Vegebul headcanons: Vegeta fell for Bulma first
So lots of ppl in fanfic often write Bulma falling for Vegeta first. I see it the other way around.
The ship explodes while he's training, and he suddenly has all this downtime he never had while serving under Freeza. They've had surface-level conversations before, gotten at each other's throats over alien-human misunderstandings as well as serious moral and/or experiential differences. But while he's recovering, he gets a bit stir-crazy and just...finds himself around Bulma rather often, and they actually start to get to know each other.
Bulma finds him dark and mysterious---fascinating to her in an almost scientific way because he's so like a human but so different at the same time. She admires his tenacity; though he would never characterize himself as a victim, she knows he's faced grief and hardship, and carrying on with such clarity of purpose anyway is heartening in a way. Meanwhile, Vegeta just doesn't understand why this woman insists on talking to him, making sure he takes care of himself... He can understand her providing gear and housing---she and her friends need him for the upcoming battle. But the interest, openness, and basic kindness she displays baffles him, especially when he is a sworn enemy of Kakarot's. With Nappa and Raditz things were always complicated. So many roles and expectations with him being their prince. But with this Earth woman, there are no expectations at all. So he doesn't know what to do with her.
He won't let himself think of her as beautiful even if his eyes linger on her. He has just seen so few women like her. Certainly, he's never spent so much time with one either. Always on his way to a new planet. No real friends or consistency of any kind. That's not to say he regards her as a friend. Of course not. He tells himself that she's useful. She has resources, power. And she pursues her own ends with intensity and fearlessness---saiyan qualities he understands.
And then she's in his thoughts day and night. He thinks of her scent or her voice when he's trying to train, when he's lying awake and can't sleep. That sparkle in her eyes when he challenges her, but it doesn't shake her in the slightest. Her laugh, her little touches. He's head over heels for her long before they have sex, but he has no context for feelings like that. He just feels like he's losing his mind.
And it scares the shit out of him. How can he focus on transforming and defeating the one who took his birthright and Freeza's death from him when this woman is just fucking haunting him? He doesn't even know it's romantic attraction. He won't even accept that he's sexually attracted even though his body reacts to hers however fiercely he avoids looking at or touching her.
Meanwhile, Bulma has just broken up with Yamcha. She's not really in a place where she's thinking about a new relationship. She might want to have some fun here and there now that she's single, sure, but she's much more focused on the arrival of the Androids. Especially since she knows how hard her future self worked to warn everyone and give them a chance to have a different outcome than she did. And Vegeta is a powerful asset to have on her side. As much of a jerk as he can be, he works tirelessly to prepare himself for the battle, and helping him become stronger may make a difference in their survival.
Sure, it tickles her scientist brain to have an alien living on her property she can ask about space and otherworldly tech whenever she wants. And Vegeta himself has a fascinating (if dark and disturbing) personal history. He's not what she expects in some ways. Proud, and yet also very reserved and even shy. Aggressive and intense, but at the same time thoughtful, introspective, and so dedicated to his calling that she realizes it's a spiritual thing for him, perhaps even religious.
She finds herself enjoying his company even when she knows that she shouldn't. He's not exactly a true ally. He's not a good person. But he's just so...interesting. And he's more attractive than he seems to realize. She indulges a fantasy or two of what he might be like in bed. But it's not serious. She knows she shouldn't. It would never work out. It would be so fucking complicated and fraught for everyone involved. There's no way an alien man would have the same (or even compatible) ideas about relationships or sex. Even if Vegeta did, he'd never fucking tolerate having a frank conversation about it. He's really kind of a prude.
And yet...they spend more time with each other, and the tension between them just builds. Over months and months, it builds slowly but surely. And one day, it just fucking breaks. One evening, they end up closer than usual. Touching each other, and it gets really intense really fast. No time to really discuss where things are going or what anything means---they just need each other in that moment. And it works out. Somehow. It's almost too easy. Despite all the cultural differences. They have sex, and it feels...good.
For Vegeta, sexuality had previously always been something tainted with negativity. What's the point of having a drive for sex, after all, when you're the last of your kind, and fleeting pleasures are hardly more than distractions? But with Bulma, everything just felt so fucking right and good. Like finally getting to experience all the things he'd always wondered about and longed for even if he never admitted it to himself. Things he thought were impossible. Having sex in a situation where he had a real choice in the matter. With a woman when he had spent his whole life having to accept the fact that no saiyan women had survived. On top of everything, not only does he want her---desperately---but she wants him in return. How she squirms when he touches her, how her scent changes, how she trembles and whimpers when he gets to do all the things he never let himself want before.
It just completely and utterly unravels him, and he can't get enough of her. He thought that, just maybe, if he gave in and slept with her, she wouldn't fucking haunt him anymore, but it just gets fucking worse. He needs her like water. Like if he doesn't get to be in her presence and touch her, he will just fucking lose it even more than he already has. And it fucking terrifies him. He's only ever wanted one thing: to transform and make things right after Freeza destroyed everything. But now he's preoccupied, and he can't handle it. He doesn't know what to do. What any of it means. What he really wants out of any of it. And he has no idea what she wants either. Only that however many times he tries to stay away from her, they always end up tangled up again. He couldn't even tell her how he feels even if he wanted to because he's so clueless about what's happening to him.
Meanwhile Bulma is just absolutely floored by how intense everything is from the beginning. She wonders if it's a saiyan thing, or if he's just intense like that himself. She doesn't know what Vegeta's full history with sex is, but she knows it's complicated. All she knows is that he kisses her like it's his last day on Earth. That he fucks her like he couldn't resist her if he tried (and he does try). And she can't help but ride that high. She brings this mysterious, strong, and austere man to his knees, and her power over him is intoxicating. She knows she shouldn't play around with someone so dangerous even if she's convinced he'll become an ally eventually. She knows that most of her friends wouldn't approve. It's not like she wants to DATE Vegeta. But gods...his desperation, the way he almost worships her, how wild and even frightening he can be---she can't help but indulge herself at least a little bit even if it's against her better judgment. It's not serious, after all. It's not like Vegeta of all people would even want to be some kind of partner to her anyway. He just wants sex (right?), and that's all she wants too. So she proposes a friends-with-benefits situation that they are determined to keep on the down-low.
Vegeta's head is just spinning at all of this. He still doesn't fucking know what to do with her. He can't have an attachment to her---especially not now when his sole focus needs to be transforming---but imagining his life without her is just... So he just lets her call it whatever she pleases, as long as no one else is involved and no one else knows about it. The weakness all the more glaring and real if other people know about it. He can tell himself he is just having sex with her so he can stay focused on training. Nothing more than that. Certainly not.
Over the course of it, Vegeta's feelings for her just intensify. If he was head over heels before they had sex, the more time they spend and the more intimate they become, he only falls more madly in love with her. And while Bulma tells herself that feelings aren't really involved for her beyond the friendship she develops with him, she has little pangs of romantic longing that hit her out of nowhere from time to time. Almost hard not to when the sex is the way that it is. She wonders sometimes if he has feelings for her. Real feelings. But he just couldn't, right? She's just being a silly hopeless romantic like she was when she was younger, and she's over that. He's an alien with a tortured past, and he's not boyfriend material, and she's fine with that. That's not what she wants anyway. Certainly not right now with the end of the world around the corner.
We all know how things go down after this, though, don't we?
But yeah. I headcanon Vegeta falls first and harder, whereas Bulma falls gradually after they become involved. Bulma has experienced good relationships before, and she wasn't looking for a romance with Vegeta in the wake of her breakup. Vegeta, on the other hand, hasn't experienced romantic love or sexual attraction where things weren't fucked up and fraught in some way before. So his "relationship" (re: passionate affair) with Bulma means so much more to him even if he couldn't articulate it. It completely blows him away, but he doesn't have the context or emotional insight to make sense of it. So he just panics, lol.
