Thanks , LadyBender and acadia93 for the reviews!


Fry is acting weird.

For a start, he showed up on time for dinner. He would have been stupid not to, of course, after he stood her up at lunch, but Leela wasn't expecting him to be exactly on time. He isn't the most focused of people at the best of times, and in her experience nerves make it worse. If she's honest, she was expecting him to be only less late than usual - or to arrive on time and have forgotten something, which is a frequent Fry habit. But he hasn't. He's on time. Dressed for a date and everything. Even he seems surprised by it.

The second strange thing is that he doesn't seem nervous. Normally, nothing intimidates Fry like a date, and the swankier the setting, the worse it gets. By rights, The Cavern On The Green should be terrifying him, but he hardly seems to have noticed his surroundings. He doesn't even blink when the snooty waiter tells him they don't do tap water, and he hardly looks at the menu. It's only when the maitre'd starts to tell them about the formation of the restaurant's famous stalactites and stalagmites that he shows any interest.

"Yeah," he says, interrupting the lecture on dripping limestone and calcium deposits. "So if you drilled holes in the roof you could come back millions of years later and they'd spell out a message. Like : I LOVE YOU LEELA."

He mimes drilling this into the cavern roof and wiggles his fingers to enact the message growing up from the floor.

The maitre'd frowns at this unconventional restaurant etiquette. Leela gets the impression people usually just listen to the lecture and nod politely.

"Anything is possible, sir," the man sneers.

Fry grins. "Everything's possible."

"You really believe that?" Leela asks him, as the maitre'd glides away.

Fry just smiles at her.

"Sure I do," he says. "I'm here. You're here. We're having dinner. What's more impossible than that?"

This is either the smartest thing he's ever said or the stupidest. Leela's not sure which.

"And that's what you'd write?" she asks. "If you could leave a message that would last millions of years, you'd write-"

"I love you." Fry finishes the sentence for her. "Yeah, I would."

A lump forms in her throat and Leela has to take a pretty big gulp of wine to get rid of it.


After dinner they take a walk, and Fry remembers he bought her a card – and lost it, which is more like the Fry she knows.

"That's okay," Leela tells him. "I don't really like cards. What I'll remember is our time together."

She wonders how long that will last as they stare up at the stars. It won't be a million years anyway, and deep down she hates the thought.

Maybe that's why she kisses him. Maybe that's why she lets him walk her home. And maybe that's why she takes him inside at the end of the night and shuts the rest of the world firmly out.