Chapter Text
Almost all of Fry’s fingers have bandages wrapped around them. Damn roses. His head kind of hurts, too, and he’s not sure if that’s from being around the scent of flowers all day or something else.
This is the most he’s worked in...months? Maybe years. He can tell that even Hermes finds it off-putting when he brings another box of flowers in and sees him working on another bouquet. He can’t explain why he’s taken such a shine to it—it just sort of makes sense to him. Putting the flowers together feels like a puzzle, in a way, and when he steps back and looks at a finished bouquet, there’s the satisfaction that everything’s come together. “Jeez, meatbag, trying to get a raise?” Bender asks as he wanders into the room. He has done nothing to help with any of this, but Fry didn’t expect him to.
“Like that would ever happen.”
“Then what’re you workin’ so hard for? I don’t get it.” Bender’s been making fun of him all week, calling him “flower boy” and “pansy”. It’s the kind of ribbing that he expects from Bender, so it doesn’t bother him, but his incessant questioning about why is starting to get under his skin.
“I...I dunno, I just want to. I like it. It’s fun.”
Bender’s optics narrow. “You never think working is fun.”
“Sometimes I do!” Fry insists, even though he can’t think of a single time at the moment. “And anyway, maybe I want to ask Leela...” he pauses. He can’t tell Bender that; he’s a loudmouth. The first thing he’ll do is run to Leela and tell her, and that takes all the romance out of it.
“Ask Leela what?” Bender asks. His suspicious look only intensifies when Fry clams up. An awkward silence hangs in the air for a few moments before Bender’s optics widen. “Ohhh. I get it. You wanna have a baby with her.”
Fry splutters. “Wh--no!”
“It makes sense now. Flowers, pollinating, reproducing.” Bender shudders, like this is deeply disturbing to him. “You wanna knock her up!”
“I do not! I do not!” Fry’s face is burning. Leave it to Bender to immediately jump to that, but it had been the last thing on his mind.
“C’mon, kid, you don’t have to lie to me. I hear you two when she stays over. You keep me up all night!” His voice goes up a few octaves. “Oh, Fry--”
“Knock it off!” Fry says. “That’s not what I wanted to ask her!”
“Well then what is it, if you don’t wanna get her pregnant?”
He stares down at his shoes. He could lie, but he can’t think of a sufficient one, and Bender would just coax this out of him somehow anyway. “I wanna ask her to marry me,” he says in a voice so small he hopes Bender doesn’t hear it.
“Oh.” Bender says, then waits. “That’s it? Really?
Fry looks at him. “Yeah?”
“That’s what you’re so shy about? That’s what you didn’t want to tell me? That you wanna marry big boots? I coulda told you that.” Bender’s expression has changed to something that looks like amusement. “Getting all worked up about that...”
“Please don’t tell her.”
Bender scoffs. “C’mon, what do you take me for? I’m not gonna tell her. I know you wanna do it yourself. You’re all about that cheesy romantic crap with Leela.”
His perceptiveness surprises Fry, a little. He can never quite tell when Bender is actually listening to him; sometimes, when he talks, he just mumbles “uh-huh, sure, whatever” over and over, clearly caught up in a different train of thought—one that is most likely along the lines of Bender is great, Bender is great. But with how much Fry has talked about Leela over the years, he guesses that Bender had to have absorbed some of it. “I just want it to be special,” he admits.
“Eh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Bender says, “She’s obviously gonna say yes.”
Fry perks up. “Really? You think so?”
“I know so. Anyway, I’m tired of talking about all this, it’s making me feel gross. If you want me to get a ring for you, you just let me know.” He struts off then, ending the conversation as he almost always does—on his own terms.
Fry glances at the bouquet he’s been making for this purpose. It’s almost done; he just needs to add a few more things. It’s bursting with red and white and some strategically placed purples and yellows. Maybe it’s too grand, too over the top. Maybe he should take a few roses out. But Bender sounded so sure when he said “she’s gonna say yes”. Bender says a lot of things, but he just as easily could’ve said to give it up, it’s never gonna happen.
He could drive himself crazy overthinking this, and he’s pretty sure he already has. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. He’ll give her the flowers, stumble over an explanation, and wait to see what she says. It makes his stomach twist itself up into knots, but not because he’s unsure. Wanting to spend the rest of his life with Leela is the surest he’s been about anything.
She loves him, he knows that now. She doesn’t hesitate to hold his hand on the street or kiss him in front of anyone or pull him into the locker room to fool around when a meeting gets boring. She lets him see her with her hair down, her monocle on, she’s kept his favorite snacks around her apartment. She talks about what she wants to do in the future, where they should go when they can get time off, asks him if he’d like to come with her to see her parents. She loves him—she loves him, and he still can’t believe it sometimes, but it’s true.
He adds a final daffodil to the bouquet. He wasn’t sure about them at first, but he thinks they look nice next to the roses. He hides the whole thing in a corner, covered by a box, and decides to take a break.
Fry’s got a plan in his head as he walks into work the next day. As he had drifted off, in Leela’s bed, he had gone over it again and again. He’s going to make dinner for her tonight at her place (which she knows about), and then he’ll present the flowers, give his spiel about not being able to afford a ring yet but he’s sure he will really soon, and ask her The Big Question. He sees it playing out a variety of ways, some good and some absolutely devastating, but he’s trying not to think of the latter.
Mostly, he just feels excited to show her what he made and explain every piece of it. The camellias and the daffodils and the red sweet peas—all of them mean something, at least to him. He hopes they will to her, too.
She’s got her hand in his, as she always does when they walk together. They have a long list of deliveries to complete today, but no one is going to want to stay late, no matter what the Professor insists (and he’ll be asleep by 5 PM, most likely, anyway). Even Hermes has someone to go home and get into a fight with.
“You’re in a good mood,” Leela observes as they take the elevator up from the Planet Express lobby.
“Well, ‘course I am,” Fry says, “You’re here.”
She smiles that almost embarrassed smile that always comes out when he says something like that. “Save it for tonight, you.”
He’s about to add something about how he’s got plenty of things saved up for tonight, but when he sees what awaits them in the lounge, his mouth dries up. “What on earth?” Leela asks.
The room is a colorful, nice-smelling mess. Every bouquet has seemingly been overturned; even the boxes that had been sealed up were opened and torn apart. Petals are scattered everywhere, thorny stems on the floor. To add insult to injury, in the corner of the room a vase has broken and a collection of beautiful flowers has been thoroughly destroyed. Fry’s bouquet. He wants to lay down and scream right there and then, but then he sees Bender in the middle of it. “What did you do?” He asks, wondering for a split second if it would be justifiable to charge at him in this moment.
“It wasn’t me!” Bender says. The look on Fry’s face must say a lot. “I’m tellin’ ya, don’t plug your stick in crazy!”
“What happened?” Leela asks. Fry feels a hand on his back.
“So I was with that floozybot I’ve been seeing lately, uh—Circatrice? Or something? And I wanted to give her something nice, y’know, make her feel sorta special. ‘Til I get bored of her anyway. So I brought her here, was gonna show her the flowers. Give her a couple.” Leela taps her foot, like she’s waiting for Bender to get to the point. “Anyway, I didn’t know that another floozybot…dammit, what was her name? Ladyboard? Or somethin’…I guess she felt pretty upset about something I did. She saw me with Circatrice, and followed us. When she saw me givin’ her the flowers, she went crazy. She said if she couldn’t be with me no one could and—well, Circatrice and I got outta here and let her tire herself out.”
“So you just let her destroy all our hard work because—what—you cheated on her with another girl?” Leela asks. “You shouldn’t have taken your little date here.”
“Oh, so it’s Bender’s fault and not the crazy one’s?” He throws up his arms.
“I can’t really fault anyone for feeling mad that they got cheated on. Even if she is a floozybot.” Leela says.
Fry still feels utterly hopeless. There’s no way he can recreate that bouquet today; all their flowers are destroyed. He could go out and buy some, but it wouldn’t be the same, and it’s Valentine’s Day, he’s sure the bouquets are picked over anyway. All he can look at is that vase shattered on the floor and the shredded petals of the red sweet peas he liked so much. “I can’t believe it,” he says dumbly.
“Fry,” Leela begins. “I know you worked hard on those bouquets, but it’s okay. At least she didn’t burn the place to the ground, or something.”
“But—but…” he grasps for words. “You don’t understand…”
“Of course I understand, you cared about them, and it’s sad we won’t be able to deliver them, but really, it’s not the end of the world.” She’s trying to be comforting, but all it does is make Fry feel like he’s sinking lower and lower, until he’s pretty sure he’d just rather have the floor swallow him up.
He’s tempted to insist that she really doesn’t understand, and now he has nothing to give her tonight, but that would open up a can of worms that he couldn’t close, and then there would be (metaphorical) worms all over the floor among the flowers. So instead, he nods, and sighs, and says, “Yeah. I guess you’re right. It’s not.” When he glances at her face, she doesn’t look convinced by his reply.
It’s not long before Hermes finds them, and then Amy, and then the Professor, and then Zoidberg. Bender explains his story and gets an intense, bureaucratic berating from Hermes. They get ushered into the conference room to sit through a lecture about profits, and how now they’ll all have to work overtime for the next two weeks to make up for the flower expenses. Fry tunes it out. He feels a foot touch his under the table—Leela’s. When he doesn’t respond to that, he feels her hand brush his. He looks up for a moment, then goes back to studying the table.
He halfheartedly picks up the flowers after their meeting, but when he sees a group of dandelions crumpled on the floor, it almost feels like too much, and he spends the rest of his shift on the couch in front of the TV. Leela’s worried, he can see it on her face every time she passes by, but she doesn’t say anything about it.
“Hey, lighten up,” Bender insists, poking him in the arm. “So your flowers got ruined, it ain’t the end of the world.”
“Yeah, but--” Fry starts, then sighs, and stops. It’s no use explaining.
“Listen. When you really wanna ask her to marry you, tell ol’ Bender, here, and I’ll go get you a ring.” He doesn’t say how he’s going to get it. He doesn’t need to.
“Thanks,” Fry replies. It doesn’t fix anything, but it does make him feel a little better to hear Bender be supportive, in his way. Just a bit.
Fry still goes over to Leela’s that night and cooks her the dinner he promised. She insists on watching him while he cooks, sitting at the kitchen counter. She’s wearing a nice shirt and some jeans, far from the usual dress and heels she would wear if they went to a restaurant, but of course she looks gorgeous. Her hair is down and she absentmindedly plays with it with one hand, a glass of wine in the other. It’s quiet, besides the cooking sounds and some music that they selected (a playlist of songs from the 20th century they both like) on in the background. “Fry,” she begins.
He looks over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“You’re not still upset about the flowers, are you?”
He swallows. “What if I was?”
She takes a long pause before answering. “I know that you cared a lot. I just…well, we’ve had lots of things like that happen. Honestly, I’m surprised Zoidberg didn’t eat them all, or Bender didn’t set them on fire with one of his cigars. I don’t think you need to let it eat you up so much.”
“It’s not that.” He insists, then pours some pasta into a colander.
“You keep saying that. What is it, then? You can tell me.”
“I can’t,” Fry insists. He swears that can feel Leela’s eye burning into the back of his head.
“Really, you can’t? What is it that was so special that I couldn’t possibly understand?” Her voice has a bit of an edge that he’s heard before and he wonders if he’s about to royally screw up their first proper Valentine’s Day together.
“It’s not—I don’t—” he stammers, then hangs his head. “I was going to…”
Leela pauses, examines him, then softens. “You were going to give me flowers. Oh, Fry, you really don’t have to worry about that.”
“But they were special, y’know, they—they meant something.”
“The pasta sauce is bubbling,” Leela comments, getting up from her seat to quickly turn the stove off. Fry’s about to turn his attention back to cooking, but she drapes her arms over his shoulders, getting him to look her in the eye, face to face.
“I know they were special, because I know you,” she says. "And it was cute, how much you cared about what all the flowers meant. I know I can’t see it, but tell me what you were gonna give me.”
It’s not as good as being able to present her with the real thing, but maybe if he describes it, he’ll feel beter. “Well, red roses, and daffodils...and you know, sweet peas, and things like that.”
She smiles, and he finds himself smiling back, like it’s an involuntary response. “That sounds beautiful. What does it all mean, then?”
Fry’s mouth goes dry again. All he can manage to stammer out is, “Well it was sort of—I guess a way to—I was think of—it's—a question?”
“A question? What do you mean?”
There’s no way he can do this now, without a ring or a bouquet, in just jeans and a t-shirt and socks in Leela’s kitchen, nothing is right, and this is Leela, the woman he loves more than anyone else. So, he settles instead for the pathetic response of, “You know. A...a big question.”
Her brow slowly unfurrows as realization hits her. “Fry...”
“I’m not asking it now. I mean, I guess, I don’t know. I don’t have anything to give you.” God, this is embarrassing.
“Fry.” She repeats again, and then kisses him, sweet and gentle. “It’s okay.”
“Is it?” He asks, voice small.
Leela nods, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him in closer. “Don’t worry about that, not tonight. When you want to ask me, you should. When you think it’s right.”
“And...and you’ll say...” He’s nervous to finish the question, for there to even be a hint of a possibility that the answer will be ‘no’.
She kisses his forehead. “I’ll say how I feel.”
“And right now, how do you feel?”
“I feel really, really happy, because I’ve got a great boyfriend, and I’d be very honored to know he’s thinking of spending the rest of his life with me.”
There’s something about the way Leela talks when they’re close like this, the way her voice gets quiet and low. It makes Fry feel so physically warm sometimes he thinks he’s going to melt onto the floor, like an ice cream. “Well--he is. I mean, he told me, personally. So I know.”
She chuckles. “I’m glad.” She pauses, then adds, “You know, one time, I was staying over at my parent’s house. When I woke up and went into the kitchen, I saw them dancing, like this.” She sways them back and forth.
“Your parents? Really?” The concept of two older parents being affectionate to each other is something foreign to him. He knew his parents must have loved each other, at some point in time, and maybe somehow, they still did. But he never saw them show it.
Leela nods. “I was surprised, but it was sweet. Dancing like they were at prom or something, in the kitchen. Just like this.”
Fry looks at her, and wonders if she’s thinking about the future, too. If they’ll one day be standing in a kitchen of their own, old and wrinkly and slow dancing to even older music. “Well, I never got to dance with anyone at prom like this.”
“Neither did I.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “But I prefer it like this.”
“The pasta sauce is going to go cold.” He doesn’t care all that much, but it feels worth acknowledging.
Leela hums but doesn’t pull away. “We can reheat it.”
“You’re right.” He smiles and presses a kiss to the side of her head. They’ll stay like this for a while longer, they’re in no rush.
The one thing that goes to plan is how they end the night; in bed, of course. She’s been giggly and tastes like red wine, and even after they’ve mostly tired themselves out, she’s curled up at his side and is playing with the hair on the back of his neck. He feels heavy, in a good way—the kind of welcome heaviness that comes with drifting off to sleep. “Leela,” he asks, because he has to ask this again, he just has to, before they fall asleep. “If I asked you...you know, if I asked you for real. Would you say yes?”
Leela doesn’t say anything; she just gives him a long, lingering kiss.
He thinks he has his answer.