gorysortofstory | OPEN SHIP WITH ME POST

They can't, not really, but notice how he failed to tell her it wasn't necessary. Whether he's letting her carry on with such unnecessary things because it'll appears her or cater to some budding, begrudging acceptance of her presence is up in the air. But he's sucking in a sharp breath through clenched teeth when the antiseptic touches his wound and stings, just as she warned him it would.

He'll deny making the sound should she ever bring it up.

Curious, he turns his head watch her as she applies bandages to the wounds on his back. She went from hotheaded and brash to gentle and caring at the drop of a hat.

Fascinating. (So fascinating, that he forgets he's staring.)

She smirks a little as he hisses at the sting. "I told you it would hurt." No, she can't resist the urge to tell him "I told you so" but at least it's mostly in good humor. Mostly.

It surprises her what a good patient he's being. Even more when he turns his head to watch her. Although Bulma is no fighter herself she's spent enough years around them to learn how to patch things up pretty well.

Eventually, the staring gets to her a little and she speaks again. "What? Am I not doing it to your liking or something?"

She never knows how quite to read him. (Maybe that's part of why she likes to push his buttons, to see how he might react).

"No," he answers. "Were you doing anything I disapproved of, you would know it."

She wouldn't be this close to him. Allowing her to get within close proximity to him with his guard down (literally, his ki would barely register on the senses of those trained to sense power levels) spoke volumes he wasn't sure she understood. Volumes he wasn't sure he wanted to her (or himself) to understand.

"Am I bothering you?"

She realizes he doesn't tend to trust easily. That much seems pretty obvious and she tries to respect it because from the little she knows, she guesses that makes sense.

"No. If you bothering me, you would know it." She parrots his own works back at him. And it's true. While she may not have the strength he does she tends to be very loud and opinionated when things bother her. She's never been one to bite her tongue.

He watches her carefully, as if she's a series of screens caught between transition slides about to change at any moment. Watching doesn't seem to give way to anything he's looking for however, and he relinquishes his staring with a sigh, resting his chin in his hands.

"You're perplexing."

"How am I perplexing?"

She's finishing up taping up the bandages. At the very least it'll keep from blood getting everywhere, if nothing else.

"There's a hole in your bedroom wall the size of my fist, yet you're taking the time to treat my injuries. It's contradictory. You ought to be withholding treatment."

Not that he needs it or is complaining, he's just confused. Vegeta has a hard time discerning what she wants from him, something he finds as frustrating as it is fascinating. It's been a long time since someone's been able to elude him with their intentions before -- or, perhaps, it's that he's never really encountered anyone who's shown him any measure of real kindness. It's baffling.

"You were bleeding on my couch, I would just be making more work for myself in the long run if I didn't."

Plus it seemed wrong not to offer to help -- not that anyone would blame her if she withheld it. Her friends think she's crazy letting him stay here, and maybe she is but no matter what a pain is he she can't imagine throwing him out. It's not like he has someplace else to go.

"Minor blood loss."

The shrug he punctuates this doesn't help the bandages stay secure. Were he anyone else, he'd mumble an apology, but Vegeta doesn't apologize. He just looks as if the fault were hers and not his, closing his eyes and tilting his head against one hand so he can let the other drop and dangle off his knee.

A few minutes of silence pass before Vegeta impulsively asks: "Why am I here?"

She doesn't like him. None of them do. (Not that he can blame them.) Her mother is a nuisance, her father seems to only be tolerating him for his daughter's sake, and her friends are in and out, fluttering about as if they're taking turns checking up on her to ensure he hasn't killed or enslaved everything with the Capsule Corp name.

Awesome. The bandages are already beginning to bunch up. Well, at least she tried. She supposes that's all she could do, really.

The question surprises her a little, and she actually considers her answer for a moment before speaking.

"Well, there's the obvious reason which is that we're going to need as much help as possible when the androids come. It's in my best interest to offer our facilities to you." But that wasn't all of her reasoning, which leads to:

"Besides, I figured you didn't have any place else to go -- I was surprised you took up the offer though." He complains about Earthlings all the time and yet he lives with three of them.

He glances back at them, and then to her, as if he's expecting her to fix them. Moreover, he's still hunched forward, giving her the opportunity to do so. Normally, once a task that required someone to be within his personal bubble was completed, he backed away (or shoved them away, whichever proved to be more efficient). He's not. He's just sitting there, watching her like some sort of feral beast who's unsure of whether he was dealing with friend or foe.

"I'm not fighting to protect you or this miserable world," he reminds her grumpily.

Vegeta just wants to fight. Fighting is all he has left, really. If he keeps fighting and builds up his strength, then maybe one day he'll be presented with an opportunity to avenge his people and actually be able to take it without that purple-haired stranger or that clown, Kakarot, robbing him of the victory he so desperately needs.

"Like you said, I didn't have anywhere else to go."

The admission is a quiet one, a rare moment of raw honesty from someone usually so carefully guarded. Anyone who got close enough to him could see that his tough, bristly exterior was more or less an act, a security measure taken to protect himself from the cruel harshness of the reality he's lived since childhood — but most people never get that close. Most of those who've managed are dead and gone, some by his own hand.

She begins to work on adjusting his bandages, fixing them so they won't ride up so easily now. It surprises her in some ways that he's still letting her touch him. Early he had been annoyed at her doing so at all and yet now he's letting her do so without any argument.

"Right, you don't want to help us, you just want to fight."

She never knows what to make of him. Does he just tolerate her company because it's easier than fighting with her? Or is he just that lonely? Like they both said he doesn't have anywhere else to go. If her family hadn't taken him in who knew where he would end up. Her friends think she's crazy for putting up with him. More than once it's been suggested she should throw him out but she can't get herself to do so.

Sure, he's a pain in the ass and he's going to get himself killed if he doesn't take better care of himself but he's not all bad. There are moments where she gets glimpses of something beyond that angry, bristly exterior of his. Sometimes he seems so surprised when she tries to help him -- like nobody ever has before.

It's kind of heartbreaking.

At first, Vegeta suspected that she was being nice to him because she wanted something. It took a month for him to realize that there was nothing she wanted from him, she merely wanted to help him. Why she wanted to was beyond him, but he begrudgingly accepted that she wasn't doing so with any ulterior motives in mind. And why would she? She was well off. Her family was wealthy and she was a genius. Even someone from a warrior race knew how to recognize and appreciate that.

He wasn't used to it, however. She still caught him off guard with her patience, with her willingness to put up with him when he opted to spit venom instead of exercising patience of his own. He could insult the damned woman left and right and she'd just stand there and roll her eyes at him like he wasn't a superior being that could snap her in half like a twig.

"You're not afraid of me, are you?"

There's nothing she really could want from him, honestly. Sure, his help against the androids is important but his pride and need to fight has basically guaranteed he's going to do that already. It would be much easier if she had just kicked him out. Maybe if she had things with her and Yamcha wouldn't have gotten as tense as they did towards the end.

Or perhaps they were always headed towards that road and this just jumpstarted it.

Still, it's easy enough to tone out Vegeta's venom most of the time. It rarely has any weight to it. If he really thought she was all those things he probably wouldn't stick around -- gravity chamber or not. He could snap her like a twig but if he was going to?

He would have by now.

She shakes her head a little. "Not particularly. If you were going to hurt me why would you wait it out this long?"

His hand shoots out, fingers stopping just short of her face. It's almost as if he expects her to flinch or dash away from him, or maybe it's because he knows that she won't. He finds her lack of fear as fascinating as it is frustrating. Vegeta thrives on being intimidating, knows how to operate around those that fear him. She presents him with a unique challenge in not responding to his usual methods, of taking the time to watch and listen.

"You should be." The tips of his fingers lightly graze her cheek. "Maybe I'm biding my time."

Maybe it's stupid not to be afraid -- but she simply isn't. Even as his fingers brush against her cheek, a light graze more than anything else. Even when he's been angry and pissed at her because she's refused to give into his whim or whatever else they had been fighting about he's never touched her in a harmful manner.

He easily could have. He may have a punched a hole into her bedroom wall and she's not happy about that but she also recognizes he chose to hurt the wall and not her.

"Maybe." She concedes. "But at least for now, you need me alive. To fix your gravity chamber. To create more bots for you to train with. So if nothing else I have the insurance that I'm too useful for you to kill."

That's the difference between himself and Goku. Vegeta was very aware of his own strength and knew what he could do. Humans were fragile and needed to be treated with care, and he wasn't someone to smack down one who wasn't an opponent. The things he did while under Frieza's command were different; he followed those orders to ensure that his life remained intact, and he fought Goku and the other Z Warriors because they started conflicts with him first. They saw him as a threat — as they well should — but all of their information on him came directly from how he behaved on the battlefield.

None of them knew how Vegeta was when he was simply existing. All but Bulma, that is.

His hand fell away. "Insurance. How degrading."

It's true. Despite how terrifying he can be on the battlefield when off it Vegeta can be surprisingly gentle. He's never once hurt her -- or her parents either (though she's fairly certain he's wanted to a few times when it comes to her mother). She even once found him carefully setting her dad's cat on the grass when it had snuck it's way into the gravity chamber.

At his comments she shrugs her shoulders lightly, a small grin tugging at her lips.

"Well, it's either that or you keep me around because you actually enjoy my company. Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

Vegeta wouldn't call it gentle. What she saw as gentle, Vegeta called control. He could break her in half, yes, but could and would were two entirely different concepts, as was should. There were things he did under Frieza's command that he wished he could take back, things Goku and his army of insipid idiots would never allow him to forget, but they hadn't been actions that were his own. In spite of what they may thing, he knew the difference between right and wrong.

He was just a dick about it a good portion of the time. (Kami forbid that someone notices that he gives a damn about someone other than himself.)

"Stop that at once." His eyes narrow, but the irritation in his voice isn't as thick as it could've been. "You act like you know things. You don't."

For a genius Bulma sometimes engages in some questionable behavior. Like taunting a saiyan prince. Which is exactly what she's doing right now. Her grin only spreads wider.

"It's okay," She assures him in a placating sort of voice. "I won't tell anyone that you like me. Or that you might actually enjoy the company or someone other than yourself. I would hate to ruin your reputation."

His reputation of being a dick. Which he is most of the time. But sometimes, like right now, he's actually tolerable company. Not that anyone would ever believe her about that.

Edited 2015-01-12 06:48 (UTC)

He snorts. "Don't flatter yourself."

Yet he makes absolutely no move to leave the room, instead leaning back against the couch now that she's done tending to his wounds. Vegeta puts his hands behind his head, closing his eyes.

In all honesty, he didn't mind her. Much. And he actually enjoyed arguing with her and the challenge that she presented when it came to her tolerance for him. Most people couldn't stand (or dared) to be within four feet of him, yet she was brazen and foolish enough to get up close and personal without concern for her safety.

Without bothering to open his eyes, Vegeta removes an arm to gesture towards the television. "Bring something up on the screen."

Remotes and the fact that those screens were called TVs weren't something he'd grasped yet. Vegeta didn't watch TV, and the only reason he was demanding she put something on was so he could focus on something other than her and do something with his time that was less boring than nothing while she insisted he take it easy for one night.

He absolutely refused to put further thought towards why in the hell he was even bothering with complying.

Bulma lets it drop for now. She knows better than to push too hard with him -- unless they're actually arguing which is something different altogether. She actually kind of enjoys that he doesn't back down with her as easily as many of her friends do. He can be as stubborn as she is, if not more so. Sometimes, that's frustrating and a pain in her ass but other times? It's kind of refreshing.

Not that she would ever admit that out loud. Lest she give him ideas.

Instead she grabs the remote for the tv, flipping through the channels as she tries to find something suitable to watch. She pauses briefly on a baseball game but it reminds her too much of Yamcha so she keeps flipping through. There's a few nature shows she considers stopping on but finally she settles on some romantic comedy that was on.

Okay, so maybe sometimes she purposefully chose things just to see how he would respond to them. She can't help it. As a scientist watching an alien react to human culture for the first time was fascinating.

Asking Vegeta to make sense of The Holiday is like asking a frog to sprout wings and fly. He tries to ignore it, to let it become background noise to other thoughts plaguing his mind, but human forms of entertainment are constructed in such a way that it grabs your attention whether you want it to or not. And soon the mighty Prince of all Saiyans is leaning forward, closer to the television, as if the proximity will help him to unravel this romantic comedy's mystery.

"Why the hell would you give a stranger your house?" He asks of her, twisting and tilting his head to peer over his shoulder at her, genuinely baffled. "Is this a common custom that humans indulge in? Am I to expect a new set of weaklings to stay here while you and your family stay in their dwelling?"

Not that he would complain about her mother leaving, but Bulma and her father were quite useful. And tolerable.

She's not sure what's funnier -- that Vegeta is actually actively watching The Holiday or that he's trying to make sense of the plot. Either way, it's pretty amusing and she may of at some point started watching him watch the movie more than the movie itself. She's seen it before, after all.

"Because you wanted to get away from your life for a while, these women aren't giving one another their homes so much as just...borrowing them for a bit. Like a vacation."

At the second question she actually laughs a little before shaking her head. "No. We have too many valuable inventions here to risk someone else staying here and stealing any ideas me or my dad have been working on."

Vegeta's far more intelligent than most give him credit for. Just because he doesn't understand and can't really relate to human culture doesn't mean that he's not smart. He's a brilliant strategist and tactician, and is good at watching and waiting, even when he's impatiently doing so. Although it was done under Frieza's orders, Vegeta's assisted in the conquering and destruction of numerous worlds. There was more to taking over a planet than blowing things up. You had to get to know your enemy first, and that meant observing them.

As far as he was concerned, watching this movie was his attempt at further understanding an alien culture that he was fully immersed in. Might as well, since it was looking more and more like he'd be stuck on this Kami-forsaken rock for a while.

"Unlikely. I'd kill them before they managed to take anything."

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