Colin Wallis

‘You may experience some disorientation,’ the doctor said. ‘The next few days may be a bit rough,’ he warned.

“Wheeeeeeeeeeee!” Mouse Protector squeals as my wheelchair speeds down the hallway and away from Hannah’s door.

“Minnie! Minnie, no!” Hannah yells as she tries to run after said wheelchair.

The wheelchair I’m sitting on.

With a manic teleporter alternatively nuzzling into my lap and flickering around me, literally bouncing off the walls to speed my invalid badge status even faster.

“We’re going to run out of hallway,” I mutter in what some may wrongfully consider to be shellshock rather than a steely countenance.

“Then we get to turn around!” the woman still wearing grey sports apparel optimized to let the skin breathe (and jiggle, and do some other interesting things) says, her arms around my neck, brown eyes looking up at me with joy that has just a note of mischief.

Oh.

I’m doomed.

“Minnie! Stop before I tase you!” Hannah yells.

“You’ll never catch me alive, boobie!” the woman about to be tased replies while pushing the wheelchair away from the right wall, her hands on the rear handle and both feet kicking at a stretch of hallway that will need a coat of paint in the near future.

“Boobie?” I ask after she reappears on top of me, this time resting her sweaty back against my chest and her left cheek against my right one.

… Note to self: design easily portable, deployable, concealing clothing capsules in case I’m ever again hospitalized. This gown isn’t cutting it.

This may jump up in priority over my anti-blinking tech.

“It’s British slang for cops. Because, you know, they had those boob-shaped helmets.”

“… You mean Bobbies. Named after Robert What’s-His-Name, the founder of the London police.”

“Nah, I’m talking about Hannah, so, you know,” she says, waving her hands in a pretty unambiguous gesture over her own police-helmet-shaped attachments. “Boobies.”

I struggle not to groan.

Then Minnie winks at me and teleports yet again, presumably to push my chair even faster down what little remains of a corridor that was never designed to hold Ben-Hur racing.

And I hear a yelp.

Which doesn’t instill me with too much confidence, seeing as said yelp is followed by a worrying absence of shapely derriere nuzzling on my lap—I mean¸ of the woman who’s supposed to be steering this thing.

I told them I wanted one with an engine, but did they listen to me? Of course not. It’s not like I’m one of the world’s greatest Tinkers, instrumental in defeating an Endbringer, and Hannah and Dragon’s boyfriend.

…

One of those things is far more impressive than the others. I’m almost certain.

“Hold tight,” the voice of one of my most impressive achievements says.

So I grasp the armrests for dear life, and the wheelchair abruptly slows down.

Without the wheels skidding on the carpet.

Or the grinding noise of rubber on metal of brakes being harshly applied.

I narrow my eyes, my brain already sparking into motion as I consider the possibilities. An obvious usage of tinkertech, remotely applied, able to be regulated. Effects similar to those of a spring—deceleration consistent with Hook’s Law? Not quite. Adjustments made on the fly, so, field theory—magnetism?

Wait, a magnetic field of such intensity would have fried any and all electronics in the building, which means…

I jump off my chair, my feet sinking into the carpet of an apartment building that may be ridiculously expensive for how little time Hannah spends out of the Rig, and I turn on the ball of my foot, pushing off to leap to the side so I can run right past the obviously superfluous mobility aid and to the open door of Hannah’s apartment, where Dragon’s still aiming something at me that—

Yes!

“Did you figure out how to beam magnetism?!” I exclaim, already running past Hannah kneeling on top of Minnie’s back, cuffing the limber woman—irrelevant.

“It’s… not quite?” she says, doing that adorably bashful thing she does after breaking the laws of physics, but this time, she’s not on the other side of a screen, so I can see her scuff the tip of her shoe on the thin slat of wood separating the apartment’s marble floor from the corridor’s carpet. “It’s more that I figured out how to modulate electromagnetic forms of energy on the fly, so I can aim a laser at something and then turn it into—”

“That’s brilliant!” I say, finally reaching the now flushing woman, barely processing the way the tips of her ears redden as they peek past her short hair and—

And I kiss her.

I’m holding her against me, as tightly as I’m able, lifting her body up when I lean back and force her to rest against me, to mold her chest against mine as she tries to let out something muffled and abrupt before she melts bonelessly into my embrace as her lips respond to mine.

I’m hugging and kissing Dragon.

And somebody just loudly cleared her throat behind me.

Slowly, not letting my girlfriend go, I turn around until I can catch the interloper out of the corner of my eye.

A Mouse Protector with her arms held behind her by a blushing Hannah beams.

“Soooo… do you want your ‘glad you’re alive’ blowjob right here and now, or would you rather we came into the apartment?”

I blink.

Dragon tries to say something without separating her lips from mine.

And Hannah hides her face with the hand not holding her oldest friend captive and groans.

***

“Absolutely not,” I say.

“You deserve it,” Minnie, sitting on the armchair hastily repositioned to face Hannah’s couch, counters.

“It’s not—you don’t deserve sex,” I say.

“Me? Well, maybe not, but you most definitely do, so that trumps whatever my karma balance has to say about getting it on with the world’s savior—”

“Minnie,” Hannah, sitting to my left on the aforementioned couch, says with a voice that sounds about as exhausted as if she had spent the past couple of weeks in a coma, “you were there. You saved my life—”

“Does that mean I deserve sex? Yay!”

Dragon, sitting on my other side, slumps against the plush backrest and groans.

“That’s not what I meant,” I answer, trying not to yell, stutter, or whatever it is that a man would usually do when rejecting a blowjob from an extremely fit heroine in sporty underwear—damn it. Okay. Deep breath. “I don’t think that sex is something that you earn, it’s just—”

“An expression of feelings? A physical show of affection? Something you may be very eager to do with the lughead who decided to go full knight errant against a dragon right after convincing you to save your oldest living friend if the worst came to happen? You know, as an expression of feelings, gratitude among them?”

I stare at the inordinately articulate Minnie.

Hannah refuses to return my inquiring look.

And Dragon is dangerously close to overheating.

…

See? This is why Thinkers are bullshit. They get to coherently answer in these situations.

“Minie, as much as I… appreciate the sentiment, I have a girlfriend—two girlfriends. I just—”

“I never said I was going to do it alone,” she insists.

And I swallow.

“I… Be that as it may…” I trail off, desperately trying to find a counterargument that may actually work in the face of relentless—is this sexual harassment? Should I call Tagg—no. No, no, no, no—

“I’ve never been with Colin!” Dragon yells.

“Wha—” I start.

“Remote-controlled bondage totally counts,” Minnie counters.

“But—but—it was not my body! I just… I used his equipment—”

“Oh, I bet you did,” the devil purrs.

“Not like that!”

“Also like that…” Hannah mutters.

“Okay, yes, also like that, but the point is that I’ve never… not… you know…”

Dragon stops talking, her eyes begging me for mercy, to help her find a way not to finish that sentence, whatever it may be.

Cute.

“I… don’t know?” Minie asks with genuine confusion rather than thinly disguised sadism.

I think.

And so the most powerful Tinker in the world turns away from me and looks past Hannah’s crystal and lacquered black metal coffee table and toward the acrobatic woman sitting with her feet up on the grey cushion of her requisitioned armchair, hugging her legs and resting her chin over her knees as a slow grin seems to parallel the curved indent she’s nuzzling on.

“I’m still a virgin…” Dragon mutters.

…

What?

“You most definitely are not,” Hannah grumbles, leaning forward to look around me and glare at the blushing Tinker.

“I mean, heterosexually a virgin,” Dragon hastily amends.

“That’s a fine needle to thread,” a still not placated girlfriend holding—is that a riding crop?

“Oh, from what I felt earlier, there’s nothing thin about Colin’s needle,” Minnie says.

Great.

Now there are two blushing Tinkers.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reflexively say, about thirty percent less sincere than I usually am when I proffer this line.

“You may not, but Hannah certainly does,” she says with a leering grin that goes to my left before meaningfully straying down between my legs.

…

“I feel objectified. I am more than a sexual conquest to add as a notch on your bedpost. I have feelings, an inner world, dreams and aspirations—”

“And none of them include getting a blowjob from three women at once? Man, your teenage years must’ve been weird. Didn’t you ever find that clip with the blue lipstick and—”

“Minnie!” Hannah yells.

“What? I know you saw it. Heck, I put it in the middle of your Winamp playlist—”

“Reminding me that I’m old enough to have used Winamp is not a good way to get me in the mood,” I mutter.

“I use Winamp. It makes me feel nostalgic,” Dragon tells me in a low, comforting, reassuring tone.

“I don’t even know what Winamp is! She just shoved all her music on my laptop and told me where to click! And I regret clicking!”

“Yeah. Regret. That’s what your room smelled like when I came in an hour after—”

“I wasn’t—I didn’t—Minnie!”

“Yeah, pretty sure you also screamed my name back then,” Mouse Protector says with a grin that Lisa must never bear witness to.

“Oh, she most certainly did,” Dragon mutters.

And, suddenly, for the first time since I entered this madhouse, there’s silence.

Blessed, blissful silence.

Mostly because of three people very intently staring at my girlfriend—ah, no, two people staring at my girlfriend and my other girlfriend covering her face in her hands and whining.

…

I like silence. It sure would be nice if it lasted.

“What does that mean?” Minnie asks with the slowest, most deliberate enunciation I’ve ever heard from her to the woman not covering her face.

Damn.

I miss silence.

And Dragon, going by the lost, pleading way that she looks at me with, may share my predilection for peace and quiet.

“Dragon?” Minnie insists.

“I… Just joking,” she says, immediately getting her Thinker rating revoked.

“’Just joking’ doesn’t merit seconds-long pauses and Hannah looking like she wants to jump out of her balcony,” the girl leaning so far forward over the armchair that the solid piece of furniture is about to tip forward comments.

“I… That’s not… I’m new at joking?”

“The excuse that your body is new at anything at all has already worn thin.”

“No, really, I’m just not used to—”

“Hannah?” Minnie asks, deciding to bypass Dragon’s denials and going straight to the source.

A whining source.

Damn it.

I take a breath deep enough that my uncomfortably thin gown shifts over my chest, and I turn to her. To the most lethal woman in the room. The one sitting beside a glowing garrote wire.

And I do something that I’m still not used to. Something that is new and fresh, particularly with how garbled my recent memories are.

I pinch her chin and gently force her to look up at me with green eyes that I struggle not to get lost in.

“She’s your oldest friend, and I’m here. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I say.

“I disagree. There’s plenty to be afraid of. This is Hannah. She could murder all of us to cover up her embarrassment, and none of us would be fast enough to stop her.”

“Nothing for her to be scared of,” I bite out of the corner of my mouth without looking away from tremulous green eyes.

“Ah. Then, yeah. Nothing to be afraid of. Not if it’s what I think it is, but I really need to hear it from her because I’m just about to freak out, and my mind is running even faster than my mouth, and, really, I’m a teleporter, so speed stopped being intimidating a long time ago, but the room is kinda spinning, and my eyes are getting blurry, and I need to hear it before I go fucking mental, and—oh, fuck!” she yells.

Which is immediately followed by the armchair tipping forward all the way and crashing on the marble floor just fractions of a second before a lycra-clad derriere is once again firmly planted on my lap.

“Sorry,” a bashful Mouse Protector says. “It’s just… you’re the last thing I marked. It’s just a reflex.”

I briefly lick my lips and nod.

Then I tilt Hannah’s eyes away from mine and toward the woman sitting sideways on my lap.

“Tell her before she destroys all your furniture, please,” I comment, trying to sound as if my own thoughts aren’t swirling in disorientation.

Silence.

This time, I don’t relish it just as much.

“I’m sorry—” Dragon starts to say.

“Don’t be,” Hannah says, her voice not so low that I don’t hear it, but just barely. And then she clears her throat. “I am… I should’ve… It’s… This is all Lisa’s fault, isn’t it?”

“Definitely,” I immediately agree.

I mean, I don’t know how it is Lisa’s fault, but, really, knowing is far from half the battle.

“I don’t think she actually planned for Minnie to—you know,” Dragon says in a way that suggests she’s refraining from mimicking a blowjob.

“Neither did I!” Minnie enthusiastically comments, even if with a tone somewhat more strained than usual.

So.

Another deep breath.

Another lull in whatever stalemate is being held.

And I finally can’t take it anymore.

“Hannah, if you don’t feel comfortable sharing whatever it is that you—”

“No. No, you don’t get to tell her to back off. Not after literal years of friendship, and sharing showers, and—I saved you from Behemoth! I put myself in the line of fire for you! Because it’s you! Because it’s always been you! How—how could you ever think I wouldn’t… do you trust me so little?”

“Minnie, it’s not that I don’t trust—”

“You don’t. I’m the goofy friend, and you think I’d take it as a joke, or mock you for it, or—or hurt you. And I… I used to be like that. I was a fucking brat. But I grew up. Because of you. Because I met you, and you were that intense girl full of things that made my own trauma look like a walk in the park, and instead of lashing out, you just… you were the best of us. You made me ashamed, and proud, and gave me something to aim for, and… and I…”

She stops talking.

And then immediately turns around and buries her face on my chest, rubbing what I dearly hope aren’t tears on white cloth that immediately betrays my expectations and darkens to show the skin and hair beneath it as Mouse Protector, Minnie, the woman whose visits I’ve always feared and who got banned from my workshop after a single incident, all but demands that I console her.

I look at Hannah, then at Dragon, and they…

I could joke. I could say that they don’t give me the help I desperately need, that they betray me in this moment of need and hopeless disorientation.

But, really, it’s just holding a crying girl in my arms. And I’ve gotten surprisingly used to it in the past… too short a time for how much has happened.

“It sounds like it wasn’t only Hannah who was afraid,” I murmur into short, soft hair a few shades darker than Dragon’s as I hug her close to me.

“Shut up. Don’t use your dad voice on me,” she mutters, fisting my gown in both hands.

“I don’t have a dad voice—”

“You do,” both women sitting on my sides say.

I glare at both of them, then go back to speaking with my perfectly regular voice.

“Minnie. You’ve all but stated it already. Both of you have. So… go ahead.”

She pushes away, looking up at me with vulnerable eyes that don’t belong on the boastful heroine too used to making villains feel too humiliated to keep their careers going.

“Why? Why would you want me to say that to your girlfriend?” she asks.

… And I really should’ve asked myself the same question before things got this far.

So I take a moment to consider it. The question. To process the words and the muddled ball of emotions they bring up, and…

And Lisa.

Because she, somehow, pushed this to happen. To have something hidden for years brought out into the open.

Why?

I consider it. The laughing eyes, the deep sadness, the girl so desperate to be accepted and loved, so incredulous whenever she manages it.

The girl so painfully grateful for every scrap of genuine affection that her power doesn’t give lie to.

And… Maybe I don’t get it. Maybe I don’t understand the true motivations of whatever she meant to set in motion or whether she acted on something other than a whim. Maybe I don’t know her that well or lack the abilities required to properly model her train of thought.

Maybe I have actual brain damage.

But, just maybe…

I keep holding Minnie, surrounded by my arms, but I draw any and all warmth from Hannah and Dragon, silently waiting for me to speak. Still by my side.

After so much and so little, still by my side.

And I smile.

“Because… She’s my girlfriend. And what kind of boyfriend doesn’t want his girlfriend to be happy?”

Dragon rests her head on my shoulder, the warmth of her skin seeping through my gown, and I’m, just this once, unbothered by its thinness.

Hannah doesn’t move, just staring at me.

And Minnie…

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Her eyes don’t stray from mine, the brown in them still glittering under the traces of her outburst.

“What if… what if she left? To be happy. With another.”

I close my eyes.

Three women. One on each side of me and another on top.

It sounds better than it is.

“Then…” I don’t quite ponder the words, but I slow them down, feeling the shape of each one as I let them come out of me. “Then she’ll be happy. And that’s all that matters.”

Because I’m not thinking about Hannah, Dragon, or even Lisa.

I’m thinking about Mom and what I’d have given to have her be happy and whole, even if forever away from me.

“I was joking when I called you a knight,” Minnie grumbles.

“I’m patiently waiting for Her Majesty’s summons, but the date for my knighting ceremony has been inexplicably not set in her calendar.”

“I could hack her,” Dragon mumbles.

“Please, don’t,” I comment.

“I’m not leaving you. Ever. I made an oath. We made an oath,” Hannah says, her hand finding mine on Minnie’s back.

“Hannah—”

“No. No. You already broke it once. Never again. I’ll—together. We’ll face them together.”

Her words burn. And I open my eyes.

Three women are staring at me, each in their own way, each making me feel something different and… Unique.

Theirs.

“I’ll still lie and cheat to save your life,” I tell her.

“I’ll still punch you as many times as it takes for you to learn not to.”

“I’ll be there. Covering for you. Always,” Minnie adds.

“… And I guess that leaves me to make sure you three don’t get killed,” Dragon finishes.

I smile.

At three women.

And then I close my eyes and, surrounded by their warmth, sink into Hannah’s couch.

***

“Are you sure about this?” Dragon says, lying on top of me, wearing a set of gold and black pajamas with a distinct insignia that…

Well.

“Data. Really,” I say.

“Shut up. You love it,” she says, slapping my chest. My chest covered by a simple, solid blue pajama top that—all right, no.

I must admit my defeat.

My chest, covered by an official set of Armsmaster pajamas.

I suspect blonde meddling.

“I always preferred LaForge,” I finally mutter.

“You would,” she says with an eye roll that can only be inferred in the almost complete darkness of Hannah’s bedroom.

“Yes. Because I’ve got taste.”

“Data had the better character arc in the Next Generation by far.”

“Just because the writers were infatuated with him doesn’t mean I have to be.”

“That’s not an argument. That’s you refusing to acknowledge an argument.”

“No. This is me enjoying having my girlfriend laying on top of me, talking about nerdy nonsense, her breath washing over the side of my neck precisely like I hoped for so long,” I say, finally falling to temptation and running my hand down her hair, my fingers idling on her nape until she purrs in contentment in a way that may suggest she’s taken some liberties with the design of her throat.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you,” I tell her.

And it’s not the first time. But it’s the first time like this. The first time that my Canadian girlfriend is here, with me, by my side like she never could before.

So I hold her close, as tightly as I can, and I… shudder.

“It was close,” I say.

“Yes,” she answers without asking what I’m talking about, her arms going around me and hugging me as hard as I do her.

“I… My memories? They almost flow. They are blurry, an incoherent mess, and then… then I get a sharp vision of something that stays. That is set and clear, and… and I have that moment. The very moment I saw in the video, me lowering my halberd, calculating eventualities, Hannah frozen mid-fall outside of my time bubble, Behemoth in front of me, and…”

I trail off.

She holds me.

“It was close,” I mutter.

She nods, her chin tracing a thick line along my chest before she kisses me on top of the blue cloth.

“Too close,” she says.

I nod, my chin briefly nuzzling on top of soft, short hair.

“I… I thought I lost you. I just… I was inside your armor, turning every system available to me into something to preserve you, and I didn’t want to let you go. I didn’t want the healers to touch you, to risk you getting out of the one place in this world that I knew could keep you alive. I just… I just wanted you. Alive. Forever.”

I don’t answer. Not with anything other than by tightening my hold on her and clenching my jaw.

“Colin?” she asks after a silence that holds too many things.

“Yes?” I answer, my throat tight with something that is not fear but that has too much to do with it.

“Are you really all right with this? With Hannah and Minnie… talking?”

“Yes,” I say, grateful for the change of topic, even if I know we will have to go back to it over the next few days.

“Why?” she asks.

I tilt my head.

“Why are you?” I answer rather than repeat my embarrassing declarations from not even an hour ago.

She doesn’t answer. Not before nuzzling against my chest and yet again kissing fabric that I’m starting to get bothered by.

“That easy, huh?” she says.

“No. Simple, but not easy,” I tell her.

She chuckles, only for it to turn into a giggle, and then just a silence that stretches longer as our arms relax, our breathing deepens…

And, for the first time in my life, I fall asleep with Dragon in my arms.

***

There’s movement, but I’m too tired, and my thoughts are muddled enough that I don’t get alarmed, just wishing that the movement will stop so I can fall back entirely unconscious and ignore the world for a bit longer.

“It’s the middle of the night,” a hushed voice mutters.

My eyelids are heavy. Too heavy to move them, even if my eyes seem to swim under them.

“That’s why it’s called a wake-up blowjob,” another voice answers.

“I’m—what are you wearing?” the first voice comments.

“Don’t ask. Please, don’t ask,” a third voice comments with enough exasperation that one of my eyelids decides it may be worth the effort to try and lift itself a bit closer to my eyebrow.

The lower eyelid doesn’t take the attempt that well and competitively decides to chase after it, my entire face scrunching with the strain of the race until a yawn escapes my throat.

And, when it ends, I blearily blink both eyes open with more effort than the task merits, only to find three women kneeling on the bed that Dragon and I borrowed from Hannah while she had her talk with Minnie.

In the middle of the trio, between a flustered Hannah wearing a set of lingerie I don’t recognize and Dragon still wearing her Star Trek pajamas and looking at me with the kind of face I would expect from Vista the next time I catch her sneaking into the firing range, Minnie smirks.

Wearing blue lipstick.

Like in a certain video that circulated through the Internet during the times of Winamp.

 

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And with this we’ve caught up to the regular release, which means that only the two exclusive chapters on Patreon are left to be posted. As usual, I’ll keep writing another weekly chapter until the story is over—which, hopefully, shouldn’t take that long. Thank you for putting up with me and enjoying this story, and see you all in a few days!

Oh, also, just to scratch the itch, you may be interested in another Smugbug story I’ve recently (minutes ago) started to repost: Wordsworth. It can be found on this very same site, on my profile, and it’s about a Case 53 Taylor who can manifest figments of books she’s absorbed. It doesn’t have the overt focus on snark that this story does, but it’s deeply personal in an entirely different way. I’d be honored if you’d take a look.

And as always, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!