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Chapter Text

Frozen Stars - Prologue

“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” Sirens blared through the chaos of a space station under attack. “Intruder alert!” Red lights intermittently cast the glorified broom closet that counted as the security hub in this civilian research facility into stark, deep shadows. “Intruder alert!”

Bulma Briefs hastened into the room and brought up the main security interface while she was still tying her kimono belt around her waist. “Intruder alert!” Then again, one look was all she needed to assess the situation. Because they were completely, utterly, royally fucked .

They hadn’t been alarmed when five round capsules that reminded Bulma of over-sized tennis balls had approached their station, and why would they? Spacecraft styles were even more numerous than friendly species in the United Federation of Planets, and while they were at the edge of Federation space, they still were far, far away from dangerous territory like the Neutral Zone. The worst thing they had to worry about out here was making sure the new researchers who’d never been to space before opened the airlock doors in the right order. Surely the newcomers were friends.

Except that they weren’t, and Bulma’s carelessness had doomed them all. Because space-suited strangers had emerged from the capsules, and they’d emerged shooting. They’d taken over the hangar and captured the techs working there before the c hief of s ecurity, who now stood next to Bulma wringing his hands, had even realized they were in danger. And now the intruders were making their way through the station by literally punching through doors that were designed to withstand the vacuum of space, and they weren’t interested in diplomacy. “I’m so sorry, Dr Briefs, I didn’t...”

Bulma didn’t blame the man. Despite his red uniform jacket, indicating that he served in the Security branch of Starfleet, he was a glorified caretaker. His job was going through his security protocol checklist every day, making sure the automatic fire extinguishers and the blast doors and the dozens of other systems necessary for survival on a space station worked, and occasionally playing training videos for new research personnel arriving from Starfleet. He had no idea what to do in a situation like that, and he couldn’t have seen any of it coming, just like Bulma hadn’t seen it coming. But she did blame herself. She was the lead researcher. This was her project, her station, her people. She should have known. She just should have. And now there was only one thing to do.

She pressed her thumb onto the touch pad of a panel that she’d hoped she’d never have to open, then punched the big red button. Instantly, the incessant wailing of the sirens and the automated computer voice changed. “Evacuate station. Evacuate station. All personnel, proceed to Hangar Bay 2 immediately. Proceed...”

“But Dr Briefs...”

Bulma didn’t have patience for fools on the best of days, and today emphatically was not the best of days. She stood again, grabbed the man by the scruff of his uniform, and pushed him towards the door of the security hub. He struggled without any real conviction against her grasp, then protested weakly, “But you can’t. You’re the lead researcher, if you’re captured...”

She had thought about that for roughly point three seconds while assessing the situation. Then she’d decided that it didn’t fucking matter. Her people, and the data automatically transferred to the escape shuttle’s hard drives when she’d given the evacuation command, were more important than her. And if the worst happened, she’d find a way out. She always did.

“Dr Briefs, you really can’t...”

One good push between the shoulder blades, and he was out in the corridor leading to Hangar Bay 2, eyes wide and shocked and uncomprehending. Bulma slammed the emergency button that closed the blast door between them with an almost deafening hiss, cutting off his angry protest when he realized what she was doing. Oh, well , Bulma sighed with the resignation of a woman who faced impossible odds and had just run out of fucks to give. He’ll get over it. Preferably in the safety of the escape shuttle she was cut off from now. But that was all part of the plan, wasn’t it?

For a moment, sheer, unabashed terror washed over her. These intruders weren’t here for nice cocktails with umbrellas or to get a look at the mediocre collection of vintage movies in the station’s databases (long-term research assignments were very boring, usually ) , and there was a good chance that her heroic plan might end up with her being very heroically dead at the end, with a nice closed-casket funeral back on Earth because there was no body to be found. But she couldn’t think about that now. She had a job to do.

Strapping herself in properly this time, she sat down in the chief’s chair , pulling up the cameras covering every angle of the station’s interior until she finally found the intruders. They were wreaking havoc in the – thankfully empty – mess hall, slowly making their way towards the core of the station where Bulma waited for them like a spider in the center of her net. Only that Bulma’s net sucked. The station had absolutely no defensive systems, even though it was a Starfleet operation, because nobody had thought it would need any. The only tools at her disposal were the cameras that were being punched out or shot down by the intruders every chance they got, and the standard civilian anti-emergency systems every space station needed because space was fucking good at killing people. Blast doors against pressure loss. Automatic firefighting systems. Automatic temperature controls. Triple backed up atmospheric regulation. Radiation shields. Point defense to destroy space debris and small meteorites. More radiation shields because there really was a lot of radiation in space. And somewhere in that list, there had to be something she could work with. She was a genius, after all.

Her ingenuity was temporarily put on hold when one of the intruders, a shockingly broadly built man with hands the size of baseball gloves, pried the mess hall door leading towards the station’s core apart with space-suited hands, because that should not have been possible. Those doors were made of warship-grade materials, made to snap shut in a fraction of a second in case of pressure loss, and he tore them open like a ration package. It just… it just boggled the mind. And then Bulma had an idea.

For a moment, the lumbering giant in his space suit hesitated, motioning for his smaller companions to join him at the door, and Bulma waited with bated breath. Then he stepped through the door he’d pried open, and Bulma pushed the button. For an agonizing moment, nothing happened, and then the pneumatic doors sprung into action despite their rough treatment, and crushed the man between their serrated edges.

“Yes! I got you, asshole!” Bulma couldn’t help but cheer despite the gravity of her situation, because she needed that win, and she needed it now, even as her ever-active brain already considered other ways to fuck those guys up and slow their progress through the space station. But then the man who’d been crushed by the blast door began to move again, rolling his shoulders as if they were just a little sore before prying apart the door again, and Bulma cursed with vicious abandon. If that hadn’t stopped them, then no weapon at her disposal – and she was using the term weapon loosely – could. She couldn’t even vent the compartments because they’d punched through a good number of walls on their way in, and not only did she not want to compromise the station’s structural integrity, she also didn’t know where they kept their prisoners.

The prisoners… There’d been three techs working in Hangar Bay 1 where the intruders landed, but Bulma barely had had time to think of them while she tried to usher the rest of her personnel to the escape shuttle in Hangar Bay 2. She’d thought that there was nothing she could do for them, but if she still had control over the doors… just maybe… but she needed more time for that. And the next little surprise she had in mind for the intruders might just give her that time.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard as five space-suited forms regarded the blast door warily for a moment. Then one of them – an almost slight figure compared to the others, even in his space suit and body armor – shrugged and began punching through the walls again, which was a smart strategy. If they made their own holes, she couldn’t use the pneumatic doors against them, and if they severed any important lines… well, they still wore space suits, and fuck anyone who didn’t . But it also slowed them down, and that was just what Bulma wanted. And what she was doing right now would hopefully slow them down even more.

Since the very beginning of space flight, fire had been one of its greatest dangers, sometimes killing astronauts before they’d even left the perceived safety of Earth behind. Which was why Starfleet was positively anal about smoke detectors, heat sensors, ventilation systems, and a multitude of different fire extinguishing systems. If smoke or heat rose above certain threshold values, they automatically went off, dousing whole rooms in fire extinguishing foam that could quench even the explosion of a good, old-fashioned rocket booster. In theory , those threshold values could not be tampered with, because there was always that one fucking moron who thought that the fire alarm going off was just so inconvenient when he tried to nuke something in his microwave, and then had no idea why half the space station burned down. Practically speaking, Bulma had just gone and re-programmed the thing to react to the space suit power sources the intruders wore, and it should go off just about… now .

The mess hall turned into absolute mayhem as every fire extinguisher in the room opened its valves and dumped foam onto the unsuspecting intruders. Visibility went down to almost zero, but Bulma could see them flailing on her heat sensors, trying to get through the wall faster, only to be greeted by more foam in the briefing room they’d just entered, their power cells like homing beacons for the fire extinguishers. “You’re busy now,” Bulma murmured with an almost sadistic smile, but she was already pulling up a broader view of the station. If the heat sensors worked on the intruders, then they’d also work on… “There you are.”

Three un-space-suited, humanoid-size d heat sources were huddled in a utility closet near Hangar Bay 1, and they just had to be the prisoners. They had to be, because she was betting the lives of the rest of her people on it. But she just couldn’t leave anyone behind. Except her, of course.

Bulma took a deep breath, then opened an intercom channel, hoping that the space-suited assholes gnawing through the intestines of her space station hadn’t severed that line yet. “Briefs to Hanger 1 personnel.”

“Ma’am! Ma’am, is that you? Please help us, they threw us in here, and we can’t...”

Bulma didn’t recognize the shaking voice over the grainy emergency intercom, but it was all the confirmation she needed. These people were frightened, and they needed her help. “It’s me. I have control of the doors, and I’m gonna get you out of there. Make a beeline to Hangar 2, the shuttle is still there, but you gotta haul ass. I have you on sensors, and I’ll open the doors for you as you go. Got it?”

“Got it, ma’am.” The woman hesitated for a moment, already sounding calmer, more rational. Like she had hope now, when before, there had been none. “And thank you. We’ll thank you properly when we get there.”

“Buy me a beer when we’re back on Earth and we’re good.” Bulma didn’t tell her that she wouldn’t be on the shuttle with them, because it didn’t matter, she just punched the button that opened the door, sparing only a quick glance at the intruders to make sure that they were still very, very busy. “Now run.”

Two hours later, everything was over, and Bulma knew it. She’d fought valiantly, with every weapon at her disposal, blast doors, fire extinguishers, venting compartments to vacuum, shutting corridors off with radiation shields, jacking the artificial gravity up to eleven, even blowing a fucking hole into the side of the station by remotely disabling the safety systems on their reactor – she’d have to complain to Starfleet about that one, how people hadn’t managed to kill themselves yet with that kind of shit security, she had no idea. She’d even figured out a way to shoot at the intruders with the anti-meteorite point defense. But none of it had done any lasting damage to them, and now they stood in front of the security hub doors, ready to punch their way through them, ready to capture or kill her. And Bulma’s only solace was that the shuttle with the entirety of her crew and all their research data was almost two hours away, fully stealthed, and almost untraceable. Space was vast , and finding something that didn’t want to be found there was hard . She was even done with the emergency database wipe, and there was nothing to do for her anymore, except face what was coming with dignity.

She’d toyed with the thought of triggering the self-destruction sequence built into any Starfleet facility earlier, but now that the time had come, she found that she couldn’t do it. These guys might kill her, yes, but maybe, just maybe, they’d capture her alive, and then she had a chance to escape… and Bulma liked life way too much to throw away her chance at it, slim as it might be, and no matter how angry she was at the bastards who’d gone and taken apart her life’s work during a single night.

It was dignity, then, but unfortunately, dignity was in short supply. She was drenched in sweat since she’d lost access to the temperature regulation systems a while ago, her blue hair sticking to her skull, and since she‘d been thrown out of bed by the intruder alert, she was wearing only a kimono over her nightgown instead of a space suit. If these guys decided to shoot at her, or just plain old toss her out of an airlock, she was toast. So it was time to garner a little goodwill with them, if that was at all possible. H er attempts to hail them had been met with stony silence so far .

She unbuckled herself from the security c hief‘s chair and furtively ran her fingers through her hair, sparing a last glance at the single exterior camera she still had access to. The gas giant Alfrmyke with its countless moons that formed such intriguing gravity patterns that Bulma gladly would’ve spent a lifetime studying their interferences turned uncaringly in the distance, red, brown and green clouds swirling in beautiful paisley over its storm-torn surface. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to acknowledge how much she loved this planet, this station, this line of research, how much she wanted to uncover Alfrmyke’s secrets, and then she sighed deeply, stuffed it all into the deep recesses of her heart, and slammed the door shut with the finality of a blast door hissing closed. Because it was over, and she knew it.

On legs shaking as the adrenaline rush ebbed off, she walked over to the blast door leading to the hallway where the intruders were waiting, knowing that she might be dead in a matter of seconds – if she was lucky, of course. Courage, Bulma. Courage, and dignity. She took a deep breath, and activated the intercom. “Uh… this is Dr Bulma Briefs. I’m the lead researcher of this station, and I… I surrender.”

Tinny laughter filtered through at least two sets of speakers answered her, and her stomach turned to ice. She hadn’t had time to be afraid before, she’d been too busy considering all the ways she could fuck up those guys, but now she was all out of ideas, and cold dread began to settle where her fighting spirit had been before. “If you’re serious about that, open the door.”

Bulma didn’t even allow herself to think about hesitating as she punched in the code with shaky fingers, and it hissed open with terrifying finality. She’d made sure that the corridor had atmosphere – she wasn‘t completely stupid – but still, standing with her hands in the air, in front of five terrifying strangers in space suits who could kill her by having an overly active trigger finger, or tearing a hole in the walls, or just giving her a good punch, was absolutely unnerving. She couldn’t see their faces through their mirrored visors, couldn’t read their body language through the bulk of their space suits, and just for once in her life, she had absolutely nothing to say. Her mind was completely blank.

Then one of them – the smallest, who she was about seventy percent sure was the leader of the group judging by the way the others deferred to him and looked to him for guidance – stepped forward and raised his hand, opening his visor with the hiss of atmospheric pressure equalizing. Bulma’s first thought was that he looked… shockingly human. The intruders had been faceless creatures in space suits for so long that she hadn’t spared a thought to what might hide behind their masks, but the man who now examined her with impossibly dark eyes in his aristocratic face wouldn’t have looked out of place on Earth at all, down to his spiked black hair.

He assessed her for a moment, the same way she was assessing him, his eyes grazing over her messy hair, her flushed face, her chest heaving with the intensity of her breaths under her kimono, her bare feet on the cold metal of the space station floor. Then he smiled at her, cold, arrogant, and terrifyingly self-assured considering the fact that Bulma had almost as thoroughly ruined his day as he had hers.

“Now step out into the corridor.” His voice sounded deeper in person, the danger just bubbling behind the surface more evident without the distortion of the speakers, but Bulma couldn’t help the small grin rising unbidden on her lips. They’d learned from their mistakes, and now feared her and her door controls. Still thought she might set a trap for them, even though she was all out of tricks now. It was… satisfying, and with that final thought, she stepped out into the corridor, towards her captors.

His smile widened fractionally when he saw that the door didn’t crush her, the proud, triumphant look in his eyes intensified, and he stepped forward until her nose almost touched the collar of his space suit and she was forced to look up at him. “Now I’ve got you.” His gloved fist gathered the fabric of her kimono on her chest, pulling her towards him . “You’ve been such a pain in the ass, and now I’ve finally got you.”

She tried to be smart, she really did, but she just couldn’t help herself. “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

Chapter Text

Frozen Stars - Chapter 1: Can it be blackmail if everyone knows?

Five Years Later

Bulma Briefs didn’t like to talk about the Alfrmyke disaster, as she’d privately dubbed it. Not because she had been captured – she’d been off the station and on her way back to the next s tarbase in one of the intruders’ ships not twelve hours after they’d tossed her into her makeshift cell, and seriously, what kind of dumbass didn’t secure all the panels in the room before imprisoning someone? That was such a rookie mistake!

Not even because of the dent in her ego – the research station orbiting Alfrmyke along with the planet’s countless moons had been her pride and joy, and she had fought hard to find the funding and get the project approved by the sometimes byzantine bureaucracy of Starfleet, especially as a relatively junior researcher. And then she’d had to essentially rip her life’s work to shreds in her desperate bid to save her people. That stung, definitely, but everyone had survived, and she still had all of their collected data.

It wasn’t even the lost research opportunity – sure, Alfrmyke had the most intriguing gravitational patterns she’d ever seen, and could teach the Federation a lot if they finally figured out what the fuck was going on there (because intriguing, in this case, meant Bulma was very confused – the math just wasn’t mathing), but there were other gas giants with other moons out there that she could study. No, what pissed Bulma off the most about the whole thing was the way it had ruined her career and cut off all of her future opportunities. Every time she proposed another project, it came down to one thing – the fact that she was the woman who’d lost the Alfrmyke station and royally botched the first contact with the mysterious intruders, who had turned out to be a whole-ass new species the Federation had previously managed to overlook. And then someone almost as talented as her and with a better track record of not fucking up things got the money and the shiny new toys, and Bulma was left with nothing.

Well, not nothing, exactly. Not anymore. After a few years of suck as science officer on various starbases and ships, she’d been reassigned to Starfleet Academy, teaching gravitational analytics to wide-eyed space cadets, and while she itched to go back out there to look at stars and planets up close, she also enjoyed teaching. Sure, answering the dumb-ass questions that she’d just covered during her lecture over and over and over again sucked sometimes, and the cheating attempts seemed to get more insulting to her intelligence with each semester, but she loved her colleagues, she loved her TAs, she even liked her students most of the time, and she loved that she got paid to do research and share her love for her field with the next generation of asp i ring Starfleet scientists from all walks of life and all planets of the Federation.

And she finally had time for her friends and her family again, time that had been sorely lacking while she’d been stationed on ships and research stations in remote corners of Federation space (or, as Launch had called it, “the ass crack of the quadrant”) . The job even came with a small but cozy apartment in one of the faculty housing complexes, and was just a short walk across campus from her favorite coffee shop. Overall, life was good, and the only thing that reminded her of Alfrmyke was the recurring dream she had where she polished the infuriating stranger’s smile off his face with a baseball bat instead of being unceremoniously tossed into a thoroughly insufficient cell.

Which was why Bulma walked into the semester’s first staff meeting, already a little late, a little flustered by the start-of-the-semester rush, and almost dropped her coffee when she stared into that same arrogant, aristocratic face that haunted her dreams. Only that the asshole wasn’t in a battered space suit this time, but a foreign-looking uniform slash armor, and standing next to the fucking Commandant of Starfleet Academy on the dais offering a magnificent view of San Francisco Bay. And once again, she couldn’t help herself. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

The marvelous acoustics of the lecture hall where the meeting was held did their job admirably, amplifying her conversational tone and projecting her words to every goddamned person in attendance . Countless heads swiveled towards her, standing in the door, coffee in one hand, disheveled pack of notes tucked behind her PADD in the other, until Commandant Morris cleared his throat impatiently, making her colleagues turn towards him again as if it were a tennis match. He and Bulma had done battle before, and she knew that he wasn’t a fan of her or her irreverent ways, so she amended with a roll of her eyes that she hoped he couldn’t see because of the distance, “What the fuck is he doing here, sir ?” Which was a fucking stupid idea, she realized the second the words were out of her mouth, but she was too angry to care now that the first shock of seeing that guy had worn off and she realized that she wasn’t dreaming. Unfortunately.

A murmur of disbelief went through the officers around her, but the object of her scorn didn’t even summon the infuriatingly superior smile she’d come to hate over the years. In fact, he barely looked at her, his face impassive and unreadable while Commandant Morris was about three seconds away from a coronary, if his complexion was any indication. “As I was about to say just before I was interrupted,” he continued pointedly, turning towards her colleagues once again, “this is His Royal Highness, Prince Vegeta of Vegeta, and he will join the teaching staff at Starfleet Academy as a part of our new technology and personnel exchange initiative with the Saiyan people.”

Bulma stared at him open-mouthedly, because she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t fucking believe it! First Starfleet went and scape-goated her for the loss of her research station when she’d done everything right in an unbelievably shitty situation and managed to get all of her people to safety against all odds, and now these stupid motherfuckers put that asshole who captured her right in front of her? If she had to see his fucking face every day in the staff lounge, she was going to kill someone! Him, preferably.

Despite her anger, part of her brain knew that now would be an excellent time to shut up, gather what was left of her dignity, and find a seat in one of the back rows, but once again, she was too angry to be smart, and her mouth doubly so. “But that’s the asshole who captured me!”

Bulma had driven Commandant Morris to the brink of homicide before, but she hadn’t known that he could look that murderous. “Dr Briefs, please do sit down right now, and we will have a private conversation later.” His tone was one perpetual troublemaker Bulma knew only to well. He was done with her shit and they both knew it, and he had more important matters to attend to than soothing her ruffled feathers. “His Royal Highness will be working as a martial arts instructor for cadets in the Security track, and I trust that all staff members,” the Commandant’s dark, angry eyes picked her out of the crowd of officers like the target-seeking lasers that guided photon torpedoes to their destinations, “will treat him with the respect and deference appropriate not only for a fellow officer and colleague , but also for a visiting royal dignitary.”

Bulma groaned and sat on a free chair pushed against the back wall of the lecture hall in defiance of all fire safety regulations imaginable, burying her face in her notes. This semester was going to suck balls. Her stay as a Saiyan prisoner had been brief, her interactions with their Prince (whom she’d thought just a random run of the mill military asshole back then) minimal, but she had found out two things about him during their disastrous first meeting: He was a capital-a Asshole, and he pushed all of Bulma’s buttons. And goddamn the Commandant and his irritating insistence on not pissing off new Federation allies, but he had just handed that asshole who’d captured her a whole fucking remote control. Because if she had to treat that guy with respect, she was royally fucked. Pun intended.

While Bulma quietly seethed in her corner of the lecture hall, trying to incinerate the asshole who’d captured her by the sheer force of her hateful thoughts – because that would solve her problem quite nicely and nobody would be able to prove that it had been her fault – Commandant Morris enumerated Prince Vegeta’s titles and accomplishments, and why he was suddenly supposed to be qualified to teach Starfleet cadets here at the Academy. If Saiyan royalty worked remotely close to Earth and other planets’ royalty that Bulma had had contact with before, two thirds of the titles and all of the accomplishments were pure bullshit, except, of course, for the fact that he’d gone and captured Bulma’s space station. Only that it was called “spearheaded the Saiyan people’s first contact with the Federation” when the Commandant talked about it, and that it wasn’t really an accomplishment in Bulma’s eyes.

“And now that I’m done with the introductions,” continued the Commandant with his trained orator’s voice, and Bulma breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Maybe they could get to the boring part of the staff meeting now, the one where Bulma surreptitiously read a book on her PADD because everything she needed to know was covered in the countless start-of-semester messages that Academy bureaucracy inevitably generated. Starfleet was not-so-secretly powered by superfluous paperwork and bad coffee, after all. “Your Highness, would you like to say a few words to your new colleagues here at Starfleet Academy?”

Bulma felt as if she’d just bitten into a lemon, but still, she looked up from her notes that she’d used as a shield to hide her embarrassed face behind, because this, she had to see. And not only because she was half convinced that the asshole would say something caustic to her and embarrass her in front of the entire staff (though, Bulma had to admit, she’d already done a pretty good job of embarrassing herself, no further assistance required). He was just the type to make her humiliation complete with a sarcastic quip and a sadistic little smile. But instead of giving a pompous speech, Vegeta just slowly raked his eyes over the gathered faculty before he scoffed, the sound so packed with derision that Bulma was surprised it didn’t have its own field of gravity. And then he walked off the stage to his seat in the front row, face impassive, as if he hadn’t just insulted an entire lecture hall of Starfleet officers without uttering a single word.

“Uh… well.” Commandant Morris scratched his head as Vegeta sat down and crossed his arms like he’d rather be shot at than sit through this meeting, a reaction that Bulma found infuriatingly relatable. “Please join me in welcoming our newest colleague at Starfleet Academy with a rousing round of applause.”

People around Bulma started to clap, confusedly, but they did clap, and rage rushed through Bulma with an intensity that took her breath away. They were fucking traitors, all of them. That guy had almost killed two dozen of her people, had captured her, had wreaked havoc on her perfect, priceless research station, and now the suckers were clapping for him, just because he’d rolled up to Starfleet Academy in his pretty uniform and scowled at them condescendingly? And what the fuck was Starfleet even thinking? Last she’d heard, the Saiyans had kicked the Federation out of their little corner of the galaxy by yeeting Bulma and her people straight back to Earth, and now they were supposed to be buddies? With people so fucking reclusive that the Federation hadn’t even known they existed until they’d accidentally built a space station right on top of one of their outposts? It was preposterous!

But Bulma was pissed off about more than the sheer absurdity of the situation. It stung that Starfleet didn’t even have the common fucking courtesy of warning her in advance that the asshole who’d captured her was coming to the Academy. Sure, the Starfleet higher-ups blamed her for how horribly the First Contact with the Saiyans had gone (even though she still had no fucking idea what she could’ve done differently – she hadn’t even known that they existed before they’d attacked), of course, she wasn’t their favorite person right now, and her career was probably dead in the water, any chance of promotion or another interesting assignment like the Alfrmyke Gravity Study gone in a flash of angry Saiyans punching through station walls like cardboard. But that they didn’t even let her know, had allowed her to run into this shit blindly and in front of the whole fucking faculty? It smarted, and Bulma wasn’t very good at handling humiliation. Suckers probably think I’ll just have to get over it! As if it was that easy!

Bulma had thought she’d put Alfrmyke behind her. She really had. She’d gone to therapy after her return to Earth, grudgingly at first, because Starfleet had made her, and then because it helped her understand everything that had happened, make sense of the fear, the terror, the anger, the guilt. She’d been cleared to return to duty, and had gone and rebuilt her career from the ashes best as she could while Starfleet was doing everything it could to keep her down. She’d thought that she was over it – nothing she could do about what had happened, so no sense moping about it. And yet, now that she’d suddenly come face to face with the man who’d taken everything she’d ever wanted out of her career away from her, the reality that she had not really gotten over what had happened slammed into her like a meteorite. She’d only put it away in neatly labeled boxes in the deep recesses of her heart, and now all of it was coming tumbling out again, the door opened by Vegeta’s sudden arrival. And once again, Starfleet was not helping. They were making it worse.

Commandant Morris pulled her into his office after the meeting and ripped her a new one for “embarrassing him in front of the entire faculty”, “disrespecting a valued Federation ally” and “jeopardizing the Federation’s fragile relationship with the Saiyans”. And just when Bulma was done breathing through the urge to scream at the man loudly enough that the cadets waiting to see him in the room outside would’ve heard, and tell him exactly what she thought about his bullshit, the Commandant added, almost as an afterthought, “You’re going to apologize to Prince Vegeta.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bulma knew the moment the words were out of her mouth that it’d been another stupid-ass decision to actually say them, but seriously? SERIOUSLY? “I’m not going to apologize to that asshole! If anything, he should apologize to me! I didn’t toss him into a fucking cell!”

“I do not appreciate your interruption,” Commandant Morris replied, and he looked like it took everything he had in him and then some to stay reasonably calm and not scream at her like he would at a clueless first year cadet who’d just tried to cuddle a warp core, “and I also do not appreciate you calling the crown prince of the Federation’s newest ally derogatory names. His Royal Highness has already assured us that he will be gracious enough to overlook your conduct during our First Contact with his people, and your sincerest apologies will hopefully entreat him to forget that you attacked him without provocation, and smooth over today’s frankly atrocious behavior.”

Even Bulma had to admit that maybe, just maybe, she hadn’t been at her most diplomatic during the meeting, but still, atrocious? After the asshole had destroyed her entire fucking research station and she’d had to escape in a tiny, cramped, smelly Saiyan pod ship? Was he fucking kidding her? Did he have any idea how devastating it had been, seeing her life’s work being blasted to tiny pieces, and even aiding in the destruction of it because that meant her people would have a better chance to escape? Bulma hadn’t signed up with Starfleet for the combat bullshit, after all! She was just here for the research opportunities and the way the uniform made her ass look phenomenal. “I don’t think I have anything to apologize for,” she ground out defiantly, adding a “sir” at the end only when the Commandant narrowed his eyes at her disrespect. “It was a combat situation, and I reacted according to my best judgment, avoiding any casualties of both Federation and Saiyan person n el, I might add.”

“Starfleet happens to disagree,” Commandant Morris retorted gruffly, and in a tone that said that he shared Starfleet’s bullshit assessment of the situation. “Your callous disregard for Starfleet protocols alone should’ve earned you a court martial! But I digress...” He stood behind his desk and walked over to the window overlooking the San Francisco campus, with the Golden Gate Bridge visible in the distance, as if he had to compose himself. As if he thought Bulma so repulsive, so irresponsible, that he was struggling not to tell her in those words that she was lower than the dirt under his boots, and not fit to be a Starfleet scientist.

Try as he might to hold himself back, Bulma still bristled at the disrespect he was showing to her. Turning his back to her in the middle of a conversation, did the guy want to get smacked over the back of the head or something? But unfortunately for both of them, the Commandant was not done with her yet. “You will apologize, Dr Briefs, and be thankful that we allow you to do so. And that is the end of the matter.”

Bulma challenged him almost by instinct, because if there was one thing she hated, and hated with a passion, it was assholes who told her what to do. “And if I don’t?”

Commandant Morris turned towards her and smiled thinly. “Then Sta r fleet will quickly find itself without any further need for your services. Dimissed, Dr Briefs.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Why do the assholes have to congregate in MY vicinity?

Bulma was still fuming while she was eating dinner in the faculty mess hall, hours after she’d stormed out of the Commandant’s office. How dare that little bastard Morris threaten her! She’d… she’d… well, she had no fucking idea what she’d do to him, except cuss him out in her head every time she saw him, or thought about him, but she had to come up with something devastating. Because how dare he!

She’d have understood if Starfleet wanted her to apologize for embarrassing Prince Vegeta (and herself, of course) in front of the whole faculty, because even though she would’ve hated every second of it, she’d been out of line, and she knew it. But… for Alfrmyke? How could those stupid idiots still be so fucking dense to think that she’d done anything wrong there? It was literally self-defense, for fuck’s sake! Did she have to do an interpretative dance to make them understand? Had all the reports she’d written, all the debriefings she’d endured not been enough?

“Who do you want to kill today, and can I help?” Launch asked as she slid into the seat across from Bulma, tray in hand, and Bulma chuckled for the first time since she’d gotten her day ruined by a certain smirking, aristocratic asshole.

“Am I that obvious?”

“Yup. Wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.” Launch (who actually was a rocket scientist) tried a spoonful of her mess hall soup and made a face. “And I can’t let you go murder the Commandant all by yourself, you’d totally get caught, especially because the whole faculty knows your motive now.”

Launch had exactly two things she was passionate about: food, and making things go ka-boom. Which was why she was the most popular person in the Tactical department at Starfleet Academy, despite her abrasive personality where ka-boom things were concerned. Nobody wanted to piss off the lady who put a tray of kick-ass baked goodies in the staff kitchen every day, and knew how to MacGyver a bomb out of a pen and a paper clip (pen optional). She’d also been Bulma’s friend since their high school days, and now that they both taught at Starfleet Academy, they were closer than ever.

“Or is it less of a murder situation, and more of a glitter bomb situation?” Launch asked when Bulma didn’t answer right away, lost in her thoughts, and Bulma suppressed a laugh at the thought of the Commandant finding pink craft herpes on his dress uniform a year later. If anyone could do it (and without getting caught, too), it was Launch. When Bulma had broken up with her fiance Yamcha after the Alfrmyke debacle, Launch had thrown her a “Forget about the Guy” party that had involved a buffet that made professional caterers green with envy, and forty-seven different ways to blow off steam by blowing up things in your back yard, and honestly, best party ever. In fact, Bulma could use another one right now, because she’d been in a real “Let’s blow things up!” mood ever since Vegeta had just sauntered back into her life with his judgmental face and sarcastic smirks.

But as much as Bulma thought that the Commandant would’ve deserved a glitter pipe bomb in his mail, it wasn’t the right move, and not only because it would’ve been glaringly obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together that she was the culprit (not that Starfleet had a huge surplus of brain cells, if their handling of the Alfrmyke situation was any indication). But a glitter bomb also wouldn’t accomplish anything, and it wouldn’t let her keep her job and her dignity. She’d have to choose between the two, which was the crux of the issue. “The Commandant is making me apologize.”

“Bastard,” Launch dead-panned as she pulled her bowl with curry over, the substandard soup apparently not good enough to eat, but whatever else Launch had wanted to say died on her lips as a shadow fell over their secluded table tucked away in a corner near the windows. Someone had clearly gone out of their way to seek them out, and Bulma wasn’t surprised when she found Doctor Cui’s purple face sneering down at them. Wonderful. Just what I need tonight.

“Trying to insult me, Launch?” he smirked, and Launch put her spoon down with too much control in her tightly curled fingers, the clink against the hard plastic tray too loud, audible even over the background murmurs of the faculty dining hall.

“I assure you, if I was trying to insult you, even you wouldn’t have to ask,” she replied coolly, her explosive temper that was the stuff of legends in the Tactical department barely controlled, and Cui laughed stiffly before he turned towards Bulma, ready to revel in her misfortune (and unwilling to antagonize Launch further, because the woman was almost as good at finishing fights as Bulma was at starting them).

“I’m surprised you’re still here, after your stunt this morning,” he taunted Bulma as he tried to pull himself out a chair, then reconsidered when Launch put her hand on its back rest, her face furious. “Starfleet should’ve kicked you out a long time ago, but after today, you’re good as gone. Dead woman walking.”

Bulma took a deep, deep breath and reached down to reserves of calm and patience she had already exhausted this morning when dealing with Vegeta and Commandant Morris. He’s not worth it. He just isn’t. He’s just an annoying little gnat you can’t shake off, and you really don’t want a dry-cleaning bill and a disciplinary hearing for breaking his nose.

She and Cui had known each other since they’d joined Starfleet together eighteen years ago, both in the Science track, both graduate students in the Gravitics department. They’d worked together well enough at first, had even bounced ideas off each other, but there had been no way back to comfortable coexistence after the asshole had stolen Bulma’s dissertation topic. She’d thought he was her colleague, maybe even her friend, but after she’d talked to him about the research she’d already done on orbital resonance patterns within the rings of Saturn, it quickly became clear that he was an opportunistic asshole who had it out for Bulma instead, and who wanted to take credit for her hard work.

Starfleet would’ve allowed him to get away with it, too – they’d called it a mere coincidence that they were researching similar topics and Bulma didn’t have proof – and for years, Bulma’s worst nightmare had been the thought of her rival finishing his dissertation first. Because a dissertation was supposed to be an original piece of research, and you couldn’t exactly call it original when your rival had published it first. Fortunately, her fears turned out to be unfounded. Bulma did not only manage to publish first, his work had also been so laughably bad that he had to completely re-write it during the following years while Bulma already did a teaching stint at the University of Betazed. And because he was constitutionally incapable of the introspection necessary to figure out that he’d fucked up, big time, the man was still salty as fuck about everything and blamed Bulma for his disastrous reputation in the scientific community in general and the years he’d lost as a grad student in particular. And now he was here to fuck with her some more, and gloat over her humiliation.

“If they kick me out, at least I go out with a bang,” Bulma retorted as calmly as she could manage and leaned back in her chair. “The Commandant knows me by name. Your career, on the other hand, has been an excellent example of barely passable mediocrity, to the point where your boss’s boss struggles to remembers you. What was the last paper you published called again? Oh, that’s right, nobody remembers, because it was just as bad as your dissertation.”

Cui turned an even darker shade of purple and spat out, “At least I have not ruined a First Contact and caused an interstellar incident.”

Alfrmyke admittedly was a sore spot for Bulma, and Cui knew it too well after the scene she’d made that morning, but she still managed to summon a superior little smile. “Yeah? That’s because you’ve never been closer than three parsecs to a First Contact procedure. Can’t fuck up when you’re not involved, can you?”

“Oh, look at you, so smug now.” Hatred was now pouring off Cui like a tropical rainstorm, and some tiny voice inside Bulma that went unused too often told her to be cautious, when she’d never been afraid of Cui before. Then he sneered, and Bulma promptly forgot about it because she was so fucking angry. “I hate to break it to you, but your days of glory are over, bitch, and mine are coming now. I’ll get what I deserve.”

“The only thing you deserve is a thorough ass-kicking,” Launch hotly interjected while she twirled her spoon through her fingers menacingly (Bulma had no idea how she did it – it was a spoon, after all, the least menacing cutlery option out there).

“Is that a threat?” Cui asked, angling for something he could report later in the most obvious fashion possible, and Launch laughed.

“Do I look like I’d dirty my boots by kicking someone like you?”

Neither Bulma nor Cui were quite sure if Launch was trying to deescalate, or implying that she’d just shoot him and make sure the body was never found, and as entertaining as the Launch show (complete with upcoming fireworks) was, Bulma didn’t particularly care to find out which option it was. She just wanted the asshole gone, preferably yesterday. Being humiliated in front of the entire Starfleet Academy faculty really was – well – humiliating enough without your archrival tracking you down to gloat while you were trying to have dinner.

“Is there something of substance you want to say, or do you just enjoy standing here and making an ass of yourself?” she asked, picking up her spoon with a soft, controlled movement that did not reflect her anger, and Cui almost growled with rage, a sound that made Bulma chuckle. What had he expected when he came here and started taunting her, polite dinner conversation?

“You just wait. You won’t be this fucking smug for long,” he retorted before he hastened away from them, not giving Bulma a chance to get in the last word. Not that she really wanted to say anything right now – she was too confused for that. Usually, when Cui spewed pointless bullshit like that, his voice had an almost desperate tinge, as if he were willing the universe itself to finally do his bidding and make things right for him. But today he’d sounded almost… confident, superior in a different way from his habitual smugness. As if he knew something Bulma didn’t – and she didn’t like that thought at all. Bad things happened when Cui knew more than she did, because Cui was a fucking idiot, and when he knew more than her, she had missed something trivial yet critical that was going to come and bite her in the ass later.

“Any idea what that was about?” she asked Launch, but her friend just shook her head and grimaced as she turned her attention towards her now-cold curry.

“You tell me, he’s your nemesis.”

And while that was true, Bulma hadn’t paid a lot of attention to him lately, busy as she’d been, first with her assignments as science officer far away from the academic circuit, and then settling into Academy life once again and finding her footing in her new teaching position. She’d thought they were both over this childish middle school rivalry, but now she wondered if it had been a mistake to let her guard down, when Cui so clearly was out to get her and already threatening her. Ugh. Did I scream “HERE!” when all the assholes were handed out? First Cui, and now Vegeta’s here at the Academy too! I can’t believe it!

The one silver lining about Cui’s infuriating intimidation attempt was that it had helped Bulma tremendously where sorting her priorities was concerned. As much as she hated the thought of apologizing to Prince Vegeta of Vegeta – and seriously, who named his kid after his planet or his planet after his fucking kid, that was just a recipe for confusion – she hated the thought of being kicked out of Starfleet even more. She could see it now, how she’d lose her uniform (and that thought stung more than Bulma had expected, with the way she told everyone that she was only in Starfleet for the research opportunities), how she’d pack up her belongings and carry her boxes out of the faculty housing building while Cui sat in the lobby, watching with glee that bordered on the sadistic, cackling triumphantly now and then… yeah, okay, maybe that was a bit over the top.

But as proud as Bulma was, her work and her career were just as important to her, and admitting to Prince Vegeta that she probably shouldn’t have tried to kill him back on Alfrmyke wouldn’t hurt too much, would it? Especially because after all the talk about proper First Contact protocol, all the inquiries and committees Bulma had sat through, where stuffy Starfleet officials who didn’t know where the business end of the phaser was had grilled her relentlessly on her thoughts and decision-making on that fateful night, Bulma was starting to think that maybe she’d overreacted a little, and should’ve tried to talk to the Saiyans first. Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that… they were totally ready to talk after they’d shot up the hangar bay!

“Penny for your thoughts?” Launch asked, waving her hand in front of Bulma’s mostly ignored dinner, and Bulma sighed and pushed her tray away. She’d lost all of her appetite over her considerations, and her food was now cold anyway. If she got hungry later, she could just eat a bowl of cereal at home.

“Why do I always get stuck with the assholes?” she asked almost plaintively in lieu of an answer, and Launch chuckled.

“Must be your charming personality that attracts them.” Launch waved around her donut to emphasize the point. “For what it’s worth, I have the same problem. And the ones that aren’t assholes don’t stick around, either.”

There was a bitterness to her voice that Bulma understood too well. Just like her and Yamcha, Launch and her boyfriend Tien had been an on and off thing for years, only to break up for good a few years ago when Tien was stationed on a starbase halfway across the Federation. And as much as Launch tried to join Bulma in the happy single life and wanted to explore the Academy dating scene, she really wasn’t over Tien, the way Bulma was over Yamcha.

“Hey, at least someone is sticking around,” Bulma pointed out sarcastically. “Even if it’s the assholes.”

She only realized how true her words had been after she and Launch had parted ways outside the mess hall, Launch heading towards the train station while Bulma walked to her faculty apartment building. Because right there, in the lobby of her building, talking to the doorman, stood a short man with a very distinctive spiked hairstyle and an even more distinctive uniform.

Bulma couldn’t fucking believe it, and almost walked back out into the San Francisco night again before she remembered that she had something like dignity, and even more right to be here than he had. She lived here, after all. And what was that fucking asshole doing here, in her building, anyway? Maybe he was lost? Asking the doorman for directions or something?

No matter why he was there, Bulma didn’t want to talk to him. Not today, and preferably not ever again, at least after Commandant Morris made her apologize to him. Things were awkward enough with her just staring at his back as if she’d seen a ghost, they could only get worse if he realized that she was there, and who she was…

That’s my chance! Bulma realized with a jolt. He didn’t know she was there yet – so maybe she could escape unseen! Bulma hastened across the lobby while his back was still turned, willing the elevator to be on the ground floor, and for once, the odds were in her favor. The doors dinged open the moment she touched the button, and she entered with a sigh of relief, then selected her floor. In just a few seconds, she’d be safely away from him, and…

A tan, calloused hand wedged itself between the closing elevator doors at the last possible moment, and Bulma felt as if all the air was being sucked out of the cabin when Prince Vegeta entered, his face his customary sour grimace, his eyes sweeping over her disinterestedly, as if she were just another Starfleet uniform and not the woman who’d made a scene this morning, the woman who’d escaped from his prison. Bulma bristled under the implied insult – she had bright blue hair, for fuck’s sake, how much more distinct could she get? – until his angry dark eyes snapped back to her face and widened for just a fraction of a second. Ah. So he does recognize me.

Bulma’s triumph was short-lived. Things had already been strange before – awkward enough that she’d tried to run away from him like a little coward, because after Cui, she was not dealing with another asshole tonight. But now she was here, and he was here, and he knew who she was, and the tension in the tiny elevator cabin was quickly becoming unbearable, especially when he did not press a button. Because that meant he wanted to go to the same fucking floor as Bulma and God, if he lived on the same floor, she’d probably go dig herself a hole to die in right there . Or just use the conveniently placed elevator shaft.

For a split second, she thought about blurting out her apology then and there. Apologies were like ripping off a band-aid, right? Quick and decisive was much easier than just dragging everything out forever, and this was her opportunity! She could be done with it now, instead of scheduling what felt like going to her doom, probably for a few weeks away, the wait interminable and dreadful. What held her back was Commandant Morris. That guy already hated her guts, and if she told him out of the blue that she’d apologized to the asshole Prince, in private, he’d never believe her, and he’d still make her do it all over again in his office while he looked at her like she’d never be good enough for Starfleet. And Bulma really didn’t want to apologize twice – once was plenty when she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Do you live here?” she asked instead, and Vegeta raised an infuriatingly superior eyebrow at her, the expression on his face too close to the smug smirk from her nightmares for comfort.

“I do.”

Bulma rubbed her forehead to ward off the approaching headache, before she replied resignedly, “Of course you do.”

Chapter Text

Frozen Stars – Chapter 3: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

Commandant Morris scheduled Bulma’s apology for the following week, much sooner than anticipated, but Bulma still dreaded the occasion every day until she finally stood in the Commandant’s office at the appointed time and stared at him in disbelief. “He’s late ?” she asked, omitting the fucking that should have been in the middle of the sentence out of respect for the occasion, if not the man she was talking to.

“Yes.” Commandant Morris rose from his seat and walked around his desk with his arms crossed in front of his chest, apprehension mottling his features. And Bulma got it. She really did. The man felt like he was between a rock and a hard place, the rock being Bulma’s temper and the hard place the interstellar diplomatic incident waiting just around the corner if she didn’t apologize, but still, if he was looking for pity from her, he could go fuck himself instead. With higher chances of success, too. She was already going out of her way to be here, had moved a lecture around for it, not to mention swallowed all of her pride and then some, and she was definitely not willing to reschedule. Not for something so humiliating, something she didn’t want to do in the first place. Either the asshole prince got here in time… or he didn’t. And that was that.

As if her rage had summoned him like a vengeful demon, Vegeta was ushered through the door by one of the Commandant’s aides, looking as thoroughly pissed off as ever, and Bulma had to turn a chuckle into a halfway convincing clearing of her throat when she realized that she was almost… relieved to see him. Not because she suddenly liked him, but because she wanted to be done with him and his smugly superior ways once and for all, except for more unavoidable chance encounters in the elevator (because of course the infathomable ways of fate and the Starfleet housing department had put him into her building – even on the same floor!).

You can do this, she told herself. You totally can! And then you’re done with the Asshole forever! She had even practiced her little speech with Launch and her friend Chi-Chi, more than once, so she wouldn’t choke on her words, and would only embarrassed herself a lot and not completely. So why did she feel like a fraud?

“Good morn...” began the Commandant, ready to greet the prince with a handshake and a welcoming smile (two things Bulma hadn’t gotten when she’d arrived earlier), but his hand lost its forward momentum when Vegeta sneered at him and pointed towards Bulma, who idly wondered if his father had never taught him that it was rude to do that with his fingers.

“What is she doing here?” asked Vegeta in lieu of a greeting, and even the Commandant visibly bristled under his abrasive tone. Bulma, on the other hand, had no idea how Morris could still act so surprised after having already had a taste of Vegeta’s charming personality. How had he reached his exalted rank in Starfleet despite being dense enough to get some nice hydrogen fusion going any second now? Or was he just willfully denying reality, and refusing to accept that Vegeta was a fucking asshole who’d never figure out how to be polite, to anybody, even when he wasn’t throwing them into the most amateur cell ever in the history of prison cells? Bulma rolled her eyes. With superior officers like that, she was beginning to understand why she was never sure if Starfleet could tell its ass from its elbow without a three-dimensional computer-assisted AR chart!

Commandant Morris cleared his throat uncomfortably in the ensuing silence (something Bulma noted with great pleasure – served him right to feel the awkwardness of this whole fucking situation, too) and decided to abort his awkward attempt at a handshake, pulling his hand behind his back again in a way that looked almost intentional, before he got down to business. “Your Highness, Dr Briefs is here to apologize to you for her conduct at Alfrmyke, and also during the faculty meeting the other day. Dr Briefs?”

Vegeta turned his attention to her seamlessly, looking at her – really looking at her – for the very first time since they’d met again here at Starfleet Academy, and Bulma swallowed heavily as memories of Alfrmyke rose again, unbidden and unwelcome. She had been convinced that she was going to die that day, had spent hours fighting for her life with nothing but the woefully inadequate civilian security systems of a station not built for combat, and she had done well. She’d been proud of her performance, too, that pride the only shield between her and the terrible memories as she raced through space alone in her stolen spaceship, not knowing if her people had survived, if her desperate attempt at holding off the invaders had paid off.

But her people had survived, her gambit had paid off. And now the Commandant wanted her to apologize, and for what? For managing to get out of a dangerous situation unharmed, mentally and physically! Getting her people out, too! And if she didn’t, they’d kick her out of Starfleet, after they’d already shunned her for years, hampering her career prospects and her research opportunities. It was absolutely preposterous, and the sheer unfairness of it all choked her with impotent rage until she painfully cleared her throat, because life sucked and wasn’t fair, and because she had to get through this if she wanted to salvage what was left of her career and her professional reputation. “I apologize...”

The prince interrupted her before she had properly sorted out in her head what she was actually trying to apologize for, his voice full of angry disdain. “Is this a joke?”

Bulma closed her mouth with an audible click , because if she didn’t, she’d start a shouting match with the Saiyan, and she was pretty sure that that would get her kicked out of Starfleet faster than she could say gravitational constant . But before she could even begin to wonder what the fuck this man’s problem was now and why he tried so hard to overtake Cui in the race to most aggravating guy on campus, Vegeta turned towards Commandant Morris, an ugly snarl marring his features. “Have you brought me here to insult me, human?”

Commandant Morris looked as taken aback as Bulma felt as she blinked, then blinked again to make sure that she wasn’t seeing things, or hearing things, in this particular case. Shouldn’t she be the one who was insulted? She was being made to apologize for no fucking reason, after all. Vegeta, on the other hand, was getting his overblown ego coddled, and with how arrogant an asshole he was, she’d never envisioned him to be anything but smugly superior as he condescendingly accepted her groveling. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she wasn’t groveling enough. If that was the case, good luck to the Commandant – he could grovel himself, if he wanted to.

“Your Highness, both I and the Federation have the utmost respect for you, your house, and of course the Saiyan people! We would never do anything that, in any way, shape, or form, might allow our relationship to deteriorate,” scambled Morris when Vegeta scoffed impatiently, and Bulma almost rolled her eyes. If a lack of buttering up was the problem, that should definitely do the trick.

“Then why have you dragged me here, if not because you think I’m a weak-minded fool?” Derision was dripping thickly from the prince’s gravelly voice, and Bulma could see the Commandant’s confusion thicken by the second. Honestly, she was rather enjoying herself now. Vegeta might not be her favorite person – in fact, he was pretty much tied with Cui for least favorite person right now – but seeing him rip the Commandant of Starfleet Academy a new asshole was surprisingly entertaining. And now that his sharp tongue was aimed at someone else, she could also appreciate that his voice sounded rather… hot. As strange as it was to find anything about the man hot. Get a grip, Bulma. He’s the last guy you should find hot, ever!

Commandant Morris straightened his spine and tried to remember that he was technically the prince’s commanding officer while he was loaned to Starfleet, then failed miserably. “Neither Starfleet nor the Federation, nor I, personally, desire to offend you, or the Saiyan people. We simply wanted to straighten out any potential… uh… misunderstandings caused by Dr Brief’s conduct towards you, both at Alfrmyke and since you’ve arrived at Starfleet Academy.”

Vegeta scoffed again, more impatiently this time, and turned his disturbingly intense gaze towards Bulma, even as he was still talking to the Commandant. “What is there to misunderstand? The woman hates me.” The words should’ve been insulting, but he said them so disinterestedly that Bulma got the distinct impression that people hating him was just another Tuesday for the prince, which was probably a good thing, because with his charming personality, he made a new enemy at every dinner party.

Morris jumped between them with an agility Bulma hadn’t expected, and raised his hands in a gesture of peace that, oddly, was barely necessary for Bulma, because she didn’t want to strangle the asshole for a change. Sure, it rankled that Vegeta called her woman of all things (how much more condescending could he get?), but at least he had called a spade a spade, and honesty she could appreciate. Unlike certain other people in the room, who were intent on proving their wilful denial of reality.

“I assure you, Dr Briefs does not hate you. Dr Briefs?” Morris prompted, turning towards Bulma with a transparent plea on his face.

Bulma furiously tried to come up with a convincing lie, then realized that she was so far beyond giving a fuck that her fucks weren’t even in communications range anymore. “Of course I don’t.” She smiled brightly. “It’s more of a strong dislike mixed with an old grudge.”

The words hung in the air between them, and then, even as Morris’ face reddened to a degree that made Bulma concerned for his health, Vegeta started to laugh. And not the mocking, cynical laugh Bulma had come to expect from him – no, it was a sound of genuine amusement, as if what she’d said was the most hilarious thing he’d heard all week. And that was oddly flattering! For just a moment, Bulma thought she saw a glance of the man behind the guarded demeanor – and wasn’t that an interesting thought, that there was a facade where she thought his personality was – before he regained his stony composure and turned towards the Commandant again, sneer on his face. “See?”

“Just another misunderstanding. I’m sure Dr Briefs didn’t mean...” the Commandant back-pedalled even as he glared at Bulma with a face that said “We’ll talk later!” better than Bulma’s mother could, but Vegeta interrupted him again, looking as done with this conversation as Bulma felt.

“Quit your dithering, man. You disgust me more than open enmity ever could. The woman has nothing to apologize for, she fought with spirit and cunning, and faced her fate with bravery when we captured her.”

Morris looked terrified now that Vegeta had finally poked the elephant in the room, but Bulma had a hard time sorting her emotions. He almost sounded… complimentary, and that was the last thing she’d expected from him of all people, after the cold rage she’d seen on his face when he had captured her. She’d thought he hated her as much as she hated him… but… now he didn’t? And she had no idea what to do with that information. As unpleasant as hatred was, at least it had the advantage of simplicity in a universe that was vastly more complex than even Bulma could ever hope to fully understand, especially where Starfleet politics were concerned, and part of her was almost… angry that Vegeta was complicating things between them. She’d hated him for five years, had hoped for an opportunity to smack the smug smile off his face for just as long, and being denied her revenge by his unexpected… admiration confused her endlessly.

But Vegeta wasn’t done with the Commandant yet, even as Bulma was relegated to the sidelines of the conversation, a position she normally hated, but that still was preferable to being in the crosseye of Vegeta’s wrath. “We know your Starfleet, and your Federation, because we have watched you for a long time from the shadows.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest and walked over to the Commandant’s impressive office window overlooking the San Francisco campus, his face more closed off than ever. “We know what you are like, we know that your customs are different. Different does not scare us. Nothing scares us. And yet you insist on treating me and my people as weak-minded children who will wilt like a delicate flower under adversity. I am the Prince of Saiyans. Find a child to coddle, and leave me alone with your foolishness.”

The Commandant opened his mouth – though what he wanted to say, Bulma had no idea, because Vegeta had left even her a little speechless, and that was a rare enough occurrence. But the prince showed no inclination to stay and hear Morris out, and instead brushed past the Commandant, who pulled back like he would have when faced with a force of nature. Two frightened cadets in the anteroom jumped, too, when Vegeta banged the old-fashioned wooden door against the wall in his anger, and then stared together with Bulma as the prince rushed out of the office like air out of a breached ship, leaving everyone behind a little breathless and unsettled. Bulma had pulled off a lot of dramatic entrances and exits in her time, but even she had to admit that this… this was something else. Damn, does the man have to be so fucking impressive? And he has a nice ass, to boot.

“Well.” Commandant Morris cleared his throat uncomfortably and closed his door, after surreptitiously checking the wall for damage. “That could’ve gone better.”

Bulma wanted to make a vaguely noncommital sound (because seriously, what did that idiot expect after putting Bulma and Vegeta into the same room?) and hightail it out of the Commandant’s office before Morris got any ideas in his head that Bulma had to try to apologize to Vegeta again, but what came out of her mouth instead was, “I told you so, sir. He’s an asshole.”

Morris shot her a dark look before he sank into his chair and buried his face in his hands. Oddly enough, he didn’t object, but then again, reality had a way of asserting itself against all odds.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Help, the asshole is stuck in my head now

“… and then he speed-walked out of the Commandant’s office like he wanted to break the sound barrier!” Bulma put her chopsticks down on her rice bowl and enthusiastically gestured for emphasis as her friends around the table listened to her first-hand account of the encounter between Commandant Morris and Prince Vegeta. An encounter that was quickly becoming the stuff of legend on the San Francisco campus of Starfleet Academy, no thanks to a certain brilliant and blue-haired scientist, of course. “I think he even made a dent in the wall when he threw open the door!”

“What did Morris say?” asked Chi-Chi, black eyes large and curious as she leaned forward across the table. Bulma relished the attention from her friend, who usually reserved scrutiny like that for her husband Goku, her two sons Gohan and Goten (particularly when she suspected they were up to no good), and her high-grav research chamber. Chi-Chi hadn’t heard the story before because she’d been working overtime again, trying to fix a thing that seemed increasingly unfixable, and Bulma didn’t have to be asked twice to tell a fifth time. Or was it the sixth? She had lost count at this point.

“That was the funniest part,” Bulma chuckled. “He looked like he couldn’t fucking believe it! And I have no idea why, because Vegeta was nothing but rude since he arrived here at Starfleet Academy, and still, somehow, Morris thought… that the guy would make an exception for him? And of course he didn’t.”

“He really doesn’t seem to be the type to make exceptions,” Bulma’s ex Yamcha added almost thoughtfully, and Bulma turned towards him, surprise on her face. Not because he was there – they got along better now than when they’d been a couple, after the initial grief over their disastrously timed break-up had passed and they’d remembered why they were friends. But she had had no idea that Yamcha knew Vegeta, because if she had, she would’ve had a good bitching session about the prince with him a lot sooner!

“What do you mean? Did you have a run-in with the guy?” she asked, and Yamcha’s brow furrowed over his immaculately pressed red Starfleet uniform shirt, his confusion mirroring Bulma’s.

“Don’t you know? He teaches hand-to-hand combat classes for Security track cadets now that the semester has begun.”

Even though she didn’t know why (logically, the guy had to have a job to be here at Starfleet Academy, right? And Morris had even mentioned that he was going to teach when he’d introduced him at the beginning of the semester), Bulma couldn’t help herself and started to laugh uncontrollably. She couldn’t imagine a job the man was worse suited to than teaching, especially self-defense! Just the thought of him, with his perpetually scowly face, standing in front of a class of doe-eyed cadets and trying to show them how to defend themselves, when he was such a frightening figure even out of his space suit! He probably never even had to fight because potential opponents just scurried when they saw him! It was too fucking funny. “Please tell me more about that,” she said, touching Yamcha’s arm without thought, a memory of closer days that were now in the past. “Did he beat someone up yet?”

It had been mostly a joke, and yet, Yamcha hesitated. “Well… not exactly?”

Bulma chuckled incredulously, the food she shared with her friends in Goku and Chi-Chi’s backyard almost forgotten. “What do you mean, not exactly? How can you not exactly beat someone up? And how do you know?”

Yamcha took a swig from his beer bottle before he leaned back in his folding chair (Goku and Chi-Chi’s circle of friends far exceeded the capacities of their regular patio furniture). “I teach the class after him, so I’ve seen some of his teaching while warming up. And uh...” He awkwardly scratched the back of his head. “He’s not very gentle, and that’s after the department head told him to knock it off with knocking cadets around, or at least that’s what the scuttlebutt says. But from what I’ve seen… I believe it. I don’t know what he did at the beginning of the semester, but those guys and gals are terrified of him.”

“The Security track cadets are terrified?” Krillin asked incredulously, and Yamcha nodded.

“Yeah. You know how there’s a certain type of guy who frequently ends up in security? Tall, buff, brawny, and built like a cabinet?” Bulma had to suppress a laugh at his words, because Yamcha had just essentially described himself to a tee without a trace of irony or recognition in his voice, but when he raised his eyebrows at her, Bulma just shook her head and gestured for him to continue. The finer points of irony were usually lost on the man, and that was one of the reasons why their relationship hadn’t lasted. “Vegeta is maybe half of them soaking wet on a good day, after he had dinner, and still… they scurry for him. And he doesn’t even have to raise his voice.”

“Can he fight?” Goku asked from his post behind the grill, where he was busy turning chicken, sausages, vegetables, and pineapple (he was the designated cook of the family, as his hours at work were a lot more flexible than Chi-Chi’s), because of course that was what interested him the most, and Yamcha nodded, almost grudgingly.

“I don’t like the guy because of what he did to Bulma, but man, when he fights… it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, no martial arts I’ve studied. Must be some special Saiyan stuff I have no idea about. Moves so well it feels like he learned to fight before he learned to walk, and he’s fiendishly strong, too. Might even have a chance against a Vulcan hand-to-hand.”

“I’d love to spar with him!” Goku looked so excited by the prospect that Bulma almost felt betrayed by her friend, but of course, fighting was what he did, what he loved. He’d made a successful career out of it while also being the primary caregiver for his and Chi-Chi’s two sons, and now that Goten was old enough to go to school and Chi-Chi had reduced her crazy hours at Starfleet, he’d opened his very own gym, with plans to expand through the Bay Area. “Can you get me an introduction?” Goku asked with the puppy-like eagerness that had fooled more than one opponent into underestimating him, and Yamcha laughed.

“The man is about as approachable as a brick wall, and I suspect he’d introduce me to one if I tried!”

Instead of laughing at the joke, like she had expected she would, because joking about Vegeta was her way of coping with the humiliation that still burned in the back of her mind, Bulma stared off thoughtfully towards the swing set where Goten screamed with delight as his older brother pushed him higher and higher. What Yamcha had said was undoubtedly true, and while she certainly enjoyed complaining about Vegeta – she’d done her fair share of it during the last few days since her meeting with him and Morris – something in Yamcha’s words had struck a chord with her.

She’d retold the story of Vegeta’s meeting with the Commandant so many times now, and still, instead of things becoming clearer with her friends’ input, the more she thought about the situation, the less she understood. She’d written off Vegeta’s hostility as part of his charming personality before, but his words about his people knowing what the Federation was like… they only made sense if there was history there, some long-standing grudge maybe? And how could that be, if Bulma was the one who’d made First Contact (if one could call what had happened a First Contact) with his people when Vegeta had stormed her space station unprovoked? It didn’t make any sense, and Bulma had no idea how could she possibly fit all of the puzzle pieces together.

And that wasn’t even getting into the things he’d said about her, because no matter how hard she had tried to forget them, his words lived in her head, rent-free. “Fought with spirit and cunning” was all Bulma could think about when she was lying in her bed alone, trying to fall asleep, and she hated that more than any other aspect of the situation, even the fact that she’d been forced into the humiliating scene in the Commandant’s office.

Starfleet had spent so many years telling her that she’d fucked things up at Alfrmyke that in her darkest moments, when she stared at herself in the mirror and faced the dire reality that her superiors had flushed her career down the toilet without a second thought, she’d started to believe them. That her actions had really been as indefensible as they’d said, that she shouldn’t have fought and relied on the Saiyans’ mercy instead, that a few scientists on a small station at the edge of surveyed space would’ve been an acceptable sacrifice to ensure a smooth First Contact with a new species. And she hated herself for her weakness, that she was so easily persuaded, not only of her own worthlessness, but also that of her colleagues – her friends – the people she’d been responsible for.

But now the last man in the universe she’d expected to – but someone who had been there, who had seen things first-hand and wasn’t a pencil-sharpening paper pusher in some stuffy office at Starfleet Headquarters – had told her that they were wrong, and she was right. That she really had done not only everything she could, but that she’d done well, more than well, that she’d been… brave. And it had made Bulma realize how deep those scars ran, how badly she felt Starfleet had betrayed her in their attempt to find a scapegoat to pin this clusterfuck of a situation on, and how much it hurt to know that they’d sacrifice her again… that she would never be able to trust the people she worked for again, and yet had no other option if she wanted to pursue her academic career, because as much as she hated their guts right now, even she had to admit that Starfleet were at the cutting edge of interstellar science.

Bulma hated everything about the situation with a passion, not only her own hurt that felt fresh again now after she’d stuffed it down for so many years, but also that things didn’t make sense at all where the Saiyans’ First Contact with the Federation was concerned. But in this case, she’d have to get used to the feeling. Because the only person who could clear things up for her was Prince Vegeta, and she certainly wasn’t gonna ask him about it, because he was, indeed, as approachable as a brick wall, and a conversation with him would be an effort in futility. This mystery would have to remain mysterious, and she would just have to deal with everything on her own. Not least because Commandant Morris would probably kick her out of Starfleet for real this time if she poked the sleeping Vegeta bear any further, and she really wanted to avoid that after all the headache about staying, and all the hoops she’d had to jump through. Not to indulge an idle bit of curiosity about something that really didn’t matter.

Fortunately for Bulma, her friends wouldn’t allow her to mope.

“Hey Bulma!” Launch waved a blue-nailed hand that matched her hair today in front of Bulma’s face. “You with us, or still spaced out?”

“I’m not...” Bulma started to protest until she realized that she’d actually been miles away with her thoughts, and she sighed and took a swig from her beer bottle. “What do you want?” she asked, because she knew Launch since they’d gone to high school together, and that face Launch just made? She’d seen it countless times when her friend wanted to copy her math homework, because, quote young Launch, “If I copy yours, they won’t know I copied it because you never make mistakes!” How the woman had made it through the math portions of her physics degrees, Bulma would never know. Or rather, how she’d made it through the math portions they hadn’t taken together. Bulma knew very well how Launch had made it through the courses she’d had with Bulma, and it was definitely not because of her keen understanding of the subject matter, or her stellar work ethic.

“Here, have another piece of the sundried tomato pesto swirl bread,” Launch said instead of answering straight away, and Bulma chuckled at the transparent attempt to butter her up, but took the bread anyway. Pretty and delicious was a combo she really couldn’t resist.

“So, do you remember the self-defense class you agreed to take with me and Chi-Chi?” Launch then continued, and Bulma froze mid-chew. She had hoped that Launch had forgotten about that, because with Vegeta, her teaching schedule, and her trying to finish her paper for the Vulcan Science Academy Congress in July, she really had neither the time nor the headspace to even think about additional classes. Not that that excuse would deter Launch, of course – her friend had the same schedule, and even managed to go to the gym regularly!

“If I remember correctly, I said I’d think about it,” Bulma conceded sourly. “You know, in that ‘I don’t want to say no outright but I really don’t want to do this’ tone! And you know that I’m allergic to exercise!”

Everyone at the table laughed at her whining, even Bulma herself. She knew that working out would do her some good, and honestly, she sometimes felt a little bit like the odd one out, surrounded by people who were so obsessed with fitness and martial arts while she herself was a self-professed couch potato. Launch and Chi-Chi and the guys could kick major ass, but the only thing Bulma was good at was verbal sparring (though she was damned good at that, if she dared say so herself). But maybe… just maybe… it was time to branch out. Especially with her experience at Alfrmyke so prominent in her mind now, an experience that had showed her how woefully unprepared she was for the fighting aspects of Starfleet life.

“You have until Friday to sign up,” Chi-Chi said firmly, the bad cop to Launch’s good cop, with an unspoken “or else” hanging in the silence after she’d finished her sentence. You knew things were dire when Launch – the terror of the Tactical department – was the good cop. Or at least the marginally less threatening cop.

“I’m sure it’ll be lots of fun!” Launch added in an attempt to soften the blow, and waved the sundried tomato pesto swirl bread under Bulma’s nose again. Bulma took another piece of bread (because who said no to homemade bread?), but silently, she wasn’t convinced. Her idea of fun lately was not even a night out with her friends anymore, but a quiet evening with popcorn watching a show or three. That was how boring she’d gotten during the last few years… and now she was taking classes to spice things up. She sighed. She sure wasn’t getting any younger, as her mother liked to remind her.

Bulma took the train home not too much later, because she wanted to get some work-related reading in before bed, another sign that she was turning disturbingly responsible and wasn’t running on sheer guts and brilliance alone anymore, but not before Launch and Chi-Chi had extracted the promise that she’d sign up for the self-defense course. It really couldn’t hurt, she didn’t even have to pay for it because it was part of the Starfleet personnel improvement program, and if she absolutely hated it, she could always quit. And if she was completely honest with herself, Bulma had been looking for something she could push herself with lately, something to break her out of the rut she’d gotten into, and, well, guys weren’t exactly lining up round the block to go on dates with her right now (not that she bothered looking for them), so the course would have to do.

The Starfleet Academy campus around her was dark as she walked home from the train station, and while the main paths were still crowded with students and faculty enjoying the warm weather even at this hour, when she arrived at her apartment building, she was the only one around. Bulma breathed in deeply, enjoying the smell of the night air and the quiet sounds of a late September evening around her, until movement on the shadowed lawn in front of her building drew her attention. For a moment, she froze with fear, her thoughts racing, until a window on the first floor lit up and she could see the distinctly spiked hair of Prince Vegeta.

He was… doing sit-ups? Bulma frowned in confusion. Even though she’d never been there (hello, allergic to exercise!), she knew that Starfleet Academy had a perfectly good 24/7 staff gym, and yet he was here, in the darkness, looking… sad? Lonely? The thought hit her unexpectedly, and yet it made sense, that the grim set of his features and his abrasive personality hid things he did not want to be seen. For a moment, she contemplated calling out to him, but she’d promised herself that she’d be a good girl, and her career was more important than trading barbs with a man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

It was the right decision and she knew it, walking into the building foyer and towards the elevators, and still, it felt wronger than Bulma cared to admit, even in the darkness of the night.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Why be the better person when you can just rage instead

Bulma had promised herself that she’d be a good girl and would stay away from Vegeta, no matter how humiliated she still felt, and no matter how curious she was about what had happened between his people and the Federation, and she stuck to her guns. Even when they accidentally met in the hallway outside their apartments or shared an elevator, all she gave him was a polite greeting and icy silence. Until fate – or someone at Starfleet with a sick sense of humor – intervened and she found his name on the list of s tudents and staff whose Space Emergency Certification Exams she was taking.

Because Starfleet liked its i’s dotted and its t’s crossed (and disliked it when people accidentally spaced themselves), all Starfleet personnel who actually wanted to go to space and not just sit around on a planet twiddling their thumbs had to prove their competence at basic space safety measures, like knowing what an escape pod was and what the red light over an airlock door meant. And because Bulma wasn’t Starfleet’s and her boss’s favorite person right now, she was the lucky lady from the Gravitics department who had to take time out of her totally not completely packed schedule to administer those exams. Because everyone else was allegedly “too busy”, especially Cui, who’d been originally selected.

Bulma had fought the assignment tooth and nail – because of course she had – but in the end, her boss, Dr Ginyu, had sided with Cui, and so she was stuck in her office one afternoon a week, coordinating with doe-eyed space cadets and administering follow-up oral exams instead of doing actually relevant work. At least the computer graded the multiple choice part of the certification for her… if she’d had to do that herself, too, her brain would definitely melt from the sheer stupidity of it, and then run out through her nose (then again, maybe she’d get a new chair for her office if that happened, one without stains? It might be worth a try).

And if that didn’t suck enough, now she either had to call Dr Ginyu and tell him she couldn’t do Vegeta’s certification, after her boss already thought she was desperately grasping for any reason not to do her work (which, admittedly, she had been), or go against Commandant Morris’s wishes and get too close to Vegeta for his comfort. And both of those options sucked balls, at a time when Bulma had been faced with too many options that sucked balls lately and was heartily sick of feeling like she was trapped between a rock and a hard place.

In the end, she decided to say nothing and just do Vegeta’s certification. If Morris got his panties in a twist about it, she could always pretend that she’d just been impartial and professional about it and tried not to show any prejudice, and what could go wrong, anyway? It was a routine exam that everyone who put in just a little bit of effort aced easily, and Vegeta hadn’t struck her as the stupid sort. An asshole, yes, but a fiendishly smart one. He would be in and out of her office in fifteen minutes tops, and then she could go back to politely ignoring him in the elevator.

Unfortunately for Bulma, Vegeta was either a lot dumber than she’d previously thought, or less interested in passing the exam than in going on a four-week all-inclusive unlimited booze nude space cruise to Betazed with her. The scores on his multiple choice exam were so bad that they were actually worse than they should’ve been if he had just picked his answers at random, and his only chance at passing now was Bulma being in a very generous mood and him having stellar scores in the second part of the exam. And if Bulma was being honest, she was not in the mood for being generous, especially to him. He’d fucked up too much shit in her life for that.

But what would that mean for her career? If she let him pass, would Starfleet come for her ass and accuse her of favoritism, especially if he did screw up something down the line? The press was bad enough if a random cadet got hurt in an accident, but if that happened to the heir of a foreign king on loan to Starfleet, the witch hunt would start before the ink on the incident report had dried. And Bulma would be on top of the list, with the way Starfleet was out to get her ever since Alfrmyke . On the other hand, if she failed him, would Morris go scream at her some more because she’d made him and his pet project look bad? Would she cause a diplomatic incident with the Saiyan people? Seriously, why hadn’t she tried a little harder to make Cui do his job, maybe bribed Ginyu with some of Launch’s prize-winning homemade cappuchino cupcakes? Then she wouldn’t be in this mess right now!

The tension headache was already sneaking its way up the back of her skull by the time she was done with the cadets whose perfectly non-remarkably certifications she’d just signed, and Prince Vegeta sauntering into her office like he didn’t have a care in the world suddenly made it worse. Had the man no sense of shame after what happened in the Commandant’s office? No concept of how badly he’d done during the multiple choice part of the exam? Or did he just not care? Was he just a spoiled brat of a prince who’d never been told to go fuck himself his entire life? She didn’t know which option it was, but neither boded well for the conversation they were about to have.

At least he was punctual this time, she thought cynically as she stood to greet him and gestured towards a chair in front of her desk without offering him her hand – she’d learned from the debacle in Commandant Morris’s office, after all. Vegeta raised sarcastic eyebrows at her and sat with studied indifference, then, after a moment of heavy silence, offered an almost bored “Well?” in lieu of a greeting.

Bulma already wanted to throttle him, which was impressive considering that he’d arrived not thirty seconds earlier. And it was her only excuse for why, instead of saying any of the thousand professional things she might have said, she blurted out, “Well, you sucked.” And as satisfying as it was to see the anger and confusion rising on his face, she instantly knew that her stupid mouth had gotten her into trouble again, or at least would get her into trouble if Morris found out about this. So much for being impartial and professional!

Predictably, Vegeta scoffed at her insinuation – okay, it was way more than an insinuation – that he might be anything other than completely flawless, while Bulma stuffed the desire to smack the arrogant grin off his face deep down into the far recesses of her mind. Not least because she had a sense of self-preservation and knew that Vegeta could tie her into a pretzel and toss her aside without a second thought if he so chose, if even Yamcha was in awe of his hand-to-hand combat skills.

“Some of us have more important duties to tend to than studying for pointless tests that only exist to satisfy petty bureaucrats,” he drawled coldly, and Bulma fisted her hands so tightly that it hurt. Did this arrogant jerk seriously think that she didn’t have anything better to do than to sit here and administer exams that a golden retriever with a calculator could grade? Gravitics theory wasn’t waiting, and she still wasn’t happy with the paper for the Vulcan Science Academy, and of course there were the actual courses she was teaching and had to prep for… for heaven’s sake, they could already be out of here if he’d just put in five minutes of effort instead of being an arrogant jerk! This shit wasn’t rocket science, for fuck’s sake (okay, technically it was an offshoot of rocket science, but whatever. She wanted to be mad, and she was going to be mad, damn it all)!

“And when was the last time you used the emergency fire extinguishing system on a space station, anyway?” he added as Bulma tried to control her temper, and that was the last straw.

“When a bunch of assholes in space suits tried to kill me and my researchers and I had to use it to defend myself!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, slamming her fists onto her desk for good measure as the pent-up frustration of weeks of dealing with him and Morris poured out of her at last.

It did not have the desired effect. As Bulma stood there, panting angrily, eyes still wide and wild, Vegeta started to laugh again. And goddamn it, was she getting sick of him laughing at her like that! It was as if he didn’t take her seriously at all! Bulma thought about screaming at him again – Morris was already going to go for her head, yelling some more couldn’t possibly make her situation worse, and she really wanted to yell at him – but before she had decided what would produce the most devastating effect, Vegeta wiped a few stray tears of mirth from the corner of his eye and inclined his head at her. “Point taken.”

Bulma closed her mouth quickly when she realized that it stood open. Had he just… agreed with her? Seriously? What was wrong with him? Or was something wrong with her, did she have a fever and was hallucinating or something? Because Vegeta was supposed to be the one she could hate without ever having to find something agreeable about him, and now here he was, sounding almost… reasonable? It boggled the mind. Again. The man seemed to do that with depressing regularity.

“Though, for the record, we wanted to capture you, not kill you,” he added in the condescending tone of a man who had no need to consider others’ perspectives (or the fact that she had been scared because she hadn’t known that), and Bulma was right back to grinding her molars. Weirdly, that was a relief. For a moment there, she’d worried she’d landed in some kind of bizarre mirror universe where everything was wrong, and now she was back in her reality, where Vegeta was an annoying asshole she had to deal with, and she didn’t have to face all the unresolved issues from that one day at Alfrmyke that still lingered in the back of her mind. She could just go right back to comfortably hating his guts.

“No matter what you wanted to do, judging by your test scores, you wouldn’t have done as well at defending yourself as I did.” Bulma lit up the PADD on her desk with the touch of a single fingertip and turned it around so Vegeta could see his dumb-ass answers to the multiple choice test glowing in bright red. “In fact, if I didn’t know you, I’d think you were nothing but a dumb red-shirted muscle-head who barely knows where the business end of the phaser is after grading all of that.”

If her words – or the possible consequences for failing his certification – bothered him, none of that showed up on his face as he leaned back on the chair in front of her desk, the picture of comfortable arrogance she’d come to expect from him. He even managed to smile that small, infuriating smirk of his that made Bulma want to smack him until he cut it out. “I already told you, I have more important duties to tend to than playing Starfleet’s little games. Let me worry about which door of the airlock I open first.”

Bulma sighed instead of smacking him, because someone had to be the bigger person, and it wasn’t going to be him, either figuratively or literally. Or at least she was trying to, but his face and his attitude made it exceedingly difficult for her to dial down the sarcasm. “So you’re telling me that you’re immune to explosive decompression now? Because explosive decompression is what’s going to happen if you fuck that up!”

Vegeta scoffed at her, as if concern for his safety – and that of everyone else around him, because starship blast doors were good and fast, but not that good and that fast – were a totally unreasonable reaction to his test scores. “Woman, why do you have to make this so difficult?”

Bulma watched the sunbeam on her office’s hardwood floor and wondered if she was going to get out of this fucking room this afternoon or if she’d argue with Vegeta until dusk fell. Not that that thought made her back off – quite on the contrary. The faster she won, the faster she’d get outside into the sun. “I’m the one making everything more difficult? What about you? You could have been out of here in five minutes, but you just had to make whatever stupid point you’re trying to make and fail this in some petty rebellion against what? Working for Starfleet? If you hate it so much, why don’t you just leave?”

And that was when it hit Bulma like a ton of bricks. His nonsensical, immature, contrarian “I’d rather be anywhere but here”-attitude actually made sense if he couldn’t leave for some reason. It would also explain his hostility towards the Federation… but why would anyone do something like that? Why would anyone trap the Prince of Saiyans – an ally to the Federation – here on Earth? And how? It just boggled the mind!

“For someone so damned smart you can be really fucking stupid,” he drawled, black eyes trained on her face, where Bulma knew that too much emotion showed for her own comfort and peace of mind. Because for a moment there, she’d almost felt for this man who’d been a pain in her ass for five miserable years now, and she didn’t want him to know that, because he’d surely use that against her. He was that kind of person.

Bulma closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to dig deep to the admittedly dwindling reserves of compassion she had. “Look, there’s no way around it: I’m going to fail your certification.” She surprised herself with how… gentle she sounded. “But that’s no big deal, if you don’t want to be transferred to a ship or a space station right now.”

Judging by his hatred for anything Starfleet, Bulma guessed that that wasn’t a concern for Vegeta, and a small shake of his head confirmed her suspicions. “It’ll be a mark on your record, and you’ll get asked to re-take in a timely manner. Usually, the next opportunity to do so would be at the beginning of the next semester, but if you want to get this done with, I’ll let you re-take any time.”

Something flickered in his gaze she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and then he scoffed angrily. “As if I’m going to do that.”

Bulma stood behind her desk, then held out her hand to him against her better judgement . “If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send me a message.”

To her surprise, he actually shook it, and his hand felt warm and comfortable and not at all as if she were touching a particularly nasty kind of dead fish, like she’d half expected.

It was only after she’d gone home to her apartment that she allowed herself to think about what Vegeta had said, because if she was honest with herself, it had shaken her up. Sitting on pillows on the carpet in front of her floor-length window (Starfleet regulations didn’t allow her to install a proper window seat, damn them and their petty bureaucracy), staring out over the slowly darkening campus beneath her, she admitted to herself that she’d gotten… comfortable hating Vegeta.

Even though hate in and of itself was not a comfortable emotion, it was easier than facing the tangled knot inside of her, the helplessness she’d felt and continued to feel when dealing with Starfleet and their dismissal of her, the nagging worry that her own defiant attitude had done as much to flush her career down the drain as the attack on Alfrmyke had, her dissatisfaction with her life during the last five years. She’d taken it all and focused it on Vegeta, like a magnifying glass intensifying sunbeams until the heat was unbearable. And in doing all of that, she hadn’t only been unfair to him – at least a little, the man was still an asshole, after all – but also herself. Because if she couldn’t even look at what she had done, she could never move on, or change what made her unhappy. And there were a lot of things that made Bulma unhappy right now, not least the fact that her boss and some of her colleagues didn’t respect her and made her the fall gal for everything that went wrong in the department.

She’d have to change that, she thought sleepily as she leaned back into the pillows, and she’d have to start with her professional life. Because something in the Gravitics department smelled rotten, she’d just gotten so used to the stench that she barely noticed it anymore.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Are you really paranoid just because you think there’s a conspiracy?

“… failing the heir to the throne of a valued Federation ally during an evaluation, just because of some petty feud over an incident years back, is unacceptable conduct from a Starfleet officer, Dr Briefs! What were you thinking? Is a childish grudge really more important to you than your future here? You could have excused yourself from evaluating him if you are incapable of being impartial!”

Bulma took a deep breath and tried to stay as calm as her new resolution to approach things more professionally demanded from her, but it was difficult, to say the least. While Commandant Morris was not personally chewing her out this time – probably better for his blood pressure, anyway – he had delegated the task to the Interspecies Relations Office of Starfleet Academy. With so many different people from so many planets attending the Academy and serving together, problems were bound to arise, and the office was trying to smooth them over as best as it could. Only that in this case, their efforts were totally misguided, as Bulma’s problem with Vegeta was not his species, and at this point in time, not even his personality. Which was a refreshing change from all of the other occasions where she’d butted heads with him, when his personality had indeed been the fucking problem.

“Sir, please,” she now said to the large-eyed Andorian Commander sitting in front of her, who made up for his – to human eyes – rather adorable appearance by having a tone so caustic that he could probably peel paint off starship bulkheads with it. “This is a big misunderstanding.”

“Commandant Morris personally appraised me of your history with Prince Vegeta, and he does not think it is a misunderstanding!” replied Commander Ov’hiannis resolutely, and Bulma suppressed the urge to find a pillow to scream into it. How had she put up with years of being disrespected like that? It was as if her opinions – no, her reality – didn’t matter in the face of Starfleet’s overwhelming institutional distrust of her, even though she had done what Morris wanted from her after all: changed her opinion of Prince Vegeta, if unwittingly and unwillingly at first.

It was time for a little more firmness, while also being polite. Or at least polite-ish. “Sir, I might dislike Prince Vegeta seven days a week and twice on Sunday, but unless you’re insinuating that I’ve hacked into the Starfleet mainframe and falsified his computerized test scores, there is no way that my opinion of him could’ve had any influence on his failing the evaluation.”

The Andorian hesitated. His face said that he would’ve liked to insinuate exactly that, but if he did, there was no way around the disciplinary hearing that would follow, because hacking into Starfleet computers was the kind of Big Deal that Starfleet canned people for on the regular. If he accused her wrongly of something that could lead to Bulma being court martialled and sentenced to decades in prison, the consequences to his career and credibility would be dire, not to mention extremely public. He might’ve wanted to do Commandant Morris a favor – but not enough of a favor to put his good name on the line like that.

Bulma smiled thinly and brought up Vegeta’s test scores on her PADD now that she had the man’s attention. “Now, sir, please let me walk you through Prince Vegeta’s multiple choice test in detail, and then allow me to explain how the grading scale works and why his scores mean that there was no way for him to pass without hell freezing over.”

She left the part unsaid where the Commander should’ve done his due diligence before bursting into her office like an angry Valkyrie riding on the wings of Commandant Morris’ disapproval, but judging by his sour expression, she didn’t have to say it for him to hear it. Good. It’s high time someone in this fucking place actually listens to me.

“… but still,” she said a few hours later, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Chi-Chi’s office after she’d told her about the encounter, while her friend inhaled the pasta dish Bulma had brought her from the cafeteria. “I’m going to polish my resumé and send out a few mails. Maybe even call my dad, ask around a bit.” Bulma’s father owned a large technology corporation here on Earth, where Bulma had gotten her first taste of how awesome science could be, and also her first work experiences. “I’m sick and tired of being treated like a lying kindergardener.”

“Understandable,” replied Chi-Chi between giant bites of garlic bread that wouldn’t have looked out of place on her perpetually starving husband. “To be honest, I’m surprised that it took you so long to get fed up with the situation. You’re not usually the type to be a doormat.”

Bulma winced, but her friend’s comment was exactly the kind of brutal honesty she needed right now, even if it was elicited by her being hungry and grumpy. And, well… Chi-Chi wasn’t wrong. Not at all, as hard as it was for Bulma to admit that. “I have been kind of a doormat, haven’t I?”

Instead of answering what was clearly a rhetorical question, Chi-Chi turned towards more important matters (namely, the spaghetti Bulma had set in front of her when she’d realized that Chi-Chi had not eaten all day just an hour before the self-defense class she and Launch were taking with Bulma began), and Bulma sighed and leaned back against her friend’s desk, resisting the urge to bash her head against the metal. What was wrong with her? She’d always prided herself on taking no shit from anyone, even after she’d joined Starfleet with its rigid hierarchies and military structures even in the science track. That attitude had gotten her into trouble a lot, but she’d always been able to look at herself in the mirror at night, even when she’d been wrong and had had to eat her words.

But now… now she’d turned into someone who allowed others to walk over her, while also fiercely protecting her suddenly fragile pride, and she hadn’t even noticed ? How had that happened? She’d been so relieved, so happy when Starfleet had finally assigned her to teach at the Academy and do actual research again, and she’d tried to be on her best behavior (which, unfortunately, didn’t say much – Bulma knew that even on her best behavior she was still rather abrasive). But her reputation from Alfrmyke seemed to precede her, and her colleagues and her boss, Dr Ginyu, treated her with barely concealed disdain.

When had “be nice to your colleagues” turned into “let them treat you badly”, and without her even noticing? When had she started to take their cutting remarks to heart instead of letting them slide off her back, when had she started to believe them when they told her that she was worth nothing, not only as a scientist, but also as a person? When had she lost herself, without even realizing, while still not making herself small enough for her superiors?

“You know,” Chi-Chi said thoughtfully as she put her napkin aside, looking down at Bulma with concerned black eyes. “Ginyu always seems harder on you than he’s on me, or anyone else in the department, for that matter. He might be a tough son of a bitch, but he’s usually fair…”

“Except when it comes to Cui,” Bulma interrupted sourly, because for some reason, her old nemesis seemed to be her boss’s absolutely favorite scientist, and it surely wasn’t for his sharp thinking and cutting-edge research papers. In fact, the man had – in Bulma’s admittedly biased opinion – no outstanding qualities except a doctorate (and let’s be honest here, you could barely take two steps at Starfleet Academy without running into a doctor of some kind or another) and an unusually strong desire to crawl up every superior officer’s ass he was allowed access to, and that Ginyu hadn’t told him to fuck off yet… well, that said a lot about Bulma’s boss, and none of it was good.

“And when it comes to you,” Chi-Chi insisted doggedly, not about to let the point she was trying to make slip away from her because Bulma wanted to go off on a tangential rant about her favorite enemy. “He’s getting worse, too, after everything with Vegeta and that public scene you’ve made... and with the way Morris treats you… it made me think, you know?”

She popped a tomato into her mouth while she sorted her thoughts, and Bulma stood quickly, suddenly too restless to remain in her comfortable spot on the floor as her stomach knotted with anxiety. “No, Chi-Chi, I don’t know.”

Chi-Chi sighed deeply and pushed her plate away, but didn’t reach for her gym bag just yet even though they really needed to get going if they wanted to be on time for their class. “I’ve worked here for a long time, and people know that we’re friends, so people don’t generally talk shit about you in front of me, but thinking back… even before you arrived here, Ginyu didn’t seem too excited to have you here, more so than with anyone else who’d ever transferred into the department. Even Lieutenant Commander Smith.”

Bulma made a face. Lieutenant Commander Smith was somewhat infamous on campus for accidentally radiation poisoning a whole Constitution -class starship and then being sent to Starfleet Academy to teach so he’d stay far, far away from any kind of reactor. Which hadn’t worked out exactly the way Starfleet intended to, by the way. But still, Ginyu had wanted Smith more than her? That was rough. She hadn’t sent hundreds of people to fucking sickbay, after all!

“So why does he hate you that much?” Chi-Chi finally asked, and Bulma stopped her restless pacing on the hardwood floor. Because that was actually a damned good question, and one Bulma had never asked herself. She’d gotten so used to open hostility from her superiors since she’d returned from Alfrmyke that she hadn’t batted an eye when she’d arrived at the Academy and Ginyu had hated her guts on sight. She’d just assumed that her reputation preceded her and that he hated her for the same reason everyone else hated her… because she was a stubborn, foul-mouthed troublemaker who’d fucked up a First Contact procedure with a new species with her idiocy. At least according to Starfleet. But… was that really enough of an explanation?

“I don’t know...” she said quietly before she turned towards her friend. “Because of the obvious? Or maybe because Cui bitched about me before I arrived?”

Chi-Chi shrugged and picked up her gym bag before she walked to the door that led out into the communal area of the Gravitics department, but rested her hand on the doorknob instead of stepping outside, where they could be overheard. “I’d believe that if it were just Ginyu, but everyone? Morris? The Interspecies Relations guy? You’re a bitch sometimes, Bulma, but not that much of a bitch.”

Bulma let out a strangled laugh, but oddly enough, that was the nicest thing anyone had said to her during the last month. Except, of course, “She fought with spirit and cunning, and faced her fate with bravery when we captured her.” Damn you, Vegeta, why are you still living rent-free in my head?

“And it’s just so strange that Ginyu seems so… invested in you and your career. He doesn’t give a fuck about me, I can say that for certain, or I’d have gotten more help with this high gravity chamber! But with you… he’s interested in you, even if it is in a bad way? As if he wanted to make sure you’re not too successful, or too well liked. And no,” she raised her hand when Bulma opened her mouth, “I have no idea why, so no need to ask. I don’t even know if it’s true or just my own, warped perspective.”

Bulma sighed deeply and hoisted her own gym bag higher up on her shoulder, even though it seemed a lot heavier than just five minutes ago, because now she was also carrying the weight of her worries. “I wish it were you, Chi-Chi… but I really don’t think it is.”

They finally stepped outside of Chi-Chi’s office and made their way across the common area crammed with teaching assistants’ desks separated by dull gray dividers that had never kept anyone from gossiping, but rather efficiently sucked all of the joy of the room, and even if they’d wanted to talk further, they couldn’t have, too big was the risk of being overheard. The soft voices of their colleagues murmured around them, but after the conversation they’d just had, they had taken on an almost sinister tone in Bulma’s mind. Were they talking about her? Were Ginyu and Cui scheming against her, maliciously whispering behind her back? Did her colleagues really hate her?

Muffled screaming from Dr Ginyu’s office followed them outside, but Bulma only briefly wondered which unfortunate soul was getting chewed out tonight as they rode the elevator to the ground floor and began their walk to the staff gym across campus. Which was absolutely ridiculous in and of itself. Had she not seen before what a horrible working environment the Gravitics department had become, or had she just not cared, all her worries drowned out by the sheer delight of being back at Starfleet Academy for the first time since before Alfrmyke , teaching and researching again? Would it even have mattered, if she’d seen it earlier? Probably not. She just would have felt more trapped, before she had realized that she didn’t need to stay at Starfleet if she didn’t want to. And all of it because of that damned man coming to San Francisco.

They met up with Launch in the women’s locker room and quickly changed into their gym clothes, not without a certain amount of good-natured ribbing from her friends about Bulma even having gym clothes when she so rarely worked out. “That all my friends are fitness nuts doesn’t mean I have to be as insane as you are,” she retorted as they walked out into the hall, used to the comments after a quarter of a century of friendship with Goku, Yamcha, and Krillin. “And I like to sleep some...”

She didn’t finish her sentence because she stopped dead in her tracks. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: He’s not a beginner, but he’s beginning to annoy me! 

Bulma stared at Vegeta like a hiker who unexpectedly came across a bear in the woods before she shook herself and walked across the polished gym floor with Launch and Chi-Chi. What the fuck is he even doing here? This was a self-defense class for beginners, or at least that was what Launch had told her, so why was a man here who could – according to everything Yamcha had told her – tie everyone Starfleet had to offer into a pretzel and then toss them into a corner? It didn’t make any fucking sense, and it made Bulma decidedly uncomfortable.

Judging by the way everyone else tried to give Vegeta as wide a berth as possible, and by the concerned glances in his direction especially from the Security track people in red, she wasn’t alone with that gut reaction. His reputation seemed to precede him across campus, and Bulma even had had a few of her colleagues from other departments privately tell her that they now knew why she’d made such a scene at the beginning of the semester, and that they, too, were asking themselves what the fuck he was doing here at Starfleet.

But she didn’t have time to worry about that right now – she had to worry about getting her ass kicked during a self-defense class she now felt woefully unprepared for, especially because she hadn’t been working out as much as she should have during the last, stressful weeks. And before that because she’d been on break and she’d needed time to relax. And before that because it was finals time and she was super busy! She was paying dearly for that now, though, because even the warm-up exercises were hard for Bulma and left her winded, and by the time they were to split up into pairs to start with basic balance and footwork exercises, Bulma was grumpy, exhausted, and completely out of fucks to give. Which was the only explanation she could give for why she did what she did next, of course.

Bulma had paired up with Chi-Chi, and Launch had found a colleague from the Tactical department who looked slightly queasy at the thought of putting himself into a position where Launch could possibly be asked to hit him, when the instructor – a stone-faced Vulcan completely unconcerned with the sudden tension rippling through his students – said, “This man still needs a partner.”

And of course it was Vegeta who stood alone on the mats, face drawn into his usual scowl. If he seemed bothered by the middle school antics, Bulma couldn’t tell from his face – he always looked on the verge of pissed off, after all – but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the class. Some of them were scuffling their feet, some trying to look like they had nothing to do with this situation, a lot of them avoiding eye contact with the instructor, and it soon became very, very clear that there were no volunteers.

Bulma suppressed a sigh. This was ridiculous, they were all adults, Vegeta had managed not to murder anyone just yet in the months he’d spent at the Academy and he probably wouldn’t today, and seriously, the sooner they got this show on the road, the sooner Bulma could go home and get a nice hot shower. And so she simply walked over to him while Chi-Chi stared at her as if she’d lost her everloving mind. Which she probably had, but Bulma had never been good at backing down from a challenge, and when she was as irritated, tired, and sweaty as she was right now was not a good time to start, anyway.

Vegeta followed her progress across the gym mats with his unbelievably black eyes, and if she hadn’t known better, she’d thought that there was something in his gaze as he watched her, maybe the tiniest hint of a sarcastic smile playing around his mouth as she took her place opposite him on the dusty mats. In the background, the instructor encouraged them to get into position and practice the steps they’d learned only minutes before with each other, because of course, for some reason Bulma couldn’t quite fathom, martial arts needed their own kind of walking, but she was too busy sorting out her confusing thoughts to start working just yet. Because she… was surprisingly not terrified of Vegeta? And not angry with herself, either. Though she suspected that might change any moment now.

“Unnecessary bravado looks good on you,” he murmured under his breath so only she could hear him, and Bulma could feel her cheeks flush under the glow she’d acquired from the (to her) strenuous workout.

“What, was I supposed to leave you standing there like the scrawny kid who never gets picked for a team during gym class?” she retorted as she tried to get into the martial arts stance Skelvim – their instructor – had taught them only minutes before. It was surprisingly hard to find the right places for her feet again, especially because Vegeta was watching her with an intensity that made something deep in her belly knot with anticipation. Focus, Briefs. Focus. “What are you doing here, anyway? This is a beginner’s class, isn’t it, and you’re the furthest from a beginner I could imagine.”

“I am a beginner in this particular martial art,” he replied as if the admission that he was not an expert in everything pained him, and Bulma rolled her eyes at how indignant he sounded. She’d thought she was proud and gruff sometimes, but the man took it to a whole other level. Some of that probably stemmed from his anger at being at Starfleet Academy – though why he didn’t just fuck off and never came back like a majority of his colleagues and students wanted him to, she couldn’t say. But even at Alfrmyke Bulma had noticed that air of smug superiority around him, and when she’d found out that he was actually a prince, it had suddenly made sense to her why he acted like he’d been born with a golden spoon shoved up his ass, and was offended when he was treated like a mere commoner.

“Yeah, right.” She almost stumbled as the stance that supposedly was to help them with balance and stability made her lose both because it was so unfamiliar, while Vegeta just watched her down his aristocratic nose (though how he did that when they were the same height, she didn’t know), with flawless form and perfect poise. “You’re such a beginner that you didn’t even have to try to do everything perfectly.”

“Some basic techniques are more or less universally applicable,” he grudgingly admitted as Skelvim now encouraged them to walk while maintainig their allegedly balanced stance. “Not that you’d have any idea about that, woman, that much is glaringly obvious.”

Bulma started to feel like an idiot on her way to tying herself into a pretzel as she cautiously tried to copy the foot placement without stumbling again, while her abs insisted that this definitely was too much work and could they take a break please? And she really couldn’t concentrate on her footwork and sassing Vegeta at the same time, so she of course stood straight and put her hands on her hips. She had her priorities, after all! “Oh no, you’re not gonna woman me for coming to this course! At least I’m trying to learn new things – you didn’t even bother with your exam!”

To Bulma’s surprise, his eyebrows knit together and his lips pursed, even though she hadn’t expected a reaction like that from him. “There is a difference between inability and unwillingness, woman,” he replied hotly, the temper he’d hidden behind his tightly controlled facade since Alfrmyke finally making an appearance. “You would do well to learn how to tell them apart.”

“And you’d do well to learn how to tell apart danger signs on spaceships,” she retorted tartly, her hands pressed to her ribcage because she was a little out of breath even though they were literally only standing and walking. Some of the other students weren’t doing much better – this was a beginner’s class, after all – and their instructor was circling the mats, gently correcting their footwork and posture.

Vegeta, however, was not about to wait for the man to come around, and instead stepped closer to her when Bulma tried and failed to get into position again. “Woman, it’s not rocket science,” he said with the impatience of a man who had no idea why she struggled, and Bulma just couldn’t help herself.

“I know. If it were rocket science, I’d be good at it!” He scoffed at her, but for a moment, through the voices of the other students echoing off the high gym ceiling, Bulma thought she’d heard a hint of gruff amusement in the sound, and was rather smug that she had brought something resembling a sense of humor out of the man.

“Now look at my feet, woman.” Bulma did as he effortlessly slid back into his stance. “See how they’re angled?” Bulma nodded. “Now try to do it yourself. Step on one of the lines between the mats so you have a guide if you have to.”

That was… actually a good tip, Bulma thought with surprise as she twisted herself again, one foot pointing forward, the other almost backwards. Still a deeply weird position, but at least she now knew that she was doing it right. Or… right-ish, if she interpreted Vegeta’s critical gaze correctly, but then again, he’d probably make the same face while watching puppy videos on his PADD, because his only joy in life seemed to be wiping the gym floor with Security Track cadets.

“Now which leg is your weight on?” he asked her, and Bulma frowned, because she had no idea, and what kind of person even paid attention to that kind of thing on the regular?

“Why is that important?”

He looked at her the way Bulma looked at first semester cadets when they said things like “But isn’t mass and weight the same thing? Because on a scale…!” and then, without warning, shoved her shoulder. Bulma nearly face-planted into the gym mats that were probably soaked with decades of dust and the sweat of generations of cadets, but to her surprise, Vegeta steadied her at the last moment and pulled her upright again. Which was probably lucky for him, because if he’d allowed her to fall after pushing her over, Bulma would’ve killed him, or at she least would’ve tried (how slim her chances at success truly were was just beginning to become painfully apparent).

“That’s why,” he said, face even fuller of smug superiority than usual, and Bulma resisted the urge to smack him despite the explanation, because damn it, the man was eminently smackable. “Now put your weight on the other leg.”

Bulma did, and even though she knew what was coming this time, the shove against her shoulder still threw her off balance. But to her surprise, this time, she barely wobbled before her body steadied itself, and Vegeta looked at her as if he’d just explained to her that water was wet and that things usually fell downward. “See?”

Even though she would’ve rather be caught dead than admit it to him, Bulma did indeed see, and when she tried to take a few, cautious steps while being mindful of where her center of gravity was, things went much more smoothly and she got a lot further before she stumbled.

“Adequate.” The Vulcan instructor had snuck up on them without Bulma even noticing, and now inspected her footwork for a moment before he said, “Now try with your partner, so you can learn to react to others approaching you.”

Bulma had no idea what the fuck that was even supposed to mean, but Vegeta just thanked Skelvim – and with more respect than she’d ever seen him display, even towards Commandant Morris – and sent him on his way before he turned expectantly towards her. She just shrugged at him, and didn’t even make an effort to look apologetic because he had sent their instructor away, after all. He could deal with the consequences, and explain to her clueless ass what the fuck they were supposed to do.

Her attitude seemed to amuse him more than aggravate him, though, because he simply stepped closer to her, then rolled his eyes when she remained where she was. “If you did that in a fight, I could hit you in twenty-seven different ways now, woman. You’re supposed to avoid me.”

Bulma seriously doubted that she’d get much of a chance to do anything in a fight with Vegeta, except eat dust and surrender quickly, but she appreciated that he allowed her the illusion that they were equals in this course, or at least, equal-ish.

“Get back into your stance,” he said, quietly, his eyes intent on her face and still standing so close that she could almost smell him. “Now take a step forward.”

Bulma did, and he slid backwards, with an elegance she couldn’t ever hope to match because of her clumsiness, then retreated again when Bulma took another step forward. And then it was her turn to move when he came for her, and they slid over the mats the same way as the other pairs in their course did. It almost felt as if they were dancing with each other, and wasn’t that a strange thought?

Yeah. Fat chance of that ever really happening.

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Frozen Stars - Chapter 8: Definitely the worst diplomat in the history of diplomacy

“What were you thinking?” Chi-Chi asked Bulma indignantly as soon as they stepped into the rolling autumn fog outside the gym and had at least the illusion of privacy again after changing and showering with a dozen other women.

Bulma shrugged, because truth be told, she had no idea what she had been thinking, as happened so often where Vegeta was concerned. “I don’t know? That I didn’t want to stand there like an idiot with all the other idiots playing middle school games?”

“But teaming with Vegeta! Seriously? You fucking hate the guy!” Launch interjected from Bulma’s other side, gym bag merrily swinging from her shoulder and a spring in her step that hadn’t been there before the class. Launch apparently was one of those annoying people who were energized by exercise, while Bulma felt like she’d been run through a meat grinder and hit by a mallet. And that was without even having reached the part of the course where Vegeta would actually get to hit her. Yet.

“You know how I am,” Bulma retorted with a grimace, her tone not nearly as chipper as she’d intended because her abs were screaming. Laughing was going to be very painful for a few days. Good thing she didn’t have too much to laugh about right now, then. “I’m very bad at backing down from a challenge.”

Chi-Chi laughed, also not nearly as affected by their class as Bulma was. Then again, her husband owned a martial arts gym, after all. Maybe that helped with fitness, through osmosis or something. “So he’s a challenge now?”

“A challenge and not, I quote, the asshole who captured me or the thorn in my side that will not go away...” Launch added from the other side, complete with exaggerated air quotes, and Bulma seriously reconsidered her choice of friends at that moment, because damn, those two were having a fucking field day, and she really was not in the mood to be teased, especially about Vegeta.

“Are you done entertaining yourselves at my cost?”

To their credit, both of them immediately apologized when it became clear that Bulma was not having fun, and Launch even put her arm around her shoulders in a rare display of affection. “I’m sorry. I know this semester isn’t easy for you, after all that’s happened.”

“So how was it? Training with him?” Chi-Chi asked in a more serious tone, and when Bulma shot her an angry glare, she raised her hands defensively. “Don’t look at me like that, you know I won’t have a moment of peace at home until I’ve given Goku a satisfactory answer. He’s been fascinated with the man ever since you and Yamcha first mentioned him!”

Bulma sighed and adjusted the strap of her gym bag, trying to find a spot for it that didn’t ache, and failing miserably. “Not as bad as I expected, I guess?” They said goodbye to a few of their colleagues walking past them and Bulma tried to collect her thoughts. “He was… actually helpful sometimes. But please don’t tell him that, he’d never shut up about it.”

Chi-Chi snorted, and added sarcastically “I’ll make sure of it. It’s not like he’ll show up at our house for dinner or something.”

“Still…” Bulma continued her thought, “I’d like to train with someone else next week. Having Vegeta there is much too nerve-wracking for my comfort, especially when I’m so exhausted.”

“I hope you can!” Launch hesitated for a moment. “I thought the instructor said that he’d like to keep pairs the way they are because things went so well tonight, but maybe he’ll make an exception for you.”

Bulma made a face, because the thought of being stuck with Vegeta for… a lot of weeks until the end of the semester was not a pleasant one. Even though she didn’t know if that was because of the spark of seriously inconvenient attraction she’d felt there for a moment, or despite it. “Maybe he will. And if I can’t switch partners, at least I’ll get to hit Vegeta!”

“Hah! Good luck with that!” Launch laughed before sauntering off to the train station with Chi-Chi and leaving Bulma standing alone in the fog.

Bulma was kept so busy nursing her sore muscles and putting together her paper for the Vulcan Science Academy that she only remembered her call with her mom when her phone actually rang, and then she had to scramble to sort her thoughts and finish her sentence before she hastily picked up. “Hey? Hey mom! Yes, yes, I’m here, I just had to do a thing...”

As it turned out, Bulma needn’t have hurried. Her mother was perfectly capable of entertaining herself on the phone without Bulma’s input, talking about her cats, her gardening, and the crazy gadgets Bulma’s father was building at the moment. “And of course, it exploded after that. But I think your father expected that, and then he tried something different, I don’t know what it was, but you’d know all about it if I could just remember the name of the thing...”

Bulma walked to the kitchen while the comforting sound of her mother’s voice washed over her from the apartment’s built-in speaker system, occasionally “Nuh-huh”-ing when appropriate. She briefly touched the button on her coffee maker, then thought better of it, and set the electric kettle to boil instead. She’d had far too much coffee far too late during the last weeks, between her regular work, her working on her paper on Alfrmykian gravitation patterns for the Vulcan Science Academy, and the self-defense classes that added another item to an already busy schedule.

She’d ended up training with Vegeta after all, and while she’d tried to change that, truth to be told, she hadn’t put up too much of a fight. Not only because trying to persuade a Vulcan felt like throwing soft-boiled eggs at a brick wall and expecting the wall to yield, but also because the one session she’d done with Launch had made her suddenly appreciate why a good fifty percent of tactical track cadets in her courses hated Launch’s guts. And also because occasionally, Vegeta was actually helpful. Not that she’d actually would tell him that, his head was already big enough.

“… and your father asked me to ask you if it’d be okay to send you some documents and specs? He thinks you might be able to help with his newest design?” Bulma’s mother didn’t pause long enough to wait for an answer. “Of course, he’d also love it if you came to work for him, he says that none of the people who are working for him compare to you, and even though he knows your background is regrettably not in engineering, you might do a world of good at the Corp, or maybe you could go back to school...”

As bubbles slowly started to rise in the kettle, Bulma rubbed her tired eyes and then dumped a teabag into her mug. She’d grown up at her father’s company – the Capsule Corporation – and had been intimately familiar with its inner workings from the time she’d been a teenager, and yet she’d pursued another path after she’d finished her undergraduate degree, and joined Starfleet instead, against her father’s wishes. Maybe it was her stubbornness, maybe her innate desire to prove herself, but she’d wanted to be her own woman, had wanted to make a name for herself, earn her respect, not inherit it because she was her father’s daughter. And what a fat load of good that did me!

Maybe it was time to reconsider now? She was so fed up with Starfleet, and she’d already sent out her resume… if she didn’t get any offers that were better than what she had now, maybe she should just go ahead, give in, and be daddy’s girl in daddy’s world for a change? That certainly would be easier than listening to Ginyu scream at people and having Cui taunt her like a villain in a middle school movie! And it would also mean moving far, far away from San Francisco, so she’d never have to see a certain infuriatingly smug prince ever again, ever, which was a considerable benefit to the scheme that she’d never properly appreciated before. Even though it would mean leaving behind all of her friends, but she’d done that before to salvage the tattered shreds of her career, and she could do it again.

“… but you’ve been keeping things from me, you naughty girl!” Bulma’s mother said teasingly, and while Bulma had tuned out almost everything else, that got her attention, and fast. Because unlike on countless previous occasions, when she’d been sneaking out with Launch and Goku and Yamcha to do stupid things she was technically too young and/or too smart for, or going to parties she had no business going to, drinking things she shouldn’t be drinking, this time she actually hadn’t kept anything from her mother, and she was wondering which of her previous sins was now coming home to bite her in the butt. Because really, she’d been so good, so boring ever since she’d been summarily chastised after Alfrmyke, that she really couldn’t think about anything, except that incident with Vegeta and Commandant Morris. And her mother knew all about that! Everyone who would listen (and even some who didn’t) knew all about that!

“… that boy you’ve been talking about all the time, that Vegeta, you didn’t tell me he’s handsome!” her mother crooned, and Bulma suppressed a loud groan, dumped hot water into her mug, and walked over to her floor-length window that looked out over the apartment building’s garden. Unfortunately, the view didn’t provide much of a distraction – the thick autumn fog was pressing so tightly against the glass panes that it made Bulma feel almost claustrophobic, even though the windows were usually one of her favorite things about her apartment.

Tea, then. She desperately needed that tea now, too – because she knew what was coming, and she’d hold her tongue through a lot of it, starting with the fact that nothing at all about Vegeta was boyish in any way, shape, or form. If anything, he was too grown up for Bulma’s comfort. Good luck trying to explain that – or her very complicated and increasingly conflicted feelings about the situation – to her mother, though. To her, he was just a good-looking young er man she could admire from afar, like a TV star or… “Hold up a second, how do you even know what he looks like?”

Her mother, who had just gone off on a tangent about Yamcha that Bulma really did not want to hear despite things being as amicable as was possible under the circumstances (and seriously, what kind of masochist wanted their mother to talk about the comparative attractiveness of their ex-boyfriend and a guy whose guts they hated?), reigned in her wandering thoughts. “How do I even know what he looks like? Why, my dear, he was on the news!”

“He was on the news?” Bulma asked, and almost spilled her tea in her haste to get back to her computer, still idling on her desk. “But why? He’s just some Starfleet officer!”

“He is also a prince,” her mother sighed as if that were the most romantic thing in the world, when the word was so closely associated with asshole in Bulma’s mind now that she might as well go and use it as the insult it was to her now. “… and princes have diplomatic duties, don’t they?”

Bulma spat a mouthful of tea over her screen and cursed under her breath, because Vegeta did not have a diplomatic bone in his body – quite on the contrary. It was quite the opposite, the man was insulting everyone he met, and quite a few that he didn’t, with his gruff manners and direct-yet-standoffish personality. But her mother was right. There, under the glistening drops of tea on her screen (she’d have to clean that up later, ugh), was Vegeta, in his Saiyan uniform… with the fucking President of the United Federation of Planets. With various Federation Council members! With an ambassador! Bulma couldn’t believe it!

“How did I not know about that before?” she asked quietly, more directed at herself than at her mother, but that had never stopped Panchy Briefs from anything, much less having a happy and slightly oblivious conversation with herself.

“Oh, I don’t know, you’ve been so busy, poor girl… and after all the trouble you’ve had with your boss, you really didn’t have time to follow the news.” Her mother sighed mournfully. “You really should come work for your father, he’d never give you grief like this Dr Ginyu… oh wait! I just reminded myself! I think I saw him too! Your Dr Ginyu, he was on TV with Vegeta… that man really does have a very unpleasant face to go with his unpleasant personality. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, but he looked very angry next to that Ambassador Frieza as they were talking to the Bajoran delegation...”

“Wait? You saw Dr Ginyu? On TV? With Vegeta?” Bulma felt a bit like her brain had just finished a spin cycle in the washing machine, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d totally overdone it with work tonight, or because following her mother’s conversation was a bit trying even during the best of times. With the way mom had just casually dropped a bomb on Bulma’s lap, nobody could blame her if she was confused!

“Why yes, my dear! They were at some embassy fundraising event, I think? And the newscaster was talking about diplomatic tensions between King Vegeta...”

“Seriously!” Bulma exclaimed, because she’d thought that having a prince and planet named the same was fucking stupid enough, without the king having the same name, too. It was a miracle anyone ever got anything done on Vegeta (the planet, not the king, or the prince) without confusing themselves!

Her mother was not deterred. “… and the Federation Council? Something about the Federation violating Saiyan rights or something, I don’t understand the particulars, but you’ll surely figure it out, if you look it up. You’ve been always more interested in things like that than me.”

Bulma wiped off her computer screen and got on the trail, her mother’s comforting voice only faint in her ears, hunting down news reports and prowling through old articles about the Saiyans and Planet Vegeta that she’d collected after the rawest edges of her captivity had been sanded off by time and abrasive Starfleet superiors. It seemed that the Saiyans had been… reluctant about contact with the Federation from the very beginning, and had only been convinced to ally themselves to the Federation through great diplomatic effort by one Ambassador Frieza.

But now, for some reason – some political commentators were calling it fickleness or domestic instability on the Saiyans’ side – relations were deteriorating (which was a fucking achievement, considering that relations had started out with the Saiyans attacking an unarmed civilian space station – Bulma’s unarmed civilian space station, to be precise), and the Federation was scrambling to convince the Saiyan people and their ambassador on Earth – one Prince Vegeta – not to break things off and ride off into the sunset without them.

How Bulma had missed a development of such magnitude, she had no idea. She hadn’t even known that Vegeta was a fucking ambassador, and why, for fuck’s sake, had Commandant Morris not told her that? She might’ve been a bit more amenable to being polite to Vegeta if he’d explained the reasons to her, instead of just screaming at her to be nice like a teacher does at a kid, without even taking the time to figure out what the problem was!

And why had Vegeta never mentioned anything about his status? He was such an arrogant bastard, she’d fully expected him to throw into her face the fact that he was a high-ranking diplomat while she was just a lowly Starfleet scientist! But he had made not a peep about it, had not used it to beat Bulma down when they’d gone toe-to-toe verbally, and that confused her, and not a little bit. A man like Cui – he would’ve told her to back off because he was a diplomat. Vegeta hadn’t.

But if he was a diplomat, why was he so… so… so… him ? Because Bulma thought that even she, of the smart, badly controlled mouth and hot-headed temper, would’ve done a better job than him at diplomating. He’d basically gone and made Commandant Morris hate his guts in a single afternoon! And when did he even have time for that kind of shit if he was teaching at Starfleet? Bulma was teaching too, so she knew the schedule, and she’d be damned if she could find the time, between preparing her lessons, grading, office hours, and independent research.

And what the everloving fuck did Dr Ginyu have to do with this clusterfuck? Last she’d checked, he’d been a scientist – a physicist, for fuck’s sake, not even a social scientist or a historian or even a fucking command track officer who’d be expected to handle diplomatic intricacies beyond a certain rank! Why was he hanging out with Councilors and Ambassadors?

“Bulma, are you still there? Are you even listening to me?” her mother asked, with a trace of impatience replacing her customarily patient air-headedness, and Bulma realized that she barely had an idea what her mother had said, then stifled a sigh.

“Of course I am, and I do hope kitty will be feeling better soon!”

But the truth was, she was growing… concerned? She’d thought that Vegeta arriving on Starfleet campus had been just a coincidence. A hellishly annoying and damned inconvenient coincidence, but ultimately meaningless and of no greater consequence. But now she was feeling more and more that there were strange things going on here in San Francisco. Vegeta acting out of character, Ginyu being more tense than usual (as much as her boss didn’t take her into his confidence, his stress levels were pretty accurately deduced by how loudly he screamed at his subordinates), her colleagues disliking her, Cui dropping mysterious hints because he was a little shit who couldn’t keep his mouth shut…

The automatic lights in the garden under her window sprang to life and caught her attention, dull halos glowing bright in the fog, illuminating how low visibility truly was. She could only barely make them out two stories below her, and she wondered who would spend time outside when the weather was so dysmal, until a gap between the banks revealed a distinctive uniform, a distinctive hairstyle, and an extremely distinctive tail, as if her dark thoughts had summoned him again.

Bulma’s decision was made by her mouth and her legs before her brain could get involved at all. “Sorry mom, gotta go, love you, bye!” Then she grabbed her shawl and hastened towards the stairs.

Chapter Text

Frozen Stars - Chapter 9: Why does the asshole have to be so hot?

Bulma was not a garden person, and she could count the times she’d gone out here since she’d moved into her apartment on the fingers of one hand. In her considered opinion, nature was best observed from the inside, where her precious electronics were not endangered by things like rain, mud, and wild animals (okay, there weren’t that many wild animals here on Starfleet Campus, but still!).

But now she followed unfamiliar paths made even more disorienting by the darkness and the thick fog. The motion-activated lights illuminating the gardens barely managed to show her where she had to put her feet on the flagstone path, and she almost felt that she’d do better without them until they went off because the sensors failed to find her and she was plunged into complete darkness. Without their eerie glow, Bulma stumbled through the night until they lit once again, and then she finally managed to turn on to the path where she thought she’d seen Vegeta.

He found her first. He appeared from the fog like a menacing demon, rage bubbling in his black eyes, his entire being poised to fight, until he recognized her and the tension seeped from his shoulders and he turned into a man again. An unpleasant man, yes, but a mere mortal. And whom had he been expecting? Was there someone he disliked more than Bulma, as unlikely as that sounded?

“What are you doing out here?” he asked gruffly, his deep voice even growlier than usual, and Bulma pulled the shawl closer around her shoulders. Truth be told, she was asking herself that right now, and was coming up completely blank.

“I saw you from my window,” she explained rather more angrily than his question warranted, anger that she should have directed at herself for not staying inside where it was nice, cozy, warm, and asshole-free. “And then I wondered, What kind of idiot would work out in the garden on a night like this, when we have a perfectly good staff gym? And now I know!”

And the asshole actually had the audacity to laugh at her! Bulma couldn’t believe it! She was angry! Granted, she was angry at herself, she could see that even through the haze of her overwhelming emotions, but she’d just insulted him, and he just… laughed. And her incredulous exasperation that he had dared to laugh at her managed to deflate her anger more quickly than any carefully crafted barb from Cui ever could.

She sighed, sat down on the cold stone bench nestled into decorative shrubbery next to them, and began to massage her forehead where a dull ache was beginning to bloom, but to her surprise, Vegeta sat down next to her, watching her from the side like a mouse would a cat? Or a cat a mouse? She couldn’t tell anymore, and frankly, right now, she didn’t give a damn, anyway. This evening was strange and exhausting enough already, and she’d have to get back to work tomorrow. Better save her energy for cadets with extremely urgent questions that were probably answered in the course syllabus.

It was a cool October evening, cool at least for the spoiled inhabitants of San Francisco, and Bulma nestled herself into her scarf to escape the dank, while the man next to her didn’t seem to mind the temperature, even glistening with sweat after his workout. They couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried. Bulma had no idea what to say, what to do, and even Vegeta didn’t have a smart-ass remark to contribute for once, and so they sat in silence, even when the lights went off again and plunged the garten into foggy darkness.

“I’ve been wondering,” he finally said, with a growling hint of something Bulma couldn’t quite identify in his voice, “Do you have no idea about the things I could do to you, or do you know and came anyway?”

Bulma shivered as unwelcome emotion that had nothing to do with fear rose inside of her, and turned to look at his profile in the darkness. She didn’t quite know when she’d stopped being afraid of him, or even why, but the last few weeks of training together had solidified what she’d known in her gut on that first day on Alfrmyke: He was dangerous – probably very much so, the same way her friend Goku was dangerous – but he was not a danger to her. Not anymore. And as she’d learned how to walk and how to retreat and how to advance and even how to roll, he’d been… helpful, and on very rare occasions, even almost gentle. And, unfortunately, very, very hot. Just like right now.

She chuckled to smother the uncomfortable attraction she felt for him at that moment, the pull to touch him almost overwhelmingly strong, and said, as nonchalantly as she dared, “If you think you’re intimidating, you’re sorely mistaken.”

A slow smirk spread over his features, barely visible in the dim light from the apartments above them that went out one by one as their inhabitants went to sleep, and he cocked his head at her proudly. “I don’t know, it seems a lot of people here find me very intimidating. Why don’t you?”

Bulma sighed. It was a complicated question with a complicated answer, and instead of tackling it head-on, she got to in in a rather roundabout way, and very quietly asked something that had weighed on her mind for quite some time now. “You wanted me to escape, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer, just stared off into the dark gardens, the slight flaring of his nostrils as he hissed in a deep breath his only reaction to her question. But that was enough for Bulma to know the truth. His lack of denial, the want of a biting answer about the warrior pride of the Saiyans was proof enough, but he surprised Bulma when he sighed in turn and leaned back on the bench, staring up into the branches slowly swallowed by fog and darkness. “Yes.”

She felt as if she’d been punched in the gut, her dark suspicions confirmed, her concerns about what was happening here at Starfleet Academy heightened once again, but then Vegeta spoke again, his voice hesitant and almost… apologetic. “We were… deceived as to the exact purpose of your station. We expected soldiers, not… a civilian outfit. I did not expect you.” His eyes seemed to bore into her soul, and Bulma swallowed harshly, now remembering the surprise on his face that she hadn’t noticed when he’d actually captured her, the dismay when he’d found a woman in a kimono instead of armed forces. “Due to… diplomatic reasons, I could not reveal that to you at the time, and if we’d have taken you back to Planet Vegeta, there would not have been a way home for you.”

Silence fell between them and Bulma stared at the flagstone path before them as another apartment above them went dark and deepend the shadows here in the gardens. It almost sounded like… like he’d understood how difficult the situation had been for her… like he’d protected her, when all these years she’d hated him for what he’d done. And if she read between the lines, he hadn’t exactly wanted to attack a defenseless science station, either… which begged the question of what the ever-loving fuck was going on here? Not that he’d tell her if she asked, of course. Not Mr Not-So-Tall-Dark-And-Mysterious over here.

She could feel him watching her from the side, and even though she didn’t know what it was that he wanted to see, his attention disconcerted her. He didn’t treat her the way he treated his other colleagues here at Starfleet Academy, first because they had history, now because… well, she didn’t know why, but he seemed to tolerate her better than most, and now he was telling her things he’d never told anyone else…

“And here I’d thought all those years that you were just a bunch of dumb motherfuckers who didn’t know how to properly secure a panel,” she quipped dryly to break the tension, and paid him back all of his arrogant smirks with dividends.

He laughed harshly and leaned back on the bench, his arms snaking over the back rest, and while he didn’t quite touch her shoulder, she could feel his presence like a searing brand on her mind. “We’re warriors, not savages. If I’d wanted you to stay, woman, you would have.”

Bulma’s mouth suddenly felt very dry, and not for the first time since she’d come out here she wondered what those things were that he could do to her, if she’d let him. And if she wanted to let him. He was an asshole, yes, but he wouldn’t be the first asshole she’d have amazing sex with in her life, and probably not the last, either. Good luck explaining that to Starfleet, though. Commandant Morris had told her to go work out her difficulties with Vegeta, but she doubted that the man had expected her to fuck the prince.

“So why are you training out here, instead of at the staff gym?” she finally asked, mainly to keep her mouth moving so she wouldn’t do something stupid she couldn’t take back, and he scoffed at her.

“For someone so smart you sometimes ask the most stupid questions,” Vegeta drawled again, immediately raising Bulma’s hackles, but maybe that was a good thing. Maybe he was just as eager as Bulma to leave the awkward tension between them behind.

Starfleet had very lenient regulations where fraternization between officers was concerned, and with him technically not even being in Starfleet but a Saiyan soldier, there was an argument to be made that even those regulations did not apply to them. No, it wasn’t their jobs that made pursuing this… tension between them a stupid-ass decision – it was the whole fucking rest of the fucking situation.

Due to Bulma’s chronic inability to keep her mouth shut, the whole Starfleet campus knew that Vegeta was “the asshole who’d captured her” (and yes, that was unfortunately a direct quote from yours truly) on Alfrmyke. The way Vegeta had told Commandant Morris to fuck off was also quickly becoming the stuff of legend amongst officers and cadets alike, and if she wanted her career to go anywhere, she’d best stay far away from him. Bulma was infamous enough on her own – she didn’t need to be associated with Vegeta to make things worse. And that wasn’t even taking the fact into account that women’s private relationships were still under more scrutiny than men’s, as much as Bulma hated that and wanted that misogynistc bullshit to just go away and die already. She and Vegeta… no. It just couldn’t be. Not least because they fucking hated each other, and he was an insufferable twat at the best of times.

“I’m not the one who Starfleet doesn’t trust on space stations and small craft,” she retorted testily, even as she tried to steer her mind away from how good it would feel to finally have an outlet for all the unresolved… things between them. How much she wanted to touch him, even though that way only madness was waiting for her, and of course, the end of her career. You were considering going to work at your dad’s place not an hour ago – would that really be so bad?

“I don’t fucking care if Starfleet trusts me or not. They can go to hell for all I care.” His eyebrows knit into a dark frown as he seemed to remember that she, too, was part of Starfleet. “Present company excluded. You’re a pain in the ass, but at least you have honor.”

It was a strange thing to say, but it also made a lot of things click into place that Bulma hadn’t understood before. She herself had a hard time working for Starfleet in general and Doctor Ginyu in particular because she thought that a lot of her superiors were a bunch of fucking twatwaffles, and it grated having to take orders from them. For a man as proud as Vegeta, who also was the crown prince of the Saiyans and used to others bending to his will, it had to be nigh on unbearable to take orders from officers of whom he thought along the same lines as Bulma did.

She turned in her seat to look at him, now unashamed in her perusal of his shadowed features before a gust of wind made her shiver and pull her shawl closer around her shoulders. “You really hate it here, don’t you?”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, much in the same way as she’d done earlier. “You really have a talent for stating the obvious.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Why can’t I just punch people the right way?

After their chance encounter in the gardens, Bulma walked into her next self-defense class with more trepidation than usual. Which meant a whole lot of trepidation, because standing across from Vegeta in a gym and knowing that today might be the day when he’d be allowed to hit you was a lot to take in even on the best of days. But today she didn’t only have to worry about him – she’d have to worry about herself, too. It was as if knowing that even back on Alfrmyke he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, hadn’t been the villain she’d made him out to be, had irrecovably opened the Pandora’s Box of her attraction to him. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stuff her feelings down anymore, the way she’d done since he’d arrived at Starfleet Academy, and watching him saunter into the sun-flooded gym in his workout clothes definitely made Bulma feel . Damn, that man is so much hotter than he has any right to be with that scowl on his face.

Bulma had never thought that she was the type for a bad boy, the way her friend Launch was (with the notable exception of Launch’s ex Tien, who was now off commanding a starship somewhere while still being painfully serious and equally shy). Sure, she liked a man who could challenge her, had even slept with her fair share of asshole business dudebros and frat boys during her wild college days, but… those had been kids. She’d been a kid, too, back then! Vegeta was many things, but a kid he was definitely not, and even if Bulma’s tastes had run to the challenging side, he might have been a little too challenging even for her to handle, especially at a time when her whole life felt like it might be too much for her already.

That small, knowing smirk he wore when they took their positions across from each other on the mat didn’t help matters, either. Not only did it make him more handsome despite (or maybe because of) the inherent arrogance, it also made Bulma wonder what he knew or suspected about her feelings, and that didn’t bode well for any actual learning during this class. She was bad enough at martial arts when she could actually concentrate and wasn’t busy being self-conscious (something that wasn’t going to happen with Vegeta as her training partner), and any chance of her being able to control her limbs went out the window when she also had to worry about every movement and glance exchanged making things even more awkward between them.

As if all of that had not been bad enough, today was also The Day (yes, capitalized) everyone in class had either been waiting for or dreading. Today they were going to learn how to hit people (and how to defend themselves from being hit, but the second part wasn’t that important to Bulma because it wasn’t like she’d have a chance to defend against Vegeta, anyway), and try that out on their unsuspecting partners. Launch and Chi-Chi, who’d paired up after Launch’s partner had dropped out after the first lesson (Launch staunchly denied having anything to do with it, but Launch also made first year cadets cry by just looking at them), were eyeing each other with barely contained glee, and Bulma was quite sure that Chi-Chi had gone and gotten a few tips from Goku to give herself a little advantage.

Bulma fervently wished that she’d asked Goku for some lessons, too, or better yet, that Goku were here to defend her, as he’d done countless times at school when Bulma had inevitably sassed someone that should not have been sassed, because she was very bad at learning from things like that (and also at shutting her mouth). But Goku was at work, living his best life teaching martial arts classes at his own gym, and she was here, facing Vegeta, as something low in her stomach curled tight.

“Scared?” he asked with a knowing smirk as Bulma tried to concentrate on their instructor demonstrating the proper technique for deflecting a punch to the face (which apparently also involved doing things with feet, a fact that confused Bulma endlessly – how the fuck was she supposed to do hand stuff and foot stuff at the same time?).

“Of you? Never,” Bulma retorted forcefully, maybe protesting a little too much, but she was also busy finding the right position to start sparring, and that was enough of a struggle. While things like moving his center of gravity, placing his feet, and knowing where his partner was at all times were things that came naturally to Vegeta (whether through years of training or through innate talent), Bulma more often than not had trouble repeating the motions the instructor showed them, because bodies were weird and difficult, unlike gravitics theory. And as embarrassing as it was to admit it, Vegeta had helped her figure it out more than once, and how dared that asshole be right about things?

And then it was time for the actual punching to happen, and Bulma felt like her brain was going to explode. Solving four-dimensional vector problems in her head was one thing, but this? This shit was hard! Raise your hand to deflect like you practiced, but also step back, and to the side, and mind your balance. And there’s probably something you’re forgetting but you’ve got this, Bulma. You totally…

Vegeta’s slow punch caught her off guard, and Bulma barely avoided tripping over her own feet while trying to think about moving too many body parts at once. She stumbled forward, and his fist connected with her shoulder – hard. “Ouch! That hurt , asshole!”

Bulma didn’t know why, but she’d expected… remorse? An apology? She didn’t know, but this complete nonchalance over the fact that she might have a bruise tomorrow was not it. “It’s supposed to hurt.”

“What? But it’s training! Not a real fight!” she hissed back, rubbing the sore spot on her shoulder, and to her surprise, his expression softened a little.

“In a real fight, you’re going to get hurt. There’s just no way around it, and whoever tells you otherwise is lying through their teeth. So the point of this...” He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the whole gym, the dozens of students around them paired up learning how to strike and parry. “… is not only to teach you how to get hurt as little as possible, but also to get used to what it feels like, getting hurt. So you’re not stunned, but still able to move, to react.”

Bulma glared at him like she was going to murder him any second, but as much as she hated to admit it, what he said… made sense. A lot of sense, actually. It also echoed dim memories of past conversations between Goku, Yamcha and Krillin she’d heard without really realizing, and she also didn’t thought he’d hit her to be cruel. He has two dozen security track cadets as punching bags for that, after all. “ Still, c an we still start out at a lower level of ouch?”

“Certainly, if you try not to find innovative new ways of tripping over your feet. I can’t pull my punches if you run into them shoulder first.” Vegeta sounded like he thought Bulma was a total wimp (okay… Bulma was a total wimp, she admitted it herself, but hey, nobody wanted to hear that from someone else!) but to his credit, the next time she failed to deflect his punch, it hurt a lot less when he hit her. Though that also might have had something to do with the fact that she didn’t stumble into his fist this time.

“Can we try it again?” she asked, even though the rest of the class was already getting the hang of it and she was the only one still struggling. Under normal circumstances and with almost any other class, that would’ve irked Bulma to no end, because her competitive streak was about as wide as the Milky Way and just as deep. But here, she didn’t have a chance in hell to compete with anyone, anyway, because she sucked this hard at martial arts (the judo class she’d taken with Goku way back when they’d both been in elementary school had been ample proof of that)… and oddly, that knowledge was very freeing. As if she didn’t have to think about anyone else for a change, and could just focus on herself, her cursed body that never did what she wanted it to do, and her reactions. And, of course, her partner.

Vegeta’s dark eyes were focused so intently on every movement Bulma made that with every other guy, she’d have sworn that he was checking her out, but with Vegeta? She couldn’t tell. He was hard to read on the best of days, his dismissive cynicism an excellent facade to hide his feelings, like he had hidden the depth of his hatred for the Federation for so long, and why was she even so invested in him finding her as attractive as she found him? There was no way anything between them could ever go anywhere, anyway.

“Slower,” Vegeta said now, and Bulma jerked back, wondering if she’d gotten so lost in her own thoughts that she’d completely lost track of their conversation.

“Pardon?” She started at him, a little disoriented, a little dumbfounded, and he rolled his eyes at her and stepped closer, so that she could hear his low, deep voice even over the echoing murmurs of the gym.

“You have to move slower. You’re trying to do everything at once – hand-eye coordination, hand movement, footwork, balance, speed – and it won’t work. You’re just confusing yourself, and making a mess of it, and if you keep it up, the only thing you’re teaching yourself is sloppy execution and shortcuts. Better start out as slow as you need to to properly execute the technique, and then speed up when you have good form and confindence in your abilities.”

Bulma scoffed. Sure, he was the expert, no matter how often he claimed to be a beginner at this particular martial art (Bulma hadn’t really looked up what it actually was, because she couldn’t tell one from the other, anyway), but he wasn’t the one looking like an idiot with two left feet while the rest of the class was progressing! “That’s easy for you to say, Mr I-can-tie-Security-Track-Cadets into-a-pretzel-and-make-them-beg!” For a moment, she thought she saw the echo of a smirk on his regally handsome features – literally regally, in his case. “But where do I even start? Don’t I need momentum or something? Or use your momentum against you?”

Vegeta looked at her a bit like Bulma looked at well-meaning but terrifyingly clueless first year cadets. “Can you pretend to punch me, very slowly?”

Bulma didn’t think punching Vegeta (even pretend-punching him) was a good idea – in fact, every better instinct inside her said that punching Vegeta was a very bad idea because he was going to tie her into a pretzel and stuff her into a gym locker in retaliation! But when he cocked his head at her and actually said “Please” in the grumpiest, most impatient tone possible, she knew she just had to, and she made a fist and went for it before her courage deserted her.

It was like watching a video in ultra slow motion. No, it was better – like being part of a video in ultra slow motion. Vegeta dodged while giving her fist just the right nudge to keep it out of his face, the way the instructor had taught them, and he did it so slowly that Bulma could actually comprehend what was happening and not only marvel at too many things going on at once for her to process. It was actually… remarkably kind of him, she thought for a split second, and then he grabbed her arm and did something that definitely hadn’t been part of the sequence the instructor had asked them to practice. Said something somehow threw off her balance and would’ve ended with her faceplanting on the mats again if he hadn’t caught her at the last moment and steadied her on her feet.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” she angrily muttered under her breath as he let go of her and sauntered away, but not before he’d heard her, and not before his touch had made Bulma feel a myriad of things she should not be feeling, right at this moment, because she didn’t have time for that if she wanted to keep up with him.

“Can’t have everyone think that I’m going soft on you,” he retorted with a self-satisfied smirk. “Our little feud is the stuff of legends, remember?”

Bulma briefly considered sticking her tongue out at him, then decided to keep her dignity and be the bigger person, until he continued, “Also, that was a horrible punch and if you’d actually hit anything with it, you’d have broken your own bones.” Then she did stick her tongue out at him, because if anyone deserved to be disrespected like that, it was him.

To Bulma’s surprise, he taught her how to throw a proper punch with a properly tucked thumb afterwards (who would’ve thought that she’d done it wrong all those years during half-assed playground fights that she started and Goku finished for her?). And when the class ended and she’d emerged from her locker room freshly showered and pleasantly sore for a change instead of already complaining about the pain, she was in such a tolerant mood that she pulled a flyer for Goku’s gym out of her bag (he “sneakily” handed her the things now and then because he hadn’t given up on getting her as a customer) and walked over to Vegeta, who was standing by the entrance to the gym and talking to their instructor in a more respectful tone than she’d ever heard of him. Even – or especially – compared to when he was talking to Commandant Morris.

“What do you want?” he asked after he’d finished with Skelvim, turning towards her with his customary scowl on his face, and Bulma briefly considered just turning around, but she’d come so far… and if he really hated the facilities at Starfleet, Goku’s gym might just be a better fit for him. Not to forget the fact that Goku had wanted to be introduced to the man for months now, and if Vegeta actually went, Goku would owe her and carry all of her boxes the next time she moved!

She held out the flyer like a sacrifice. “My friend has a gym. Thought you’d might to try the place out.” And then she turned around an ran before Vegeta had a chance to say something sarcastic.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11: Saiyans and dating don’t belong in the same sentence

Weeks passed without Bulma really noticing because she was so busy, December approaching fast, and what Vegeta was lacking in infuriating obnoxiousness lately was made up by Cui these days, with rage to spare on Bulma’s side. It felt like she could barely sit down in her office – let alone work – without the man knocking on her door with the most petty shit imaginable, asking physics questions a first year cadet could’ve answered, asking if she’d seen the stapler (and who the fuck even needed a stapler in the twenty-third century? Bulma certainly didn’t! They had PADDs!), walking into her space then back out because he’d picked the wrong door, as if the office assignments in the Gravitics department had changed on him suddenly (they hadn’t). It almost felt like he wanted to disturb her as much as possible on purpuse to keep her from finishing her paper for the Vulcan Science Academy!

Bulma had taken to working from home and at night in order to avoid him, as much as her commitments to office hours (office hours he regularly used to harass her, even when she was having conversations with cadets) allowed her. It felt strange, being the bigger person for once and not letting him bait her into yet another ugly public confrontation, but the Vulcan Science Academy had standards about as high in the air as their noses usually were, and they rarely – if ever – accepted contributions from non-Vulcans even for posters. And this year, for the first time in her career, Bulma felt that she had a shot at going to their yearly congress on Vulcan. She wouldn’t jeopardize that for a satisfying – if ultimately pointless – screaming match with Cui.

After she’d been chased from Alfymke with her tail in her hand – figuratively speaking – Bulma had never really bothered to look at the data that she’d fought so hard to gather and then get out of the system along with her people. Bad memories and the feeling that she was a complete, utter failure for losing her research station to the Saiyans the way she had had clouded her judgement, and she’d been too scared to even look at her files, because she’d been convinced that it would be useless drivel. Proof that she was just as worthless as Starfleet thought she was, the culmination of her failure as a scientist. Humiliation that she better kept packed away, the same way she’d kept her emotions packed away, so she could carry on and have a future as a Starfleet officer.

But after Vegeta had turned up and forced her to confront everything she’d so carefully repressed, she’d found the courage to look at what had happened to her, and part of that had been digging out the work she’d already done during her long evenings at Alfrmyke (because it had been work, or re-runs of ancient TV shows. Not much to do on a science station at the edge of nowhere). And to Bulma’s utter surprise… her work had been nothing short of brilliant, if she dared say so herself. And she would’ve published it a long time ago, maybe gotten some awards and some follow-up funding, if some asshole hadn’t come around and blown her space station to smithereens.

Her chance encounter with Vegeta had sparked not only a renewed interest in the data she’d never properly sorted through, but also a new passion for her research. Her anger about Starfleet’s treatment of her had bled into her opinion of her work and her field for far too long, making her forget why she loved physics and especially gravitics so much, the beauty of not only staring at the stars in awe but also understanding why they did what they did, comprehending the mechanics behind the breathtaking dance. How she delighted in wrapping her mind around a problem, sorting through layers upon layers until she understood , not only following along with what others had found out before her as she had as a student, but now forging her own path as a researcher and advancing – if only in a small way – their understanding of the vastness that was space around them. Sure, she might not have a beautiful research space station anymore, staring out at the endless gas giant clouds swirling under her bedroom window, or traveling through space on a Federation ship, but in a way, she was still out there, still contributing, still a part of the stars she’d loved so much ever since she’d been a kid.

She still mattered, her work still mattered, even though the realization felt bittersweet and made her heart hurt in peculiar ways after almost allowing Starfleet to persuade her that she didn’t. And now that she’d finally allowed herself to properly mourn what she’d lost at Alfrmyke, instead of stuffing all of her pain and hurt and fear and anger into a box along with those memories and never opening it again, she was readier for new endeavours and adventures than she’d ever been. Wiser, even, if her new zen feelings – okay not zen feelings, she still wanted to strangle the asshole, and would’ve gladly yeeted him out of her life, maybe even out of an airlock – but calmer behavior where Cui was concerned was any indication.

That Bulma channeled all of her energy into work now instead of being angry or keeping her petty little feud with Cui going showed. Even Dr Ginyu – who hated Bulma’s guts and wanted nothing more than to get her out of his department, and generally favored Cui and his unparalleled bootlicking skills – had shown signs of appreciation, offering actually helpful advice now and then and working with Bulma instead of against her! It was unheard of, and made Bulma wary at times, because it was such a change in behavior for her boss… but then again, what was he going to do? Kill her with kindness? Very unlikely.

A knock on her office door made Bulma groan internally even before it opened and revealed – to exactly no one’s surprise – Cui, his face as smug and superior as ever. “Have a moment, Briefs?”

Bulma breathed deeply and tried to tell herself that this deescalation thing she was doing was totally worth it, but it was getting harder every time Cui barged into her office with increasingly contrived excuses. For fuck’s sake, what did the moron want now? Help locating his ass because he couldn’t find it with both hands and autopilot engaged? “Sure.” She even managed a halfway convincing smile that quickly melted away as Cui pulled one of the chairs she kept for meetings with students out for himself without asking, turned it around, and sat down on it backwards like an edgy teenager trying to look cool.

Bulma stared at him like he was a fucking moron, which he undoubtedly was, even before he opened his mouth and removed all uncertainty by saying, “So I’ve heard you’re working on a paper.” Which was a very idiotic thing to say, because who the fuck wasn’t working on a paper at any given time? Except for the ones who were working on books, of course.

“Yes.”

Cui looked at her thoughtfully, even propped his elbow on the back of the chair and rested his chin on his palm for the full thinker pose, then said with the absolute confidence of a less-than-mediocre purple man, “You don’t need to bother. The Vulcan Science Academy will never accept it.”

“So this is what this petty game is all about?” Bulma retorted, so calmly that she wondered if she’d had the organ that was supposed to produce rage surgically removed and just hadn’t noticed. Just a few weeks ago, she would’ve flown off the handle and tossed him out of her office so forcefully that he never would have dared to show his face again – now, she thought the man was just pathetic and beneath her notice. “Don’t you have something better to do? Count rocks, lick boots, derive sin x forty times and see what you end up with? Who knows, maybe you’ll surprise yourself with your results.”

“You should be afraid of me,” Cui retorted with a cold smile, and for a moment, Bulma wondered what the little shit was up to right now before she remembered that whatever it was, she could handle it. She’d already handled him once, after all – she could fuck him up again if she needed to.

“I try not to be afraid of my coworkers, generally speaking. Makes for a much pleasanter work environment.” Bulma stood with a chilly smile that matched Cui’s and walked over to her office door, then hissed under her breath, because she just couldn’t resist a little pettiness, “I hope you stub your toe on your coffee table tonight.”

“Really, that’s the best you can come up with, Briefs?”

Bulma opened her office door with a flourish. “That is Dr Briefs to you. Now have a good day. Preferably far away from me.”

It was only then that she realized Vegeta stood in front of her office door, and what the everloving fuck was he doing here? Then, irritation quickly replaced her confusion. Of course, he just had to pick the most inconvenient time imaginable to show up here and cause her more trouble. Typical Vegeta.

But first, unfinished business with Cui. She turned towards the man again to toss him out of her office by his ear if necessary, only to jerk back in surprise. Cui looked like he’d seen a ghost up close and personal, and it was not because of her admittedly cliché comeback, but because Vegeta was sizing him up in a way Bulma had only seen on Goku right before he tore a guy to shreds with his bare hands. And what in the quadrant was going on here that she wasn’t the only person on campus who low-key (okay, more like high-key in Vegeta’s case) wanted to strangle Cui with her bare hands?

“What a surprise to see you here,” she managed to say to Vegeta, hoping to diffuse the tension of the situation a little, because she suspected that they were about three seconds away from a very one-sided brawl in the gravitics department open office space. And as exciting as that would be, not only did Bulma want to stay out of trouble, but there was also a line of people who wanted to murder Cui, and she was first, damn it!

“Surprise indeed,” Cui echoed weakly, as if his brain was still trying to re-boot after receiving a shock to the system, and then he realized that Vegeta was eyeing him with a dangerous glint in his black eyes. “Uh, good to see you, Dr Briefs, gotta go!”

Bulma was quite sure that he was breaking a number of land speed records on his way to his office, which was probably the first bit of good sense she’d seen from Cui during the last decade. And then she turned towards Vegeta, who reluctantly tore his eyes away from Cui’s retreating form and towards her.

“Dr Briefs.” He seemed to try out the words, but to her surprise, there was no mockery in his tone, the way she’d have expected from an asshole like him who called her “woman” more often than not. Bulma had a little running list about that, so she could kick him in the nuts for every time he had done that at an undetermined time in the future when she could afford to tank Federation-Saiyan interstellar relations for the second time. So probably never, but a girl needed to dream, right?

She rolled her eyes and finally stepped aside to allow him into her office. “Bulma is fine. You know that I can fuck you up after that little interlude on Alfrmyke, I don’t need a title to make you respect me even a little.”

He snorted as he entered, which wasn’t a laugh, but it surely was something, and Bulma followed him, then closed the door behind them. Of course, that didn’t necessarily afford them any privacy – the eyes of every teaching assistant and grad student in the department were on her door now, and she knew from Dr Ginyu’s frequent shouting sessions that despite how far technology had come, their office walls afforded precious little sound insulation. Starfleet could keep the vacuum of space at bay, but soundproof working spaces were still a pipe dream made impossible by budgeting constraints. And of course, everyone wanted to know how the most infamous feud on Starfleet Campus this year was going, so Bulma half expected a bunch of her colleages pressing their ears against the door right now.

Bulma sighed and put away Cui’s chair, then gestured for Vegeta to join her on the small squished sofa she’d cramped into a corner for power naps, and when they were both sitting, she asked, “So, what do you want?”

“What makes you think that I want anything from you?”

Vegeta looked so damned smug, so damned unaffected that Bulma wanted to strangle him a little, but then she remembered that he’d come to her office this time, instead of her seeking him out, and surely, that had to give her a little bit of power, a little bit of control? “So I’m supposed to think that this is a social visit because you’ve missed my radiant beauty and charming personality?”

He stretched out on her sofa like he owned it and crossed his arms behind his head, and with the way he looked at her, for just a moment, Bulma thought he actually might be there for her radiant beauty and charming personality. Then he cleared his throat. “There’s a thing at the Vulcan embassy I’m invited to. A science thing.” He made it sound like science was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, ever, and Bulma wondered if she should be offended or not. “I want you to come.”

Bulma blinked, then blinked again. Because this had not been on the list of things she’d expected from him, and the only thing her dumb mouth could come up with was, “Are you asking me out on a date? Because it really sounds like you’re asking me out on a date.”

Vegeta scoffed again, that little sound Bulma had come to know so well and whose meaning ranged from “You’re an idiot!” to “Well, maybe you are kind of funny.” Unfortunately, this was an “You’re an idiot!” scoff. “Saiyans don’t date. I just need someone who speaks science so I don’t make a complete ass of myself, and whose radiant beauty and charming personality can distract everyone while I do my thing.”

There had to be a compliment in there somewhere, Bulma mused, but right now, she wasn’t too inclined to go and find it. Because “Saiyans don’t date” was rattling around her brain like dice in a shaker, and she was angry at herself for how easily those little words had gotten under her skin, even though she’d thought she’d convinced herself that nothing could ever be between her and Vegeta. “Yeah, whatever. Just send me the details and then we’ll see if I’m free.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 12: Just a thing with a guy

When Vegeta’s message with details about the “science thing” at the Vulcan embassy finally arrived, Bulma was suddenly very, very happy that she hadn’t blown him off. Because it was not merely a “science thing” - it was a soire on cutting edge physics research held by the Vulcan Science Academy! With presentations! And mingling! And a buffet! Bulma would have given an arm, a leg, and a grandparent to be invited to one of those, and now she was going!

Granted, she was going with Vegeta, which would probably put a damper on all the fun she was going to have there, but Bulma was sure that he’d look absolutely gorgeous in whatever formalwear people from his planet preferred, and had she mentioned that it was a soiree held by the Vulcan Science Academy yet? Because that was so fucking awesome that she barely had words! She was willing to endure a lot more than a hot-yet-grumpy not-date with a guy who had no fucking clue about physics for one of those!

But before she could have fun and games and bubbly at the Vulcan embassy soiree at the beginning of December, Bulma had to finish her paper for the Vulcan Science Academy first. And as much as she loved her research, she was getting mightily sick of that damned thing and quickly reaching the stage of paper-writing where she just wanted to be fucking done with it already, not to get that coveted poster spot at the congress on Vulcan, but simply so she wouldn’t have to stare at her own data again for a few weeks.

Luckily for her, her boss Dr Ginyu had finally pulled his head out of his ass where she was concerned, and was working with her instead of against her for a chance. She was almost looking forward to going to his office now where before she’d been dreading it, not only because she was not getting yelled at for a change, but also because the man was a damned good scientist when he was not too busy getting his boots licked by the likes of Cui. Her paper was better for his mentorship, and while years of resentment could not disappear overnight, she didn’t want to spit in his coffee when she saw him in the staff kitchennette anymore, and that was definitely progress.

“… and this last section details why further research into Alfrmyke’s gravitational patterns is important for our understanding not only of this one gas giant, but of gravitational anomalies as a whole in all of Federation space.” Bulma pointed at the old-fashioned paper printout of her work in front of her, ready to be done with their meeting. They were just wrapping up an hour spent eviscerating the final draft of her paper, Bulma’s head was spinning from the concentration, and she yearned for fresh air, coffee, and to be away from her boss. As much as he’d recently improved, that didn’t make him a person who was exactly pleasant to be around.

“Very good.” Ginyu took his reading glasses off and leaned back in his chair, and suddenly, as if a switch had been flicked, Bulma felt like she was the one being eviscerated now, instead of her work. “And I do agree with you that further research into Alfrmyke’s gravitational anomalies is warranted – that is, if the Saiyans will let us.”

“If the Saiyans will let us,” Bulma agreed with a small smile towards her boss, but old suspicions were springing to life even as she tried to match his casual posture and demeanor. Both of them had studiously avoided discussing the elephant in the room so far – the reason why her investigation of Alfrmyke’s graviational anomalies had ceased abruptly, and why she’d let her research collect dust for years before finally turning it into this paper. The reason why Dr Ginyu had hated her guts from the moment she’d first stepped into Starfleet Academy’s Gravitics department.

“What do you think of the Saiyan prince, then?” Ginyu asked her, shuffling through some papers on his desk in a vein attempt to look unaffected. And Bulma suddenly felt something dark and suspicious coil in her stomach – was this the reason why he’d suddenly taken an interest in her work? Was it because of Vegeta? Because Ginyu wanted to… do what the fuck, exactly? What was going on here?

“He’s an asshole,” Bulma replied with a shrug, and it was the truth. Vegeta was undeniably an asshole, and she’d called him an asshole in public before, and really, if she hated his guts and wanted him gone, that was an expected reaction. No need to talk about any of her newly mixed feelings, or that she knew how unhappy Vegeta was here at Starfleet Academy, or about her suspicions that the situation was a lot more complicated than it seemed on the surface, and veered into diplomatic territory that Bulma much rather would’ve left to her superior officers. Especially not those.

“Still, you seem to be spending a lot of time with him,” Ginyu probed further, and Bulma ground her teeth while she wondered what to say. She’d been through oral exams, held lectures and seminars regularly, had even defended her dissertation, but she’d generally known her shit back then, and even if she didn’t, she was good at picking up context clues and bullshitting her way through. Now? Now she felt like she was completely clueless, like she was grasping at straws in the dark in a way she’d never felt during her whole academic career, and she hated every second of it.

“The man is like a blight on my life.” She sighed and massaged the sore spot between her eyebrows, as if a headache was developing, to hide her face. “First he attacks me on Alfrmyke, and if literally escaping from captivity in a stolen starship is not enough of a clue that I don’t want anything to do with him, he’s now following me around here on campus. If you have any idea how to get rid of him, please tell me, because I’m sick of that arrogant face of his.”

Ginyu laughed heartily, and Bulma exhaled a covert sigh of relief, because it seemed that she had passed the test. She had no idea what the test had even been, or what the grading requirements were beyond “hates Vegeta’s guts”, but she would have time to figure that out later. For now, she needed to get out of this office before she said something that made Dr Ginyu unhappy.

“Anyway, I’m sure I have taken up enough of your valuable time now, sir.” Bulma rarely called anyone sir, even though she’d been in Starfleet for eighteen years now, but she was willing to make an exception today in the name of self-preservation. “Thank you for your help with my paper, I’ll submit it once I’m done with revisions.”

Ginyu smiled genially and stood along with her. “No, please. You can send me your final draft, and I’ll forward it to the Science Academy with my recommendation.”

Bulma blinked, then blinked again. She knew that Vulcans greatly valued the opinions of their elders, and that was why submissions to the Science Academy were more likely to be considered if they were endorsed by a senior researcher like Ginyu. She just hadn’t even bothered asking, because she’d thought that ice hockey was going to turn into a popular outdoor sport in hell before Ginyu would ever consider endorsing her work over – say – Cui’s.

It appeared that hell had frozen over, though, and what was she going to do except graciously accept? “That is… that is very generous of you. Thank you, sir.”

She walked out of Ginyu’s office almost inclined to forget about his weird interrogation, so happy was she that she now had a real chance to go to Vulcan for the Science Academy Congress. But when she looked across the busy Gravitics department bullpen and saw Mrs Park approach her, her lined face drawn in concern, her good mood vanished entirely.

Mrs Park – who insisted on being called Mrs Park even though it was the twenty-third century – was a round woman in her seventies who’d been the Gravitics department’s head secretary since before Bulma had joined up with Starfleet (or had even been born), and had seen more than half a dozen department heads come and go. Everyone knew that she was the one who really kept things running in these parts, and those who were naive – or arrogant – enough to think differently usually quickly learned that in addition to a wealth of knowledge about how things worked around Starfleet, Mrs Park also knew a thing or three about physics, and had acquired quite a few degrees “to keep me on my toes in my old age” to prove it. She was also the most determined gossip Bulma had ever met, in an organization where the only thing that traveled faster than the ships was the scuttlebutt.

Many years ago, when both Bulma and Launch had been very new at Starfleet and very green behind their ears despite both having finished masters’ degrees at prestigious universities, Mrs Park had taken both of them under her wing, instead of letting them figure things out for themselves (like she did with the unfortunate young cadet who’d said something alone the lines of “What would you know about that, you’re just a secretary!” to a woman with a master’s degree in astrophysics). Mrs Park had saved both of their asses while they acclimated to military life (poorly, in Bulma’s case) and taught them how to navigate the complicated world of Starfleet with its bureaucracy and often clique-y politics. Bulma and Launch had repaid her with undying loyalty – and of course, Launch’s prize-winning homemade cupcakes – and they’d been friendly ever since. And if Mrs Park made that kind of face? Shit had definitely hit the fan.

“Dr Briefs, Commandant Morris’s office called. He’d like you to come in tomorrow morning, to discuss Prince Vegeta.”

Well fuck, Bulma thought, after she’d absent-mindedly thanked Mrs Park (even in case of a major emergency, one was not impolite to Mrs Park), frantically trying to think, to figure out why the Commandant might be displeased with her now, and coming up empty. He’d wanted her to get along with Vegeta – Bulma was getting along with him now. What else could the Commandant possibly want? She had no idea, and she was sick of feeling like she was grasping at shadows – she needed answers. And she needed them before tomorrow morning, before she walked into Morris’ office like a moron who brought a knife to a gunfight.

Fifteen minutes later, Bulma was back at her apartment building, knocking on Vegeta’s door and silently hoping that he wasn’t out, at the gym, or roaming the campus. She’d worked into the evening because of her meeting with Ginyu, but one never knew, and maybe she should’ve called him or…

“What?”

The automatic door opened with a hiss, and there stood Vegeta, topless and in workout pants, and, judging by the rivulets of sweat running down the valley between his pecs and over his abs, clearly in the middle of… something. Bulma almost forgot about concerning superior officers and mysterious conspiracies, until he snapped his fingers and she remembered where his face was, and that she was supposed to be angry.

“What the everloving fuck is going on here?” she hissed, remembering at the last moment to whisper-yell instead of yell-yell, because secrets and stuff. Her brain was incapable of more complex thought right now, she was way too distracted.

To his credit, Vegeta didn’t even try to pretend that he had no idea what she was talking about, he just stepped aside and jerked his head to invite her into his apartment before closing the door behind them. If she’d expected an explanation now that they were finally alone, though, none was forthcoming. Vegeta just walked past the tiny kitchenette near the front door that mirrored Bulma’s apartment, grabbing a towel from the back of a kitchen counter stool and toweling off his absurdly spiky hair and sweaty face. Bulma followed him in incredulous silence, admiring the way the muscles on his shoulders rippled with every movement, because that seemed like the most sensible course of action right now. What else was there to do? She’d made her stance crystal clear and now it was up to him to cough up some answers for her.

Vegeta didn’t seem in a hurry to start talking, though – but when was he ever inclined to talk, at least about personal matters? He took his time putting away the ridiculously large weights from the workout Bulma had clearly just interrupted, then put on a sweater (which Bulma privately thought was a damned shame, but she wasn’t about to say that out loud, the man’s ego was big enough as it was), and pushed a few buttons on what looked like a top-notch security system that was definitely not Federation standard issue. Bulma itched to get her hands on the thing – she might have been a physicist by trade, herself, but her father created intricate and exotic electronic gadgets for a living, and she’d inherited a love for tinkering from him – but then again, her hands itched at the thought of touching a lot of other things in this apartment, and she’d managed to contain herself. So far.

“Talk to me,” she entreated him almost gently, surprising herself, and Vegeta sighed deeply and pushed his fingers through his hair before he sat down on the weight bench he had put into this living room, instead of a TV or a sofa or anything a normal person might have.

“But can I?” he asked quietly in return, and he wasn’t asking her but himself, the conflict playing across his normally so impassive features a testament to how torn he was, how heavily this question weighed on his mind. The first time Bulma had laid her eyes on him, he’d been the invincible conqueror, if only of a tiny space station at the edge of nowhere, but now that he’d shed his armor, all that was left was a man struggling to keep up his defenses in a world that wanted to bring him down.

“I don’t know.” Bulma shrugged and leaned against his weightlifting cage, struggling to quelch the unbidden compassion rising up in her throat, and replacing it with anger that intensified with every word that followed. “But my boss Dr Ginyu asked about you today. Commandant Morris too. I’m in the middle of something here, and I have no idea what the fuck it is, and you obviously do.”

Something in his eyes hardened curiously at her mention of Dr Ginyu, his nostrils flared, muscles tense before he made a conscious effort to relax them again, and Bulma doubted that this was about Ginyu being a condescending asshole to Vegeta the way he usually was to her. Vegeta usually let condescension drip off him like sweat during a workout. “I never wanted to drag you into all of this.”

Bulma snorted. “And I wanted a Constition-class heavy cruiser for my birthday when I was ten.” It occurred to her then that with Vegeta being a prince and everything, he might have gotten that cruiser as a kid if he’d asked, which made his obvious distress at being here at Starfleet Academy all the more baffling. He was a man who had everything, and yet… “We mere mortals don’t always get what we want.”

He hesitated on the precipice of a decision, watching Bulma with an intensity that made something in her stomach curl in apprehension, before he squared his shoulders and stood, once again the regal man who was in control of himself and his surroundings. “Privacy is in short supply for me,” he said while walking over to her, his presence alone trapping her between the steel cage behind her and the man in front of her.

“I gathered that from subtle context clues, like your not opening your damned mouth.”

His laugh burst out so suddenly that it bypassed all of her defenses, and her gaze dropped to his mouth unbidden and lingered long after his lips had curled back into that insufferable smirk she was so used to now, before she remembered that she was here for answers to other questions, and that she would never find out how his hands would feel on her skin, or his lips against hers.

“My security system can give us an illusion of it, for a time, but what we discuss cannot leave this room – cannot leave your mind.”

Bulma nodded mutely, her mouth suddenly dry for a completely different set of reasons, and Vegeta took a step backwards, his black eyes still full of intensity, but satisfied for the moment that she’d understood how serious he was about her keeping his secrets. And how fucking serious things were got hammered home by his next few words, with a vengeance that made Bulma’s stomach drop. “I’m here at Starfleet Academy as a hostage.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 13: I guess he actually likes it when I’m a bitch

“I’m here at Starfleet Academy as a hostage,” Vegeta said quietly, and it felt like Bulma’s universe tilted on its axis.

“Starfleet would never,” she retorted on reflex alone, because she didn’t want to believe, wanted, deep down, to hold on to that youthful illusion that she lived in a just world, and that the organization she was working for was on the right side of history. But there was nothing fair about the way her superiors had treated her after Alfrmyke, and it seemed that there was nothing fair about the way they treated Vegeta, too.

He let out a cynical laugh that almost sounded like a bark. “You still say that, after they hung you out to dry after Alfrmyke? For trying to save your life, and that of your colleagues?”

“Momentary lapse of judgement on their part.” Bulma angrily pushed herself off the weight cage and paced the small apartment, the same way she did in her deceptively similar living room. She wasn’t sure if she was angry at herself, at him, at Starfleet, at the bad luck that had landed her squarely in Vegeta’s path, but surely there had to be something – someone – she could blame for this mess. “This has something to do with Alfrmyke, hasn’t it?”

“It’s about damned time you realized that, Captain Obvious,” he taunted, and Bulma’s nostrils flared as she whipped around towards him, a convenient target for her rage found.

“If you were capable of opening your fucking mouth instead of strutting around with that smirk on your face being all dark and mysterious, maybe I would not have had to pierce everything together bit by bit.” Most people around Bulma recoiled when she was in a mood like that, used a tone like that, but not Vegeta – he stood his ground, his black eyes flashing just as furiously, the intensity on his face matching hers blow by blow.

“And why should I trust you? This place is full of little spies who are only too happy to report everything I say and do to the Federation. Are you one of them?” His black eyes looked straight into her soul, and she could feel the tension crackling between them, as if they were standing on a bridge together and just waiting for the other to launch themselves first into the dark waters below.

Bulma squared her shoulders and faced him nose to nose, her mouth twitching defiantly, and his hand rose to her face, almost as if to caress her…

“No.” Bulma was the first one to take a step back this time – literally, and Vegeta pulled his hand back as if he’d burned it on a hot stove while she scrambled to explain, “I’m not. Not yet. But I suspect that either Ginyu or Morris would love to turn me into one.”

“Ginyu and his true superiors,” Vegeta corrected almost absent-mindedly, his eyes still following her every movement with a preoccupation that did not do the gravity of the situation justice and made Bulma irrationally angry. Her career was on the line, damn it – he could check her out any other time, if he wanted to! “Morris has even less of an idea what’s going on than you do, and is just trying to keep the Federation from insulting my people. Which is rather ironic, considering that they’ve already dealt us the greatest insult there is to a Saiyan: captured one of us.”

“Captured is a strong word,” Bulma said acerbically, the memories of Alfrmyke suddenly rising between them like a wall, the hours she’d spent trying to fight him off, the anger on his face when he’d realized he’d almost been bested by a blue-haired girl in a kimono. “I don’t see you in handcuffs, or a holding cell.”

“True,” he admitted, the single word a peace offering she had not expected in the midst of her tumuluous emotions. “And yet I’m still very much under the Federation’s control – surrounded by Starfleet personnel, in one of the most secure locations on Earth. That is more than enough to ensure that my father knows I’ll be killed if he so much steps a toe out of line.”

Bulma stared at him incredulously. “All of this… to make sure that the Saiyans join the Federation?”

Vegeta nodded mutely, and Bulma had a feeling that if he’d been just a tad less self-controlled, he’d have gladly punched a number of holes in the walls of his apartment, seeking an outlet – any outlet – for his frustration. He was strong, and he was proud, and he was cunning, and he fought with every fibre of his being against being chained, even if the chains were not physical ones. Maybe especially then – because in this invisible cage there was nothing he could test his strenght against, nothing to break to finally be free, only endless days of pretending that everything was okay when it certainly wasn’t.

“That is...” She tried to find words and failed. “Peaceful expansion and self-determination of its member races are the core tenets of the Federation. How can they… how can they just throw their principles out of the window like that? And why is nobody talking about this!”

Vegeta scoffed disdainfully, his opinion of the principles the Federation allegedly upheld perfectly clear in that one single sound. “Certain factions inside the Federation have decided that there are more important things than peace and self-determination, at least for them. And so they forced the issue, because they couldn’t afford the Saiyans’ deciding not to join.” He opened his mouth to continue his thought, but the exotic security system on the wall made an angry beeping sound, and he sighed and walked over to it. “That is all I can say for now.”

Before Bulma could interject, react, tell him how sorry she was for the situation she was in, he pressed a button, and his eyebrows knit together in a frown. “Now stop bothering me and get the fuck out of here.”

He’d been so… well, approachable was probably the wrong word for a man who was as dark and angry as he was, but definitely more open than usual… that the sudden change in his demeanor took her completely by surprise, and she needed a moment to understand that it was just an act. Just an act, because their precious moments of privacy had finally come to an end. The almost tender feelings inside her chest had a harder time getting the memo, though – even as she glared right back at him. “Fine, fine. Keep your secrets. And go fuck yourself.”

It was easy to storm out of his apartment and slam the door closed behind her with enough force that even their neighbors could hear her little tantrum. Not because she was angry at him – she wasn’t, not really, fighting with him was just so familiar that she felt she couldn’t help herself – but because this whole situation was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and Bulma was right in the middle of it. And that made her very angry indeed.

She’d suspected that this… thing she was caught in the middle of went far beyond the usual Starfleet politics and backstabbing that she’d gotten used to during her years here, but seriously? Intergalactic diplomatic shit? Traitors inside the Federation? A huge scandal that could have repercussions for the whole quadrant, because who would ever trust the Federation again if their treatment of the Saiyans became public? This was way beyond Bulma’s paygrade – and she had nobody to turn to. Ginyu was apparently part of whatever it was that was going on, Morris was a certifiable moron, and her friends? She really didn’t want to pull her friends into this mess, too. It was one thing to risk her career in this clusterfuck, and another entirely to endanger Launch and Chi-Chi and Yamcha and Krillin.

Because no matter how this thing ended, things were going to get messy as fuck. Bulma had noticed that Vegeta had not sounded particularly concerned about the prospect of his own death, and she had a gut feeling that even though he might look like it, the man was not idly sitting in his pretty little prison cell twiddling his thumbs. Him inviting her to the Vulcan Embassy also suddenly made a lot more sense – he was not the type for social occasions, and Bulma had a feeling that he would be there for everything but small talk and munching on Vulcan canapées (did Vulcans have canapées or were they too mind-over-matter for that?). Whatever his plan was, she hoped she’d be there when he put it into action, because the fallout was going to be grisly, and she was going to get caught in it, and if that was the case, she might as well go enjoy the explosion and pretend that it was fireworks.

All Bulma wanted after that little charade was a blissfully Vegeta-free evening with a book in front of her bay window, but it wasn’t meant to be. Not because he disturbed her – he knew better than that – but because of an excited call from Chi-Chi. “You won’t believe who showed up at the gym!”

Bulma had almost forgotten about handing Vegeta the flyer for Goku’s gym – and honestly, the whole thing had been kind of cringe, now that she had had time to think about it – but the memory resurfaced with painful intensity. “Let me guess. It was Vegeta.”

“YES!” Chi-Chi almost screeched with excitement. “How did you know? Did you have something to do with that?”

Bulma hesitated. “He mentioned that he didn’t like the staff gym on campus, so I mentioned Goku’s Gym to him...”

“What? You’re TALKING to the man? When did that happen?” Chi-Chi sounded like she’d just made an exciting discovery, and Bulma cursed her friend’s nose for gossip and her own carelessness.

“Occasionally. During class. When I can’t avoid it.” Se hesitated for a moment, unsure if asking about Vegeta would make Chi-Chi even more suspicious, but her friend was like a dog with a bone even when she was at her most mellow, so really, subterfuge was pointless now that Chi-Chi’s curiousity had been piqued. “So how did it go?”

“How did what go?”

“Vegeta. At the gym. Did he meet Goku? Because Goku was dying to get introduced to the man who terrified all the Security Track cadets.” Okay, maybe Chi-Chi wasn’t the only one who was curious here, because now that she’d started to think about it, Bulma, too, was dying to find out how things went between Vegeta and Goku. Especially because she loved her friend, and she was proud of how far he’d come, and if he’d said something bad about Goku’s Gym she was going to tear Vegeta a new one the next time she saw him.

Chi-Chi laughed so hard that it sounded like she was crying. “Well… this guy showed up, all angry and scowly and superior, and of course, he ran into Goku. And Goku offered to show him around, and well, to make a long story short, they nearly beat each other bloody and called it a sparring session, and now they’re friends. Must be some weird meathead thing, I don’t know.”

“Friends?” Bulma scoffed. She doubted that Vegeta had a whole friend in the whole universe, much less Goku – but on the other hand… she could actually see it. Goku was easy-going enough to put up with Vegeta’s bullshit, and Vegeta valued loyalty highly, something Goku had in spades once he’d decided to give it.

“Don’t ask me about it. But they’ve been sparring three times a week since he first came here, and he looks happier after he leaves.”

And it was only then that she realized that… Vegeta trusted her. Trust her to keep his secrets. Trusted her judgement. Out of all the people around him, he’d picked the most unlikely choice, the woman who’d loudly proclaimed that she hated his guts at the beginning at the semester. But maybe, in a twisted kind of way, that actually made sense – he’d never had to guess where he stood with her, because she always wore her opinions on her sleeve and in her too-expressive eyes, and every time she’d called him an asshole, what he’d heard was “She doesn’t want to deceive me.”

And to her surprise… Bulma couldn’t betray that trust, even if she wanted to. Part of her had contemplated going to Commandant Morris tomorrow and spilling everything to her superior officer, hoping to buy herself forgiveness and a way out of the penitentiary she’d been put in after Alfrmyke… but she couldn’t do it. Because Starfleet had tossed her aside like she didn’t matter, and he had… chosen her. And that was enough for her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14: Starfleet is not paying me enough for this

No matter how much Bulma disliked Commandant Morris, if the Commandant of Starfleet Academy asked one of his officers to meet him, that officer better broke the sound barrier on her way to the Commandant’s Office. And so Bulma found herself in that familiar room again the next morning, far earlier than she’d hoped (personally, she thought that “never” was a good time to talk to Morris again. If that failed, she could always re-schedule for February 30th). The last time she’d been here, she’d been angrily waiting for Vegeta to show up to so she could be done already with her farce of an apology, but today, there was no Saiyan prince to distract Morris from her and her shortcomings (and to storm out banging the door so hard that it left a dent in the wall – Bulma had seen the mark on her way in). This time, she was alone.

“Please, take a seat,” Commandant Morris invited her after his aide had ushered her in, and Bulma breathed a quiet sigh of relief. After her last visit, she’d half expected to be left standing like an errant cadet about to be chewed out, and that the Commandant almost seemed… solicitous left her confused and unsettled. The message she’d received had only indicated that Morris wanted to talk about Vegeta, not why, but Bulma had naturally assumed that he wanted to yell at her some more, though she didn’t know for what, after she’d tried so hard to behave herself and not antagonize her coworkers and Vegeta more than was strictly necessary. That did not seem to be the case, but as nice as it was not to be the target of the Commandant’s ire for a change, she had no idea what the fuck was going on, then, and that was its own kind of torture. It wasn’t like Morris had called her here because he suddenly wanted her opinion on his new carpet!

“Thank you for coming here on such short notice.” Morris looked at her warily, like she was a dangerous animal sitting on the other side of his desk, about to pounce the moment he let his guard down, and Bulma blinked at him slowly while her brain was trying to compute the absurdity of the situation. If he was so uncomfortable, why had he invited her?

“Of course, sir.” She smiled through gritted teeth. Her choice in the matter had been entirely illusionary – if Morris wanted her here, she was coming here, no matter how carefully his message had been worded, because he was her boss’s boss’s boss’s boss. And she didn’t like being reminded of that, at all.

“Especially with you being so busy working on your paper for the Vulcan Science Academy, and of course, the unseasonably fine weather.”

Bulma’s nostrils flared dangerously, and she valiantly tried to turn her “What the fuck, dude?” eyes into something that couldn’t be called insubordination when it was directed at one’s superior officer. She wasn’t a fan of small talk under the best of circumstances, but she seriously doubted that Morris gave a singular fuck about her academic research, or what she did in her spare time. She had a long list of things she’d rather do than sit here and talk to the Commandant, such as deep-cleaning her apartment, looking through all the photos she’d collected during her relationship with Yamcha, and running a marathon. And while the weather was unseasonably warm for the beginning of December, they were living in San Francisco! It was either nice, or foggy as fuck, with not much in between.

“Forgive me, sir, but I doubt that you’ve called me here to discuss the weather.” Which was polite-ish for, Get to the fucking point before I die of old age! Because of course, she couldn’t say that to the Commandant of Starfleet Academy, along with a great many other sarcastic things she was dying to tell him.

Morris looked at her like a startled cadet in the middle of a particularly asinine presentation that was rudely interrupted by Bulma’s questions, and then stood and paced over to the window, where the Golden Gate bridge was hidden by the customary autumn fogs today. Unseasonably good, my ass. Bulma followed him with her eyes, unsure if she should stand, or wait like a good little Starfleet officer (she’d never been particularly good at the latter), her patience rapidly melting under the flame of her ire. She still had better things to do than waste her time in the Commandant’s office, damn it!

“How are you getting along with Prince Vegeta nowadays?” Commandant Morris finally asked before she could make a decision, and Bulma felt like a deer suddenly hit by the headlights of an oncoming truck, even though she’d seen the truck coming for miles. Because that had been a loaded question even before Vegeta had dumped all his conspiracy shit in her lap last night, and she had no idea what the Commandant wanted to hear. It seemed like a good idea to keep the fact that they didn’t hate each other’s guts anymore under wraps – but how did she phrase that politely, and in as boring a way as possible so Morris wouldn’t ask any further questions?

“I have managed to avoid further public confrontations with him,” Bulma replied carefully, and the Commandant turned and walked back to his desk, his gaze suddenly sharp and shrewder than she’d previously given him credit for.

“That is a very interesting turn of phrase, Dr Briefs, considering the reports about the private confrontation you had with him last night, in his apartment.”

Well, crap. Now Bulma did feel like a cadet caught doing things she was not supposed to be doing, something she really wasn’t used to – not only because she hadn’t been a cadet for a long time, but also because when she’d been, she’d made damned sure that she wasn’t going to get caught. “What can I say? He provoked me, and after the disaster at the beginning of the semester, I decided to yell at him where people couldn’t hear. You should be commending me for that kind of restraint.”

That was… probably not the right suggestion for her career, but at least it distracted Morris from thinking too deeply about the situation. Because he was quietly fuming, of course. “Do leave the matter of finding commendable behavior to me, Dr Briefs. As your superior officer, I have a more complete picture of the situation than you do.”

Bulma tried to turn her disdainful snort into a convincing cough and failed spectacularly, but Morris just pinched the bridge of his nose as if a headache was coming on, and then decided against pursuing her actions that – if Bulma were honest with herself – bordered on insubordination. Damn, I should’ve listened to Chi-Chi back then, when she’d said that she didn’t think I’d do well in a military-adjacent environment!

“I see you’ve started without me.” A cold voice coming from the office door made both of them turn incredulously. Bulma doubted that even she – who was apparently the most disrespectful person the Commandant had ever had the misfortune of meeting – would’ve walked into his office without so much as a knock. And yet, the almost diminuitive man in a white suit who casually stood in the doorway, a distressed aide obviously expecting the wrath of the Commandant behind him, had done just that. And Morris… instead of doing what he would’ve done to Bulma if she had pulled that stunt and yelling at the newcomer, he looked small. Scared. If a man as powerful as him could be scared, that was, which Bulma somehow doubted.

“Ambassador Frieza! What a surprise!”

Now where had Bulma heard that name before? Ah, yes, her mother had mentioned him, because he’d been on TV with Dr Ginyu at some diplomatic thing or another. Ordinarily, Bulma wouldn’t have given a flying fuck about who Dr Ginyu hung out with in his spare time (even though diplomatic things were not exactly her idea of fun, but hey, you do you, Ginyu!), but with everything Vegeta had said, about Ginyu working with the people who were behind trapping him here on Earth, every acquaintance of Ginyu’s suddenly seemed sinister in her mind’s eye. And… she thought frantically, while fixing a faintly pleasant smile on her face… wasn’t Frieza the ambassador who had brought the Saiyans into the Federation’s fold? Was this the man who was trapping Vegeta on Earth, who was threatening him and his father, who’d been ruthless enough to make a proud man like the prince cave in to his demands? And what the fuck was he doing here, invited to Bulma’s appointment with the Commandant?

The man strolled into Morris’ office like he owned the space, his walking stick treading so lightly on the polished hardwood floor that it couldn’t be anything but a fashionable affectation. He observed his surroundings with critical eyes, letting his finger brush casually over the bookshelves as if to judge the quality of the housekeeping services of Starfleet, and yet Bulma got the distinct impression that it was hard work to be so insulting without saying a fucking word. Hard work, deliberately done.

Morris was quietly seething behind his desk, cataloguing the ambassador’s invasion of his office with the same intensity that Starfleet’s deep space sensor network surveyed the Neutral Zone with, tracking his opponent’s every move to prepare for the inevitable confrontation. Under ordinary circumstances, Bulma would’ve enjoyed watching Commandant Morris getting knocked down a peg or three, but this? Way above her pay grade. Definitely not worth hanging around for. Bulma felt like she was watching cars slipping on a collision course on black ice, and wondered how she could excuse herself as inconspicously as possible, preferably before the inevitable crash occurred, when Ambassador Frieza turned towards her and held out a hand. “Dr Briefs. I believe we haven’t been introduced, but I have heard a lot about you, and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for quite some time now.”

Bulma shook his uncomfortably clammy fingers reluctantly, unsure what she should make of this sudden attention from a man whose gaze made her decidedly uncomfortable. Not in a lecherous way – Bulma had dealt with her fair share of lecherous old men, and Ambassador Frieza was decidedly not one of them. No, it felt as if to him, she was an insect, or maybe a footstool – and people generally found the idea of being attracted to furniture quite absurd. Just like they didn’t even think twice about stepping on furniture, or stopped to consider the furniture’s feelings about the matter.

Bulma shook off her uncomfortable impressions and regained her customary, sarcastic poise – she had made it a habit not to be afraid of her superiors during her Starfleet career, and she didn’t intend to start with Ambassador Frieza now. “I do tend to have quite a… reputation,” she conceded, with a small smile at Commandant Morris, who had exchanged his quiet fury for the face of a man watching a bomb diffusal team’s work up close and personal. Bulma wasn’t quite sure if she or the Ambassador were the bomb in the metaphor, but did it really matter when the fireworks went off and she was caught in the blast radius?

“Indeed you do, Dr Briefs.” Frieza chuckled mirthlessly. “One for recklessness, too, particularly where Prince Vegeta is concerned. Which is why I’m here today.”

Frieza’s icy eyes held her gaze with an intensity that stood in stark contrast to his limp, almost bored handshake, and Bulma summoned her anger at the situation like a shield, and forced a small smirk. “Well, someone needs to tell him occasionally that the universe does not revolve around his aristocratic navel.”

“There, we are in agreement.” Frieza turned towards Morris, and with a sharp gaze to hammer home the insult, sat down in one of the visitor’s chairs in front of the Commandant’s desk. Uninvinted, of course. Morris’ almost apoplectic rage would have been funny, if Bulma had not been painfully aware that this display of power was squarely aimed at her, something Frieza’s next words confirmed. “I do hope that our interests in that area will align in the future, too.”

He left the comment hanging uncomfortably between them, but this time, Bulma did not take the bait, just stood and waited for him to continue with his… interrogation? Recruitment? Threat? She wasn’t quite sure what it was, and also would’ve preferred not to find out, because that man? She might have to break her “never be scared” policy for him. Her normally criminally underused self-preservation instinct insisted.

Frieza smiled at her as if he knew that his intimidation tactics were working, at least a little, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs with the air of a man who was entirely comfortable in the uncomfortable situation he’d just created. And then he dropped his next bombshell. “Your father’s corporation has a number of Starfleet contracts, I’ve heard?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should probably try to stay on my good side, and help me out with my little Vegeta problem. Tell me what he’s up to, now and then. I am an influential man, after all.”

Bulma swallowed heavily, stumbled through the rest of the converstion in shock, and then fled from the Commandant’s office with almost disgraceful speed.

For a brief moment there in Commandant Morris’ office, Bulma had been afraid, but as she got further and further away from Ambassador Frieza, that feeling faded, until only incandescent rage remained. How dare that motherfucker threaten her? How dare he threaten her father, and the livelihoods of the thousands of people he employed? How dare he make her doubt herself, how dare he make her afraid, more afraid than she’d been even when she’d looked certain death in the eye on Alfrmyke Station! How dare he, period!

As her visceral reaction to the man faded and her rarely-used self preservation instinct crawled back into the recesses of her mind, ready to comment only after she’d done the next stupid thing in a long line of not-too-smart decisions, Bulma’s rage only increased. Not only because the man was trying to blackmail her into compliance – something that was sure to raise her ire – but also because she was angry at herself. Angry for being afraid, angry for abandoning her principles and considering Frieza’s immoral offer, if only for a fear-laced moment there in the Commandant’s office, angry at her own weakness… and she couldn’t have that.

Why was that motherfucker even a Federation ambassador? Weren’t they better than that, weren’t they above such disgraceful tactics? Apparently not. If Bulma had been in charge, she’d have yeeted Ambassador Frieza into the Neutral Zone for the Klingons to deal with already, but she wasn’t in charge, so she had to find some other way of dealing with him. Not by giving in to his amateurish blackmailing attempt – that had never been a real option, and not only because Bulma knew that a man like Frieza was not to be trusted to hold up his end of the bargain – but by taking the bull by the horns. And she needed help for that.

That Bulma had to talk to Vegeta was undeniable, but the how of it confounded her a lot more than she cared to admit, even to herself. New as Bulma was to the spy business, running to Vegeta so fast that she was breaking the sound barrier after leaving Ambassador Frieza did not strike her as the best idea in this situation, and Morris’ words proved without a doubt that their last private confrontation had been noted, if not overheard. So directly approaching him was out, but they were still going to the Vulcan Embassy – an event Bulma wouldn’t miss for the world, not even when threatened by the ire of Ambassador Frieza (and really, the guy couldn’t have been as intimidating as she remembered him, right?). They could talk then.

In the meantime, Bulma did what she did best – she researched the hell out of the Ambassador, even though she had an important paper to write. Bulma knew from Vegeta that the diplomatic contacts the Saiyans had had with the Federation hadn’t all been beers and skittles, and that was a pattern that repeated itself with every interaction Ambassador Frieza had had with the Federations’ allies and neighbors. The Klingons seemed to have actually appreciated his bluntness and his strong-arm tactics, but everyone else seemed to hate the man, and in more than one case, that hatred had transferred itself from the Federation’s head diplomat to the Federation itself.

Five years ago, Frieza had been close to getting booted out of the Federation’s diplomatic service, and then the Saiyans had come along and shot up Bulma’s space station. Frieza had been sent to talk to them, the logic being that he’d done well with the last martial race he’d interacted with. But he’d needed that success, and badly, to save his career (and his freedom – a few of the Federation member races who’d been badly harmed by him and his methods were just itching for his diplomatic immunity to lapse), and Bulma could absolutely believe that a man as ruthless as Frieza would’ve stooped very low to make the Saiyans do his bidding. Up to and including basically abducting their crown prince.

When Vegeta had talked about being trapped here at Starfleet Academy, surrounded by his enemies, unable to escape, part of Bulma had been doubtful. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, per se, but she’d been sceptical, the way people who were not part of a situation (and therefore tended to think that they know better) often were, but not anymore. If this man was his foe, she understood why he stayed put – Frieza had enough to lose to make him dangerous, and enough influence to make it very dangerous for Bulma and her father if she were to defy him. And for a woman like Bulma, there was only one answer to a situation like that: Fuck that fucking guy. He was going to pay.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15: The tension is thick and it’s not because I’m being blackmailed

While ambassadors, foreign Princes, blackmail and spies were undoubtedly interesting, Bulma also had a fucking paper to finish, and when she found the time – which was admittedly rare – she cursed the bad timing with vicious abandon. As always, “just the finishing touches” turned into long days of work bent over her computer or her PADD, checking and double checking and double-checking what she’d already double-checked. But while concern and worry and anger swirled in her stomach, Bulma would be damned if she let Ambassador Frieza or Vegeta or anything less than the complete destruction of the planet ruin the only chance she had to go to the Vulcan Science Academy Congress and revitalize her flagging career. Her work was good, she knew it for a change instead of desperately trying to convince herself that she didn’t suck as hard as Starfleet thought she did, and the moment when she finally handed the damned thing to Dr Ginyu was the first time she truly felt proud of herself and her accomplishments since Alfrmyke.

She’d gone out for cocktails with Launch afterwards like a giddy undergrad after writing her first term paper. After that, already tipsy, they took the train out to Goku and Chi-Chi’s for dinner with their friends, but the moment she walked into their dining room, she came to a dead stop. Because the unlikeliest person in the whole quadrant was there, too. Vegeta. And Bulma had no fucking idea what he and his perpetually scowling face were doing here, sitting at a table with Gohan, Goten, Yamcha, Krillin, and Tien and his diminuitive first officer Chiaotzu, who’d just come back to Earth after a year-long out of system assignment. And so she did what everyone would have done in her situation – she asked. Though she probably could’ve asked more gracefully.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she hissed after she’d taken her place next to him in the dining room (because of course, none of her friends were volunteering to spend time with him, except Goku).

He growled quietly, as if he wanted to be there even less than she wanted to see him. “It’s his fault,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at Goku, who was busy carrying in an enormous pot of high-protein pasta, because apparently that was a thing, and also they’d need a lot of it to get everyone fed, because boy oh boy did their crew eat. “We were working out, and when he found out that I didn’t have any plans tonight, he wouldn’t let me bow out.”

“He is like that sometimes,” Bulma mused, smirk on her face. Goku had apparently decided that he liked Vegeta, and when Goku decided that he liked someone, he usually didn’t give them a chance to object. And honestly, with all the shit Vegeta had put her through on Alfrmyke, it was rather nice to see him getting steamrolled for a change. Her smiled broadened another fraction. “So, did he beat you up yet?”

Vegeta almost chocked on a piece of Launch’s garlic bread that he’d stuffed into his mouth while Chi-Chi started portioning out spaghetti for everyone (less of a chance of fistfights breaking out that way). “Why would you think that he, of all people, can beat me up?”

Bulma scoffed. “Because he’s the strongest guy I know, and because he beats everyone up? If they ask for the beating nicely, that is.”

Vegeta poked another piece of bread at her accusatorily (Bulma couldn’t blame him, Launch’s garlic bread was epic). “Do you have any idea how different human and Saiyan physiques are? Any Saiyan grandma fresh out of the nursing home could beat him up!”

But there was an almost… thoughtful quality to his tone, as if her words and his had made something click inside his brain that had not been connected before, and anyway, Bulma didn’t have time to follow up on it because she’d just gotten her pasta, and now it was time to pick one of the half dozen sauces Goku had made for them (Goku was the main cook of the family – as Chi-Chi had once jokingly said, he ate most of it, so it was only fair). A home-cooked meal was a treat for Bulma, who usually ate at the staff cafeteria or poured some cereal into a bowl, and she wasn’t going to let Vegeta distract her from her triumph, her quality time with her friends, and her delicious, delicious pasta. For the first time in long, long weeks, Bulma felt happy and relaxed (and tipsy – Launch still kept the cocktails flowing), and while the knowledge that she should talk to Vegeta swirled around at the corners of her mind, she was not going to let a little thing like that ruin this perfect evening.

They nevertheless walked to the train station together after the evening had come to a close. They lived in the same apartment building, after all, and ignoring each other the whole way to their front doors would’ve been rather awkward. And Bulma really wasn’t in the mood for awkard right now, because she wanted to cling to her happiness, to that peculiar sense of freedom and contentment that had enveloped her during the evening. But she couldn’t – not with the pleasant effects of the alcohol receding, not with the gravity of the situation slowly sinking in again after she’d managed to forget for a moment. You have to talk to Vegeta.

“Vegeta, we need to talk,” she said, not allowing the impulse to filter through her brain lest she lose her courage, and he turned towards her as they walked up the steps to the almost deserted train station platform, his customary frown even deepening. If Bulma was relaxed, Vegeta was the opposite, he seemed even more tense and high-strung than usual, probably because he’d just spent an evening in the company of people he thought beneath his notice.

“Not now, woman,” he replied brusquely, his eyes scanning the echoing space of the platform where gusts of wind swept stray leaves over the train tracks, and Bulma wrapped her scarf more closely around herself, not because she was cold, but because she needed something to do. Because his words? For some reason, they hurt, even though she knew better than to let herself be hurt by a man like him.

“We can talk on Thursday,” he added, in a slightly gentler tone, when he saw her face, and for a moment, Bulma’s brain scrambled, until she remembered. Thursday. Vulcan Embassy. Soiree. She’d forgotten for a moment, which was odd - the only way she’d actually miss the thing was by being dead. If she were in the Starfleet infirmary instead, she’d still request they wheel her bed there. “You’re coming, right?” he asked when he picked up on her confusion, and Bulma laughed.

“Of course I’m coming. Someone has to defend you from all that dangerous science, right?”

Their train’s arrival saved her from Vegeta’s penetrating stare, and as they found their seats, Bulma frowned. Two of the men who’d boarded with them seemed oddly familiar, but her tipsy brain refused cooperation when she pondered who they were, and so she shrugged and leaned back against the train window behind her with a sigh that was more contented than the situation warranted. But she was well-fed, and happy, and rid of that fucking paper, and it was hard to be too concerned.

It felt strange walking home from the train station with Vegeta, almost… domestic, the way they made their way through the December fog together until they arrived at their apartment building. They rode the elevator up in silence, but even though Vegeta seemed deep in thought, he still smiled thinly at her when they parted ways in the corridor in front of their apartments. “Until Thursday, then.”

“Thursday.”

Bulma was looking forward to the soiree at the Vulcan Embassy – she really did – but her giddy anticipation was tempered by the sticky situation she found herself in, and how high the stakes were with anything even remotely concerning Vegeta. And also because she had no fucking idea what to wear. Vulcan fashion seemed like a confusing and arcane art on the best of days, and a quick search of the internet left Bulma only more befuddled than before. Better not to accidentally insult anyone by not wearing the right thing, or by wearing the wrong thing, or mixing the wrong patterns, or wearing the right thing in the wrong way! In the end, it came down to her Starfleet dress uniform and her little black dress. And because she wasn’t exactly Starfleet’s poster girl right now (a sentiment that she returned with dividends), she picked the little black dress (and of course, because that dress made her everything look fantastic).

Armed with nothing but her PADD, her purse, and her wit, she got into the car Vegeta had gotten for the occasion, where he was already waiting for her, dressed in impeccably polished ceremonial Saiyan armour, his tail curled around his waist protectively. Bulma was almost relieved to see his dark scowl – the only familiar thing in a completely foreign situation – and grinned at him defiantly. “Let’s hope I don’t cause an interstellar incident.” Then she remembered who she was accompanying, and she quickly amended, “Let’s hope you don’t cause an interstellar incident.”

Vegeta chuckled darkly and leaned back against the leather limousine seats, and Bulma was struck by how right she’d been. He did look devastatingly handsome in his planet’s traditional garb, the red cloak contrasting with his tan skin, the black and gold armor emphasizing the defined muscles of his arms and legs. And he knew how damned good he looked, if the smug little smirk that spread on his lips as Bulma checked him out was any indication. What an arrogant asshole. Not that she was going to tell him that – his head was already big enough without any help from her.

They passed the drive to the Vulcan Embassy in uncomfortable silence, Vegeta’s eyes on Bulma so intently that she squirmed in her seat, as if he was waiting for something… though she neither knew what it was that he wanted from her, nor if she wanted to give it to him. She only knew that she felt uncomfortably aware under his gaze, of the way her thighs moved against the car’s leather seats, the chilly air that brushed against her neck where her hair usually lay, the way her curls fought against the pins and hairspray she had used to tame them into an elegant up-do. As if every mundane sensation, every breath even had acquired greater significance because he was watching her, making a study of her every movement, memorizing every line of her face, every curve of her body that was hugged by that little black dress, the shawl she’d draped over her shoulders not enough to hide her from him.

And did she even want to hide? She licked her lips nervously, and when his gaze dipped down to follow her tongue, awareness prickled alive at her core and spread through her body. She’d been attracted to him before, but it had been a one-sided thing, something to be buried in the depths of her soul, because the very idea of them together was absolutely ludicrous. But now he was looking at her as if he wanted nothing more than to bury his hands in her hair and pull her against him, and…

The limousine slowed down in front of the Vulcan embassy, and like a bucket of ice water over her head, Bulma was reminded of the stark realities of her situation. Because out there on the sidewalk in front of the embassy building, surrounded by journalists and guests in the colorful garb of their home planets, was Ambassador Frieza himself, smiling his reptilian smile and holding court when the evening should have been a celebration of science. “Fuck. What is he doing here?”

Vegeta leaned forward, and then his face instantly darkened when he, too, saw what Bulma had seen. He even seemed… concerned, and coming from a man who was as arrogant as Vegeta, that was concerning indeed. “Be careful. He is...”

But Bulma did not find out what, exactly, Ambassador Frieza was in Vegeta’s considered opinion. They’d come to a stop in front of the embassy building with its red sandstone facade and the small windows that were necessary to keep out the heat of Vulcan but seemed just a little oppressing here in San Francisco, and one of the attendants opened the limousine door for them. The buzz of hundreds of voices suddenly filled their previously quiet cabin, and Bulma was gripped by a sudden case of stage fright when usually, she relished being seen and heard. She was going to fuck this up, and that was that. She’d never felt less prepared in her life, not even back when she’d defended her dissertation (and nobody ever felt prepared when defending their dissertation), and nothing she said to herself could calm her frayed nerves.

What was she even doing here? Why had she come here with Vegeta, when she knew that he was in deep shit with the very people she should be kissing up to to salvage her career? And why had she thought that she could hang with all of those brilliant scientists who would present brilliant science at this soiree, while she had struggled to finish a single fucking paper to send in to the Vulcan Science Academy that probably wouldn’t even get read there?

Oddly enough, it was Vegeta’s touch that soothed her. He handed her out of the car as expertly as if he’d done that a thousand times, and then steered her through the crowd with a surprisingly light hand on the small of her back, his dark scowl as efficient at making a path for them as a more imposing build would have been. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad? Maybe Ambassador Frieza wouldn’t notice them? There were a lot of people here, after all, and Bulma in her little black dress with her blue hair felt positively invisible among all the people from all over the Federation in their finest garb. She could have a glass of champagne, listen to a bunch of exciting presentations, try all the Vulcan canapées (she really hoped Vulcans had canapées) and… fuck.

“Prince Vegeta. What a surprise to see you here, and in such… charming company.” It was Ambassador Frieza – because of course it was him. The last person Bulma wanted to meet, the very person she’d just told herself wouldn’t notice them, but of course, she’d lied herself about that, too? Odds were the ambassador had been specifically looking for them, to find out if Bulma had listened to his thinly veiled threat, and to keep tabs on Vegeta, who, judging by the way his entire being had stiffened next to her, the hand on her shoulder suddenly tense and hard as rock, would’ve rather jumped out of an airlock without a space suit than made polite small talk with Ambassador Frieza. And in such a formal setting, too.

“Frieza.” Vegeta bared his teeth, a gesture that not even the most casual of observers could misinterpret for a smile, and moved his center of gravity as if bracing for a fight, just the way Bulma had learned to during her self-defense course. “What a surprise to see you here, too. I thought you’d managed to get banned from all Vulcan properties in Federation space.”

Frieza laughed, a sound that held no real amusement and just highlighted how devoid of human emotion the man was. Like a black hole swallowing everything that was light and good and compassionate around him, until only scorn and hatred and the desperate desire to make others smaller so he could feel more important remained. “Oh, they made an exception for me tonight. You know how it is… I’m such a patron of the sciences.” His cold eyes turned towards Bulma, and she felt Vegeta press his fingers into her shoulder in a gesture of… warning? “But I’m sure your charming companion told you everything about that. I didn’t know that the two of you were so… intimately acquainted.”

Before Bulma could say something entirely undiplomatic, Vegeta next to her scoffed disdainfully. “She’s a physicist. This is a physics soiree. Who else am I supposed to bring?”

Bulma had no idea if Vegeta had just complimented or insulted her, and even Ambassador Frieza seemed momentarily confused and digesting the situation. Time to go on the attack. She turned to face the ambassador. “I’d also be careful about what you’re implying with your word choices if I were you.” Starfleet might have had very lax fraternization policies compared to military organizations of the past, but public scrutiny of relationships between personnell was still intense, and old stereotypes of women sleeping their way to the top were still present enough in people’s minds to make things decidedly uncomfortable. Add in Vegeta’s high-profile status as a foreign dignitary and member of the Saiyans’ royal house, and the very public enmity between them at the beginning of the semester, and all the ingredients for a shitshow of enormous proportions were right there, if the ambassador just pushed the right buttons. “People might get the wrong idea, and we wouldn’t want that, would we, ambassador? That could make me… see things in a different light.”

Vegeta’s fingers ghosted again over her shoulder blade in appreciation before he pulled his hand back, cognizant of their audience who analyzed every touch, every gesture between them, and Frieza raised a sardonic eyebrow at Bulma. Was telling him that she still had fight in her and would not just acquiesce to his demands a good idea? Probably not. Was it very satisfying to see his surprise that someone he considered beneath his notice had dared to defy him? Absolutely.

But before Ambassador Frieza could deliver the no doubt blistering set-down that was to follow, a man materialized at his shoulder and dropped into an obsequious half-bow, and Bulma couldn’t believe her eyes – because it was Dr. Ginyu! Until about five seconds ago, she would’ve bet money that her boss was too arrogant to bow to anyone this side of the galaxy’s core, and yet here he was, treating Ambassador Frieza with a deference Bulma would’ve been hard-pressed to find even for the President of the United Federation of Planets. “Ambassador Frieza, the Andorian delegate would like to have a word with you...”

Bulma caught Dr Ginyu’s eye and watched the man flush when she tilted her head at him inquiringly, because one of his favorite things to yell at his subordinates was that he was “not a fucking post office” and if they had something to say, they’d better go and say it themselves, because he sure wouldn’t be passing their message along. “What a surprise to meet you here, Dr Ginyu. I hadn’t known you were invited.”

Ginyu flushed even darker – no invited, then? – and instead of answering her, turned towards the ambassador. “Sir, the Andorian delegate...”

“Of course.” Ambassador Frieza’s chilly gaze swept over Vegeta and Bulma, making her suppress a shiver because him looking at her always felt like a spider crawling over her bare skin, and with a menacing nod, he walked away. Bulma looked after him until the undulating crowd swallowed him, and then she and Vegeta turned towards each other before she asked, “What the fuck?”

Chapter Text

Chapter 16: The lion, the witch, and the audacity of that man!

Bulma stared at Vegeta’s impassive face, at the aristocratic lines of his nose and his brow, at his space-black eyes, and wondered what the everloving fuck had just happened and what kind of deep shit she’d gotten herself into. Because she was completely out of her depth here, Ambassador Frieza could crush her like a bug if she continued to antagonize him, she needed Vegeta’s help to figure out how to get out of this situation, and she hated everything about it. And so she did what she always did when she was scared: She got angry instead. “What the actual fuck?”

Vegeta scoffed at her indignantly as the crowd moved around them, and there was suddenly a… suspicion on his face that cut Bulma deeply, because she’d always been up front with him about her dislike of him. “I could ask you the same, woman. How do you know the Ambassador?”

Bulma rolled her eyes at him as she struggled to put everything into words, something that rarely happened to her. But how was she supposed to explain what had happened? It was just altogether too much to take in, especially while sober at an event where she was supposed to be at least a little bit tipsy. Well, she could change that. Bulma snatched a glass of champagne (served for the benefit of the guest species at the embassy – Vulcans didn’t get drunk from consuming alcohol) from a passing waiter’s tray and downed it on go.

“Well?” Vegeta demanded indignantly, and when she didn’t answer immediately, he moved to her side and pulled her arm over his so they could continue to walk and mingle instead of making a little scene right there on the sidewalk. They had already started to attract stares, especially because a lot of the diplomatic crowd seemed to know who Vegeta was, and that his people’s relationship with the Federation wasn’t the best right now. Him having an unknown human woman as his plus one was obviously attracting attention – and she suddenly had the dreadful thought that she was just here as a political ploy. And why that hurt when she was basically using Vegeta for his connections, she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Bulma briefly considered the best course of action and then settled on biting sarcasm, even as she was painfully aware of the heat of his bare skin under her fingers and his muscular shoulder pressing into hers. “Oh, he just waltzed up to me in Commandant Morris’ office and low-key threatened me, my career, and my father’s lifelihood if I, and I quote, don’t help him out with his little Vegeta problem.”

The sharp turn of his head told her that that was not the answer he’d been expecting, and his black eyes caressed her face for a moment before he deftly maneuvered her into the embassy’s foyer, where the crowd was waiting to enter the large auditorium to hear the first presentation of the evening. Voices murmured around them and echoed from the high sandstone ceiling, and Vegeta pulled her even closer to his side, then hissed under the cover of the other guests’ conversations, “And do you intend to help him out?”

Bulma watched the gathered crowd around her thoughtfully before she contemplated the depths of her champagne flute, because truth to be told, Vegeta had not asked her a simple question. She’d grown up privileged, the only daughter of a rich father and an indulgent mother, a girl who’d always traveled in the highest circles (except when she didn’t want to), who’d gone to excellent schools, had always had everything she’d ever wanted, until she’d ventured beyond her father’s sphere of influence and joined Starfleet to prove herself.

But as privilaged as she’d been, this right here was a totally different world from the one she’d grown up in, society that was not limited to only one planet, dignitaries from countless Federation worlds in their finest garbs gathered here to hear about the newest advancements of the Vulcan Science Academy. This was intimidating! And Vegeta was asking her if she was ready to defy a man who was considered frighteningly influential even here… because somehow, she’d ended up in an intergalactic game of tug-of-war whose players she didn’t knew and whose rules she hadn’t yet understood, and damn it all, but she had questions. Even though at the end of the day, her decision was already made, and she knew it all too well.

“Are you asking me if I stand with you, or against you?” Bulma murmured into his ear, his too-enticing scent filling her nose, and she realized once again how easy it would be to give him everything he wanted – to give herself everything she wanted. And how much fun. And what a horribly bad idea. “Because you’re the one who dragged me into this mess, and you owe me answers first.”

“Don’t blame me.” Vegeta scoffed indignantly. “You’ve been in this mess for five years now, woman, whether you knew it or not.”

Bulma turned to face him, their noses almost brushing against each other because they were so close, his eyes on her so intently that Bulma thought he was looking for a particular reaction, and she had no idea if she’d passed the test or not. “You mean… since Alfrmyke?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a diplomatic acquaintance greeting him. Of course he had to introduce Bulma, too, but she could barely keep up with the conversation because her thoughts were racing at the speed of light, running through everything that had happened since Alfrmyke and trying to understand how she might’ve made an enemy out of Ambassador Frieza. Surely not for just hanging out with Vegeta, like, zero times? She didn’t even like the prince, for fuck’s sake!

“Well?” Bulma asked after he’d sent the diplomat on their merry way, returning his arrogant, impatient tone with dividends, and he looked at her if it was him who was going to have a headache for a change. Serves the asshole right.

Still, as annoyed as he looked, he did the one thing Bulma had not expected from him – he actually answered her question. “Yes, since Alfrmyke. You might not have known, and it wasn’t your fault, but you’ve had that target on your back for a long time.”

Bulma swallowed heavily as she wrestled with the implications of what he’d just said. She’d tried to control her own destiny, to cling to the illusion of control, and now she’d found out that her fate had been sealed on that horrible, frightening day five years ago the moment the sirens blared to life to tell her that the station was under attack. And she still didn’t understand. “But why? How?”

Vegeta stared off into the distance, his face twisted with pain and rage long past. “You remember that I was led to believe that your science station was a military installation? Ambassador Frieza was the one who gave me that false information, possibly to incite a war between the Federation and the Saiyans, so he could sweep in and publicly rescue the day and save his career that way.”

Bulma had never understood what the phrase “it boggles the mind” truly meant, but as she stared at Vegeta like an idiot, she had to admit that her mind felt really boggled. Because she couldn’t quite decide between anger that her beautiful, perfect, love-of-her-life space station had been sacrificed for stupid shit like that, and incredulity that anyone had come up with a stunt like that in the first place, and thought that it would work. And she said as much. “That’s a ridiculous plan and it never would’ve worked.”

“Do you think so?” Vegeta laughed cynically, and there was not one iota of humor in the sound. “We thought it was a heavily armed military installation ready to deploy missiles to hit planet Vegeta, and just annihilating it with a long-distance strike was a possibility that was discussed. If we’d come in with our fleet of warships instead of sending a small commando team, do you really think the Federation would not have defended itself?”

Bulma wrapped her arms around herself against the sudden chill ghosting over her arms, even though the Vulcan embassy was uncomfortably warm by human standards. She’d always known that she might’ve died on Alfrmyke, had accepted her own mortality the moment she’d sent the only shuttle that could’ve carried her to safety away, but she’d always been in control of herself, in control of her choices. She had fought. She had defended herself, and her people, and that had held the worst of her fears and nightmares at bay in the years after. The possibility of dying in her bed without even knowing that they’d been under attack, instead… she shivered again. “Well, I for once am grateful that you sent a commando team.”

“I am, too,” Vegeta conceded quietly. “Our diplomatic relationship with the Federation is bad enough despite frantic publicity efforts to make it seem tolerable, I don’t know how they would’ve reacted if we’d annihilated one of their research stations without even a warning beforehand.”

Bulma quenched an unbidden and unwelcome flame of anger inside of her. For a moment, she’d thought he was glad because of her, because she’d survived, but that was a foolish thought, a foolish wish, and why did she care if he cared about her? He would never care about her more than his people, and she shouldn’t have needed this little wake-up call to jostle her out of her daydreams.

Time for a change of direction – she could freak out about almost dying another time, and preferably in a less public space, because the eyes of the diplomats around them were still on her and Vegeta. “So Frieza hates my guts for some weird reason and wanted you to destroy my space station for him?”

Vegeta sighed and pushed his fingers through his hair, making it stand up even more than usually, but that was the only outward sign of his agitation. He was very good at hiding behind his usual dark scowl, but Bulma supposed he had to be, after a lifetime spent in the public eye. “I think your space station was chosen for its proximity to Saiyan space, not because Frieza had a particular problem with you. He is very angry that you survived, though, and I understand that your career has suffered because of it?”

“Well, that’s one way to put it,” Bulma shot back with more than a little bit of anger in her voice, because damn it, that would explain so much. Why Starfleet had never listened when she’d tried to tell them what had happened at Alfrmyke, her superiors’ dislike of her, the way doors seemed to get slammed in her face every time she looked for a new opportunity. She wasn’t paranoid, after all. She hadn’t felt welcome at Starfleet because she hadn’t been welcome at Starfleet. “That doesn’t explain why he wants me to help him, though,” she added testily and snatched herself a new glass of champagne, more to have something to do with her hands than because she actually wanted to drink it.

“That’s because you’re a danger to him, and he needs to control you,” Vegeta said in a tone so serious that it made Bulma’s stomach lurch as if she’d just stepped into zero g. Maybe she was going to need the bubbly, after all. To fortify her nerves. “You and I are the only people who know the truth about what happened on Alfrmyke. He has already tried to discredit you, just like he has tried to silence me, and now that he has clearly failed in keeping us unaware of what the other knows, I’m worried that he will take more… drastic measures.”

“Not if I fuck him up first,” Bulma ground out angrily, and Vegeta laughed, with a curious warmth in his voice that Bulma hadn’t thought possible.

“I should’ve known. Only you would be willing to take on the most infamous and dangerous man in the history of the Federation as if it were just a little afternoon stroll.”

She wasn’t quite sure if he was making fun of her or not, but truth to be told, her fear of Ambassador Frieza had melted away in the course of one conversation and given way to blinding, burning fury. That man hat taken her space station from her, he’d taken her career from her, he had threatened her, and he wanted to use her father against her. And she was going to fuck him up, one way or the other. And that was that. She just didn’t know how – yet.

Before Bulma could start to formulate her plan for revenge, however, a melodious Vulcan gong called them into the assembly room, where Bulma spent the next three hours listening with rapt attention to the most brilliant minds the Vulcan Science Academy had to offer. Ambassador Frieza be damned, this was what she’d come for, this was why she’d been ready to accompany a man she didn’t even particularly like even though she found him way too hot, and damn, did the Vulcan Science Academy deliver. Absolutely the best evening Bulma had spent in a long time! Vegeta seemed to disagree, however, if the perpetually bored scowl on his face was any indication, even though he did lower himself to ask a few polite questions along the lines of “Why the fuck do we even care about this shit?” that Bulma answered excitedly between presentations. Because damn it all, she loved her job, she loved her field, and physics were damned good fun! And the fun wasn’t even over yet!

Vegeta left Bulma alone to mingle after the scientific part of the evening had ended, and mingle Bulma did. Every member of the Vulcan Science Academy in proximity to Earth had turned up for the event, as well as every cutting edge researcher who could make it, and Bulma loved the opportunity to connect with colleagues and reconnect with old acquaintances who’d lost trace of her after she’d faded into obscurity after the Alfrmyke disaster. Fortified by a little more champagne, she threw herself into the social aspects of the evening, and while Vegeta made what looked like boring small talk with the Vulcan ambassador to Earth, the Vulcan Federation council member, and – to her surprise – their martial arts instructor, Bulma did what she loved to do – talk about her work. Passionately, of course, because she didn’t have any other modus operandi, even inside the Vulcan embassy where logic should have ruled the day.

Oddly enough, the members of the Vulcan Science Academy she met didn’t mind her too much. Maybe it was because they lived for their research, the same way Bulma lived for hers, even though they did it in a much more quietly passionate way, or maybe it was because they found the blue-haired woman with the big mouth and the big gestures oddly entertaining, but she had her fair share of interesting discussions with stoic-faced, robed-clad Vulcan scientists while munching on Vulcan canapées (they did indeed have those, and they were damned delicious).

Bulma was just in the middle of discussing Alfrmykian gravitational analysis and a rough outline of her paper she’d sent to the Science Academy, when a sour-faced Vulcan woman who’d listened quietly before spoke up. “I have read such a paper.”

Bulma instantly brightened. As much as she loved talking about her research, the only form that properly did it justice was a paper, and a paper she’d written – and a damned good one, if she dared say so herself. Even though she’d had a lot of doubts and a shed a lot of tears on the way to get there. And maybe… maybe the Vulcan woman even was a scientist from the Academy? Maybe Bulma could get some intel on how her paper was doing, even though she’d just handed everything in a few days ago? Maybe the Vulcan Science Academy was very fast! “Yes? Did you like it?”

The woman’s brow knitted in consternation. “It wasn’t written by you.”

For the second time that evening, Bulma felt as if a bucket of ice water had been emptied over her head, erasing any trace of her good mood or her pleasant tipsiness. Because there was no way – no fucking way – that paper could’ve written by anyone but her. But… she hadn’t been the one who handed it in, had she? That had been Dr Ginyu. Who was close with Cui, who’d taunted her the whole autumn that her paper would go nowhere and that he’d make sure that she wouldn’t succeed… Bulma suddenly wished she’d taken his bullshit more seriously.

“Was it by Dr Cui, by chance?” she asked, almost conversationally, and the woman nodded, too surprised to control her reaction, because what were the odds? Bulma smiled at her, thanked her, and then walked away, and it took every ounce of her self-control not to scream.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17: Why use reason when you can just rage

Bulma only had vague memories of how she got home, and how she made it to work the next morning. The world around her felt foggy and unreal, as if she were trapped in a bad dream that she couldn’t wake up from, engulfed by the horrors of her own imagination. Because this couldn’t be fucking happening. She’d worked so hard on this paper for so long, she’d fought so much, against the demons of Alfrmyke and her own pride and Starfleet, and she’d won in the end. She’d handed it in, she’d thought she had a shot… and now Cui – fucking Cui of all people – had gone and taken credit for her work? Bulma couldn’t believe it.

It was the kind of thing that should not only have been impossible – it was also so unbelievably stupid that Bulma wondere where he’d found the guts for it. Because Cui might’ve slapped his name on her paper, but he had none of the raw data she’d used for it, and the moment someone asked a pointed question or three about his work process, things would be falling apart. Not to mention the fact that Bulma had read some of the things the man called a paper (using the term loosely) and nobody with more than two brain cells would actually believe he’d written the damned thing. It was a plan so stupid that nobody with a PhD should’ve thought it would work, and yet here they were. Bulma couldn’t even accuse the man of thinking with his dick, because dicks were generally smarter than that.

The problem was, of course, that his plan didn’t actually have to work to fuck things up for Bulma. Right now, the Vulcan Science Academy thought that Cui had written her beautiful baby of a paper, not her, and if she didn’t straighten this out as quickly as possible, it would get tossed out, because the vetting process for Cui would throw up enough red flags to clothe Starfleet’s entire Security department. And then all her work would have been in vain and she could give up on her dream of maybe having a poster at the Vulcan Science Academy Congress next year (not that she had much of a shot – Bulma could count the non-Vulcan researchers who’d been invited to send a poster, much less present there, on one hand).

There was also the interesting question of how, exactly, Cui had exchanged her name for his before the paper reached the Vulcan Science Academy to consider. Because there were only two ways he could have done it – either by hacking into the secure Starfleet mainframe and intercepting Dr Ginyu’s communications (and if you did that and Starfleet caught you, you were lucky to get out of prison in time to meet your great-grandchildren), or by asking Dr Ginyu to do it, and Bulma knew which option she thought was more likely. Cui wasn’t exactly a computer genius (that had always been her part).

Accusing Cui of stealing her work was easy – the whole department knew what she’d been working on, and she had enough proof that her work was hers to bury Cui until not even the remnants of his reputation as a researcher remained visible. But it would also tip off Dr Ginyu that she knew what was going on, and the man would cover his ass faster than Bulma could say “court martial”. She’d have to be smart about this. She needed a plan, and she was going to bide her time and not say anything, and then… and then she walked into the Gravitics department and saw Cui standing in the cubbie farm, coffee mug in hand, insufferable smirk on his face, and all of Bulma’s good intentions suddenly decided to go on a nude beach vacation to Betazed. “CUI!”

His head whipped around when he heard her, coffe sloshing over the edge of his mug onto his lovingly polished uniform boots, and the smile drained from his face when he realized how absolutely murderous Bulma felt, and that all of that rage was focused on him. “Y-yes?” He’d tried to sound nonchalantly superior, but the little quaver in his voice betrayed him. Cui was a lot of things, but a brave man he was not.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY PAPER?”

Dozens of curious heads popped up in grey cubbies and open office doors around them as Bulma came to a halt in front of Cui, already so angry that she could barely contain herself from grabbing the little weasel by the collar of his tunic and shaking him until the paper he’d stolen tumbled from his pockets (no, unfortunately it didn’t work like that).

“W-what paper?”

Bulma couldn’t believe the fucking audacity of this asshole. “Don’t play even more stupid than you’re already are! My paper for the Vulcan Science Academy that you slapped your name on!”

That elicited a shocked gasp from her colleagues. Everyone here – even the cadets employed as teaching assistants – knew what a big deal the Vulcan Science Academy was, and everyone also knew that plagiarism was a thing that Starfleet took a very dim view on. Cadets had been tossed out of the service for a lot less. Hell, senior researchers like Bulma and Cui had lost everything because of less than the whole-sale plagiarism of a complete paper.

“Sounds like there was a mix-up?” Cui suggested weakly, his hands raised like a man desperately trying to appease the angry bear that had suddenly popped up in front of him. “I don’t know what happened.”

“So you have no idea why the Vulcan Science Academy told me yesterday that they did not receive my paper, but instead one with your name on it, that just coincidentally concerns itself with Alfrmykian gravitational anomalies? If you expect me to believe that, I have a nice red bridge over the Bay to sell to you,” Bulma spat out while her colleagues’ heads swivelled between them as if they were following a tennis match. Every thought of subterfuge and biding her time had gone out of the window the moment she’d seen the little fucker, and her only regret was that their confrontation was too public to get away with kicking him in the nuts. Because damn, that man deserved a kick in the nuts.

Cui’s anger had taken a bit of goading to surpass his fear of Bulma’s visceral rage, but it was now rearing its head, ugly and cutting as always. “So the great Bulma Briefs is the only one who can write a decent paper? Do you think I’m not scientist enough to produce decent work on my own?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. You’re nothing but a plagiarizing little shit who’s never had an original thought in his entire life, and I will fucking end you and your pathetic little career.” Bulma had no idea how she was going to accomplish that, but right now, that didn’t matter all too much. Her righteous anger felt way too good to let silly practical considerations like that get in the way of a good confrontation. “The only question is whether you go down alone or with...”

“With whom?” Dr Ginyu’s icy voice cut through the crowded department with the ease of a commanding officer who’d learned long ago how to make cadets afraid of him with just a few words.

Bulma whirled around to face him. Anger was still boiling inside of her, but it was like lava hardening into obsidian now – still dangerous, still deadly, but its intensity didn’t engulf her anymore. She could think again, plan again, and as angry as she was, she knew that accusing Ginyu right here, right now, would be a very, very stupid idea. The man had friends in high places – Ambassador Frieza came to mind – and if she wanted to take him out for being complicit in stealing her work, she needed proof first, not a theory.

Instead of waiting for Bulma’s answer, Ginyu let his icy gaze travel over the curious scientists and saucer-eyed cadets around them intently watching the spectacle. “And what are you looking at? Get out of here, now.”

The department emptied out faster than that one time when the infamous Lieutenant Commander Smith had smashed together what should not have been smashed together and accidentally gotten some nice nuclear fission going in the department’s storage room (no worries, everyone had been fine – Starfleet was very good at treating radiation sickness by now). Watching a shouting match between two colleagues was one thing – a conflict that involved the boss called for immediate retreat, or an early breakfast break. Especially when the boss had just told you to fuck off and mind your own business.

As she watched her colleagues file out, it briefly occurred to Bulma that she was outnumbered now, with only her, Ginyu, and Cui remaining in an eerily quiet office where she could only hear the sounds of computer fans and air conditioning, but she didn’t mind. She still felt angry enough to move mountains and leap tall buildings in a single bound, and she’d be damned before she started to be afraid of Ginyu and Cui now. They’d made her life miserable for too long already.

“You were saying?” she asked Ginyu after the last of her colleagues had made themselves scarce, even going so far as to cockily lean against the desk of the unfortunate cadet Cui had been bothering when Bulma walked in this morning, the pose of a woman who had not a care in the world.

It was then that she realized Ginyu was shaking with barely suppressed rage. “How dare you?”

Her boss was clearly asking a rhetorical question, so Bulma crossed her arms in front of her and settled in for a long tirade.

“How dare you accuse your colleague of academic misconduct! In front of the whole department! That could get him dishonorably discharged from Starfleet!”

Perish the thought, Bulma thought sarcastically, because who cared if Cui got kicked out of Starfleet? The man clearly deserved it after what he’d done, and Bulma would gleefully watch him pack his desk and provide biting commentary while he carried out the cardboard box full of his meager belongings.

“And in such a tone! I could hear you yelling from my office! How dare you disturb your colleagues like that! We’re scientists here, we need silence to work properly!”

Bulma thought that was rather rich, coming from a man whose subordinates had invented the Ginyu as the unit of measurement for how much the department walls shook from his yelling and what that said about his mood, and her face must have expressed as much, because the veins on Ginyu’s face started to bulge dangerously while Cui looked on with a smug expression on his face.

“And that is not even considering the nature of your accusations! Are you trying to ruin Cui’s career? I know that there is a grudge between you, but you cannot let bygones ruin our work environment here at Starfleet! We are a team here, and no team player would ever maliciously make accusations like that towards her colleagues!”

“With all due respect, sir,” Bulma retorted, sounding not particularly respectful. She’d been trying to be patient, but her patience had its limits, especially with Cui and Ginyu. “No real team player would just outright steal a colleague’s entire paper, either. And no real officer would allow it.”

Fear flared up in Ginyu’s eyes for a moment when he understood what she meant, before it was quickly smothered by blinding rage, but that was all the confirmation Bulma needed. He’d been involved, and if she could prove it, he was going to go down for it. And good riddance for Starfleet, too.

“What a… what a baseless...” He clearly struggled to find words, and Bulma did not intend to be around when he found them again.

“Is that all, sir?” Bulma smiled at him thinly, and did not give him a chance to respond. “Excellent. Now please excuse me, I have a complaint to prepare.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 18: Who thought ugly Christmas sweaters could be so useful?

Bulma complained about Cui in all the appropriate places, and Starfleet actually listened to her for a change. Once the investigation committee had confirmed that it was indeed her paper that had arrived at the Vulcan Science Academy under Cui’s name, and Bulma had submitted the appropriate documentation to show that it was her original work, Starfleet was already ready to come down on Cui like a ton of bricks. They took academic conduct violations seriously, not only because they were one of the leading scientific organizations in the known galaxy, but also because both Bulma and Cui were teaching young, impressionable cadets, and none of the higher-ups wanted to give them the notion that Cui was going to get away with nothing but a slap on the wrist.

Then the committee – with the tiniest bit of prompting from Bulma, of course – started to ask the very interesting question of how exactly Bulma’s paper had ended up there under Cui’s name, and shit hit the proverbial fan. As much as Dr Ginyu might have enjoyed Cui treating him like he was the most brilliant man in the history of both brilliance and men, the little bootlicker was apparently not worth his career, because he threw Cui under the bus faster than a Constitution-class starship going Warp 9. Bulma was still privately convinced that he’d helped Cui plagiarize her paper, because wanting to help her with her work had been so damned out of character for him, but according to what he’d told the committee, he had no idea how that had happened, had just wanted to give Bulma a hand, and Cui had probably hacked into Starfleet communications and altered his documents. And that was a court-martial offense that carried a lengthy prison sentence, too. In short: Cui was fucked. So fucking fucked. And Bulma found it utterly delightful.

The wheels of justice at Starfleet were turning slowly, however, and while everyone in the department – including the man himself – knew that Cui was done for and would be dishonorably discharged at the very least, he still had to come to work, pretend that everything was okay, caught in the limbo of the drawn-out investigation. And Bulma relished every fucking second of it, including the irony that after calling Bulma a dead woman walking at the beginning of the semester, that part had now gone to Cui. She didn’t care if that made her cold-hearted or vindictive or a bitch, but Cui walking around the department on eggshells while Ginyu screamed at him at the slightest provocation, their little bromance unceremoniously broken up? Best thing ever.

The downside of her situation was that she’d been so busy leading up to the holidays that she hadn’t had time to talk to Vegeta about what was arguably her bigger problem – Ambassador Frieza. But maybe the Prince was even becoming more sociable in general – perish the thought – or just in a better mood, because just a few days before Christmas, Bulma met him at the last occasion where she’d expected him: at the staff holiday get-together to celebrate the occasion. Bulma herself had been on the fence about going because her shouting match with Cui was being gossiped about all over the campus, and the thought of making some eggnogg and then throwing a blanket over herself and not emerging until the New Year sounded extremely appealing after the semester she’d just had. In the end, however, her petty side won – she’d get to drink punch, eat cookies, and socialize with her colleagues (which mainly meant talking lots of shit about Cui right now – academics loved juicy gossip about alleged plagiarism), and if the man actually dared to show his face, the shitshow would be spectacular.

And really, the party wasn’t that bad. Bulma got to hang out with Launch, Chi-Chi, Yamcha, and Krillin, drinking punch, eating cookies, and spending some time together before everyone except Chi-Chi went home to visit their families for Christmas break. And Bulma, of course – her parents were going on a space cruise, and while they’d invited Bulma to join them, that sounded like the opposite of relaxing (because her father would try to recruit her for his company and her mother pester her about “that handsome boy Vegeta” for the whole vacation), just like the equally unappealing offer from Launch to come visit her family (who were all just as loud and just as opinionated and just as explosive as Launch, and best enjoyed in small doses). No, Bulma was going to stay in her nice, cozy apartment, visit Chi-Chi and Goku on Christmas Day for excellent food and to spoil Gohan and Goten rotten with presents from their rich and eccentric auntie, watch lots of cheesy Christmas movies, catch up on grading, generally do lots of nothing, and definitely not wear a bra or real pants until she had to deal with cadets again next year.

“I still can’t believe he was that stupid,” Chi-Chi sighed into her glass of punch with an almost pitying expression on her face, because of course, there was only one topic of conversation that evening, and it was Cui. “Like… I worked with him, I know he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but something so blatant, something so easily discovered… what did he think would happen?”

Bulma had asked herself that many, many times during the last few weeks since the soirée at the Vulcan Embassy, and had not come up with a satisfying answer. Because after more than a decade of him being a pain in her ass, him heckling her and harassing her, she’d paradoxically thought… that Cui was smarter than that? But maybe he had been, in the past? Maybe he had become desperate? Maybe he’d needed a quick success? Maybe he’d thought Ginyu would protect him if he got discovered? Or maybe he’d remembered that there had been no real consequences to him trying to steal her dissertation topic, and thought that he’d get away with a slap on the wrist this time, too? Bulma had no idea what he’d been thinking, and she doubted that she’d get a satisfying answer soon, if ever. She’d have to be content with watching him squirm until Starfleet finally gave him the boot, and really, it wasn’t very hard to be content with that!

“At least I won’t have to deal with him anymore...” Bulma smiled, taking another nice sip of punch (technically non-alcoholic because of Starfleet regulations, but Launch had snuck a flask in her purse and was not afraid to use it). “And everyone knows how much of a pain in the...”

But before Bulma could add something even more derogatory about her colleague, Chi-Chi turned and waved, “Oh, hi, Vegeta!”

Bulma raised her eyebrows in surprise. She’d been rather preoccupied with the Cui situation, making her complaints and providing her statements to the committee, but it seemed she had missed a number of major developments here, because Vegeta… actually walked over to them? Bulma mouthed “What the fuck?” at Chi-Chi as covertly as her slightly tipsy state allowed her, but Chi-Chi just smiled serenely and produced a glass of punch for Vegeta.

“Vegeta has been a regular at Goku’s gym,” she explained after they’d all greeted him with varying degrees of enthusiasm (meaning, Bulma’s friends still low-key hated the guy). “And of course, Goku had to invite him over for dinner a few times, too. Depending on a few clearances by Starfleet Medical, he might even get to test my high gravity chamber!”

Chi-Chi sounded over the moon about this development – she’d been looking for a volunteer slash guinea pig for her chronically underfunded and undervalued gravity chamber project for a long time, but Bulma wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to think about this situation. Sure, she didn’t hate the guy as she used to, and sure, they had a common enemy in Ambassador Frieza, but that didn’t mean that she wanted him around all the time all of a sudden, or wanted to share her best and oldest friend Goku with him! A one-off family dinner to be nice to a guy Goku had been dying to meet for a long time was one thing, but she’d go nuts if Vegeta showed up at Goku’s every time she went to hang out with her friend or visit the boys, or began spending time in the gravitics department on the regular, and not only because of the potential for conflict with Dr Ginyu! She was already seeing so much more of the guy than she wanted to, and now it seemed he’d be around even more, and that made feel Bulma all kinds of feelings that she didn’t want to examine too closely right now.

She wasn’t the only one who seemed supremely uncomfortable with the situation, though. Vegeta eyed her and her friends warily, as if he expected Yamcha or Krillin or Launch to jump him if he looked away (not an unreasonable suspicion – you never knew with Launch), and he just stood by silently as Bulma and her friends dunked on Cui some more, because really, this was the juiciest piece of gossip that had happened at the Academy since Vegeta’s fight with Commandant Morris. And really, why am I always in the middle if there’s drama? Can’t there be drama that I can watch gleefully from afar without being involved?

All Bulma wanted was a little bit of quiet, as incredulous as that sounded even to her own ears. After Alfrmyke, she’d incessantly bitched and moaned about how fucking boring her jobs were, but now? Now her life was definitely too exciting, between Commandant Morris trying to get her kicked out of Starfleet, Ambassador Frieza threatening her, Cui stealing her paper, and the unresolved tension that still made something inside her coil tight whenever she saw Vegeta, like a trap ready to be sprung by the slightest touch. What was it about that damned man that made her lose sleep at night and drew her to him like an electron to an atomic nucleus? And why was the universe conspiring against her so she couldn’t leave him and her unrealistic attraction to him behind once and for all?

Even now, in his customary Saiyan uniform and with a scowl on his face as if the peasants around him were beneath his notice, he looked hotter than any man with that expression on his aristocratic features had the right to be. And when he finally extricated himself from the conversation he’d only listened to and disappeared on the balcony that wrapped around the campus building where the party was being held, Bulma couldn’t help but admire his ass while her friends snickered around her. And then she remembered that she probably should talk to Vegeta, and not only because the last time they’d spoken had been when he’d taken her home from the Vulcan Embassy, and Bulma hadn’t been exactly forthcoming that night. She’d still felt too shocked after she’d found out Cui had stolen her paper, and after that she’d been busy and had let that lure her into a false sense of security, especially as Ambassador Frieza had not approached her again.

“Uh… I’ll be back in a second, okay?” she told Chi-Chi, who exchanged a knowing glance with Launch, but otherwise refrained from commenting (something Bulma was rather grateful for in that moment – her brain was excellent at saying sarcastic things about her acting like an idiot without help from her friends, thank you very much). Then she made a beeline for the balcony too, suddenly grateful that she was wearing an ugly Christmas sweater, because the air outside held a decided chill, at least for San Francisco weather. The rest of the world probably thought Starfleet were a bunch of wimps, though.

Vegeta was nowhere to be found, which was odd, because Bulma was not a minute behind him. But the balcony wrapped around the building, and maybe he’d stepped around the corner to get some privacy, away from the crowd of faculty members inside, most of whom still thought he was quite the asshole after he’d behaved so standoffishly in his first few months at Starfleet Academy. Truth to be told, he still behaved standoffishly at best – just not quite as much where Bulma was concerned.

The lights of the campus glittered beneath her during a rare winter evening without fog as she walked towards the corner, thinking that it was rather nice out here, and that Vegeta had had the right idea, when she heard, “So… I hear you’ve been having problems with Bulma Briefs, too?”

At the last possible moment, Bulma stopped herself from sucking in a loud breath that surely would’ve given her away. Because she knew that fucking drawl – would’ve recognized it everywhere. It was Cui. She hadn’t even known that he was here, had thought that there was no possible way for him to sneak in without her knowing, but apparently, he had managed. And Bulma had to give the devil credit where it was due – it took balls to show up at a staff party when you were basically a non-person amongst your colleagues because you were about to be court-martialled, and yet here the sucker was, trying to stir shit. As always.

“I wouldn’t call it problems,” Vegeta answered dryly, and Bulma bit her lip for a second time. What the fuck were these two doing out here? Meeting clandestinely? Was Vegeta somehow involved with Cui’s bullshit? Was she getting paranoid? Scratch that, she was definitely getting paranoid, but unfortunately, that didn’t mean she was wrong.

“She publicly humiliated you at the beginning of the semester,” Cui pressed on, an almost desperate tinge to his voice that did Bulma’s soul a world of good and almost made up for the fact that she’d probably missed out on the best chance of going to the Vulcan Science Academy Congress she’d ever have in her lifetime. Almost. “And now she’s playing all hot and cold with you… don’t you have pride, man?”

Vegeta scoffed angrily. “Get to the point, Cui.”

“I hate that bitch, you hate that bitch. And if we work together, we can fuck her over and make sure she’ll never be a problem for either us again.”

And whoa. Bulma didn’t have street smarts the way Goku or her ex Yamcha (who’d spent a lot of time on the wrong side of the law before joining Starfleet) had, but she recognized a man who had just taken the turn from Nuisance Road into Danger Avenue as well as any woman did, and Cui had done that with screeching tires and without setting his turn signal first. Bulma had destroyed his career – but Cui was not going to settle for a little professional rivalry anymore. He wanted to destroy her. And he had powerful friends who were more dangerous than they had any right to be.

Around the corner, Vegeta started to laugh – that full, rich belly laugh she’d admired so many months ago for the first time, the one that had made her think there might be a man behind the mask, and he might be worth getting to know. But now, she just wanted to step around the corner and strangle him with her bare hands, because did the idiot not understand that Cui was dangerous now? That she was scared of him, for the first time in her life?

“That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all week,” Vegeta said instead, and Bulma could almost see the small smirk that now surely was on his lips. “Don’t your people have this delightful little saying? Fuck around and find out. You fucked around. She fucked you up. And now you come to me whining like a spoiled child instead of accepting defeat? You’re pathetic.”

Bulma picked that moment to step around the corner, and the way Cui’s eyes turned into saucers as he realized she’d heard every word banished some of the lingering fear inside her chest. Because really, she’d heard enough – enough to be careful, and enough to know that Vegeta was on her side, that the admiration he’d expressed months ago in Commandant Morris’s office was still there, and that put a small smirk of her own on her lips despite the circumstances. “Really, Cui?” she just asked, and he excused himself with the haste of a man who expected to be slapped if he lingered any longer (and rightly so). At least she still had that.

When Cui was out of sight – and also out of earshot, Bulma made sure of that by quickly peeking around the corner – she sighed deeply and leaned against the cold steel of the balustrade, looking over the campus and the city beyond. Really, she was sick of all the bullshit, but she had a feeling that the bullshit was only just starting where Cui was concerned. She’d always thought that she could handle him, that she knew how far he was willing to drive their rivalry, but tonight… tonight, he’d scared her, and she felt like she was now whistling in the dark to drive her own fear away.

Vegeta joined her as quietly as her own shadow would, crossing his ridiculously toned forearms on the railing, the heat of his body so close that Bulma ached to touch him. And yet she didn’t, stared out over the city in almost companionable silence with him instead, all the things she’d wanted to talk to him about forgotten in the surprising peace of the moment. San Francisco really was beautiful at night, when it was not covered in thick fogs rolling in from the bay, something Bulma had never quite found time to admire before, and even though their breaths were condensing in white clouds in front of their mouths, she didn’t feel the desire to go inside. Not yet. Not when there was calm to be had here, calm that had turned into a rare commodity in an otherwise tumultous life during the last few months.

“Don’t worry about him,” Vegeta murmured very quietly into the darkness, so quietly that Bulma was not quite sure if she’d heard him at first, or if his words were just a figment of her own imagination. “He talks a tough game, but he can’t hurt you. I’ll make sure of that.”

It was a rare occasion when Bulma found herself speechless, but what was she supposed to tell him, after that little declaration? That she could take care of herself, like her pride demanded, even though she felt that Cui’s threat had entered territory entirely unfamiliar to her? That he was the last person she’d want help from, like the side of her that still held on to their old grudge whispered, even though he was a dangerous man to cross, but even more dangerous to her enemies if he was on her side? That she was scared of owing him anything, because she wanted to give him so much, like her instinct of self-preservation screamed at her? She had no idea.

“I… thank you,” she said instead, still doubting, because words were cheap, and he gave her the tiniest of smiles before he disappeared inside.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19: Pulling Goku into this mess really wasn’t part of the plan

Bulma spent a peaceful (and blissfully Vegeta-free) Christmas Day at Goku and Chi-Chi’s house, eating copious amounts of homecooked food, spoiling Gohan and Goten with their lavish Christmas presents (being a rich girl had its advantages occasionally), and generally enjoying quiet quality time with her friend’s family, while trying not to think of work. Bulma and Chi-Chi usually had a tendency to talk about physics at the dinner table, leaving everyone else behind in a cloud of confusion except maybe Gohan, who was in high school now and shared his mom’s inclination for science.

But with Vegeta volunteering to test Chi-Chi’s gravity chamber that she’d shed so many tears over, even Goku’s almost endless patience had run thin, and he’d thrown a temporary ban on shop talk in his presence (“If I hear one more word about that gravity chamber I’m going to start screaming and never stop!”) that secretly, Bulma was very grateful for. She needed a fucking break, like, yesterday, and so it was a good thing that she had one now. Terms and conditions applied, of course, because she had a metric fuckton of grading to do over the holidays.

But today, there would be no work. There were only endless Christmas movies, board games until even Goten’s boundless energy was exhausted, Gohan and Goten playing with their remote-controlled flying space ships (there were things a kid was never too old for – as evidenced by Goku waiting with bated breath for one of his sons to put down the remote), and finally, finally a chance to wind down. The first one since that fateful day in September when Bulma had walked into her staff meeting and found Vegeta on the dais next to Commandant Morris.

She truly had cursed herself when she’d wished for a more interesting life last semester, she thought idly as she relaxed on her friends’ sofa and wiggled her toes (clad in the thick Christmas socks Goku had knitted for her as a present). Now she was dealing with all the shit all at once instead, and the one thing she’d had the audacity to want – getting recognized by the Vulcan Science Academy for her paper on Alfrmyke’s graitational anomalies – wasn’t going to happen because Cui had been a stupid, spite-fuelled, vengeful idiot. Even if the Starfleet committee determined that Cui had plagiarized her work (which they better would, because if they didn’t, Bulma would chuck them into a star and never look back), she still hadn’t handed it in in time for this year’s congress, and who knew what would happen in another year? Cui might not have gotten away with stealing her work outright, but a year was enough time to recreate her research and turn what should have been unique and groundbreaking into just another paper in a ginormous pile of them. Because everyone and their grandmother wanted to be recognized by the Vulcan Science Academy – it was the highest honor there was for a Federation scientist, and competition was both fierce and excellent.

“Why the long face?” Goku asked as he plopped himself down on the sofa next to her, almost bouncing her off the cushions by sheer momentum (the man was heavy, damn it). “Thinking of work again? That’s against the rules!”

“You caught me,” Bulma sighed, even though Goku’s rules had only mentioned talking about work and not thinking about work, and leaned her head back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling that bore the dirt marks of the rubber balls Goten liked to throw at it despite his mother’s admonishments. “Distract me right now, or I’ll be horrible the rest of the day.”

Goku laughed at her playfully despondent tone, then leaned back the way she had, spreading his long, muscular arms on the sofa’s back rest. “Tell me about Vegeta.”

“That’s what you’re coming up with to improve my mood?” Bulma chuckled incredulously and turned towards her oldest friend, who, admittedly, could be daft on the social front sometimes. “The guy whose guts I hate?”

“Well, for starters, I don’t think you hate him,” Goku disagreed quietly, and as much as it rankled Bulma to have her own emotions explained to her by her oldest friend, whose homework she’d done so he’d actually make it through high school, well, he unfortunately wasn’t wrong. “Not anymore.”

She sighed again, and with a surreptitious glance at Chi-Chi and the boys squabbling over their next Christmas movie – she really didn’t want an audience for this conversation – she asked, “Why do you want to know about him? Aren’t you all buddy-buddy with him since he started training at your gym?”

Goku was usually such a happy-go-lucky guy that the evident unhappiness on his broad face hit Bulma directly in the gut. She’d thought something was off a few times during the day, when he’d looked uncharacteristically thoughtful, staring off in the distance, but she’d dismissed it as her own, concerned imagination. That she was concerned didn’t mean everyone else was concerned, and Goku wore his heart on his sleeve all the time! Why should he keep secrets?

But when he asked, “Do you trust Vegeta?” and in a serious tone that was completely out of character for him, too, Bulma realized with a rush that she wasn’t the only one weighed down by private issues right now. And it felt like shit. Not only because she’d put Goku in Vegeta’s way when she’d pointed the prince to his gym, but also because she hadn’t been there for him, too caught up in her own mess to see that he needed a friendly ear.

“Why do you ask?” Bulma shot back, because her heart shied away from the question, loaded as it was with all kinds of feelings that Bulma had not had the guts to explore yet.

Goku frowned unhappily. “He asked me a bunch of things. Told me a bunch of things.” When he noticed her opening her mouth to ask the obvious, he shook his head forcefully. “And no, I’m not ready to talk about it just yet. I just… I just want to know if you trust him. If you think he’d be lying to me.”

How the fuck was she supposed to answer that? Because Bulma was sure Vegeta would lie to everyone and their daddy for the good of his people, and kept so many secrets from her right now that he could fill a whole library with them. But while he undoubtedly was a fucking asshole and thought himself better than everyone around him and especially Starfleet and the Federation, he also didn’t seem to be the type to delight in the pain and humiliation of others, the way Cui or Ginyu did.

“I don’t think he’d lie to you for funsies,” Bulma said thoughtfully, then chuckled. “I don’t know if he even knows what funsies are. But he would lie to you, or me, or anyone else, for his people, and he’s not exactly happy with the Federation right now. So… be careful, okay?”

Goku sighed and scratched the back of his head, the same way he’d had since they’d been children. “That’s not exactly helpful.”

“If you’d just tell me...” Bulma pressed on, but the look of raw pain on Goku’s face stopped her dead in her tracks. Whatever had happened – whatever Vegeta had said – it had cut her normally so unflappable friend deeply, and she felt sudden anger rising in her chest. She was going to wring Vegeta’s neck the next time she’d see him, because how dare he fuck with her friends! Goku did not deserve to be pulled into his bullshit! “I’m sorry. I can see you don’t want to talk about it yet, but I’m here for you when you’re ready, okay?”

“Thank you.” Goku sighed deeply, and Bulma swallowed. Goku was her oldest friend, the closest thing she had to a brother, what with her parents basically adopting him after his grandfather had died. He’d even taken losing the only person left of his family in stride back as a child, so for him to be so… so… reticent, what Vegeta had said really must’ve shaken him up. Goku was usually rock-solid, the perfect counterbalance to Bulma’s fierce and often unpredictable energy. But now she had to be the rock, because he desperately needed one.

“Whatever it is, I’ll be here for you, okay? If all your embarrasing teenage antics didn’t drive me away, this won’t, either.” She’d half meant it as a joke, but to her surprise, Goku stood and pulled her into an all-enveloping bear hug. He tucked her under his chin and rested his big head on hers, and there was a peculiar tension to his muscular arms that told Bulma that he was, indeed, worried that she’d see him differently after she found out what was going on, and that was a silly and terrifying thought all at once.

“Have you talked to Chi-Chi?” Bulma asked his shoulder quietly, and Goku just chuckled mirthlessly.

“Chi-Chi is the last person I’d want to talk about this. The very last.” And that was bad. Very bad. If Goku was the rock their family was built on, Chi-Chi was the heart that kept everything going, and if it was something Goku couldn’t tell the woman he’d loved since they were children and been together with since high school… the only explanation Bulma could come up with was an affair, and that was completely impossible. Goku simply wouldn’t. And he had said it was about something Vegeta had told him, and Bulma just had no idea what could be so earth-shattering, so terrifying, so dangerous for his family.

“Are we hugging? I want a hug too!” Goten had abandoned the fight for the remote control and jumped into his father’s arms with the confindence of a loved child who knew that his dad would catch him, and Goku laughed and twirled his son around with practiced ease before he enveloped him in his arms, too. And yet there was a fear in his eyes that Bulma had not noticed before when he looked at Goten, and at Gohan, too, and Bulma could not help but wonder what the everloving fuck Vegeta had told him that made Goku doubt everything he had in his life. I’m going to do things to that fucking man!

Bulma returned to her apartment long after night had fallen over San Francisco, wondering what she should do with the rest of her evening. Not grading, certainly – she was not even going to think about work for at least a day or two more before regret inevitably set in and she started to worry that she wasn’t going to get done with her grading in time. She could lie down on the sofa and watch some more Christmas movies, but her conversation with Goku had left her concerned and unsettled and with restless energy to burn, as strange as that felt for her. She rarely had restless energy to burn, and if she did, she usually spent it on cerebral pursuits that did not appeal to her at all right now. Maybe a workout, then…?

Bulma usually avoided the pool on the roof of the faculty apartment building, mainly because it was always overrun with more people than she cared to spend time with, and also because she was not exactly an outdoorsy person or a sporty person and any kind of exercise naturally repelled her. But Bulma had not seen a single soul in her building since the holidays had started and faculty and cadets alike had all traveled home to spend time with their families, and right now, a little night swim to clear her thoughts sounded like just the thing. And she’d have the whole pool to herself… that decided it. Instead of parking herself on the sofa, Bulma quickly changed, grabbed her towel, and headed for the elevator to the roof.

Chapter Text

Chapter 20: Playing with fire does have the advantage of keeping you warm

Bulma stepped out of the elevator onto the rooftop and smiled triumphantly. Alone. She was all alone up here, and it was just as glorious as she’d expected. The wooden deck glowing in the lamplight, the water of the pool glittering like a mirror in front of her, the hot tub in the corner beckoning to be used without having to jockey for a spot with her colleagues (and brushing feet in the hot tub with your colleagues? Awakward as fuck). All of it was just waiting for Bulma to enjoy it, and enjoy it she would, because after the semester she’d just had? She deserved a fucking break.

With a deep sigh, Bulma breathed in the crisp night air, the sounds of traffic below her as distant and faint as they could be in the middle of a busy campus in a busy city. She felt like she was the only person left at Starfleet Academy when it usually crawled with cadets and faculty, a sensation as exhilarating as it was terrifying, like strolling around an empty school at night, or a deserted space station.

She smiled, then walked over to the pool, shedding her slippers as she went, because there was nobody around to complain about them. The wood felt warm under her bare feet, an exciting contrast to the cool air that made her grateful that she’d brought her robe, and then she threw her robe off her shoulders too and slipped into the pool, and it was as if all her worries disappeared as the warm water hit her bare skin. This was exactly what she needed, and Bulma’s only regret was that she couldn’t come here every night, because inevitably, her colleagues would be back and the magic would be lost.

Bulma swam a few laps, just enjoying the feel of the water, stretching muscles that were rarely exercised, diving under the surface occasionally to make even the last traces of the world around her disappear. And she felt better. A lot better. But at last, as she was already considering leaving the pool and going home to finally curl up on that sofa of hers, reality intruded in the form of the elevator across the deck announcing the arrival of the cabin with a soft pling. Bulma had no idea who the fuck was on their way up here – maybe the night janitor, closing the pool for the day – but she had been about done anyway, and she could just…

The elevator doors opened, and Bulma lost the grip she’d had on the edge of the pool, going under for a moment before coming back up for air, and to look. There, in a pair of black Starfleet regulation swim shorts, towel slung over his shoulder, stood Vegeta, and Bulma had to admit that regulation had never looked that damned good before. She’d seen glimpses of him and his impressive physique before, knew how gracefully he moved from their martial arts training together, had even seen him sweaty and topless when she’d interrupted his workout, but never before had she been confronted with all this tan skin, all these sharply defined muscles at once, in addition to his darkly handsome face that was usually enough to drive her to distraction alone. She barely knew where to look, barely kept on treading water as she followed his progress across the wooden deck with hungry eyes, until he walked over to the treadmills set up on a small patio.

Bulma felt a stab of disappointment – he wasn’t coming into the pool, and why would she want him to come in when she’d just been so happy to have all this luxuriously warm water all to herself – but then he threw his towel over the treadmill and broke into what, to him, was probably a light jog, while it would’ve exhausted Bulma in a matter of seconds. She was already feeling hot from just watching him! Okay. Uh. Maybe I’m gonna stay a little bit longer. A little bit longer can’t hurt, right?

While Bulma made the most transparent of efforts to pretend she was still enjoying the pool instead of the view, Vegeta barely acknowledged her existence, no more than a curt nod when he’d seen her in the pool as he walked over to the treadmills. Maybe he felt as put out that he wasn’t alone up here as Bulma had been, before she’d realized who was joining her, and how damned nice he looked running, muscles rippling under his tan skin, a slight flush slowly working its way up his chest and neck as the exercise drove the cold of the December evening away.

But the longer Bulma looked, the more she became aware of his space-black eyes on her, of the way his gaze surreptitiously followed her when she made her half-hearted attempts to swim a few more laps, of the way his stride faltered for a moment when she broke through the water’s surface and smoothed her blue hair out of her face. No matter how much he might have wanted to remain aloof, detached, he couldn’t deny any longer that Bulma was affecting him – the same way he was affecting her – and that thought made longing shoot through her in a way even his impressive physique had not managed.

A shadow of her thoughts had to have crossed her face, because Vegeta’s lips curled into a sarcastic, superior little smirk as he caught her gaze across the rooftop deck. And then he increased his pace on the treadmill, beads of sweat now beginning to form on his face and neck despite the chilly temperatures outside the water. Bulma couldn’t help but appreciate the view, the way his corded muscles flexed with every step, the glimpses of sharply defined calves, of thick thighs, of rippling abs, but this was a game two could play, and Bulma smiled back at him almost devilishly. Then she let go of the edge of the pool and pushed herself back into the open water, relaxing her body until she floated on the surface, her nipples hardening under the thin fabric of her skimpy bikini as the December air hit them. She raised her eyebrows at Vegeta, silently daring him to look, and then followed his gaze that felt like a caress down her body, over her tits, her stomach, her hips, her thighs, until he reached her feet that she teasingly wiggled at him because they, too, needed his attention.

He mouthed something at her that looked very much like an exasperated “Woman!” at her, and how strange was it that something that had aggravated her so at the beginning of the semester now almost sounded like a term of endearment to her? Back then, she would’ve called him an asshole – now she smirked and leaned back into the water as if it were a sofa, at least until she tipped over and went under the surface with a rather undignified sputter.

When she came back up for air and returned to her vantage point at the edge of the pool, the bastard had the audacity to laugh at her, a full belly laugh that made his black eyes warm up and the faint lines around his mouth crease, and Bulma sighed because he was so damned hot and the air was full of possibilities. It seemed that in the quiet of the night they were both finally ready to admit what had been clear as day all along, and maybe they would even be bold enough to do something about it. Maybe.

Vegeta increased the pace of his run once again, sweat now running in rivulets down his face, his neck, through the valley between his pecs and over his abs until they reached his swim trunks. Bulma watched their progress from afar while she wondered what it would feel like to follow their traces with her fingers, explore all those hard muscles he usually hid beneath his Saiyan uniform. Maybe she’d get a shot at it, if she waited long enough – he’d clearly come here for a run, followed by a swim, and if she just so happened to be in the pool when he jumped in…

Her train of thought abruptly derailed when Vegeta finally stepped off the treadmill, toweling off his sweat-soaked face absent-mindedly as Bulma couldn’t help but stare. While he’d been working out, the panel of the treadmill had hidden everything beneath his waistband, but if Bulma had been in any kind of doubt that he’d enjoyed their little game, it would’ve been dispelled now. Because judging by the hard cock stretching his tight black swim trunks, he’d enjoyed it – enjoyed her – a lot. And from the look of it, he wasn’t done with her, either, because he was coming for her with a heat and an intensity in his eyes that took Bulma’s breath away, as if he’d been waiting for this moment ever since they’d been re-introduced in September.

She hungrily followed him with her eyes as he walked over the deck, her nipples suddenly tight and aching for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold winter air, her stomach knotting almost painfully, until he looked down at her, his bare feet at the edge of the pool, right in front of Bulma, and held out his hand to her in invitation.

Bulma swallowed. Fantasizing about Vegeta was one thing – the reality of the man and their situation another thing entirely. From her low vantage point in the pool, he looked impossibly tall and almost as intimidating as she followed the lines of his body from his toes over his toned calves, his muscular thighs, his cock outlined by his trunks so clearly that she ached with anticipation, his abs that begged to be touched, the graceful lines of his neck, his smirking mouth, and finally, his black eyes that looked almost as hungry as Bulma felt. Was this a bad decision? Without a doubt. Bulma had made enough bad decisions in her life to know one when it stared her in the face, begging to be touched. Was she going to do it anyway? Of course she would.

She took his hand, and he pulled her out of the water with an impossible ease, as if he’d temporarily suspended the laws of physics. Gravity, inertia, they all had forgotten about them for just a brief moment until he set her on her feet on the wooden deck around the pool, goosebumps breaking out all over her body as the icy air hit her skin. And then his arms came around her and his mouth finally crashed down on hers, and Bulma forgot about inconsequential details like physics or weather entirely.

He wasn’t a gentle man, and it wasn’t a gentle kiss. He had no qualms taking what he wanted, his lips hungry and demanding on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth as heat pooled between her legs with an intensity that took even Bulma by surprise. Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood for gentle tonight, anyway. One of his calloused hands went right to the small of her back, holding her against him, and there was no give at all to his tense muscles. But that suited Bulma just fine right now as she arched closer, eager to feel that hard cock she’d seen pressing against her while she dug her fingers into his spiky black hair until she finally found purchase close to his scalp and pulled roughly, to make his mouth slant against hers just the way she wanted it to.

He groaned, the sound a rumble deep in his chest that Bulma felt more than heard, and something dark and fiery awakened in his eyes as he caught her gaze for a moment before his hand dipped deeper, caressing her ass that was only half covered by her skimpy bikini as if trying to get the lay of the land. And then his fingers dug into her skin, and she pressed closer to him almost on instinct, his cock digging into her lower stomach, her tits crushed against his naked, sweaty chest as he kissed her with almost bruising intensity while she held onto him.

Bulma had thought that a swim had been just what she needed this evening, but she’d been wrong. This was what she’d needed all along, and when his fingers tangled in her hair to pull her head back so he could nip her swollen lower lip with his teeth, she couldn’t help the moan that escaped her. Anticipation had clouded her every thought before he’d finally touched her, even though she hadn’t known it herself, and the first raindrops of the coming storm felt like sweet relief. She didn’t know what it was about him, but he made her feel almost painfully aware and alive in a way she hadn’t felt like in a very long time, and she wanted more of it. Right now.

Something of it must have shown on her face, because Vegeta pulled back, his eyes dark and hungry and altogether too knowing, considering how vulnerable Bulma suddenly felt. And then he smiled at her, the expression on his face almost unbearbly superior, and Bulma found her fire again, raked her fingernails over his exposed back in retaliation, a move that made him arch towards her in return, looking for more heat, more friction, more contact.

He found it when he pulled her leg up over his hip while Bulma held on to his shoulders as if her life depended on it, and then his cock settled against her core, her head falling back with the force of her moan. He seized the opportunity, his mouth finding the tender skin of her neck, and he nipped, not hard enough to leave a mark even though Bulma wished that he’d had, if only to remember tomorrow that she hadn’t dreamed making out with a Saiyan prince on the deserted rooftop of their apartment building. But kissing – touching – grinding against him – it wasn’t enough. She wanted so much more – she wanted him, all of him, she wanted him inside of her, with an acute, aching need that transcended pain or pleasure.

“Please...” she murmured against the sweaty skin of his neck that smelled so much like him, hoping that he hadn’t heard her and praying that he had, that he’d know what she was pleading for. She hadn’t dared admit it even to herself, but she’d wanted him for so long that now that they were finally kissing, her desire had ignited like dry kindling just waiting for the flame, and she wanted him so much that she could barely think, only feel. And things felt way too good…

She made an involutary and indignant sound when he put her down and steadied her on her feet, too close to a whine for comfort, but they’d have to get off their clothes – what there was left of them, anyway, they were both very nearly naked – sometime, and now was as good as any.

But his hands didn’t go to the straps of her bikini top. They traveled up her body, over her ass, her sides, her tits, her shoulders, until they finally settled framing her face, one of his thumbs brushing over the spot on her lower lip that he’d bitten. And when she looked at him in return, the hunger in his eyes was still there, but had turned into something more… tender, something altogether more intimate, and how that could be when Bulma had been so damned close to fucking him just a moment before, she didn’t know.

He kissed her again, just a brush of his lips against hers, and Bulma braced herself for rejection, because she’d been here, and done that, and got the t-shirt, and she knew what a guy pulling away like that meant. The regret on his face was so clear that he might as well have hired a skywriter as he picked up her robe from the floor and almost gently draped it over her shoulders, then closed the belt for her, and Bulma sighed deeply and pushed her fingers through her still damp hair. “That means no, then?”

Vegeta chuckled darkly, and the sound sent shivers down Bulma’s spine. She wanted to know what it would feel like, to have him laugh like that against her bare skin as he kissed his way down her belly to her pussy… she shook her head forcefully to find her focus again.

“That means not here.” He stepped closer again, with a pained expression, as if his self-control were deserting him and he hated that she’d reduced him to acting on his desires, and kissed her, properly this time, his hands in her hair, his tongue in her mouth, until she felt dizzy and unsteady on her legs when he pulled away. “If you want this to go any further, you know where my quarters are.” With a last, hungry look at her that left Bulma with no room to doubt that he definitely wanted things to go further, he turned away from her to grab his towel from the treadmill.

“Vegeta...” Bulma pleaded, voice and legs shaking with unfulfilled desire, but he just he smirked that insufferably arrogant smirk again that just begged to be kissed off his lips.

“You know where to find me.”

Before Bulma had collected her scattered thoughts, the elevator doors had closed behind him and she was alone on the cold, quiet roof again.