The next time Fry came back wasn't just to bring lunch and leave.
He opened the door.
He was not supposed to open the door. She warned him. There was no good reason to be in this dome, to breathe her air, to come anywhere close to her when she was constantly on the edge.
He didn't listen. He didn't care. He just wanted things to go back to normal.
But Leela knew better. She wasn't normal. And in mere seconds, he wouldn't be, either.
He approached her, and without a second thought, she pushed him to the ground. Hard. The bouquet scattered across the floor.
She didn't want to hurt him – she just didn't want him close to her. She couldn't handle any more guilt. But the only way she knew how to express herself right now was through aggression. When they were separate, that could be kept to snappy remarks. But when he was next to her, physically, despite her telling him how much it hurt to know she infected people… it just happened.
Luckily, Fry opened his eyes quickly – he was a hardy little guy. But when Leela leaned in, she could see the madness swirling in those now-glassy eyes. He shut them tight again, bracing himself, and kicked her right in the chest. That was a surer sign of his infection than any frowny-face nose swab.
When she grabbed his leg, she accidentally yanked off his shoe. Disgusted, she tossed it to the side. "Did you wash your socks once since I left?!" she shouted.
"Oh, like your feet smell so rosy!" He sat up and tore off his other shoe to brandish as a weapon. "Bender still thinks that fungal cream is mine, and you never even thanked me for covering!"
"It was yours, idiot!" Leela ducked out of the way of the thrown shoe. "Or at least it should be!"
As Fry stumbled to his shoeless feet, Leela put up her fists. Lord knew what crazy things Explovid-infected Fry could do.
And then he kissed her. Hard.
Leela wanted to protest. This was so wrong. This was so irresponsible. So many people had tried their best to avoid Explovid, and here was Fry taking it right in his mouth. And it wasn't just a little peck, either – barring the brief moments they broke apart to cough, this was as wet and heavy as usual, when they were healthy and happy and had no reason to be apart.
And… she liked it. In a way she hadn't liked anything in two weeks.
Her body tensed. Her heart pounded. Her face flushed. She wanted nothing more than to grab Fry by the collar and push him back to the ground. This could all still be attributed to her hot, pulsing fever, but now, finally, another feeling was bubbling to the surface.
L u s t.
Leela had been so blinded by anger, so used to isolation, so unable and unwilling to dwell on what she was missing, she'd forgotten how fucking good it felt to touch him. And for him to touch her. He grasped her waist, digging in his nails to make sure she couldn't escape (where would she go, dumbass?), and pulled himself so close to her, he nearly lost his footing. (Not having shoes didn't help.) She had his hand on his back – he was so warm. Probably from his rising fever, but fuck, it just felt so right.
The anger and the lust together was overpowering, Leela thought she might burn out entirely. But her brain was so full of smoke, she couldn't just say "stop."
So she used her head in another way: by slamming it into Fry's.
"OW!" Fry recoiled, holding his left eye. "God!" He glared back at Leela, his eye already swelling shut. "What the hell was that for?!"
"Um, enter quarantine when I specifically said not to? Play tonsil hockey with me as if you want to get sick? Throw your shoe at me!"
"I came in here to keep you company and you just… pushed me!" Fry yelled back, his voice already hoarse.
"I was hoping you'd get the message and leave before it was too late."
"It's already too late," Fry said with a cough. "But I don't care. I may be sick, but I'm more sick of you trying to get rid of me. All I did was try to make your quarantine better, and all you could do was treat me like dirt!"
"Yeah," Leela replied with indignance, "it was literally all I could do! Maybe now you'll understand!"
"Well, I'm stuck in a boring dome with no TV for God knows how long, and my throat hurts and I'm tired, and also I have one eye now, so I guess I do know how you feel!"
"You can't just assume you know how I feel!" she barked.
"Augh!" Fry tugged at his own hair, then stopped to take a breath. A rough and shaky breath, but a breath nonetheless. "All I wanted was to be with you," he said as calmly as he could. "And you're making it… really, really hard. But you're still you. And I can't walk away from you…" He mumbled a bit sardonically, "Even if I could."
Fry seemed a little better at reeling in his anger than Leela had been this whole time. Maybe because he'd had more time to study Explovid and its effects from the outside? Or maybe his brain was already too simple to mess up any further. Yeah, probably that.
"So I guess we may as well try and…" He looked around the glass dome. "...make this dome a home?"
"Oh! Did you already track dog crap in here?" Leela snapped with sarcastic glee.
"No, but you could leave the seat up so I could fall in after you send our Xmas card to your parents!" Fry snapped back.
"You could run the bill up by ordering another stupid race car bed." She took a step closer.
"Sure! And you can kick me off it in the middle of the night during one of your weird night fits!" He took a step closer.
She grabbed his waist and lowered her voice. "You can fuck me in five minutes and fall asleep."
He grabbed her upper arms and lowered his voice. "You can pull on my hair way too hard."
"You can blow your load on our brand new sheets."
"You can bite my lip so bad I need stitches."
They kissed again. They just couldn't help it. Leela dug her hands into Fry's pants and left claw marks in his ass. Fry pulled Leela's hair back enough to expose her neck, then sucked it hard enough to leave a bruise. Then he whispered in her ear:
"You do care."
She glowered.
"Fuck you."
He tugged the strap of her top.
"Make me."
She did.
Fry ripped that strap off her shoulder.
Dozens of passersby saw her bare ass.
It took half an hour to catch their breath afterwards.
It was worth it.
Finally, she had some release.
Eventually, the anger and the lust became far less overwhelming, instead blending into one fiery sensation that Fry and Leela shared.
They were still sick, and their minds were still foggy and sensitive. If either of them typed or tapped their foot or hummed a song or even just breathed too loud (which was easy to do with a respiratory infection), the other one would fly into a misophonic rage. All they could remember was what annoyed them about each other, and those lists could get long. Not to mention they now had to rely on delivery for meals instead of Fry's homemade cooking, which meant many hangry hours waiting for crappy lukewarm food. No tip, slowpoke! (And no snide comments about occupational irony, either!)
The worst was when Fry noticed the torn remains of his drawing. His healthy self would've accepted it, then walked away to cry. His sick self screamed himself hoarse at Leela and tried to rip up her clothes to make it "even" somehow, using a shard from the plate she broke nearly two weeks ago. But Leela quickly realized, even in his delirious state, he couldn't actually bring anything that sharp close to Leela's skin, even if he was only targeting her leggings. The furthest he got was ripping the strap off her boot.
(Leela actually did use the shard on Fry's chest once, when the argument escalated to some cutting remarks about their exes. Thankfully she didn't cut very deep, but she did have to pull out the peroxide from the first aid kit. He whined that it stung, and she called him a baby. But her virus was forcing out just as many furious thoughts about how unhinged she had been.)
But their symptoms would subside the sooner they stopped talking and started swapping infectious spit. Or at the very least, it'd distract them, and they'd forget if the tenseness in their chest was fury or yearning.
When she and Fry fucked (it still didn't quite feel like "making love," not yet), Leela felt her walls come down. She didn't feel the urge to stand her ground, or humiliate some racist troll, or berate her past self for her shortsightedness. She could focus on Fry's steady motions, building up a tension that was far easier to release. Even when they trash talked each other, or bit or scratched or pulled on hair or cloth, it all came back to one kinder, controllable feeling that was even more intense than the anger.
Good thing Professor would be disinfecting the dome anyway.
