Vegeta rapped his fingernails sharply against the kitchen table, boring smoking holes into Raditz and Nappa from across the kitchen table.
They shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.
"He did what?"
"We're all surprised, too—"
"You've got to be kidding me."
"Sorry. We're not."
Vegeta shot up from his chair, planted his palms on the table and leaned forward into Raditz' face. "What in the fuck?!"
But Vegeta was frowning with confusion, even as he radiated aggression, hovering in Raditz' vision and causing Raditz' overtired eyes to cross.
"Sit down."
The other men looked at Nappa with mild surprise as he eased out of his chair. "I'll pour some coffee. Let Raditz explain."
Nappa lumbered to the cupboards, searching for the coffee cups with clumsy fingers for a brief moment, before he stilled, wrenching around to hold up an oversized tumbler.
All three men focused on the cup, zooming in on the unicorns and silver glitter that swam in between the plastic and caught the light. 'BELIEVE' was printed in fat pink cursive across the side.
Nappa's face screwed with the effort to understand.
"What. In. The. Hell." Raditz gawked, before his eyes slid slowly over to Vegeta. Both the men stared as Vegeta's cheeks pinkened.
"It's Bulma's," he snapped with more conviction than necessary. He glowered at the duo, daring them to say something, to even breathe.
"Hmm," Raditz mused, eyes lighting up with delight at Vegeta's expense.
Nappa sat a full cup of coffee down in front of Raditz, sloshing coffee on Raditz' lap, who started to stand and protest before deciding he was too tired and settled on sliding down into his chair with a pout. Nappa sat the other mug in front of Vegeta with more care.
Nappa fell back into his seat, which groaned with his weight.
Raditz fixed his coffee with a look of appreciation, then poured enough creamer into it to create a washed out shade of ivory as Nappa chugged the contents of his own mug next to him. Nappa, seemingly producing Vegeta's coffee pot from nowhere, poured himself a second cup of coffee, and then sat the pot on the table within arm's reach.
"Alright. Where do we start," Raditz began, slouching even further into his chair and combing his hand through his hair in a clear gesture of exhaustion. Even his notoriously well-kept hair was as frenetic as he this morning, sticking out from all sides and looping around his shoulders crookedly.
"Last night, you left about six. Nappa and I were chillin' in the work parking lot, getting ready to head to Receiver's for some rum and cokes. Hoping to get laaaiiid," he sung, before bro-fist-bumping Nappa behind him. "You leave. We're about to leave. Out comes Goku, Goku's old man, and your old man. Whatever. We think nothing of it. But we can't help but overhear. It sounds like a pretty important conversation, right, Nappa?" He wrenched around in his seat for approval. Nappa nodded, staring at the ceiling distractedly.
"So Bardock and your old man leave, Goku walks to his car, sees us, and looks like he's trying to avoid us. Naturally, we're like, 'What's up Goku. What's the dillee-o.' You know how we do. But he didn't look so good."
"Sick," Nappa offered behind him, nodding this time at the kitchen tile.
"Yeah, he didn't look like he felt real good. He tries to brush us off real nice-like, you know Goku, and gets in his car and leaves. Whatever. We had a date with the night, know what I'm saying?"
Vegeta looked like he was about to pull out his hair. "Go on," he grit.
"So we're at Receiver's, party's all there but we're not getting a good response from the ladies, we decide to pack up and head to the strip club."
"Of course." Somehow the words made it through Vegeta's clenched teeth.
"So we walk in, flash our ID's, head to the bar, about to be surrounded by ladies, when who the fuck is sitting at the bar but your old man and Bardock."
Raditz paused, staring wanly at the table and massaging his temples.
"They were already trashed," Raditz continued tiredly. "We were thinking of bailing, because who wants to hang out with those old cretins, you know. Probably fuck with our game, you know what I'm saying?" Raditz's head began to shake back and forth. "Oh, no. You wouldn't believe it, but those two…."
"They know how to party," Nappa finished for him.
The men took a moment to regroup from the memory with a sigh.
"I'm halfway down some stripper's shirt," Raditz recalled with growing horror, "and Nappa's halfway into the trashcan puking his guts up when your old man goes, 'Enjoy yourself, kids. This is the last time you'll be able to.' And I'm like, whaaaaat. I'm not really cognizant at this point. That's when he says it."
He looked back at Nappa for confirmation. Nappa was already nodding sadly.
Raditz turned back to stare at Vegeta, pale and sick. "That's when he said it," Raditz explained matter-of-factly. "'I retired today.'"
Vegeta glanced back and forth between them. "It was probably just a figure of speech," he argued anxiously. "Or something someone says when they're overworked and aggravated and finally get some relief on a Friday night."
"Nah, man. He's done. Bardock starts patting him on the back, he's like, 'This is all on me old friend,' and then he pays some stripper to do some nasty things on your pop's face because 'Today he retired.'" Raditz curled his fingers into air quotes on the sides of his face.
"You don't just establish a law firm and then leave under everyone's nose," Vegeta argued, more frantically now. "You don't just go out quietly when you're the fucking senior partner." He was beginning to sweat, a tic forming at his temple.
"Vegeta. Trust me." Raditz pleaded tiredly. "To celebrate his retirement 'the right way,' the assholes…they did something horrible."
Nappa hid his face in his hands.
"What?" Vegeta snapped.
"They took us...to the seediest joint on 39th Street...and paid the strippers there to do terrible things that we will never unsee."
"Never unsee," Nappa reiterated.
"39th Street? You don't mean-"
"Yes," Raditz said, before letting his head fall into his arms on the table. "He took us to Ni-san's. He took us to Ni-san's." The traumatized keen was muffled in the crook of his elbows.
"The gay dominatrix place?" For just a moment, Vegeta's angered face fell into one of childish confusion.
Raditz took a deep breath. "Yes," he admitted defeatedly.
"I'm going to have welts on my ass for days," Nappa confessed, his big face drooping with a weird sadness.
Vegeta stared at them both incredulously before bursting out into laughter. "Whatever, jerks. This isn't bad news at all. This is great news. It means I'll finally get what I've been working towards all these years." He finally took a sip of his coffee and smiled smugly into the sun coming in through the kitchen windows. "With my old man out of the way, there's only one man capable of taking his place. And that's me." A smile hooked the corner of his mouth that sadistic pleasure tugged upwards.
"Nah man," Vegeta heard Raditz mumble.
Vegeta looked sideways at him as he slumped to extreme flatness against the chair, with his arm over his eyes to block out the sun. "It isn't you they chose."
Vegeta froze.
"What do you mean?" He barked quarrelsomely. "I'm the only one who has the qualifications and has put the time in. I've been the stand-in for his job since I joined the firm. I'm his son. There's no doubt about it."
Nappa leaned forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Vegeta with intense foreboding. "They're not promoting you, Junior." Nappa didn't break his gaze, despite what he knew was likely about to happen. "They're promoting Goku."
Vegeta's face went slack.
"Sneaky bastard," Raditz muttered into his forearm at Goku as Vegeta threw on his jacket and shoved his feet into his shoes, already out the door as Raditz was sitting up and looking on at the scene with confusion.
"I'll bet you twenty he goes to Goku's first." Nappa drained his fourth coffee and gawked at the hole in the wall the doorknob had made when Vegeta flung it open in rage.
"Nah." Raditz stared at the ceiling, feeling his eyelids droop, the kitchen blinking black as sleep crept up on him. "This is between him and his dad. Fifty on his dad's first."
"It's a bet." Nappa laid his fat head into the pile of his arms, and Vegeta's kitchen winked out of existence for both of them.
Bulma paced out of her closet for the umpteenth time, pivoted, and headed right back in. Clothes were flung out; some were hauled back in and propped against the front of her body as she modeled them in awkward poses before being discarded again.
She sat on the floor of her closet and slid her feet into several of her mother's shoes that she had borrowed without asking. Her mother just happened to wear her shoe size. Well, very nearly her shoe size. Close enough that if she shoved her feet in and scrunched up her toes they'd go from blistering to agonizing slowly enough for her to meet with Chi Chi for the first time in six months.
Bulma crawled out of the closet and tossed the shoes and clothes back in, the shower of dresses and heels fluttering to a heap in the corner. There was a retro, gold sequined number lying on the bedspread that she felt very strongly must be worn soon. But not today. Bulma sat back on her knees and regarded the closet in defeat.
She stood and padded one last time inside, and regarding the heap of clothes on the floor with a regal, take-no-prisoners scowl that would have even Vegeta envious, she grabbed a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
This didn't have to be rocket science. There was no reason to make choosing an outfit hard on herself. She had nothing to prove.
Well, mostly. A small, stubborn part of her that she had to shove down every few minutes informed her that she did want to impress Chi Chi.
She just...wanted to look adult. In control. In a good place, rather than in the many low places Chi Chi, as her very best friend, had seen her in throughout their friendship.
She never would have thought she'd be this nervous about meeting Chi Chi for dinner, but things weren't the same anymore. As surreal and irrational and crazy as it was, they were different people now.
Thankfully, her generous chest fit into the t-shirt for the most part, and she squirmed her way into the jeans, up over her wide hips, wiggling the hook into the clasp.
She regarded herself in the full length mirror uncertainly before sliding her feet into a pair of sneakers and fluffing her hair. The curly blue mess framed her face like a lion's mane. Not in the elegant way, but rather, the mentally-deranged. She scrunched her nose up and ran her fingers through it.
Now with less frizz, it still sat on her shoulders thickly and shapelessly like a shroud.
"Oh to hell with it," she muttered, tying it back.
Bulma took the stairs two at a time as she made her way upstairs, despite already running late. She hadn't seen her mother all week, what, with her long summer hours scooting their way into her every available moment. The most she'd interacted with her was in the sticky note with a smiley face tacked to the leftovers wrapped in the fridge.
Bulma's mother sat with her back to her in the sitting room of the master floor, nibbling popcorn with high anxiety as her favorite day time couple quarreled over his mistress, who was in a coma, and also pregnant with his triplets that may or may not have been the pool boy's.
"Mom," she issued gently, careful not to scare her as the woman looked on with fear.
"Oh!" Bulma's mother craned her neck over her shoulder to beam Bulma with a smile. "Hi, honey! Going out to dinner with Mr. Handsome?"
Bulma snorted before plopping down next to her mother and diving in for some popcorn. "No," she explained, chomping kernels, "he isn't answering his phone." Bulma allowed an expression of concern to grace her features before focusing in on the drama on the big screen before them. "So, no. It's dinner with Chi Chi tonight."
Bunny gasped. "Chi Chi!"
The women shared a look of understanding.
Bulma broke eye contact uncomfortably.
"Oh, that's great, dear. I'm sure she will be so glad to see you."
Bulma shrugged self-consciously. "Maybe."
"This is the first time you two have talked since you moved out!"
"I know that," Bulma replied wryly.
"What do you think she wants to talk about? Getting back together?"
"We're strictly platonic, Mom," Bulma issued dryly.
"Oh, girl friendships are so much more than that," Bunny explained, crossing her legs at the knee and bobbing her foot happily. "It gets complicated with girl friends. So, she wants to make amends. How wonderful! And by accepting her invitation, you do, too?" Bunny gave her daughter a discerning look.
Bulma scowled slightly and grabbed another handful of popcorn. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Mom."
"I see." Bunny scrutinized the side of her daughter's profile before taking a bite of a piece of popcorn between her small, square teeth. "So what's your honey bunny up to? What do you think's keeping him occupied tonight?"
"Work, probably," Bulma murmured, with a hint of frustration. "He usually answers my calls or texts, but he hasn't tonight." Bulma thought back on Nappa and Raditz' withdrawn faces with fresh worry, but didn't mention it to her mother. It would be too hard to explain all of the...that...that was Nappa and Raditz.
"When are we going to meet the handsome man? Oh! Why don't we invite him over for dinner this week?" Bunny gasped. "Oh, what a good idea!" She answered herself. "We'll have pork chops, and baked potatoes, and pie. Oh! Apple pie or chocolate mousse? Oh, I can't decide. How about both? I sure hope he likes to eat!"
Bulma nearly choked on a piece of popcorn. "Don't you think you're jumping the gun a bit?" She whined.
"Oh, no. It's been how long since you've been in a relationship?"
"Ouch, Mom."
"I've missed spoiling Yamcha." Bulma cringed a little, but Bunny's voice softened. "I want to spoil this new man that has you running over to his house every weekend." Bunny then winked at her daughter. "He must be quite a beast between the sheets, then."
Bulma blushed the fiercest shade of scarlet imaginable.
"This conversation is over." Bulma croaked, standing.
"Well, give my best regards to Chi Chi! I miss my second daughter," she heard her mother say wistfully as Bulma made her way across the room.
Bulma stopped at the threshold before turning back toward her mother with a sad smile. "I'll let you know how it goes."
"Good, dear," her mother called, waving her out as she turned up the volume on her show, already absorbed again in the drama unfolding between her favorite couple and his bedridden mistress.
Two flights of stairs down and she was making her way out of the house, into the garage that was her family's in theory but hers and only hers in practice. In front of her, the ample garage space boasted several top of the line cars: sleek, sexy, expensive, with sleek, sexy, expensive motors. Some imported, some purely conceptual. If they came to Capsule Corporation for engineering and support, the prototype remained here, in her private museum. She ran her hands over one tenderly as she made her way to the other side of the garage, where her Bus sat, stout and out of place.
For a moment, she entertained the idea of inviting Vegeta over to meet her parents.
It was probably too soon, as far as relationship protocol went; and on top of that, where they stood in their relationship was anything but clear at this point. In fact, Bulma thought while worrying the inside of her cheek, it had been going on long enough that it was high time that she get some assurance about what it was they had going on.
Having fallen quick and hard for Yamcha, and then being so out of the dating loop for so long since their breakup, she wanted to pace things very slowly with Vegeta. Compounded by the fact that he was a man that took a long time and a lot of trust to get to know, she was making only centimeters of headway each day anyway.
But maybe, once she worked what was going on between them out of him—because that's what it would be, a veritable surgery to excise his feelings for her—than maybe she would, just, invite him over for dinner.
If he was worried about making an impression—which she really doubted—he shouldn't be, and that was that. Her parents were the easiest people to be around, ever. They'd taken in all of her friends as their own with no thought at all.
The first time her mother had met Goku she'd nearly cried as he left, so in love with his grand compliments of her chili. They'd adopted all the stray cats in the neighborhood in a show of compassion, too, which is how she found her Scratch-arooni. Her parents were good people, and good-natured people, and they made everyone near them feel at home, fast. Even Vegeta couldn't withstand them, Bulma was sure of it.
And asking him to meet her parents would be worth seeing his face when she showed him what her garage held. Bulma giggled under her breath and pulled herself into her bus with tentative hopes and dreams.
Vegeta's Ghia raced up to the penthouse with a squeal of tires. He'd shoved his driver's side door open before the keys had even left the ignition and took the steps two at a time, sneakers slapping against smooth brick, but it just wasn't getting him to his father's townhouse door fast enough.
He was seething, chomping on his own teeth. He was at a level of angry that someone might have labeled DANGER. Anyone with half a brain or a proper flight response would keep their distance and comply with his demands for the right to a promotion, but his father wasn't a normal person. His father had built himself on an empire of self-control and a total lack of emotion. Towards other people, towards himself. Vegeta understood somewhere where logic swam in the torrent of his rage that, if the decision to promote Goku had already been made, than he wouldn't find his father sympathetic or flexible to his demands. His father had already made a choice, and would stand stubbornly with that choice, even if it meant his grave was dug around him.
It wasn't that Vegeta thought he'd be able to change his mind. Mostly, he was just burning through fury. Mostly, it was just the last straw in a whole long chain of events, a whole legacy of his father ostracizing him and treating him as if it were a real hiccup that he'd ever been born.
Vegeta understood that his father was as immovable as a mountain and as compassionate as a snake. His father's world view was informed very much by an industry, of absolute self-control and the chain of command as the path to success. He had no time for beggars, and no time for anything that wasn't making him money and inflating his ego.
That he had even allowed himself to plow forward towards his father's front steps made Vegeta question his own sanity.
But what was sane about the decision his father had made? The decision to promote a lousy paralegal who hadn't worked, slaved, with a fraction of the effort he had, he who had given up hours and years of his life to advance the firms—his father's—interests.
Vegeta had only put in so much time and energy because he was so naturally driven, so addicted to the jolt of pride one got from a well-won victory, to the sweetest reward earned from pure hard work.…Which allowed him to be manipulated, he saw now. Vegeta was a work horse with an abundance pride, and he was convinced now that his father had attached an invisible lead to those traits and tamed him to work for some conceptual reward that now was never to come.
His father had played him. And what made Vegeta so dizzyingly furious was that he had thought all this time he was playing his father for the win. He had been the one advancing his pawns, smirking in the board room, building his own empire to ensure that his father's dynasty was limited without him and finitely relative to his father's retirement. He was the star of the show at his firm and of West City, at this job that had consumed him for a decade now. That he'd sacrificed everything for.
Everything, everything he could have been.
He'd got out from underfoot of his father immediately after private school by joining the military...and had inadvertently wound up in military law. It was discomforting, sure, but law was something he understood and was acutely good at. And because he and his father hadn't spoken since his high school graduation day—and that in the shape of an empty chair in the audience—he didn't care much about how his foray into his father's profession looked. He had cut off contact with everyone he once knew. It didn't really matter what they thought, because they didn't even know where he was.
And then Bardock had found him. Offering him a place among other top lawyers should he just make some alterations to his life, like move back to West City, leave the military.
With livid, breathless anger, Vegeta wondered if his father had manipulated him all along. Was Bardock complicit in it all, too? It was Bardock's son, after all, that had been chosen. He felt squeezing suspicion and conviction run through him, a taut wire plucked and keening that promised a one-on-one conversation with Bardock's son as well tonight.
He had been so careful, so controlled up to this point, because the rewards were right around the corner! Freedom from his father, once he'd finally retired the firm! Pride as the head of the firm! Rightfully earning the envy of the body of litigators that made up this shitty city. For his profession, he'd harnessed the anger and bitterness building up in him, and it supplied him with the boundless energy to keep at it.
Working at Bardock Vejita and Sons was tolerable, because he and his father had only spoken when it was absolutely necessary, professionally, with eyes and hearts shut. Because pride and face came first.
Because the bone attached to the string was floating in his field of vision the whole time.
Vegeta paced outside his father's door with his fists clenched.
He didn't have any room anymore for logic, control, strategy, to hold his tongue like he had so many other times.
The door to his father's penthouse creaked ajar, despite that he hadn't yet rang the bell.
There was only a second to take him in: the man he'd always looked up to, the man he'd hated himself for looking up to. The man that he tried to imitate in so many situations, to prevent himself from feeling the sinking angst and the certainty that he was powerless without his father. With the sinking dread that despite his affection for the man, he wouldn't ever make his father happy, the man who had, through neglect, superimposed himself onto Vegeta's own identity somehow, turning him into a distorted picture of him, with the same flame hair, the same almond eyes, the same hard pitiless jaw and square palms right down to the fingernails. Except Vegeta hadn't received the chestnut hair of his father, the barrel chest, the pug nose. No, the features that he'd been given instead had been a gift from his mother, features Vegeta couldn't scrub away no matter how much his father tried to incinerate her out of him with his contempt.
Vegeta stilled in front of his father, who stared back at him through lidded, hard eyes, and all at once, the thoughts that had been whirling and wrenching him like an emotional maelstrom in his skull stilled, too.
Vegeta looked back at his father, and for a brief moment, there was a sort of calm silence between them as they each regarded this new event wedged between them. As familiar as the other's face was, they were each looking in the eyes of a stranger they had been betting against all this time.
He wasn't looking at someone he had ever comfortably called 'Dad,' and he could barely bite through 'my father.' That thing which society called 'father,' that gene donor which lent him genetic code, and by rights, no matter how much he hadn't earned it, blood. He was looking at someone that he had wanted so badly, even now, to return his feelings. His father was big and untouchable; he had his claws in Vegeta too deep in every facet of his being, this abominable fixture throughout his life that he aspired to be even when he rebelled against it. Trying to touch that hardened statue, praying to it to offer some proof that he heard, that he cared. And he never would.
It was with that final understanding that Vegeta lost it.
His father would never be anything more than a darkness Vegeta could not extract from his heart in spite of how much he tried.
Vegeta balled his fist with that final thought, and an algebra of hatred took over his movements. He swung the fist in an almost perfectly straight line towards the apple of his father's cheek with a complete stillness of mind. It made its way with simple minded determination, with an uncanny speed, so that his father had no chance to duck or flinch away. It was powered by the same fierce determination that he'd gotten from his father, and Vegeta felt a strange sense of zen returning it to him like this. His fist impacted; Vegeta felt something crack and skin crater and yield to his fist in a timeless, soundless moment.
When Vegeta pulled back his fist, shaking it instinctively as it already smarted with pain, time was released from the barrier of deep hatred and flowed forward, and he was staring at his father's hunched form against the doorjamb with numb regard.
His father looked up at him then with loathing, and a little bit of shock, which Vegeta found most satisfying.
"I quit," he heard himself say, and it didn't quite sound like himself. Only as he turned and advanced back down the steps and towards his car did he hear his father rail behind him.
"You won't last a day without us! You're fired! Terminated! Your career's gone, boy! Do you hear me? I'll be charging assault! I'll have your name smeared throughout West City and you'll have nothing, you are nothing!..."
Even as feeling was coming back to Vegeta's body, his heart now slamming in his chest, his knuckles split and throbbing as they clutched the old leather wheel of his Ghia—even as a tingling numbness radiating from his knuckles warred with the jitteriness of the rest of his body, as if he were coming unfrozen—even as his body felt something, Vegeta felt nothing.
Well, that wasn't entirely true.
At that moment, Vegeta understood what he was feeling at dispatching the tyrant and burning all his bridges:
this remote emptiness was freedom.
Vegeta felt free.
Bulma had arrived, characteristically, late.
Not too late, though, because there Chi Chi sat, next to a window in the booth farthest from the door, looking tiredly out the window with a tea cup and saucer steaming in front of her. Her hair hadn't been styled, just thrown back into a low, messy bun, and Bulma could have sworn she was wearing yoga pants.
Chi Chi did not dress this way in public.
Bulma stepped forward in a pantomime of control and slid into the booth as Chi Chi looked up, at first with surprise and then eyes wide open with contained emotion.
"Hey," Bulma said sheepishly, her hand waving a little at half mast on the table.
"Hi," Chi Chi returned, smiling small but genuinely.
"I hope I didn't keep you waiting," Bulma apologized instinctually. "My mom says hi."
"Oh. I hope she's doing well. Give her a squeeze for me."
"Sure."
Chi Chi sat clutching her tea cup as Bulma sat stiffly with her hands in her lap.
"So what's going on?" Bulma asked, feeling stupid for it as soon as it left her mouth. What lay between them was palpable, but still they had to do the charade of, "How are you?" "No, how are you?"
"Oh, nothing, you know, the regular," Chi Chi rambled, holding the cup near her mouth and looking outside, around, anywhere but Bulma.
Her eyes were tired, bruised, even, and her lips were pale and thin.
"Are you feeling alright?" Bulma asked with concern.
Chi Chi nearly spit out her tea and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, muffling a strange noise coming from her that Bulma thought sounded a lot like giggles.
"No." Chi Chi said abruptly, this time really looking at Bulma.
Bulma stiffened as Chi Chi stared at her with intensity.
"I'm pregnant."
Chi Chi said it matter-of-factly.
But she looked terrified.
Bulma's mouth dried up.
"Ohmygod," she said dumbly.
They stared at each other with the awareness until Chi Chi said, "Yep."
"Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!" Bulma hissed, drawing in closer to Chi Chi and taking her hands and shaking them without really knowing why. "Ohmygod!" She finished lamely.
"I know," Chi Chi said with the same level of insight.
"Chi Chi, you look like hell," Bulma said with concern.
Chi Chi's eyes watered and Bulma immediately regretted it.
"That's not what I meant. I just meant, are you okay?" Chi Chi's mouth moved but nothing came out. "Obviously, you're not okay. That was a stupid question. I'm sorry."
Her hands were still holding Chi Chi's, and she squeezed them supportively, looking at her friend with all of her love for her swimming in her eyes.
It was too much for Chi Chi. Her tears got the best of her, and Chi Chi dabbed them gently.
"Why so glum?" Bulma asked tenderly.
"It's just," Chi Chi began, voice thick with emotion, "I'm just so tired, and so sick, and so alone." Her eyes drifted to the ceiling, and Bulma felt a pang in her chest. Guilt. Regret.
"I'm sorry," she sympathized. "Have you been to a doctor? Are you supposed to feel so tired and sick?"
Chi Chi nodded. "It's all just normal for the first trimester," she said as though reciting something she'd read a hundred, million times. "I pretty much bought out the bookstore's 'Pregnancy' aisle."
Bulma suppressed a laugh. "Oh, Chi Chi. Why doesn't that surprise me."
Chi Chi cocked an eyebrow and smiled tiredly.
"How do you feel about it?" Bulma asked tentatively, feeling out of her element. She'd had no friends who had had children. She'd never even had a pregnancy scare. It was the four letter word among any young woman and she knew nothing about it except that it changed everything. Pregnant. Like it was the plague or something.
Chi Chi looked up from under unwashed bangs wanly. "I don't know."
Bulma's voice lowered. "Are you...are you going to...keep it?"
Chi Chi nodded tiredly. "Yeah. At first, I wasn't sure...I know that sounds crazy, but I was just so shocked..."
"That doesn't sound crazy, that sounds normal," Bulma assured her.
"It's just, it's crazy because," Chi Chi's brows knit with distress, "because I've wanted to get pregnant so bad for so long. I want a family, I do. It's just, I didn't realize I'd be so tired all the time, and throwing up constantly. Whoever said it's just 'morning' sickness is a damned liar. And my boobs hurt bad enough I could cry. And I'm crampy all the time. And instead of feeling overjoyed like I thought I would I just feel wrung out and I look terrible no matter how hard I try and I feel bad, I feel so guilty that I don't feel happy..."
The waitress was suddenly at their side, and Bulma smiled an apology at Chi Chi before asking for a Pepsi and a plate of waffles. "Would you like anything?" She asked Chi Chi.
A little green, Chi Chi shook her head sharply.
"More tea, or whatever that is," Bulma ordered, gesturing at Chi Chi's side of the table.
"What are you having, darling?" The waitress asked without looking up from her notepad.
"Ginger lemon ginseng," Chi Chi answered pathetically.
As the waitress walked off nodding, Bulma looked at her friend curiously, who seemed to be drooping in her seat.
"Sounds fancy," Bulma said about the tea.
"It's supposed to make me feel less queasy." She let out a little burp that was more wet than it should have been. "It doesn't. Excuse me." She was already sliding out of her seat and walking clumsily to the bathroom across the room.
Bulma watched her go with an anxious frown, feeling helpless. She stared at the tea cup before sliding her hand into her pocket to check her phone with the anxious need to do something as her friend threw up her tea in a diner toilet.
2 messages.
She unlocked her screen and met with two texts from Raditz.
"is vegeta with u"
followed by
"cuz i think hes in a bad mood."
She snorted wryly.
Her fingers moved over the phone quickly. "He's always in a bad mood. And no."
She put her phone back on the table and thanked the waitress for her Pepsi as it was placed in front of her. She leaned in to take a sip and jumped as her phone buzzed against the table.
That was fast. She looked down.
"I think he might need a bj to calm him down. we'll need pics"
Bulma stared unamused at the screen.
"Why are you so worried about him?" She typed back, sipping on her Pepsi with the straw in the corner of her mouth. She watched the screen.
A wall of text surfaced. "I just really think you should try to talk with him soon...shit got real and I can't find him."
Bulma felt like face palming. What in the hell was he going on about?
"What the hell went on after I left? What did you do to him?"
"I didnt do n e thing!"
"We were supposed to go to dinner tonight but he hasn't returned my calls."
"Fuck"
Bulma rolled her eyes and put the phone down as her waffles appeared in front of her, covered in whip cream, powdered sugar and strawberries and with an extra two cups of syrup. She felt a jolt of glee.
Chi Chi suddenly slid back into the seat opposite her, looking even paler than she had before.
"All better?" Bulma asked her uncomfortably.
Chi Chi nodded slowly, looking at nothing. "Puking makes the nausea go away...but I don't have anything to puke up because I can't eat...So now my stomach hurts, and I'm so achy from all this dry heaving and not eating..."
"And you're sure this is normal?" Bulma asked incredulously, cutting into her waffles.
Chi Chi sipped her tea. "Yeah. Completely normal. It should let up soon. It better let up soon." She frowned, the old Chi Chi showing through. "It's supposed to get better after the first trimester."
"How much longer until that's up?"
"First trimester is twelve weeks….I'm fourteen."
"What?!" Bulma dropped her fork. "So you're...three months along?" She peered at Chi Chi's stomach as though it had grown a head, invisible under the bulky sweatshirt.
"Yep." Chi Chi blew the hair out of her face, her bangs longer than she usually let them go, and oilier.
"So you feel terrible. But I bet Goku's ecstatic," Bulma attempted encouragingly.
Chi Chi's look of guilt was immediate.
The bite of whip cream on the way to Bulma's mouth stilled.
"He's not?"
Chi Chi's mouth began to tremble.
"Ohmygod, are you guys still together?"
"Yes, we're together!" She yelled, causing the people next to them to look over.
"Then why so funereal?" Bulma frowned, not understanding.
"Goku..." Chi Chi's voice trailed. She sighed and hid as much as she could of herself into her sweatshirt. "Goku doesn't know," she muttered.
"What?!" Bulma shrieked, her turn now to disturb the peace around them.
"I haven't told him," Chi Chi admitted in a small voice.
"Why the hell not?" Bulma nearly screeched.
Chi Chi looked defeated. "At first it was because I didn't know whether it was a good time or not. I didn't know...if I should keep it. Now...I just don't think it's a good time to tell him."
"And why the hell not?" Bulma repeated. Her fork still drooped near her mouth.
"Goku has a lot going on at work, and..." Chi Chi's face fell into her hands and her shoulders shook as she began to cry.
Bulma jumped out of her side of the booth to slide in and sit beside her, squeezing Chi Chi's side to her chest.
"He's been so stressed lately, and I haven't wanted to make it worse. The thing is," she said hoarsely, "is I had this all planned in my head. I would get pregnant, we would be overjoyed, I would be glowing, and, and Goku could quit the job he hates, and he would stay home with her and I would support us..."
"Her?" Bulma asked, before making a motion that it didn't matter and that Chi Chi should go on.
"The thing is, is that this would happen after we were married." Chi Chi's sobs wracked her shoulder, and Bulma felt her hot tears through her shirt. "We're not even married—he hasn't even proposed! And now he's been promoted and he's guaranteed not to be around much anymore and there's no way he's going to feel like, like he's in any position to take care of a child...I don't even know if he wants one, because maybe he doesn't even want me, he doesn't even mention settling down..."
"He hasn't noticed how sick you've been?" Bulma asked quietly into her friend's silky black hair. How could he not?
She felt her friend snort into her shoulder. "Sure. He just assumes I've had a lingering case of summer flu. Real lingering."
"Cheech, you have to tell him," Bulma implored. "It's not fair to him that he doesn't know. And it's not fair to you, either. Are you guys having problems or something?" She tried asking her tenderly.
Chi Chi slowly extricated herself from Bulma's shoulder and wiped mercilessly at her eyes, rubbing her face raw with the sleeves of her sweatshirt before taking a breath and sitting straight.
"No. We're as good as ever. I just...I can't help but think...that if he hasn't proposed yet...then he's not in this for the long haul. And then what do I do? I'm knocked up with his child." Chi Chi's jaw began to quiver again.
"I'm sure Goku would be over the moon with excitement. No matter how bad things are at work," she said firmly.
Goku had been a friend of hers for a long time. He was good-natured to a fault. She couldn't imagine her friend reacting poorly to the news of Chi Chi's pregnancy even if he tried. Everyone knew she was the only woman he was interested in being with, so why couldn't she? Chi Chi was overreacting...but then again, she'd never been pregnant, and she'd never had to wait, and wait, and wait for her dream boat to propose to her until they were up shit creek without a paddle and she was just, still, waiting.
She hadn't known Goku had been promoted. Then again, she'd only have found out through Vegeta, who didn't talk much about his work life. She had an idea that he liked to keep work and play cleanly separate, which may have been why he gave her so much hell when they first started seeing each other. She had made a bit of a mess of his rules about work and play.
"He might act like it. But I'm afraid he'd wish it hadn't happened in his heart."
Bulma wrapped her arms around her friend once again and squished her to her chest.
"I'm probably not qualified at all to tell you how you should feel," Bulma began gently, her voice gaining momentum, "but you have to tell him, even if it's hard to do. You've done harder things in your life. You're a strong woman. Tell him, and if he has a problem with it, tell him too bad so sad. If he does whine about it, well..." Bulma stalled. She didn't want to say 'leave him,' but she wanted Chi Chi to understand that she was strong enough to do this... "Well, then." Bulma blew a raspberry.
Chi Chi giggled a little and let her head fall into her arms on the table.
"Enough about me. Go eat your waffles." Chi Chi shooed Bulma, who frowned and maintained her seat stubbornly until Chi Chi pushed her gently out of the booth, grumbling.
Bulma plopped down on her side and bit into a strawberry slice before eyeing her friend once more. Chi Chi looked better now, more composed and aware, like most women after a good cry. Still pale, still in need of a shower and a nap, she looked less peakish and more enduring.
"I don't want to think about it for awhile. It's all I ever think about," she admitted with irritation. "So tell me what's been going on with you. How's shop life going? Is that guy with the old Beetle still coming in to harass you about the thingy whatchyamacallit?"
Bulma laughed sharply. "No! I think he finally realized that he couldn't yell at me for not putting in a new oil filter because Beetle's don't have an oil filter." Bulma took another bite of her waffles, eyes gleaming with amusement. "It's summer, so I seem to have more work than usual as everyone gets out their old cars, but I like the work. It keeps me busy."
Chi Chi smiled conspiratorially. "Goku tells me you and Vegeta are still together?"
Bulma nearly choked on her waffle.
How many times was that going to happen today?
"Yes." She said after she cleared her throat. "Yeah, we are."
Chi Chi's eyes gleamed. "Aaaaaannnnnd?"
Bulma narrowed her eyes. "What is it exactly that you want to know?"
Chi Chi kicked her in the shin. "I want to know how it's going."
A smile blossomed then on Bulma's face, and she winked at Chi Chi before licking the last of the whip cream from her fork. "It's going well! I guess. We really only see each other on the weekends, because we've both been so busy at work. Sometimes he'll pop in at the shop." Bulma trailed off, realizing she couldn't finish her sentence.
"And what, you close shop and you guys get down and dirty?" At Bulma's flushed cheeks, Chi Chi prodded further. "So what, are you guys just hooking up or are you seeing each other exclusively or whatever?"
Bulma shifted uncomfortably, and then sighed loudly. "I don't know, honestly. I want to say we're dating?" She said uncertainly. "Vegeta made it clear...in a really unclear way...that he wanted to, I don't know, 'see' me. He takes me out to dinner sometimes. One time he brought me lunch and told me he wasn't going to make a habit of it." Bulma snorted, and smiled. "I really like him."
"I find that kind of surprising," Chi Chi said honestly, though smiling a little. "Most people find him pretty cold and self-absorbed."
"He can be that," Bulma agreed. "And I can understand why people would feel that way. I think...I think he's just different with me, honestly. I think he lets himself go a little around me, and each day I'm chiseling at his walls, and I think that's good for him. I have fun doing it. I mean, at first, maybe it was just, you know, sexual attraction, but I think we both have a respect for the other that we don't find in most other people. And we kind of meet each other there."
"Soooo...is he at least nice to you now?" Chi Chi took a gulp of her tea and sounded disbelieving.
Bulma nodded, and looked out the window, where the late summer dusk was starting to create a sooty lavender monochrome of the parking lot. "There's something I've come to realize through him that I didn't understand before. Vegeta and I...we come together with conditions, with our identities already in place. We're able to be with each other while still being independent. Since we, I don't know, reconciled, I guess you could call it, we're patient with the other, accepting of the other's quirks and obligations. We just exist together. It's much, much healthier than what I ever had with Yamcha."
Bulma looked up from her waffles slowly to meet her friend's gaze, who stared back at her with alarm, knowing what was between them had finally breached.
Bulma placed her hands palm up on the table and peered down at them. "The head over heels love I had for Yamcha was immature and dependent," she explained slowly. "There was...a desperation and loneliness behind it, which enabled him to make me compromise myself in ways that I wouldn't have ever thought I would for a man. And there was an unhealthy amount of throwing myself away to earn table scraps of his love, 'cause I think he felt trapped, too. Everything was a pissing contest; every time we talked, it was a tug of war. There was no 'just being ourselves' around the other, I realize now. We were just trying to be what the other wanted, or what we thought we should be. Or we were just angry, transformed into this bitter person that wasn't really us, only ever interacting with the thing that our dislike had created of the other. There's none of that with Vegeta. I mean, we had our quarrels in the beginning, but for the most part we just kind of support the other without mincing words, you know? The only thing I think we're missing, honestly, is something I'd kind of like answered." Bulma frowned, voice growing meandering. "Is this a commitment? Because I feel like sometimes there's just no communication. What we have is just, this thing that developed between us that we've accepted as truth, but we haven't talked about what's growing there at all."
Chi Chi looked at her keenly.
"Well, I'm happy for you. Maybe you should talk about it with him, though."
"Yeah, I know."
"No, I mean it. What's so hard about asking him what's going on between you? I mean, it's only fair to you that you know what he expects from you." Chi Chi smiled as Bulma glanced up, recognizing her own language thrown back at her.
Bulma smiled back. "It's hard when it's Vegeta," she whined. "Kami. The man can be so clammed up."
"Even in bed?" Chi Chi took pleasure from the flush that heated her friend's face.
"Definitely not clammed up there."
"Well, then. Let's make a deal." Chi Chi leaned back in her seat, a smirk curving the corner of her mouth. "I'll tell Goku if you tell Vegeta. Tonight."
Bulma's eyes bugged. "Hey! That's not fair!"
"It is too fair! I tell Goku something which needs to be said, and you tell Vegeta something which needs to be said. Then we move on with our lives."
Bulma sipped her Pepsi frustratedly. "Hmph."
Chi Chi smiled excitedly, looking for the first time like she were enjoying herself.
"Fine," Bulma snapped.
Chi Chi giggled as Bulma's phone buzzed on the table between them, and Bulma glanced down.
Raditz.
"'Scuse me, Cheech," she said under her breath as she swiped at the screen and read through the text.
Um, I have Vegeta. Can you come pick us up?
Bulma's eyebrow twitched upwards.
Where are you?
"It's Raditz," she explained to Chi Chi as her friend asked the server for the bill. "Sometimes I feel like I got more than I bargained for with Vegeta, like he came as a package with those two."
Chi Chi snorted with laughter.
"I think I scared them away a few months ago," Chi Chi mused. "They came over to Goku's all drunk on a Saturday night and tried to raid my fridge. I smacked him with a spatula and I haven't seen him since."
A smile curled on Bulma's face and quickly disappeared.
"What?" Chi Chi asked, seeing her friend's face grow pale. "What is it?"
Bulma looked up with an expression of fright, slowly lifting her phone up so Chi Chi could see the text written on it.
We're at the police station.
We've got Vegeta.
A/N: If you think I'm channeling Jay and Silent Bob with Raditz and Nappa's characterizations, you might be on to something.
Except I view Raditz as more of a preening Gaston. Just, with a fouler mouth.