In your opinion, how do you think Bulma and Vegeta treat ed each other at the end of the Buu saga?
i remember you had a HC about Bulma not wanting him to touch her, but do you believe she still talked to him and spent time with him or did she simply avoid him unless it was absolutely necessary?
Do you think he sorta did things to try and be close to her and do things to try to win her trust back?
Digging through my posts like a disheveled researcher fjdjdk
If it’s the hc I think you’re talking about, I think(?) I was talking about touching sexually (unless it was older than that post, which it might be!) Basically I think/hc that it was an uno inverse of what Bulma did creating a soft place for Vegeta to land and encouraging his more emotional trust in the 7YG, except this time it’s Vegeta having to be the strong one for her while she finds her footing and decides if and how she wants to move forward.
I think I have a post about it somewhere unless it’s lost to one of my many tag essays, but basically I like to think they kind of started dating for the first time. Despite being married for years, their relationship was really non-traditional (and as many of us hc, hypersexual as a means of both coping and bonding).
I love the idea that this time around they had to slow things down and have limitations to how physical they could be based on Bulma’s comfort and hesitation. I love to think that came with her fears that Vegeta would get impatient now that (what I hc as) the source of the sexual instigation is not comfortable with sex, and Vegeta getting an opportunity to be gentle and learn to offer affection as a show of reassurance that he’s not going anywhere unless she dismisses him. I imagine there was still touching and cuddling and grooming bonding, and now with the bathtime canon I love thinking that was incorporated heavily into their trust rebuilding, but I really love the idea that Bulma was hesitant in the same way Vegeta used to be in that kissing could only go so far and touching could only get so intimate before she got uncomfortable and had to bow out for the night because she wasn’t ready to give him access to her that way again.
I have a super specific hc about their first night back, after borrowing the time chamber because Vegeta is upset that she isn’t angry at him and Bulma explains that she doesn’t even know what happened, and they end up talking for a Long Time so Vegeta can tell her everything and they can talk about it and she keeps trying to rationalize it and he keeps not letting her do that because he needs her to accept that he chose to do a bad thing and he just found out he won’t be with her in the afterlife and what does she want to do about that because he thought he was going to be gone and doesn’t know how to move forward and all she wants to do is go home with her family because she woke up this morning just wanting to go to a stupid little tournament and then their whole world literally exploded, so they talk for hours (they’re probably gone for like 10 minutes in the real world) and kind of agree that she’s allowed to be upset later but right now let’s just go home together since we still can.
So Vegeta gets some time to talk to Trunks later that evening and it’s cute in my head but that’s another post and after Trunks goes to bed, Bulma’s had some time to decompress on her own and offers Vegeta his old room For A While and he’s of course gutted by it but is like yeah, fair, of course. If Trunks asks, Papa trains at night now so he can be with the family during the day (which is probably true anyway) and doesn’t want to wake up Mom afterward. It’s fine. So they go to bed in separate rooms and like half an hour later Bulma’s crawling into bed with him just to sleep next to her husband, and there’s nothing sexual about it, there’s no kissing, they just want their arms around each other, they just want to be here, home, and alive, and together. That’s all.
And I think that kind of summarizes The Vibe I imagine for that period of their lives. A lot of grief dealing with a fate that feels like borrowed time for something terminal, a lot of grief dealing with the one decision Vegeta could make that could really deeply hurt Bulma, a lot of faith in the thousands of good days they’ve had between the few incredibly bad ones, a lot of love for the effort they’ve put into their relationship, and just a lot of patience and careful hands slowly healing fractures that never fully broke and can’t quite be reset.
Adjacent ficlet but I also love to think that a month or so later when they decide to take a bath together Bulma notices that all of Vegeta’s scars are gone and says something about it being like all of his memories being erased and he very suddenly remembers what Piccolo told him and makes a mental checklist like
✅ Cleansed My Soul (came back without Bobidi’s mark)
And he goes to rush off to find Baba and Bulma’s like “Hey take me with you I’ve been to her house” and so they go and he asks her about it and that’s how they find out Vegeta’s technically been reincarnated as himself just like Piccolo was and that’s why he’s been upgraded to just going to hell in super
and because I am a comedy hound I decided Bulma’s like ‘oh well maybe I can come visit you’ and Baba’s like ‘you won’t need to visit’ and that’s how they find out Bulma is also going to hell for fucking with time and the dragon balls and shooting a child in the face with a gun gjdjd
idk if finding out they’ll be together forever after all sparked the night they hooked up again but i imagine their unparalleled joy response definitely made baba uncomfortable