Crying is a No-No

Anyone who knew the first thing about Bulma Briefs could tell you as much: she was a proud, self-sufficient woman.

As such, she was prone to screaming, abusing, manhandling and blackmailing people into doing her bidding.

One thing she was not prone to doing was crying.

But make no mistake – while being who she was, Bulma Briefs was by no means made of stone. She was just as susceptible to feeling like crying as was the next person. However, she was also the type of woman who made it a point not to cry in front of her friends too easily. This is the reason why most of them, to this day, had only seen her tear up only in life or death situations or at the loss of a dear person. (Said person was usually subsequently brought back to life with the dragon balls, but nevertheless…)

The fact she rarely indulged in it didn't mean that Bulma never cried tears of frustration, indignation or sadness which had nothing to do with the loss of a close one though. Maybe it wouldn't seem so to the amateur onlooker but the blue-haired heiress was a very sensitive woman.

Whenever she needed to cry over something that upset her personally, though, she had made it a point to keep it to herself or between her and her parents at most. Ever since she had been a little girl, she had found the most comfort in crying on her mother's shoulder or in her father's gentle embrace.

As times changed and her life situation shifted, Bulma found herself involved with a person to whom tears were a weakness and something to be looked down upon. Not to mention that the man himself was the very epitome of pride and thus would never allow himself to be subjected to such weakness. To Bulma that meant that he most probably sneered upon anyone he saw succumbing to such a shameful act such as crying.

And while Bulma didn't give a damn what he thought about it when she was upset, it did matter to her for Vegeta to respect her. She had worked hard for months upon months to earn his tentative sort of admiration and unspoken respect and she would hate for her hard work to have been for naught.

Not to mention that she had quickly learnt through experience that Vegeta was the worst person to go to for comfort when extremely upset. The sight of her in tears seemed to make him squeamish or disgusted—which, to this day, she wasn't entirely certain—and he wasted no time in lingering in the same premise during such moments. And so, as an adult, whenever Bulma needed to cry, she isolated herself from her lover and her family and cried her heart out. She cried to herself until all she could feel was numbness.

The most curious thing about the Saiyan prince who shared a room and bed with her was that even though he looked down on her "show of weakness" at the height of it happening, he didn't seem to be completely averse to dealing with the aftermath. Whenever she was done crying herself dry and headed to their room to bury herself in a heap under the covers, upon his return Vegeta wouldn't say anything to her but would always find an excuse to put an arm around her waist and pull her to him as he stared vacantly at the ceiling.

The first time he'd done that, she'd broken down in tears again—because she was oversensitive after having cried so much and because it was the most touching gesture he had ever done for her—but had quickly reined her emotions in as she sensed his mounting discomfort underneath her as he held her.

As time wore on and the years passed, experience taught Bulma that the most comforting place to be when she didn't feel well was in her lover's arms. Regardless of how infuriating he could be, or what he thought of her moments of weakness.

Because whenever he held her with tear streaks down her sides, he never breathed a single word to cross her and his touch was kinder than anything she had known her entire life.

A/N: I am back to this fandom. Yeah, baby! And I bring some drabbles for the time being. They're actually a perversion of the idea of the "50 sentences" community on LJ. I just can't write an idea that comes to my mind in a single sentence, usually, and I needed something to start stretching my muse's fingers with in this fandom. So this challenge seemed a good place to start. But I decided I would make drabbles to the prompts instead of one-liners. One-liners are pretty much impossible to me anyway so… :D

Chapter Prompt: Theme Set Alpha, #17.

#17 (Tears) was originally #1 (Comfort) when I started and hadn't taken a good overall look at the prompt table. xd Because it fit the second prompt more, I left it as 17 instead of 1. xd

Hope you liked! I have about a dozen more of these, so let me know if you want me to share them too.