In her head, Katie kept a scoreboard of the pros and cons of dating Cuthbert. This list had started out all pros. Now she was clinging to the last few points like a drowning woman as she kept having to tack up more paper on which to record the black marks against him.
1. He was cute.
She couldn't deny that he had some all-American good looks going on.
2. He was considerate.
He totally held doors open for her and remembered their anniversaries (even the majorly lame "two-week" anniversary... Which should have been a red flag right there). Which every girl wanted, right?
3. He took her places she wanted to go.
He was completely obtuse once he was actually there, but he took her to the awesome coffeshops in the city that she was addicted to and paid for the overpriced drinks with obligatory chivalry.
But still, she thought as they pushed through the door of the post-modern ironically bohemian coffeeshop and out onto the warm, busy streets of San Francisco, it was getting harder to remember why that was enough. He reached over to hold her hand, but she casually shoved her fists into her jeans like she hadn't even seen him.
The sky was just barely starting to dim above them, evening creeping up onto everything like a thin inkwash.
A ways down the street, a crowd of onlookers was gathered around one of the many construction sites that had sprung up since the invasion. This was less because of the actual work than who was working. To be more specific, four monsters.
Katie had seen something about that on the news. It was a publicity stunt if ever she saw one, but the same group of monsters that had saved the earth were doing some construction in the city they'd partially destroyed whilst fighting a giant robot. It showed goodwill, or something.
Her eyes lit up. "Hey, let's go," she said, nodding towards the distant crowd.
"But the car's parked over there," he said in a hopeless voice, pointing in the opposite direction.
She started off on her own and within seconds, he was by her side again.
"Why do you always go for stuff like this?" he asked with a puppydoggish pout she failed to find adorable.
"Because it's cool."
"Yeah, like aliens are cool," he muttered under his breath.
She didn't reply. Alien robots were cool, in an unimaginably terrifying way. Being the first to discover them was cool. Knowing there was more to life than school and awkward dates and primetime television was really cool.
Her determined pace and his long, athletic strides quickly carried them to the scene and she pushed easily through the crowd. Cuthbert struggled several paces behind her, finally worming his way through the annoyed onlookers.
The news clips didn't do them any kind of justice. Katie leaned on the temporary barrier ringing the site and watched in awe as the very nearly fifty-foot woman moved steel girders like plastic straws, as the bug-headed guy operated some sort of pieced together machine, as the fishman easily hefted around smaller supplies like lumber, as the blue blob did... not much of anything, really. Human workers moved around and alongside the monsters, and the whole operation had the feel of a well-oiled machine.
She stayed like that a good twenty minutes, simply fascinated by the otherworldliness and the sheer rate of things getting completed. Cuthbert kept shifting impatiently, finally settling for leaning with his back against the barrier but glancing frequently over his shoulder as if he expected all hell to break loose at any second.
The sky grew several shades darker above them and a sense of wrapping up started to pervade the worksite. The crowd thinned but had yet to actually dissipate.
Either finished or simply abandoning his tasks, the fishman walked towards the edge of the crowd with long, loping strides. Suddenly, a large percentage of the gathering remembered they had other places to be or spontaneously decided that there were better vantage points at least ten feet away from the makeshift wall.
The same removed part of Katie that had marveled over the construction was now distractedly noting how oddly fluid his gait was, nothing like you'd expect from an amphibious humanoid in theory. A slightly more conscious part of her was calculating his trajectory and, yes, he was headed right for her, specifically. Which wasn't so surprising, as she was still casually leaning against the wall right in the middle of a sudden no man's land.
She raised an eyebrow as he came to a stop and leaned one obviously powerful arm on the barrier. "Hey, sweetheart," he began in a voice that was deep but not guttural like she'd half-expected. "Noticed you lookin' and I was just wondering if you, y'know, had any plans for tonight."
Katie leveled a long, cool look at the monster, who was grinning crookedly at her, then turned to look at Cuthbert, who was a good fifteen feet away and apparently just barely on this side of an aneurysm. She glanced back a moment, and finally turned to her boyfriend.
"Hey, Cuthbert!" she called, cupping her hands around her mouth to be heard more clearly. "I'm breaking up with you!"
Then she turned back to Link.
"Looks like my schedule just opened up," she said with a smirk.
A/N: Okay, the concept of Katie breaking up with Cuthbert for Link mid-date? All Nobility's. So thanks for letting me steal your idea, honey. Hope I did it justice.