Leela expected Bender to be ‘handsy’.
He was with every other woman or fembot she’d ever seen him, so she’d expected it to be a chauvinistic habit that he’d be hard-pressed to stop for her. Which he didn’t, obviously, to the point that she had to tell him that as much as she agreed she had a ‘great ass’, he had to stop trying to touch it while they were at work.
What Leela hadn’t expected was that he was handsy in… the… romantic way.
He certainly wasn’t a fan of full-on PDA (“I’ve got a reputation to keep!” he’d said once), but in private? She couldn’t sit on the couch next to him without even a minute passing before his arm was possesively wrapped around her waist, or leave the bed in the mornings without having to practice weight-training in the form of lugging his heavy arm off her stomach.
It wasn’t very often, and when it was, she was the one to usually initiate it, but it had happened enough for her to notice: every time she wanted to finally let go of his hand, for whatever the reason, it was almost as if he wouldn’t let her.
“Bender, honey,” she’d have to say gently, “I need my hand.”
He was always caught off guard, quickly letting go and rattling off a small manifesto of how he was only holding it for her, and thank god that was over.
Of course, he eventually realized she thought that was cute of him, and now he had to make a big deal out of it. Funny how he was so easily able to brush off his macho bravado in the name of teasing her.
“Bender!” she called, fuming in an attempt not to let on she was amused. She raised their interlaced hands and stared down the robot on the complete other side of the supermarket aisle, his stretched-out arm earning them annoyed looks from other shoppers. “Telling you I was walking away with your hand was supposed to be a threat, not a fact!”
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shoutout to @lyfe-at-last for the idea of bender just stretching his arm without regard for anyone
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