Let me start with a thank you to all my reviewers thus far. I appreciate the feedback. Even if I'm never sure how to reply to any of it directly I assure you I read it and take it seriously. I'd also like to thank the couple of you who have favorited and/or followed. Didn't expect that to happen at all ever.

That all being said, lets get back to it. Trying a different perspective on this one. No idea how it turned out. I'll take any feedback, positive and negative alike.

The previous night had been good. It had just been the two of them in Leela's spartan apartment sharing a pizza and watching a movie. They'd settled on some comedy flick with an utterly forgettable plot that none the less had provoked some laughter from them. Fry had laughed at a few jokes he probably wouldn't have gotten normally and he'd seemed to have some trouble falling asleep afterward but the evening was otherwise uneventful. All things considered it was better than Leela could have expected.

Leela was further relieved when she woke up the next morning to not only a distinct lack of any troubling memories related to the night before but also no signs of a difficult day ahead right out of the gate. Fry was exactly where she'd left him, namely laying down behind her with an arm clumsily draped over her waist. It was an increasingly familiar experience and one Leela was slowly allowing herself to admit to enjoying. It was hard for her to fight old habits. Sometimes she wondered if she'd ever really be able to let go of all her Fry based hangups. She had so many of them, after all.

As was her normal morning routine she filed such concerns back into the latent mental illness pile and hauled herself out of bed. She hesitated at the door, turning her eye back to Fry. A small smile graced her lips at the sight of him still fast asleep. Just like any normal day it was going to take a lot more than a quiet alarm and her getting out of bed to get him awake. That left her enough time for her morning exercises, a shower, waking Fry, browbeating Fry into a shower (which on reflection she might have to skip until she asked the Professor if that hat was waterproof), and convincing Fry that this didn't get him out of future showers either way. With a bit of luck they'd be able to hack their way through any lingering gigantic bean vines fast enough to have time for breakfast at Planet Express before work started.

–

The morning had continued to play out exactly along expected lines. Fry had been his usual groggy self that waking up on time always made him to the point that Leela had to practically dump him out of bed to get his butt in gear. There weren't any vines blocking the tube network and the new machetes Leela had ordered got them through those that had gotten in their way on foot. They'd arrived on time and Fry had helped himself to a bowl of Archduke Chocula while Leela opened a can of Kibbles 'n Snouts for Nibbler before settling down at the table to eat her own cereal. It was all perfectly ordinary.

But still Leela was tense.

It had set in the moment it had been time to wake Fry up. It felt like the first time they'd made a delivery to the robot planet. She and Fry had been forced to don crummy disguises and attempt to blend in with the human hating populace. She'd been surrounded, all but alone, with no choice but to press on and hope to slip by unnoticed long enough to do what she needed to do and go home. At any moment the crowds could have turned hostile and descended upon her like ravenous wolves all because she wasn't like them. It had been like high school all over again.

The motivations were different but that same feeling had settled over her now. A gnawing, oppressive anxiety that spiked every time Fry opened his mouth but otherwise simply hung around her neck like heavy scrap metal fashioned into a necklace and painstakingly disguised as a proper piece of cheap jewelry. But that necklace had been easy enough to throw away after prom night. Fry's hat was out of her hands.

The worst part was that he was now perceptive enough to tell something was wrong before it came to a head.

"Are you still worried about me?"

"What? What makes you think that?"

"I... don't know," Fry said slowly. "It's like you're about to punch people but you're not actually punching people yet." Fry furrowed his brow in concentration. "Or maybe it's like when..."

Leela waited several second for Fry to continue. When he continued to stare at her in silence she spoke up. "Like when what?"

"Huh? I don't know. You just seem worried is all."

"It's nothing really. It's just..." Leela cast about for a reasonable excuse. It'd been so long since she'd had to come up with something plausible to throw Fry off that she wasn't sure what would actually work on him. She'd have to tell something like the truth.

"I'm just worried about the hat. I mean, we get into trouble on deliveries a lot. What if it gets damaged and you go back into a coma while we're running for our lives?"

Nibbler paused in his ravenous assault on his breakfast to chime in with his eternally dramatic baritone. "A valid concern. Perhaps it would be wiser for Fry to remain on Earth."

"I hadn't thought of that," Fry admitted. "I could wear a helmet? Or... do we have one that would fit over the hat? Wait, what are we talking about? It took 10 years for us to make 100 deliveries. What are the odds we'll go anywhere today?"

"Good news, everyone!"

–

Leela had a bad feeling about this delivery. Granted, when you worked at Planet Express that sort of feeling carried about as much weight as expecting rain on a tropical storm planet. This delivery had specific reasons for feeling particularly ominous, however. The crew was one man short since the Professor had lost all sense of time and driven her and Fry from the building before anyone else had shown up. Consequently, Leela had to remain behind to watch the ship while Fry ventured out into the brown and green muck outside with the hover dolly to deliver the package.

Sending Fry out alone was typically an invitation to disaster but there hadn't been any way around it. The planets unstable terrain meant someone had to be at the controls to lift the ship off if the landing pad decided to plunge into the murky depths. And so, Leela sat there.

And sat there.

And sat there while drumming her fingers.

And sat there while not drumming her fingers.

After what felt like an eternity she heard the cargo elevator rising back into the belly of the ship. She sprang to her feet and charged through the door and down the stairs to the hold. Fry was there, no worse for wear, though his shoes and pants were thoroughly caked with mud. The dolly was in one piece as well and loaded with two bags, one nearly the size of a piano, the other closer to a basketball.

"Fry? Did anything go wrong? Why did you bring stuff back?"

"They didn't pay in advance," Fry answered, jerking his thumb at the larger sack. "That's the money."

"Huh. Hermes must not have been in on this one. Normally he never lets us see how much money we're not ever going to get a reasonable cut of. What's the other bag?"

"Oh, this?" Fry picked up the smaller bag and they both started up the stairs to the bridge. "Tip."

"You got a tip?" Leela said incredulously.

"I know! They said I earned a little extra for being 'punctual and professional'. Also for not running away screaming when they turned out to be 20 foot tall worms filled with teeth. I think they get a lot of that."

"Wait, you didn't run away screaming?"

"Nah, I looked up the planet on the computer during the flight over. Told me all about them."

"Oh."

"Wait, aren't you supposed to be at the controls in case the ship sinks?" As soon as the words left the delivery boys mouth the deck tilted underfoot. Leela stumbled through the open doorway, tripped over the door jam and landed in the navigators chair in an undignified heap. Fry skidded past her and caught hold of the main console with little more than his fingertips. With considerable effort he hauled himself into the chair, turned the key and yanked the stick into gear.

Bessie rose from the sinking cement slab with a graceless lurch. The ship listed and swayed for a few sickening moments before finally settling into a steady hover once Fry got his bearings enough to take control.

"Whew, that was close, huh, Leela?" Fry shot a nervous post-near-death-escape smile at his captain. Leela gaped at him in silence. "I guess I'll, uh... get us into orbit? Then give you the wheel back? Kind of seems like a bad idea to let go while we're hovering here. So... hold on?"

Leela nodded mutely and swiveled her chair around to face front but her eye remained fixed on Fry. He'd learned how to pilot the ship years ago in a bid to impress her but he'd rarely taken the helm for anything but deep space cruising when Leela deemed it safe to allow him to live out his old fashioned space travel dreams for a while. For him to take charge like that not just during some personal quest he'd gotten stuck in his head but on the bridge of the ship, her ship, was something Leela didn't have words for.

He'd pulled the delivery off. The clients had been so pleased that they'd given him a tip bigger than his head and he'd returned completely unscathed. He'd managed this because he'd had the forethought to research their destination, something Leela had given up on after years of briefings being a waste of time. When the mission had threatened to fail it had been because she had failed in her job and it had been Fry who saved the day.

Now he was sitting in her chair, competently piloting them up and out of the atmosphere. He was doing it quietly, without any excited babbling or sound effects or anything. Fry was focusing on doing his job. She could see it his face and posture, even in profile. The way he leaned forward, drew his eyebrows down and tightened his lips ever so slightly like he had to force his senses to stay attentive to the situation at hand.

Leela tore her eye away and stared determinedly at the stars appearing outside the windows. She knew that look all too well. She'd seen it so many times before on certain bald man with short, yet unkempt, facial hair.

"Leela?" Fry asked hesitantly. "We're in space now. Do you want to take the wheel?"

"Yeah." Leela screwed her eye shut, took a long, steadying breath and forced her offending thoughts back into the dark corners where they belonged. When she opened her eye again it was framed by her usual no-nonsense captains face. "I'll take over. Go make sure the money hasn't been spilled all over the hanger. If we lose any we'll end up having to sleep through another of Hermes' four hour lectures. I'll call you up when we reach a drive-thru."

–

"This is no big deal. You're not going to start freaking out," Leela assured herself. "Okay, so he pulled off a delivery without a hitch. And he kind of saved both our necks. I mean, he's done that before, right? And it's not his fault he reminded you of Lars. That's just the hat shaking things up. He only has so many facial expressions he can make so one of them was bound to be similar. But he's not Lars, he's still Fry. I think. Oh lord."

Leela sank back in her chair and glared at the stars as if to blame them for her problems. Everything with Fry had to get so complicated. Or did it? After all, Fry only needed to wear the hat for a little while, just enough to get his brain back on its feet. It was just that damned little device that was over complicating things. Once it was off, Fry would be right back to his old self. This was just a temporary bump in the road. Like a coma, or having to hide from all technology on the Amish planet, or having your entire body turn into tentacles.

After all, Fry was nothing if not consistent in some matters. It wasn't as though being as smart as everyone else for a while would make him act like everyone else. It'd just be a few disturbing shades of parasitic worms and time travel. It's not as though Fry would actually change his mind about-

The sound of the door opening jerked Leela out of her thoughts.

"Haven't we passed a Fishy Joe's or something by now? I'm starving."

"What are you doing up here, Fry? Is the payment secure?"

"Yeah, it's all still in the bag. Probably a good thing Bender didn't come along. Anyway, we stopping for food?"

"No, we can eat when we get back. We passed a few places but we're right in the middle of the lunch rush. The shortest line was half an AU long."

"Fine, I'll go dig through the fridge then."

"Hermes said not to open that until the request forms he sent in for a hazmat team goes through."

Fry gagged involuntarily. "Oh God, has Bender been cooking again?" The mere thought of the robots abominable cooking inspired dry heaves in all who had experienced it.

"God, I hope not," Leela shuddered. "I still remember what he did to that slug."

"Don't remind me."

Fry settled into his usual chair and propped his feet up on the console. After a few minutes of silence stretched out between them Leela noticed the sound of quiet humming. Fry had his hands behind his head, his eyes pointed out the window and one foot tapping air in time with a familiar tune.

Leela felt the tension in her shoulders slowly bleeding away into the chair as she took in the scene. With a quiet sigh she shifted into a more comfortable position and returned her attention to the star spangled vista ahead. It was so typically Fry to stare out the window not to spot problems, but just to look. To Leela space had always seemed so utterly featureless and boring. A vast span of void with only a few nebulae to brighten up the dismal blackness. But if there was one thing she'd learned from Fry it was to stop taking sights like this for granted. The universe really was incredible when you stopped to look at it. Even someplace as barren as the moon.

Leela gently nudged the ship into a minor course correction and as Fry began the next chorus she found herself following along in the barest whisper.

"I'm walking on sunshine... ohh-Oohhh..."