Love During Robot Fighting Time: Chapter 28

Hello, lovelies! Hope y'all are doing well :)

If you want to support my work, consider making a one-time donation via Ko-Fi:

https://ko-fi.com/helenaheissner

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram here:

https://www.instagram.com/helena_heissner?igsh=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

and Tumblr here:

https://www.tumblr.com/helenaheissner

Thank you so much for your continued support of my work! Every little bit helps me to keep going :)

And now, back to our regularly scheduled nerdy romcom shenanigans!

***

Zeke

I woke up from a beautiful dream of a wedding with two brides flanking me on each side, and I opened my eyes to the sight of a woman I loved. Loved, that’s right. The word ignited in my brain as I saw her sleeping, wrapped in my arms, looking like a fucking angel. I loved Faith Watanabe. I probably had for a while. And I was starting to feel the same way about Katie Calloway. 

We’d been switching off whose bed we slept in each night. Mine was a bit bigger than Faith’s, but Faith’s room was cleaner, so it was a trade off each time. Maybe at some point we’d pool our resources together, push the beds into one room for maximum mattress usage and use the other one as a guest room, or maybe an office. 

Part of me wondered, ‘is this too fast?’ Faith and I had gone from just friends to live-in romantic partners pretty much all at once, and this was on top of the part where we were constantly at each other’s sides. Add Katie into this… If we kept moving this fast, how much more ground would we even have left to cover? Especially given it was impossible to make the dream I’d just had into an actual reality.

Okay, Underhill, let’s think this out: you love Faith. You probably love Katie, or at least you’re almost there. And they clearly care about you and each other to a very high degree. You wanna be with both of them. Putting aside the part where you might have to face Kate in the ring at some point in the next few weeks, there’s other obstacles. Kate’s never been in a relationship before now, so this is all new to her, and she might get freaked out if things keep escalating between the three of us. But what if things escalate between Faith and I, and Kate feels left out as a result? The easiest way to prevent that would be for her to move in with us, but there’s no way that’s a good idea right now. It’s way too soon. Kate still lives with her parents, for crying out loud. So how do I keep her happy while respecting her boundaries?

… Well, okay, respecting her boundaries IS a good way to keep her happy. But still. Long term… I can’t marry both of them, legally speaking. 

I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t even told Faith I love her yet. I’m worrying about what’s ten steps down the line instead of what the next step I have to take is.

So what-

“Morning, handsome,” Faith whispered into my ear, kissing my temple gently. “Whatcha thinking about?”

“Hm?” I said. 

“You’re staring at the ceiling like you’re trying to fry it with heat vision. You don’t have heat vision.… You would tell me if you had heat vision, right?”

I chortled. “Yes, Faith, I would tell you if I had heat vision.”

“Cool, that’s good to know,” Faith said, tracing the outline of my pectoral with her index finger. “So. What’s on your mind then?”

The next step. The one I have to take. Maybe this could make it harder down the line, but…

… But now’s as good a time as any to take it. 

I rolled onto my side and looked at her, looked right in her big brown eyes, and said, “I love you.”

She blinked. Her mouth opened, and she breathed out and back in through her nose. She gulped. And then the smile bloomed on her face, and she looked ready to cry as she said, “I love you too. I think… I think maybe I always have.”

“Hm. Same,” I said, kissing her. 

She kissed me back, her soft lips pressed against mine, reminding me of them wrapped around something else. I sprung to life and tented the bedsheets, and Faith began giggling uncontrollably. 

“What?” I said. 

“Oh, I’m just happy,” Faith said. “My wonderful boyfriend has brought me breakfast in bed. Mind if I dig in?”

“... Will you do this every time I say I love you?” I said. 

“Keep saying it and find out,” Faith winked as she put her head beneath the covers and got to work. 

“I love you,” I said as her delicate fingers pulled down my shorts and underwear. “I love you,” I repeated as she took me in hand and guided my member into position. “I love you-OH, OHHHH, oh, Faith,” I moaned as my stiffness slid into her mouth and the sensitive skin was gently tugged and massaged by her tongue and lips. 

I said it again as she kept going, and I kept saying it until I’d finished and she’d lapped up every last drop. “I love you,” I said. 

She wiped her mouth and smiled at me. “I know. And I love you too.” 

***

Katie and I stepped into a wonderland of mecha model kits and anime merch, and her eyes went so wide she may as well have been a shoujo protagonist herself. Made sense- she was quite probably the most adorable human being I’d ever encountered in my entire life. She rushed between different model kits in glass display cases, leaning over and gaping at the contents behind the glass. She wore the pink skater dress she’d worn when I’d first come over to her house, when we’d first watched Gundam together and just… Enjoyed each other’s company. It brought back all those pleasant memories on a warm wave of nostalgia and romantic bliss. 

It also made her legs look amazing. That much couldn’t be denied. 

“Oooohhhh,” Kate said, wiggling her fingers at a Barbatos Lupus Rex model on a shelf in the middle of the small shop. 

“You like that one?” I asked. 

“I LOVE this one,” she said. 

“You should get it,” I smiled. 

“Can’t afford it,” she said, pointing to the obscenely high price tag. 

“Well then consider it an anniversary present,” I said, reaching into my own wallet. “We can go halfsies.”

“But wouldn’t that mean sharing it? How do we share a model kit?” 

“We’ll build it together,” I said. “That’s the solution. We build something new together.”

“Are you sure?”

I cupped her cheek and said, “More sure than I’ve ever been about anything.”

She closed her eyes and smiled, gripping the hem of her skirt and then leaning in and kissing me on the lips. Soft to the touch, warm and beautiful. I wanted more of her. I wanted all of her. 

She seemed to realize that, given her eyes shot open while she was pressed against me. “Hm. Babe, I know you’re happy to see me, but we’re in public,” she whispered into my ear, then gave it another playful kiss.

I wanted to pin her against the wall and take her right there. “Maybe it’s just a beam sword in my pocket.”

“If you had a beam sword in your pocket, I’d be deeply concerned,” Kate snorted. “And also annoyed that you invented a beam sword and didn’t tell me.”

“Touche,” I said, kissing her neck. 

“Ahem,” the clerk at the register, a tall and stocky Asian American woman in her thirties with pink hair and shaved sides and a septum piercing, sighed. “You gonna buy that, or is this some kind of public exhibition thing?”

I coughed, and Kate giggled. 

I paid for the model kit in cash while Kate venmo’d me her half. And we left the store with a very, very precious goody bag. We stepped onto Sawtelle Boulevard and Kate opened up her pink parasol and held it over us, the only thing barring the hot summer sun on that clear-skied July day. We walked to Kate’s car, parked a block over between a Korean barbeque restaurant and a massage parlor. Her hand in mine, she carried the bag slung over her shoulder and made pleased mouth-noises as she stroked my palms with her fingertips. 

We were gonna build this together. The idea of that… It felt like a good direction. It felt like… 

It felt like the next step. 

We got into the car and Kate jammed the key into the ignition and turned on the air conditioning to blast away the hot air strangling the interior… And then she reached over and between my legs. 

“Um…,” I said, “What’s going on there?”

She raised her eyebrows at me. 

“A-are you sure?” I said. “I thought you said you weren’t ready?”

“Not for the whole endeavor, no,” she said, smiling with teeth. “But maybe for some… Other fun stuff, I could be ready. And you, you just seemed so eager back there.”

I couldn’t blink. I could barely think. I could feel my brain overheating, threatening to melt out my ears, I was so hot. And don’t get me wrong, the idea of two blowjobs in one day appealed to me very much. VERY MUCH. But at the same time… 

I pulled her hand off of my crotch and laid it over my heart, squeezing it.

“No?” she said, crestfallen.

“Not like this,” I said gently. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to, but not here, not on a random street and inside your car. I know it’ll be your first time, and the fact that you want it to be with me… That’s really sweet, and also incredibly hot. So I want it to be special. For you, and for me.”

She gulped, then nodded, the sadness starting to fall away from her face. 

“If you want,” I said, “Tonight can be arranged.”

That smile came back. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll text Faith, and we’ll figure something out. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” she said, giving me one more kiss, throwing in some tongue for good measure. 

“Mmmm,” I moaned. “Did I mention you do amazing work with your tongue?”

“Thank you,” she said. “And I’d very much like to test its range of capabilities.”

“You’ll have ample opportunity, I promise. We should probably get to your appointment, though.”

“Okay,” she said, still making bedroom eyes at me. 

It was amazing. It was as if she’d finally found that happy medium she’d been looking for between her former confidence and her newfound sense of self. It looked good on her. Extremely good on her. And even putting aside my own blatant lust… God, it was just nice to see her so happy. 

I looked at the model kit in the bag, and then back to her as we started driving. We were gonna build this together. And it wasn’t all we were gonna build together. 

I knew what the next step was. And maybe the one after that, too. 

***

We got to Gaines’ and something immediately felt off. It was mid-afternoon, so I hadn’t expected it to be too busy, but the place was completely and utterly deserted. Nobody in the gym, nobody in the garage. And yet the door was open, and we stepped inside to find… Slurs painted all over the walls. Lots of different slurs, most of them against trans people. But it wasn’t exclusively limited to that. Some very unkind things about Japanese people and Romani people were sprayed on the walls as well. 

“Hi there,” came a voice from behind us. 

Kate jumped, and I formed a protective wall around her as we both turned about. 

“Nadine!” Kate said, rushing forward and taking her friend’s hand. The other woman’s eyes were red from crying, her makeup flooding down her face. “What’s going on? When did this happen?!”

“It was like this when we got here today,” Nadine said, hugging Kate tightly. “And it gets worse. Whoever did this emptied out our safe. Gaines isn’t crazy about banks, he keeps all of our money on site in cash. He’s closing the place while the police investigate, and because of the income he’s gonna lose while that happens, in addition to the money that was stolen-”

Kate gulped. “No. No, he can’t. He can’t!”

“He already did,” Nadine said, handing her a slip of paper. “He fired me as well. He can barely afford to keep this place open.”

Kate’s eyes went over it, and she wept. I took it out of her hands and scanned it, confirming my fears. He was dropping her as his client. 

I held her in my arms while she sobbed into my chest. 

And deep within me, rage swelled like never before. 

A man protected the people he loved. I knew what the next step was. I just had to figure out how to take it. 

***

We wound up back at Faith and I’s apartment. Kate sat on our couch, shaking her leg and staring at the television while one of Faith’s old soap operas played. Faith and I were in the kitchen making curry, Faith stirring a pot of rice while I viciously hacked apart onions and carrots on the cutting board. 

“Zeke, please dial it back,” Faith said. 

“No.”

“You’re gonna injure yourself.”

“Well I’m so mad I won’t feel it,” I said, continuing the chopping. 

“That doesn’t make it better,” she said flatly. Then, softly, she said, “Also, being protective is one thing, but getting angry on her behalf is another. Don’t make this about you.”

I winced. Fuck. “Fair enough,” I said, decreasing the speed and ferocity of my cutting. 

“I’m screwed,” Kate finally said, laying flat on the couch and staring at the ceiling. “I don’t have a sponsor. I barely have any money. Any damage I take in my next fight, I won’t be able to recover from.”

“Kate, don’t talk like that,” Faith said. “We’ll figure something out.”

“And that’s without even getting started on next season,” Kate said. “I’ll have to find a new sponsor, but who’s gonna take a risk on someone like me after an incident like this? Nobody. It’s over. I’m done. I have to pick a new line of work.”

I breathed in deep. Don’t make this about you. Every time Dad had a problem, Mom made it about her, and vice versa. You’re not them. Be better. Take care of the women you love.

I put down my knife and walked over and sat with her, pulling her into my chest and holding her tight. “You’re gonna get through this. I promise you.”

“How can you say that?” she said, looking up at me with devastation on her face. “How do you know?”

I breathed in through my nose. The next step. Maybe it’s too soon, but… I have to take it. “Because I love you. I love how strong you are, I love how you never quit, and I love how you can figure out how to do anything all by yourself. All the things that make me love you, that’s how I know for sure.”

Her jaw hung slack, and she ran a hand through her long platinum hair and licked her lips and blinked rapidly. “Y-you… You love me?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I know it’s early on in all this to be saying that, but it’s what I feel, and I think you needed to hear it now. You don’t have to say it back if you’re not ready though-”

I didn’t finish. She cut me off with a kiss, deep and passionate and thorough. When she pulled away, she pressed her forehead against mine and laid her hands on my chest. “I think I’m falling in love with you too, Zeke. But I was afraid to say it. Thank you for… For saying it first.”

“He does have a habit of that,” Faith said, having walked over and standing behind us. 

“Oh, get in here, you nerd,” Kate said, beckoning her over. 

“I gotta finish cooking,” Faith said, gesturing over to the boiling pot. “Besides, I want you two to take some time getting acquainted with each other. If you catch my meaning.”

“A-a-are you sure?” I said. “Don’t you wanna… You know, partake?”

She grabbed my pectoral and gave my nipple a pinch. “I already got a head start. Only seems fair to let blondie catch up.”

I spend a few moments stammering incoherently, wondering how in the fuck I’d gotten so lucky with both of these girls, only for Katie to start giggling. She stood up and took me by the hand and led me toward my bedroom. 

 And we took the next step. And I knew then that no matter what happened, no matter why it happened, we would continue to walk forward together, building something new atop the wreckage of the old.