Vegeta cringed. Pity rolled off her like potent nerve toxin. He wished he'd kept his mouth shut. Gods. Humans and their fucking feelings. He didn't want pity. He only wanted her to know that nothing about his life mattered, that she could take his life in her hands and do as she saw fit; use him up and throw him away; and it would be better than anything he'd hoped for. Anything he'd known. She would be more likely to try him out if she understood that he was disposable. Everyone was, of course, but there were tiers to it and he was well below her.
She handed him more cheese and crackers and he sneaked pieces of plain cheese while she contemplated what he'd said. She stared up at the stars. "If I build you a ship, will you leave?"
Her question took Vegeta entirely by surprise. He watched her. He enjoyed staring at her while she was oblivious to him, looking at the supple line of her throat, that place he imagined kissing, down to where it met her collarbone, nipping that delicate tendon just enough to make her gasp not to make her bleed. When she lowered her turquoise gaze, still so vivid even with only light pollution and starlight, he met it, held it. He was curious what motivated her question. Did she want him to leave? Did she feel sorry for him and think he would be happier out there? Vegeta likely wouldn't be happy anywhere. It wasn't in his nature.
"I don't miss the void enough for that. And I don't think Earth has the tech for intergalactic travel anyway. I should have paid more attention to the engineers, but I didn't. I could only do basic repairs on my ship, not build it from scratch."
"But if you could—if you could escape Earth—would you? Hypothetically," she asked sitting up. Her eyes ate him alive and he always feared she would see the fear he buried so deep. The fear that he would never feel anything more keenly than the peace and oblivion of being in the vast emptiness of intergalactic space. The fear that he would feel something stronger, the fear he felt because he already did. For her. For this beautiful woman asking him this enigmatic question.
"I don't know. There's nothing for me out there. My planet is gone. My people are dead. I'm a pariah from the Frieza Force. There's…well…all that awaits me out there is more nothingness."
Vegeta, for once, lost his appetite. He was foolish to believe that this woman wanted to spend more time with him. She only wanted to investigate how hard she should be working on the spaceship so she could be rid of him. Maybe she was sick of working on the spaceship. She was brilliant, but she had a tendency to move on from unfinished projects when they no longer held her interest. Was Vegeta's ship that way? Was Vegeta that way? Had he only been an amusing project for the past three years?
"Did you ever have anyone, you know, who cared about you? Out there?" she said, briefly glancing at him and then looking up at the stars again.
Vegeta laughed, releasing some of his tension. "No one cares about anyone out there, woman." She refilled his wine glass again. He should have determined how alcoholic it was before continuing to imbibe, but he didn't care. Maybe he'd get lucky and drink himself to death, spare her his bungled attempts at closeness. At what passed for love in Vegeta's desiccated soul.
"Really? Like no one dates in space?" she asked, her gaze snapping to him. Her eyes narrowed skeptically. "I have to believe people at least have sex in space, right? Don't all species like sex? Or at least feel biologically driven to have it?"
Vegeta's face burned. Even hearing the woman say the word "sex" made him ache to show her just how much sex people in space had. He gave her a lascivious smirk and purred, "Vulgar woman. I don't know what 'dating' is, so I can't properly say whether spacefaring peoples engage in it. But sex, yes, of course. Plenty of it. Sex is one of the few leisure activities that almost anyone, anywhere, can enjoy, rich and poor, all ages, past physical maturity, obviously, male, female, and every other gender out there. Sex is space's main diversion and its great equalizer because everyone wants it."
She giggled and this time her bizarre socializing shoulder-blow lingered, her hand squeezing the muscle there as she shook with laughter. "Are you serious?" she wheezed out and the pads of her fingers brushed the skin of his bicep as she removed her hand from him. The touch made him hungry again, and not just for food.
He downed as much cheese as he could without the dry, flavorless crackers, and said, "Of course I'm serious. What else could people do when time is short? Languages exist by the thousands so communication can be challenging. No one out there does any of the type of things that Earthlings do for entertainment. There's fucking, eating, and killing. Gambling sometimes, I suppose that's a form of diversion."
She shifted to sit on her ass with her legs butterflied and crossed, pushing the cloth of her dress to cover her crotch. But it didn't cover the wave of scent that rippled out from her as she moved. Vegeta felt his tail scar tingle upon smelling that the woman was aroused. Intriguing. Perhaps just talking about sex excited her.
The woman said, "So have you had sex with other species? Or just Saiyans?"
"Both," Vegeta said with a little snort of laughter, "Or rather, I've had sex with a single Saiyan—not a lot of us left—and a whole lot of other species."
"Oh my gods, Vegeta, were you just a complete space slut?" the woman asked, her smile broad and her eyes sparkling with delight.
Perhaps she assumed he was sexually naïve and thus had no interest in fucking him, but finding out he'd been with other species made her feel more sure of his ability to couple well? How bizarre. Vegeta wondered if there were sexually mature humans who didn't enjoy sex as a pastime.
Carefully now, feeling like maybe he found a route to get between her legs, or even to gain her affection, he said, "I don't know what a slut is," though he hated admitting more ignorance. Better than saying something stupid.
The woman's eyes crawled over him, took in his body for what felt like the first time. "You're not actually a slut, Vegeta. It's a pejorative for people, women especially, that have a lot of sexual partners."
Vegeta flared a nostril in confused horror, his lip pulling up on one side. He spluttered, "But…why…why would that be a pejorative? Doesn't it demonstrate the sexual prowess of the person deemed a 'slut?' Do humans not enjoy skill in their sexual partners?"
The woman's smile, which Vegeta didn't think could get any wider, managed somehow, and she laughed more which made him happy. That had never really happened before, someone else's pleasure making him happy, outside of sex. He liked it. It felt nice to amuse her this way. When she stopped laughing, she said, "Well…sex amongst humans has lots of weird…baggage. So for women, especially, having lots of partners is considered bad."
"That's absurd. How can you properly select a mate if you don't try different partners?"
"A mate?"
"Like your parents. Are they not a mated pair?"
"Oh! Yeah, you mean married."
"Is there no physical bond between them? No claim? Is it merely a legal arrangement?" Vegeta was aghast, but tried to hide it. What if humans didn't pair-bond at all? What if they refused to be claimed? Vegeta couldn't bear the thought of the woman being tied to him only by a legal contract (then reprimanded himself for how far ahead of himself he was getting). His mouth watered with the urge to claim her, mark her as his, but he would never force such a thing. He missed his tail. Without his tail the early stages of courtship felt empty and difficult. Unsatisfying.
The woman said, "Well…they love each other. They certainly, um, share a physical relationship. Is that what you mean?"
Vegeta needed to stop this conversation. He snuffed out his hope for truly mating with the woman. "Never mind. I suppose if I'm going to teach you to fly we'd better get started."
She wiggled her glass of wine in front of him. "I want to finish my wine. You're just trying to get out of talking to me. You always do that. You start to freak out and I never know why and I wish you'd just tell me," she said and leaned back to brace herself on her free hand. It thrust her breasts up beautifully. Gods he wanted her so badly, but she seemed to view his change of subject as negative.
"I don't 'freak out!' Wait, what does that mean?" he asked, trying to stop himself from staring at her nipples where they strained against the thin fabric of her dress.
"It means you get uncomfortable and avoid actually talking to me. You opened up earlier, when you told me about the void. You don't have to tell me about all your hot alien affairs if you don't want to tell me. I was just surprised you've had a lot of partners," she said and took a sip of her wine.
Vegeta scowled and snarled, "Why are you surprised? Do you think I'm weak? Or impotent? Or—"
The vixen interrupted him and he considered screaming, "No, Vegeta, you ridiculous man, you're obviously not weak and I assume you're not impotent. You're just…reticent. Guarded. Wary. It's strange to think of you having sex because those things seem…challenging…in the bedroom."
"Where?"
"In the bedroom."
"It's true, they do cause difficulty sleeping at times, but I don't see how that's relevant."
"No, I mean sex. I can see it being hard to enjoy sex if you're on guard constantly and waiting for someone to hurt you."
"Very few partners have ever hurt me, I'm quite powerful, even on the universal scale."
"Vegeta, sometimes I can't tell if you're deliberately misunderstanding me or if our cultures are just that different. I mean hurt your heart."
Vegeta's eyes widened and his brow furrowed, "Do…do…do humans use their hearts for sex somehow?"
"Okay, so not deliberate, just obtuse. No. Calm down, you're going to flutter my dress up with your chi floof."
"Floof?"
"Shush. Just listen to me for a minute without being an alien—"
"I am an alien—"
"Shush!" she commanded and pressed her finger to his lips as she had earlier in the day. He wanted to suck it into his mouth. To taste her. Gods, even with her infuriating lotion she smelled lovely.
"Vegeta. Humans do not have sex with our hearts. It's a metaphor for feelings, like feeling good about the person you want to have sex with. For feelings to be mutual there has to be a certain level of…vulnerability…you know? But maybe alien sex is more animalistic than human sex. I just assumed that if you did it for fun that it would be…fun. You seem to struggle with…fun," she said the last part very slowly.
When she pulled her finger away from his lips, she leaned forward and he had another excited moment when he thought she might kiss him. But she just refilled his wine.
"I—It—That type of thing isn't necessary for sex. Humans have much more elaborate social customs than most aliens I've encountered, and certainly more complicated than any species I've fucked. It's maddening. It's not like this in space. You just express your attraction and they either agree or don't. Occasionally there is flirtation as in your Earth entertainment, but when living a nomadic life, there's no time for true courtship, in general. No time for anything, really."
"So you never had a girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? Do you have sex with both?" she said.
"Yes, I fucked whoever I was attracted to, but Earthlings seem to have strict rules about that too. Is a boyfriend or girlfriend…is that when you are…trying out…a potential mate?" he asked, grinding his teeth in fury that he had yet again exposed his lack of knowledge. Stupid isolated planet with its beautiful landscapes and one perfect, beautiful, blue-haired woman.
"Yeah, basically. It's someone you like, but have sexual relations with too, and sometimes it leads to, um, being a mated pair. Did you ever have that, or something like it?"
"Not exactly," he answered, feeling the horrifying sting of tears.
"What does that mean?" the woman asked.
Vegeta didn't want to think of his past. Of the closest thing he'd felt to love. The shame he felt for feeling something so weak. The shame of who'd caused him to feel such a thing.
Vegeta mustered a smirk and said, "It doesn't matter. Shall I teach you to fly, woman? Or have you changed your mind?" He stood up and extended his hand to help to her feet. The act of helping people to their feet seemed to be widely regarded as positive on Earth, whereas Vegeta would sooner die than allow someone to know he needed or wanted such a thing.
The woman took his hand and he enjoyed that her hands were calloused too, rough from always working with them. He loved how capable she was. She stared into his eyes and held his hand a moment after she stood. His heart thundered and he swallowed hard, always afraid of what she would see if she looked hard enough.
She whispered, "There's no shame in loving someone, Vegeta. I'm sorry you lost whoever it was. If you ever want to talk to me about it, you can, but I understand if it's too painful."
Vegeta's throat tightened and he clenched his teeth to stifle the way everything tried to burble up in him. He wanted so badly to take solace in the woman. He wondered what she would do if he told her, undoubtedly crying like a weakling child, and let her see that he wasn't strong. Hadn't she said something about vulnerability being part of sexual culture on Earth? He searched her eyes more. But the thought of opening himself up that way made him recoil back inside the shell he'd cultivated over the years. So he only said, "Come, first I'll have to teach you to direct your chi."
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