Remember, R & R if you please! I really appreciate everyone who has so far!
Disclaimer: Don't own these guys and gals!
XIII.
Smiling
"Alright, that's it, I'm exhausted. Twenty minutes—that's all I'm asking. When—and I do say when—Bra starts crying in the next twenty minutes, you have to deal with it. I just changed her and you don't have to feed her, Kame forbid you do any real work, after all. Just hold her or bounce her or look at her for all I care. Hell, fly around with her. I know I said not to, but I'm taking it back. I'm taking it all back. I don't care. I don't care. Go find the dragon balls. Resurrect Frieza and fight him together. Teach her about the birds and the bees and the androids and why she wouldn't exist if it weren't for my superior intellect and her brave brother's willingness to time travel and save your good for nothing life. Sorry, that was mean. I love you. But I need twenty minutes and if I can't have them, I will kill you." Bulma, the intensity of her eyes only accentuated by the bags under them, broke the gaze she accosted her unsuspecting husband with as she flopped on to the living room couch, throwing an arm over her eyes.
Raising an eyebrow, the Saiyan placed his sports drink on the coffee table and crossed his arms. "Fine," he replied tersely, inspecting his mate's disheveled form. She was, by all accounts, disgusting; her two-day old lounge leggings and sweater were splattered with stains, and her hair was neither clean nor brushed. In fact, if it had not been months since their last sexual encounter, Vegeta would have been slightly repulsed by her appearance. However, her missed shower and twice-warn clothes now only served in strengthening her alluring aroma, and her tired body, stretched beckoningly across the sofa, seemed to call his name (or, at the very least, his manhood).
The scientist lifted her arm from her eyes, catching sight of the way the Saiyan Prince eyed her. "Don't even think about it. Even if I had the OK from the doctor, which I don't, I wouldn't risk making another one of those hybrid life suckers. Not today. I'm so exhausted that, even when I look at you in those tight little shorts and muscle tank, I feel nothing, and see only a short, bad-tempered, exceedingly long grocery list."
"I see this exhaustion does not extend to your tongue," Vegeta growled, rolling his eyes.
"That had better not be any part of a blow job innuendo," Bulma warned, teeth gritted.
The Saiyan's cheeks reddened, but as he opened his mouth to label the new mother a "vulgar woman," infant cries began to echo from the second floor of the house.
"YOU GO. Twenty minutes!" shot Bulma as she rolled over and covered her head with a throw pillow.
Grumbling, Vegeta turned and headed to the source of the crying, the physical craving for his mate effectively diminished. He strode through the nursery door and to the crib, eyeing his screaming child, his head beginning to throb at the sound of her piercing shrieks. "Shut up," he muttered, waving a hand in front of her face, as if to ward off an invisible assailant.
Almost immediately, Bra stopped crying. She looked at Vegeta's hand, then his face, big blue eyes full of wonder and interest. This caught the full-blooded Saiyan by surprise. "There, see, no reason to carry on," he said, leaning on the crib wall and studying the infant. She smiled at the sound of his voice, then began to laugh and gurgle, little hands extended towards her father.
Vegeta, as a personal preference, held Bra as little as possible. In fact, since her birth five weeks before, the Saiyan Prince had held her only six times: four because Bulma had momentarily handed her off, needing the temporary use of both hands, and two more because Bulma's mother had done the same. While he had promised himself he would not make the same mistakes with Bra that he had made with Trunks, and failure to hold Trunks ever was pretty high on his mistake list, cradling his new baby terrified the warrior. He wasn't sure if holding her heightened his awareness of how fragile she truly was, or if he was just paranoid of accidentally crushing her. Either way, he didn't like it, and being scared was not a feeling Vegeta had experienced enough to properly cope with.
However, as Bra smiled at and reached for him now, he felt he had no choice. He sighed and scooped her up with one arm, moving the index finger of his free hand back and forth in front of her face, fascinated by the focus with which her eyes followed it.
"She just started doing that a few days ago," Bulma said softly from the door, watching the pair.
"Doing what?" Vegeta asked, too transfixed by his infant to be embarrassed by Bulma's spying.
"Smiling," the scientist replied. "Give her another week and she'll be zooming around and blowing up planets, just like her father."
At this, Vegeta smirked. "I have little doubt."
