A / N : I don't even know what this is. All I know is it appeared in my head and wouldn't go away until I wrote it down.
This is a stand-alone piece, set on a Valentine's Day after S4's "Love and Rocket" but before Leela meets Lars in "Bender's Big Score". It's not tied to anything else I've written, but if you're also reading my AU fic "Walking A Fine Line", this fits as a pre-fic event and can be read as such, if you like.
I don't own Futurama, or the Rolling Stones.
"14th FEB" is marked, on the flip-calender in the employee lounge, with a red cartoon heart. Xmas is marked with a target and Freedom Day with a miniature Earthican flag, and neither of them have ever bothered Leela. But the red heart is a personal touch too far. It galls her, and so at 8pm on Valentines Day she uncaps a pen and and scribbles over it. She does so efficiently, turning it into a utilitarian black cube so even-sided and dull no-one who didn't know would ever guess it was anything else.
Leela is feeling done with Valentine's Day.
It's not just that she doesn't have a date. It's that she doesn't want a date. After a lifetime of dating dropkicks and skeezeballs she's exhausted. Her mother says dating is a numbers game, and Amy says you have to kiss a few trust-fund princes before you find that perfect frog, but Leela isn't sure she wants to play anymore. She doesn't want to spin that wheel again, and watch the dice land on another user, abuser, or just plain loser. She doesn't want to settle.
She wants . . .
She wants . . .
She flicks through the calender absent-mindedly, trying to get her thoughts in order.
Hermes has diligently penciled in the company tax deadlines. Cubert has added "Growth-Scraping Day, Hooray!" to the relevant date in August. Fry's tiny "Happy birthday Bender!" on Bender's date of assembly has been mostly eclipsed by a scrawled "THANK YOUR GOD, TINY MORTALS!" which was obviously added by Bender himself. No-one has added in her birthday, July 29th, but there's a little doodle of her face at the bottom of the page. Whoever drew it is no great artist – it would pass for a generic smiley-face if it wasn't for the huge round eye and high ponytail – but it's clearly supposed to be her. The fact that doodle-Leela is smiling gives away the artist. Of all the crew, only Fry would draw her and automatically add a smile.
Leela shades in the hair. She's no artist either, but it's something to do with her hands, while she follows her train of thought. Where was she? Oh, yeah. Dating.
The problem is that it's all so pointless. It's not going anywhere, and she usually knows it's not going anywhere midway through the first date, so why do the dance? Without consciously deciding to do so, she's given up. It's been months since she went out with anyone, and weeks since she cared. She wants . . . she wants to meet a man and feel that pull. That need to be near him without understanding why, that swoop in her stomach when he looks at her, that feeling like life is better, brighter, more real when he's around. That's what she wants.
Of course, he'll have to be the usual things as well: handsome, funny, dependable, driven . . . That goes without saying.
Keep dreaming, a little voice in her head snickers.
Leela stares down at the calender. The smile on her doodled doppelganger seems to mock her, though she knows it wasn't intended that way. You could be smiling too, it seems to say. You could be happy too, if . . . if . . .
If what?
She doesn't know and she's sick of wondering, so she snaps the calender shut and goes to see what the crew are up to.
It turns out they're not up to much.
Amy, Fry, and Bender are sitting in the shadow of the ship, downing cheap beer and playing some sort of card game. They must be a little drunk already, because none of them can seem to agree on what it is they're playing. Bender is lounging in front of a pile of stolen goods (Leela notes Amy's watch and Fry's wallet among them), while Amy peels off a layer of clothing every time she throws down a losing hand (or a winning hand - it's hard to tell with Amy), and Fry just tosses a card down every once in a while and yells out "Snap!", seemingly at random.
Leela prods him in the back to alert him to her presence.
"It's Valentines Day," she points out. "Shouldn't at least one of you be out on a date?"
Fry moves up to make room for her on the crate he's sitting on. He holds up a handful of cards.
"Wanna play?"
Leela shakes her head.
"No, I'm good." She does, however, accept the half-empty can of beer he offers her. It's warm. "Valentines Day?" she prompts.
"Snap, suckas! We all struck out," Fry says helpfully.
"All of you?" This is surprising.
Bender shrugs.
"Eh. I can pick up some floozy-bots later."
"Kif couldn't get leave," Amy says mournfully.
"And I forgot to get a girlfriend again," Fry confesses. He scoops up his cards. "What about you? How come you're not dating some skeezy mayor's aide with weird eyebrows? Or whatever."
"I didn't feel like it." Leela swallows the last of the beer. "We should go out," she says suddenly, changing the subject. "All of us, I mean. We should go get hammered. What do you say?"
"I'm in," Fry says immediately.
"Me too." Amy kicks off a shoe. "I could use something to take my mind off Kif being away."
Bender scoffs.
"You have to ask?"
They wind up at O'Zorgnax's bar. It's a familiar haunt. Fry likes it because it follows the template of most bars from his time – all muted colors and peanuts trodden into the floor – and Leela likes it because the clientele are mostly serious, down-at-the-mouth drinkers who mind their own business and don't stare too much at her eye. Amy will go anywhere she can garner male attention (which Leela learned long ago is everywhere) and Bender feels at home anywhere they serve alcohol. So everybody's happy.
Leela sinks a tequila slammer, relishing the burn at the back of her throat. She has some catching up to do. Fry and Amy - who started drinking much earlier than she did - are already drunk, whereas she just feels mildly buzzed. Still, being more sober than they are has its advantages. It means she can amuse herself watching them.
Amy is a flirtatious drunk. Maybe it's habit, or maybe it's just her nature, but she parties like the world is going to end tomorrow and she wants to begin repopulating the species ahead of time. She's a dancing, squealing, adorably-falling-down dynamo when drunk. The attitude isn't surprising, considering she stands to inherit a chain of casinos on Mars, and is technically still a grad student - a subset known for their serious attitude to partying.
Fry is an affable drunk. (Unless something happens to make him an angry drunk, in which case he's likely to end up picking a fight with a trash can and puking all over his shoes.) He also has a tendency to suddenly remember songs from the Stupid Ages, and sing them loudly while insisting "I can't believe I forgot this song!" When he sobers up he downloads them all to the ship's music system and Leela ends up feeling like she's flying an Ancient FM radio station instead of a ship. She rolls her eye and lets Bender complain about it, but in truth she doesn't really mind. Since meeting Fry, Leela has discovered she has an affinity for 20th Century music. It has a charm she can't quite explain.
Bender, of course, is the same drunk as he is sober. Alcohol doesn't impair the robot in the least, unless he stops drinking it.
"Le'ss play a game," Amy slurs. "Okay. Okay. You have to marry one, and be with them every day forever and ever. And ever. Or. Or. You have really wild sex for only one night. Or you push 'em off a cliff and never see them again!" She giggles. "One of your exes. You have to choose."
"That's easy," Bender says. "I'd have sex with Anglelyne, because she was smokin' hot. She can bend my girder again anytime. I'd push Lynn off the cliff just to shut her up."
"Lynn?" Leela queries.
Fry laughs.
"She's the suicide booth on 72nd. Every time they hook up Bender tries to commit suicide in her." He frowns. "Or every time Bender tries to commit suicide in her, they hook up. I forget which."
"Does it matter?" Bender says darkly. "She's nuts, I'm telling you. Her and her crazy mother! Anything they tell you about me is a lie."
"You didn't say who you'd marry!" Amy interrupts.
Bender rolls his optics. "Aw, fine. I'd marry Calculon."
"Bender!"
"What? Calculon counts! We could have one of those whatchamacallit . . . open marriages. I get to sleep around, and I get to be rich and tabloid famous! What's to lose, baby? Anyway, if I have to spend every day with someone, it better be someone nearly as great as I am, if not greater."
"I'd marry Kif," Amy decides.
"Duh."
"I'd have the wild sex with my college boyfriend Trent, because he had an eight-pack and now he plays pro-golf. At an Olympic level." She nods, impressed. "And I'd push my calculus lecturer off the cliff."
"Why?"
"My parents were paying him to date me."
"Ouch." Leela grimaces in sympathy. "I'll get us another round."
She orders doubles. Fry is patting Amy's hand when she returns.
"One time I was dating a girl and her dad said he'd pay me not to date her," he says. He grins. "We used the money to go bowling. Joke's on you, Mr Ketterman!"
Amy giggles. "What happened to the girl?"
"I 'unno. She moved to Montana, I think. To ride horses."
Amy slaps his hand, then points her forefinger at him like a gun. "Okay, you go. Marry, sex with, push off a cliff."
Fry screws up his forehead in concentration.
"That's hard."
"Spluh! It's supposed to be. That's the game!"
"But I don't wanna push anyone off a cliff."
"Not even Michelle?" Bender interrupts. "The broad who ditched you for Pauly Shore?"
"The woman who cheated on you?" Leela adds. "On multiple occasions?"
"You always said she was a nag," Amy agrees.
"She was. She did. But I still wouldn't push her," Fry protests. "She was my girlfriend."
"I know! Morgan Whatserface!" Bender claps him on the back. "The freaky inspector lady."
Fry shudders.
"Yeah . . . she was scary. Okay, her."
Bender throws back a shot.
"So who would you bang?"
"Amy," Fry says easily. He high-fives her over the table. "We were really good at making out."
"We were! But you were a jerk."
"Yup."
He and Amy high-five again, because that seems to be the way this thing is going. Then Amy and Bender high-five, then Amy high-fives a passing stranger.
Fry downs his drink.
"We should do karaoke!"
Leela grabs his arm. She tips another tequila down her throat, feeling light and buzzed.
"You didn't tell us who you'd marry," she points out.
To her surprise, Fry turns red and avoids her gaze. Instead of looking at her, he rubs his thumb along the rim of his shot glass, making it sing.
Bender snorts, like he knows the answer and doesn't think much of it. Amy stops giggling and suddenly looks uneasy.
Fry meets her eye at last, and Leela feels her cheeks grow hot. He's looking at her that way he does sometimes, all open and intent, like he can't see anything else. Fry rarely shows anything such focus, which would make it disconcerting all on its own, but that's not what bothers her about it.
What bothers her is that sometimes, when he gives her that look, she feels like she's falling into it. And she doesn't know what to make of that.
"I'd marry you," Fry says quietly. "For real."
Silence.
It honestly hadn't occurred to her that Fry might count her among his ex-girlfriends. The first time they dated he wasn't himself. The second time – when they married – was during the time skips. Seeing as neither of them can remember anything but the divorce proceedings, Leela has trouble thinking of that as something that really happened.
She swallows.
"You know, karaoke sounds good. Why don't you go pick out some music? I think the machine is free."
Fry blinks, then shakes his head, visibly pulling himself together again.
"Karaoke! Yeah! Let's do that!"
He bolts out of the booth and disappears.
Bender and Amy follow him, already arguing over song choices. Leela is the only one who makes no move to rise. She stays sitting, toying fretfully with the bowl of peanuts on the table.
This isn't the first time Fry has hinted at deeper feelings for her, but it always manages to catch her off guard.
It started on that doomed space-liner, when Leela lost her wits and decided to pretend Fry was her fiancé. She was trying to put a halt to Zapp Brannigan's advances, that was all. It wasn't supposed to mean anything – Fry was simply nearby and not unbearably hideous. As a fake fiancé, he worked. It all worked, until she kissed him.
Leela didn't pay much attention to the kiss itself – at the time, her entire being was thinking go away, Zapp – but then Brannigan left and she realized Fry was standing completely still. Stiller than she'd ever seen him, like his brain had shut down. When they broke apart he looked dazed and Leela felt her stomach dip, an uh-oh, this is trouble feeling. She ran damage control as best she could, but that kiss was the beginning of a full-blown crush on her Fry has never really got over. He returns to it intermittently, like a child with a favorite toy. Sometimes Leela will think he's forgotten all about it, and then he'll turn around out of the blue and ask her on a date. It's disorienting.
Of course that kiss stuck to her too, in odd ways. At the time, Leela thought little of it, but she remembers seeing him make out with Amy later (another fake, supposedly meaningless relationship) and feeling a sudden surge of annoyance. It was a possessiveness – a sense of ownership – that has plagued her ever since when it comes to Fry. He might be an idiot, but he's her idiot, and it never feels right watching him make a fool of himself for some other woman. When Fry convinces himself he is in love with somebody else – which he does every so often - it feels as if the world has been turned upside-down. As if Fry has betrayed her, somehow, which is ridiculous on several levels. The fact that Leela has rebuffed his advances more times than she can count is one, and the fact that his feelings aren't real is another. As far as she can tell, they're a kind of puppy love: persistent but not particularly deep. Fry loves her as a friend and finds her attractive, and he has convinced himself that's love. It's sweet, but Leela would be a fool to put any faith in it.
The cyclops sighs and orders another drink. She isn't nearly drunk enough for this. The whole area of her feelings for Fry is one she assiduously avoids when sober, and doesn't worry about at all when drunk. The only time it bothers her is during the in-between phase, when she is drunk enough to let her guard down but sober enough to be cynical about it. When she is fully aware of why it would never work, but wonders if it might be worth trying anyway.
Because Fry is flawed, but he makes her happy in a way no-one else has ever mastered. He has a knack for it; a way of smiling at just the right moment, or making some sweet (if stupid) gesture just when she needs it most. Even when the words are wrong, the sentiment is usually right.
Alcohol burns the back of her throat, and Leela sighs again. This is a waste of time. Fry is what he is, and there's no changing him. Letting herself think of him in a romantic light would only set them both on the road to disaster. One of them has to be sensible, after all.
Fry is her best friend, and that's that.
Leela gulps back another double and goes to join her friends. Someone has to keep them out of trouble.
Fry has the mic now, and is encouraging the bar's confused 31st Century patrons to fight for their right to party. Bender is in the process of stealing some poor lady's purse, and Amy is trying to prove she can fit an entire lemon in her mouth. People are already placing bets.
"Leela! You're back!"
Fry grins and topples off the stage. It seems he has already forgotten his embarrassment over sort-of proposing to her. Or maybe she was gone longer than she realized, and he's gotten more drunk.
He throws an arm around her shoulder, and Leela decides it's probably both.
"Where'd you go? You missed all the fun! And the Rolling Stones!"
"The who?"
"No, the Rolling Stones!"
Fry laughs like she just said something funny, though Leela can't see the joke. Must be a Stupid Ages thing. He jumps back onstage and punches a number into the karaoke machine.
"You can't always get what you want," he sings. "No, you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, no, you just might find" - he winks at her - "you get what you need . . . ohhh, you get what you nee-eeed!"
He pulls her up onstage to dance with him and Leela finds herself smiling. The tequila is working its way through her system, making her head swim pleasantly. Fry's hand is warm in hers, and his smile is goofy and uncomplicated. It prompts a sudden rush of affection for him.
Maybe the song has a point. You can't always get what you want. Maybe Valentine's Day – maybe life – can't always be true love and perfection, or anything like it's supposed to be. Most of the time Leela is convinced it doesn't even make sense. But maybe the day – and her irredeemably single life – has some good points.
Like getting smashed out of her gourd with friends who are just as lonely as she is.
Fry twirls her around and Leela lets go at the last moment, falling into his arms as the room spins around her.
She hugs him before he can recover, and plants a sloppy kiss on his cheek. Now she's drunk, and the world seems so much brighter.
"You're my best friend," she tells him. "My best best friend . . ."
It seems important to remind herself of this, although Leela can't remember why.
Fry smiles.
"An' I love you best," he says happily. "Best of all the people, everywhere!"
Leela frowns. Even through the fog of tequila, this seems wrong. Fry is her closest friend, but it's clear his best friend is Bender. It's not a choice, but if it was, she's always known who he would choose.
She taps him on the nose and gives him her best reproachful look. It's harder to pull off when inebriated.
"You forgot Bender."
"Hmm?"
Fry's attention has started to wander. He's looking for another song to sing. Walking On Sunshine, probably.
"Bender," Leela reminds him. "Your best friend."
"Oh, yeah," Fry says easily. "Bender's my best friend. I wanted a robot for a best friend since I was six. Did I ever tell you that?"
"Uh-huh."
"He's the coolest."
"He's . . . something," Leela agrees. It's as diplomatic as she can be when drunk.
Fry nods.
"He's my best friend. But -" - he puts a finger to his lips, the universally accepted sign for shh, keep a secret - "I love you best. Hey, the Dave Matthews Band!"
He jumps off the stage to get Bender's attention and Leela is left staring after him, one hand stretched out into thin air.
I love you best.
It makes her feel funny. Off-kilter, somehow.
"You do?" she says dumbly.
Her mouth and brain are working too slowly, but it doesn't matter. There's no-one left to hear, and even Leela can't make sense of what she's thinking.
All she knows is that it feels like falling. It feels like trouble.
She stares across the bar at Fry.
"Happy Valentine's Day," she murmurs to herself.