Disclaimer: don't own DBZ, y'all!

I.

Sick Day

Trunks darted through the front door of the Brief family home, headed, undoubtedly for food. He and his father had been training for hours; they had almost trained through lunch, which was a rarity for the father/son warrior duo. Left to his own devices, Vegeta would easily skip a lunch in favor of training, making up for the lack of sustenance in a double helping at dinner. Trunks, however, never let his father forget a lunch break. It was one of the many small compromises the Saiyan Prince found himself making over the years in his ill-fitting "father" role.

"Hey there, you, working hard?" a voice cued from the sitting room, noting the late lunch time.

Vegeta turned to his wife, who sat perched on the couch, surrounded by paper work and blueprints. She was clad in yoga pants (which Vegeta had learned he liked very much, both on his wife and for his own training purposes,) and a Capsule Corp. t-shirt, her hair and makeup undone. She looked odd, somehow, like she was too pale, but also too flushed. He couldn't decide which.

"It is Tuesday," the Saiyan noted flatly, studying his mate.

Bulma knew this to be Vegeta-speak for "why are you home and not at work? What has merited a change in the routine? Is there some obligation I have forgotten that requires my presence? Are you going to shout in that horrid tone you take with me because I have forgotten said obligation?"

"Don't worry, I'm just taking a sick day," the scientist assured her husband, rolling her eyes at his predictable manner.

"Sick?" Vegeta frowned. Bulma, in general, was a very healthy human, as well as a workaholic. It was rare that she ever took ill and rarer still that she took off work. This circumstance, he feared, would lead to a large amount of unwanted work for him; she would need to be "checked" on, fetched pills and glasses of water in the evenings while he tried to sleep, and most insufferably, he would find himself concerned about her well-being while trying to focus on his training. She was, after all, a human, and humans were so pathetically weak that disease and infection could actually kill them.

Bulma shrugged, flipping through a stack of papers. "Yeah, it's the strangest thing! I've been throwing up and dizzy all morning! It's probably just a 24 hour thing, though. I feel a lot better now," she flashed her husband a smile, setting the papers she held beside her and reaching for a new stack. "And boy am I glad; this work isn't going to do itself!"

Vegeta continued to frown, crossing his arms. "Perhaps you should rest. Your work cannot possibly require completion this very day," he suggested, feeling the annoying tug of worry in the back of his mind.

"And I guess you can't possibly require this house, or lunch, or a gravity room to train in with our son who also can't possibly require food or shelter," Bulma replied, shaking her head as she skimmed through a blueprint. "Honestly, it's like you really don't get it! This stuff doesn't just magically appear for you to use! Here on Earth, we work for our possessions, not play intergalactic-finders-keepers, genocide edition!"

"Because that was SO easy and not hard work AT ALL," the Saiyan Prince shot, glaring at his mate, then storming off to locate his son and lunch. She was so infuriating sometimes.

Smirking, Bulma returned to her work. He was so easy to bate, that husband of hers. Her amusement was cut short, however, by her turning stomach. She tossed her papers down and ran for the nearest bathroom, just making the toilet as what little was left of her breakfast came back with an admirable vengeance. She groaned, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and easing into a sitting position. She felt terrible. Hell, the last time she had felt this bad was…

"MOM! Dad broke the refrigerator! It wasn't me this time! I swear!" a voice yelled from down the hall, followed by the (not so) muffled sounds of Saiyans wrestling and name calling.