There were two eventualities Vegeta had prepared for all his life. One: He'd soar through the ranks of the Armed Forces on the coattails of natural ability. Power and accolades would just fall into his lap. Two: He would finally get off Earth.

This detour to Earth wasn't how it was supposed to happen. It was a dark timeline. Admittedly, he hadn't been planning leaving it all his life because he hadn't been on Earth much longer than a Standard year. But it felt like a lifetime, an eternity ago, when a totally different Vegeta had stomped his way out of a star ship, another Vegeta who'd made some questionable choices and (cleverly) insulted his commander and so kicked rocks up the path to this new, utterly humiliating duty station. Glorious power and freedom, these were that Vegeta's fantasies, and should have been his most mouthwatering prospects.

Today, he was being served a portion of both.

"This isn't what I had hoped I'd be forced to relay to you today," his commander was grumbling, his thick frame wedged uncomfortably in the office chair. He steepled his fingers and glared at Vegeta, who sat slouched sideways across from him, staring with boredom over his shoulder. "Actually, I was relishing the thought of seeing you humbled and put on trash duty for the rest of the foreseeable future." The man's fleshy eyes narrowed. "But those above me don't feel the same way. They say," his commander's voice was a whip crack, "that you've been about as humbled as a Saiyan can be. That there is nothing as antithetical to our nature as the lack of a good fight, and boy, have you been deprived of one. They say," he gusted, "that you ate your humble pie, because there is nothing worse that could happen to a big-headed, loud-mouthed, high-strung Saiyan than having to simply endure a jab at his pride. And that you have. Because, for weeks, you've been an unimportant nobody."

Vegeta's eyes flashed. The commander didn't notice or care. He just held out his hands in confusion, staring into his big palms as if tortured with thought. "But there's been no sound from you. I don't understand it. It's as if I've woken up in an alternate universe, one where Vegeta isn't an irate jackass. You haven't lashed back. For weeks, you haven't attempted even one revenge scheme. It would have failed stupendously, as it always does. But not a single dramatic scene out of you." He turned his suspicions on Vegeta. "You can't sit still for long," he accused. "You're a workaholic, for one. And as my boss keeps reminding me, you're a self-serving saboteur. One insult to your pride and you're retaliating, your common sense left by the wayside, your goddamned battle-honed wits abandoned at the altar of your arrogance."

"Poetic," Vegeta muttered.

"Your rap sheet is a mile long with these temper tantrums. Half the fights you pick are with us. And yet you haven't bitched since we clamped on the wheel boot." The commander's big voice flipped, then, from appalled to cheeky. "And we all know how much you despise this place. That's part of it's appeal. Earth breaks us all, doesn't it?" He smirked at Vegeta's expense, a thoroughly hostile Saiyan gesture.

Vegeta appreciated giving them much more than receiving them.

"We had a pool." His commander leaned back, thumbing his chin. "Lots of losers, we had. Lots of bets lost. Some bet you'd lob a ball of ki at the city and we'd have to go on level one lockdown trying to peel you from your soapbox in the city square. Some bet you'd jettison a star ship and try to wrest the mission for yourself. There was even one bet that you'd abdicate your position and go back home. Wasn't he surprised."

Vegeta went slack jawed for a brief moment before his eyes narrowed and found the spot on the wall behind his commander again. He folded his arms over his chest, resuming his sullen rebellion.

"You're one hell of a hardass, I'll give you that," the commander grumbled, shifting in his seat again in discomfort. "Earth is the punishment, and you're surviving. And, overall..." His commander sighed big, as if all the air was leaving him like a deflating balloon. "That is what makes you such a fine Saiyan."

Vegeta's world crumbled and rebuilt in a second.

The big man's expression softened. "You've served the Saiyan Forces for over half your life. You don't know what it's like to be anything but a fighter, do you? Some say you put yourself first, and they're not wrong—but every bad decision you make revolves around a grand battle. You have to learn restraint, we all agree on that. You put your team in danger when you don't. Following directives from your superiors—admitting you have superiors!—is Military 101. But what's those old, Saiyan religious nuts say? Dei dono sum quod sum."

"By the god's grace, I am what I am," Vegeta mumbled.

"We are what we are, for better and for worse. We are Saiyan. Look around you." The commander's arm swept outward. "Look at all these weak Earthling do-gooders. Think back on every planet you've visited, where all your star-hopping has taken you. There aren't many races that can hold a candle to the power we have just in our pinky fingers. Being Saiyan is a privilege." His glare darkened as he latticed his knuckles together into a fist, then tucked them under his chin to survey the wayward asshole before him. "It sickens me to say, but you have dedicated yourself to being a Saiyan. In every bad decision you make, you're just seeking your best Saiyan self, even if you get in your own way trying to fulfill it. Fuck, it reads like a self-help book. But there's the kicker: A true Saiyan always chases the fight, and you're no exception." The commander's head now sank into his hands. His thumbs rubbed little circles against his temples. "Learn to swallow humility every once in awhile, Vegeta. Embrace the struggle. Don't resist it." With one last, aggrieved sigh, Vegeta's boss looked up and pinned him with a hard stare. "Despite all of this, your betters have agreed you are one shining fucking testament to our Saiyan blood."

Vegeta choked on "betters" but sat across from his commander trying not to look too smug. This was a truly titillating morning. And here he'd begun to think he couldn't do anything right!

"You, a shining star," the commander snorted, rubbing the pinched bridge of his nose wearily. Vegeta was known to give his commander's migraines. "You see, we've agreed—some of us reluctantly—that you're ready for another mission." One eye squinted open, pinning him to his seat, and the commander's grin started curling at the edges. "That's why we chose you to lead your stupid, merry men—and the only capable one among you, Fasha—on a special mission to the Deep Sea."

Vegeta blinked. "The Deep Sea?"

"Through a partnership with I.A. The Intergalactic Alliance will shepherd you there, cloaked in obscurity on a cruise ship. Once in the Andromeda belt, your squad and a very limited number of I.A. support squads will take a light-class battle cruiser to Oblemon, where you will intercept the smuggling ring the Red Eyed Infamy and take their leaders out of the picture for once and for all. I'll have the dossier sent to you."

Vegeta's brain wasn't working. First he'd heard that, because he never followed orders, he was the poster child of the Saiyan Special Forces. And then he had heard—

"This mission will get you off Earth for several months." His commander clapped his hands together. "You are the hero boy here. I'd focus all my energy on staying out of trouble if I were you, because this is your absolute LAST CHANCE," he bellowed, "to prove you're worth these fucking migraines. No selfishness that doesn't contribute to the mission. No heavy drinking. No gambling. No commandeering vessels," he looked pointedly at Vegeta, who shrank a little at the memory. He'd almost been demoted for that one. "No blowing up planets," his commander continued. "No bar brawls with the locals. And no women." The commander chuckle snorted, slapping the table's edge. "Vegeta. With a woman. That's a laugh!"

Vegeta decided suddenly that his commander's face would look better with a fist shaped indent in it.

His commander abruptly stood and saluted. "Congratulations. You are now again the starbuck of the elite Roamers. Display that you can work with a team without any of your usual diva antics and you'll win your ticket off of Earth by the end of the year."

Something was happening to Vegeta, because his ears started ringing and his chest felt like someone heavy was sitting on it and he could only see one cheerful, female face tilted up at him, goading him to kiss her. Was the tinnitus he'd earned from lots of close-proximity explosions finally rearing its head?

"I gotta say, this will either make you or break you." The commander was chortling. "Can't wait for either outcome. You have one day. Your squad will let you know when it's time. Good luck...Major."

Vegeta barely had time to swallow the promotion before the dread settled in.

...

Bulma knew one thing, and one thing only:

Blue was a very flattering color on her.

The crumpled blue pamphlet was falling out of her purse, the worn paper with the Saiyan Navy and Intergalactic Alliance emblems stamped on the corner and a smiling Earthling giving a thumb's up on the front. The happy figure wore what Bulma assumed was their naval uniform, a shapeless, blue ensemble. It would look terrible on her. She had one day left. Hours, minutes, even, to measure her future by. She'd have to report by tomorrow, if she finally penned her smooth, looping signature to paper.

"I don't know what I'm doing with my life," she conceded into the hem of a tight black dress, a scrappy suede number that had no business being worn out of a bedroom. It was the fourth time she'd said it that night, and the eighth dress she'd tried on. Bulma was beginning to see and ignore a pattern between her shopping habit and the level of stress in her life.

From the crack between the curtain and the wall, a dark eye rolled, and ChiChi's lips flattened, silver hoop earrings glinting against raven's wing hair.

"I don't see you offering any solutions, ChiChi." Bulma shot her a look. "Why would Yamcha help me like this? A part of me thinks this is all part of his master plan to deliberately set me up for failure."

"Yamcha's dick may not get hard, but he's not vengeful," ChiChi pointed out.

"I know that," Bulma snapped, and then sighed through her nose, tucking her short hair behind her ear impatiently. "I know that. But why would he go out of his way for me now? He couldn't even be persuaded to give me five minutes when we were dating." Bulma stared at the wall of the fitting room. "A part of me wants to snatch what he's given me, turn it into gold, and then laugh in his face." She could imagine it now: holding a flute of champagne in a champagne dress, laughing with her head thrown back, surrounded by bare-chested men on all sides as money fluttered down around them like confetti.

"That would be a very Bulma thing to do," ChiChi reasoned.

"But I can't." Bulma whined. "I just can't."

For a reason that she was having a difficult time relaying to anyone, Bulma was...stuck. She was paralyzed. On hold. In stasis. In a hibernation with no promise of thaw. She was incapable of making a choice, and it was because something was wrong with her. She felt it, as real as drawing fingers over a rip in her thigh hi's. The wrongness was a profoundly menacing black hole spiraling in her gut. It was an inarguable fact stamped with the force of every heart beat. A thing that was both so deeply a part of her and so foreign to her being but couldn't be exorcised. She knew its presence defied the logic of how Bulma's worked, because Bulma's thrived on work and self-confidence and racy texts from flame-haired Saiyans who commented on how perfectly her ass was shaped. She knew crumbling like this meant that she wasn't as strong as she thought she was, and it made her melancholy. She knew it was totally unlike her to feel this way. But there it was.

She wasn't leaping at the chance to have her old life back. To be rich, to be famous, to be carefree. It didn't feel like she deserved it.

She was a woman who had suffered from a lapse of the self-esteem.

That was a miserable reality to have to stare in the face. And an even more jagged pill to swallow? Even if she could return in glory, she didn't want to go back. Bulma groaned, her head sinking into her hands. It was true. She rather liked the future she had stumbled into, if her meager wage was excluded, a future that was all a very hot man's persistent and dirty texts and after work his finger nudging her thighs to part. Why couldn't this thing she had with Vegeta, this slice of pie, just last forever? A place with no overdue rent, no weird buried past, no ex-boyfriends with dubious offers. Vegeta. Vegeta was like, being with him was like...like...like a year spent hyperventilating in a locked and windowless room, and suddenly a window appeared, and she could throw it open and lean out, and surprise, there's a whole world outside, where the meadow-fragrant wind tossed her hair around and the sun laid its warm hand on her head and her smile just grew and grew.

Bulma was not a woman who wanted to afford a man too much credit for her successes, but there was something about this particular man that made her feel like she could grab life by the horns and shake it, laughing. She didn't think going back to her old life would align with this new feeling of flight, this new...Bulma. She didn't want to go back to the locked and stifling room. The stars were the limit. The stars were the literal limit if she took the job as a contractor for the Space Navy.

ChiChi wasn't a mind reader, though, and couldn't hear the internal dialogue whirling, seizing, and tumbling around in Bulma's head like a shoddy carnival ride. Instead, she was giving Bulma a look through the slit of the dressing room curtain like Bulma was sitting on a dressing room floor teary-eyed in an expensive dress she couldn't afford while refusing a handful of money.

"Okay," ChiChi drawled. "So now what. What are you gonna do? Keep grinding and making minimum wage at that busted up star ship hangar downtown? You have no opportunities there. There's no room to grow. You hate it there. Bulma, nothing will change."

Bulma glanced down at the mechanic's uniform that lay in a limp pile on the floor next to a pair of glossy red heels with a price tag worth four of her most overdue bills. Today had been her first day back to work. Now that her internship with the Saiyan military was over, she had no other choice but to slink back to Poseidon's Hangar. What other option did she have? Her boss had offered her the only opportunity at his disposal: a temporary position wrenching on Saiyan crafts for the experience, with a blueprint contest thrown into the mix. The blueprints would take weeks to judge, weeks she didn't have to keep her head above water. It was like holding out for getting pop star famous and knowing she couldn't hold a tune. Bulma liked to sing, but Bulma wasn't going to be singing in front of anyone anytime soon without a few drinks in her.

"So what next?" ChiChi was saying. "It's not like you could trap a man." ChiChi stilled and gave Bulma a hard look. "Wait. Does Vegeta have money?"

Bulma looked down at herself in the dress that she couldn't afford that suited a lifestyle she no longer lived. The purse with no cash in it. The grimy work jumpsuit with a wadded up final warning slip in it. The air she couldn't afford to breathe.

Bulma felt like the oxygen was being sucked out of the room. Maybe it was that black hole in her chest again. Somewhere in there was an untameable urgency to run. A wild, drum-beating, tempestuous plea to escape.

But where could she go?

The dress got stuck around her ears as she frantically tugged it up, and with frustration, she slung it to the floor and made her way out of the cramped room.

She milled around the panty bar—the latest trend in the city to display fine lingerie—thumbing through jewel shades, creamy ivory lace, and slippery latex. Her fingers ran over them longingly. She held up the panties, eyeballing them as if they hid an answer. Bulma stared at their lace edges, waiting for it to be offered up.

Her hands, and the panties with them, fell limply to the table. Things were so dire right now that she was asking a pair of panties for advice.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Eyebrows raising, she hunted through all the change and lint of her work pants and, finding it, turned its face up.

Bulma's eyes widened in surprise.

Yamcha.

Finalizing the paperwork tomorrow. Meet me for signing and champagne.

Attached was the address of a very swanky restaurant and three emojis: glasses toasting, a fountain pen, and a rose.

"Ugh." Bulma nursed her forehead delicately on her fingertips.

She'd heard more from Yamcha today than she had of Vegeta. Not a single text. Not a single inquiry into the shade of her panties, or the text she was really lemming for, the one where Vegeta asked what they were doing tonight and she gave a list of demands. 1. My place 2. Your scouter and gloves on 3. Nothing else. God she loved it when he left his gloves on. Although she equally adored it when he took them off with his teeth.

The need for a text from him, just for evidence that he was alive and still on Earth or that he was thinking about her even a fraction as crazily as she did him was becoming such a huge and gluttonous thing that she felt consumed by it. She felt it in her gut, she felt it in her chest, she felt it in every graspy finger tip—this urgency to be acknowledged and held and seen and needed. It made her feel like a piece on a chess board that someone had picked up and placed onto a new square when she wasn't looking.

In a relationship that was supposed to have no strings, her heart was suddenly on the line.

Curled up against his side last night, she could not have fit more perfectly against someone. She'd startled awake when he stirred to life well past midnight. The streetlight from outside had gilded his eyelashes and the tufts of his thick hair, and her heart had grown raw and tender. She'd felt an unshakable need to possess this man, and be possessed by him. She'd fit her mouth to his and he'd kissed her, trapped to his chest, as if he were searching for the essence of life, chasing it with the stroke of his tongue until she felt the Bulma she'd had to hold together all year came apart in his arms.

When her alarm had woken her for work, he was gone, the sheets cold. Bulma had sat up in bed, searching the room dismally for something she recognized she could never completely own.

ChiChi was right. She had to be real with herself.

Vegeta was a thing she desperately wanted, and Vegeta was not a long-term thing. No matter how the dice were rolled or how the cloth was cut or whatever the object was that did something, Earth was a temporary duty station. They were a Venn diagram, two opposing colored bubbles, and the only time they met in the middle was when he was shelved on Earth because of bad behavior and wanted to mash privates. She was Earth, and Earth was not his final destination. His job would have him hopping from planet to planet, from...bed to bed. He wouldn't always be hers. He wasn't hers now.

Saiyans, damn them. Being a warrior was an inseparable part of them. It was cold, inarguable fact. And warriors didn't just sit around on the couch and pop potato chips, or work a customer service gig and bring home a salary to their girlfriends and their girlfriend's cat. They ate and breathed the fight. They left their girlfriends to go knock heads in homoerotic displays of strength. She'd seen it before in movies. And it was probably why all Saiyans looked like they'd had their Wheaties for breakfast. Which gym did they go to, anyway? All of them?

He wouldn't give that up for her. He couldn't, even if she tied him to the bedposts. Bulma's brows knit as she gave some thought to how long she might be able to distract him from his work with just her slick wet ache and every wanton technique she could throw at him. Her mouth turned down. Not long enough. She'd eventually have to drink some water and take a few gulping breaths, at least. A woman could only have so many orgasms! The thought was depressing.

ChiChi and Eighteen were watching her with concern from the corners of their eyes. Bulma had asked them to meet her after work because the clingy lunacy that had built up in her all day would have her dashing to Saiyan Command if she didn't, throwing herself at Vegeta in front of everyone, clinging to his perfectly sculpted bicep and begging him to stay. She couldn't decide whether she wanted most to ugly-cry or grind on it. If she rubbed herself enough on it, would her scent imprint onto his, warning other females off? Her laugh was edged with hysteria, and her friend's eyed her nervously.

"Bulma, are you muttering?"

"No," she denied testily under her breath.

It just wasn't fair to ask him for more than they originally bargained for. She should really just take what she could get. Wasn't it enough for her to have him the few chances she'd get?

Nope. She didn't know when it had happened, but it had, and sure, that's how this had started, with panting over the line and a muffled "fuck" groaned into a shoulder in the dark. But like the two complicated mammals they were, it had evolved. It had evolved, and her desires had evolved, and her expectations had evolved, and none of it fit at all in the original arrangement.

Her phone buzzed again, doing its little shaky dance in her pocket. Putting the pair of black panties down carefully and smoothing the wadded ball out apologetically, she glanced down again at her phone.

Vegeta.

Her heart stumbled.

Stoic black text on a white screen.

Don't have time. Find you tomorrow.

The bottom dropped out of Bulma's stomach. She felt her eyes heat, and she blinked rapidly and dumped her phone back in her pocket.

She was just pitiful.

How long would this go on? Until she was living in a cardboard box in an alley, recently dumped and unable to pick herself up from her parent's leaving her high and dry? Where would she even fit all her shoes? Would she forever be a woman men were leaving?

But wasn't she a woman with free will? Wasn't she...wasn't she a woman smart enough to conceive another way?

"Guys?" Bulma's voice was thin and warbling even to her ears. She hazarded a glance in their direction.

From over the table of folded panties, Eighteen and ChiChi looked up at the same time.

"What if I..." Her voice trailed off, and her gaze skipped across the panties before them. "What if I told you, I have an idea?"

She dragged the pamphlet from her back pocket and handed it to them.

After a long look, ChiChi glanced back up, gawking.

"Ohmygod, YES!" ChiChi belted it, surprising the other women and the shoppers around them. "Go have an adventure!" ChiChi's face steeled into a cold mask of resentment. "Do it for those of us who can't leave our homes without a diaper bag stuffed with enough shit to get us through a nuclear fallout."

"Maybe it would be like a vacation," offered Eighteen.

"Get out of here for a few months, come back well rested, make a decision about Capsule," ChiChi laid out, like they were talking about their dinner plans.

"Yeah," Bulma agreed half-heartedly. "Yeah!" She said, this time with more animation.

She'd make a little money, see the sights the universe had to offer. She'd always wanted to road trip through space. She'd know what to do about Capsule by then. About herself. Maybe she'd have the answers then. Maybe she'd come back to Earth, naturally more sophisticated and more beautiful than ever before, and they'd run into the other at the spaceport and she'd say, "Oh, hello there," and he'd say, "How do you do? What panties are you wearing today?" And when he left on missions she'd be so busy helming an empire that it wouldn't hurt, and when he finally left for good she wouldn't even bat an eye because she was so successful and so self-satisfied. She could have her cake and eat it, too.

ChiChi was talking. "Yamcha wouldn't hold it against you if it took another couple months before Capsule gets off the ground. After all, it's waited all this time anyway, right?"

Bulma sighed, and then dashed away the unexpected tears angrily. She was suddenly overwhelmed with helpless frustration. "I hate men."

"You could find a man on your trip to take your mind off both Yamcha and your Saiyan. What happens in space," Eighteen reminded them, popping her gum, "stays in space."

Bulma made a face.

She had it bad.

"Girl," ChiChi said with horror, "don't tell me you're not interested in flirting with handsome soldiers and space hunks."

Bulma balked, limning the lace waist of a panty with her finger. "The last thing I need is another man." She was deflecting.

"What about this guy?" Eighteen was suddenly shoving her phone into Bulma's line of sight, and Bulma blinked a few times to focus before she realized what was staring her in the face.

"A dating app?" Bulma gasped, offended. "You won't see me on ShipLove." Bulma bristled. "I'm not that desperate." Yet.

"You can even sort by star ship!"

"If I didn't have milk leaking out my breasts, I would be hooking up with everrrryone on that app." ChiChi's voice lowered with earnestness. "I'd be such a whore."

Eighteen glanced at Bulma. "You're single, right? Then why not?"

"I'm not...not single," she hedged. "But..."

Eighteen and ChiChi watched her sympathetically, like love was a disease she'd caught that they'd suffered through, too.

ChiChi put her hand on Bulma's shoulder."Maybe your Saiyan was never meant to be a long-time thing," she opted gently. "He was fun when you needed it, and now you have to part ways. But there are a lot of hot fish in the space sea." ChiChi and Eighteen's faces floated close in Bulma's watery vision, their eyes brimming with concern. Come to think of it, they'd never talked about feelings like this while she was dating Yamcha. Most of their discussion had centered around the "how to" on voodoo dolls and sneaking laxatives in Yamcha's coffee. They were small mutinies. "And a sexy space adventure would solve a lot of that angst," ChiChi finished.

"Go be a space slut for a few months," said Eighteen.

"Sex isn't going to solve my problems," Bulma sighed. She was learning that lately.

"Some men write their dick length in their profile info," ChiChi whispered.

"What?"

"They're lying," Eighteen stated.

"Dick length!? Why? Really?"

"Some of them are like," ChiChi measured the space in front of her face with two index fingers, "thissss long, but all of the Saiyans say they're—" her hands flew out wide—"this long."

"Download it," urged Eighteen.

"Download it! Download it!" ChiChi and Eighteen urged, their laughter breaking up the night.

...

As if the damned universe was trying to send her a message attached to ballistic missile, Bulma's potentially-last-day-on-Earth was growing increasingly hostile. She had to sign up for the Navy contracting gig by 6 tonight. As she drank her morning coffee, surveying her living room, her finger fiddled with the round top of a storage capsule.

Would she stay or would she go? She decided, instead of making a decision, she'd get ready for work. That was a decision. She had decided that she needed to make a decision, and she'd made one.

Maybe she could just fake her own death and start a new life?

Right on schedule, a final notice was slapped onto her front door as she was going to work. She looked at the back of the apartment manager incredulously, watching the woman's big behind swish down the hall. Bulma bared her teeth at the woman, giving into the dreadful immaturity that unfortunately always simmered at the surface. Then she muttered into her coffee all the way to her train.

At work, as the whirr and shriek of power tools ricocheted around the hangar, the girls, hungry for gossip, had asked her if she was still making illicit calls to her Saiyan. Bulma sighed dreamily and confirmed. Yes, she was still "seeing" him. The girls shrieked with pleasure, congratulating her on her piece of man meat. She wasn't getting nearly as much ass as she wished she was when the man was gone all the time, Bulma complained under her breath.

Things got out of hand when they asked her to describe what her Saiyan looked like. They wanted a visual of Vegeta that they could sink their teeth into, so they, too, could live the muscles and the experience of being lusted after by a strong, virulent warrior. Bulma's relationship with "her" Saiyan had devolved into a cheap romance book cover, but she played along. Red scarf knotted around her head, eyes round behind the refraction of her goggles, Bulma waxed poetic about all her favorite parts of Vegeta. His thick neck that she loved to lick in one long sweep from bottom to top. All the juicy meat of his arms, the perky round shape of his athletic ass, the slab of abs she worshiped. "Each little muscle stacked like Legos!" It sent the women into fits of laughter. "Underneath that tight suit," Bulma was dramatically orating, "is a body that could fog an old librarian's glasses. Every time he crosses his arms over his chest, my underwear curls off." As they cackled and fanned themselves, cleaning up for lunch, Bulma grew melancholy again. She could objectify Vegeta all day—what woman couldn't?—but this was More. M-O-R-E, more than just lust. More than just attraction. Her heart did little swooping things when he was near. He shouldn't have ever agreed to something more than just phone calls. He'd created a monster.

"I'd be looking to tie that man down," one of the older women shot her a wink as they shuffled down the hall with their lunch boxes. The women around them erupted with laughter at the suggestion.

"I've already considered that angle," Bulma sighed. "The mechanics of tying him down demand a whole lot of adamantium chain link I just don't have."

Like an orgasm, it wasn't a sweet, tame thing rolling over her, but violently needy. Every text from him thrust her deeper into love.

This was going to end in disaster.

The older woman frowned at Bulma. "Did you just say something?"

"No," Bulma grumbled.

At lunch, Bulma ate a cold sandwich in the break room, staring at the empty black screen of her phone.

At three o'clock, her phone vibrated in her pants pocket. Bulma reached for it so fast that it slipped from her hand, only for her to slap her hands around it on its descent but drop it once more. From the floor, the phone screen blazed.

Just a text from Yamcha.

See you tonight.

...

It wasn't until after the final whistle that Bulma made a decision. She'd been hurrying to her train home, her metal lunch box clanging against her thigh. Her coveralls were damp with sweat against her lower back from the jaunt, the sidewalk rolling drunkenly under her. She was trying to meet Yamcha quickly to get this Capsule Corp business all over with, but she still had jet grease under her nails.

She'd heard her name called familiarly, and looked sideways in confusion.

Some old acquaintances waved, some rich kids with rich parents and the ambition only to spend their money. She slowed to a stop, disconcerted by their appearance. They smiled with artificial sweetness and asked questions that not at all subtly pried into her life.

And then one of them asked her how she was recovering from the break up. They smiled cruelly. The scandal, when Yamcha broke up with her for another woman.

If Bulma had been capable of channeling ki, she would have erupted into a fiery supernova with a shriek. She would really have to ask Vegeta how Saiyans did it.

She seethed all the way home. They thought he'd broken it off with her? And they pitied her!?

"Ma'am?" A gentleman on the train eyed her cautiously. "Are you okay? You're talking to yourself."

Bulma's pride was being hammered like a signpost by a drunken sailor. "This is not the way I want to be nailed!" She foamed.

Yamcha had ended things with her? Yeah right. Not Yamcha, and his egg timer foreplay attempts. Yamcha, and his out of fashion navy blue suits. Yamcha, and his love of pickle sandwiches. Ugh, they made his breath smell awful. But no one was talking about that!

She took a scalding shower, found her most mouthwatering set of lingerie, and then delved into the dark recesses of her closet for the most perfect dress, cataloging each dress before coming away with a sensuous gold sheath, its modest hem belied by the jutting neckline. It was sensual and it was powerful. It wanted to be both things, just like her.

Her heels rang out punishingly as she stomped to the train station, taking it to the Naval recruitment center, where she signed her name to paper with enough force to cause the contract to burst into flames. The Saiyans stood stupidly, gawking at her. Then she stormed to the restaurant where she was meeting Yamcha, where history would be made, and in the history books, she'd be wearing this killer fucking dress.

...

For over an hour now, her and Yamcha's team of lawyers had prattled on about the latest episode of 24/9, a crime thriller that broadcasted from somewhere in the Pegasus Galaxy and involved a team of lawyers with superpowers. Because they would just not shut up, Bulma was well into her fifth cocktail. Her father had already worked out most of the details with the Briefs lawyers, everything falling perfectly into place for her best interests, and it made her unnaturally sour with him.

Bulma sighed, soft and gusty. Yamcha was stealing glances at her, but she wasn't paying him any attention. She wasn't paying the legalese much attention, either, lost in thought.

Bulma was thinking that she didn't want to touch this Capsule stuff with a ten foot pole. It was shamefully immature of her, but she didn't care. No one cared what she wanted. Why care about what they wanted?

Bulma was also thinking how weird it was that suddenly she had Yamcha's full attention. How many evenings had they gone out to places just like this, and she'd stared out the window in her best dress, waiting for him to get off his phone? To listen to her? For just a second of his undivided attention?

For someone to love her?

For someone to save her?

Her thoughts drifted to Vegeta.

Oh, it was unfair.

A lawyer brayed with laughter down the length of the table, and Bulma's lips drew into a line. Her eyes caught Yamcha's. He was already smiling gently at her, eyes warm. He nodded at her, once, a few locks of his hair letting go of their clasp and spilling over his eyes.

Bulma sipped the martini. The thing with Vegeta was, they'd both been stifling parts of themselves for so long, but then they'd collided with the other, and all their vulnerability and weirdness and emotion commingled. It erected a wall against the world, it kept them safe. They were two exiles who'd forged a partnership and an escape, who, in the protection of the dark, could share their secrets. But it was the no-strings and the devil-may-care that had buoyed them so far. What happened after the escape? What was the glue that would keep them together when they were beyond the walls, when the world creeped back in through the cracks, fissures made by their jobs and time? The question was, could the wall keep them safe from each other?

The ball of despair started up its accretion in her gut again.

Bulma worried her lip, resting her cheek in her hand. The lawyers were all buzzing with half-drunk energy, arguing now about law school instructors and whose test score revealed them to be the smartest attorney at the table. All the Capsule papers had been signed. Someone might think the lawyers had something to celebrate that had nothing to do with her.

It didn't matter. Tomorrow she'd leave them all, leave Vegeta before he could leave her first. Finally she'd be the one who was leaving someone behind. "It's either him or me," she muttered, and drained the rest of her martini.

She almost choked, chest tightening. Because, without his mouth slanting over hers, stealing her breath until she was holding fistfuls of his hair, without his low and throaty chuckle that promised siege and surrender, and his infuriating, charming smirk that was so magical to watch emerge from someone so serious, how was she going to pull herself up and stand on both legs? How could she face her future without that? Bulma fought the impulse to sink her head into her arms on the table. There was stark, raw truth in it: that she wanted to spend yesterday with him, today with him, tomorrow with him, and the next day, and all the days after that. And if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck...it was love.

Bulma groaned just as the lawyers fractured into laughter.

Yamcha stood up to herd them out. Bulma stood, too, as they made a move to shake her hand.

Maybe, like ChiChi had suggested, she was confusing fantastic sex with depth of feeling. Maybe her upstairs and downstairs brains were having communication issues.

Someone had brought a photographer in, and they all stood shoulder to shoulder and smiled as the flash bulb blinded them.

The lawyers filed out, leaving Bulma and Yamcha standing there.

"One more bottle of champagne," he asked gently, "between us?"

Bulma looked at him for what felt like a long time. And then she nodded and slid back into her seat.

Yamcha ordered for them and excused himself to the restroom. Bulma sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the wall.

Her phone vibrated noisily against the table, tucked in her clutch.

She pulled it out vacantly.

Vegeta.

A wave of relief and joy crashed through her.

Where are you?

It was stupid. It was reckless. It was wrong, but it felt right. Excitement vibrated through her. It was truth, bone deep knowing. If she could have anything in the world, any future, any altered past, it would lead her right back to this man.

Her thumb brushed her screen tenderly. Then she typed.

At the bottom of five martinis and a glass of champagne.

Panties?

Pleasure was a hot flush through her body. Bulma's eyes skirted around the dining room as a smile tugged at her lips.

Even if there wouldn't ever be anything more than this, it was okay. She would gladly sacrifice herself on the pyre of her bad decisions. Nothing else mattered but this, right now. Nothing else was more integral to her being, nothing more immediately critical than unwinding into the woman who was free to just be, and the man who encouraged her to be so. The air was electric between them, its charge stretching all the way from her table to the other side of the city, wherever in the darkness he inhabited and waited.

Black.

Yamcha was at her side again, and then a phone rang, and Yamcha's hand went to his coat pocket. "I gotta take this," Yamcha apologized, putting his hand over the speaker of his phone and turning right back around. She waved him off without looking up. Bulma was sinking deep and exultant into the sea of their escape without a single thought of whether or not she could breathe underwater. Or was it more like standing back up after being knocked down, and facing off the world, shoulder to shoulder with a partner who knew all her weaknesses and, despite them, had her back? Didn't matter if tomorrow never came. Only mattered that they made a stand.

Should I pull them off with my teeth? Or make you take them off for me?

Bulma rested her chin on her knuckles and smiled at her phone lazily. One night wouldn't hurt. One night would never hurt. Only tomorrow would hurt, and she'd deal with it when it came. Maybe tonight I want to be in control.

How would you manage that?

I've been thinking about investing in some adamantium chains. A sigh escaped her nose and her guts tied into a complicated knot. She glanced around the room.

She was a shameless, dirty flirt. How would she ever break herself of this weakness for Vegeta? It was a really strong weakness.

Getting off planet was the preemptive strike, yet the moment he snapped his fingers with a, "Wait, but I need you," it was "Oh, well, okay, if you need me." She needed to recode her brain. The blame couldn't all be heaped on her, though. After all, like she'd told ChiChi, Vegeta'd told her he didn't date...

"Then what happened?"

"Then he kissed the hell out of me."

Bulma sent him her location.

Candelight fractured in the crystal tableware as Bulma's fingers moved over the keyboard. A heavy sigh escaped her even as excitement trilled through her synapses. Her body recognized danger and thrilled at it. It was a curse. "Work hard, play hard," she muttered, as Yamcha's figure approached their table.

"Sorry," he gushed, falling back into his seat, and he really did look sorry. "Work."

"Used to it," she said, tucking her phone back into her clutch. Her smirk was humorless. Her fingers wrapped around the glass of champagne and she finally gave him her full attention.

Yamcha's confidence dissolved a little before her eyes. He had the sweetest eyes, she realized. Vegeta's were black on black, a mirror, intensely focused and complete. She was often the focus of that consuming gaze.

"About that," Yamcha started, clasping his hands in front of him on the table.

Bulma waited.

"I'm sorry," he gushed. "I know I said it already, but I'm sorry. I'd like to try it all over again, you know?" The statement was open-ended. He could have meant he'd like to go back in time and fix things, but she didn't think so. "But. I know," he trailed off. "I know you're seeing someone."

"How do you know that?"

His eyes trailed over the objects on their table. "I saw the armor in your living room."

She blinked. Then her arms crossed, and she looked away. "Aren't you seeing someone else, too?" Then she pinned him with a stare. "A Saiyan, I heard."

Yamcha had the audacity to blush. "I was seeing someone. Just dating around. Nothing serious."

He looked as if he was working up to something, and then a wry, self-defeating smile twisted his features and he sighed loudly. "But really. A Saiyan?" He teased her, eyebrow winging. "I thought you preferred romance, and, and, mental acuity."

His insult jarred her. Her eyes narrowed. "The man I'm seeing is sharp as a tack." Slowly, she popped a grape in her mouth, lips sliding around the fruit's flesh. She bit into it. "And his favorite thing in the world is eating my pussy." She swallowed, and Yamcha's eyes darted to the flex of her throat.

Yamcha's brows pulled into a stormy line as the mood shifted. "So he's your rebound."

"Are you kidding me?" She'd lowered her voice because she wanted to yell. It wasn't super effective. "Not everything's about you."

Yamcha wrestled his own frustration. "Saiyans are like frat boys. They have two settings: fighting and partying. How could I not assume someone wickedly smart like you is using a Saiyan as a distraction?"

Bulma gaped. "Using him? Like a toy?" ChiChi would have approved.

"It's not like they make good dinner company."

"And you do?" Bulma was hanging on to the volume of her voice by the skin of her teeth. "Do you know how many times I've eaten my dinner alone while you're a few meters away on the phone?" She struggled not to grab his tie and bare her teeth at him. "How many birthdays and anniversaries I sat alone through?"

Yamcha had the audacity to look astonished. And then he deflated. "I was working." His eyes warred between heat and disappointment. "I thought that's what you wanted me to do. When I first came here, that's how I could win your affection. You know?" His voice gentled. "To become like you."

Bulma was now the one knocked back a pace. "Like me?"

"Bulma." Yamcha looked like he might tear out his hair, and then he clasped his hands together on the table as if to hold himself together. "I had to work to get into your circles. To make you notice me. To stand out. To just stay abreast of everyone, like I was always a second away from being left behind. I just wanted you to like me. I wanted to be enough for you."

Her mouth parted on words that weren't fully formed. Then grasped on to the one thought that made sense. "You were often talking to other women." Her voice was a dangerous growl.

Disappointment wafted off him. "Yeah," he admitted. "Sometimes I needed an outlet. From work. Even from you. You were a little intense for me." He looked at her like a man who had hit bottom and realized what a prize he'd had before he squandered it. His eyes glittered with feeling. "That doesn't make it right."

Is that why he'd helped her win back Capsule Corporation? To atone for all his sins?

He was too late.

You were a little intense for me. Yamcha had lacked intensity. That was true, she realized. He was harmless and eager to please, but he'd also bored her. He wasn't very imaginative on dates or in bed, but she'd misconstrued that as reliability at the time. Vegeta oozed danger, and didn't care if he pleased anyone. She couldn't rely on him to be here from one day to the next. What could be said of her for turning to someone so opposite? She'd once heard an engineer murmur about Vegeta, "I'd stay away from that one if I were you. You mess with the reaper, you get the scythe." Bulma had canted a little. After all, she'd just sent the reaper a dirty wink.

Bulma sighed and leaned back. "Let's try being friends, shall we, Yamcha?" Her stare was unyielding. "Let's try moving forward. I have a suspicion that we might make better friends than lovers."

Struck with rejection, Yamcha recovered quickly, laughing a little too forcefully. "Yeah!" He scratched his nails in his hair, the tousled lengths falling forward into his eyes. "You were a little too intense for me there, too."

Bulma's eyebrows shot up. And then she laughed. "Then is it any surprise I wound up with a Saiyan?" She poured them both another glass of champagne.

"Intensity isn't the same as finesse," Yamcha grouched.

"Oh, don't worry about his finesse." Bulma's smiled wickedly, eyelids hooded. "He's a finely honed tool."

"I hope you know what you're doing," Yamcha sighed.

Her confidence faltered. She did not. She was shooting from the hip, and she was just waiting for it to be over so she could regret it all later. At least tomorrow she had somewhere to run when shit hit the fan.

"To new things," she said loudly, leaning her glass over the candlelight.

He lightly knocked his against hers. "To new things. To Capsule Corp. To you."

Bulma drained her glass, the alcohol making quick work of what remained of her wits, and then stood.

Yamcha, sensing the night was over, stood and helped her out of her chair, handing her her clutch. She held out her hand. He shook it, their grips firm.

His phone rang again, and he was mumbling sorry, fishing in his coat pocket for it, but she was already making her way out the door.

Heels slapping pavement, the dry heat of summer embraced her as she strode out the door. It felt like a black cloud of anxiety followed. She hurried her pace, ducking her head and maneuvering to outrun it. The world sloshed back and forth a little. Absorbed in remaining on two feet, she ran right into someone as she queued past the windows of the restaurant.

She startled, gaze jerking up, and met Vegeta's sharp stare as his hands reached out to steady her.

For a breathless moment, they just looked at one another.

And the world was corrected.

Her gaze ate him up. And then she threw her arms around his waist and clutched him tightly, heedless of the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk.

Just held him, until he heard something muffled coming from his shoulder.

Eyes wide, he looked down.

Doe eyes blinked back. "I said, this is the first time we've ever hugged."

Vegeta resettled his gloved hands at her waist, gazing out over traffic.

"You're not bad at it," she continued. "Three out of five stars."

He let out a huff of air. "Three? How insulting."

"You need practice."

She grinned up at him. She couldn't help it. The anxiety receded, like water spiraling down the drain. If this was all they'd ever had then she'd take it. Doomed? In his arms, she was ready to be doomed a thousand times over.

She untangled herself from him. The smell of fizzy champagne lingered. His eyes raked her, approving the dress. His lip curled at the corner, his eyes heating. "Special occasion?" His voice was a hot rumble.

She could have swooned. His smirks were sharp as any shit-talking Saiyans, but this one in particular was reserved for her, softened at the edges but still hungry with intent, relaxing his normally humorless and focused features. It was trust, it was pleasure. It was a smile that was all hers.

"Mmhmm," she answered vaguely. "Do you like my dress?"

"Mmhmm," was his answer. Vegeta was not into public displays. He liked to look as dignified as possible, but she felt there was an element of shy embarrasment, too. To spite him, she moved his hands up her waist toward her breasts. He jerked back.

He leveled a disapproving look. "I want to grab dinner," he declared. "Hungry?"

"Hungry for a few things. Can you be specific?" Her gaze smoldered under heavy lids, and she splayed her hand against his chest, palm to palm with the bloody hand print. Even through the breast plate, his skin hummed warmly against her palm. She leaned into him now, watching him with smoldering mischief.

Like any warrior, he stayed straight against her onslaught, but her insouciant grin was shaking him. He just couldn't help it. His gloved hand skated her side, came to rest at her lower back. The intent in his eyes sharpened.

Vegeta's eyes caught movement behind her, and he glanced immediately over her shoulder. He stiffened, intensely focused.

Yamcha had halted just outside the doors, staring with rapidly growing astonishment.

Bulma wasn't paying attention. She was exploring the muscled contours of Vegeta's forearms with a sweep of her palm before hooking her arm into his and pressing her cheek into his shoulder, listing places to eat. Everything in his body seemed ready to spill into motion, straining for battle, yet predatorily still. His eyes pierced Yamcha's, contempt rolling off him in waves. The hand at her back pressed her to him. Claiming.

The other mans' gaze dropped, recognizing the gesture. Some emotion flashed in his eyes, but the man didn't step forward. Vegeta was petty enough to feel smug about it. And then he led Bulma the other way.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: True fact: I have worked on this chapter every day for months. Scribbling notes in the middle of the grocery store aisle and punishing my keyboard well before dawn. I'm sorry this chapter arrived to you so late. Writing is hard. This chapter isn't perfect and neither am I. True fact #2: Next chapter is close. Real close. #3: There's a one shot in the pipeline. #4: I've not been very good about checking my email or participating in the fandom lately. But I miss the fuck out of my readers. I'm sorry. I've been neglectful. I love you. I'll do better.