A/N : Thanks kaci, cartoonlover27 and saffronraymiecorinna for the reviews. (Saffronraymie : No, it hasn't been asked before. I definitely think Fry has synesthesia. And . . . haha. Yeah, you should wait and see about him and Leela. I don't want to give away too much but they're both about to get in a whole world of trouble.)

Fry was pretty sure his roommates liked each other. Liked liked each other. He would usually be the first person to admit he was oblivious to sexual tension (if Leela wasn't around to admit it for him) but the evidence was starting to stack up.

Gomez hardly said two words to Xandri, but when she was in the room he stared at her like his eyeballs were about to fall out, and if she started to do anything, he jumped up right away to help. He had insisted Fry let her sleep on the couch every night, despite the fact that Fry grumbled about it – loudly, and often. He kept cleaning stuff, and now the kitchen was full of Lucky Charms, because Xandri had had targeted advertising in her dreams and woke up one morning singing the cereal jingle. So, obviously, Gomez had assumed she liked them. Normally Fry wouldn't have minded – it was free food, after all – but his teeth were starting to ache from all the sugar, and his dreams had turned crazy, Technicolor-bright. He was starting to yearn for Bachelor Chow, and Leela had once told him that was just Kibbles 'n' Snouts in different packaging.

In Fry's experience, being stupidly chivalrous and simultaneously tongue-tied only meant one thing. The thing he'd run to another planet to escape. Love.

At least Gomez wasn't alone. That was the one good thing about watching his new friends fall pathetically in love with each other. Xandri was just as obsessed, and just as bad at hiding it. Now that Fry was stuck sleeping on the floor, he got to watch Xandri lie on the couch at night and spend hours at a time staring intently at Gomez's bedroom door, like someone had dared her to knock on it and she was working up the nerve. She kept changing her hair and her perfume too, and sometimes she'd swing by the bar and buy Fry drinks, so she could tell him he was getting good at cocktails and ask him fake-casual questions about Gomez. And then ask him what the answers meant, like he'd answered in Morse code instead of English.

It was driving Fry nuts.

"You should ask her out," he said one morning, as he heaped Lucky Charms into a bowl.

Gomez blinked. "Wh – what?"

Fry picked up a spoon and wiped the dried ice-cream off with his sleeve.

"You. Should. Ask. Her. Out." He gestured at the door to the bathroom, where Xandri was singing in the shower. "You know, on a date. You obviously like her."

His room-mate turned the dark purple color of a week-old bruise.

"That's . . . haha. No, I don't. That's crazy. Why would you think I . . ." He laughed like he was having an asthma attack. "She's not even Neptunian. Why would I like her?"

"She likes you."

Gomez stopped breathing. "No she doesn't."

Fry rolled his eyes.

"Are you kidding me? She never shuts up about you. She has to like you. Hey, is this yours?"

He held up a bottle of bourbon. It was annoyingly light, but there was a promising sloshing sound when he shook the bottle.

Gomez shook his head. "No," he said impatiently. He hesitated. "You really think she likes me?"

Fry shrugged. "I dunno. You should just ask her out. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? She says yes or she says no, right? Unless she tells you she has to meet a ghost," he added thoughtfully. "Or her pet is sick. Or it's laundry day. Or she's washing her hair. That can happen."

He up-ended the contents of the bottle over his cereal and started to eat.

"I'm done washing my hair," said a bright voice behind him. "Are you guys talking about me?"

It was Xandri, fresh out of the shower and smiling in a way that made Gomez clam up again. He didn't even unclam when Fry kicked him under the table.

Xandri sat down, frowning at Fry's breakfast.

"Why did you just kick the table leg?" she asked curiously.

Oh, right. That's why that he didn't notice.

"My aim was off," Fry said truthfully. He glared at Gomez, trying to send silent ask-her-out-before-I-go-crazy ray beams across the table, but they bounced off Gomez unnoticed.

He switched his attention to Xandri.

"You look nice. Did you change your . . ." He frowned, trying to figure it out through his slightly-drunk morning haze. At last he gave up. "Uh. Face?"

Xandri smiled. "I tattooed my lips." She pointed to the azure blue floral pattern printed on her lips.

"Oh, yeah." Fry floundered. "It's pretty," he managed.

"Thanks." Xandri glanced across the table at Gomez. "Thanks for noticing."

Fry suppressed a groan. These two were hopeless. There had to be something he could do. Hmm . . . this was a delicate situation. What would the characters do on Three's Company? His eye fell on the bottle of bourbon again and he had an idea.

"We were just talking about you," he said. That snapped Gomez out of his trance, at least.

Xandri blinked. "You were?"

Fry grinned. "Sure. We were talking about seizing the moment. Crappy diem, and all that." Gomez was shaking his head furiously, but Fry ignored him. "Yeah," he went on, warming to the plan. "We were gonna hit the casino tonight. Wanna come?"

Xandri smiled, confused. "You mean you're going to play? But you never play."

Predictably, she was looking at Gomez. Fry didn't play much, because it reminded him of Bender, but sometimes when he was especially drunk he liked to work the slot machines. Gomez didn't play at all. Fry had privately decided he was too square. Time to drag him out of his comfort zone.

"He's playing," he said firmly. "And you're playing, right?"

"Sure. It sounds like fun."

Fry smiled craftily. "Oh, it will be. We can get drunk, and gamble, and . . . see what happens."

It took Gomez a long time to wake up, and even longer to stand up. There was a lot of groaning and dry heaving involved.

"Ugh," he groaned. "What happened last night?"

"Oh, good, you're awake." Fry grinned.

He was eating cereal out of the only clean mug in the apartment, and enjoying the feeling of being comparatively sober. "Comparatively" meaning compared to his room-mates. Gomez had been passed out on the floor since 6AM, and Xandri was vomiting loudly in the bathroom. Fry, by contrast, could breathe in without puking, remembered most of last night, and only had the heavy, throbbing headache he got most mornings and had learned weeks ago to dull with drink.

"What happened?" Gomez said thickly. He pulled the neon pink bridal veil off his head and gaped at it in confusion. "Why am I wearing this?"

Fry shrugged. "It's funny?"

He crunched a mouthful of Lucky Charms.

"A lot happened," he said. "It was a great night. I got this tattoo in memory of my dog."

He rolled up his sleeve to reveal the raw, pink-edged words Seymour Asses printed on his forearm.

"And then you lost three hundred bucks to the Borax Kid," he continued. "And then we saw the robot Don-Bot, and he stepped on my foot. And then we crashed a corporate dinner for the free bar . . . and then Xandri rode a mechanical buggalo and won back your three hundred dollars . . . and then you guys got married." His grin widened at the sight of Gomez's expression, which was frozen in horror. "Yeah . . . it was a good night, for sure. You want breakfast?"

Gomez choked and spluttered his way back to coherency.

"When you say married," he began nervously. "You mean -"

"I now pronounce you man and wife," Fry said cheerfully. "That kind of married."

He pointed at the TV, where the wedding footage was playing unheeded. A very drunk Xandri (wearing the bow-tie from Gomez's tuxedo) and an equally inebriated Gomez (wearing her bright pink veil) were clinging to each other, laughing nonsensically in front of the bored-looking Elvis-bot that served as the Vegas minister. They were wearing blue suede shoes and kept laughing at Fry, who was less drunk than them, but still drunk enough that he couldn't hold the camera straight and kept forgetting confetti was something you threw over the couple after the service. And then . . . there it was ; that moment right before the "I-do"s when they blinked at each other and went oddly quiet. It was a stupid wedding and everybody was drunk, but for a moment it was real. They loved each other.

Watching it again made Fry feel hollow. He'd been having fun until then. And now all he could think of was Leela.

Leela, standing in the shadow of the ship, her eye bright with something that might have been fear and might have been recklessness. "You're shaking," she'd whispered, and Fry had been, because he loved her and didn't understand why she wanted to do this, why she wanted to have sex – now, and with him. She hadn't explained, but her face had gone soft and she'd kissed him in a way that was soft too, and Fry had loved her so much he thought his heart might burst.

Leela, breathless and undone beside him, telling him she didn't know what she felt, but holding onto his hand so tight it hurt.

Leela, resting her head on his chest, happy for the smallest space of time.

No, no, no, Fry thought uselessly. Shut up. Stop thinking about it. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and dragged himself back to the present.

Gomez was tearing at his hair.

"What do I do? What do I do?"

Fry shrugged. What did you do when you married someone? Divorce immediately and try to figure out how it happened, if his experience was anything to go by. But this probably wasn't the same. No time-skips, for one thing.

"Well . . . what do you want to do?" he asked. "I mean, you like her, she likes you . . . what's the worst that can happen?"

Gomez stared at him. "You think we should stay married?"

"Why not?"

Gomez colored. "It might not work. I mean, I never even told her I liked her before last night. And we've never . . ." He writhed in embarrassment, unable to finish the sentence. "You know." He lowered his voice. "What if we can't? She's human. I'm Neptunian. What if we don't . . . you know, fit. Together."

"Work it out," Fry suggested. In his experience, everything and anything could have sex in the 31st century. Robots, humans, aliens . . . it all seemed to work somehow.

Mutants, his brain suggested helpfully.

"Look," he snapped. "You love her and she loves you back. Unless one of you did something really dumb and screwed it up forever, there's no reason you can't be together. She's right there!" He pointed at the bathroom door. "Just go get her. I can't take this anymore."

Gomez stood up. He squared his shoulders.

"You're right. You're right."

He crossed to the bathroom and threw the door open. Xandri was swilling her mouth out with water.

"Gomie -" she began, but she didn't get much further before he kissed her. It seemed to last an age.

"I taste like puke," she whispered when they broke apart.

"I don't think I care," Gomez told her.

"Oh, good," she mumbled, and she kissed him back.

Fry watched them kiss in the bright morning sunlight. The hollow feeling swelled inside him and after a while he stood up and walked out of the apartment.

Maybe he should leave again, he thought dejectedly. Maybe he should go somewhere new, like the planet of the loveless mole people, where nothing would ever remind him of Leela.

Or maybe he should go back to Earth and find Leela. Maybe he should tell her they were making a big mistake and he couldn't live without her. That was what he really wanted to do. But he couldn't do that.

Could he?

Fry forced himself to slow down, to sit quiet on the sidewalk while he mulled it over.

No, he decided. He couldn't do that. Or rather, he could, but he shouldn't. He could show up on Leela's doorstep – drunk, most likely - and tell her he loved her. He could kiss her, and they'd probably end up having sex again. (It just seemed to happen.) But it wouldn't change anything. It would only make them both miserable, like it always did.

He could challenge Lars to some kind of death-duel for Leela's heart, but that probably wouldn't work either. Leela would miss the guy.

"It's not fair," he muttered. "My life sucks no matter what I do! The universe hates me."

He could hear the whine of sirens in the distance. That was unusual – in Mars Vegas justice was mainly dispensed by bouncers with fists the size of his head, or by bartenders with a shotgun to hand, or (more rarely) by casino owners with a set of thumbscrews and a soundproofed private vault. It was rare for the cops or the DOOP to have anything to do with it. But there was no mistaking those sirens.

Fry stood up as a Slurm hovervan shot around the corner.

"Hey! Slow down!" he yelled – and the fender slammed into his stomach.