Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Decoding the Saiyan ❯ Hug ( Chapter 9 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball Z.

A/N: The prompt for this chapter was `hug' from the Intimacy Challenge.

Hug

Bulma cursed as the sound of her lab door slamming shut made her jump, causing her to hit her head on the body of the small aircraft she was currently lying under. “Vegeta!” she yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you not to scare me like that? It fucking hurts every time I hit my head, you jerk!”

When no reply came she rolled herself out from under the aircraft, smudging her dirty hands on her overalls. “Vegeta?” she asked tentatively, getting to her feet and looking for the Saiyan Prince. When she rounded the corner of the plane, however, she realised that it wasn't Vegeta in the room at all, but the smallest of the three living Saiyans.

“Gohan!” she grinned, reaching to pull the small boy into a hug. She stopped herself just in time, remembering the fact that she was grubby, and settled for crossing her arms across her chest. “What brings you here, kiddo?” she asked, smiling down at the child.

The boy blushed and started at the ground, shuffling his feet. Bulma had to fight the urge not to laugh; she had spent a month in the confines of a small spaceship with the kid, but he still had a quiet nature, and it sometimes took a while to coax information out of him.

“My mom was wondering if you could help me, Bulma,” he said politely. “I have a physics test next month, and -”

“Physics?” she interrupted. “Isn't that something that kids don't start seriously until they're fourteen?” she asked. She, of course, had been different, but she was a genius.

“My mom got me into an advanced program,” Gohan explained quickly, his eyes still focused on the ground, “but she doesn't understand the content herself, and so she told me to come here and ask you if you could help me with it.”

“Well sure,” she replied, rocking back on her heels. “But I thought you were meant to be training for the Androids with your dad and Piccolo?”

The little boy winced, and Bulma bit her lip.

“Did your mom chew out your dad about all the training you were doing?” she asked gently, eliciting a nod from the child. “Ah,” she replied. “I guess you're trying to fit both training and study in then, huh?”

“Yeah,” the boy nodded, still yet to look her in the eye. “I just study one day a week, so it's not that bad, but it's why I need to get on top of my physics homework today.”

“Okay,” Bulma replied gently. “Well how about we find my mom first, and get her to cook you some nice lunch, and in the meantime I'll get cleaned up. Then we can go over your physics homework together.”

“Thanks Bulma.”

“No problem, kid,” she replied, only just remembering not to smudge grease through his hair.

.

Bulma pressed the heels of her hands into her back, trying to get the crick out of her spine. When it didn't work she sighed and stood up from the table, walking into the kitchen to get a drink. At nearly six in the evening, she needed a break from tutoring Gohan, and it was time for her to take her faithful little pill, anyway.

She glanced over at the young boy, smiling at the sight of him while she filled herself a glass of water. As the afternoon wore on he his eyes had begun to droop closed every now and then, and now it seemed that he had crashed completely as his head nodded forward towards the table, his chin resting on his chest.

She couldn't blame the poor thing. From what she could gather, Chi Chi and Goku had had a rare but serious argument over his future, and the boy had been stuck in the middle, wanting to please both his parents. He literally had the weight of the world on his small shoulders, training for the Androids with his dad, and on top of that his mother was making him study advanced subjects to fulfil her dream of him becoming a scholar. Bulma shook her head as she mulled over Chi Chi's approach to parenting, her hands moving on autopilot as she reached for her box of pills.

At that moment the door to the dining room flew open with a crash, startling her and making Gohan jump from his chair with a yell. Vegeta stormed in and grabbed the small boy by the front of his shirt, lifting the child high into the air.

“Vegeta!” Bulma yelled, leaving her glass and pills untouched on the kitchen bench. “Put him down!”

“He will spar with me in the chamber,” Vegeta sneered, his lips curling back to reveal his canines. “Do not interfere with my training, woman.” He turned abruptly, Gohan still hanging limply in his grasp, and headed for the gravity chamber once more.

“Vegeta!” she screamed, following after him. Gohan flashed her a pensive look, but didn't attempt to fight the older Saiyan off, and she knew that she was the boy's only chance of getting out of the impromptu sparring session. “You can't just pick him up and order him around like that!”

“I can do what I like, woman! I am this half breed's Prince!” he yelled back, ignoring her.

“Argh!” she screeched. “You have training bots to spar with! That's what they're there for! Stop being such a big bully!”

“Your pathetic bots are worthless!”

“They are not!” she retorted, far too irritated to come up with something better. Red-faced and bristling with anger, she followed him to the capsule ship, though she was too late to prevent the door slamming shut on her. She spent the next ten minutes banging on the door, watching as poor Gohan, unused to the heavy gravity, struggled to stand, let alone fight. Her hand ached from slapping it against the heavy-duty glass, her skin was chilled from the winter air, and her throat was raw from screaming profanities at Vegeta.

“Fuck!” she hissed. It was no use, she realised, to continue knocking on the glass window; Vegeta would simply continue to ignore her. The thought irritated her more than it should have, tears pricking in the corners of her eyes. You would think, she thought to herself, that the man you're sleeping with would have a little more respect for your opinion.

It was obvious to her, however, that he did not. The realisation stung, burning in her throat.

Having exhausted all her other options, she gave up, decided to call Son kun.

.

Twenty minutes later she was still on the phone, cheeks flushed with fury as Chi Chi's voice screeched in her ear. Goku, on the other hand, stood outside the capsule ship, watching his son's spar with a grin on his face.

“Look. You sent him here!” she yelled back down the phone.

“I didn't think you were that irresponsible, Bulma! Vegeta is a murderer! Those horrible men still give my little boy nightmares! He watched four of his allies die by that monster's hands!”

“Vegeta is not a monster!” Bulma yelled back. “And this is the reality of marrying a fighter, Chi Chi! If you didn't want your son fighting, you should have never married Son kun!”

“You butt out of my marriage! You have no idea what it's like!”

“Oh, really? Because I actually went to Namek with your kid, y'know. If he didn't have to do so much homework on the trip over he might've been a little more prepared for what went on there! Did you think about that, huh?”

“You just wait until you have to watch your son fight some monster, and then you tell me how you feel!” Chi Chi snapped.

“I'm NOT having kids!” Bulma screamed down the phone. She pressed the `end call' button, and in a fury hurled the entire handset at the nearest wall. It crashed and shattered, leaving a dent in the wall as the broken pieces clattered on the tiled kitchen floor.

Her plans for the night entirely interrupted, she did not notice the cleaning bot that tipped out her untouched glass of water and threw away her uneaten pill.