The Prompt: Vegeta/Bulma

In the seven years between Cell's defeat, and the start of the Buu saga, Vegeta begins to warm up to Bulma; really let's her in, and their 'relations' become more than about sex. Leading up until the end of the series, the sayian courts her and gives both words and affection to show just how much he cares, even gives an I love you with (maybe) some really passionate sexings. As much as I love hot sexy times between Bulma and Veggie, I'd love to see more substance between us, something to bite into that the anime/manga never gave us.

Veggie's a softie, we all know it, and we all deserve to see it :)

Additional prompt info:

Here it is:
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thanks again! i really think you'd be the only writer capable of pulling this off. i've noticed that a lot of your works have been humorous and intriguing, but i'd looove to see how you sink your teeth into something...fluffy. i know you can do it, author!anon! :)

The fill:

We've got years ahead of us
We've got people who care for us
We've got Sunday morning coffees in the sun
We've got Monday night television

We've got years of happiness
We've got decades of laughter ahead of us
We've got Christmases with family by the sea
We've got wine and vintage cheddar

Yeah, I have everything a man could ever want
And all I'll ever need is you

Nothing can stop us now
Only the good times left
Nothing can stop our love
Except terminal illness
Or sudden accidental death

Nothing Can Stop Us Now, Tim Minchin

It must have started after Cell was gone. After Goku had died, just admit it. When she woke up to find him still there, unmoving. After, after. Curled on his side, like Trunks would sleep in his cribs. Mouth pursed. Unsettling, she told herself, even as she remembered her relief when he'd come home. Blood in his hair, eyes staring off into nothing. That he might have died rose up to cut off her breath, and left her to hold their son, who didn't understand the fear on his mother's face. Vegeta shifted, opening his eyes.

The thrown clothes scattered around the room, where he'd tossed them before collapsing onto the bed.

("Don't ever do that again; I thought you'd died. Do you understand? Do you hear me?" Him reeling with exhaustion, and she hadn't seen him like this even during those three years)

Bulma had cried during the funeral, and everyone had been teary eyed. If Vegeta had been there, rather than disappearing somewhere again and coming back with sand in his hair, he might have even shown human emotions. Chi-Chi's face was still locked in her silent grief as she tried to understand that her husband, whom she'd just gotten back to start their life again, was gone forever. Gohan at her side, looking very much the adult-like in his black suit. Yamcha had dispensed with his attempts at casualness, and didn't make a single joke. And not even Krillin was even trying to cheer everyone up, as he spent the ceremony looking grim, or mooning over the date he'd brought, because he apparently had no idea how to treat a lady. Whoever that possibly deaf/blind/mute pale girl had been, since no one introduced her to Bulma.

For the first time since they'd had sex in the backyard and passed out to be awakened by the sprinklers, they woke up in the same place at the same time. Then they stumbled downstairs to have breakfast. For once, her mother didn't begin chattering and pointing out the obvious of how strange that was. He even put on normal, human clothes, though typically left his dirty armor lying there to be picked up by someone else.

It wasn't like she had never let him see her in her old pajamas, but it still felt strange to sit there, across from him at the table in sweatpants. While Trunks babbled, and tried to spill his oatmeal onto his head. Only, Vegeta was the one to stop him and gently pry the bowl from his hands.

During breakfast, all he said was, "I will not fight again."

Goku had been dead two weeks.

This tiny, squirming thing. He'd never seen the boy up close until now, but he could notice that the face wasn't so squashed, or so red, and that now he could open his eyes. They were round, and blue. Combined with that lilac hair, and the pudgy warm body, the missing tail, he didn't appear to be any sort of Saiyan.

Yet still, he grabbed for Vegeta's hands and clung to them. His bared hands.

The finger much too small to properly harm anyone, too weak, fingernails still soft. But he could raise and manipulate the hands, and stare up at Vegeta with moron wonder. For a second, the Saiyan wondered what exactly the boy saw. Then the lilac-haired child was lifting his father's index digit to his mouth, and biting down as hard as he could with his few shiny white teeth that shone in the dim light.

Vegeta found himself laughing at the struggling bundle at three in the morning.

He remembered with a sudden start green eyes and golden hair, the shape of the chin that was his only in retrospect. The sincerity that was sickeningly like Kakarotte. The blue eyes. The unhappy furrowed mouth.

The next night, when Trunks began screaming, Vegeta came back to him again.

That he'd dragged her out of her oily chambers that smelled of plastic and sheet metal, a cigarette hanging from her surly pink mouth that was warm and wet and opened beneath him, despite her earlier claims to remove himself from her bodily orifices. On a small wooden table, cluttering with pictures. To peel up her baggy grey shirt, warn soft from so many washings, the only thing she had on besides the laughably flimsy underwear. Hands on his shoulders. Bulma kicked and squirmed hard enough to break her one of mother's vases and not several picture frames down.

I will never have to fight again. I am no longer a warrior.

"Vegeta? Do I even want to know why you're looking like that?"

They gathered the glass together. She somehow managed to cut a calloused thumb despite her being so fidgety about picking up the shards, complaining about getting blood everywhere until he stuck the offending digit into his mouth, and then they ended up back on that table, knocking things over again. With her ankles nearly on his ears, kicking him, Vegeta almost understood what he was supposed to do now, but then she was scratching his chest, and in the roar of his orgasm, it didn't seem to matter.

For once, the two of them ended up on her bed, scrambling amongst the overstuffed pillows and toy animals of Trunks.' They'd both enjoyed the novelty of the bouncy mattress and having sheets to cover themselves in. But then they were there during odd snatches throughout the day and night, when the sun was rising, when it was high in the sky, when the moon was already up. Vegeta found himself lying in that bed, the blue-haired woman lying across his back, and not wanting to move.

Somehow, he ended up holding the boy on the ridiculous creaking chair that rocked back and forth, and was so overly adorned with lace and pillows. His son loved to wail at all hours, pacified no longer by his mother's breasts or the bottle or his toys—except to bite on them. His crib had to be replaced every two week, since he had a tendency to gnaw on the bars or rattle them hard enough to dismantle it.

It fell onto Vegeta to entertain him. The Saiyan couldn't even recall being around a baby on his planet, or really on this one. The boy could barely stumble around, though he did seem to love watching harmless balls of ki being manipulated into air, and would always reach for the bright light they emitted. Spoiled, helpless. Trunks also burst into laughter every time Vegeta would toss him into the air, in an attempt to get him to raise his ki.

This boy will one day be a Super Saiyan. The last of my race.

The blue-eyed child seemed more content to scream wordlessly over a matter Vegeta couldn't comprehend, or drool onto wooden blocks, than learn to fight.

My kin.

Yet every attempt to hand him off to someone else was foiled. Even that scarred fool with the idiotic laughter no longer spent so much time around Capsule Corp. He would touch the taller man's face, curious and unafraid. "Boo-boo. Hurt?"

The short bald one was good at distracting the boy for a few hours by being his willing punching bag, but he sometimes brought along the blonde machine. "Krillin! Play!" The shriek he'd felt in his chest seeing that thing holding his son was one that still stuck in his mind, interplayed with the image of her swinging an older version of Trunks into Vegeta. Her blue eyes, paler than Bulma's and the boy's, held a mocking knowledge. There was no one else on the planet that he hated as much as that thing, not anymore. One smirk from the can opener pricked his pride more than any of his woman's words.

But he didn't want to be comfortable here, even as he hated the annoyances, the complaints. During dinner, Bulma poured juice for the boy into a plastic cup curved for his mouth, and a glass of wine for herself, one that Vegeta stole from her hands. She gave him a suspicious glance, unhappy with her own day.

"You made him worse," Bulma accused him, while attempting to wiggle the boy into a clean jumpsuit.

But just one glance at the boy, and Vegeta knew he wouldn't be like his father. He would never grow up under Frieza's control, never hear his mocking of the race that Vegeta and his boy now shared. Trunks giggled when tickled, and didn't seem to go an hour without being stuffed with food. His grandmother carried him everywhere, making him even weaker.

"C'mon. Be a good boy and sit still for Mommy. And then you can play."

Though he had removed and moved about his share of the crude traps Bulma and her parents had arranged, Vegeta couldn't be certain it was actually improving the boy's agility. When he could be coaxed upward, it never lasted long. Nor was it graceful. He sipped at the wine, hoping it would bring something to him. Fire, or worth.

It would ease the stiffness in the human's shoulders, as they drank. Made them louder and more affectionate.

The boy at their feet rolled a ball the same color as Kakarotte's spirit bomb against the rug beneath him. In a shirt with a giant duck on it, he definitely did not look to be a Saiyan.

Vegeta hadn't trained properly in over a week.

"Dada." Trunks looked up, with as much authority as Freiza surveyed a planet. A big stupid grin. "Mama."

Then those pale brows furrowed with rage. "Food! Now!" Then he reached over to throw a plastic ball towards his mother's head.

She wasn't even able to duck. "Definitely like you."

"Give him the toy back." He stood. "I'll help prepare the food."

"What? You?"

"Just sit down, woman. And make him stop yelling."

He watched her feed Trunks out of a small jar, the food mostly mushed to help compensate for the missing teeth. She made faces to make him laugh, and then spooned food into his loose mouth. They giggled over the spills together, and when he tried to grab the spoon to feed her. "Oh, no, that's for Trunks. Not Mommy."

The Saiyan prince stared at them, hungry for something other than the food spilling onto the counter and cooking in the pans. There was some knowledge between them that he wanted to learn, something in their happiness that twisted a thing in his stomach. Vegeta refilled his glass of wine. Then he went to search for the salt.

She leaned against him on their bench, sighing. "This reminds me of Trunks' birth."

"What?"

"This part. The pregnancy ward." The woman ran a finger through her hair, casting a quick instinctive glance towards her own child, sleeping on a book, hair cast over some plastic toy shaped like a castle. Besides him, Kakarotte's own offspring was snoring away, round face as content as his father's had always been. Hand curled around the toy he and Trunks had fought over.

He had little fire in him, this second son, and brought dim memories of Vegeta's own younger, failing brother. No doubt long dead on some planet. The boy had never been strong.

"Why are we here? I hate that machine."

She flapped a magazine in his face. "We're here to show support. Towards our friends?"

Vegeta snored, disdainful. Cast a glare at the rest of the room, the sleeping Kakarotte's widow, the scarred fool flopping in a chair, the old man with his comments towards Bulma either sleeping himself or watching the TV screen. "These people are not my 'friends.'"

"Whatever. Too bad. We're here to help Juuhachigou." Another long sigh. "Everyone's having a baby."

He looked at her. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing, nothing."

The Saiyan looked at the others, making sure they were well asleep. "You have Trunks. Is that not enough?"

"Oh, I'm not saying I want another baby. He's enough." She was crinkling the paper between her hands. "But all the couples have children now. I guess it's nice though, that Trunks will have someone else to play with."

"My son will not be 'playing' with any child of that android."

"I wonder if they're having a boy or girl?"

"Probably a toaster."

But she wasn't listening to his baiting. Her blue eyes were focused on something far away. Recalling her own pregnancy, as she'd been regaling her parents and Vegeta with anecdotes of back straining and having to urinate every five minutes and complaining of stretch marks.

He'd been there, for the after part of Trunks' birth. Heard his shrieks as he tried to process what was happening, his wailing for food and a diaper. Had even held him once or twice, but only when it was just the two of them. The lack of tail and other resemblances made him suspect Bulma had been lying to him about his parentage, but the high power level, the appetitive, the frowning face that he was told over and over again matched his own revealed the truth.

Now the boy was getting old enough to attend human schools, where he fought with the human children and was in constant trouble with the supervisors there. Bulma raged at them both, but Vegeta couldn't help but be somewhat amused at how vicious the lilac-haired boy could be. Especially when he recalled the version of him from the future, who seemed to lack the bloodlust that so many Saiyans had. Even Kakarotte appreciating fighting more than he had.

But the small boy who regularly would wallop Kakarotte's sons as a hello loved to train alongside his father. Once, at night and during a full moon, Vegeta had gone downstairs for food only to find Trunks digging into the garbage with his teeth bared. It took many pounds of meat half-cooked, half-burnt on the stove to calm him down, and allow his father to carry the greasy-chinned boy back to his room. Pale hair falling onto Vegeta's arm as he removed his son from the dirty kitchen that left Bulma and her family mystified in the morning.

"I am sick of waiting here."

"Too bad."

"What are you expecting, that we'll have to help her birth the child?"

"No. But they want us here."

"I distinctly remember the machine telling us to leave." Vividly. Her face had been as red as her eyes, as she cursed them all as she was wheeled away, and nearly swung at the shocked man who'd fathered her child. Chi-Chi and Bulma had laughed it all off, and assured the short fighter that it was all normal, but maybe he shouldn't hold her hand? "It's just the hormones."

"I know, I know… so, it'll get better after the baby's born?"

The two women had glanced at each other. "Sure."

"Come." Vegeta was surprised by the tiredness in his limbs as he stood up. "There must be someplace in this hospital that has food."

"Aww, are you asking me out to dinner? I don't know, isn't that a big move in our relationship?"

He stared at her, annoyed. "Let's just find a place to eat, woman."

Bulma did that annoying thing where she grabbed onto his arm to drag him about, but for once she didn't insist on having him carry around Trunks. "Let him sleep. Aw, look how cute he is."

Of course, then she made the Saiyan prince carry her tray while she nearly locked herself out of the hospital when attempting to smoke. The food here was starchy and bared little resemblance to the blonde woman at Capsule Corp's creations. They drank too much burnt coffee, and Bulma kept trying to nudge him into conversation.

"It's still strange to see you acting like a normal person. You know, here, in this cafeteria, with our friends nearby.

"It reminds me of that time you accidentally took those Quaaludes. You were so nice then…Remember, you even danced with me. Even though there was no music playing. And in front of all our friends."

"I should slip you pain meds and downers more often."

Vegeta did his best to ignore her. Yelling at her for making him recall those memories only egged her on; she would just pull out pictures of that incident. Probably some punishment for not spending enough time with her during her pregnancy. Her mother and Yamcha had helped her push out the screaming child, a fact that she had reminded him whenever she was particularly upset. Though they both knew he would have had the same use then as now.

"I could be training now."

"For what." Bulma slumped in her seat, eyes falling half-shut. "You said you didn't want to fight anymore."

"That does not mean I should let my training cease. Especially the boy's."

She was going to fall asleep right at the table, and make him carry her around. Like when she drank too much wine. "He's still a kid. Take it easy. You'll have plenty of chances to force him to do pushups."

This place seemed little like the birthing chambers of his own home world. Where the woman went away in rooms to birth, and their children inspected for signs of strength. Trunks would have stayed there, to join the warrior elite. Of course, the child would never have been conceived had Frieza not destroy Planet Vegeta. A corner of his mouth turned up, imagining his father meeting Bulma, who would be utterly unimpressed by him, Trunks who would want to fight with him, as her parents would offer him food or otherwise not notice him at Capsule Corp at all.

The prince continued talking, hoping to keep her awake. "I didn't even know the machine was able to reproduce. Let alone with baldy. I don't know who has worst taste.

"Some men are just sadists, I suppose."

She stuck her tongue out. "You're the sadist; I'm the masochist, remember?

But the fire was leaving her, as her eyes grew distant. "I can't wait to see what their kid looks like…They'll probably ask us to babysit."

The evening didn't turn into an entire waste of time. He ended up telling some nurse to get the hell away from them, when they'd been found copulating in a closet that smelled strongly of soap and cleaner. But that stopped when Bulma dragged him back to the hospital's store to buy stuffed animals that he had to carry and wafting balloons, and then back to the waiting room where an exhausted Krillin was telling them about his new daughter.

"If there were ever a time I would prefer not to deal with your crap, it is now."

But that never worked with Bulma. She inhaled, and put her hand son her hips. Her own fighting pose. Hands balled into fists, but increasingly ready to use them. "We almost didn't wish you back! You jackass. Do you have any idea of all the crap you pulled?"

Vegeta fell back onto the bed. It was best to just show weakness, and hope she would relent rather than keep him up all night. He was tired, above all else. When he focused, he could sense Kakarotte at his home, with his screeching wife and children that so admired him. The strongest fighter again in the universe, back in domestic ease.

"Vegeta, Vegeta." Her hands over his face, calloused pads of her fingers over his eyelids. "I lost you. Does that mean nothing?"

His own death was sliding away to vague memories, as the first one had eventually become.

Refusing to let him go, "Vegeta?"

He closed his eyes. How long had he considered them a soft grave to fall into? She struggled onto their bed besides him. The two of them trying to touch in a way that was affectionate, but not sexual. His hands felt awkward over her hips, feeling the pelvis bone, the underwear she wore under her dress. Her body seemed the same as it always had, as though she hadn't died and been resurrected with a brand new body that matched the other down to the scars on her knuckles. Vegeta pulled her closer.

The Prince's hands went to the zipper of Bulma's dress, as she slid hands under his shirt to trace the scars she knew so well. "I thought you were gone forever."

"It's fine. We're alive now. Us and the boy."

She looked increasingly pathetically sexy with her makeup smearing, the black ink beneath her eyes smudged and mixing with her tears to run down her face. Still furious, as she clambered over him. "Don't ever do that again. I couldn't stand to lose you. You and Trunks."

"I won't." His hands were slid out of his gloves, and then he was bothering with the straps of her undergarments rather than simply tearing it off.

"You know." She bit into his shoulder, harmlessly. The smell of her makeup was driving him insane, reminding him of memories of her mouth on him, all over him, enveloping. Salt of her tears similar to his semen on her face and breasts, between her legs. How many times had they fucked through all the years, in how many ways was he intimately aware of her body, how well did she know of his own?

All that was escaping was moronic nothings, "Yes, yes."

"I do." Bulma was nearly sobbing into his skin. Face cold. He reached up to touch the short silky hair out of her eyes. "I really do love you."

Vegeta moved towards removing her underwear, wanting to end this, wanting to find the simple relief her body provided for him. It was so much easier to express how he felt through his actions than struggling to find the right words, something she should have known by now. "Stop weeping."

"So much," she wept.

"I know! Woman, I know. I won't leave again."

"You better not." A useless punch to his chest. "Does it still hurt anywhere?"

Vegeta's jaw set. "No."

With experience, she went to pull his shirt off to throw in the corner to be found by either one of them or a robot in the morning. "I hope it does!"

His mouth went to her breasts, the skin as sweet and responsive as ever. Her nipples stiffening under his tongue, its patient licks that drove her crazier than their fast fucks. Hands in his hair, sobbing his name over and over again. It would be so easy to shove his cock in her, and push the memories of their previous day aside, to pretend they hadn't died. Bulma's mouth against his forehead, moans stifling her cries. His woman, his mate.

Kakarotte, unfathomable degrees ahead, miles away, the last pureblood of his race, with his own family, with no fears of those dark-eyed kin. How angry that made him, now, the ease of his power and words that he exchanged with his children and wife. The promise of Bulma's hand on his cock, his rising ki, the screaming claws that scratched at his chest, almost as painful as the blast that had killed him. The strangle of his pride. The words pushed free, burning in a fury of rage that drove him up to grab her small white shoulders, too tired in a hundred ways, to be held back, so miserable and too powerful, "I love you."

Bulma sniffled. "I know. Now you better stay awake so we can have sex."

Trunks was at his side, badgering him to see the tiny person wrapped so carefully in a blanket. Since Bulma had become pregnant, he seemed to have regressed back ten years, and turned into that whiny child that made his mother and grandmother carry him everywhere in-between serving him treats. "I wanna see."

As though he hadn't spent hours standing before that room full of human children, awed by their presence as Vegeta himself stood by and watching his own boy. Saw the amazement in his blue eyes. "Look at them all. Think the baby is going to turn out like that? Look at that one, Dad, he has blue hair. Maybe the baby looks like he will? Or she, maybe? Do you think it'll be a boy or girl?"

He knew what infants looked like, she resembled them utterly. No tail; just as Kakarotte's second child and Vegeta's own son, she had been born without. There were tiny curls of blue hair, blind eyes that seemed unable to open more than a millimeter, a loud shriek that informed even those in the waiting room that she had been born. Small fingers, helplessly reaching for her own face. This child that had punched and kicked her way through nine months. How Bulma had spoken of that, with pride and complaint. "I think this baby might be worse than Trunks. God, just calm down in there. It's not like you're going anywhere for a while, so just get comfortable."

But this baby had proved less tractable. Even Vegeta had felt this child kick, once when in bed and her parent's had both been trying to sleep. The confusion that had woken him with a start, sure an enemy was in the room. Bulma had awoken to find him pressed into her stomach, listening.

A grab at his arm threatened to spill the child out of his hold. Had he grown so distracted, so weakened by this tiny infant. She looked painfully small, with a red, wrinkled face that reminded him of his son when he'd been this age. The same blue eyes they'd inherited from their mother. Only she was paler and more delicate, and little like the terror Bulma had foretold. "Stop it."

"Can I hold her?"

Vegeta handed his second child to his first. Trunks cradled the baby, easily supporting the head. For a moment, the full-blooded Saiyan remembered him spending time with the machine's child, and sitting through tea parties and playing with her dolls to avoid the blonde child's tears. Going along with it, even as he complained to Goten about feeling so dumb. Now, he might have to do that all over again. "Hi there. Bra."

They looked at the baby together, almost sighing at the same moment as she opened her eyes to blink at them, almost drunkenly. She, Bra, definitely took after her mother.

"Give her back," Bulma yelled at them. "Stop hogging her."

"You had her for nine months, Mom. We just wanna look at her. Everyone's waiting outside, in the hallway."

She went to fuss with her hair, eyes on the baby. "Just give me a second. Okay, hand her over."

Vegeta's hand went to the back of her hand. Trunks was still in the room, and even making a face, he found it impossible not to touch her. Even in a harmless manner that had her complaining about how shitty she felt, he couldn't stop admiring the flush to her face, and the squirming child in her arms. His hand found its way to her shoulder, and then slid down to inspect the baby. This tiny indefensibly thing…who immediately began screaming loud enough to make the others in the room reach to cover their ears.

"Quiet the child, woman."

"I will, just shut up. You're making it worse!"

"Feed her. Or cover her mouth."

"I'm not suffocating our daughter! Here, you take her then, see if you can get her to shut up."

"Fine." Vegeta took her, trying not to squeeze. Then he looked down at Bra, at the tears that were dripping down the red face, at her sudden silence. "I'm not going to do this every time you start screaming, you know. I won't."

"Oh, stop acting like you don't already love her. Now go tell our friends to come in."