Comfort

Vegeta exhaled slowly through his nose, a rare feeling of near-contentment overcoming him. It had been a very productive training day for him, even if attaining his ascension was still a feat beyond him. No matter – he wasn't exactly in a dead rush to get there as long as he could feel his power swelling. The rest would come naturally, he thought to himself with a complacent smirk.

After a much needed shower when he was done exerting his power for the day, he ventured downstairs towards the kitchen. He was on a prowl for something edible as a snack as a little reward for his hard work for the day.

As it was well into the wee hours of the morning, the prince hadn't expected anyone else to be up. His surprise was considerable when he found the television set to be on in the living room, bathing in light the form of one of Vegeta's housemates.

He raised a confused brow at Bulma's back but couldn't be bothered enough to stop and actually demand what she was doing up so late. It wasn't like he really cared anyway, so he saw no need in wasting his breath.

The woman seemed no more eager than he was to start a conversation with him. She seemed entirely too focused on whatever nonsense she was watching while she was stuffing her face with some food article he couldn't recognize. Shrugging a shoulder, Vegeta decided to prioritize his current state of starvation higher than a mental account of what Bulma was and was not doing.

The saiyan spent a considerable amount of time in the spacious Capsule Corporation kitchen. This was quite understandable when one took into account the fact that what counted by him as a "small snack" could be evaluated by normal people's standards as a small feast. Warming up that much food in the microwave oven and then devouring it did require a certain amount of technical time.

When he was done putting away his many dishes into the sink, he noticed that the dim light from the television was still on in the living room. Having sated his most pressing need, the prince now found himself much more curious about what was keeping his brainy housemate awake.

Walking back into the premise she occupied, he was a bit taken aback by the fact she was sitting in the exact same position she had been in when he first passed by her. This made him cock a curious eyebrow at her, his arms crossing themselves over his toned chest as he scrutinized her profile.

"What are you doing still up?" The way he asked was more of a demand than a question. The imperiousness of his tone didn't seem to make much of an impact on the impassive woman though.

"I'm burying my misery under copious amounts of ice cream while watching action flicks with shamelessly huge budgets," Bulma responded almost mechanically, chomping down on a spoonful of this "ice cream" thing of hers. She elaborated no further, as though his presence was not nearly enough to busy her attention any further than it already had.

Having just finished his snack, Vegeta found this food article of hers suddenly very appealing. Another thing that had caught his attention was the sound of a huge explosion coming from the television. It had drawn his eyes to it and made him witness a rather flashy on-screen combustion of a large truck. The chain car wreck it caused afterwards and the ensuing chase between the main characters and the villains made Vegeta hover next to the couch Bulma was sitting on.

He had always found humans' ideas for "entertainment" ludicrous. He failed to see exactly what enjoyment seeing weaklings pretending to be who they weren't while doing things they couldn't in their actual, pitiful lives while watched by billions of other weaklings in front of their television sets could be "fun". The whole concept of "movies" was entirely lost on him.

Action movies though, however unrealistic the spread of the fire and its magnitude, did tickle Vegeta's fancy just slightly. At least it was enough to make him pause and give it a second glance.

Noticing that, Bulma eyed the saiyan out of the corner of her eye for a while. Then she heaved a sigh. She honestly didn't want him to—she'd been counting on Vegeta already being asleep when she'd come to stuff her face with ice cream—but she guessed it couldn't be helped.

"Vegeta, why don't you stop hovering and just sit down? You're distracting me from my movie."

On any other day, the man would've snapped at her for the way she was addressing him and insinuating that he had interest in things that he most certainly had none in. Or some other nonsense of the sort. She was fully prepared to hear the tirade after her suggestion to him and braced to hear it with chagrin.

She was more than a bit surprised when it never came. Instead, the Saiyan just grunted in a sort of noncommittal concurrence and plopped down next to her. His gaze stayed glued to the screen the entire time.

The reason Bulma had been less than thrilled when he had first descended the stairs was that she was in no mood to deal with him and his princely tendency to annoy her to no end. She had just had the most disastrous date with her boyfriend in a long time; a date which had ended on a very sour note when she'd let loose her frustrations on the man responsible for them.

So, finding herself once again single and very much upset with that fact, Bulma had decided to do the one thing that always took her mind off of the things that bothered her. Naturally, that one thing being binge-eating ice cream while watching a good action flick or two. She wanted to do just that and not be bothered, nor talked to while she proceeded to do so. Thus her vexation with the fact her housemate was still awake and invading her space for wallowing in self-pity over the bleakness of her love life.

When he didn't seem up to dishing out his usual wide range of insults and offensive remarks about anything and everything he could think of, focusing instead on the movie with quiet interest, Bulma found the aloof man's company to be not half bad indeed. In fact, ever since she had found his presence to be much less intimidating after the whole Namek fiasco, Bulma had always found Vegeta to be a rather fascinating individual. Well, maybe "fascinating" was a poor choice of word to describe him but the man most certainly succeeded in distracting her, regardless of the situation.

There was just something about him that she couldn't quite put her finger on. He was infuriating almost one hundred per cent of the time. When he wasn't using all of his wit trying to annoy her or pester her, the sheer fact that he was displaying a different kind of behaviour ended up derailing her train of thought from whatever she was doing just as successfully, if not even more so.

The case right at that moment was no different. Bulma found endlessly curious the fact that he was "subjecting" himself firstly to her company and then to the "silly notions of entertainment petty humans had".

Unimaginable was her intrigue when at a bit later point into their movie watching together he demanded as to why one character did this and then later why another didn't take a more logical course of action that could've spared him a lot of grief.

The heiress almost found herself laughing at Vegeta's reaction when she explained that, if the character had done so, the movie would be left without a plot twist and that would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. The prince had shaken his head disapprovingly and started muttering to himself something about silly humans and making no sense.

Soon enough, Bulma realized that she had spent a lot more time gauging at Vegeta's reactions to the movie than the actual thing itself. That wasn't really all that big of a deal since she had already seen the movie before. The fact she had completely forgotten that she had been upset did not elude her notice though.

The woman smiled warmly at the prince's strong profile when he shook his head at another illogical action the main character performed under his onyx gaze's scrutiny. She shifted her own eyes down to the pint of ice cream in her lap – her comfort food that was slowly melting off as it lay there almost forgotten for a while.

She then offered some to her companion in a wordless gesture. He spared her merely a glance before taking the proffered item and digging into it while pinning his gaze back to the screen once again.

That night was the first time since Bulma had invited the alien to stay over in her house that she was glad she had done so.

It was very rare that she found something more effective as comfort after a bad break up than her usual ice cream-action movie combination. The fact that she found it in the presence of a certain prince served to only fuel her curiosity in the man himself.

A/N: One of the weakest parts, in my opinion. Don't know if you guys will agree or not. But I liked the notion anyway. Hope you enjoyed too. ^.^

Chapter Prompt: Theme Set Alpha, #1: Comfort.