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“We never talk,” Bulma says one night. Vegeta stares at her. She waits for a response, but he seems to be hoping that she’ll stop being there if he just squints enough. Alas, many men had tried such tactics before and failed (typically at board meetings, bleh). “We never talk.”
“I heard you the first time.” Vegeta informs her. “We talk all the time.”
“We argue all the time,” Bulma corrects.
“Yes. That is talking. The best kind.”
She has to fight to keep from rolling her eyes. Goku had never been overly fond of arguments, as far as she knew, but Vegeta enjoyed every form of fighting, including verbal. She couldn’t help but think that that was why he’d taken interest in her at all - she found it very unlikely that Saiyan beauty standards were anything like humans.
“I mean an actual conversation. About– I don’t know, little things.” She can’t actually think of anything they should talk about. Basic small talk 101, why hast thou forsaken me?
“Little things?” Vegeta repeats, frowning. It’s probably an Earth idiom of sorts, but he’s still not familiar enough with the language to be certain, so he decides to take it literally (partly because her reactions are amusing, and partly because perhaps then they can just argue and call it a night). “Your father’s shoulder creature is rather minuscule.”
“So are you, jackass,” Bulma snaps, gleefully lording her half a centimeter over him. Unfortunately, she’s aware of what he’s trying to do, so she takes a deep breath and calms herself. “No, like, we should get to know each other. In a less physical sense. Seriously, I know more about your dick than who you are as a person.”
A good response, Bulma thinks, would have been “isn’t that the part you like best”, but Vegeta never responded well to sex jokes. He just turned red and spluttered a lot– and he’s true to that now.
“Woman– I– you– gah!” His face is brighter than an emergency siren, and Bulma bursts out laughing before a thought occurs to her.
“Hey, how come jokes like that bother you so much?” she asks suddenly. “Most guys I know only get embarrassed a little, or they like that kind of humor too. Or they don’t really get it at all.” Vegeta frowns.
“It’s– I don’t understand why it’s even funny,” he admits after a moment. “Why are humans so obsessed with such vulgar things?” Bulma shrugs.
“There’s probably reasons, but that’s not my field of expertise.” She considers offering to stop making those jokes altogether, but Vegeta would probably be offended by that. It’s not really easy to be nice to him. “Are you saying you’ve never met another species that jokes like that?”
“I avoided as many people in Frieza’s army as I possibly could,” Vegeta says flatly. “And any planets I went to.... well, it’s not like I was there to chat with the residents.” Right. The genocide thing. Bulma generally tried not to think about that, but given how big a part of Vegeta’s life it was, it’s almost impossible to avoid. “Do– do you regret any of it?” She asks before she can stop herself.
“No.” Vegeta’s answer comes instantly, and Bulma can’t find a shadow of guilt anywhere in his features. If anything, he seems surprised by the question. “Why would I? Are you asking because you feel guilty for sleeping with me? on their behalf? They would have died anyway.” Bulma blinks. She hadn’t been aware of it, but perhaps she did feel guilty for sleeping with a man who’d taken so many lives. She doesn’t really know what to do about it, though, so she just flops down on his bed.
“This is why I wish you’d talk to me,” she says at the ceiling. “There’s so much about you I don’t understand. Maybe it’s just the scientist in me, but–”
“You are an engineer,” Vegeta says, blinking. “Are you comparing me to a machine?” Bulma snorts.
“Everything’s personal with you, huh?” She muses. “I wish you were a machine; then I’d be able to figure you out in no time.” He doesn’t respond, so she lies there and waits for him to tell her to leave. He’s never let her stay after sex, which is fine. That’s all it is, after all. But he remains silent, so eventually she stands to leave on her own.
As she nears the door, she hears him finally speak.
“...Nappa and Raditz made jokes like that, sometimes,” he says, so quietly that she’s not even sure he meant to say it aloud at all. “It’s not a Saiyan thing, I don’t think. I just– I never–” He cuts himself off and rolls over, facing away from her. “Never mind.”
“Were you close?” Bulma asks, hand hovering above the doorknob. She can’t see his face, but she can imagine him staring out the window at the night sky, comparing Earth’s constellations to the ones he seen on other planets. It might just be her imagination, though.
“...I don’t know,” Vegeta admits. “If we were, it was a long time ago.” She doesn’t ask if he regrets anything about his old partners. She’s not sure she wants to know the answer.
“Goodnight, then,” she says, as cheerfully as she can. Just before the door closes, she thinks she hears him say it back.