A/N: I don't own DBZ or the characters, that honour belongs to Akira Toriyama. I use British English spelling. Reviews are very much appreciated!
It was dinner time and there was no solved equation on her desk. Bulma chewed the nail on her thumb and mulled it over. She'd decided that if Vegeta didn't give her the equation she'd take advantage of her newfound knowledge. If he did complete it, then she'd know he wasn't a complete jerk. Should she go through with it though? She had no idea how he'd react. Vegeta was volatile on a normal day.
Maybe she'd ask him about the equation at dinner and decide then. He'd probably be there since her mother was cooking. Bulma stood up and stretched out the kinks in her joints, then made her way to the large dining room that her family ate at.
Mrs Briefs had just started to serve the food, piling the large mahogany table with enough food to feed twenty people (or three humans and one Saiyan). Vegeta was there, although he didn't look at her, focussing on his plate instead, which he was piling with food almost as fast as it was being delivered to the table. He was somehow managing to eat at the same time as plating. He managed it all quickly, but tidily - he had it down to an art form.
Bulma took the seat next to him, even though there were plenty of others free, smiling to herself as Vegeta shuffled his chair slightly away.
"How are your projects going?" Dr Briefs asked Bulma as he buttered a warm bread roll. "You've been making some incredible breakthroughs lately."
"They'd go faster if I could solve this particular equation," Bulma said, looking sideways at Vegeta. "If someone would take a break from being a selfish pig and finish."
"Maybe someone should learn the meaning of patience," Vegeta shot back, tearing into a roll with his bare teeth.
Bulma grit her teeth. "We had a deal to get it done today."
"That deal was made by you, not me." Vegeta started stabbing the carrots on his plate. "I said I'd do it, but not when."
"I said today and you agreed!"
"Because I wanted to get you out of the room!" Vegeta stood up and roared.
An odd silence fell over the room.
"Well," Mrs Briefs said cheerfully. "It's lovely to see you two getting on and working on a project together."
Vegeta snorted, but sat back down, continuing to attack his food before eating it.
Bulma pursed her lips and resolved to go ahead with her plan. She'd teach Vegeta not to mess with Bulma Briefs.
Vegeta's head throbbed. Between no sleep, a hangover and the woman's screeching at dinner he was ready for this day to end. He powered down the GR then opened the door, taking in a deep breath of fresh night air. Except... it wasn't fresh. Vegeta sniffed the air. There was definitely something odd in the air - a rich, earthy smell tainted with a bitterness Vegeta didn't recognise.
He stepped outside to investigate. As he placed a bare foot on the doorstep of the GR, something slimy and squishy surrounded his foot, squelching through his toes. Vegeta looked down and let out a high-pitched yelp. He tried to step over the squirming mass, but his foot slipped and he landed face first in the giant pile of writhing, wriggling worms.
Vegeta blasted into the air, frantically brushing himself off while swearing in every language he knew. He heard a sound coming from the main doorway to the house. He knew without looking that it was Bulma, and he directed his swearing at her.
Her shoulders shook and her hands were over her mouth. When he swore even louder at her, Bulma's giggles turned into full blown laughter, and she leaned against the doorway to support herself, tears streaming down her face.
"I'm going to murder you in your sleep!" Vegeta switched to a language she'd understand.
Bulma just laughed harder. Vegeta brought up a ki ball and floated it in front of him. Bulma stopped laughing but grinned up at him, her blue eyes daring.
Vegeta made it look like he was going to send it her way, and just as she flinched, pitched it towards the worms, killing them all. Then, he flew into the air and headed towards the nearest ocean, intending to swim until he had every last spec of worm matter off him.
Three days. It had been three days and Vegeta still hadn't returned to Capsule Corp. Oh, he'd disappeared for lengthy periods of time before without saying a word, but that was before he and Bulma had started... becoming friends? Not dating? Bulma wasn't sure how to classify their early morning activities. Regardless, the longer he stayed away, the more Bulma started to worry about exactly how angry Vegeta was.
He had to be planning something. Not to kill her in her sleep - Bulma was certain that was a threat meant to frighten her, but not anything he would actually go through with. No, Vegeta would do something unpredictable. And that was what worried her.
She had to find out what it was.
Bulma headed to the other side of the house, towards Vegeta's bedroom. She hadn't been in there since he'd moved in for the second time, and she was curious to see if it was as stark as it had been when he'd lived here while the Namekians were staying.
She slunk down the hall connecting to his bedroom and cautiously knocked on his door, just in case he was hiding out there. When she didn't hear a response, she opened the door slowly and poked her head around.
The bedroom was neat, with a military-style made queen bed, no clothes anywhere on the floor (unlike Bulma's bedroom) with the only decoration being a pile of books on a bedside cabinet (ordered in size, with the largest at the bottom, smallest at the top and all their spines lined up neatly). There was an interesting mix of titles, including a couple of horror novels, a history of World War One, a book on Greek mythology, and what looked a physics theory textbook. Bulma was surprised he even had physical books, considering how much he favoured the e-reader in the evenings. The e-reader sat on top of the books, also lined up in a similar fashion.
Bulma scanned the rest of the room. There was a small stack of paper on a desk in the corner. Bulma walked in, shutting the door behind her, and went to inspect it. The papers were stacked with precision - they were exactly the same distance from the edge of the desk on the left as they were on the bottom. There were two pens, one blue and one red, and they were lined up parallel with the papers.
"For someone who enjoys leaving a mess in the kitchen after cooking, he sure is a neat-freak," Bulma said and she sat down on the chair by the desk to inspect the papers.
She spread them out over the desk, making careful note of where they had been so she could put them back later. "Wow." Bulma raised her eyebrows, impressed. Vegeta had written out the equation several times and made attempts to solve it. He'd written notes in red in both her language and what looked like a cross between Russian and Korean. From what she could tell, he was very close to solving it. He appeared to be struggling over the final algebraic expression and had made several attempts at it on one piece of problem, underlining several words she didn't understand, his writing getting a little messier each time.
Bulma's stomach started to feel ill. Vegeta had actually been making a genuine attempt to solve it for her. The worst part was she still been certain that the equation and a half Vegeta had solved was a fluke, or he'd somehow enlisted the help of a mathematician, or... Bulma put her head in her hands. It sounded crazy, even to her. Vegeta was an alien. Being good at mathematics was hardly the most unusual thing about him.
"Shit." Bulma let out a groan. "What am I doing?"
"I could ask you the same thing," a deep voice said from the doorway.
A/N: I'm not sure what's more fun to write - V/B getting on or V/B arguing. Will Vegeta retaliate? And will we discover the reason Vegeta doesn't like worms? You might just find out in the next few chapters...
