Hiro would never have expected to wake up in his bed, remembering the best sex of his life that had taken place just a few hours ago, atop a frantically-cleared lab station in the midnight hours of the Robotics building. But then again, if one expected that, it would make one kind of weird.

Nonetheless, it had occurred. Hiro lay in bed, alone, replaying the feelings from each of his senses as he and GoGo had explored each other, completed each other, enthusiasm building until tools and papers were falling off the workstation with soft clinks.

Hiro remembered the soft synthetic cushions they had grabbed from some sophomore's molecular project. He remembered the softness of GoGo's skin, supple and yielding and warm, burning hot with excitement, all directed at him…

Hiro usually awoke to some morning wood. This was more like morning steel. With a sigh of resignation, he slipped a hand into his flannel pajama bottoms and began to stroke himself. It was going to take a lot of 'replays' before the memory of that night could go through his mind without arousing him, and Hiro was never one to put off such a satisfying moment of self-indulgence.

He wondered what it all meant, what they had said and done. Part of him wondered if it was all a dream. Most of him was content to remember GoGo's face, flushed with color as her body enveloped him. The exquisite feelings rebounded in his mind like priceless coins that could not be fit into any common slot.

No, it wasn't a dream, Hiro grinned to himself as he felt his load preparing to blow. It happened. He and GoGo had sex -

He barely grabbed a tissue in time. Panting slightly as his mind calmed to something closer to his morning baseline, Hiro wiped away the evidence and sighed. If not for some asshole professor assigning her an 8:00 AM deadline for a paper, GoGo would be waking up next to him right now. Instead he could only think about what it all meant. At least in the heat of the moment, they hadn't neglected any precautions. Honey Lemon's old workstation had a bottle of her experimental spermicide-infused lube, so no need to worry…

…about pregnancy…

Hiro sat bolt upright in bed as a good night's sleep and post-nut clarity suddenly ramped his brain to full processing speed. No, GoGo getting pregnant was not at all the problem. The problem was that Hiro had just slept with his best friend of several years, he didn't regret a single second of it, but he knew instantly that the dynamic of the Big Hero 6 had changed. Were he and GoGo a couple? Like, did they have to be more than really, really good friends?

I guess a couple is by definition a pair of close friends who sleep together, Hiro mused. "Alexa, play 'I'm a Believer.'"

"Playing 'I'm a Believer' by The Monkees." came the low, robotic reply. There was a slight delay because Hiro routed all the Alexa traffic through a virtual server to limit the data Amazon could collect on him. Fortune Magazine had tried to get him for a cover shoot, at which point Hiro had realized he might just be a target for hackers, and he sure wasn't going to make it easy.

"Alexa, send a message to Fred and Wasabi: 'Sushi in Doyle Quad for lunch?'"

"Message sent." A few minutes passed. Hiro was content to massage his now-soft member, still unable or unwilling to suppress the shivers of thrill going through him. He truly had no idea how this was going to play out.

"Your message has been liked by 2 recipients," his Alexa drawled.

Good. Hiro needed some Guy Advice.

No one could say for sure which came first - Doyle Quad or Doyle Sushi. The restaurant had stood across the street from campus, offering tastebud-rapturing food on a student budget, for longer than most tenured professors. The quadrangle was a pleasant slope of glass with a beautiful view of San Fransokyo, perfect for enjoying a plate of sushi or something more illicit. It was said that upon learning which of the two had been named first, a student would lose the ability to savor the taste of Doyle Sushi while in the bounds of Doyle Quad - thus the knowledge was to be avoided at all costs.

According to legend, a male student had learned which had been named Doyle first, and had been struck celibate for two years because no college girl would sleep with him, for fear the deliciousness of Doyle Sushi would be lost to them as well.

"I know we say it literally every time we eat it, but this sushi is so good I would kill anyone threatening to reveal which was named first," Fred said as he, Wasabi, and Hiro tucked into their lunch, watching the cityscape before them glitter in the Bay Area sun.

Fred did, in fact, say that literally every time they got sushi. As Hiro watched a stray strand of fog wobble lazily in the distance, he mused over Fred's impressive family portfolios and calculated that Fred probably could make someone disappear, without any help from BH-6. Not that the gang or Fred would do anything like that - they were heroes, after all - but Tadashi had taught Hiro that it was better to generate a full spectrum of perspectives to consider before selecting one that aligned with Ethics. Hiro doubted anything could truly drive Fred to the dark side, except perhaps the theft of one of his vintage comic books. Even Heathcliff was forbidden to expose them to light and had to use a flashlight when he checked the climate controls of Fred's comic storage vault, deep in the family manor.

It could be said the Big Hero 6 was composed of people nearly all exhibited obsessive tendencies. The only one who didn't was Baymax, and he was operating off a neural net, meaning even he might eventually pick up their little habits given enough time.

"Just lock them in a freshmen sorority house during pledge week, they'll be effectively lobotomized," Wasabi said around a large California roll. He glanced at Hiro. "I can't help but notice we're eating at noon, when it was you who said on two separate occasions that 11 AM is the best time for the Sushi-Sokyo View."

"True," said Hiro, swallowing his own roll and bracing himself. "I did have something I wanted to ask you guys about."

"What's her name?" asked Wasabi, delicately picking at some of his edible namesake.

"Ok, how on earth -" Hiro began to splutter.

"Ha! So it is a girl!" Fred laughed on his other side, crumpling a napkin in preparation for an arcing shot toward a trash bin that would make Steph Curry blush. "Come on, Hiro, we all know what we look like after a hookup. You have a spring in your step to rival a pogostick, Lil Dashi."

"Yes, I mean no, I mean yes it is, hypothetically!" Hiro tried frantically to retain control of the narrative. "I just wanted some advice on a course of action I'm thinking about - just thinking about…"

He trailed off, eyes still locked absently on the distant strand of fog approaching the Golden Gate. Fred and Wasabi, who still had a few inches on Hiro in the height department, shared a significant look that lasted only a split second, then they looked down to their plates like nothing had happened.

"Well, shoot, what is it?" said Wasabi, after the time needed to eat another California roll had passed. "Thinking about someone we know?"

"Yes." Hiro said. There were only two possible names he might say, and hopefully claiming a hypothetical would mean they wouldn't press him on which…

"Either of them would be a good choice," said Fred, sounding more serious than he had in months. This probably was the most serious thing Fred had been a party to in months. Wasabi nodded and said nothing.

"Did either of you ever -"

"Bro, we were on the scene long before you. Not to mention Tadashi. Zip, zilch, nada. It wasn't like that." Fred spoke again. "Whatever would have happened would have happened, but it wasn't meant to. So it didn't." He'd read that in a comic book, but there was no need to cite sources now. "Whatever's meant to happen is meant to happen, Hiro. You don't have to get specific. We have your back."

"Amen. And by the way, we wouldn't say that to anyone," Wasabi chimed in. "But somehow you, a guy who, at age fourteen, nearly collided with the Salesforce tower on a scramjet-powered marshmallow -"

"AM I EVER GOING TO LIVE THAT DOWN?!"

"- have some actual solid common sense rattling around in there. Whatever choices you make have to be right for everyone. Stick to that principle and the fun will come guilt-free."

Hiro grinned. "Amen."

They said farewells and dispersed to their classes, or in Fred's case, back to Doyle's for a second helping. He and Wasabi left Hiro together on the pretense of sharing a vape - Hiro wasn't a fan of nicotine.

Once they'd crossed the quad, Wasabi finally said what they'd been thinking. "Son of a gun. Tadashi knew. He knew. How did he know? You never… he never…" Wasabi caught himself. "I never…"

Fred hit the vape and blew contemplatively. The conversation with his departed friend didn't come to mind as easily as he'd hoped, probably because he hadn't realized its significance at the time. "I'm starting to think Tadashi did more than just know."

Wasabi looked like he wanted to probe this last statement, but then they were over the threshold of Doyle's, and the smell of more sushi pushed such considerations aside.

In Honey Lemon's bedroom, the mood was not at all peaceful or reminiscent of logic and reasoning.

Honey Lemon was looking at the incident photo her workstation had logged when someone had jostled it enough to trip the security system. Well, not one someone. Two someones.

Two someones who were her best friends, and who were apparently capable of producing some seriously powerful emotional storms inside Honey Lemon's mind. In front of her, enhanced with just a bit of AI low light processing, was a very clear picture of Hiro and Gogo… getting very familiar. GoGo's face was a picture of bliss, not unlike her awesome post-race-victory selfies she took that blew up on Instagram - Honey Lemon hadn't quite shaken the habit of measuring things in insta likes. Hiro had a face like a puppy that just learned it was being both adopted and somehow given the ability to drive a Ferrari. It was so cute, her anger was fading to something more like intrigue.

Honey Lemon sometimes had difficulty processing how she felt about things. On those occasions when things were just that bit too difficult to think logically about - such as the fact that two of her closest friends for life were getting it on with her own lube, no less - Honey Lemon tried to list out her feelings and decide which one she felt like acting on.

GoGo must have come on to Hiro. Honey Lemon's brain, which was as sharp as anyone's save for Hiro on a cup of coffee, churned through the possibilities, whirling like the rotors of Alan Turing's enigma decoder. GoGo had come on to Hiro, they had a Special Moment, gravity did the rest.

There was a real possibility that Honey Lemon - yes, the Honey Lemon we know: girl genius, Instagram darling, not one to be trifled with - might have allowed this to merely become a happy fact about two of her friends, whose happiness was in fact very important to her.

But they used my lube. They used lube I designed to be mind-blowingly good, and it's GoGo blowing Hiro's mind with it?!

It was the kind of conundrum you were unlikely to find yourself in unless you attended San Francisco Tech.

Honey Lemon now added a firm feeling of conviction to her list. No one had told her Tadashi's little brother was Allowed. Moments lept into her head unbidden, begging to be made into reality and captured forever in the photo diary that was her Insta.

She had always been hesitant about Hiro. She had only come to know him a week before Tadashi's death, and it was the memory of his older brother that had held her back - and surely GoGo too, now that she thought about it. She'd always assumed Tadashi would have opposed it.

Would he? It was like turning over a stone that had lain for many years. She could not remember thinking of the flip side. Now it was all she could think about.

GoGo, you started this. The species Hirous Hamadous is now off the protected list.

Yes, Honey Lemon mused, she was starting to sense just which feelings she wanted to act on.

GoGo was feeling tired. The good sort of tired, but still tired nonetheless. She felt like she was orbiting a planetary body, circling it without quite falling into a terminal descent. If she fired her boosters now, she could still escape with a story to tell. Or she could choose to land…

GoGo didn't give each moment of her life the same weight the way Hiro or Wasabi did. She didn't intake all available information, adjust her plans delicately to match a changing situation, or consider feedback from others when she pursued an objective. Fred had christened her GoGo for a reason. When the bicycle company she had followed for years in the newspapers went bankrupt, she simply went and designed her own electromag bike. When corporate suits that prowled the SFIT tech fairs told her magnetic suspension would never hold its own in competitive racing, GoGo simply went and took first place in the Tour de Frisco.

The problem with paying too much attention to the environment, or to other people for that matter, was that they might get it into their heads to discourage GoGo from doing whatever it was she found worth doing. Shooting first and asking questions later - maybe never - had served her well. She'd broken the rules with her electromag bike in the Tour, but even disqualified, her win blew minds all over the country. The only thing standing between GoGo Tomago and a ridiculous pile of money was her general distrust of the stuff, and an even greater distaste of the men in suits who'd come simpering with her to license her patents. Professor Callahan may have gone off the deep end, but he'd drilled into every student he met the importance of patents and intellectual property. Students from SFIT were not easily swindled out of the fruits of their ingenuity. For GoGo, ingenuity was a far tastier fruit indeed.

That is, until last night, with a certain Hiro Hamada. GoGo groaned and almost reached for her phone but thought better off it. She had a friend in the molecular lab that could print her a few milligrams of klonopin on a moment's notice, but it had been months since she'd felt stressed enough for that and besides, this was good stress if ever such a thing was possible.

There had always been boys. It was GoGo and it was San Fransokyo - how could there not be? There had been crushes in primary school and hookups in frat houses. There had been memorable moments with some of the few racers who could match her on the track. GoGo's attention wasn't lavished on everyone like Mansa Musa's gold. It was earned, a fact of her personality even GoGo wasn't always happy about. Sometimes she wanted to be Miss Agreeable, offensive to no one, able to show up anywhere and not worry that someone there would get huffy over some little incident she didn't even remember. But of course, that wouldn't be GoGo.

Now GoGo was feeling stressed - which didn't happen often - and it was anxiety about a good thing - and that was even rarer - and that good thing was a boy. That was a first.

Of course, Hiro himself was a first. First accepted to SFIT technically while he was still fourteen. Only legal now in his last year, she thought to herself with an awkward half-smile. First to integrate the Neuralink ECG AI-extrapolated Motor Cortex Engine into a headset that could also control over thirteen thousand wireless, magnetic microbots. GoGo had looked through the designs of Hiro's microbots and had given up; engineering that never needed a simple pair of pliers simply didn't hold her interest.

The same could not be said about their inventor. Hiro, Hiro, Hiro, she mused. She thought back to his words, whispered so softly it might not even have been meant for her.

"Please let this be real."

"It is."

GoGo was not one for flowery romance, but sometimes the laconic approach had its own charm. She wondered if Hiro had also spent the day thinking about her, and knew right away that he had. They had clicked, they had meshed. Was it love? It wasn't surprising, not in the slightest. They'd fought crime together, pulled pranks together…GoGo had once snatched Hiro's own prototype rocket boots out of his hands when he said he was too scared to test them, and announced she would save him the trouble. That particular incident had ended with GoGo appreciating much more the bodies of water that were backyard pools.

When she'd seen Hiro walking into the empty robotics lab near midnight, she'd just seized on the first course of action she felt like. And lordy lord was it worth it, for the looks that had played on Hiro's face, for the feeling as he entered her and their bodies melded.

A long time ago, she'd followed Tadashi in a similar manner. Things hadn't gone so far - just an embrace, an exchange of kisses - but Tadashi was different. And even on the scale of the Big Hero 6, Hiro was too different to even be categorized. She remembered some things Tadashi had said to her, years ago, about who she was and what he thought she needed. But he couldn't have known…

Maybe that's what she found so irresistible about it all. It was damn near impossible for GoGo to categorize it, label it, to in any way diminish what had happened. And on some hastily grabbed cushions on a lab bench!

"I don't know what to call this," she said to the ceiling of her bedroom. She had fallen on her bed, still fully clothed after a day spent absentmindedly wondering if Hiro would text first or would she. "But I think I'd like more."