Four printed dating profiles sat on her lap. Just four, whittled down painstakingly by Mrs. Briefs, spread out on Bulma's crossed legs. Four men that her mother desperately wanted her to see—and one of them to burden her with his pleasantries this very night.
"Bulma, honey, you aren't getting any younger here!"
Bulma had scoffed. She wasn't that old! And, hey, she'd already given them Trunks; what more did her mother want from her?
"So handsome!" Her mother had gushed, running her finger down their "About" sections in a caress. "And so caring! Look, this one 'loves to make his lady feel special with small gestures, like a surprise trip to a tropical island for a sunset dinner!'" Her mother pinned Bulma with doe eyes, very impressed. "Oh, a real keeper!"
"If he calls me 'my lady,' I think I'd have to wallop him one," Bulma muttered as she calibrated the baby monitor to an even wider range, screwdriver spinning between her fingers with annoyed energy.
Bulma, with four of the most eligible bachelors on her lap, mused on the fact that this was all very ironic. Not just in the I-already-had-romance-and-look-where-that-got-me way, but because, plainly, Bulma had always been a romantic. Photos ripped from magazines, all starry and hazy at the edges like someone had put vaseline around the lens of the camera. All bare and twitching pectorals, wind-swept hair, and epic passions. Dashing men, whose strong arms would embrace her protectively, whose dedication to her would be inscribed in sweeping script between leather-bound pages and maybe even sold outright as a movie script.…Yes, at one point she'd been afflicted with the teen disease, the all-absorbing lust for a profoundly charged romance.
Though perhaps not so, well…innocently. Bulma had been more curious about the physical mechanics of romance and the push-and-pull game of dominance in flirting, and less interested in flipping through wedding magazines all day. Tulle, cakes, flowers, quiet happy endings—that hadn't been Bulma's jive. No, she'd wanted action, and wow-factor, and fireworks, and desperate, lusty, inflamed confessions of need! She'd wanted a romance for the ages, from a real, hot-blooded man! She had cared less about finding someone ambitious or rich to take care of her—money and success were a currency no man could best her in—and more about finding someone fascinating and gallant with a dash of dark and troubled thrown in like an ala cart side of sour cream. Yamcha had been her desert bandit once, but he'd taken the opportunity for redemption and had settled down. And what they had had was a low burn, with no fireworks or fire or confessions of desire in the pouring rain. And so Bulma'd grown bored and resentful, and Yamcha had grown fairweather.
Bulma had only spent a good chunk of her life pining for searing gazes, yearning for grand gestures, and lusting for physical devotions of white, hot love. And in hindsight, it probably explained why she'd sprang so swiftly from Yamcha to Vegeta. There was no denying Vegeta's grand gestures (300 G's before he'd even had time to acclimate to 50) and devotion (to himself).
And albeit, they were of a different variety...his fingers toying under the hem of her dress as she bent to fix the GR; or how about hoisting her against the hallway wall, sinking to his knees, and burying his face between her legs as her Z Warrior friends were to arrive any moment for her party? Even, she was embarrassed to admit, one time in an empty Capsule Corp boardroom, with her dress hiked over her hips and her panties between her teeth. It was everything that she'd always wanted with all her being and that she'd never known she'd wanted. Needed.
Vegeta had been a man of action, and fire, and dedication, that much was undeniable, and what wasn't grand about that?
She stared down at the profiles of the four men with her lip curled. They were all handsome enough, she supposed, and successful in their respective fields. But they didn't make her blood boil, they didn't make her heart stop. But should they? Maybe she'd never stopped being a romantic, but her tastes had just changed and her expectations had gotten more realistic?
The fridge opened and she startled, head snapping up to find Vegeta scanning its contents. She tried to appear busy, and as usual, he returned the favor. He was wearing sweat pants and a hoodie, but she could make out the curve of his hard calves and round shoulders stubbornly underneath. Athletic fashion's paragon model. The casual Earthling clothes still made her snicker, just because they seemed so…misplaced…on a man so typically condescending. She couldn't get used to how laid back he appeared to be the last few months, though she preferred this new look exponentially to his training suit and gloves, which just reminded her how far a rung she was on the ladder of his prerogatives. The corner of her mouth quirked down. And yet, mixed in with her resentment for his battle suit was a jolt of pride for the man who worked so hard to deserve to wear it.
She tamped down the sentiment firmly.
There was something about him as he plucked things from the fridge that seemed slower, wanner than usual. Her brows knit. Though she was loath to admit it, his odd, worrisome behavior was starting to unravel the anger at him that she (he, she corrected) had so meticulously built.
He wasn't the same man who'd offered up all that searing, electric devotion in the years before the Androids, that was for sure, but he also wasn't that arrogant, overbearing, pigheaded Prince that'd just stepped off Capsule 3, or his even more nauseating twin who'd graced them all with his presence during the android conflict. She'd still have liked to sock him one for showing his face so nonchalantly after she'd gone and barfed up her guts for nine months before bearing him a son without so much as a thank-you-ma'am, but dispatching the androids spectacularly and effortlessly had been the goal from the beginning, right? It wasn't like she should have expected him to go and marry her or anything.
Except he couldn't beat the androids, and he couldn't beat Cell, and he couldn't even beat Cell after his ceaseless training in the Hyperbolic Whatsit. And so now what? Bulma was surprised he hadn't just gone back up to Kami's Lookout once the smoke had cleared and asked to crash there. He'd bailed on her in the most despicable way, in her esteemed and righteous opinion, and had left her with some cruel, harrowing feelings of self-doubt that she could never overlook, and for what? To impress everyone with some fancy moves and dramatic flair? He could go train with Hercule, the empty, pompous schmuck. So count Bulma out of sympathizing with poor, sad Vegeta.
But something tugged at her anger like a child trying to get its parent's attention. It was something like an acknowledgment that this Vegeta was of a different stock: quiet, but not haughtily reserved; unintrusive when he was once pushy; and, moreover, lacking the conceit that gave his every royal #2 importance.
One way that this Vegeta was a mirror image of his former self, however, was that he had been pushing himself to falling apart, coming in from the GR each night nearly in pieces—but for no good reason at all. The androids were no longer a threat, and Goku was no longer alive. She had refused to patch Vegeta back up, the idiot, and reward him for his masochistic behavior. She'd tried that already, but evidently helping a Saiyan demonstrated that you were their doormat.
But she was beginning to rethink that strategy, and in fact, her whole strategy for dealing with his continued presence. Her rules had been set up to protect her from the Vegeta who'd bailed on her; but the Vegeta-who-bailed-on-her was coming apart at the seams.
She narrowed her eyes, watching him carefully from the corner of her eyes. That didn't mean this Vegeta was deserving of her trust. This was the same man who'd left her, after all; what was to prevent him from leaving Trunks? She looked back down at the four profiles on her lap.
These men were boring—at best, fishing for a wife, which wasn't at all in her purview; or, at worst, looking for a night between the sheets, and only one man could keep up with her there. Though Kami could pry that information out of her cold. dead. hands. Vegeta had practically ruined her for other men, and there had been plenty of nights that she'd never speak of—NEVER! EVER!—that involved a bottle of wine, a book of erotica, and a reimagining of some of her most sordid escapades with Vegeta.
Nonetheless, the four assholes splayed in her lap were probably predicable, and that was like a solid chunk of gold perched atop a whole heap of fool's gold. Maybe one would fall for her, bland as he was, and she'd finally get a man that was devoted to her and not his own damned reflection. That was something, wasn't it? She rested her cheekbone on her knuckles and contemplated it. What would her life look like with another man in it? Crowded, she thought immediately, and snorted.
She looked up as Vegeta placed his plate in the sink. He'd inhaled his sandwiches as she'd been lost in thought.
She watched him contemplatively, gaze softening unconsciously. "What are you up to today?"
His eyes flicked over to her as he gulped his water, and he put the glass back down on the counter without turning toward her. "Training," he replied automatically, even though she'd knew that'd be his answer, was ever his answer.
"What is it you're training for?" She stood, tossing the profiles onto the table, and crossed her arms over her chest, ambling forward. "Now that Son Goku and the androids are gone," she explained, tone carefully polite.
He continued to gaze down into the sink. "A warrior never knows what looms around the corner, only that something does, and so he must prepare." It sounded awfully scripted, but there was an edge in it, too, that she didn't like.
"Well, get prepared, soldier," she commented dryly, turning away to leave. "I have a hot date tonight, and you're watching Trunks."
AN: Thanks to all those following and reviewing. And as a cautionary note for those readers who are new to my work, this story is what I work on when I want to, well, exercise. I started it as a warm up for other stories, not to lay down some sprawling, epic storytelling. Sorry. :{ When I sit down to write for this, it's to challenge myself for half an hour. So Legless is slow and weird because it's my emotional, psychological, descriptive drabble trash can. It's one of my favorites to write, though, and because it's open-ended I never have to feel boxed in by what's supposed to happen next. Anything can happen next. And it will, with Vegeta's POV in the next chapter.