She couldn't believe she was doing this.
"I can't believe I'm actually doing this," she groaned, sucking in her stomach so she could button the tight pants. Once the button slid into home, she whipped around to scrutinize her butt in the mirror. Shifting her hips back and forth dramatically to get the full effect, Bulma stared over her shoulder into the mirror with her sexiest, sultriest, most contrived expression, before making a face.
She sighed wistfully and turned to stare down at her bed, where a row of shirts lay intimidatingly.
She could hear Chi Chi's voice, lecturing her. "Not too low cut, you'll be falling out with those melons you call your breasts. You want to tease him without seeming provocative." "So you want me to look like Margaret Thatcher." "No one said that. Just...for Kami's sakes, Bulma, you look great in pastels. Put on the coral blouse over your black bra, for a flirty look." "But isn't flirty just a synonym for provocative?" "For Kami's sakes Bulma put on the coral blouse!"
She chose the coral blouse.
She tucked it neatly into the waistband of her jeans with a lot of straining on her part, form fitting as they were, knowing full well Chi Chi would be laughing at her for not just unbuttoning the damn things. She frowned stubbornly at the thought of it, cursing under her breath. She hadn't spent ten minutes getting into them to turn back now.
The ruffles at the neck lay modestly below her collar bone, making their way down the shirt yoke to taper off above the button of her jeans at her waistline. The sheer thing was fashionable, it was sophisticated, and it was feminine, and Bulma thought that it better damn well be for as embarrassed as she felt purchasing it. She'd mashed her lips together as she'd sat it beside the register, to keep from spilling a deluge of complaints and criticisms about the mental costs of entering the world of women's fashion to the innocent and unsuspecting cashier.
It's not that she hadn't been gussied up before; there was a point where she and Chi Chi, Launch and Juu slunk out every weekend night in their shortest skirts and highest volumes of mascara to tease their peers at the university bar. Her current failure at being a femme fatale was just evidence of the toll that time takes from a woman who dove into shapeless clothing and boxed dinners to escape some big questions for too long. And who knows, maybe it was all compounded by the radical heights of her stubbornness as well.
What could she say? Her self esteem had taken a nose dive after the honeymoon period of her relationship with Yamcha. He shifted from someone so easygoing and loveable to someone so unappeasable, and eventually, she became dissatisfied with who she'd become for him. Once they'd split, she'd turned a bit of a new and more sloppy leaf, and she felt like the new, more careless identity agreed with her. She'd crashed at Chi Chi's and, with her best friend's support, never looked back.
Mulling over it made her recognize that, at one point, she'd relied on Chi Chi for everything. It was no surprise that Chi Chi had taken the role of mother and mentor, that she'd just assumed meddling in Bulma's life was much more helpful than it was criminal, and the thought made her sad. She had just as much self questioning to do as Chi Chi did.
But here she stood, alone in her old bedroom at her parents compound, with only her own judgment to call on. She didn't want to check out her transformation in the mirror. She didn't want to see her stupid, awkward body staring back at her unapologetically, like the matted, slobbery thing at the shelter nobody wanted but wouldn't come right out and say. She knew her chest was too large, causing her to look wide. Her thighs and arms were too thick with all of the heavy lifting she did at the shop, making the tight pants and sleeveless top feel like a fashion faux pas. Albeit flat and narrow, her belly was soft around the middle, probably thicker than it could be. She was no bony, long swimsuit model, that was for sure, no willowy and graceful Chi Chi, and definitely no overconfident teenager anymore. She wasn't sure if there was any room in the definition of beauty for her, as a headstrong mechanic whose liberal excesses were junk food and isolation, and she couldn't imagine why someone as discriminating as Vegeta would have been attracted to her in the first place.
But there were some things she just couldn't change about herself, and reaching her 30th birthday recently had put that into perspective. She liked cars—and what she meant by that is she didn't just like men who drove nice cars, or like sprawling with her legs splayed for someone to snap a high-res photo of her on someone else's car. She liked ripping them apart. She liked the weight of an old bolt in her hand, the soapy battle to cut through the grease on her hands after a long day. The distinctive smell of old leather, the shoddy song of an air-cooled engine turning over, the deep clang of a real steel car door shutting. After a long adolescence under her father's thumb, hovering over blueprints for conceptual projects with astronomical price tags, it was now one of her deepest pleasures to be able to take apart her old bus's simple engine and put it back together in under sixty minutes. They were small things, these things that made her her—things that she understood deep down that she really didn't want to change about herself, things that were shallow and frankly silly in the profound scope of things, like her disorderly hair, or things that were really for other people's capricious pleasures, like her waistline or how simpering she could be.
However, there were some things that she could at least tidy up before she put herself out there for another shot with Vegeta.
She'd plucked her eyebrows into what she hoped were svelte arches; she'd shaved her pits and bikini line and clumsily trimmed her pubes; she'd even gotten a haircut, taming the unruly curls into a shorter, chic 'do from a decent stylist.
All that was left was to turn her pasty, colorless mug into art. She chewed her lip and turned to call for her mom's help, but stopped herself, lips parted. She needed to do this on her own.
With trembling hands, she picked up the bold red lipstick and stared herself down in the mirror beside her bed. She wasn't familiar with lipstick, but she was familiar with lip balm—there had to be similarities, right? How had Chi Chi encouraged her to do it? Bulma made a grimace, flattening her lips and pulling them across her face in an unattractive death's moue that she assured herself would lead to more attractive prospects. Smoothly, she drew the lipstick across her lips.
She was careful not to cake the foundation on, and was stupidly proud of herself for putting the blush in its right spot. Not too wide, not too thick.
Slowly, she pulled the thick, clumpy brush from the tube of mascara and stared at it.
She'd done this before. She could do it again.
She batted her eyelashes over the round brush until they were longer, fuller, and blacker, and hopefully smoldering, and then stood, stiff and gracelessly, regarding herself in the mirror.
She looked alright. She looked like...well, like herself. Adult, and self aware, and...strong. She didn't look like she was trying to prove something. Bulma felt relief settle in her gut, felt something surfacing from her mouth like laughter.
She grabbed for her oxblood leather jacket and shoved her feet into her riding boots.
She was taking the bike out tonight. It was early June, and warm as happiness, with a breeze as soft and reassuring as fingers through hair. Everywhere, there was room for new things, like hope, like stitching the fragmented pieces of her adult life together and then asking a guy out.
She padded down the stairs and made her way into her parent's kitchen, where her mother stood over flattened dough with a roller, preparing to cut the sweet stuff into sections, tiny rounded loaves of almond biscotti to indulge in tomorrow morning. Her mother, always busy as a bee, always pouring herself into domesticity with simple, unjaded pleasure. No one asked her to, no one expected her to, but here she stood where she always stood, her hair done, her cute A-line dress swinging around her knees, humming to herself.
She wrapped her arms around her mother's tiny waist and squeezed.
Bunny let out a little pleased huff and patted her daughters hands.
"Wish me luck, Mom."
"Go get him, tiger."
She inhaled the comforting, warm fragrance of her mother's perfume and smiled.
There were only two things in life Vegeta needed, beyond the basic requirements for survival: a challenge, and privacy.
Should one of those terms not be met, he could be found prowling, pacing, and snapping at anyone unabashedly like a caged animal. He didn't ask for much, but those two things were absolutes.
And for the most part, they were easily met. He was fiercely competitive in certain areas of his life, self-important, easily insulted. He didn't try to hide his low expectations of everyone around him, and consequently, they gave him a wide berth, aside from the bumbling of Raditz and Nappa, who were impervious to his disparaging.
He lived happily alone and in comfort inside a sleek condo which overlooked an impeccably manicured lawn. He was a homeowner, he was a shareholder, he was a doctorate holder, he was an established, envied attorney.
However, tonight, both of those conditions of his existence were egregiously non-existent.
He had nothing to do tonight, frankly. Nothing to do. Things sat in his apartment, unobserving, unjudging, undemanding; sophisticated, soulless decor to elevate his living space and impress guests. Suddenly, they held no appeal. His decor didn't connect with him. His lifestyle didn't interest him. Nothing interested him. No one interested him. His condo was impeccably clean, his sleek, modern furnishings tidy and mostly unused. Even his bed was neatly made, his marble and stainless steel kitchen winking with immaculateness—the only two areas of his house he really utilized. At one time, he took a lot of pleasure in furnishing and enhancing his personal space. Now it seemed an incredibly boring, pointless task. The furniture, the pictures, they'd all taken him to a height of removal from character and fun, and now he felt them contrived and cold. He resented them just for being made to do so. At one time, he was maddened with making his home a true representation of a calculating, sophisticated urban male. Someone he ought to be. Now the purpose seemed empty. Now it seemed beneath him. Now he was more or different than that person he ought to be. He paced around, muscles clenched, bristling.
There was the kitchen, and food, another pleasure of his, and yet, cooking for one tonight seemed irrational. And lonely. And it required a measure of feeling on his part, of pleasure and excitement and challenge, but all he had was resentful confusion.
And, lastly, the fact that had him boiling over: his cars required no extra care tonight. Not even an oil change, not even air in the tires. For some obscene reason, they didn't need him, and they were silent, finished. For some infuriating reason, finished was maddening him. If there was nothing to attend to or lift him up in his home, than he could always prowl out to his garage and enhance the already top tier performance of his sports cars. He yanked a few pounds of beef from the fridge and threw it on the counter with an almost shameful amount of frustration.
Immediately changing his mind, Vegeta stomped into his front room, where his gym awaited him near the elegant bay window. Free weights, a pull up bar, a mat. It was one of his small pleasures in life to clear his mind and challenge his body and mind with intense interval workouts and strength training. So he bent and hooked his legs under one of the barbells that sat silently beside the mat and burst into a flurry of sideways sit ups with all of the intensity of a man at the end of his rope.
Up, down, elbow to knee, and the familiar anaerobic burn coursing through his muscles. He shot up and grabbed the handles of the pull up bar and pulled his densely muscled body up easily. One, two, three, one hundred, and all of this nominal counting the only thing to occupy his mind, except that wasn't true, because back there, it lingered, the knowledge that he wasn't finding this completely thrilling. How many times had he done this before? It was a routine, and although he was someone who really relied on routine, who really found comfort in routine as A-type and controlling as he could be, the familiarity this time around seemed to alienate him, and the practice seemed juvenile.
Vegeta let himself fall to the floor where he caught himself easily on his toes and palmed his jaw, running his hand over his skin, where trace amounts of bristles were beginning their evening scourge.
He hadn't shaved today.
It should have shocked and repulsed him, but it didn't. He hadn't shaved today.
There was a fierce thirst for something growing in him, and Vegeta, having spent all this time working on very few things he found satisfying, was feeling angrily confused about why they could just suddenly not be enough. A part of him was alarmed and panicked. With single minded intensity, he'd burst though every hurdle life—his father, for example—had thrown at him since he could remember. He had been on a one-way, linear path upwards without ever straying. To feel disconnected from the Vegeta that put enormous amounts of energy into the straight and narrow for years and years was absurd. He wondered if he should bite the bullet and call a therapist. This kind of numb disconnect should alarm him. But for a reason he couldn't decipher, he was mostly just frustrated, like the answer was right under his nose and he was too stupid to figure it out.
Before he knew it, he was standing in front of his carport outside, his fists clenched lightly. He didn't even care that sweat dampened his white shirt between his shoulder blades from his momentary flurry of exercise, that he could be seen by his neighbors in anything under the highest level of control. He stood in front of his Kami forsaken Ghia and hated it, with a burning, churning in his gut.
It was perfect and he hated it.
The early June evening was descending over West City and he hated it.
His condominium complex was quiet, well-landscaped, and he hated it.
He couldn't feel anything but anger and not pride at the conditions he'd worked so hard to put himself in, and he hated it.
And as if in answer, the sound of a loud, raw motor making its way through the complex rollicked up his spine, and he glanced up from where he stood, just inside the pool of streetlight above his carport. A motorcycle rounded the corner a few complexes over, and he felt a mild spark of interest upon recognizing that it was no normal motorcycle, but a bobber, an antique.
His eyes were glued, something pulling the bike and him together, connecting them integrally. He watched it near, and knew instinctually who it was, watched her pull up to his garage without blinking and, with one leg, kick off the motor and kick down the kick stand.
The figure threw her leg over the seat and stood. He couldn't see her face, hidden as it was behind a bubble helmet colored the same deep champagne and burgundy of her bike. The figure walked towards him slowly as she pulled the helmet from her head, and he couldn't control his gaze as it raked up her shapely legs before lingering on the spill of curls from under her helmet.
Bulma Briefs regarded him with a small smile.
Although his expression didn't change, something in his chest warmed him through.
She cradled her helmet under her arm. Her jacket was the same shade of burgundy as her helmet, but her lips were a racy red, a beckoning, teasing, powerful red that seemed fitting for the woman that prowled under the laid back exterior. She regarded him with honest, up-front blue eyes, with a mixture of uncertainty and resignation crossing her face, and he took a step towards her.
"Hey," she breathed.
He realized a moment later that he hadn't spoken. He tried to make a noise but couldn't.
"You ride?" He finally said. It felt stupid after he said it. Of course she did.
She nodded hesitantly.
"Honda CB550?"
She nodded more enthusiastically, and turned towards her bike. "I don't get a reason to ride it enough, honestly." She smiled, patting the seat.
"So you must have a reason now."
She blushed a little, embarrassed. He immediately regretting saying it, putting it out there so soon, everything that stood between them. The look of uncertainty on her face churned his gut. Inside him was growing need to make her fearless around him again. He suddenly, desperately wanted to see her biting back, he wanted to watch that unapologetic backbone straighten. But for the first time in his life, he wasn't really sure how to go about it. Plans failed him. Being...being enchanted by a woman, a woman he could respect and boast about….Men were schooled on what to chase and how to woo, but they weren't prepared for women who interested them, women who they felt a hard attraction to simply because of their character. Her red lipstick made him feel stripped bare because it was on her lips, and not someone else's. Her humble nature made him feel humbled without feeling humiliated or unrepresented, in a way he needed to feel divested, in a way that made him preen at her respect and attention.
He didn't know this Vegeta, but this Vegeta seemed to know who he was, to know just what he needed to do.
"I'm glad you showed up." A dark smirk rippled across his features.
Her eyes widened. "You are?"
"Yeah. I was just about to rip the Ghia apart."
Her face lit up even as she frowned. "Why?"
"Because I'm pissed off." He looked at the ground cooly, his voice free of emotion. "I'm bored."
She took another step in his direction, and looked around his garage, before making a face.
"Do you have the tools to take it apart?" She regarded the clean garage warily.
A cheshire grin creeped over his face, and her eyebrow rose as his eyes gleamed wickedly.
"No, but you do."
She snorted. "You want to use my garage to tear into this beauty?"
He was already palming the keys and shooing her back towards her bike. "You lead the way," he called as he descended into the drivers seat of the Ghia that he was suddenly overcome with butterflies to destroy.
She shuffled back uncertainly to her bike before tucking her head back into her helmet and starting up the engine with a raw, ripe roar.
Well, the hard part's over, she thought.
The garage door opened with a shuttering racket, and the Ghia rolled in smoothly. Vegeta put it into park and opened the engine to a roar one more time before shutting it off.
The night was cool for June, but Bulma shrugged off her jacket and opened the other garage door to let the night in. She was already shoving the jack under the Ghia and tromping on it, and Vegeta was filling with something like desire watching her, prowling around behind her. He ran his hand over his jaw with a gruff sigh, and that's when he saw it: an old juke box, lit red and gold and illuminating the inside.
He drifted over and scanned the catalog, and he felt her near his side. She was giving him a guarded look that he couldn't decipher.
"Where did you pick this up?"
"I traded a camper for it. Guy had it on his trailer, wanted a rusted out Westfalia sitting on the lot." Her lips thinned a bit as she regarded him, the gold and red light bathing their faces. She was all gold skin, bright eyes, red lips, and he couldn't help but to want to kiss those lips into submission.
He chose a song, and her eyes widened a bit.
"I haven't listened to this stuff since college."
She smiled at him, a real one that reached her eyes, which sparkled with delight. "This is their best album."
"I disagree. Doolittle was their best album." His dark eyes were molten in the light.
She felt the tension between them in her gut, and her self-preservation cautioned her to sprint away from it.
She backed up and handed him the socket wrench as she walked backwards to the car. "So are we going to get this engine out of there or what?"
He watched her back away with a predator's interest.
She leaned over the engine bay and began working the bolts that held the engine to the car, before whipping around and glaring at him. "Hey, I'm not doing this alone, buddy."
It was stupid, stupid, stupid, but he was reeled towards her like a fish on a line, and before he knew it, he was cupping her jaw and smiling down at her and she was pressed up against him, that amazing, soft body of hers, the scent of her imprinting itself on him, and he placed his other hand on the small of her back, warm through the thin fabric, feeling her tense. "Can I kiss you," he heard himself say distantly, with need, and he tore away his eyes from her lips to see her watching him anxiously.
"Vegeta," she began, with a note of disapproval, and he growled.
"Bulma," he rumbled dangerously, his palm running along her back with a mind of its own.
"I...We need to talk about this first...Need to establish some rules...Talk about what happened..."
"I disagree."
"I won't do this with you again unless we do," she argued firmly.
"Then let me tell you what happened." He cupped her face and stared down at her. "I saw you that night months ago with Goku's woman. She wanted us to meet." His mouth got closer to her own. His breath was on her lips. "You were uppity and defiant and unashamed. You were the exact opposite of other women I've had the displeasure of dating. You didn't stroke my ego like you were supposed to. Instead, you soaked it in gasoline and lit it on fire." His lips brushed hers, feather light. "I detested it," he snarled, nipping her nose lightly. "You left in the loudest, most mortifying way possible. Chi Chi sent me to get you back. I refused. She made me. I do not tolerate those who don't show me respect, and time and time again, you've disrespected me. Or, rather, redefined what respect, and pride, means." His eyes narrowed even as his thumbs stroked her cheeks. "We wound up at your apartment," he continued, "where you were kind enough to offer me dry clothes and make fun of my hair," he protested roughly, before pressing his lips against her eyelids. "I answered a phone call from my secretary in the middle of an intimate moment and then accused you of making a big deal of it when you balked. I just wanted to kiss you rotten, I didn't know how to react to your criticism of my actions and still keep face, but you told me to get out. And when I left your apartment in front of Chi Chi and Goku that one morning, do you remember accusing me of making a big deal out of what was going on between us?" She nodded uncertainly. "It is a big deal," he reasoned against her lips, before pulling her top lip into his mouth possessively. "You wouldn't follow the rules. You wouldn't let me boss you around. I've never met anyone as infuriatingly subversive as you, and I've never wanted anyone more." His lips settled into the curve of her ear, and lightly, slowly, his tongue traced its contours. "You object to everything I do, and you enjoy the things about me that I didn't think mattered. They do matter," he attested roughly, looking into her eyes again darkly.
"Vegeta no'Ouji," she choked out weakly, "I...somehow...know exactly what you mean."
"Let me kiss you," he demanded gently, her face in his hands.
"Okay," she breathed without protest.
He kissed her.
Her lips melted into his as he pressed them against hers vehemently, and she clutched his face. If there was any way to kiss with molten, uninhibited pleasure, he was showing her how, pressed up against her as he was, mouth hungry, chests heaving against the other. He hadn't yet opened his mouth and she was already melting into a puddle into his hands; she gripped him harder.
"Tell me that you want me," he demanded into her mouth, one hand leaving her to snake around her waist and pin her against him possessively.
"I...I don't know."
It was crazy, given how she'd already turned it over for days, whether or not she should approach him again, whether or not they could even have something that was even close to a normal relationship. It had seemed like, in retrospect, that the only thing they were any good at was intensity, and she knew from experience that a relationship needed more than just intensity. It needed understanding, and patience, and no inhibitions to breathe easily. She wasn't sure even now if he was capable of that, if even she was capable of patience, of dealing with his own intensity, his sharp tongue, his cruel defensiveness that lashed out immediately with steep consequences. Was she strong enough for that? Was he able to relax enough to enjoy her, to do the things normal couples did, like go out to eat, like greet each other's friends? She wasn't sure how any of that could really work between them.
"Let me prove it to you," and his mouth opened against hers, and his delicious tongue was in her mouth, his nails against her neck, and she sighed into his mouth. Her hands were against his pecs, wide and jutting outward from his chest, and they made their way down without any thought to where his dense waist curved towards his spine. He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her in close, and pressed his mouth against her hard. She opened her own wide, wanting to take him all in. "I've never met anyone like you," he told her haltingly as his mouth ransacked her own, "I've never been so uncertain I should see someone ever again, for fear of who you turn me into," he explained against her neck, his mouth making her arch backwards in sharp desire of it, "I've never met a woman I've been interested in, who sets me on fire like you do, who leaves questions unanswered like you do." His mouth was filling the dip of her collar bone, and she felt a growing answer in her lower abdomen, settling in the juncture of her thighs. His hands were around her waist, and they were burning into her.
Her small hands roved around his strong, thick neck, the curve of his shoulders and the top of his chest revealed by the neck of his shirt which she just found so delicious. She couldn't help it and drew him in against her, wrapped her tongue around his hungrily, wildly.
His hand, sensing her mood, tugged her shirt from the back of her jeans that she'd worked so hard on tucking. It shot up inside and pressed against the bare small of her back before running up her spine, and she felt herself boil as his fingers grazed the clip of her bra.
She wanted his hands everywhere, everywhere politely mannered hands weren't supposed to be. She wanted him to grip her breasts, she wanted him to acknowledge the pressure that was growing between her legs. She moaned into his mouth and tugged his shirt up, up over the ridge of his abdomen, and he helped her, pressing her against him with one hand as the other grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled it over his head, his hair quickly resettling from the constraint of the t-shirt neck into its upwards flame. She gripped his arms, hard mounds of muscle, hot and bare.
He swept her from the back of the car to press her against the Ghia's door, which was probably for the best, as weak-kneed as she was becoming. She ran her fingers over his hard nipples, the thrill of them against her palms, which earned her lips a little nip. He sucked her tongue into her mouth and chuckled as she lost her footing a little bit.
She released him and began fumbling with the buttons of her shirt. He understood where she was going and responded by making it as hard as possible for her by running his hands over her breasts and squeezing them gently.
He moved to rip her shirt open but she cried out. "No, don't rip it! I just bought the stupid thing."
He cast her a dark glower and ripped the yoke open, spraying buttons. "Don't tell me what to do."
"Oh, no you didn't," she reprimanded him impetuously. He showed her he did by cupping her breasts in his hands, spilling out from his fingers, and staring her down.
Pressing her mouth roughly against his, Bulma wrapped her arms around his neck and arched her stomach into his, the bare heat of his skin driving her wild. She disengaged from the kiss for a moment to rub her cheek possessively against his, kissing down his jaw and then up, up into his mouth, before she unhooked her bra and tore off what remained of her top.
His hands were lightning quick and already cupping her bare breasts, which spilled into his hands, soft and aching. His wet mouth made its way down her neck, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, wanting him closer, wanting to feel his need for her.
Finally his descending mouth made it to her pale pink nipples, and he held one captive between his teeth, and it hardened painfully in his mouth, earning a small strangled cry from her above him.
"Do you want me?" He asked her perilously. Daring her to say no.
She fingered the waist of his pants and intercepted him with her own question. "Do you want me?"
Distantly, behind from the roar of his desire, he understood the weight of the question. Will you run away from me again? Will you be embarrassed of me? ...Will you stay?
"Yes, I want you," he replied throatily, sinking his hands into her hair and pressing her against the hard evidence below his waist. "You bet your ass I do."
As Vegeta set her carefully onto the hood of her car, where he peeled her pants from her legs and she laughed at his struggle to get the constraining things off, the pair melded into the gold and red glow of the juke box, softly emitting its tinny rock music, the dim incandescents from the shop lights bathing their bare skin in warm light as he began to slowly move against her, inside her, their foreheads pressed against the other's as they gazed at one another in understanding.
The Ghia rocked lightly to the rhythm of their hips and a balmy breeze drifted throughout the shop and through the car parked on the curb outside the shop, where two grown men sat huddled, sharing a pair of binoculars.
"Oh my god, I should be recording this," the one with long, thick hair cursed, sliding down deeper into his seat covertly while pressing the binoculars against the window.
"Roll down the window, Nappa, and hand me the bag of chips," he demanded, "before I steam it up."
"Are they doing it?"
"What do you think, asshole?"
Raditz popped a handful of chips into his mouth and smiled with smug satisfaction. "We did it, Nappa. We finally brought them together."
He heard Nappa snort from up front and resettle his hulking form into the too-small drivers seat, the car jerking left and right with the weight of him.
"Can we please go to Bazookas after this?"
The End!
Thank you so much for reading and showing your support! I'm so thankful for you all, and deeply flattered that you've bothered to read this. This was just born out of my need to read something silly but romantic, and I'm humbled that it's gotten the response it has. Thank you!