A/N: Hellooooo there long lost readers! I apologize for the appalling lateness. Or hiatus. Or whatever. Thanks for giving this another look!
Disclaimer: All things associated with Dragon Ball Z belong solely to Akira Toriyama.
Something in the Water
Untouched
Bulma frowned and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. "I think the appropriate phrase to use here is 'HELL NO,' Vegeta."
"And in reply, I'd say 'Well too fucking bad,'" he sneered as he zeroed in on the incoming planet. "Saiyans are not meant to be kept in a piece-of-shit ship for months on end."
"Yeah, cause they'd fit much better in a cage in a zoo."
Snapping his head around to glare at her, Vegeta snorted through his nostrils. The bitch had a particularly waspish attitude about visiting the yellow planet. "If you'd like to keep that tongue of yours in your head then you'd best keep your thoughts to yourself," he growled.
Having expected a much more offensive reply, Bulma let the edge of her mouth turn up as she slid a hand up his back. "Don't rip it out too soon, Prince," she coohed. "You haven't even had a chance to experience it properly." To make her point, the blue haired woman leaned in to flick the edge of his ear with her tongue.
Vegeta held back the urge to squirm away. "Perhaps there's time for that soon enough," he replied, turning to catch her waist in his hands as she batted her lashes up at his countenance, "But on this I insist, Bulma."
"Unghhhh..." she groaned as her head flopped against his chest. "I'm NOT okay with visiting all these foreign planets that literally want to eat you up!"
Vegeta rolled his eyes. "I have only ever been to two planets in my lifespan that have been physically aggressive. You just so happened to experience one as well - "
"And I'm in no mood to experience one again," she snapped.
A muscle twitched in his jaw as he lightly shoved her away. "You're insufferable," he groused as he made his way down the hall. "Stay on the fucking ship then for all I care, because I have no desire to be near your infectious idiocy any time soon."
"FINE!" she yelled at his back, her nails screeching against the metallic counter. "Don't come to me the next time you're feeling 'lonely' then!" She took a gulp of air, realizing his complete dismissal of her as he disappeared into the gravity chamber. "And STAY OUT OF MY BED!"
The hum of the GR drowned out her curses.
Bulma narrowed her eyes at the sight of the Saiyan jumping nimbly to the ground. It had been nearly two days since she'd seen him last, and it appeared as though it didn't bother him in the least. I suppose that makes sense, she groused to herself, running her tongue over her teeth, He did perfectly well without my presence before we left. Apparently it's no different now. Had she been in a Western film, this would have been the moment in which she leaned over and spit a wad of chew into a spittoon while contemplating her next surreptitious move.
She looked on out the window at him as he paused, letting his hands graze through the waist-high grass. Rolling and craggy like a peach pit, the land disappeared shortly over a nearby crest, and Bulma would lose sight of her prey in a matter of minutes if he continued to amble straight ahead.
Though Vegeta rarely ambled.
With an unexpected blaze of ki surrounding him, Vegeta blasted off the ground into the horizon, leaving rippling waves of the yellow grass behind him and Bulma to vaguely wonder about the texture of the grass, as it seemed to float softly above the ground at his disturbance, rather like a patch of seaweed would float in the water. It looked so silken - like the fur of a cat or pulled-apart cotton, but the yellow grass seemed to stand up quite well against the 1.25 x Earth's gravity.
Bulma sniffed distastefully at the thought. It wasn't as though she was a stupid, thick-hided Saiyan and could venture out into whatever conditioned he was able to. Even if she wanted to follow...
Snapping her head around as she turned back to the navigations area, Bulma dismissed the thought. No Briefs heiress would be caught dead following some idiotic man like a puppy...
But a day and a half later, with no signs of the petulant Saiyan having ever returned, Bulma began to eat her words. How could he be out there for that long without needing to come back for food? ...or to bathe... Bulma chewed on the edge of her cuticle as she perused her box of capsules, searching for her air bike. Cabin fever had set her temperament on edge; a mixture between the lack of company and the glinting sunlight off the rippling golden field was getting to her. Plus, she couldn't see far past that damn hill, and it felt like the planet's limits were calling to her.
Still... she shivered at the memories from the last foreign planet she had stepped out on. If Vegeta hadn't come back, surely it was from his own querulous irritation with her and his stubborn refusal to live without killing himself via training on a daily basis. Surely he was fine. Surely.
Air bike in hand along with various other capsules including (but not limited to) a portable house, a bikini, and a barbeque grill, Bulma strapped an impressive yet light-weight laser gun on her hip. Her cyan eyes scanned the view outside the window for any hint of danger as she breathed in deep. Hopefully she would be able to withstand the extra .25 Gs. If not, she'd just flip the switch on her snow-white gravity suit. Bulma frowned as she plucked at the spandex-like material coating her body.
This time in space better not have added any pounds to her frame, or someone was going to have to suffer.
Moments later she stood on the platform, her chest rising and falling heavily with the extra strain. Blinking at the sunlight above, she grimaced at the unexpected chill of the wind while shouldering her scouting backpack that now felt as though she had piled it full of bricks instead of capsules.
"Alright, Vegeta, here I come," she muttered as she tramped down the ramp in slow motion. Like a swimmer in a pool full of pudding, she felt sluggish and out of sync with the world. Even her braided hair resting against her shoulder seemed like a hand pressing her towards the ground. Bulma frowned.
Within minutes, her air bike was gleaming in the bright sunlight as she dragged one leg over the seat. The blue-haired genius pushed the ignition and the motor roared to life beneath her thighs before she kicked off into the distance.
Blades of shimmering gold whipped by as the air bike blew through the fields of the mysterious planet, and Bulma stretched out her fingers to flit through the tendrils as they wafted by, dancing in the wind like algea in the ocean. For nearly twenty minutes she zoomed through the fields as she relished the feeling of sun on her face; to breathe in the crisp air and feel the blush return to her cheeks... It felt like the beginnings of fall on Earth, and suddenly a pang of homesickness hit her.
The feeling, however, was short-lived as she crested over another hill to find herself at the top of a slope that stretched thousands of feet ahead of her in rippling grass before it met a shimmering, teal lake. Bulma slid the bike to a quick stop as she gasped and took in the sight. The body of water was massive, but she could clearly see huge mountainous crags on the other side, and it seemed as though the lake marked a change in the landscape of the planet.
"How can this place be so untouched?" she wondered aloud as a grin bloomed on her face. Far down the slope she could see the clarity of the seemingly-motionless water, and it appeared as though the lake was deeper than she had originally thought. Bulma took in her immediate surroundings. To the left the lake went on into the horizon, possibly for miles, but to the right the golden plains stretched on, and creatures that resembled sheep on stilts with elongated necks grazed across the land, looking as tenuous as the grass itself. Unconcerned after having watched a herd of them from the spaceship window, Bulma merely whistled at them like they were old friends before she turned back to her personal task at hand.
Within another ten minutes she had arrived at the edge of the lake, put away her bike, and brought out her bikini, towel, and picnic set. (The punctuated blasts of the capsules had in fact roused the feeding herd into a panic and set them running in the opposite direction.) Bulma glanced around, momentarily nervous, as she contemplated changing out of her exploration gear into the strapless, salmon-colored, ruffled bikini. It seemed as though not a single other soul resided on the planet but herself - Bulma's nose wrinkled - and a certain missing Saiyan who would go unnamed and ignored.
Deeming the coast clear, she shrugged off her gun and unzipped each zipper on her suit, allowing her appendages to be released quickly, before she tugged on and slipped into her bikini. The effort left her panting and sweating despite the cool wind, and Bulma was eager to flop down onto her oversized beach towel that laid atop the grass at the shoreline.
And so, bikini ruffles blowing in the wind, sunglasses over her eyes, and all thoughts banished from her mind, Bulma gave herself over to the arduous art of tanning.
Vegeta, on the other hand, had a wayward mind that never gave him a moment's rest. With beads of sweat coursing down his body, streaking his face with mud from the dirt that had settled there, Vegeta dropped to one knee and spat viciously into the ground as he glared at the horizon. She was always plaguing him, no matter how far he strayed from her presence. The prince supposed it was a genetic quirk - a fail safe for his bloodline that forced an unnatural bond into the mating relationship - that caused his unexpected fixation on the woman, but he couldn't be sure if something else had tainted the water to make him act so strangely. A ghost of a smirk passed over his face at his own personal joke.
He knew she was fine. She had to be. The life forms on this planet were negligible, and unless she had gone and knocked her own head off with a wrench or something she should still be alive and screeching.
Not that he cared terribly.
His usual frown intensified. He couldn't remember the last time he actually gave a shit enough about another person to take the time to think about their relationship to one another. Perhaps when he had killed Nappa he had thought about the ramifications of it later, but not in any great detail. It just didn't matter.
Most of his intellectual efforts had gone into memorizing battle strategies, strengthening grudges, and assimilating his galactic knowledge, not focusing on extra-curricular activities like fucking. That was a side treat, like getting a potato with your steak: Not necessary, just good for morale.
Four days ago he had slept with the woman, woken up, and stolen into the gravity chamber for hours on end until they had landed on the planet. Unlike the woman, Vegeta couldn't simply drop his attitude and make a 180 turn; whereas she apparently had decided to cater to his whims, Vegeta needed time to contemplate his decisions, mostly because of his lack of experience in that area.
How much of a so-called human relationship was he willing to put up with? Vegeta coughed up a cloud of dirt as he stood and faced the sun, feeling its rays soak into his bronzed skin. 1) He wanted to fuck. Whenever. Wherever. On his terms. 2) No whining. He had watched the woman with that scar-faced pussy long enough to see that she had the uncanny ability to guilt him into doing whatever she saw fit, and there was no way in hell Vegeta was going to get caught up in that. Ergo, the less contact between fucking, the better. 3) He wanted her to himself. He supposed that, under the circumstances, they were linked together, and he wanted it to stay that way. If that meant owning her beneath the sheets and acquiescing to some of her lesser emotional needs, then so be it.
Letting a gust of air out, Vegeta relaxed his shoulders. He felt ready. The past two days of relative relaxation had calmed his frayed nerves and enhanced his feeling of security over his life. He would ascend, he would defeat Kakarrot and those metallic idiots, and then... take over the universe?
A pang of uneasiness wormed its way into his stomach. Never before had his actual future loomed without a real purpose. Until the past few months he had been preoccupied with defeating Frieza, but the futuristic boy had taken care of that particular obstacle for him. Before that, the sum of his desires was to dethrone the lizard bitch and usurp his entire galactic kingdom, but now...
He just couldn't see it. That was what was so unnerving to the prince. He couldn't see how to regroup past the androids. And what about Bulma? part of him wondered, while the other half sneered in contempt. He would need a queen, but something in his gut whispered that, although she certainly strove to dominate the characters in her life, it wasn't the same type of domination synonymous with intergalactic rulership.
Belly churning uncomfortably at the thought, Vegeta quelled his mind with a shake of his head. Those things would be addressed when the time came, and the only time at hand was that of lunch time.
A herd of fuzzy white creatures with towering legs and necks grazed down in the plains below him, and if he closed his eyes he could zone in on the energies of the smaller animals that flourished behind his mountain on the shore of the lake. And then there was... Vegeta's eyes snapped up. That energy was not a fish.
Without a second thought he blasted up into the mountain peaks, spinning through a few of them before he landed atop one that overlooked the shimmering body of water.
Hands clenching at his sides, Vegeta ground his teeth together in frustration. What the hell is she doing out here? he thought irritably as he watched the barest speck of blue and pink in the distance. Wasn't she the one who had complained about being scared of the world? Hadn't she sworn to stay on the ship?
With a stab of pain in his stomach, Vegeta realized suddenly that his duties to the Earth woman had become more defined that he had originally assumed; her apparent lack of protection in the outside world tore through his guts like a serrated knife. Kicking off in a cloud of dust, the Saiyan soared towards his prey without a second thought.
Even in her light doze, Bulma could feel a mighty presence coming her direction. Like a thunderstorm roiling in the distance, Vegeta pulled the atmosphere around him in a way that set her arms tingling, and the peculiar yet singular sensation woke her from her dreams of cream pies and chocolate pudding. Blinking into the light of the near-sunset, Bulma took a deep breath in response to the resounding call in her very bones. His very being shook her in a way that she couldn't explain, but one thing she knew for sure - he was angry.
She surprised herself in her own assured knowledge that it was her personal Saiyan zooming towards her, but she didn't question the strange things that happened around Vegeta anymore. He was like a character out of a fairy tale, neither good nor bad, but always stirring up magical happenings. Despite her immediate concern for her well-being, Bulma couldn't help but smile at the man surrounded in a blue blaze who approached her on the wind.
The moment he landed in front of the woman who sat propped up on her elbows, glasses on the end of her nose, and the slightest twinkle of a grin on her face, Vegeta had to take a moment to gather his thoughts.
She was too radiant. Even her misgivings about his anger couldn't subdue the happiness that spilled from the brim of her soul at his arrival, and suddenly he couldn't remember why exactly he had been so foul. Vegeta's eyebrows floated apart momentarily at his lack of readiness.
Bulma blushed at his startled face as she slowly stood, her unbraided hair floating about her shoulders and her ruffled suit lifting slightly in the breeze. Had she crossed her arms over her lady parts she could have been a painting of the Birth of Venus, and her gleaming skin and radiant eyes as she tossed away her glasses stunned the man before her.
Had she always been so ethereal? His eyes roved over her figure, noting with pleasure the lack of clothes.
"You've been away," she spoke softly, interrupting his musing with a smile as she crossed her hands behind her back.
Vegeta scented her delicate petal-light smell in the air, ignoring her comment and lifting his chin to the breeze while his eyes narrowed. "You're out of the ship."
Bulma shrugged, her face the epitome of innocence.
Glancing around to ensure their solitude, he noted the dipping of the sun. "It is nearly nightfall. You don't know what creatures inhabit the dark on this planet."
"Yeah, well I want to be out here and experience a little bit of it," she countered, tilting her head as she noted his sudden shiftiness. "At least I know you'll be out there in the dark, too."
Vegeta snorted. "Changed your mind so quickly then? Wanting a taste of adventure?" he taunted, feeling his blood begin to boil with expectation.
Her half-frown as she put one hand on her hip betrayed her displeasure at his insinuations.
Vegeta's teeth glinted off the setting sun. "Fickle little bitch."
"Well at least I came prepared unlike some filthy people," she snapped as she tried to turn and grab her bag without too much effort.
Of course, there was no way to be flippant about increased gravity around an observant Saiyan.
Vegeta cocked a brow. "Feeling a bit... heavy... are we?"
"Oh, are you using the Royal 'We' or just talking to me, Prince?" she retorted as she stood with her house capsule in one hand.
"Be careful whom you mock, bitch," he warned as a house exploded in a cloud of dust at their side. "You're already on thin -"
"Seriously?" she said, eyebrows flying up. "You think I'm the one in trouble here? You left and didn't come back for nearly two days on a strange planet, Vegeta!"
He ground his teeth, eyes flashing. "Then it would be pure stupidity for you to come out here if you were under the impression that I had disappeared, wouldn't it?"
Bulma rolled her eyes and walked into the house with the Saiyan two steps behind her. "I knew you were fine... for the most part. I just had cabin fever."
His stomach jolted. "Are you cured then?"
Bulma turned in surprise at his tight voice. "It's just an expression, Vegeta." Her roving eyes caught the blush that tinted his cheeks before he turned away. Her heart squeezed suddenly, too full of the joy and excitement that his little admission gave her, and she had to catch her breath. "...but thanks for caring."
"I couldn't care less," he grumbled sourly, ripping open the refrigerator. "I just don't want to catch any worthless human's disease."
Her lips curved upwards, and she chose not to bait him anymore. "How about you take a shower while I scrounge up some food?"
Vegeta tossed a handful of berries into his mouth before he graced her with a curt nod and headed off the the bathroom, and Bulma took a moment to change out of her bikini into a short, gauzy lavender dress with a modest chest but a plunging back. It felt right to her to act like it was any other early-fall evening; she'd put the kitchen on automatic and let it heat up the food itself while she set up a table outside, shaking out a white tablecloth to eat on.
Meanwhile, Vegeta dallied in the shower and took his time to get dressed. Instead of heading straight out to pester the woman, he sat on the bed to clear his mind, letting his hands drift to fasten his white button-down shirt most of the way. Slung low on his hips were a pair of worn-in gray slacks, and he left his shirt untucked when he finally decided to return to the evening air.
Bulma glanced up from setting the little table and immediately sucked in her belly at the sight of Vegeta lounging against the open door, the V of unbuttoned buttons revealing gleaming bronze skin beneath. "Hungry?" she queried as she poured two glasses of wine.
Vegeta scanned the view, feeling like something was eluding him. "What's going on here?"
"Isn't it obvious?" she chirped, tossing her teal hair over her lilac straps, "We're having our first date!"
A/N: So. Review. Obviously I've had trouble continuing this; every little comment helps!