It's dangerous
To fall in love, but I
Wanna burn with you tonight
Hurt me
There's two of us
We're bristling with desire
The pleasure's pain and fire
Burn me

-Sia

It all started rather accidentally.

Settling in for a late night at her desk with her favorite comfort food, Bulma just happened to notice a tiny blinking light.

The gravity room was still in "debug" mode. Normally only engaged after major updates or repairs, this mode gathered every scrap of data in case of malfunction, including full audio and video. Clearly she'd forgotten to disable it after last week's overhaul.

The chamber was in use, because it was always in use. After a pause, Bulma routed the feeds to her workstation, curious.

Brilliant energy washed over her wall of monitors, coruscating. The first bite of instant ramen went cold in mid-air, and she picked up the wine instead.

Her shirtless, sweaty houseguest held her mesmerized. With utterly precise control of his body, he flowed through a series of forms with the grace and suppressed violence of a caged panther. All without touching the ground, in an environment lethal to almost anyone else. Sweat traced the lines of his body, rolling unhurriedly along the carved furrows of his ridiculously cut shoulders, chest, and abdomen, giving her no option but to trace each path with her eyes.

Her office was suddenly stifling, and the wine had her cheeks burning. She was somewhat thrown by the intensity of her reaction. It's not like she'd never seen him in the chamber; they used video chat as necessary to discuss repairs, mealtimes, other mundanities. It's not like she'd never seen him shirtless; all summer he'd walked around in little else other than spandex training shorts. She was a bit spoiled maybe; most of the men in her life were built like Greek gods and liked to show off.

But watching his body move as it was built to, coiled and powerful at a pace so slow it was almost sensual , that was an entirely different encounter than brushing shoulders briefly in the kitchen or on the stairs. He had so many scars, more than any of the rest of the fighters she knew, pale against the tanned olive of his skin. The effect was dangerous, delicious - and somehow a tiny bit vulnerable. She was well familiar with how fast Goku healed. Were these scars all from battle? Some appeared quite old - decades, even. How hard must someone have been trying to hurt him, to leave such marks on Saiyan skin?

That sobering thought was enough to wrench her mind out of the gutter, long enough to realize he'd been talking to himself this whole time, while she was too distracted to notice. She couldn't understand a word, but it shocked her to hear such free expression from a man she'd long since decided was quiet, standoffish, brusque, and borderline rude.

After a beat, her heart constricted.

He's an alien, Bulma. He looks human, so everyone expects him to act human, to grasp all of the weird social customs and nuances the rest of us have had decades to assimilate.

He spent his entire adolescence and adulthood in a tyrant's military. He's probably not even well-versed in the social norms of his own people, whatever they might have been before they were all blown to particles.

His entire social structure had been survival of the fittest and whatever the privilege of royalty afforded him, which seemed largely to have been his soul-sustaining pride. "Playing nice" wasn't just an idea he disdained...he had no idea how to adapt to a social structure where power and ruthlessness did not rule all. Even if his pride would have let him.

He had to feel a loneliness beyond the scale of anything she'd ever imagined - and as a too-smart, know-it-all, underdeveloped kid who'd never known a real friend until she hit Goku with her car, that was really saying something. The last of his race. The last speaker of his language. A revenge-driven soldier without an army, or a target. Just an empty, almost aimless existence he tried to fill with training to beat Goku, the new goal he tried to convince himself was a worthy replacement aspiration for avenging his entire planet. Even in his obsession, in the dark of night he had to see it for the pettiness it was; he'd asked Goku to avenge their people, and he had, and now somehow the only other of his kind was the locus of all his directionless, unsatisfied hate?

He really had nothing; not a single possession to his name but the armor he'd died in. He lived on Bulma's generosity, accepted her food, shelter, technology, clothing. His life was aimless and untethered; training for a battle with the androids and then Goku sounded aspirational in the abstract, but in the end, what would it really mean ?

Bulma's worst mean-girl experience growing up was an extremely fancy birthday party. Awkward-middle-school-Bulma quickly realized she didn't belong there, and had been invited as a joke. No one had tried to help her navigate that social nightmare.

For him it must be like walking around all day long not knowing which fork to use.

The one thing she knew for certain about him was how much pride he had. Not knowing how to act, not permitting himself to show ignorance, it was no surprise he avoided contact with everyone.

You've patted yourself on the back for trying to "include" him in your invitations to party, but have you done even one real thing to help him feel more comfortable here?

No, instead she'd harassed him about being stuck-up and antisocial. Her cheeks burned with shame.

You also give him shit for training all of the time, but has it ever occurred to you that there's nothing else for him to do? If you'd thought more than two seconds about it, that translator implant must be verbal-only. He can't fucking read. Deciphering everything from the shower controls to cereal boxes to the TV remote must be an exercise in frustration for a man pretty much continually maxxed out in that category by his failure to ascend.

No wonder all he does is train, eat, and sleep.

Alone.

She watched him for hours, food and work long forgotten, mesmerized by his movement, his unflagging determination. The only other person she knew with that kind of obsessive, single-minded dedication was...herself.

He finally stopped long after midnight. She memorized the lines of his face in the brief moment of stillness as he drank water, mopped down with a towel, closed his eyes. Patrician and perfect, there was no denying he had the features of royalty. Her finger traced his bottom lip on screen.

She ignored the irrelevant ache of baser wants and focused on the problem at hand. This is your fuck-up, Bulma Brief. What are you going to do about it?

Something was different, like the shift in barometric pressure before a storm, or the oddly long last moments of a doomed planet after the fatal blast - where all is lost but everything still looks the same.

It made his hair stand on end. The woman had been especially enigmatic lately; she had not harassed him in months about his preference for solitude or his time in the chamber. He was tempted to break something on purpose to get a rise out of her, but not tempted enough to delay his own progress.

The only thing keeping him sane was that there was progress; he could feel it. It was just so infuriatingly slow. Without a breakthrough, he would never catch up in time.

Sometimes he felt like he'd fallen into an alternate dimension where nothing made sense. The people around him floated through their lives, day in and day out, no struggle to kill or be killed, no watching over their shoulders for betrayal, sleeping at night like babies. Except for her, maybe, he often heard her roaming the halls or mumbling in nightmare.

The leaves were changing color in what he hoped heralded the end of the hot season, but it was still sweltering. He shut everything down an hour earlier than usual, suddenly unwilling to deal with the heat any longer.

He lingered in the cool breeze on the back deck, looking at the wretched mess of stars. Nothing was where it should be, and nothing made sense.

She'd once called the stars "pretty," but as many times as he'd awaited-dreaded-prayed-for death in the emptiness of space, he knew them for the soulless, empty sentinels they were.

The kitchen was silent and dark, soothing to his overstimulated senses. All he wanted was to eat, bathe, and sleep, winding down with the familiarity of routine. He fetched the large glass container of "leftovers" the nicer woman had taken to leaving him, heating it directly with his hands. He'd finally figured out how to use the microwave; he just didn't fucking feel like it tonight.

He didn't see her until he was almost on top of her, which was irritating beyond all reason. Damnable creatures with no discernable ki. And since when has she ever been quiet?

Dangling one bare leg carelessly, the other was tucked underneath her as she nursed a cup of that black death beverage, a jumble of hand-drawn schematics spread out before her. Hair twisted back casually with a writing implement, baggy garment with her own logo slipping off of her shoulder, she was the picture of casual disinterest. He wasn't buying it.

What was she up to?

Too tired for her shit, and determined to maintain his routine, he grabbed the entire pitcher of chilled water from the fridge and turned for the stairs.

"I hope your day was good."

His finely honed reflexes saved the food, but the pitcher shattered spectacularly at his feet.

She'd spoken in his native tongue, so the literal words had been more along the lines of "I hope your day was red with the blood of the unworthy."

He whirled to face her, mouth open, unable to tell if what he felt was fury, astonishment, or something else entirely. He'd never expected to hear his own language again. The stab of raw emotion evoked by the rough syllables in her honest voice was quickly overpowered by suspicion and resentment.

"What are you playing at, woman?" He snapped at her, in the same language, automatically. "It's not fucking funny."

"I'm not playing at anything," she said carefully, "It's been a lot of work-"

"No one asked you to-"

"I promise I'm not fucking with you , Vegeta." She sighed. "Please. Sit. I'll explain while you eat." Her eyes begged him to stay. She seemed so open and earnest. If she were manipulating him, she was the best he'd ever met. Better than Frieza.

She fetched him more water and asked a kitchen bot to clean up the shattered glass.

She was the only person he'd ever met who asked machines to perform tasks, instead of ordering them.

He sat.