Okay, here comes part three!
This is where the whole thing really gets moving, so enjoy the ride.
Standard disclaimer: As I said in the last chapter, don't sue me.
A red light flickered insistently at Bulma's elbow as she left her lab.
"Oh great! Now what?" she asked aloud. She turned around and examined the control panel that held the blinking light. Something was wrong in the gravity room. Sighing loudly Bulma pulled up a chair and tapped out a few commands on a keypad. A series of numbers scrolled down a nearby screen.
Five hundred seventeen...
Five hundred eighteen...
Five hundred nineteen...
"What the...?" Bulma muttered, tapping a few more keys.
Five hundred twenty...
Five hundred twenty-one...
"No, not even Vegeta's that stupid..."
Five hundred twenty-two...
Bulma called up a comm screen and linked into the gravity room. "Hey, Vegeta, is everything okay in there?"
No answer.
Five hundred twenty-three...
Bulma waited for the usual scathing retort, but was disappointed. She began to worry. "Hey! You big jerk! Answer me!"
No reply.
Bulma switched on one of the cameras inside the gravity room and hooked it up to one of her many computers. She scanned the chamber and cursed. Vegeta was laying sprawled out on the floor. He looked unconscious. He looked... dead.
"Damn it!" Bulma swore. She sprinted back over to the control panel where the red light was now blinking furiously. Her fingers fairly flew over the keypad as she input an override command.
Five hundred forty-five...
Feeling panicked Bulma jabbed the keys. "Protocol eight-niner-zero, emergency override command delta-zero-zero-two," she whispered to herself, "engage." She pressed the final button and gave a sigh of relief as the numbers on the screen began to go down.
Five hundred thirty...
Five hundred twenty...
Five hundred ten...
Bulma stood up and ran out to the gravity room and waited impatiently for the pressure inside to return to normal. Upon opening the door she was overcome by the smell of stale sweat, blood and the distinct scent of ozone that was always left behind when someone fired a ki blast. She spotted Vegeta laying in the same position he had been before.
"Hey... you... are you... dead?" Bulma squeaked, approaching the downed Saiyan. "Um... if you said something I'd feel better..." She couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. "If you're not dead say something! You're freaking me out!" She stood over him as she said that last, looking for any signs of life. He didn't look like he was too badly hurt. She nudged him with the toe of one of her shoes.
Finally Vegeta made a low, groaning noise and stirred. He sat up gingerly, assessing his condition. Nothing broken, nothing crushed, no internal injuries as far as he could tell, just a whole lot of bruising. He had been very, very lucky. "Luck's a bitch," he muttered quietly. He wiped his hands on his shorts and stood up, eyeing Bulma warily. "What do you want?"
Bulma's eyes widened in surprise and anger. "What do I want? I don't want a little gratitude! I just save your miserable ass and you're not even decent enough to thank me!"
Vegeta frowned, and muttered, "Thank you." He didn't sound like he meant it, which bothered Bulma.
"You're welcome," she replied somewhat sarcastically.
There was a long silence.
"There's really nothing I can do about whatever's wrong with the gravity generator until Daddy gets back, so why don't you come inside. I was just about to fix myself some dinner. You could join me, I guess," Bulma offered awkwardly. She hadn't been looking forward to eating alone, and any company, even Vegeta, would be better than none.
Vegeta gave a non-committal grunt.
"Well, if you want to, just come with me." She turned around and walked out of the gravity room. A few moments later Vegeta reluctantly followed.
The two of them entered the house, Bulma first, Vegeta trailing a good deal behind.
"It's going to take a while to get dinner on, you could shower, or something..." Bulma suggested. Vegeta was staring off into space, so Bulma felt the need to add, "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine!" Vegeta snapped.
"No need to get touchy! For God's sake I was just concerned! Normal people get concerned when someone nearly dies!" Bulma retorted. "I'm just trying to be friendly. Do you understand the meaning of the word 'friendly'?"
Vegeta looked at her for a moment longer then said something in a deep growling language.
"What?" Bulma asked.
"Tir'rral torra," Vegeta repeated a little more clearly. "In the old tongue it is the closest translation of the human term 'friend'. It means, 'one who fights beside me'." He frowned, as if having trouble believing that he actually remembered any of the old tongue, a language that had fallen out of use on Planet Vegeta many generations before his birth. Still frowning he walked up the stairs. A few moments later the sound of running water alerted Bulma to the fact that Vegeta had taken her advice about the shower.
"Tir'rral torra..." Bulma repeated quietly to herself, struggling to get the accent right. She shook her head, unable to get rid of the feeling that something very, very strange had just occurred, something very strange, indeed.
The food was set out on the table by the time Vegeta emerged from the upstairs bathroom. Bulma was sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, a half empty beer bottle in one hand.
Vegeta grabbed his plate and ate leaning against the kitchen counter.
"You know, I went to the trouble of setting a place at the table for you, you could at least be courteous enough to sit down for your meal," Bulma reprimanded him.
"Courtesy is a human custom," Vegeta grunted.
"Well hey, what a surprise, I happen to be human!" Bulma said sarcastically.
"I'm not."
Bulma made a noise of aggravation. She tried to remember why eating with Vegeta would be better than eating alone and came up wanting. She drained the last liquid out of her bottle and got up to get another. "So," she said, trying to fill the awkward silence, "how is the training going?"
Vegeta didn't answer for a long time, contemplating what to say. "My destiny continues to elude me, but it cannot run from me forever," he said at last.
"That's a new one on me," Bulma remarked. "Usually people run from their destinies, not the other way around."
"I happen to have a particularly slippery destiny."
"Yeah, well it almost got away from you today." A thought suddenly hit
Bulma. She went back to the fridge and grabbed another beer. She tossed it to Vegeta, who caught the bottle deftly.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A toast," Bulma explained, "to you're continued survival and my first day as a free woman. Let's hope things get better from here."
Vegeta frowned. He would rather not toast to his continued survival. He wasn't quite sure if living was worth it. If there really was no other way to become a Super Saiyan other than Goku's way, Vegeta was pretty sure that he was never going to attain that much sought after level of power.
Bulma noticed the contemplative look on Vegeta's face and gave him a curious look. "What're you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that earth alcohol is pathetically weak. Which makes a great deal of sense considering that you humans are pathetically weak."
"Why do you insist on being so rude? Especially to me?"
Vegeta took a sip of his beer then said, "Because it's fun."
"Fun?" Bulma demanded angrily.
"Well, more accurately, funny," Vegeta corrected himself, smirking all the while.
"You're a horrible person!"
"By your definition I'm sure I am."
"And you're proud of it!"
Vegeta shrugged.
"I should have let you get crushed by the gravity generator!"
"I never asked you to save me."
"Of course if I had let you get squished I'm sure I would have gotten stuck cleaning up the mess."
"Probably."
"Vegeta?"
"What?"
"Do you want another beer?"
By midnight both the pretty blue haired scientist and the Saiyan Prince were soused. Neither of them particularly cared though. They were both pretty much past caring.
"Oh sure, get into the 'I've had a worse life than you' argument with me, woman, I dare you," Vegeta challenged. His cheeks were flushed and the neatly stacked pyramid of bottles on the table to his right was a testament to his level of inebriation.
"Okay," Bulma agreed. She looked, if possible, a little worse off than Vegeta. She had had a quarter the number of beers Vegeta had, but then again her alcohol tolerance was much lower. "I've nearly been killed about a billion times."
"I've actually been killed once. I believe one death beats a billion almost deaths," Vegeta countered. He was amazingly good-natured when he was drunk.
"I've had people threaten to blow up my planet."
"My planet was blown up."
Bulma blinked, trying to think up something worse than having one's planet blown up. She settled on, "I was married to Yaumcha."
Vegeta looked at her, trying to figure out whether or not she was joking. "You win." he decided.
"No, no I don't. Not really," Bulma said after a moment. "I'd rather be me than be you. Don't you ever get... lonely?"
"Lonely? No time to be lonely. I'm too busy trying to catch my destiny."
"Ah yes, the slippery destiny," Bulma said.
"Besides which, I don't think I can be lonely." The look on Vegeta's face was enough to catch Bulma's attention even through the haze of alcohol.
"Is there a problem with that?" Bulma asked. "I'd love not to feel so alone all the time."
"No, no problem at all actually. 'Cept sometimes I envy you humans and your emotions. Not often, just... sometimes. Saiyan warriors can't have emotions like you humans do though. They get in the way. They make us weak. I can't get attached to anything like you can." Vegeta frowned and picked up the cat, which was rubbing insistently against his leg, and petted behind its ears. The cat purred happily. "If I have a goal I can't let anything get in my way." He laughed bitterly. "And that's what's getting in my way."
"Come again?"
"Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I am. I've had too long to think about it. Kakarott, he became a Super Saiyan because he needed to, right? To survive and avenge the death of that little bald monk what-his-name. I want to become a Super Saiyan to defeat Kakarott and finally catch my destiny, but I think something out in this big wide universe is trying to tell me that's not what I need. I can't become a Super Saiyan the way I'm trying, but I can't do it Kakarott's way either."
"Why not?"
"No friends. I don't care enough about anyone, to need to avenge them or to be driven over the edge by their death."
"Tir'rral torra..." Bulma murmured.
"Eh? What about that?"
"Isn't that the closest translation for the word 'friend' in you language?"
"In the old tongue," Vegeta corrected. "It was a dead language long before I was born."
"Well," Bulma said, brightening, "I'll be your Tir'rral torra."
Vegeta frowned, confused. Then he burst out laughing.
"What? What's so funny?" Bulma demanded. "Doesn't it mean 'one who fights next to me' or something like that?"
"It means 'one who fights beside me', but only for men," Vegeta said, trying to keep from laughing again. "For a woman it means something different."
"What?"
"You just proposed to me."
Bulma laughed. "I didn't!"
"You did. You just said 'I'll be your mate forever'." He feigned seriousness for a moment. "I'm sorry, woman, but I'm going to have to decline. As nice as an offer as that is, seeing as this whole nonsense," he waved his hand around the kitchen, showing off the mess the two of them had made, "started with you wanting to celebrate being a free woman and all, I simply cannot accept."
"Oh shut up!"
"No, don't try to change my mind," Vegeta said, being a little melodramatic. "You must learn to live without me, as hard is that may be to imagine."
"Oh please! Get over yourself!" Bulma laughed.
Silence reigned for a moment.
"Well, it's late, and I'm going to have an evil hangover tomorrow, so I'm going up to bed," Bulma decided. She stood up uncertainly. "You know, Mama's got a room upstairs for you to sleep in, if you don't want to wobble out to the gravity room and sleep there," she told Vegeta.
"Saiyans do not require beds. Those are creature comforts only weak humans would need," Vegeta sniffed disdainfully.
"Yeah, and I bet you ten zenni that tomorrow morning I'm going to find you
passed out on the lawn," Bulma said. "Besides which, I'm not sure I'll be able to make it
up the stairs on my own."
"All right, I'll give into weakness for one night," Vegeta assented. "Show me to this room your mother prepared for my use."
The two of them walked shakily over to the stairs, and then even more shakily up the stairs. At the top step Bulma tripped. Vegeta caught her and steadied her.
"Thank you," Bulma said, smiling drunkenly at him.
"You humans and your inability to hold you alcohol," Vegeta muttered, picking her up.
"Put me down!"
"You're drunk. You'll just trip again, and then I'll have to catch you again. It's much easier this way," Vegeta argued.
"You know, you're drunk too, and if you trip, you'll squish me."
"Saiyans do not trip. And anyway, you should be so lucky to break the fall of a Saiyan Prince. You'd be squashed with honor," Vegeta pointed out. "Where to?"
Bulma sighed and decided not to protest. It just wasn't worth the energy. Besides which it wasn't actually that unpleasant to be carried. "Two doors down and to the right," she said. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "You know, my Mama was right about you. She called you 'a nice young man'. You are nice. At least when you're not being a jerk."
"Was that supposed to be a compliment?" Vegeta asked as he nudged open a door. "This it?"
"Yeah. Just put me down near the... eeeeyyyaaaah!"
In the process of making his way through the room Vegeta had caught one foot on a pile of clothes, unbalanced he tripped. He managed to roll before they fell.
"I thought Saiyans didn't trip," Bulma said a little sourly.
"We don't, I did that on purpose."
"Oh you did, did you? Well then, Your Highness, I'm going to have to hold your intentions suspect. Look where we landed."
Vegeta looked. They had fallen half on the bed.
"And look how we landed," Bulma added.
Vegeta notice all of a sudden that Bulma had slipped during their fall... and so had his hand, which was now resting firmly on her bottom. "I was trying not to squash you," he muttered.
"Then why don't you move your hand?" Bulma teased. "I bet if there was light enough, I would see you blushing."
"Saiyans don't blush."
"They don't trip either. And I also heard from someone not long ago that they don't get lonely. No time for it. You know what I think? I think that's a whole lot of bull."
"I think you're too drunk to think straight, woman."
"You're right, but about more than you know. I AM a woman. And I'm lonely. And you're in my room with your hand on my ass. And we're laying on my bed. And I'm... I..." she broke off, unable to think of anything to say. She pulled his head down near hers. "I want to be your tir'rral torra," she whispered. Even in the dark she could see his eyes widen. Without giving him the chance to speak she kissed him. His arms tightened around her almost reflexively.
Vegeta broke the kiss, feeling bewildered, but more than a little intrigued as well. "You do understand that this changes nothing," whispered, his voice hoarse. It did change things. He knew it did even as out of it as he was he knew things would change. He had let too much of his soul out that night for it not too.
Bulma kissed him again. She scooted further onto the bed, pulling Vegeta along with her. "I understand perfectly."
This is where the whole thing really gets moving, so enjoy the ride.
Standard disclaimer: As I said in the last chapter, don't sue me.
A red light flickered insistently at Bulma's elbow as she left her lab.
"Oh great! Now what?" she asked aloud. She turned around and examined the control panel that held the blinking light. Something was wrong in the gravity room. Sighing loudly Bulma pulled up a chair and tapped out a few commands on a keypad. A series of numbers scrolled down a nearby screen.
Five hundred seventeen...
Five hundred eighteen...
Five hundred nineteen...
"What the...?" Bulma muttered, tapping a few more keys.
Five hundred twenty...
Five hundred twenty-one...
"No, not even Vegeta's that stupid..."
Five hundred twenty-two...
Bulma called up a comm screen and linked into the gravity room. "Hey, Vegeta, is everything okay in there?"
No answer.
Five hundred twenty-three...
Bulma waited for the usual scathing retort, but was disappointed. She began to worry. "Hey! You big jerk! Answer me!"
No reply.
Bulma switched on one of the cameras inside the gravity room and hooked it up to one of her many computers. She scanned the chamber and cursed. Vegeta was laying sprawled out on the floor. He looked unconscious. He looked... dead.
"Damn it!" Bulma swore. She sprinted back over to the control panel where the red light was now blinking furiously. Her fingers fairly flew over the keypad as she input an override command.
Five hundred forty-five...
Feeling panicked Bulma jabbed the keys. "Protocol eight-niner-zero, emergency override command delta-zero-zero-two," she whispered to herself, "engage." She pressed the final button and gave a sigh of relief as the numbers on the screen began to go down.
Five hundred thirty...
Five hundred twenty...
Five hundred ten...
Bulma stood up and ran out to the gravity room and waited impatiently for the pressure inside to return to normal. Upon opening the door she was overcome by the smell of stale sweat, blood and the distinct scent of ozone that was always left behind when someone fired a ki blast. She spotted Vegeta laying in the same position he had been before.
"Hey... you... are you... dead?" Bulma squeaked, approaching the downed Saiyan. "Um... if you said something I'd feel better..." She couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. "If you're not dead say something! You're freaking me out!" She stood over him as she said that last, looking for any signs of life. He didn't look like he was too badly hurt. She nudged him with the toe of one of her shoes.
Finally Vegeta made a low, groaning noise and stirred. He sat up gingerly, assessing his condition. Nothing broken, nothing crushed, no internal injuries as far as he could tell, just a whole lot of bruising. He had been very, very lucky. "Luck's a bitch," he muttered quietly. He wiped his hands on his shorts and stood up, eyeing Bulma warily. "What do you want?"
Bulma's eyes widened in surprise and anger. "What do I want? I don't want a little gratitude! I just save your miserable ass and you're not even decent enough to thank me!"
Vegeta frowned, and muttered, "Thank you." He didn't sound like he meant it, which bothered Bulma.
"You're welcome," she replied somewhat sarcastically.
There was a long silence.
"There's really nothing I can do about whatever's wrong with the gravity generator until Daddy gets back, so why don't you come inside. I was just about to fix myself some dinner. You could join me, I guess," Bulma offered awkwardly. She hadn't been looking forward to eating alone, and any company, even Vegeta, would be better than none.
Vegeta gave a non-committal grunt.
"Well, if you want to, just come with me." She turned around and walked out of the gravity room. A few moments later Vegeta reluctantly followed.
The two of them entered the house, Bulma first, Vegeta trailing a good deal behind.
"It's going to take a while to get dinner on, you could shower, or something..." Bulma suggested. Vegeta was staring off into space, so Bulma felt the need to add, "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine!" Vegeta snapped.
"No need to get touchy! For God's sake I was just concerned! Normal people get concerned when someone nearly dies!" Bulma retorted. "I'm just trying to be friendly. Do you understand the meaning of the word 'friendly'?"
Vegeta looked at her for a moment longer then said something in a deep growling language.
"What?" Bulma asked.
"Tir'rral torra," Vegeta repeated a little more clearly. "In the old tongue it is the closest translation of the human term 'friend'. It means, 'one who fights beside me'." He frowned, as if having trouble believing that he actually remembered any of the old tongue, a language that had fallen out of use on Planet Vegeta many generations before his birth. Still frowning he walked up the stairs. A few moments later the sound of running water alerted Bulma to the fact that Vegeta had taken her advice about the shower.
"Tir'rral torra..." Bulma repeated quietly to herself, struggling to get the accent right. She shook her head, unable to get rid of the feeling that something very, very strange had just occurred, something very strange, indeed.
The food was set out on the table by the time Vegeta emerged from the upstairs bathroom. Bulma was sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, a half empty beer bottle in one hand.
Vegeta grabbed his plate and ate leaning against the kitchen counter.
"You know, I went to the trouble of setting a place at the table for you, you could at least be courteous enough to sit down for your meal," Bulma reprimanded him.
"Courtesy is a human custom," Vegeta grunted.
"Well hey, what a surprise, I happen to be human!" Bulma said sarcastically.
"I'm not."
Bulma made a noise of aggravation. She tried to remember why eating with Vegeta would be better than eating alone and came up wanting. She drained the last liquid out of her bottle and got up to get another. "So," she said, trying to fill the awkward silence, "how is the training going?"
Vegeta didn't answer for a long time, contemplating what to say. "My destiny continues to elude me, but it cannot run from me forever," he said at last.
"That's a new one on me," Bulma remarked. "Usually people run from their destinies, not the other way around."
"I happen to have a particularly slippery destiny."
"Yeah, well it almost got away from you today." A thought suddenly hit
Bulma. She went back to the fridge and grabbed another beer. She tossed it to Vegeta, who caught the bottle deftly.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A toast," Bulma explained, "to you're continued survival and my first day as a free woman. Let's hope things get better from here."
Vegeta frowned. He would rather not toast to his continued survival. He wasn't quite sure if living was worth it. If there really was no other way to become a Super Saiyan other than Goku's way, Vegeta was pretty sure that he was never going to attain that much sought after level of power.
Bulma noticed the contemplative look on Vegeta's face and gave him a curious look. "What're you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that earth alcohol is pathetically weak. Which makes a great deal of sense considering that you humans are pathetically weak."
"Why do you insist on being so rude? Especially to me?"
Vegeta took a sip of his beer then said, "Because it's fun."
"Fun?" Bulma demanded angrily.
"Well, more accurately, funny," Vegeta corrected himself, smirking all the while.
"You're a horrible person!"
"By your definition I'm sure I am."
"And you're proud of it!"
Vegeta shrugged.
"I should have let you get crushed by the gravity generator!"
"I never asked you to save me."
"Of course if I had let you get squished I'm sure I would have gotten stuck cleaning up the mess."
"Probably."
"Vegeta?"
"What?"
"Do you want another beer?"
By midnight both the pretty blue haired scientist and the Saiyan Prince were soused. Neither of them particularly cared though. They were both pretty much past caring.
"Oh sure, get into the 'I've had a worse life than you' argument with me, woman, I dare you," Vegeta challenged. His cheeks were flushed and the neatly stacked pyramid of bottles on the table to his right was a testament to his level of inebriation.
"Okay," Bulma agreed. She looked, if possible, a little worse off than Vegeta. She had had a quarter the number of beers Vegeta had, but then again her alcohol tolerance was much lower. "I've nearly been killed about a billion times."
"I've actually been killed once. I believe one death beats a billion almost deaths," Vegeta countered. He was amazingly good-natured when he was drunk.
"I've had people threaten to blow up my planet."
"My planet was blown up."
Bulma blinked, trying to think up something worse than having one's planet blown up. She settled on, "I was married to Yaumcha."
Vegeta looked at her, trying to figure out whether or not she was joking. "You win." he decided.
"No, no I don't. Not really," Bulma said after a moment. "I'd rather be me than be you. Don't you ever get... lonely?"
"Lonely? No time to be lonely. I'm too busy trying to catch my destiny."
"Ah yes, the slippery destiny," Bulma said.
"Besides which, I don't think I can be lonely." The look on Vegeta's face was enough to catch Bulma's attention even through the haze of alcohol.
"Is there a problem with that?" Bulma asked. "I'd love not to feel so alone all the time."
"No, no problem at all actually. 'Cept sometimes I envy you humans and your emotions. Not often, just... sometimes. Saiyan warriors can't have emotions like you humans do though. They get in the way. They make us weak. I can't get attached to anything like you can." Vegeta frowned and picked up the cat, which was rubbing insistently against his leg, and petted behind its ears. The cat purred happily. "If I have a goal I can't let anything get in my way." He laughed bitterly. "And that's what's getting in my way."
"Come again?"
"Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think I am. I've had too long to think about it. Kakarott, he became a Super Saiyan because he needed to, right? To survive and avenge the death of that little bald monk what-his-name. I want to become a Super Saiyan to defeat Kakarott and finally catch my destiny, but I think something out in this big wide universe is trying to tell me that's not what I need. I can't become a Super Saiyan the way I'm trying, but I can't do it Kakarott's way either."
"Why not?"
"No friends. I don't care enough about anyone, to need to avenge them or to be driven over the edge by their death."
"Tir'rral torra..." Bulma murmured.
"Eh? What about that?"
"Isn't that the closest translation for the word 'friend' in you language?"
"In the old tongue," Vegeta corrected. "It was a dead language long before I was born."
"Well," Bulma said, brightening, "I'll be your Tir'rral torra."
Vegeta frowned, confused. Then he burst out laughing.
"What? What's so funny?" Bulma demanded. "Doesn't it mean 'one who fights next to me' or something like that?"
"It means 'one who fights beside me', but only for men," Vegeta said, trying to keep from laughing again. "For a woman it means something different."
"What?"
"You just proposed to me."
Bulma laughed. "I didn't!"
"You did. You just said 'I'll be your mate forever'." He feigned seriousness for a moment. "I'm sorry, woman, but I'm going to have to decline. As nice as an offer as that is, seeing as this whole nonsense," he waved his hand around the kitchen, showing off the mess the two of them had made, "started with you wanting to celebrate being a free woman and all, I simply cannot accept."
"Oh shut up!"
"No, don't try to change my mind," Vegeta said, being a little melodramatic. "You must learn to live without me, as hard is that may be to imagine."
"Oh please! Get over yourself!" Bulma laughed.
Silence reigned for a moment.
"Well, it's late, and I'm going to have an evil hangover tomorrow, so I'm going up to bed," Bulma decided. She stood up uncertainly. "You know, Mama's got a room upstairs for you to sleep in, if you don't want to wobble out to the gravity room and sleep there," she told Vegeta.
"Saiyans do not require beds. Those are creature comforts only weak humans would need," Vegeta sniffed disdainfully.
"Yeah, and I bet you ten zenni that tomorrow morning I'm going to find you
passed out on the lawn," Bulma said. "Besides which, I'm not sure I'll be able to make it
up the stairs on my own."
"All right, I'll give into weakness for one night," Vegeta assented. "Show me to this room your mother prepared for my use."
The two of them walked shakily over to the stairs, and then even more shakily up the stairs. At the top step Bulma tripped. Vegeta caught her and steadied her.
"Thank you," Bulma said, smiling drunkenly at him.
"You humans and your inability to hold you alcohol," Vegeta muttered, picking her up.
"Put me down!"
"You're drunk. You'll just trip again, and then I'll have to catch you again. It's much easier this way," Vegeta argued.
"You know, you're drunk too, and if you trip, you'll squish me."
"Saiyans do not trip. And anyway, you should be so lucky to break the fall of a Saiyan Prince. You'd be squashed with honor," Vegeta pointed out. "Where to?"
Bulma sighed and decided not to protest. It just wasn't worth the energy. Besides which it wasn't actually that unpleasant to be carried. "Two doors down and to the right," she said. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "You know, my Mama was right about you. She called you 'a nice young man'. You are nice. At least when you're not being a jerk."
"Was that supposed to be a compliment?" Vegeta asked as he nudged open a door. "This it?"
"Yeah. Just put me down near the... eeeeyyyaaaah!"
In the process of making his way through the room Vegeta had caught one foot on a pile of clothes, unbalanced he tripped. He managed to roll before they fell.
"I thought Saiyans didn't trip," Bulma said a little sourly.
"We don't, I did that on purpose."
"Oh you did, did you? Well then, Your Highness, I'm going to have to hold your intentions suspect. Look where we landed."
Vegeta looked. They had fallen half on the bed.
"And look how we landed," Bulma added.
Vegeta notice all of a sudden that Bulma had slipped during their fall... and so had his hand, which was now resting firmly on her bottom. "I was trying not to squash you," he muttered.
"Then why don't you move your hand?" Bulma teased. "I bet if there was light enough, I would see you blushing."
"Saiyans don't blush."
"They don't trip either. And I also heard from someone not long ago that they don't get lonely. No time for it. You know what I think? I think that's a whole lot of bull."
"I think you're too drunk to think straight, woman."
"You're right, but about more than you know. I AM a woman. And I'm lonely. And you're in my room with your hand on my ass. And we're laying on my bed. And I'm... I..." she broke off, unable to think of anything to say. She pulled his head down near hers. "I want to be your tir'rral torra," she whispered. Even in the dark she could see his eyes widen. Without giving him the chance to speak she kissed him. His arms tightened around her almost reflexively.
Vegeta broke the kiss, feeling bewildered, but more than a little intrigued as well. "You do understand that this changes nothing," whispered, his voice hoarse. It did change things. He knew it did even as out of it as he was he knew things would change. He had let too much of his soul out that night for it not too.
Bulma kissed him again. She scooted further onto the bed, pulling Vegeta along with her. "I understand perfectly."