Chapter 31

He was bored to tears, absolute tears. All the little Earthlings were seated on the stage, playing instruments of some sort. They had been playing for two hours already, and he was certain it was never going to end. He was going to die of boredom in the little chair that was nearly too small for him, and the last thing he was going to hear was that awful, shrill noise that passed for Earthling music. He ground his teeth and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, reaching back and scratching his neck where his hair was pulled into a ponytail. Bulma shot him a dirty look and he caught it, wincing as her blue eyes narrowed with annoyance. He scooted lower in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, scowling as he began to stare at the stage once again. A few seconds later his gaze began to wander and he noticed that the majority of the audience were crowded into narrow rows, elbows touching and coats bunched up in laps. Luckily for him Bulma had a box or he would never have been able to sit down during the performance. Shut up, he told himself. You’re doing this for her. No one said you had to like it. He looked over at her, at her slim white shoulders rising out of the strapless black gown, the voluminous taffeta hiding her shapely legs. Even under the perfume she wore he could smell her fresh, light scent. She must have felt his stare, for she looked back at him, a faint scowl still on her brow. “Shhh,” she said sharply, raising her index finger to her lips.

“I didn’t say anything,” he whispered back.

“I don’t care,” she snapped quietly. “Now behave yourself!”

Radditz scowled and leaned back into his chair, staring off into nothingness until he felt a tap on his shoulder. Looking up, he saw that Bulma had stood and was the person who had touched him. Then he realized the music had stopped, the musicians were gone, and the lights of the hall were up to full brightness. The concert was finally over. “What?” he asked, realizing her features were a little twisted with some sort of emotion.

“The performance is over, Radditz,” she growled, angrily throwing her coat over her shoulders and adjusting her elbow-length gloves.

He stood clumsily and stared down at her, adjusting his bow-tie. “Yes,” he said softly.

“Well?” she said sharply, her heels spearing the carpet as she began to stalk away angrily.

“It was very nice,” he said, scrambling to keep up with her. Panic rose in him as he realized he had no idea what she wanted from him or even what he was expected to do. He was just a warrior after all, despite his mechanical training and passing interest in technology, and as such had no idea how to properly conduct himself in the current situation.

She turned on him, eyes snapping, and slapped her hands against her legs in frustration. “Don’t you feed me that garbage, Radditz!” she hissed. “You were bored to death!”

“Bulma,” he said, reaching out an arm.

She batted it away. “How dare you lie to me?” she said.

“It’s not that,” he began, distress starting to show on his features.

She raised a gloved hand and shook her head. “You know what,” she said, “I don’t even care. Vegeta was bored out of his gourd at the opera and he managed to behave himself!”

Radditz stiffened as the comment struck him. Inferior to Vegeta once again! Was he forever doomed to such a fate? Was he condemned to envy the Prince forever? Radditz’s features hardened and he stiffly offered Bulma his arm. “Why are you comparing me to Vegeta?” he said haltingly, looking straight ahead as they left the box and entered the corridor.

Bulma stopped and stared up at him, at the hard planes of his face, the fine weathered lines at the corners of his eyes, the marks of hard life and not age. His nose was a little rounded off at the end, more like Goku’s instead of sharp like Vegeta’s, and his dark eyes were relatively placid. He looked striking in his tux, tailored to his massive build, with his dark hair pulled back at the base of his skull and his bronzed skin shining faintly in the dim light of the concert hall. She gingerly took his arm and clung to it, feeling the large muscles shift beneath the sleeves as his fingers flexed. “I don’t know,” she said, casting her eyes towards the carpet. “You’re nothing alike.”

Radditz looked down at her then, watching the light move across the softly shining crown of her head. “I know that,” he said, suddenly afraid. Vegeta seemed to react very strongly to Bulma. Was that his fault? Would Bulma be safe? “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear.

She glanced over at him from the corner of her eye, her gaze only hitting him at rib-level. A cold prickle worked its way down her spine. “You’ll just have to make sure you don’t,” she muttered, clenching her hands around his forearm and letting him help her descend the stairs.

He realized he was drunk. Very, very drunk. His first clue was when he missed the chair when he tried to sit down, the second being when Zarbon kept saying “Over here, Yamcha,” every time he tried to tell the green-haired man something. The third and final clue, however, was that he found himself nearly unable to walk, which was actually okay, since someone was kind enough him in a booth. The waitress seemed to be checking on him at regular intervals whenever Zarbon wasn’t there, but he ceased to noticed her after a while, because he had passed out cold.

Zarbon returned to the table with the woman he had been dancing with and slid into the seat, staring at Yamcha. The woman made a little noise when she saw the dark-haired man, but slid onto the seat next to Zarbon nonetheless. “You’ll have to excuse my friend,” he said to her quietly. “He seems to have taken leave of the premises,” he muttered as he looked distastefully at Yamcha. Reaching across the table he wrapped his fingers in the thick black hair and raised the head as he removed the bowl of pretzels with his other hand. Yamcha made a little groaning noise and Zarbon had to suppress a laugh; the scarred face was dotted with little red marks where the pretzels had been pressed against the skin. Oh, that was going to hurt in the morning, he thought as he laid Yamcha’s head down gently.

“Is he okay?” the woman asked, running her fingers over Zarbon’s bare, hairless forearm.

“He’ll be fine,” Zarbon murmured, fixing his golden eyes on the woman. “He just broke up with his girlfriend.”

“Oh, and he returned to the dating pool too soon,” she said sympathetically, reaching across the table to pat the dark head of hair.

“I suppose,” Zarbon replied, resting his arm on the back of the cushion.

The woman leaned into his side and smiled up at him, pressing her breasts against his ribs. “It happens. How about you? Are you attached?”

Zarbon had to consciously keep his eyes from widening as he felt her hand trail along the inside of his leather-clad thigh. “Not at the moment, no,” he replied, doing his best to ignore where her hand had come to rest.

“That’s nice,” she said, rising a little to whisper the words in his ear. She reached up and gently tapped his earring, making it sway back and forth in his lobe. “You know, you have wonderful taste in clothes,” she commented, her lips so close to his ear he could feel her breath.

“Thank you,” he murmured, knowing that the outfit he had assembled fit him well. Yamcha had picked out a great pair of lug-soled oxfords that went well with a pair of black leather pants, and Zarbon was partial to the shiny burgundy top that just barely clung to his muscles, and the way the half-zipper in the collar dangled its little ring was absolutely delightful.

“You’re welcome,” she said softly, hooking a finger in the ring of the zipper and pulling, exposing his collarbones and the top of his pectorals and leaning in to kiss the side of his Adams apple.

Zarbon felt the heat ripple through his body and allowed his eyes to roll back a little in his head before looking at Yamcha nervously. Oh, gods, how he loved this planet! “You don’t think I’m a little strange?” he mumbled, trying to focus past where her lips were toying with his neck.

“No, your skin is heavenly,” she muttered against his flesh.

Zarbon let his eyes slide back to the crowd dancing on the floor of the club. “Well, I suppose you do have all sorts of different mammalian and reptilian types here,” he said.

“Do you really need to talk right now?” she asked, suddenly filling the narrow space his lap occupied between the seat and the table, her fingers moving up and down his neck and muscular shoulders.

“Maybe,” he said, closing his eyes and tasting her as she leaned down to kiss him. “I just met you and you’ve been drinking. I don’t want to do anything unfair to you.”

“How could you do that?” she asked, taking his earlobe between her teeth.

“I’m an alien and I’ll be leaving this planet soon,” he said, suppressing a shudder of pleasure.

She backed away and stared at him askance. “Do you think I’m looking for a relationship or something?” she said sharply, eyebrow raised.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Are you?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “One night is all I’m after.”

“Honestly?” he said, secretly delighted. “I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt you.”

She smiled slyly, brown eyes partially hidden by lowered lids and thick lashes. “Then don’t. Or at least not until I ask you to,” she whispered, kissing him again.

He made a noise of pleasure and broke contact, leaning back into the seat and feeling the warmth of her thighs on his lap. “Do you want to leave here?” he asked abruptly.

She ceased straddling him and slid off the seat. “Yes, immediately,” she replied.

Zarbon looked at Yamcha. Poor fellow. “Will you wait for me outside while I take my friend home?” he asked. “It shouldn’t take too long.”
She sighed and looked at Yamcha as well. “Sure. Poor guy lost his girlfriend, after all, and I guess I can be bothered to wait for something like you,” she replied, running her hand over his rear.

“Trust me, I will go as quickly as I can,” he assured her, hoisting Yamcha up over his shoulder and striding towards the exit.

Bulma was just relinquishing her coat to a servobot when the door crashed open behind her. Radditz, standing next to her and waiting for her to finish with the robots, spun around, face contorted in battle-readiness but merely uttering a sharp cry instead of attacking. “What in the hell have you done?” Radditz demanded. Bulma turned herself to see Zarbon standing in the doorway with Yamcha’s limp body draped over his shoulder.

Zarbon scowled, marring his perfect, lovely features. “Nothing,” he snapped in return, quickly going over to the large Saiyan and depositing the Earthling into his arms. Yamcha’s head lolled to the side, eyes shut and cheeks red.

“What is this?” Radditz snarled, clumsily taking Yamcha.

“He’s drunk, nothing more,” Zarbon growled, shooting a look at Bulma. “See that he’s taken care of, for once,” he added before bursting out of the door and into the nighttime sky once again.

Bulma roused herself from the shock she felt and rushed over to her ex-lover’s limp form, quickly inspecting his face with her fingers. The little red marks all over his face looked like the ones won by too close of contact by something unyielding to the skin, but she realized instantly that they would disappear with time. “He’ll be okay,” she breathed, putting her hand under Yamcha’s bangs and pressing her fingers to his forehead. “He’s just going to have one hell of a morning.”

Radditz looked down at Yamcha distastefully. “What should I do with him?” he growled.

A mischievous smile wound across Bulma’s face. “Why don’t we put him up in Zarbon’s room?” she said devilishly, sidling up to Radditz and running a hand down his arm.

A similarly wicked smile twisted Radditz’s face and he shifted Yamcha to a more comfortable position for transport. “Excellent,” he replied. “Show me the way.”

“AAAUUUGH! Why won’t this work?” she screamed, shaking her fists and letting her wrench rattle against the floor.

Radditz looked up from where he sat sautering at a bench and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Why don’t you let me see it?”

She jerked away as he stood, clutching the machinery to her. “Well, aren’t you the expert?” she snapped, eyes flashing.

He stared at her, dumbfounded. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t ever seem to interpret her moods. “Well, actually, Bulma, I am the expert around here,” he said.

Bulma’s blue eyes blinked for several moments as her shoulders slumped. “Oh, right,” she muttered, lowering her eyes and pressing her mouth into a line as he bent and handed her the wrench. “It’s just frustrating, you know, seeing what I want but not understanding it or how to make it work,” she said bitterly, casting her glance back at the pod. When she looked back at him he had an odd expression on his face, as if he had just swallowed a particularly nasty bug.

“I know exactly how you feel,” he intoned, black eyes covering her and making the hairs on her neck stand up.

She stared right back, wondering how he managed to creep her out so bad when he was just being sweet. Was it the way he never seemed to stop looking at her? She thought he was handsome, her mother had been right about that after all, and most of her friends seemed to get along with him, but it seemed as if he was looking at her skin and not what was inside. Just like Yamcha. He was sweet, and loving, but had never been able to understand her or feel what she felt. No one had ever been able to tell her the why of it all, and that’s what she wanted most desperately, to know how things worked. Shaking her head, she decided to ignore the prickles at the base of her skull and pretend that she didn’t notice the way he never blinked when he looked at her. “Whatever,” she mumbled as a movement at the edges of her vision caught her attention.

“Mornin’,” a voice said from the doorway.

“Yamcha!” she said, feeling old emotions well up inside of her. Although the love was gone she still retained strong feelings of affection for him. He leaned against the doorjamb heavily, rings under his eyes and his hair sprawling wildly in every conceivable direction, hands in his pockets as he looked at her sheepishly. A smile broke over her face and she dashed over to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and burying her face in his neck.

“Ow,” he said, wincing as her movement jostled him. “My head’s still pounding.” He pulled her close to him and inhaled deeply of her lightly scented hair. Raising his eyes, he focused past her to where Radditz stood, fists clenched at his sides and posture stiff. The Saiyan’s face was slightly pinched with some sort of unnamed feeling and his tail was unwound from his waist, lashing madly back and forth in the air behind him.

She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him away so she could look at him better. “I don’t doubt it. You were out cold last night when Zarbon brought you back and you’ve been sleeping ever since.”

Yamcha resisted the urge to reach out and crush her to him again, instead eying Radditz warily. He had heard through Krillin that Radditz had been sparring with Goku, and as such was possibly stronger than himself, so he immediately decided against issuing a challenge to the large Saiyan. Besides, that would just give Vegeta one more reason to try and kill him. “So where is Zarbon at?” he asked idly, instead settling for running his hand gently up and down her upper arm.

Bulma raised an eyebrow. “He just dropped you off and left. Did you hook him up with one of your friend’s sisters or something?”

Yamcha grinned and started to chuckle, but winced when the movement jostled his skull painfully. “No, he was more than able to find his own partners,” he muttered. “Hey, what time is it?”

She frowned and looked at her watch. “About eleven-thirty,” she said. “How come?”

“I’m still in time for brunch!” he chortled, looping his arm through hers. “You’re just in time to come accompany me.”

“She was here to begin with,” Radditz snarled. “She’s busy right now.”

Bulma turned on him, scowling. “I don’t think you know how I dole out my time,” she said. “Of course I’ll go with you, Yamcha,” she cooed. “It’s not fun to eat alone.”

“Great! I’ve got the worst grease jones going on!” he crowed, silently noting Radditz’s brittle expression after Bulma’s sharp words. This situation merited watching, he decided, and began to walk with her down the hallway.

Zarbon sauntered in the door, stretching an arm as he picked at his braid with his other hand, and felt the room go silent around him. Glancing up, he saw that everyone seated at the table was looking at him, food raised halfway to mouths, eyes ranging from curious to disgust. He dropped his braid awkwardly and flashed his best smile. “Good afternoon,” he said brightly, wandering over to the fridge.

“Hey, Zarbon,” Yamcha said, sipping his coffee once again. “How was your night?”

Zarbon chuckled from the depths of the fridge. “Oh, a good deal better than yours, I’d say,” he muttered, his voice accompanied by the clinking of bottles. “How are you feeling?”

Yamcha laughed, shooting a glance over at Bulma and winking, earning a growl from Radditz. “Shitty,” he said, taking another drink. “But that’s to be expected.”

Zarbon’s eyes appeared momentarily above the refrigerator door. “Never much liked drinking alcohol myself, and some of the things you have here are absolutely horrible. Can’t complain, though.”

Bulma shifted nervously in her chair. “Uh, guys, what’s going on?” she finally said, blue eyes darting to and fro. “I didn’t know you two were such good friends.”

Yamcha turned his gentle gaze on her and smiled, rubbing her upper arm with two fingers. “He was bored and so I took him out. After all, since he doesn’t have Vegeta to worry him he needs something to do.”

Bulma scowled. “Where is Vegeta?” she asked, sending a cross glance at Radditz. The color rose to his cheeks in response and he looked at the ground.

Zarbon appeared with a plate laden with food and sat down across from her, his cool eyes resting lightly on her face as he daintily rose some food to his mouth. “In the desert, meditating,” he replied nonchalantly.

Bulma laughed loudly. “Him, meditating?” she chortled. “Does he honestly have the capacity for something like that?”

Radditz’s spine stiffened. “The Prince prides himself on his wide range of capabilities,” he said defensively.

Zarbon nodded appreciatively. “Yes, Vegeta is full of surprises,” he agreed. “You’d do well not to underestimate him.”

She scowled and shook her head. “So you just abandon him in the desert. Great. So how long are we free of his royal-pain-in-the-ass?”

“Bulma,” Radditz chided softly. “You really shouldn’t speak that way about the Prince...”

Bulma turned on him, eyes snapping. “Oh shut up, Radditz,” she spat. “You hate him even more than I do.”

Zarbon’s eyebrows rose in curiosity and he leaned forward in his chair. “What?” he said, trying to hide his shock.

Bulma directed her glare at the green-haired man. “You heard me,” she growled. “Radditz probably hates Vegeta more than any of us. I mean, you know how it is to work with him, Zarbon, and he even respects you!”

Zarbon barked a short laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it respect,” he began with a crooked smile, fingering his fork absently.

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what you call it. Poor Radditz is at the bottom of the food chain and I don’t think it’s fair. He told me all about what happened on that Arlia place and about how Nappa was going to let him die and then Vegeta, who he has served faithfully all his life, treats him like dirt!” she snarled.

“Bulma,” Radditz urged, embarrassed.

She whirled around on him once again. “Shut up!” she snapped, standing angrily and striding from the room. Radditz threw the other two men a strange look of suffering and exasperation and followed her out of the room, his voice pleading with her as they traveled down the hall.

Zarbon turned wide eyes on Yamcha. “What in the hell was that?” he said.

Yamcha shrugged, staring at the table and idly toying with the handle of his mug. “She does this sometimes. I think the stress is getting to her. She works all day with Radditz on technology she desperately wants and I don’t think she’s making as much progress as she would like.”

Zarbon scowled, chewing thoughtfully. “Well, isn’t that to be expected? Our things are an unknown quantity, after all.”

Yamcha nodded, gesturing with his other hand. “I guess, but she’s not used to it. And Vegeta’s not helping her out by picking at her all the time. She just doesn’t know what she wants, I guess.”

Zarbon scowled and shook his head. “You’re losing me. Remember that I’m not an Earthling.”

Yamcha sighed, changing his posture to lean his elbows on top of the table. “She wants to finish the technology so she can have it in hand, but I don’t think she wants you guys to leave soon. Same thing with Radditz. She’s attracted to him but he creeps the hell out of her, staring at her all the time and being all strange.”

Zarbon immediately put down his food. “What? Have things gone far between the two of them?”

It was Yamcha’s turn to scowl darkly. “No, I don’t think so,” he said bitterly, “And if I have anything to do with it they never will. Anyhow, you’d have to be blind not to notice how he pants all over her. He even does that tail thing!”

“What tail thing?” Zarbon demanded, his alarm increasing.

Yamcha gestured again with a finger. “You know, where the tail uncurls and waves around in the air like crazy, like a cat stalking its prey.”

“I do not like that analogy,” Zarbon said.

Yamcha shrugged again. “It doesn’t exist for you to like. That’s the way it is, and I don’t think there’s anyone who can do anything about it.”

“That’s what worries me,” Zarbon replied, and rose to put his dishes away.

30 / Bulma’s Hideout / 32