became serious. Somehow, it would insert vulnerability into this pretend war. It would make holes in their defenses. It would disrupt and transmute the rules they played by so that they weren't always in their favor. One or both of them could lose.
How could two people who loved taking on challenges be so scared to meet one?
He tucks her head under his chin and that's it. After a few blinks and he still hasn't come to his senses, she unstiffens and lays her head in the crook of his shoulder. The meat of his arm is under her cheek, her chest warm against her forehead. This is New Territory. This is Something More.
She wonders if it's okay to touch him. Would that be too much? Would that ruin this tenuous peace, this magical, insular moment? She frowns, and in rebellion, flattens her hand and skims it across his side. This is different from an hour ago, about to gobble him up. This is somehow more packed and loaded. There's so much more on the line.
Vegeta doesn't leap to his feet shouting, "Got ya!" Nothing blows up. The world is exactly the same as it was a minute ago, except this time she's touching him. His skin is warm and velvety smooth, taut across dense muscle. She buries her nose deeper into the crook of his arm, mashes her face into his chest. She is burrowing, like a weird little animal into its den. Softly, tentatively, her hand journeys around to his back, smooths over the curve of his shoulder blade.
She could do this forever. She inhales the scent of him, bare-chested and quiet, and wonders if she can distill it. Bulma weasles her other arm under his heavy body and somehow pulls him even closer. Squeezes. They are in uncharted territory. There are no rules to this game; anything could cause the whole house of cards to come crashing down.
But she is Dr. Briefs. She has to test the boundaries. "I like your sweater." She thanks whatever mysterious reason he put on real clothes today. She thinks about stealing his sweater and taking it home, keeping it under her pillow. If he suspected anything, she'd just get the pleasure of having him snooping around her home. It's a win-win.
"Your speech," he rumbles above her, chest vibrating beneath her. "Didn't want to be under-dressed."
Some kind of feeling takes hold in her chest and won't let go.
They lay there until their breath matches, and then they keep lying there. For the first time in a long time, she is in a man's arms while he comforts her. Does Vegeta mean to...to...make her feel safe and supported? "Bulma does not compute," she murmurs, closing her eyes.
She doesn't know she's falling asleep on him until he's pulling away. Blearily she watches as he makes a bed on the couch, just like he said he would.
"You lose," she jabs sleepily.
"I win."
"Only an idiot would give up the chance to sleep with me," she teases, shoving her legs under the covers and torquing off her robe from underneath her. It's a lot harder than it should be, until she realizes it's because she's lying on it.
"Only an idiot would want to."
Her eyes narrow at him as she draws the comforter up to her nose.
"I win," he says softly.
He doesn't sound satisfied.
"In your dreams," she answers, turning out the light.
