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"Terrible news everyone. Absolutely terrible news!" The Professor proclaimed one morning at the time the workday was supposed to start.
"What do you mean professor?" Leela asked after The Professor’s unusual announcement. "And shouldn't you wait for Fry to get here?" She tacks on, noticing the redhead isn't at the table.
"No need, none at all. For you see the terrible news is in fact about poor, poor Fry."
"What's wrong with Fry?" Leela shouts, echoed by Bender.
"Well, as you all have noticed," The professor pulls a small remote out of his pocket, clicking it to reveal a few short holo clips of Fry falling, injuring himself (or someone else), as well as several more clips of Fry's more erratic behavior as of the last few weeks. "Fry has been acting more strangely than usual. I took it upon myself to perform a few tests and examinations to see if perhaps some, outside influence was at fault for Fry's failure to act in a normal manner." Here The Professor drops his head and shakes it slowly.
"What was it, Professor? What do we need to do to fix Fry?" Leela prods.
"I'm afraid there is no fix that can be applied." The professor states. "For you see, it is Fry's own brain that is the source of his problems."
Here the professor clicks the remote again, to reveal an outline of Fry's skull and brain, the inside of which has a number of masses and growths. The room gasps at the image, all understanding without words the severity of the situation.
The professor explains anyway, "As you can see, Fry has numerous growths and masses within his brain and skull, a great deal of them are pressing onto important structures, such as this one here, which is at least partially responsible for his dizzy spells and his balance problems. And this one here, against the gland, which has been causing his mood swings."
"Oh my God!" Leela gasps loudly, "But Professor! Surely with the advancements in medicine that have occurred in the last thousand years, we have some way to fix this?"
"Unfortunately, though we have found cures, from everything from heart attacks to Super Space Gonorrhea, along with several kinds of cancer. The kind of cancer that is currently eating at Fry's brain is very unique, and thus, has not been as well studied as others. Along with that, the number of masses, along with how quickly they're growing and multiplying means that Fry does not have the time it would require to treat him traditionally."
"Oh, God!" Bender shouts, "I'm going to lose my best friend!" He sobs into the 'elbow' of his arm and leans low over the table. The others slowly start to join in his tears.
"Not necessarily!" The professor shouts, startling them from their tears, at least momentarily. "I have devised a device that, with some time and no small amount of editing, will allow Fry to live on in another form!"
"But how, Professor?" Amy asks.
"By connecting a machine, not unlike the device that one uses to access explicit memory, to Fry's head and then applying as many forms of stimulus as possible and recording all the results. Then later going through and deleting anything extraneous. Also, any memories that may be affected by the cancer spreading through Fry's brain at this moment. The memories are then placed into a safe place, Fry's physical body can then be put to rest, without him having to remember the worst of what will happen to his body. But soon enough the new body I'm making him will be ready. Then everything can go back to normal."
"You're making him a new body, professor?" Leela asks, "But how? Is it some kind of clone?"
"Oh, no, no." The professor shakes his head again, clicking the small remote again to show DNA strands. "This is Fry's DNA, along with Leela's and my own. As you may or may not be able to tell there are quite large amounts of damage to all three of our DNA's just in different manners. My DNA is heavily damaged by years and years and years of replications. It's heavily damaged indeed. Leela's is DNA is also damaged, but see, it can still replicate without problems. Hence the eye, but otherwise no other mutations or anything that has shown up over time. Fry unfortunately has massively damaged DNA. Look here, it attaches to itself, it bends, it mutates almost as one watches. Even if I had the technology ready to clone Fry, by the time it had reached the age Fry is now, it would be in a worse state than he is now. There is no way to make Fry a body from his own. I suppose I could make some sort of... Meat puppet. One that came from the flesh of others, but there is a great risk from that, and a high chance that he won't be quite the same. High risk of him going insane as well." The Professor continues muttering, lowly, and lower than that, his musings becoming inaudible.
"Speak up old man! What does this mean for Fry!" Bender shouts, unwilling to wait for the man to meander his way back to being understandable.
"Huh, wha-? Oh right. Well, over the last few nights I have completed large amounts of work on Fry's new robot body!" The professor exclaims with fervor.
"Robot body? Professor!" Leela shouts, "How can you expect Fry to go through life as a robot!"
"Hey, it's not that bad!" Bender is quick to object, "I bet Fry will make a great robot!"
"Professor, did you even ask Fry if he wanted to be a robot?" Amy asks, "I mean, spleesh, there are plenty of people who would rather be a head in a jar instead of dead, but plenty of people who would rather be dead than a head in a jar."
The professor hems a moment, "You know, I can't remember if I did." He shrugs, wholly unrepentant, "I guess we can ask him when he's fully downloaded. Which is going to take a few days."
"A few days?" Leela exclaims, "Professor! The real Fry is a living breathing person, not some automaton! And he's still alive, so let's just ask him now!"
"Well," The Professor shakes his head, "I'm afraid that is no longer possible." He sniffs slightly, "For you see, Fry is dead!" He wails that last chunk collapsing into his chair holding his head.
"Fry's dead. Like dead-dead?" Leela asks, her tone devoid of most feeling at this point. When the Professor simply nods his head she starts wailing as well, "Fry no! I thought we had so much more time together!"
"Well, you see Leela-" The professor starts.
"Oh cram it old man! Fry is dead!" She wails once more.
"Would you shut up! Yes, Fry's physical form is dead, but all his memories, everything that makes Fry, er well, Fry will continue on in the robot body, more or less."
"Well Professor, how long will it take for Fry to be able to return to work?" Hermes asks, ever focused on the job.
"Let's see, the download indicator was saying anywhere between 20 minutes and 500 years, so I'll guess that it'll be closer to a week, and as far as his new body I only need to finish up some, well, minor parts, wiring and such, which should be done long before the download. He'll need at least a couple of days to get used to his new body, so I'd say anywhere from one to two weeks to answer your question, Hermes."
"... One... Week... Got it!" Hermes nods to the Professor.
"Now I'll leave you to your grieving of Fry while I go to finish his brand new robot body." The Professor groans and levers himself out of his chair, ignoring the cries and sobs of his employees.
"He'll never be the same! I just know it!" Bender sobs into his elbow.
"Hey, that's my line! You and Fry will have more in common than ever, what are you so upset about?" Leela points out.
"Fry's the only fleshbag I've ever cared about! And now the fleshbag part is go-oh-oh-oh-oh-on!" Bender sobs harder.
"Well, I'm going to put us all on bereavement leave for the next week. I suggest you all go home and sob your eyes out until the funeral, and then quickly move on so it doesn't affect your work." Hermes says, stamping a few papers. He stands, begins a hiccuping, wailing cry, and then walks out of the room while still crying.
Leela sniffs, "Well, I guess I'm going to go home to do some deep introspection as to how I feel about robosexuality." She stands, following Hermes out the door.
The others walk out themselves. Each, except Scruffy, seems to be lost in thought. Only Bender remains, sitting quietly at the table and staring at Fry's usual chair.
His literally photographic memory provides him with thousands of pictures and short bit memories of his time in the Planet Express building with Fry.
He stands, each place he looks new information is being mixed with old files, all providing a veritable sea of information.
The ship has memories of cleaning it together. The lockers have memories of pranks and plans for new adventures, would they be the same now?
Would Fry be the same?
Bender walks, no trudges back to the apartment that he and Fry share. His usual walk has too much swagger for this occasion.
Once in the apartment Bender looks around at the collection of his and Fry's stuff, how much of it would they still need when Fry was a robot too? He sits on the couch. Some of Fry's underwear is on the back, Fry won't be needing that anymore. He turns on ‘All My Circuits,’ will Fry still like the show when he's a robot?
Every time Bender turns his head there’s something else that reminds him of Fry and makes him worry about what Fry will be like as a robot. He closes his visor to get away from all of the outside stimuli, only for the countless memories (not for a robot but counting the exact number of memories that Bender has of Fry would be pointless [Bender has 1,759,646 separate memories of Fry]) to run across his visuals. Bender lets himself go into recharge mode, his data dreams completely full of Fry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Bender wakes up close to noon he checks Fry’s room before leaving.
There’s no sign that Fry had come in the night before. The TV was still on, playing some less cool reality show. There’s no red jacket tossed somewhere strange, no shoes kicked off someplace where they’ll be tripped over. No extra beers left on the table, no new pizza boxes on the table, floor, or Fry’s bed.
Fry hasn’t been home, and it’s terrible evidence that the professor wasn’t lying yesterday.
Bender sad-stomps to the Planet Express building, he wants to see Fry. Maybe the Professor was lying, or just kept Fry overnight for some experiment again.
He skips the lockers today, usually the only reason he stops there is to talk with Fry while he drops off his own things. The Planet Express ship is grounded. There’s no sign of Leela or Amy, so no easy entertainment while he looks for Fry and the Professor.
He stops by Hermes’ office but the door is locked (not like that would stop Bender) and all the lights are out. The bureaucrat isn’t in today. Scruffy isn’t in any of his usual haunts either, though none of his magazines have been left behind so he must be wherever he actually lives.
Finally, Bender approaches the Professor’s living quarters, he had hoped to find the man literally anywhere else in the building. (Not that he would ever admit it out loud, but the Professor’s lab gave him the spooks.)
The old man is working at some sort of holographic projection that’s projecting something that looks like a large net. The Professor is slowly and carefully picking and pulling at the threads that make up the large net, cutting some and twining others together.
“Professor?” Bender tries softly. But the 160-year-old man doesn’t hear him, so Bender resorts to yelling, “Professor!”
“Huh- Wha?” The Professor pulls away from the holographic netting and turns quickly (well, not that quickly but quickly for him) to Bender. “Bender? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on bereavement leave!”
“I’m looking for Fry, he didn’t come home last night. Plus the TV here is better.” Bender swaggers with false confidence over to the Professor’s workspace.
“Bender, weren’t you at the meeting yesterday? Fry’s dead!”
“But, he can’t be dead, that had to be some kind of terrible dream.” Bender drops to the ground next to the Professor’s chair.
“I’m afraid he is, but before the week is out Fry will be back in a shiny, new robot body!”
The Professor tries to cheer Bender up but it doesn’t seem to be working.
“Right now I am going through Fry’s memories to see what has been damaged and need removal and what will be repairable.” The professor explains though he knows that no one except Fry on occasion ever cared. “Would you like to watch?”
Bender hums his agreement and watches for a while. It only takes a few minutes for him to identify the traits in the threads and knots that the Professor is looking for and removing or fixing.
“So, uh, Professor,” Bender starts after spending an hour watching the Professor slowly and steadily work, “How long do you think this is going to take you?”
“Well, I still have years and years of Fry’s memories to get through, it will take me at least a week to get through it all.” The Professor doesn’t stop to answer Bender’s question.
“Can I help? I can probably get through all of Fry’s memories way faster than you, then we get Fry back even sooner!” Bender suggests, hopefully.
“Well Bender, I don’t know if your coding will allow you to do this type of work, and even then, if you make an error then something integral to Fry’s personality might be completely erased.” The Professor hems, taking a moment to think it over.
“Are you kidding me? I was coded to go against almost all of my coding, and I won’t make an error, I’m Bender! I’m the Best there ever was! Now move over!” Bender shoves the old man away and sits in his chair.
Within seconds Bender’s hands are flying to work selecting, removing, fixing all the memories that Fry would need. In moments and hours and no time at all Bender works through everything, though he has to wake the Professor to get to the next step of the downloading process.
With all the work that required focus from an outside source done, the Professor shoos Bender back to the apartment.
“I’ll call you when I’m ready for you to take Fry home with his new body. I suggest you clean up that pigsty you call an apartment so he doesn’t trip and damage himself right off the bat.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever old man.” Bender waves off the Professor’s words as he leaves the lab, and then the Planet Express Building.
Despite his dismissal of the old man, when Bender gets back to his apartment he does clean up the old floor pizza boxes, and table pizza boxes, and bedside pizza boxes, and the ones in the fridge, and on the fridge, and the one that was sitting on top of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. And then most of the beer bottles. And cans. And the glasses. And the keg. By the time he’s done the apartment is a close to spotless as it’ll ever be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He waits anxiously over the next three days for any news from the Professor. He barely keeps himself from wearing a hole in the floor by channel surfing. Unfortunately, even in the 30th century, there’s never anything good to watch.
On the fourth day, he gets a call. The download is finished! Fry is ready to come home and to learn how to be a robot.
Despite no one really caring, Bender would absolutely deny that he ran the whole way from the apartment to the Planet Express Building. He absolutely did skid to a stop outside the building to make sure he didn’t appear frazzled. Then ran through the building and up to the lab.
He throws the door open to the lab, yelling, “Fry ol’ buddy, ol’ pal! I’m so glad you’re okay! This is gonna be-” And this is where if had Bender a tongue he would have swallowed it.
Inside the lab, the Professor, and a robot, who -based on all logic- would have to be Fry sat on opposite sides of the Professor’s worktable.
Bender, newly lost for words can only look this new robot up and down.
Fry’s new body was obviously made to help bridge that Fry was formerly human, and thus had a fair few differences from Bender’s own body. Unlike Bender, whose head was more or less screwed into his body, Fry looked more like a fembot with a round head on top of a thinner neck, and what appeared to be a ball joint connecting the two so he could look around more easily. While Fry’s new arms seemed to be tubes with ball joints to give him a more human-like range of motion, his torso was split only into two parts, he wouldn’t be doing much yoga, but he would probably be more flexible in the chest region than Bender.
He was well-built by the Professor’s hands, a new frame that would turn human and robot heads alike on the streets, and with enough curve to give any fembot a preprogrammed jolt of jealousy.
By the time Bender could get his soundbox and optic units under control he had already missed half of the Professor’s ramblings, “What’d you say Professor?”
“Wha-? Oh, I was just going over the things that you and Fry will need to remember while Fry is a new robot. But while I have your attention, what do you think of Fry’s new body? I worked quite hard on it and would like some feedback.”
“It looks great Professor, he’s not going to have any problem fitting in with other robots.” Bender narrowly avoids growling at the thought of other robots seeing his Fry like this. He pauses, ‘his Fry?’ Since when had he openly and willingly thought of Fry as his?
“Not too weird then?” Fry’s voice comes from the other robot and it takes Bender a second to actually look at him again.
“Nope, you’re gonna have fembots swooning left and right!” Bender laughs, but it’s a little strained.
“Well, I don’t know if I’m ready to deal with that.” Fry, because that is Fry the Robot with Fry the Human’s voice, says, laughing nervously. He reaches up with a four-fingered hand to scratch at the back of his head only to slam the robotic limb into the side of his head. “Ow!”
“And that right there is what Fry will need the most help with. He’s still unused to moving his robotic limbs around, and I don’t have time to babysit him. I’ve already determined that he’s in complete working order, he just hasn’t adjusted. That’s where you come in Bender, you’re going to be teaching Fry the things that I can’t, such as what beers provide the most energy and how to drink his with maximum efficiency, which I know you know how to do.”
“I- Well- I mean-” Bender sputters, the Professor cuts him off before he can figure out what he was going to say.
“Excellent! Why don’t you take him home now? Call me if you notice anything too out of the ordinary.” The Professor is quick to start shooing them from the lab.
Bender starts to argue but stops when he sees Fry trying to lever himself standing. “Do you need help?” He asks, probably a little gruffer than Fry deserves.
“Uh, yes please,” Fry answers sheepishly. He doesn’t meet Bender’s optic units as he offers his hand.
Bender grabs the hand and yanks, surprised when Fry stands up and topples right into Bender.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” Fry shouts, his voice box crackling a little at the volume. Bender’s processing unit heats up at the sudden, near full-body contact with the other. He freezes, keeping a hold on Fry’s hand. He barely notices as Fry manages to steady himself on two feet, well, footcups, using Bender’s hand as an anchor.
“I’m sorry, I’m not used to standing yet.” Fry apologizes again, pulling away from Bender, who finds himself missing the undercurrent that came from the other.
“Whatever, you should probably hold my hand while we walk home so you don’t fall.” Bender looks away but holds his hand up for Fry to grab.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to be a burden.” Fry hesitates and bows into himself some. Bender just grabs Fry’s hand and tries not to think of the current that runs between them. “Bye Professor!” Fry shouts as Bender starts the slow but steady walk back to their apartment.
Bender notes that while it still takes a while for Fry to relearn how to walk, he still learns way faster than he would have as a meat sack. He doesn’t mention when the other is walking smoothly that he could let go.
The current between them feels almost, warm. Warm in a way that no other robot Bender had touched had ever felt.
Bender deletes that thought before he can dwell on it for more than a nanosecond.
When they make it back to the apartment Fry oohs, and awws over the state of the place.
Bender ignores him for that and tosses the other a beer from the fridge.
Then cusses quietly and goes to find a broom when Fry drops the beer and the glass and alcohol go everywhere.
When the glass is clean and they both have beers and footcups less than carefully balanced on the living room table does Bender think to go through the events of the last several hours that have led the two of them here, and to the couch where they both sit now.
‘All My Circuits’ is on, but Bender can’t give Calculon the same amount of attention he usually does.
All of his thoughts, all his senses but sight are as focused on the other as they can be. He can hear the clink of the glass bottle against Fry’s face, the false gulping that is prerecorded but sounds wrong somehow. The soft buzz of energy that the other is putting off that even from over a foot away Bender can feel.
He wishes for a microsecond that he could smell or taste, so he knew how Fry’s beer coated metal would taste. Wishes he could smell so he could know if the hum of energy could be smelled on Fry.
The microsecond after Bender realizes that right next to this very vulnerable Fry is the last place he should be, and goes into the kitchen to gather his thoughts away from the very distracting, very new Fry.
He spends the next few hours alternating between teaching Fry what he can about being a robot from the safety of their apartment and hiding from him.
When night comes he hadn’t expected to have to teach Fry how to power down, but telling him stories of his heists and adventures is almost enough to settle Bender as well.
He wasn’t actually settled by it, but it helped him equate this new Fry with the old one. The look in Fry’s optics was almost the same as the look in his fleshbag eyes before.
That night he dreams of new Fry, he dreams of new Fry doing so many things that old Fry couldn’t or wouldn't be able to do. And when he wakes the next morning he knows that he won’t be able to keep himself away from Fry in this tiny apartment any longer.
He takes Fry back to the Planet Express Building, and a part of him yearns to hold hands like they had on their way over the day before. He stomps down that part of himself as viciously as he can. He can’t do everything he wants to Fry, his friendship with the former meat bag more important to him than any desire.
From there he calls all their coworkers in, to act as foils and to allow him to give Fry the space the other needs, which Bender seems to be having a harder and harder time giving.
He does his best to avoid looking at Fry, each glance longing to turn into a stare, and each stare potentially something very uncomfortable for Fry. Bender avoids talking directly to Fry over the day, worried he might spill something he wants to do to the new robot, and very worried about scaring him away. He does his best to find the need to do something in a different room from Fry whenever possible. Much to the confusion of their coworkers, who all thought that they wouldn’t be able to pry Bender off of Fry. (And boy does Bender want to do things that would require prying him off.)
At the end of the day Fry and Bender walk home together, and multiple times Bender thinks of offering Fry his hand but the icy silence of the other keeps him from saying anything.
When they get up to the apartment Fry stomps (Something he hadn’t been able to do that morning) to his room and closes the door before Bender can offer him a beer.
Bender gives Fry his privacy, something that he really doesn’t want to give the other, and sits down to watch TV. He waits for Fry to come out, to grab a beer and join him on the couch. But the other robot doesn’t. He waits until his visor is heavy and about to close on its own. He waits, just a little longer, before standing. Then he grabs a beer from the fridge and stands outside the door to Fry’s room.
“Fry, you need to drink something before you power down. You don’t want to let your reserves get too low.” Bender calls through the door.
He listens a moment but pauses when he doesn't hear anything. He had noticed it the night before, but Fry evidently didn’t snore anymore. Bender wasn’t sure if the professor had just forgotten that or purposefully didn’t add it back. Bender also didn’t care.
He knocked quietly against the door, prepared to leave if he didn’t get a response.
The door opens almost before Bender finishes knocking. Fry’s face is suddenly right there, so much like his old face but so hard and metal now. Known and unknown, everything beautiful and foreign, and yet hideous and horrifying.
Bender could only hold the beer up in front of him in offering.
Fry grabbed the beer from him with a huff, before slamming the door in Bender’s face.
It seemed that Bender wouldn’t be helping Fry get to sleep tonight.
He thought about waiting but decided that getting caught lurking outside Fry’s room (even if it was only by Fry) wasn’t worth trying to explain.
He’s woken by Fry throwing open the door between the closet and the apartment. He would have marched right past Bender if he hadn’t accidentally blocked Fry’s path.
The two of them walk to the Planet Express building again. This time Fry leads, but whatever mood had overtaken him the night before was apparently gone. He chattered happily about a dozen different things as they walked to their work. Evidently needing no responses from the other robot, Bender didn’t even get a chance to respond.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When they got to Planet Express again Bender left Fry in the more or less tender care of their coworkers. Even though he had a complete enough mental file of how Fry now looked, he still felt the urge to stare at the other whenever they were in the same room.
Bender didn’t know what was causing the urge anymore. They were both Manbots. They didn’t have the compatible coding that was needed for making little robots. Bender knew he wasn’t Romosexual. He’d never felt anything like this for another Manbot.
It was completely new, and it terrified him beyond words or code.
Bender couldn’t stop staring and that scared him too, he wanted to look so bad. But he didn’t want to scare Fry off. He wanted everything to go back to how it was.
When Fry was a loveable Meatbag and Bender just had to make sure Fry didn’t drown in his own vomit occasionally. Things were better then because Bender didn’t have to fight not to look at Fry.
Right now though? It was impossible not to look.
Bender knew that Fry was in the living room watching TV with Leela. He knew it because he was standing in the hallway like a creeper and listening to them.
“Fry,” Leela said, and the TV was switched off.
“Hey! I was watching that!” The new and strange part of Bender told him to go in there and defend Fry from Leela, but he couldn’t make his legs move when he heard Leela start talking again.
“Fry, we need to talk about us.” Bender’s circuitry heated with jealousy. Fry belonged to Bender and no one else, ever.
“What about us?” Fry asked in a small voice and Bender’s jealousy was gone.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, and, you know, that I love you. But this.” Leela’s pause tells Bender all he needs to know about the mutant. “I don’t think we can work like this.”
“It’s cause I’m a robot now isn’t it?” Fry’s small voice makes Bender was to wrap him in a blanket and cuddle him forever.
“No- I mean yes. But-” Leela sputters, but Fry is far kinder than Bender would ever be.
“It’s okay, Leela. I know, this is a big change that neither of us ever expected.” Fry sounds heartbroken and Bender wished that he could be a better robot than he was. “I understand that you were only barely attracted to me before, and I know that you’ve never been attracted to robots. So don’t feel bad. All I ask is that we can stay friends.” Bender can hear the small bit of hope in Fry’s voice and hates himself a little more.
“Yeah, friends,” Leela says.
Bender hates himself for listening but at least he can turn some of his hatred against Leela as well. She could pretend that she and Fry could be together when they thought that Fry was a mutated monstrosity, but not when he was a Robot?
To Bender that really showed Leela’s true colors. And even as he listened to them talk about more pleasant things, he found himself a little happy that the two wouldn’t be getting back together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later, after a long day of getting paid to do nothing as there weren’t any deliveries to be made, Bender searches the building for Fry, only to be told by Scruffy that the other robot had gone home already.
Bender tries not to let it show how much that shocks and hurts him, but if Scruffy notices then he doesn’t care and thus doesn’t comment.
Bender walks home, alone, for the first time since Fry had awoken in his robot body.
There’s no swagger in his step, just a desire to get home to make sure his best friend was okay. After that maybe he could extend a beer and an invitation to watch ‘All My Circuits.’
When he gets to the apartment though, Fry’s door is closed, and there are quiet shuffling noises coming from behind it.
Initially, Bender wants to give his friend his privacy, but as the sounds of things being moved around get louder and louder he knows he has to do something. Opening the door to the bedroom is a shock, Fry’s been packing, and about half his things are already thrown into boxes.
“What are you doing?” Bender gasps in shock.
“You obviously hate the new me, Bender. I’m just, I’m done. You won’t look at me or talk to me, you won’t be in the same room as me!” Fry looks away, “I’m gonna move out, I’ll stay with Leela until I can find somewhere else to live. I understand, this isn’t- No one was expecting this, I know you weren’t. I know how weird this is.”
“Fry, please- Please don’t leave.” Bender barely says, more than loud enough to be heard by a robot but still so quiet.
“Bender, you don’t have to pretend-” Fry tries.
“Dammit, Fry! When have I pretended to do something?” Bender shouts.
“Was that rhetorical or do you want a list?” Fry half-jokes, half sighs. He turns to face Bender fully, wondering where the other is going.
“Fry-” Bender stops, taking a moment to think about what he wants to say. Fry steps closer, the slight clack of his footcup against a beer can is enough to regain Bender’s attention. “Fry, I don’t hate the new you. I really, really don’t. I don’t you to leave.”
“Yeah, your continued avoidance of me really sells that.” Fry shakes his head. “You still haven’t looked at me since you came in here.”
Bender huffs, he starts to look up, but seems to get caught around Fry’s ‘ankles,’ “I can’t. I can’t Fry. You’re- You’re my best friend, and I can’t lose you.”
“So you shove me away instead?”
“No!” Bender looks up to Fry’s ‘eyes’ and freezes. He catches himself and looks away again, “I never meant to push you away! I just-”
“You just what Bender?” Fry yells, “You just planned to avoid me till the end of time?”
“NO! Dammit, Fry just let me explain!”
“Explain what? That I horrify and disgust you and that you never want to see me again you just can’t say it?”
“Dammit Fry, no! You’re beautiful!” Bender yells, looking into Fry’s optics and not looking away this time. “Who you are was beautiful for a damned meat bag and I loved you for it, but I couldn’t be a robosexual-”
“You could be a robosexual for Amy but not for me?” Fry retorts, quick and harsh.
“I was scared, Fry.” Bender whispers, “You’re from the 20th century, you were frozen even before marriage between two men was really legal, let alone marriage between a man and a manbot.”
“You, what?” Fry sputters some, then sits on his bed.
“Fry, you were always beautiful to me. You always treated me like an equal, where most humans don’t view robots as anything other than things to make their lives easier.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever made anyone’s life easier,” Fry says a little absently.
“And I’m damn proud of that!” Bender adds, “But it was easier to be robosexual for Amy, because she was a female meat bag, and I’m a manbot. A man and a manbot wouldn’t be as accepted. I thought I had a chance when you were making Googoo eyes with that Lucy Liu bot, but as soon as she was gone you went right back to chasing Leela.”
“You never seemed like you were interested before,” Fry says, finally meeting Bender’s optic units again.
“I was scared I’d lose what we had if I made any kind of move on you. It was easier to chase a string of floozies than risk scaring you off.”
“What changed?” Fry asks, velvet steel in his voice.
“You, this-” Bender gestures at all of Fry’s current form- “The Professor said you were dying, dying, dead and that everything that made you, well, you would be put in a new robot body. And then, you weren’t dead, and I went to the Professor to bring you home and, and. You were beautiful, I knew it was you as soon as I saw you, but- You looked like something out of my best dreams. The solid frame of a manbot, but curves that hinted at the flexibility and loveliness of a fembot. You were more beautiful to me than any other bot I’ve ever seen, but you were still my best friend. The human, the meat bag from the 20th century. Someone who was still adjusting to being in a robot body and probably wouldn’t appreciate the person they lived with hitting on them when they were in such a delicate position.”
“That doesn’t explain the avoiding, Bender.”
“I’ve been looking at you so much Fry, every time I look at you I’m worried I won’t be able to look away. There have been so many times you’ve almost caught me staring. I thought pretty early that if I didn’t look at you, it would be easier to stop staring. I thought, if I didn’t talk to you as much, it would be easier to keep my feelings for you trapped in my cold, dead circuitry. I thought if I avoided you, it would be enough to keep you around. That if you couldn’t see how much I cared, then you couldn’t be scared away by it.”
Fry stands and then steps into Bender’s space. He wraps his now four-fingered hand around Bender’s arm to keep him from backing away. “I guess we’re both idiots then. Cause I thought you were avoiding me cause you hated me, but, you don’t hate me.” Something shifts in Fry’s optics, “You never hated me, cause- Cause you love me !” Fry murmurs.
“Oh sure, go shout it from the rooftops why doncha?” Bender mutters, turning his head to avoid the softness in the hard, robot optic units of his roommate.
“I’ll do that later, first though?” Fry uses his other hand to move Bender’s visor so the other had to look at him, “I love you too Bender, I pretty much always have.”
Fry twists himself and Bender some so he can press their grills together, he giggles at the electric current that runs between them at the imitation of a kiss. It’s not fireworks, it’s better.