kind mouths

by ratsplendor

Summary:

Looking at their doppelgangers from another universe is like looking in a funhouse mirror that shows worst fears you didn't even know you had. At least for Perry.

Before today, he would've proudly proclaimed there is absolutely no version of him that would fall into a love so blind, he'd burn entire dimensions down. Before today, he would have insisted he isn't in love at all, period. But it turns out he's a fucking idiot when it comes to owning up to himself.

Objective number one, then, is "survive this goddamn hellride and save one dimension (maybe two)." Objective number two is "live long enough to tell that goofy, brilliant bastard you want to suck his dick (maybe kiss him a little (or even fall in love a little bit))." Luckily, aside from himself, very few things in this world--or any other--can get in Perry's way.

Chapter 1: oh, i miss the meaning

Notes:

there are 2 ways to read this fic. in both cases, start with hard work, having a soul. you can read:

1. chapter by chapter, starting with hard work, having a soul.
2. straight through. in the first fic,look for this symbol: ∀ click to be taken to the corresponding section of this fanfic, read over here until you find this symbol: ♢ where you'll be taken back to the other fic. yeah, i have fun around here.

in either case: start in the other fic :) fic title + chapter titles are from "The Mission" by Valley Maker.

tws and self-indulgent nerdy notes are in this chapter's endnotes.

Of all the ways this job has flipped Perry’s world upside down, this has to be a new one.

There have been the usual Danville brain-twisters—aliens, people shrinking down to microscopic sizes, weird creatures appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing—and then there have been the kinds of things that necessitate his License to Kill. The worst humanity has to offer. The things that happen out of the public eye.

But standing across from some other version of himself, some other version of Heinz, and feeling as though he’s looking in a warped funhouse mirror, one that shows you a worst fear you didn’t even know you had— that’s gotta top the charts.

Mindfuck. To say the least.

He throws Phineas and Ferb through the rapidly-destabilizing dimensional gate and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in that they land in the proper dimension. Prays OWCA’s paying attention and will sort things out on their end.

Then he contends with the possibility he’ll never see them again, never go home; that, even if he does, given the events of today, his life at the Flynn-Fletcher household is over.

He sows some discord between his Heinz and the one he sarcastically titles Doc in his head because there’s just something so cartoonish and stupid about it, and maybe the levity will fucking help. And then he grabs his Heinz and breaks a window and soars out into the open air.

Of course it’s kind of a given that the other him will follow. But some part of Perry’s counting on it. He wants to have some words with that motherfucker, see if any spark of himself remains within the shell. If there’s anyone in this twisted, upside-down Danville that might have Perry’s back here, he’d kind of hope it’d be…y’know… himself.

Platyborg apparently disagrees. Hard. As in, hard fucking steel or some other alloy pummeling Perry in the guts. Like, hey, dude, we have the same body, chill out!

Some other things become rapidly clear. Namely that, in every dimension, Perry Bartholomew, codename Platypus, is a sly and cunning bastard when he needs to be. Because how the fuck long has Platyborg been faking being under mind control? All Perry wants to know is why. What’s at play here? What’s the game?

The way that Platyborg snarls, “You know why, ” arm hard-barred across Perry’s windpipe, only confuses him. In the few seconds of thought that he has before Platyborg chokes him out, his mind can only come up with the idea that it’s…a really cruel undercover OWCA ploy.

Yeah. That’s the only thing that makes sense. You know why. It could only be OWCA; has to be.

(In his heart of hearts, as he lapses off into unconsciousness, he knows what the other Perry’s really saying. He knows there are certain ways his life could’ve gone that look very different, and that they all revolve around one person, and that he’s been walking a dangerous tightrope for years now. Oh, he knows, he knows, but he can’t let himself think about it. Not if he’s going to do what needs done.)

*

By far, the worst part of the “interrogation” (Perry personally thinks Platyborg did a shit job, but that it’s probably because he knows how famously un-interrogable they are) is when the other Heinz joins them in the room.

The sight of him makes Perry’s skin crawl. Gets his gut screaming at him like few other things have in his life.

There was this time he was in a sting detail out in rural West Virginia. Safe-house based operation: the guy they wanted was going after someone in Witness Protection, so they set up a decoy, but guy was slippery. Had a way of getting in and out of places without being noticed, making himself part of the scenery. There were the regular guards that were supposed to “miss” seeing this guy make his entry, and then Perry and one other fed waiting inside the house.

Except the regular guard really, actually hadn’t seen the guy come in. Perry had been waiting in a stuffy attic, and then there was something unseen, a shift of the light maybe, a tiny air current changing directions, and it felt as if the bottom had fallen out of the world and his spine was lit up like a lightning rod, and he knew.

This is like that.

The one-eyed Doc looks at Perry like he’s a piece of meat. Like he’s a doll. It’s not even the talk about using his body parts to refurbish Platyborg that Perry’s bothered by—he’s used to similarly gruesome proclamations from humanity’s worst. It’s the slimy sense of…ownership, predation—something is tripping Perry’s survival instincts.

The fact that it’s a man wearing Heinz’s body and wearing it wrong only heightens the sense of danger and fear, and it’s all Perry can do to try and keep his expression closed off and sign like nothing’s wrong. To utilize any outward signs of anxiety, discomfort, in pursuit of his own goal.

Which is, mainly, to keep his body intact so that he can save his whole damn dimension, first and foremost. Secondly, it’s to keep from revealing anything disadvantageous, such as his complete and utter prey-fear of this man, or the fact that he does in fact remember what he did to the Dimensionator that made it both work and self-destruct at the same time.

Beyond that, he’ll have to come up with some kind of plan. Do the thing he does: be Agent P. OWCA’s best, a Jack of all trades, a paragon of adaptability.

Somehow.

*

When Platyborg shoves him back into his cell—with, Perry would contend, a little bit of unnecessary force—Perry starts to pace slow, meditative circles, just barely trailing his fingertips along the wall, his usual method of working through tight situations. The sense of movement, the predictable sensations, help move his thoughts along.

He lets himself start by processing just… everything that’s gone on today, as much as possible. He has the sense that he’s losing time doing so, but he needs to, or else nothing’s gonna get done.

He thinks mostly about Platyborg. Thinking about the Doc is just…too hard.

He closes his eyes, holds his other self’s face in his mind’s eye. More gaunt than his, the jawline sharper, wrinkled in different places—that’s besides the obvious, of course. The one bionic eye, the metallic carapace that covers a good portion of his skull. Perry wonders where they diverged from one another—whether it happened long before Platyborg’s assignment to the Doc, or whether the clear differences after that point are entirely to blame for their dissonance.

Were they the same as children? Does Platyborg have the same memories, the same experiences—the same scars? Or have they been, for all intents and purposes, different people entirely from birth?

Perry doesn’t think so. In his counterpart’s one remaining eye, he sees some part of who he is. Driven, constantly thinking on the fly, a bit—though it’s fucking corny to say—tormented. It’s hard not to be, when you shoulder what he shoulders on a daily basis.

And the kids. That’s another thing—they can’t be too different, based on the way Platyborg reacted to the Doc’s idle threats. He was willing to lie to a guy he kind of has to act brainwashed around in order to survive, just to protect the Flynn-Fletcher kids in this dimension. Perry has to hold out hope that there’s no version of himself, in any universe, that wouldn’t do the same.

If they’re the same that way, maybe he can get through to Platyborg. There has to be enough that ties them together that something can be done. But when it comes down to it, Perry knows he can only really rely on himself. On the version of himself that he is, that he knows.

Still. He’ll keep that on the back burner.

You know why. He shakes his head as that memory crosses it, his brow furrowing. I think in all places, in all realities, all of us probably do…. He shoves it away. It’s not important to understand why Platyborg’s done this, not right now. He’s hoping it’s a deep-cover OWCA thing, in which case Platyborg’s unlikely to even tell “himself” that. Perry knows he wouldn’t.

Then there’s this troubling business of Platyborg and his Doc expecting Perry to convince Heinz to build a new Dimensionator. Which obviously can’t happen, because—

His other self’s voice cuts in on his thinking. If you don’t shape up and play your goddamn part, I will kill your Heinz, and I know you know that I don’t make idle threats.

Perry’s pulled up short mid-circuit, sucking in breath through his teeth. Whether or not you’ve admitted certain things to yourself, you are gonna go and sit in your cell and find yourself doing what you’re told anyway, even if you can’t admit why.

He presses his finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. It’s…ridiculous. He doesn’t know what his other self is trying to get at.

There are a great many hurts that Perry will shoulder, if he has to, if they mean the protection of his loved ones—if they mean the protection of the public; of the whole world, which is kind of what’s at stake here? There’s very little he wouldn’t weather.

Probably nothing . Being realistic. He’s just reluctant to make a definitive statement, because you so rarely know yourself in the moment until you’re there. And assuming you know how you’ll act is more likely to mean you’re so caught off guard that you fuck up.

He just goes back to his slow, methodical circles of the room and performs a rather massive feat of denialism by refusing to allow himself to think any more about what Platyborg is implying. Instead he thinks about plans, he thinks about the small parts of this complex that he’s been able to map in his mind, and if he thinks about his Heinz—if his thoughts stray, a little too long, towards worrying over him—well, it’s only because Heinz is the person this all rests on. He’s the only one who can build the damn thing, after all; the power to doom or to save is in his hands. ♢

*

Perry, at some point, lets himself drift off into that hazy, gray, tactical half-sleep that never really seems to do his body much good; he always wakes up with his joints aching, although…to be fair, that’s probably also because Platyborg kicked the shit out of him.

When he wakes—on a hair-trigger—it’s to the sound of clunky, mechanized footsteps at the other end of the hall. Perry’s ribs are fucking killing him, and he allows himself to hiss in pain as he unfurls his body. Just once. By the time Platyborg gets in front of Perry’s holding cell, Perry is upright and alert, though he’s under no illusions that he’s able to hide his pain from a guy who literally is him. Or was, at some point, maybe.

At Platyborg’s direction, Perry sticks his hands out the port in the holding cell to be handcuffed. They’re pretty elaborate handcuffs, and Perry’s kind of… satisfied that these exist, that at some point this Heinz decided he had to reinvent the handcuff to be as Perry-proof as possible.

Platyborg pinches the skin at the base of Perry’s thumb, and Perry stiffens in surprise, looking down at his hands. Low and close to himself, shielded by the shadows of both their bodies, Platyborg is signing, ⟪You had better remember what I told you.⟫ Aloud, at the same time, he says, “Doc is ready for you to hold up your end of the deal.”

Perry would sign back, but these handcuffs are stupid-tight. There’s literally no room. Platyborg seems to prefer it that way. He seems to almost…pity Perry for still signing. Or to be embarrassed by him, for him, somehow. Perry resents that about as much as it makes him recursively pity Platyborg, because clearly something happened in his life that’s given him a bad relationship with sign.

You used to do that before I fixed you, the Doc had said. So fucking casually, too. With a shudder, Perry realizes it could very well have been after Platyborg became…what he is now. It could very much have been involuntary.

Given the Doc’s rambling chatter about swapping out Perry and Platyborg’s parts, as if they’re cars, that also begs the question of how many of Platyborg’s modifications are due to wounds sustained in combat with the Doc’s opposers. How many of them came from combat with the Doc himself. Or, oddly worse—how many times the Doc maybe just…decided he wanted to. And with that, the prey-fear of the Doc comes back, and Perry has to shove away this line of thought in order to keep his head straight.

As soon as they’re in sight of Heinz’s cell, the man is rambling. “Okay, unless the other me created another Dimensionator, I’m gonna guess that this is the Perry the Platypus that I showed up with, whom I did not recognize at first? Wait a second, how do I know it’s really you and not a cleverly-dressed clone sent to trick me into revealing things?” Perry snorts, but is unable to answer given the bastard-tight handcuffs, which Platyborg is currently removing harshly.

Once again pinching Perry to get him to look down, which, surely there are nicer ways of doing that, but whatever—Perry looks down and catches his counterpart signing, ⟪If you don’t behave, I kill him.⟫

Yeah, yeah. Perry rolls his eyes and turns around to face Heinz, and the sight of him is so familiar that it almost erases the prey-fear caused by the Doc, and all of a sudden Perry’s kind of limp and exhausted with it, and he slides down to sitting against the bars with a rough exhale.

“Prove to me you’re not a clone of Perry the Platypus, tell me something only he would know,” Heinz is saying, his arms crossed, doing his best to look stern and mostly looking cranky. “Oh, and it has to be…something from within the last… year, to be safe. This guy has definitely been in charge at least that long.”

⟪The lady downstairs, Carla. You snorted spaghetti out your nose at her grandson’s birthday party.⟫

“That could’ve happened here, too.”

⟪This guy probably killed Carla. For…having both her eyes, or something.⟫ Heinz snickers at that, then quickly makes his face cranky again. “Stop—don’t do that, just because you can be funny doesn’t mean you aren’t a clone. Stop trying to distract me and tell me something else.”

With a pained breath, Perry leans his head back against the bars, trying to think through the pain clouding his head. Now that his adrenaline from being woken is ebbing some, he’s really feeling his ribs. ⟪Here.⟫ Slowly, sluggishly, he undoes a button on his collar and pulls it down over one shoulder. ⟪Four months ago. The Komodo dragon you accidentally beamed into the lab.⟫ The scar from the claws is distinctive, slashing across the point where his collarbone meets his shoulder, and it’s then that he drops his arms, feeling dizzy. Tips his head back, takes deep breaths even though it hurts like fuck.

Get it together, Perry. Probably a broken rib or two. Bruised bad, at the very best. Nothing he hasn’t handled before, but probably among his least favorite broken bones. And he’s had a lot of them.

“Yeah…okay, that’s pretty conclusive. This me doesn’t seem like he’d make dumb mistakes like that,” Heinz says, a little resignedly, and Perry glares at him, but can’t quite form the signs to tell him to stop being down on himself because this dimension’s Heinz Doofenshmirtz sucks. “Okay, so you’re my Perry the Platypus. My dimension’s, I mean. Scheiße, what have you done to yourself?! And I kind of mean that literally, because it was probably, you know, the other you!”

⟪I’m okay,⟫ Perry signs, unconvincingly. ⟪Just a couple busted ribs, probably.⟫

“Big guy, that sucks, but I was more so thinking that you’re lucky you don’t talk. Because I think if you did, you’d be having a lot harder time.” Much without asking, as usual, Heinz is all up in his personal space, prodding at Perry’s jaw, which, fucking ow, that Platyborg guy has a mean uppercut, and Perry snarls crankily, wrestling Heinz’s hands away. And then his ribs twinge again, and he drops his hands. Perry realizes, while snarling, that he also must’ve bit the fuck out of his tongue at some point; it feels like it’s twice its usual size.

See, funny how he doesn’t notice all these things until Heinz points them out, on account of the goddamn ribs. Of all the things….

“Let me wrap your ribs, at least.” Heinz has furnished a first-aid kit from somewhere in that cavernous fucking lab coat, and something about that clicks in Perry’s head.

⟪Hey. What’d you do with the blueprint for the Dimensionator?⟫ He has the sudden panicked thought that it might be still back at their version of the Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated building, that when he threw the kids through, they might’ve immediately started building a new one to come after him. Because that seems like something they’d do.

“Why is that important? Take off the vest.”

⟪Heinz! Stop fussing. Tell me. If you tell me, then I’ll let you do whatever you want, okay?⟫

Heinz makes a put-upon noise, but ultimately huffs and gives in. Which is sort of nice of him. “I pretended I was going to give it to the other me, but then I activated the auto-combust. Man, he was pissed.”

⟪Your blueprints have an auto-combust feature??⟫

“They’re intellectual property! Now will you please get your shirt off so we can have a proper conversation?!”

God, today has been such a fucking day. The comment catches Perry so off-guard that he starts wheeze-laughing through his nose, through his teeth, which hurts like hell. ⟪Phrasing, H,⟫ he signs, followed by their sign-shorthand for a stupid inside joke. It essentially translates to “innuendon’t,” and the whole thing’s a long story, but anyway it gets a laugh out of poor Heinz, whose ears have turned red the way they always do. Because this happens a lot. Not—not this, as in being shirtless, just—the man’s grasp of English is truly…incredible.

“Honestly, Perry the Platypus, that your mind can be in the gutter at a time like this makes me wonder if that’s like…your secret. Why you’re OWCA’s super-scary, special guy. Which yet again begs the question of why they bother with sending you to me. Anyway—upsies,” Heinz says briskly, and then he’s pulling Perry’s vest and shirt over his head, and Perry prays his skin will not betray him, because he is flushing.

Maybe the bruises will cover it up. Thanks, Platyborg. ⟪I can wrap them myself, you know. If you just give me—⟫

“Shut up,” Heinz says roughly, hauling Perry insistently, but gently, up to his feet. In his voice, Perry hears the fact that he needs to do this because he needs to do something. He needs to feel like he can fix something, like he’s in control of something on this fucked-up day, and so what little resistance Perry puts up from then on is just to make Heinz feel like he’s earned it fair and square.

In his mind, Platyborg says, again, You know exactly why. Perry tunes into the pain in his ribs as Heinz compresses them, drowning his counterpart out.

At some point, between the pain and the general calm of the moment, a hush falls over the little cell. Heinz doesn’t seem satisfied with wrapping the ribs, and he splays his fingertips on the top of Perry’s skull and turns his head this way and that, prodding at his jaw until it’s all Perry can do to hold still, before saying he doesn’t think it’s broken. All the while, Perry’s keenly aware of those five points of contact on the top of his scalp. Of the fact that this is the first time he’s been touched kindly in awhile.

And then Heinz helps him put his arms back through the sleeves of his shirt, so he doesn’t have to lift them too much, and the Platyborg in Perry’s head, the him he could’ve been, says In all realities… and Perry dispels him by sinking slowly back down to the ground and scoping out the nearest visible camera.

There may be ones that aren’t visible. Basically, he has to just operate as if Platyborg’s watching everything he does, everything he says. Since this dimension’s Heinz apparently can’t sign, that’s the best bet. Heinz sits with his back to the wall across from Perry, and his legs, stretched out, almost hit the opposite wall. Which is a thing Perry really should stop thinking about. (That’s, like, 4 feet, probably, wall-to-wall. God, Perry really shouldn’t be thinking about this.)

“Hey, Perry? This other version of me,” Heinz says, tapping his finger against his mouth fretfully. “He’s, you know, probably better at the whole evil thing than me. You don’t have to deny it, it’s fine. But I also think he’s kind of an asshole. You know? And, like, not in an evil way. I think there’s probably a way to be evil and still be, you know, a gentleman.”

Perry can tell Heinz is dancing around something, so he placidly indicates the man should continue. “The whole mind-control thing just doesn’t seem… sportsmanlike,” Heinz finally exhales. “What I’m saying, Perry the Platypus, is that I would never do that to you. I think it’s cruel, and actually kind of fucked-up. And anyway mind control was never my strong suit.”

⟪I know you wouldn’t, H.⟫ Perry ignores the way his forearms are prickling with goosebumps, for some reason. He debates, for a long few moments, whether or not to tell Heinz that Platyborg is actually here of his own free will. But it’s possible that’s because of an OWCA undercover mission, and Perry doesn’t want to blow it for him.

It’s also possible it’s because Platyborg has some…other, more personal reason for being here. You know why. In which case Perry doesn’t really want to put that in Heinz’s head.

It would just be…awkward. That’s all. Given that even if that’s the case for Platyborg, it doesn’t mean—

Okay. No more thinking about that. He’s not going to tell Heinz, not yet, anyway. That’s all there is to it.

“I’m glad to hear that, or, y’know, to have seen it signed,” Heinz sighs. “Whenever I defeat you, I prefer it to be fair and square. I’m still evil, though, so don’t let your guard down, or anything.” Perry tries to keep a straight face while he signs, ⟪Wouldn’t dream of it.⟫

“Say, why’d robot-Perry bring you in here anyway? Are they just short on space, or something?”

⟪I’m supposed to convince you to rebuild the Dimensionator,⟫ Perry signs carefully. Now’s the time to get his head on straight. This is the part where anything could happen, and it very much depends on riding the fine line between what needs to happen and what he wants Platyborg to think is happening.

Fooling himself…while also being himself. He’s nowhere near rested or sharp enough for this right now, but duty calls.

It takes a lot of careful signing. A lot of trying not to think himself in circles. A lot of wishful thinking that he isn’t wishful thinking, and that Heinz is getting at the hidden messages behind his words, but in the end he has no choice but to trust the man. And that comes easier than it should, has done for awhile now.

By the end, they agree—Perry’s pretty sure they agree—on Heinz only pretending to build a working Dimensionator in some way. What way, Perry’s not sure. Maybe it’ll send his other self to the wrong dimension, maybe it’ll kill whoever goes through it, maybe it’s just a decoy project meant to stall until Perry finds some super-secret spy way to get them out of all of this…he genuinely doesn’t know. No matter how well they know each other—and they do, because they basically live in each other’s heads for a living—coded language, and Perry’s own exhaustion, can only take them so far.

He doesn’t bother to hide how fucking tired he is. Heinz uses it as an excuse to fuss over him again, checking the bandages, then needling at him until Perry accepts being given his folded-up lab coat to pillow his ribs. “I know you say you won’t roll over, but you’re a side-sleeper,” Heinz is lecturing, a fact he only knows because, despite Perry’s better judgment, lately Heinz has been convincing him to actually sleep when Perry has to follow him around on multi-day trips. Perry lets him win, because he knows Heinz needs a win right now. Needs to feel like he’s doing something.

You know exactly why, Platyborg whispers again in Perry’s mind, and Perry, on the edge of helpless sleep, can’t quite shut him out entirely. Finds himself letting in the knowing, for just a second, as the line between waking and dreaming stretches and blurs.

*

It’s so hard. Not letting it in.

Although, okay, in practice, he does let it in. Often. It’s just…like, he doesn’t name it.

If he does let himself name it, it’s usually just “nemesis stuff.” As though this is anything like the normal type of nemesis stuff.

There are a great many days where he feels like the only reason he can stop Heinz doing anything is because he knows, deep down, Heinz kind of wants to be stopped. Heinz needs constant reassurance that no matter how much he breaks, no matter how “bad” he is, there will be enough good in the world to balance things out. At least, that’s the sense Perry mainly gets; it’s not as though Heinz talks about it frankly.

In any case, sometimes he has the terrifying sense that he couldn’t, if Heinz ever asked him to stop. And not in the normal, daily-bickering way, like, “Ugh, just let a guy have something, Perry the Platypus,” but genuinely. If Heinz ever looked him dead in the eye and said, “Please,” or said, “I need you to let me,” Perry wonders if he might. Just.

Let him.

Case in point: the reason Heinz knows he’s a side sleeper. It’s not in the contract, because Perry checked, but there is a sort of unspoken taboo that you’re not supposed to sleep in front of your nemesis. At the very least, everyone is deeply embarrassed whenever it happens, both OWCA agents and villains alike.

But there are a great many days when Perry is just…run ragged. The downside to being one of OWCA’s top agents—really, the top agent, but he’s humble—is that there are certain things Perry is uniquely qualified to handle. And he’s also a bit of a bleeding heart. As in, if the OWCA brass insinuates that his declining a mission may lead to casualties or injury for less-experienced agents, Perry finds himself giving in more often than not.

Which all culminates, sometimes, in a great deal of stress and action spread out across a great many consecutive hours, and very few of those hours being usable for sleeping, and then Heinz does something that trips alarms, and sleep deprivation be damned, Perry’s there.

All Heinz had to say: “Perry the Platypus, please.”

Of course he said more. He said, “You are about to drop dead where you stand, Jesus Christ, do those fascists ever let you sleep, do you really expect me to do battle with a man who’s this poorly-rested, surely you respect me more than that. Go to sleep. You can have a nap, and I’ll give you my word that I’ll wait until you wake up to be evil. I want a fair fight, verdammt.”

But he could have stopped at “please.” Point being: all he had had to do was ask, and taboos be damned, at risk of the ridicule of his entire organization, if not their disdain, perhaps their pity—not to mention Perry’s own trust issues, he can’t remember ever feeling comfortable sleeping with another person in the room—but because he asked, all of that was out the window. Perry would damn well go to sleep.

He tells himself it’s because the man’s joy is infectious, so, hell, throw him a bone once in awhile. Or because Perry’s too goddamn tired to fight about the small stuff. Or because Perry’s just a good guy, even to people who are evil.

But he knows. He knows it’s because in a world that so often makes no sense to Perry, Heinz feels like a law of physics. Like something some proto-scientist wrote down, from which an understanding of the word “order” descended. It’s because some days, Perry wonders if he’s even real, because god love them but his family don’t really see him, not the entire him, and then too neither do OWCA, but then he goes to Heinz and he’s reminded. Sometimes in a visceral way. He’s real, he’s a whole fucking person, not just bits and pieces filled in with sloppy shading in between.

And it’s because sometimes the light strikes a certain person in a certain way, and the strictly segmented walls within which you order your psyche and force it to behave shatter for just a second. For just a second, there is nothing but some sort of brilliance, irradiating everything you convince yourself is always true, and your only thought is, I’m fucked.

And then the second passes. Perry goes right back to not letting himself know.

But each time, it gets harder and harder. ♢

Notes:

tws: a chunk more violence than is typical in canon, nothing gory/extreme; villainous threats of vague violence towards the kids, *without* them present (whom i immediately plot-yoinked because i don’t feel like fucking w them); casual ableism towards selectively mute people/people who sign.

 

self-indulgent nerdy bullshit:

• the diamond symbol ♢ is a part of logical notation. it means “it is possible that” or “it is not necessarily not,” which i find deeply interesting for autism reasons. the expression “♢x E” means (i believe) “it is possible that E is true for x,” or “it is not necessarily false that E is true for x.”
• yeah, i yoinked the kids from the 2d movie lol. i figure it’s off-canon enough that i might as well, and having them around would’ve been complicated. plus i’m not a huge fan of kids being around for violent scenes i write lmfao
• multiverse theory is my SHIT. i am all over quantum physics, i would do numbers as a particle, and, if asked, i have all kinds of halfway-well-read theories backing up any sciencey dimensional stuff that happens in this fanfic. do not come 4 me. but maybe cum, by the end, bc it wouldn’t be me without the porn.
• maybe sometime i’ll dive into my human!Perry backstory. you can read him as Australian if you want. you would be incorrect, but i’m not ur boss. bro is not white, tho. lol

catch ya on the next one!

Chapter 2: brother, does it eat you?

Notes:

reminder: you can either:

• leapfrog between here and hard work, having a soul using these symbols (♢ / ∀)
• OR read one at a time.

in both cases, start in this fic today :)

 

TWs in end notes.

Platyborg tries to interrogate him again, and it doesn’t go well.

Not least because Perry’s brain is going in a billion directions at once. He keeps wanting to ask him, Where did everything go so wrong? Because if there’s a chance, even the slightest one, that his Heinz could end up like the Doc someday, Perry desperately needs to know how to head it off in advance.

But talking to this other-him about their respective Heinzes feels like inviting trouble. Not only is it likely to set Platyborg off—the guy seems like he’s on a hair trigger, anyway—it also feels like it runs too close to some dam in Perry’s head that’s walling off a whole mess of things. If that dam were to give, Perry has a strong sense that nothing will survive this—not him, not Heinz, not the world they both came from.

So he puts his energy into messing with the guy a little bit while also getting answers. It’s easy to keep his other self preoccupied with Perry’s random questions; Perry’s pretty sure he’s doing a good job not tipping off Platyborg that he’s lying to him about a great many things. Platyborg’s so het up about…whatever the hell his issues are that he seems to be having a hard time telling if Perry’s telling the truth or not.

All fine by him. Perry kinda has to pity the guy, though. It’s plain as day that talking still fucking exhausts him, that it’s still hard, and if it weren’t giving Perry a tactical advantage he so desperately needs, he’d suggest to his counterpart that they both switch to sign for awhile.

When Perry makes his move and gets out into the hall, it’s not really because he has any grand designs on escaping. He’s well aware that he is in rough shape, and he’s in a heavily guarded compound; he won’t get far—this is not the DEI he knows. But his control is slipping, and the things behind the dam are churning around the more that Perry goads his counterpart about the Doc, and he knows that if he pisses him off enough, Platyborg will probably put him out again.

The guy really does just seem to hate him, Perry thinks, as Platyborg snarls in his ear, the last thing he hears as his consciousness fades.

When he comes to, he’s back in a cell. He can’t tell if it’s the same one from yesterday; he’s disoriented, most of his body twinging in pain. He rolls very slowly up to sitting, taking stock.

Ribs are still fucked. Maybe a little more fucked, given Platyborg—the dude is brutal. Perry shudders with the memory of Platyborg shoving his thumb into the spot on his ribs, the feeling of grating that had happened—they’re definitely broken. His whole neck is sore, his throat ragged; being choked out twice will do that to a guy. He slowly rolls his neck, then moves his jaw around gingerly. It’s not broken. He doesn’t think, anyway.

No telling how long he’s been out, but he’d wager not long. Usually the longer it is, the more disoriented he is, and the more his brain and his body feel out-of-sync. With a hiss of pain, he props himself up against one wall and sits breathing slowly in and out.

Usually at times like this (and there are a lot of them), he rewinds the most recent events, looking for useful information that he didn’t process right away. But it’s oddly hard to think about being in that interrogation room, to remember staring down a face so like his own, but so…differently worn.

There’s a kind of hard, flinty intensity in Platyborg’s remaining eye. The kind that seems to be a cover for deep hurt, for vulnerability. Does Perry look like that? He genuinely doesn’t know. He thinks it may just be possible.

What I do know about you is that you wouldn’t last a fucking second here.

Perry really wonders about that. Because in his experience, there is nothing Heinz can do that rivals the things that really tear him up inside. The things that wrench him out of sleep most nights, shaking and sweating, his screams only held inside because of copious amounts of training. Torture at the hands of cartel leaders, friends and colleagues dying in front of him, the white-hot flash of IEDs, hell, monsoon season, for fuck’s sake—the things he’s seen, the things he’s yet to see.

Sure, things are fucked-up here. Sure, Platyborg’s clearly been experimented on, forced to commit atrocities—only he hasn’t really been forced, has he? He’s only had to pretend he’s being forced, which is just…is that really something he’s having to survive, in that case? Seems to Perry like it’s a choice he made. One that Perry can’t really fathom making. Not even for—

Not for anyone.

But then, his Heinz would never ask him to.

In his head, the dam shudders, the wall of force behind it threatening to burst outwards.

Maybe that’s why Platyborg hates him so much. Because he feels like Perry got lucky. Or because he looks at Perry and remembers a time when he would’ve sworn he’d never make the choices he’s made by now.

Ask yourself how much of who you are is because of what he thinks about you.

Perry knows himself. He’s his own person, however much OWCA training and his own traumas have tried to suppress, but…would he have stayed that way? Maybe the difference between him and Platyborg is one bad mission. One bad instructor.

Or one different Heinz, his traitor-brain supplies before he can clamp down on the thought. In all realities….

The dam is leaking. In all realities, all of us know exactly why. The weight of that statement overwhelms him, the idea that there are thousands of realities in the universe, or…multiverse, or whatever, but in all versions of the world, every Perry is—

What? Every Perry is what? That’s when he finally gets himself to stop thinking about it. He can’t think about it, not now. He seals the dam. Slaps some duct tape on it and fucking, just… prays.

*

Platyborg comes for him a few hours later. Perry’s tried to sleep, but hasn’t been able to, the pain in his ribs keeping him from resting. His contacts have started to really itch at him, and he’s sure his eyes are probably red; long-wear only goes so far.

Platyborg motions wordlessly for Perry to put his hands through the bars for the stupid handcuffs. Guess he’s scared of Perry trying to “escape” again, which is sort of hilarious. Perry sucks in a couple sharp breaths through his teeth, then manages the word, “Where?”

He’s fucking tired. He doesn’t wanna go anywhere, he doesn’t wanna answer any more goddamn questions.

“Shut up,” answers Platyborg, before yanking open the cell door and grabbing Perry by the elbow.

He tries valiantly to keep track of the turns, the hallways, the route, but he’s going on probably 36 hours without eating or drinking anything, a good while without being able to breathe normally, being choked unconscious twice…shit’s rough. They take an elevator that goes up and up and up, and when they emerge, it’s into a familiar-yet-unfamiliar penthouse. Bigger, grander, gaudier, decked out in the kinds of villain-chic furniture and decor that Heinz himself usually eschews as “tacky and a bit desperate-seeming.” The smell of food in the air gets his mouth watering, but it’s really water he could desperately use right now. That, and a change of contacts.

They round the corner to the blurry (for Perry, anyway) sight of both Heinzes huddled over a familiar drafting table. Some things never change, Perry guesses. “Oh, good, you’re here,” says the Doc, straightening up, and Perry does his best not to shudder visibly at the slimy feeling of the Doc’s attention on him. “You know, this guy was starting to raise a fuss about his ‘contractually agreed-upon’ check-ins with you, and I thought, you know, why not invite the guy for dinner? It’s been too long since I’ve had a version of Perry the Platypus who can actually hold a conversation.” He laughs nastily, and Platyborg’s already-brutal grip on Perry’s arm tightens further.

Perry figures Platyborg owes him for the way he’s kept from reacting, kept from giving away how pissed off his counterpart is. “Your eyes are red, did Platyborg make you cry?” the Doc taunts, and Heinz snorts. Perry can read the air of discomfort and reluctance on his version of Heinz, but the Doc doesn’t seem to notice.

“Perry the Platypus doesn’t cry. It’s probably just his contacts.”

“Oh, I forgot, you used to wear those, Platyborg! Don’t you have any of your old ones laying around somewhere?”

“No, sir,” says Platyborg tightly.

“Anyway, Perry the Platypus does cry, but of course you wouldn’t know that,” says the Doc smugly, and Heinz carefully schools his face into a mask of indifference. God, Perry’s so… tired. And he hates that Heinz is probably feeling all inadequate and self-conscious next to this guy, when he really shouldn’t, because the Doc is Heinz but worse, end of story. “He looks like shit. Platyborg, take him to the guest bathroom to clean up, neither of you are in any shape for dinner—”

“Excuse me, but I think I’ll be doing that,” Heinz says haughtily. “I don’t really trust your minion over here, I mean look at him, he definitely did not have those bruises when I left him this morning! Verdammt, and you want me to trust you.”

“He tried to escape.”

“Of course he tried to escape, he’s Perry the fucking Platypus. It’s not my fault your version wasn’t prepared. Give me the keys to these things.” Perry sets his jaw, instantly regretting it because it still really fucking hurts, but he hates when people talk about him like he’s not in the room. It happens a lot. It’s pretty much never Heinz, though, so Perry feels like he should be more lenient with him. On the other hand, it’s never Heinz, so it just kind of really sucks. Heinz is the only person, really, who never does that, even accidentally.

“At least put this on him. You can’t just have an unrestrained Perry the Platypus wandering around the place,” the Doc gripes, tossing something at Heinz, something that jingles. “Have it your fucking way, but I have some real questions for you about…whatever the hell is going on here.” He gestures disdainfully between Heinz and Perry, and Perry’s just…too goddamn exhausted to give a fuck about whatever he’s getting at. Too on edge, jumpy, from being in the room with the red-hot hatred of Platyborg at his back and the sticky, unwelcome attention from the Doc at his front.

Heinz grabs his arm in a way that’s only pretending to be rough and glares pointedly at Platyborg until the Doc orders him to let go, and Perry bites his tongue hard to stifle a whine of pain. His arm hurts a hell of a lot more now that Platyborg’s let go.

Only the rigid set of Heinz’s face and his silence give away how tightly he’s reining in his emotions as he leads Perry down to the guest bathroom, which is in the same place in this dimension as it is at home. His movements, as a whole, are agitated, pissed off, but he’s still gentle as he undoes the (several) latches on the handcuffs. He catches Perry’s eye, then flicks his gaze up subtly to the ceiling: they’re being watched.

And he’s quiet, way too quiet, as he fusses over Perry, replacing the wrap on his ribs, prodding at his jaw, just—Heinz is never quiet. There’s always a steady stream-of-consciousness narration going, his beautiful brain picking him up and running, unless he’s deep in thought, and even then— Perry’s signing, ⟪You OK?⟫ without really thinking about it.

“Of course. Just a long day of doing evil,” Heinz answers, a bitter undercurrent to his words. “The other me is kind of a bossy asshole. And a bit of a control freak.” He holds Perry’s gaze for a second longer than necessary, and Perry might be slow on the uptake, but he gets the gist: It’s hard to do much in secret right now.

Fuck. He is too messed-up to come up with a Plan B right now. It’s gonna be a really weird dinner, and he’s just gonna have to get through it.

And then Heinz lifts the thing he’s holding, the thing his other self had told him to put on Perry, and Perry drops his face into his hands with a growl of frustration. ⟪Seriously? Is that a collar?⟫

“I know you hate it, but you are famously a flight risk,” Heinz says wryly.

⟪No. I’m just—that’s not happening.⟫

“Perry the Platypus, either I put it on you or Platyborg does.” The frenetic edge to Heinz’s voice would probably sound, to anyone else, like frustration with Perry, but Perry hears it for what it is: it’s a plea.

He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get why this is something Heinz has chosen to plead with him on, but what he does get is that—like the time he slept on Heinz’s couch, the better to give him a “fair fight”—it’s really fucking hard for him to say no to the guy.

Fine. If this makes him feel better, fine— at least one of them does.

He struggles to keep his breathing even as Heinz puts on the infernal thing. It makes his skin throb, because he’s still bruised as all hell around his neck, and the instant it’s bolted, it’s claustrophobic and conforms uncomfortably precisely to his neck. Probably it was made for Platyborg at some point. There’s a fucking bell on it, and he’s pretty sure there’s a circuit running through it, some kind of high-tech shock collar, and he glares at the floor and signs, ⟪Sure am missing your stupid traps right about now.⟫

“Yeah, me too, Perry. Here…why don’t you finish washing up. Five minutes.” There’s a flash of guilt in Heinz’s eyes the last time he looks back at Perry, and then he’s handing him his vest and slipping out of the bathroom.

Perry takes those five minutes to center himself. Inside the vest, he finds a pair of his glasses, which he guesses Heinz was carrying around in his endlessly-roomy lab coat, for some reason—thank god for the man’s squirrel-like tendencies. He pops his contacts out, splashes water on his face, trying not to growl at the sound of the stupid fucking bell. With his glasses and his vest on, he somehow feels like he looks worse. He always feels that way when he’s all beat up, but also dressed normally—like he’s trying to be something he’s not.

He steels himself as much as he’s able, then rejoins Heinz in the hallway. “I’d ask if I could take you to dinner,” Heinz says flatly, “but it doesn’t appear we have a choice.” Despite himself, he laughs. All right. Dinner. He’s got this.

*

He so hasn’t got this. But he’s Agent P, so it’s his entire job to act like he does.

The Doc has positioned himself directly across from Perry, though, and seems intent on staring at him in a way that makes him feel like he’s naked or something, or like the Doc wishes he was naked, and Platyborg is standing a few feet behind the Doc’s shoulders looking at Perry like he wants to eat him alive.

And Heinz of course notices, because he knows Perry, he knows both Perrys, and so he looks at Perry in a way that means, Are we sure that guy’s brainwashed? And Perry just has to pretend he’s not taking notice, because he’s still not telling Heinz the truth about Platyborg, for reasons he has yet to admit.

The stab of pain in his jaw each time he takes a bite of food (which is really quite good, annoyingly) is all that’s grounding him right now. Keeping him in the moment, instead of letting him crumble under the combined weight of all this…this shit.

Fuck. It’s been a really long time since a combat situation has gotten to him this bad. Usually it takes a lot longer, it takes a lot more pain and discomfort and stress to really make him hit a make-or-break point, but something about it being him. Something about it being Heinz. It’s like it’s speedrunning all his usual trigger points.

“What I’ve been wondering,” says the Doc, in that weird, cold, vicious drawl that sounds like Heinz’s voice but isn’t, “is whether you two are really enemies, or if you’re only pretending, because it really seems like you like each other.”

“We like hating each other,” Heinz fires back. “What else would he be except my enemy? He always keeps me from doing what I want to do.”

“Which is exactly what I don’t understand: why haven’t you vanquished him yet?”

⟪YOU apparently like me well enough to keep me around…sort of,⟫ Perry signs, mostly to get under Platyborg’s skin, because he’s been ordered to translate for Perry.

“Only as a reminder of how much better than you I am,” the Doc says contentiously, and Heinz rolls his eyes.

“Seriously, do you even have any fun anymore without anyone to fight? Think about it. Not to be blunt, but you seem bored as hell, man. It’s sort of like you’re a little kid, maybe, who’s discovered cheat codes for the first time, and then you use them to beat the game and suddenly it’s not fun anymore.”

“Of course I have fun, I’m in charge. I can do whatever I want. No, but seriously, why do you care if I fuck him up a little bit?”

“Oh, okay, so you’re saying if I went over to your Platyborg and ripped the bionic eye out of his face, you would just be okay with it? Or if I took a socket wrench to him and added an arm, that would just be fine with you? Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

⟪It’s because you’re both control freaks, that’s why,⟫ Perry signs, and—after he’s translated—the Doc points at Perry and says “See? See? You really should shock him for that!”

“Why would I do that, he’s right— see, you’re trying to control me right now!”

“You can’t pretend you wouldn’t like it. Do you remember that first year? I wonder how much of the same things we did—anyway, I made an invention that would let me control the stock market, and I dumped this one into a pool of electric eels. Did you also do that?”

“What? No! Mein Gott, that’s got to be animal cruelty if nothing else!”

“Really? And does yours not have the same scar on his hip? I got him with a branding iron that time.” The Doc goes on to list several atrocities he apparently committed against Platyborg, and Perry finds himself feeling queasier and queasier.

It’s not that he can’t handle pretty much anything that’s thrown at him. It’s that…well, the scars Heinz has given him have never been… on purpose. They’ve never been sadistic. They’ve been casualties of self-destruct buttons, the occasional Komodo dragon incident, a nick from broken glass…beyond the occasional black eye, once a torn ACL, just normal fight things, Heinz isn’t the person in the world who’s hurt him the worst.

Heinz is the one he goes to knowing he’ll come back whole—the only part of the job he can say that about for certain.

In his mind, that dam starts to shudder again, and does his best to focus on finishing his food. “You know what I think?” the Doc says snidely. “I think that Perry the Platypus might just be your weakness.”

That’s ridiculous, Perry thinks instantly, at the same time as Heinz says it. Vanessa’s his weakness. His fervent wish to be noticed—a consequence of his fucked-up childhood—is his weakness. “You know, turnabout is fair play, so chew on this,” Heinz says, and oh, no.

Perry has the feeling something bad’s about to happen.

“I don’t think your Platyborg is brainwashed at all. There. I said it.”

Fuck.

Platyborg’s face is stoic, but Perry sees his hand move. Drawing his fingertips across the base of his thumb—a nervous tic, a thinking tic.

The Doc is spluttering, offended and angry, and Heinz throws his hands up. “Seriously! I mean, think about it! What does it mean to be brainwashed? Wouldn’t he, by definition, be unable to think for himself? Which would mean either you were running that interrogation somehow, which you weren’t, because you were breathing down my neck all day like a wet dog, or that he’s at least a little bit not-brainwashed. In which case why would he be here by choice? He wouldn’t. And you know it. Not unless he was still working for OWCA.”

The conversation devolves into a shouting match from there, and dinner is thus pretty much ruined. The Doc orders Platyborg to escort Perry back to the cell, and Perry narrowly keeps himself from wilting under the panicked, enraged energy rolling off his other self on the ride down.

The inevitable confrontation between the two of them once they reach the prison level is kind of a blur in Perry’s memory, owing to the fact that it ends with him finding out what the stupid fucking collar’s capable of. Turns out: a whole hell of a lot.

The next thing he remembers is being basically thrown from over Platyborg’s shoulder to the floor of the holding cell, and he allows himself a whimper, and from then he just shakes silently and lets himself break down a little bit. Lets himself get some distance from his body.

He doesn’t cry, he only drifts. Leaves his body for a little bit, abandons the side of Agent P that’s all calculation and cunning and action. Very few people up top know this, but the only reason that Agent P is so on point is because he knows when he needs to let himself break. It’s a controlled blast, a strategic measure, and it’s undignified as hell, but he learned the hard way that if you hold too tight, you tend to lose more than you keep. ♢

When he starts to hear Heinz’s voice, he really thinks maybe he’s losing it, for a second. That the dam in him has well and truly burst, and there’s nothing between him and the things he’s been keeping apart anymore. But then the fucking collar’s off his neck, and he realizes those were actually hands touching him just now, and he bolts upright and scrambles away until his back hits the back corner of the cell.

Yeah, there’s Heinz. Crouched on the floor a couple feet away, his hands up, frozen the second Perry started panicking. With a rough sigh, Perry drops his shoulders. “Sorry,” Heinz says softly. “Hey, it’s me.”

⟪I know. I know that now.⟫ Perry scrapes his hand back through his hair, then shivers. Not a second later, Heinz is fussing at him to lean away from the wall and dropping his lab coat around Perry’s shoulders. ⟪Stop it, H, stop fussing,⟫ Perry complains, but the warmth is lulling him, and he can’t quite bring himself to shove the coat off.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Heinz sulks, and Perry snorts, then coughs, then can’t quite hold back a whimper as his ribs protest.

⟪What are you doing in here?⟫

“Ah…I managed to piss off my other self enough that he sent me back down here,” Heinz shrugs, like it’s nothing. “Which was kind of the point.”

⟪You did it on purpose?⟫ Perry gives him a flat look. What about what we talked about? he’s thinking.

“I felt bad for you,” Heinz answers, his voice flavored with full, scathing Heinz sarcasm, “all down here by yourself. It was pity. Fuck a guy for being nice, though.”

⟪Phrasing.⟫ Heinz flips him off. ⟪Seriously, you’ve got to stop worrying about me. I’m a secret agent, Heinz—⟫

“Maybe I don’t like being alone right now, how about that,” Heinz hisses, his face screwed up with hurt, running hotter than he probably means to around Perry right now. They’re both having trouble keeping masked, apparently. “Just—forget it.” Heinz looks away, and Perry growls until he looks at him again.

⟪I’m sorry. I get it.⟫ He hesitates for a long moment before adding, ⟪I’m glad you’re here.⟫

“Yeah?” Heinz’s mouth twists, the way it does when he’s insecure about something, and Perry rolls his eyes.

⟪Yeah, H, if only because I have a jacket now.⟫ Just so Heinz knows he’s messing with him, Perry pats the spot beside him, invitingly at first and then insistently, until Heinz drops down next to him. His legs, again, stretch almost all the way across the cell, and Perry really needs to stop thinking about that, but it’s kind of hard right now.

Especially because Heinz starts whispering in his ear, and it’s even harder not to think about it, to not think about the warm weight of his coat around Perry and how goddamn long his legs are because Perry has a thing for when guys whisper in his ear, and this is just so not fair. It hits him like a low, hot strobe in his belly for a second until he forces himself to focus on what Heinz is actually saying. “I’m currently below the decibel threshold for the microphones that the other me has installed,” he says.

Leave it to him to know a nerdy-ass thing like that.

Perry—not thinking about how far Heinz has to lean down to whisper in his ear—signs, ⟪Got it.⟫

“He’s going to be able to finish the Dimensionator on his own,” Heinz whispers, “but not well. He’ll still need me to stabilize it. I mean, probably. So he’ll either get trapped over there, or he’ll have to come get me to finish it.”

⟪Cool,⟫ Perry signs, unable to muster the wherewithal to sign anything more drawn-out, because…because whispering. Because he’s exhausted. Goddammit.

“Are you okay? You look a little flushed,” Heinz whispers. “Is it because I’m whispering?”

Um.

“Oh, god, I forgot—some people have, like, this ASMR thing. Sorry, Perry the Platypus.” Jesus Christ. Perry tries not to visibly sag in relief. “I’ll remember that the next time you’re refusing to sleep when you really should sleep, though,” he adds wickedly, and Perry feels himself flush more because that would…very much not help him sleep. At all.

At least he switches back to a normal volume after that, but his arm against Perry’s is still distractingly warm. Perry kind of suspects his arms are a higher body temperature than the rest of him, because of batteries, probably. “You know, I’m thinking I know our dimension better than he does anyway,” Heinz says casually. “So…home field advantage. Maybe I have a shot at usurping him.”

Fuck. Perry doesn’t sign anything, but he does give Heinz a Look that he hopes nobody watching can decipher. This wasn’t the plan.

“Do you remember what my mother said right before she hung up on me the last time she called?” Of course Perry does. There’s only so much you can do. She’d said it disgustedly, god Perry hates Heinz’s mother, but slowly his brain catches up.

This was all Heinz could do, is what he’s saying. ⟪I believe you.⟫

“Hey. You remember….” Heinz starts signing, in his sharp, over-exaggerated way. ⟪The beginning of innuendon’t?⟫

Of course he does. He can hardly think of it without laughing. ⟪Babygate?⟫ he signs, and Heinz’s ears turn red, but he’s grinning.

“Babygate” was an early invention of Heinz’s, from when Vanessa was a toddler. He quickly realized it was a horrible and lazy idea, so he never actually used it on Vanessa, but it was basically a doorway to a little space-time pocket in which it would be impossible to be hurt or die. The idea was to be able to put Vanessa in there without having to worry about her, but he decided to be a father instead.

He did, however, rediscover the prototype Babygate in storage at some point, and repurposed it into the slightly-more-evil “Babygatinator.” The idea was that he could trap Perry in there for extended periods of time, but…Heinz being Heinz…the second he realized that Perry being in a literal pocket dimension kind of spoiled the fun of monologuing, he walked into the Babygatinator himself to explain what the pocket dimension was, and also his evil plot of the day.

It ended in them both being stuck there, because he’d programmed it to need him to unlock it in order to let anyone out, but he was inside it.

Innuendon’t is another story. When he walked into the pocket dimension, which at that point contained only a very confused Perry, he said, “I have put you in the Babygate dimension! HA! You’re my baby today, Perry the Platypus! Wait, Scheiße, I’ve just realized calling an adult person that has a different connotation. Okay, hold on, let me regroup. I have put you in my pocket, because I’m unhappy to see you. Fuck— goddammit, Perry the Platypus, I swear I’m not doing this on purpose!”

It only got worse from there. He tried to continue with the rest of the monologue, but it just kept happening, until Perry was at once crying from stifled laughter, flushed beet-red, and silently yearning because of…things he can’t quite bring himself to face.

Perry went from signing ⟪Stop⟫ to ⟪No flirting⟫ to ⟪No innuendos⟫ to simply signing ⟪Not!⟫ because he was doubled over laughing at the time. At which Heinz loudly exclaimed, “Innuendon’t?!” and it inexplicably cracked him up so hard he forgot to finish his monologue.

That was…a weird day. And, it’s safe to say, not one that this dimension’s Doc has lived through: Perry’s almost positive he doesn’t have a daughter.

To Heinz, in the present, he says, ⟪I hope this doesn’t accidentally turn out like Babygate.⟫

“This is reminding me a lot of Babygate, actually,” Heinz answers gesturing to the cell around them. “We have this habit of getting into tight and sticky situations together.”

⟪Phrasing! Maybe this is like Babygate!⟫

“Only because you have a very dirty mind! Anyway, I’m only asking because—did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally stuck Babygate to my window? I forgot about it, like, I entirely forgot it was there, until this time that I thought, hey, what if Perry the Platypus blocks the balcony door someday but I need to get out there? Or there’s a fire? So I practiced running through the window really fast. Or I meant to, except I got stuck in Babygate for, like, a solid three hours.”

Perry’s 98% sure he’s lying, because if this happened, it would definitely be something Perry would’ve heard about. What Heinz is trying to say is that he can attach the Babygatinator to the Dimensionator in some way. And then, they can ????. And finally, they will have won…somehow.

⟪I would’ve thought it would run out of battery if it was there long enough for you to forget about it,⟫ Perry signs carefully. He means, Superpowered Babygate does what?

“Its battery was low, and, you know, that’s probably the only reason I even got out. I think it would be disastrous if it was ever hooked up to a stronger power source. Actually, that reminds me, did I tell you about that movie that I went to go see alone a couple of weekends ago?”

Yes, yes he did. Perry remembers, with fond frustration (a combination only Heinz can really pull off), that he’d been strung up in some kind of trap (an armchair? The details get lost in his exhaustion) and Heinz had detoured from the monologue and rambled about some infuriating movie he’d gone to the theater to see. Purgatory Cube, or something of the sort. In which it’s heavily implied that Satan is as trapped by his kingdom as the souls he damns, or something, except, as Heinz pointed out, if you want to go by the Bible it doesn’t exactly work like that—but basically, the story is that a guy who thinks he’s just in normal Heaven ends up stuck forever in Purgatory, for…reasons, and Purgatory is sort of like having a cubicle at the DMV, doing a job that should’ve been automated forever ago, and this—somehow—is cutting-edge societal commentary, and also horror.

Anyway—

What Heinz is saying is that he thinks he can trap his other self in Babygate forever. “There are a lot of things I would change about that movie if I was directing it,” he’s saying. Meaning, I’d need the time to make some modifications.

⟪Would you cast me in it?⟫ By which Perry means, Let me help you. But also, deep down, want me want me want me. Some of the things that the dam has been holding back are, admittedly, trickling out.

“Of course I would. You would be Satan.”

⟪I thought Satan didn’t even show up in the movie himself.⟫

“He doesn’t. But that’s something I would change if I was the director.” Perry suddenly feels like they’re having a second (third?) secret conversation, about something implied, but he can’t exactly grasp the topic.

After a second, Heinz stops looking into his eyes (which he was doing kind of purposefully, again Perry’s not sure why) and says, “Do you remember what we were even talking about?” By which he means Are we on the same page?

⟪Yes. But I’m not going to tell you.⟫

“Thank god, because I am exhausted,” he sighs, then rolls his neck slowly. “Not that I’m planning to sleep. No matter how I fold this sweater, I know I will fuck up my neck if I lay down on that floor, and then I’m no use to anyone. Could barely keep my head up today.”

Heinz closes his eyes, and Perry takes that moment to stare intently at him, taking in the shadows under his eyes, the tense set of his jaw, his general demeanor. This whole plan—half-cocked and shrouded as it is—hinges on Heinz, really. Perry’s not worried; he knows the man’s brilliant, if people would only give him a chance. But he needs his sleep, and hasn’t he given the same lecture to Perry so many times? (As if he doesn’t pull all-nighters regularly at 47, the hypocrite.)

So he elbows Heinz’s shoulder until the man opens his eyes. ⟪I think I need to sleep sitting up tonight, or else I’ll fuck up my ribs worse.⟫

“That’s probably a good idea,” Heinz mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “Maybe I’ll also do that. Except then I’ll slump over and fuck up my lower back…I can’t win, verdammt—hey!” Perry has grabbed him by the shoulder seam of his sweater and is manhandling him, not allowing himself to think too hard about it, until Heinz’s head is resting on his thighs. God, he hopes he doesn’t smell, but then again it’s not like either of them have had a change of clothes since coming here.

Heinz’s face immediately goes red, and Perry hopes to god he hasn’t made a huge mistake, although with how often the man will just grab Perry by the shoulder and steer, it’s not like he has room to complain. “But your leg will fall asleep,” he says. “I have been told my head is very heavy—”

⟪I’m a secret agent, Heinz.⟫

“That doesn’t mean you’re immune to numb legs.”

⟪It means many worse things are going on in my body than letting you get a good night’s sleep.⟫

“But—”

⟪Shut up. Idiot. When the other you realizes he can’t do shit without you, you’re gonna need to be able to get us home.⟫

“Are you sure you’ll be able to sleep like this, Perry the Platypus?” Heinz’s words are already a bit heavy, dragged down by how exhausted he is, and Perry knows he’s won.

⟪Yes, I’m sure.⟫ If he was planning on sleeping, he’s pretty sure it would be fine.

It’s enough for Heinz. In less than five minutes, he’s limp and heavy and dead asleep, on his side, face pointed towards Perry’s knees. Perry finds himself holding deadly still, almost holding his breath, like something out of his childhood: at his orphanage, once—and only once—there had been a magpie that came up to him when he held out a few grains of rice, his little hand sticky with the island heat, and he had held so still. For just a moment, it had hopped up onto the meat of his hand, and Perry could have been a statue at that moment, feeling as if his heart and the bird’s were strung together, some odd synchronicity.

That’s what he feels like right now. There’s an almost painful clarity to the moment, his top-down view of the side of Heinz’s head, his face slack in sleep, twitching here and there as dreams take him under. No detail escapes his notice: the mole just where the corner of his jaw meets his neck—the tiny metal shaving caught in the rim of his ear—the way the vein in the side of his head, just visible through the close-cropped hair there, beats a slow-motion rhythm, a river rolling lazily.

Heinz’s breath warms and dampens the fabric of Perry’s pants, just a bit above the knee, and his arm shifts up and drops itself over Perry’s shins, and even just his head and arm take over so much of Perry’s body that he feels at once small and large, and the dam—

Bursts.

It breaks so hard and so spectacularly that Perry knows there is absolutely no putting it back together. Fucking. Pours into him, takes every bit of sense he has on a chaotic riptide ride, one whole, formerly-closed ecosystem crashing haphazard into another, no restraint. No negotiation.

Youknowwhy-youknowwhy-youknowwhy.

There’s not really any thinking through what’s happening to him, all he can really do is feel it all at once, all the little pulsating moments of oh-shit that have happened over the past…well, forever, because maybe time didn’t really start for him until he met Heinz, and god— all the way back to the very first day, when they were strangers fumbling through a dance they hadn’t really learned the steps of, and Heinz had pinched the tip of his tongue between his teeth for a moment, staring almost cross-eyed at the literal index cards he’d written his monologue on—

You know EXACTLY why.

It should be impossible, it kind of feels like, doing this all at once—it certainly wrecks him. Like it’s an exothermic reaction, even though his skin feels clammy and cold at the same time: what’s going on is that one half of his brain, the half he reserves for his family and for the maintenance of the dam (RIP), is going backwards in time and rearranging everything, inserting moments between the moments, weaving two timelines back together.

What’s left of him is this: he is chock-full of blinding, wretched, unsightly love for the guy currently drooling on his khakis in a prison cell. He is now, and has always been, absolutely fucking wrecked for Heinz Doofenshmirtz. Which is just so goddamn fucking unfair, because what the fuck.

I think in all places, in all realities, all of us probably do.

He doesn’t believe in fate. He believes in chance and in choice. But chance brought him to Heinz. Choice kept him there.

The dam pours all the way down to his fingertips and his toes, and his legs fall asleep (he was warned) and it doesn’t matter, he just loves. He presses his face into the lapel of Heinz’s lab coat and tries to breathe evenly as he cries it out, tries to stay as quiet as possible.

It’s one thing to feel what he’s been pushing off for so long. It’s another, much more embarrassing thing to be caught doing so.

God. God fucking dammit, he is so fucked. ♢

Notes:

tws: the Doc continues making weird, icky threats towards Perry; general ableist attitudes from the Doc; shock collars; brief description of a dissociative episode.

i would swear i don't just have a thing for shock collars but *gestures at my entire body of work*

Chapter 3: buzzing light, empty building

Notes:

reminder: you can either:

• leapfrog between here and hard work having a soul using these symbols: (∀ / ♢) OR
• read one at a time.
in either case: you're in the right place!! start here! :) tws in end notes.

When he blurs awake from out of the gray, tactical doze he’s fallen into, it’s because he can sense someone watching him. To his best guess, it’s the early hours of the morning, maybe a bit before sunrise…then again, he’s not sure his biological clock is handling this whole other dimension thing well.

The person watching him is Heinz, his head still on Perry’s lap, and it seems like he’s been watching for awhile, which is…concerning. Usually Perry’s pretty quick to startle when he dozes, which is of course by design. Maybe he was sleeping harder than he thought, or…more likely, it’s because it’s Heinz.

He hopes the previous night’s revelations aren’t showing on his face. ⟪You’re staring,⟫ he signs gruffly.

“Sorry, it’s just…I was dreaming,” Heinz mutters, mopping a sluggish hand across his face. “For a moment, I thought you were—the other one—so I was…just….”

⟪It’s fine, H. This shit is fucking with me, too. Hey. It’s me. Not…a clone of me created to trick you.⟫ He snorts, reddening.

“Facial blindness is a medical condition,” he whines, but his face looks lighter for a moment before it falls again. He sits up creakily, leaning himself against the wall next to Perry again, long goddamned legs bridging the cell, warm and solid. “I feel like—like I don’t know who I am, right now,” he admits, his voice breathy and pained. “Like—I look at this guy…I’ve been calling him Zweinz, because he’s the second one? Get it? Anyway—I look at him and I don’t know if I… know myself. If there’s something in me that’s— capable— ”

He breaks off, staring pensively at the ceiling of the cell, and Perry snaps his fingers softly until Heinz looks at him again. ⟪You’re not him.⟫

“But I am, though. Like, there’s ostensibly some point where we—where we were the same person. Or are.”

⟪So maybe you were. Doesn’t mean you are now. I know you. Don’t I?⟫

“Of course you do, Perry the Platypus, it’s kind of your job, and you’re welcome.”

⟪Okay. Then listen to me. Sharing molecules and genes doesn’t mean anything. There are identical twins who are totally different people. Maybe you chose to be better than him, maybe it was chance, but either way, you are.⟫

“Better than him, huh? You really think that?” Heinz smirks down at Perry, smug, and Perry rolls his eyes.

⟪You’re funnier. That’s mostly why.⟫ Then he sighs, shaking his head. After last night, he just can’t really countenance finishing this off with lame jokes. ⟪And you’re kinder. You might be evil, but you don’t speak over me. Or want to change me.⟫

“That’s just basic human decency.”

⟪You would think that.⟫

“There’s nothing wrong with you.” Heinz squeezes his hand for a brief second, and then gasps, and Perry holds his breath, hoping the other man isn’t reacting to the fact that his pulse jumps up every time he touches him. “Verdammte Hölle, your hands are freezing.” He wraps an arm around Perry’s shoulders and scoots a little closer, and ah, hell. Perry’s in no shape to complain, nor does he want to, leaning his head back, where Heinz’s shoulder is, just about the perfect height. The other man thrums with warmth, despite his lean frame, a mess of contradictions in just about every regard, goddamn does Perry love him. “You must be in bad shape if you’re not even giving out to me about ‘manhandling you,’” Heinz adds smugly, and Perry rolls his eyes.

⟪You used me as a pillow all night, I think I deserve it.⟫

“Only because you insisted. Thanks for that, by the way. Hey, Perry…I really do think the other you is still…in there. But I don’t really know for sure.” Perry holds very still, wondering how much he should say. What Heinz is thinking. “But, ach… I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t make much sense. Because I don’t think there really is an OWCA anymore, so there’s probably no reason to…to pretend. I just—that’s what makes me, you know, doubt myself, because I don’t want to think I could ever—but in this world I did.”

⟪No? You don’t want to deck me out like a Transformer and put me in charge of your army?⟫

Heinz snorts. “No. When I’m in charge of the tri-state area someday, I think I’m going to make it a law that you have to sleep a certain amount each day.”

⟪Me, specifically?⟫

“Yes, you. I swear, OWCA’s worse than me about pounding you into the ground.”

⟪Dear god, Heinz, phrasing. That one might be your worst one yet.⟫ Not for the first time, Perry wonders—a little wishfully, sure, without much hope—whether Heinz is doing it on purpose. Heinz definitely isn’t flirting with him, but if he was, Perry kind of sees that being his MO.

“It’s, like, 5 AM. Cut me some slack,” Heinz sighs, and his breath stirs the top of Perry’s hair, and he has to hold back a shiver. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

⟪Not well. Ribs,⟫ Perry half-lies—it was the hypervigilance more than anything else.

“Sleep now, while you can, then,” Heinz says. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to sleep, just…FYI.” A warm, bashful feeling—the kind that Perry’s been shoving behind the dearly departed dam before it begins, until now—heats up the inside of his chest, his neck, his face. Heinz is letting him know he’ll be on watch duty, because he knows the real reason Perry can’t settle down, and this is just so fucking unfair.

Because Heinz is just a kind man, underneath the petty evil and the insecurity, and he’s definitely straight and is just obliviously touchy with his friends—and Perry’s so goddamn lucky he’s even that. Especially considering what Platyborg puts up with.

This is the real reason he built the dam in the first place. Not because of some strong sense of duty to OWCA, or because he’s afraid of feeling (even though that’s true, too): mainly because he knew that once he owned up to it with himself, he’d be consigning himself to a life of unrequited love forever.

Because there can’t be anyone else. There never will be. He’ll always have more of Heinz than he deserves, but less than he wants. Perhaps this really is the plight of Perrys everywhere, not because some diffuse sense of fate strings them together, but because on a genetic or even cosmic level, Perrys are just stupid bastards who only know how to want what they can’t have.

Miserable fools in love, all of them.

*

Perry wakes bleary, disoriented, to the sight of Platyborg standing outside the cell looking absolutely wretched.

He doesn’t know if it’s the sight of Heinz with his arm around him, or whatever’s about to come out of his mouth, or both. Whatever the case may be, Perry feels an instant camaraderie with him, at the same time as he feels a distant sort of loathing. Because they’re both Perry, and they’re both fucked up right now, but he can’t quite find it in himself to love the self before him.

Not with the desperate way he keeps looking at Heinz. A protective, selfish wave takes over Perry’s whole body, springing up from the long list of things that were recently undammed, and he’s almost glad to be going up to the penthouse alone, even though he’s rather terrified of why the Doc wants him up there. ♢

It’s getting exhausting, the whiplash. He figures that’s why he kept so much shit dammed up for so long, probably. Ricocheting from combat-readiness to (sort of) self-loathing to (sort of) self-love to jealousy is…not fun.

He grounds himself in the unease of the moment, in the years of training and field experience that enable him to slide a stoic mask over even the searing pain in his ribs and the desperate yearning he uncorked last night. Even with everything, he’s still Perry.

Which seems to be exactly what the Doc is looking for. When he sends Platyborg out of the room, Perry sees murderous intent on his other self’s face, and he can’t help whatever’s in his eyes at the moment. Pleading, probably—for what, Perry doesn’t know.

And then he and the Doc are alone, some device on the breakfast table between them that Perry’s supposed to sign into, because this Arschgeige never cared to learn to speak with his Perry. Truly, Perry’s not sure how he’s lucked out of being the Doc’s sole focus for so long, and it would seem the time for reckoning is now.

“Go on, fix yourself a plate. There’s coffee, too, I know you love that.” Huh, that’s new.

⟪I hate coffee, actually. Any tea?⟫ The translator’s not perfect, but it gets across the gist.

“Tea? How un-American of you.”

⟪I’m…not American.⟫ The translator does a piss-poor job of communicating the bewilderment and disdain in Perry’s demeanor. He thinks the Doc can probably suss that out for himself, though.

“You know what I mean, Perry the Platypus. Will you please eat? It’s getting really awkward sitting across from you being the only one eating.”

⟪Why should it? Aren’t you in charge?⟫ Perry taunts, then starts ripping his croissant into tiny pieces. He has no intention of eating anything he’s offered; he has a feeling it would not end well.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s not drugged. I’ll switch plates with you, if it makes you feel better.”

⟪Why do you care?⟫ It’s risky, really. He doesn’t know this Doc, doesn’t know what tips him over the threshold from being almost-Heinz to being…the guy who tipped his Perry into a pit of electric eels.

“Because I’d like for this to be a…productive conversation. Now.” The Doc switches their plates around, his movements sharp and aggravated, then spits, “Eat the goddamn food.”

Perry raises his eyebrows, his face communicating what Heinz calls Princess Perry mode, apparently one of the most sassy affronts to social decency if Heinz is to be believed. The Doc doesn’t seem to pick up on it whatsoever, which…maybe explains a lot, actually. But he ultimately obliges in “eating the goddamn food.”

In between bites, he signs, ⟪I’ve never understood, really, why villains think a meal is a good time to have a “productive conversation.” Especially when the other party kind of needs their hands to talk.⟫

“It’s because I can’t think when my blood sugar’s low,” the Doc grunts, and despite himself, Perry snorts at that.

⟪Yeah, I know that.⟫

“You know your Doc well, it would seem.”

⟪He just goes by Heinz, you know.⟫ The translator doesn’t understand the name-sign, obviously, so Perry spells it. ⟪What’s with that, anyway?⟫

“If I wanted to talk about him, I’d have sent for him.”

⟪Does that mean you want to talk about me? I don’t really do much.⟫ Perry leans back in his seat, allowing himself a bit of a smirk because it always gets under Heinz’s skin and makes things interesting. ⟪Other than my civic duty, which yours seems to have forgotten how to do.⟫

The Doc steeples his gloved fingers, his one eye digging into Perry in a discomfiting way, almost sharper and more unnerving than if he’d had both eyes. “The funny thing about duty,” the Doc says, “is that it’s one of the easier things to break a person of. It requires thought. It requires moral reasoning. And it’s not very easy to access either of those things when you’re being slowly skinned alive.”

Perry does his best not to telegraph his revulsion. Because it’s fucked-up, regardless, but god— the Doc wears Heinz’s face, almost, and it just—it’s not right. ⟪I can attest to that,⟫ he signs, once he’s got hold of himself. ⟪Beijing, 2004.⟫

This Heinz wants to talk about Perry. So let’s talk, he thinks grimly. He’s a real person; he’s always been one. That the Doc never knew, or never cared—so much so that his Perry started believing he was empty—is probably not something Perry can break him of, but goddamn if it doesn’t just get under his skin in a way few other things ever have.

“The war stories are all well and good,” the Doc says, leaning over the table, “but that’s not what I’m interested in.”

⟪Then what?⟫

“Before I scooped Platyborg’s poor, duty-driven little brain out with a melon baller—metaphorically, of course, though I did use one on the eye—” Acid fills Perry’s throat, and he wonders if this is why the Doc was so hell-bent on him eating. “—I wondered, sometimes, if there was really anything there to begin with. He seemed so…malleable. Like he was being programmed long before he met me. It wasn’t hard to follow such well-worn grooves.

“And then here you come along. Obstinate. Wearing that ridiculous outfit, which you most certainly picked out yourself, with one child under each arm, and while I was quicker on the uptake than my double I had the first thought that this couldn’t possibly be Perry. And you throw a little bitch fit about everything. And even when I don’t understand you, you’re sitting there poking fun at me. Like the whole world is a partner in this sassy comedy routine you’ve got going on, undercut only by your propensity for sudden violence. And so the question becomes: were you ever the same? What made you this way? Or have you been the same all along, and it’s me left out of the joke?”

Ah. Perry knows what’s going on.

And even though this isn’t his Heinz, he sees a thread of him in there. Surely, as children, they couldn’t have been much different. Not enough, anyway, for this Heinz not to feel the injustice of the drab, cold world pressing down on him—it’s a miracle, really, that Perry’s Heinz is who he is, instead of being this.

This isn’t his Heinz. He hates this Doc, he’s terrified of him, but that same little boy lives in his chest, the boy whose worst pain has been being left out in the cold, time and time again, unloved, unwanted, and forgotten. Perhaps that’s where they diverge: Heinz had Roger to focus on, to rationalize as the reason he didn’t measure up. This Doc was just—alone. The burden, the reason, his alone to bear.

⟪I don’t know if you ever knew me. Or your version of me. But I know you.⟫

“Again, I don’t want to talk about me.”

⟪Doc, you’re not a kid here,⟫ Perry signs slowly, holding the Doc’s eyes. ⟪There is no fist pressing down on you. You are not starving in the Drusselsteinian wilderness. You are a grown-ass man with far more power than you deserve, making your own choices, god help you. So if you never knew your Perry, there are only two possible reasons: you didn’t care enough to try, or he didn’t think you deserved to. Fuck off with the victim mentality.⟫

Throughout Perry’s little monologue— ha, Heinz would be proud—the Doc’s face has been growing steadily angrier, and Perry can’t say he’s surprised when he slams down on the remote in his hand and the collar goes off. He is surprised by how weak it is, though. Ah. Heinz has tampered with it, the beautiful bastard.

Perry does his best to act like it’s worse than it is. Not hard to do, as there’s plenty of other pain he can give in to for a moment. He ends up slumped over in his chair, genuinely winded by his ribs spasming. “You know nothing about me,” the Doc hisses. “If anything, it shows how weak this other me is, that he’s even told you any of that. I don’t think about it. It doesn’t affect me. Of course I know everything is my own choice. Unlike your shitty excuse for a copy of me, I can take care of myself.”

⟪Of course you can, H,⟫ Perry signs, a strained smirk on his face. ⟪That’s why your longest-lasting companion is one you brainwashed into sticking with you.⟫

The Doc doesn’t settle for hitting the collar this time. Perry’s counting on him needing something more direct and active as retribution for what he’s just said, and he’s correct: in two long strides, he rounds the table, and Perry makes a show of cringing in on himself, puppy-dog eyeing the Doc’s raised right fist. “Look at you,” the Doc sneers. “You’re beaten. It was never this easy with mine, that much I remember. He might’ve been a manipulable shell of a man, but at least he stuck it through to the very end. Your Heinz is weak, so of course you are too.” He hauls his fist back further, and Perry takes his moment. Ribs screaming, shins still twinging from hitting the concrete wrong last night, he springs out of his slump, toppling his plate to the floor at the same time as he drives his shoulder into the Doc’s middle, taking them both down in a flurry of limbs.

Perry lands a couple blows to the Doc’s kidney before catching an elbow in his ribs, his whole body screaming with reverberating pain. The Doc reverses the pin, his knee in Perry’s solar plexus, and god there is no part of his body that wants to cooperate, but even as the Doc hits the remote again and the shock activates—it’s weaker, okay, but still there— Perry snarls and fists a piece of the shattered plate. He can’t raise his arms enough to get the guy in the jugular, but he does what he can. Opens the bastard’s leg, kneecap to hip.

The dissonance…fucks him up for a second. Splits him open. Because the enraged, teeth-gritted cry of pain the Doc releases is Heinz’s. The way he says “Scheiße, Gottfickhölle” is Heinz’s. Hell, the point of his knee digging into Perry’s chest, the way his brow twists, his sharp way of moving—it’s Heinz. And Perry thinks, for a moment, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, because he would never—

Have to. He would never have to do this to Heinz because Heinz would never make him.

His conscience isn’t exactly clear, it’s rather murky actually, but it’s better than bloodstained.

The Doc’s whole weight is on his goddamn knee, on Perry’s fucking chest, and between that and the sheer exhaustion of everything, Perry’s not unconscious, but he’s well and good close. He’s in a numb, cotton-stuffed haze as Platyborg comes in and presumably moves the Doc and Perry both, and Perry lets himself drift again. And the next thing he knows, Platyborg is hauling him to his feet, his grip bruising the same place it did yesterday.

The Doc is sitting on a chair, his pants leg ripped away, stitching himself back together. Platyborg drags Perry over, his own two feet barely supporting him, and the Doc leans in close enough for Perry to smell coffee on his breath. “Listen to me,” he says acidly. “When I cross over into your dimension, you will be alive, and you will be aware, and I will make damn sure that you are watching when I play with those three little children like meat puppets and turn them into monsters. It will be your fault, Perry the Platypus.”

Perry doesn’t usually respond to intangible threats. Unless the hostage is in front of him with a knife to their neck, he proceeds brazenly. He finds it best to assume most people are all talk, unless they’re proving otherwise—it keeps his head on straight.

But this is different. These are his kids. This is his— no, not his Heinz—he doesn’t know this man. He doesn’t know him, but he does know that the Doc believes every ounce of what he’s saying—what he’s threatening.

And it’s enough to shake Perry. Honestly, truly, it is, and from the way Platyborg yanks at him viciously as they leave the room, the same holds true for his other self.

Down the elevator. Back into that same corner from yesterday, which Perry assumes is unsurveilled. Platyborg fists his hand in the front of Perry’s shirt and bodily lifts him, his toes dangling off the floor, back against the wall. This guy and walls, Perry thinks dazedly, choking mildly as the fabric bunches up under his chin.

“You are so,” Platyborg pants, “goddamn lucky that it was me he told to search for the kids in this dimension. And so goddamn lucky that the search turned up nothing.” Perry lets out a sigh of mild relief, though this does nothing to assuage his other concerns, and Platyborg only seems to get angrier. “You realize I have to be there too,” he seethes, “when he does what he says he’s gonna do? There is nowhere else I can be, you asshole.”

The pain in Platyborg’s voice yanks at Perry’s heart. With much effort, he gets his arm to cooperate enough to squeeze Platyborg’s shoulder, and the other man tenses, his face swarming with complex emotions that Perry can definitely empathize with. Perry sucks in air. Of all the times, fucking please.

“You,” he manages to say, “deserve better.” Does he believe it? He’s not sure. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe deserving shit isn’t a part of this whole equation, but whatever the truth is, his statement seems to hit Platyborg hard. His grip on Perry sags a bit, and Perry’s toes touch the floor, as Platyborg uses his other hand to cup the back of Perry’s head. The metal is hotter to the touch than he’d expect, and he thinks woozily of Heinz’s arms, the fever-heat they seem to emit. Platyborg’s either being gentle with him, or he’s about to break Perry’s neck, and Perry’s too far gone—too out of his body for the moment—to think too hard about it.

“Don’t tell me what I deserve,” Platyborg whispers. “I only have what I have. I only have what I’ve done. And so do you.” Both hands return to their brutality, and Perry hisses as the tips dig into his scalp. For a moment there, he almost thought he’d gotten to Platyborg—most assuredly, he has, but what happens because of it is out of his hands. Or…in his other self’s hands.

The cell Platyborg totes him to is dark, windowless. Maybe 4x4. Maybe DEI ran out of budget in this corner, Perry thinks. He mourns only the lack of Heinz sharing it with him.

But then the door closes, and the darkness and the air press in close and tight, and then—knowing what will happen, he knows, he knows— Platyborg plays the sound of a dog barking, ragged and distant, and Perry shudders. Scrambles until his back is braced in a corner, his chest spasming from how tense he’s holding his body, his head reeling back and forth in time until the moment sticks, like it always does, and he’s gone, he’s gone.

*

The sound of the stray dogs barking. Perry could see them in his head, because he’d finally seen them when it ended—they’d been roaming back and forth in a spot of high ground, turned marshland, two of them, afraid to swim. The things whose voices had haunted him for days while he floated in the dark, alone. Three years old, and his world was ending.

He never remembers the part right before. What he was doing as the storm closed in—was he sleeping? Playing? Bouncing on someone’s lap, or wandering up and down the stretch of ground in front of his house? No—he remembers everything shaking. A woman’s face, blurry, indistinct, as strong hands lowered him into the damp, dark space he would occupy for four and a half days. The space where he’d die and be reborn, or where he’d hide while the world did the same.

He thinks the roof was already missing by that point. He thinks the rain was lashing in—his hair was wet, anyway, he remembers sucking water out of it, long enough to hang down around his neck and chest. It hadn’t been cut since before he turned one, and in the days that followed, it grew oily and stiff.

He remembers the water rising in the bottom of the crawlspace, his eyes straining in the dark; he remembers crying out until his throat was ragged, and then he remembers that the more he cried, the more the dogs frenzied.

And it grew in his childhood mind, the voices of the dogs. They turned monstrous, and the howling winds chopped up their cries, and it was impossible to tell how close they were to him. He was convinced they would eat him, that they belonged to the storm somehow—that these creatures were the reason his parents had hidden him in this narrow wet box, the darkness contorting its size until he couldn’t even be sure he was still there.

He drank the water seeping in, chewed on his hair when he was hungry, to self-soothe. He was fevered, bloated, by the time rescue came, some pathogen in the water infecting him.

But he remembers the dogs. He remembers seeing them on that stretch of high ground, where they’d been trapped like he was trapped, surviving by hiding under a piece of his house’s blown-off roof. And they looked like they were watching him. Like they were waiting for him to come out. Even though they were only dogs, they looked like monsters.

So now he’s here in the dark, and the dogs are barking again, and he’s three years old— no—

There’s something else he’s supposed to do. He has a job.

He has a job— he’s a thirty-eight year old man. For fuck’s sake—

Get it together, Agent P. Major Monogram’s voice in his head inspires the usual flash of irritation and respect, and he feels his body in the 4x4 cell.

He’s bigger than he was back then. This space is much larger than the crawlspace.

There’s no storm. There are no dogs.

It takes him untold time to soothe his brain, to get his throat to stop seizing up. The child inside him is convinced that if he makes a sound, the dogs will be able to find him. The panic-breathing hasn’t helped his ribs, and he leans his face between his knees as much as he’s able and tries to take it slow.

There’s no storm. There are no dogs. What there is—

He sees Heinz in his mind’s eye. Of course he does; his guidelight. The thing he turns to when the world presses in and nothing makes sense.

There is nothing wrong with you, he’d said. Perry laughs brokenly, and the laughing loosens up his breathing just that little bit more.

Sure feel like a whole hell of a lot is wrong, he says in his head. H, I miss you.

It’s wishful thinking. But it gets him through—it gets him breathing again. In his head, Heinz says, I miss you too. You’re gonna get back to me. You have to.

Yeah—yeah the fuck he is. You got this, big guy, Heinz says. Remember who you are. Remember where you are.

Just one more breath, he tells himself. And one more. And one more. ♢

*

And the hours pass. He’s not sure how many. He gets tired of his eyes straining in the dark, searching for dogs— no— just searching, so he keeps them closed, pretends the dark is there because of that. He drifts in and out of dreams (he thinks) or maybe they’re real—his head aches with thirst, which doesn’t help with the whole… not getting swept under by flashbacks thing.

Anytime he’s present enough to do it consciously, he forces his mind back to Heinz. Not even to the problem at hand, to the way he’ll solve this, just— him. That’s all he can really muster right now.

God, he’s so gone for this man. If he’s the last piece of sanity Perry has in the throes of his old life sneaking up on him, that ought to tell him something— how had he shut it out for so long?

Even though it fucking hurts, even though it’s a forever kind of yearning, it feels good to feel these things fully. It feels right. Like his body’s been hurting for it, begging him to own up to himself and settle in for the long haul. The love settles into Perry’s bones, into his soft tissue, like an old friend, like oil hugging the bottom of a skillet. The love’s like a second skin in the dark when the flood tries to press in—he’s sealed tight shut; he’s waterproofed.

And it’s all he can stand to be right now. It’s all he can manage to hold on to. God help him.

Wherever you are, Heinz, he thinks deliriously, do your brilliant, beautiful thing.

And in his head, Heinz says, I’ve got you. Watch this….

*

When the cell door opens, the light feels like it’s burning, and Perry can’t quite figure out who’s standing in it. He presses his palms over his face and makes a stupid noise, a scared, strained noise, and then he hears his name.

It’s Heinz talking. He thinks it’s Heinz, anyway, that or he’s really lost it, that or he’s dead—

“Perry, it’s me,” he’s saying, and Perry lifts his face. Squints against the bladed light until his eyes catch up, and then he fumbles for his glasses beside him and puts them on and it’s—

⟪Am I dreaming?⟫

“No, big guy, you’re not dreaming.” Perry makes another noise, because everything’s just fucked-up right now, and shakes from head to toe for a second before stilling. “What happened? What did they do to you? Here, will you squeeze my hand—”

⟪H. Stop it. I’m fine.⟫

“You are not fine, you—” Heinz turns to the doorway, where Perry catches a glint of chrome. “What did you do to him, huh?”

Right. Platyborg. Perry kind of wants to fucking kill him right now, because he can still hear the dogs barking, echoing in his ears, and the chill really isn’t helping, because he remembers how sick he was, how the fever stretched minutes into hours—

He doesn’t realize he’s clinging to Heinz’s arm like a fucking idiot until Heinz uses his leverage to pull Perry up into a sort-of standing position. His muscles scream after being locked up, stationary, for hours, frozen while Perry tried to just fucking breathe, because of that fucking asshole with his fucking chassis.

A wave of dizziness almost topples him once he’s standing, and Heinz is murmuring in his ear. “Perry, hey, I need you to let go, okay? Platyborg, would you move? He needs to get out into the hallway. Clear out! I’m serious, buddy!”

The way it makes him want to laugh—that helps. He lets go of Heinz sheepishly, and the other man winds his freed arm around Perry’s back, mindful of his ribs, and helps him limp out into the hallway.

While the lights kind of make him want to throw up—not that there’s much in his stomach—it does immediately help. The claustrophobia lifts, and his muscles slowly adjust to being upright, and he finally bats Heinz’s hands away with fond crankiness. ⟪You are such a mother hen,⟫ he says, and Heinz says, “Henz?!” in the affronted, exaggerated tone he once said innuendon’t, and while it’s not the same, it does make Perry grin weakly.

And then Platyborg encroaches on his peripheral vision, and he remembers how he fucking got here. He raises his eyes, searching Platyborg’s face with an unrestrained intensity.

You knew what you were fucking doing, he thinks, and his counterpart looks away, almost looking ashamed. Good. He snaps his fingers until Platyborg looks at him.

⟪Did that make you feel better?⟫

Platyborg takes a deep breath, seeming to shore himself up, then looks away again. “Come,” he says, then extends an arm down the hall, indicating the elevators. Yeah. Figures. Perry pushes off the wall with a hand, forcing his limbs to stand stronger than they think they can, forcing his lungs to expand and contract at a steady rate. He hears Heinz draw breath to argue beside him, but he grabs him by the elbow and nudges him along. ⟪I’m fine. Not worth it.⟫

“Then what was that just now, huh?” Heinz demands, as they enter the elevators. “Platyborg, you did do something to him, didn’t you? I mean, I suppose you had orders, you had no choice….” Heinz cocks his head at Platyborg, who, for a brief second, displays a flash of guilt, and then Perry knows Heinz has him. “You did have a choice? What is wrong with you, huh? And what did you do, anyway? Perry, what did he do?” Perry just.

Can’t.

And he knows Heinz will keep asking him to. And at some point the Heinz Effect will take place and Perry won’t be able to say no.

So he claps his hands together until everyone’s full attention is on him, but mostly Heinz’s, he doesn’t give a fuck about Platyborg, he’d like to pretend Platyborg doesn’t exist, and he signs, ⟪H. Stop it. Now.⟫

“Why?”

⟪Because I don’t want to fucking talk about it. I want to go and get this bullshit over with so that it will be over. Okay?⟫ He regrets it immediately. He doesn’t make a practice of “shouting” at Heinz. Or at anyone, really, unless you count Carl being a know-it-all at trivia night, but at the same time he is fresh out of emotional resources. He is out of the endless Perry Bartholomew well that is full of care for everyone all of the time. He has finally hit the fucking bottom.

And what does Heinz do? When Perry’s just spoken to him more harshly than he ever fucking has, when Perry’s losing his shit over a goddamn dark room and a stupid elevator ride?

Loops his arm through Perry’s. Leans against his side. Stays quiet, but stays close, and stays there. It’s just.

Too fucking much.

Perry would kind of rather be choked out again. Honestly. He’s frayed. At the end of his fucking rope. He cannot be what he needs to be while also giving in to his deep need to have Heinz Doofenshmirtz lean against his side and be all quiet and accepting of his weird neurotic bullshit. And yet.

He simply can’t find it in himself to pull away.

Tough shit: he’s fucked. ♢

Notes:

tws: non-graphic violence (perry cuts the doc up a little bit, mention of him stitching himself up); vague violent threats against the Flynn-Fletcher kids, who aren't present; description of a ptsd flashback/episode (involves flooding, illness, + tight spaces). (dw Heinz is there to make sure he's ok :) )

Chapter 4: when you go home, oh how i'll miss you

Notes:

reminder: you can either:

• leapfrog between here and hard work having a soul using these symbols: (∀ / ♢) OR
• read one at a time.
in either case: you're in the right place!! start here! :) tws in end notes.

When they arrive at the penthouse, the Doc is waiting at the door with a heavy chain, which he clips to the stupid jingle bell collar and then hands to Platyborg, who seems all kinds of bewildered by that fact.

⟪First the collar, now this? You two are into that freaky stuff, aren’t you?⟫ Heinz cackles and says, “Phrasing!” and Platyborg’s visibly tense next to Perry. Even for his usual.

The Doc, however, doesn’t seem interested in knowing what Perry’s said. Which Perry takes as probably a bad sign.

The Doc leads the procession out to the roof platform, which Perry knows well but not from this dizzying height, where a really high-tech-looking round doorway is sitting, connected to masses of cable. All possible weak points, knowing Heinz. Who sees Perry casing them out and clears his throat and shuffles his feet a little. Remember the plan, he’s saying, and Perry twists his mouth subtly. I know, genius, I’m just thinking.

Both Heinzes shout “BEHOLD!” at the same time, which leads to a minor squabble between the two of them, and finally the Doc takes charge. A phalanx of Normbots has meanwhile been gathering off the edge of the roof, prepared to go through the portal once it’s opened. Platyborg seems riled, like something about having to be the one holding the chain is pissing him off.

And Perry’s just trying to get his head on straight.

Get home. Get H to the Babygatinator…wherever that is. Get him time to do his thing. Get into bed and sleep forever.

Maybe quit his fucking job while he’s at it.

The portal roars open, and Perry feels faintly sick as he stares into its swirling mass. Feels like he sees a little too much, while also not being able to remember or take in any of it. And then it’s like an oiled glass window, showing what just might be the rooftop of DEI—the other DEI, the right one.

A bit anticlimactically, they all shuffle through, the Doc lugging some kind of broadcasting equipment with him, Heinz with a very determined I’m not doing anything, everything here is very innocent swing in his step, and Platyborg tugging on the chain a little bit harder than is maybe fucking necessary. In Perry’s humble opinion.

He knows the second he’s home. It’s like some low-level, constant, dissonant hum in his body has suddenly been put to rights. Like a knot he didn’t realize was in his back has been released by a skilled masseuse’s hand. And it’s not much—not enough; not with the constant dehydration of the last few days, the broken ribs, the hunger, the exhaustion. What’s enough is that he’s Agent goddamn P, best the OWCA has to offer, and he has to save a whole motherfucking dimension.

His vision goes into that stark, sharp clarity, smudges on his glasses be damned, and he sees everything.

Danville, perfect and whole as yet just beyond the roof. The clunky, trailing wires of the broadcast equipment in the Doc’s arms—some of which trail through the portal, seeming to be connected to the mess on the other side. Heinz, giving Perry a quick You good? look out of the corner of his eye, then strutting forward and starting on a loud, mildly-insecure ramble about what he figures they should do first, once they’ve taken over.

His counterpart’s back right side, which appears to house a few reloads for the shuriken shooter on his arm. God bless Platyborg’s apparent lack of nerves in his metal parts. With a light touch and an agonizing slowness, Perry manages to slip one free.

Perry makes a shhht sound with his mouth, Perry-speak for Look at me —that one’s for Heinz. Then he throws the shuriken, which is like nothing he’s ever thrown and thus the aim is a bit off, but it has the intended effect of making the Doc screech in outraged shock and scrabble at his arm for the remote to the shock collar. Then Perry flings his body as if he has the strength he knows he doesn’t, and his body gets the memo and finds the strength, aiming to get the chain looped around the base of Platyborg’s neck, where the cables from his skull disappear into a back armor plate. The charge ricochets through him with an intensity that makes his whole face hurt, Platyborg’s body shaking and seizing underneath him.

Despite everything his counterpart’s put him through, Perry fervently hopes this won’t kill him.

And also that he’ll fall forward, rather than back, because Perry doesn’t know if he can get out from under the guy afterwards.

Platyborg falls forward, and Perry thinks that maybe the only reason he’s still conscious is that he was braced for the shock. And also that Heinz is counting on him. The Doc seems to have cut his losses, jacking the broadcasting stuff frantically into some port on the roof, and the first of the Normbots come streaming through into the crisp, early autumn air.

Perry regains control of his limbs and pushes through the exhaustion. He doesn’t have the option to fucking feel it right now. He’s up in a weak half-crouch when Heinz grabs him by the sleeve on the way past and pulls, and goddamn, has Heinz been pulling his punches lately or is Perry just so stupid for him that his center of gravity has changed on command? Has he always been that strong? Shake it off, lovesick fucking idiot—

“I am the same in both dimensions,” Heinz pants, leading Perry through the darkened penthouse apartment and out into the hall, “easily distracted by you throwing things at me. I almost ducked.” Perry snorts, then grunts as Heinz yanks him around a 90-degree turn, where there’s a utility closet. “Sorry, Perry, I just—we need to get the thingy and get out of here, fast.” ♢

While Heinz rummages through the utility closet, Perry leans over with his hands on his knees and tries to catch his breath. “I haven’t seen you winded in a long-ass time,” Heinz quips. “Maybe I’m off my game lately, huh?”

⟪Don’t rush getting back on it,⟫ Perry signs raggedly, and then Heinz makes a muted exclamation of triumph, snatching a toolbox from behind some boxes. “The facilities guy has been stealing tools from me,” he explains, “and at first it pissed me off but then I realized it could really come in handy in a situation like this. You okay?”

⟪Right behind you.⟫

There are already Normbots roaming through some of the halls, but through a combination of Perry’s experience breaking into Heinz’s shit, Heinz’s own expertise, and pure dumb luck, they make it into the workshop and get the Babygatinator from the corner of some cabinet where it’s been gathering dust. Perry goes to where he knows there’s a hidden camera and signs, ⟪Carl, if you’re watching this, give us time, if you can.⟫

“Who are you talking to? Oh, right—surveillance.” Perry gives Heinz a half-incredulous, half-sheepish look, to which the other man only winks cheekily, and Perry really should not be thinking about that in any context right about now, he really shouldn’t. It doesn’t help that Heinz helps him take the goddamn collar off a second later, and Perry musn’t think about those fingertips brushing his neck, he mustn’t. “They’ll be looking for us if we leave the building, patrolling outside, probably,” Heinz is saying, “so I’m thinking we need to get to some part of the building that he won’t know to look for. Plus it saves us the trouble of breaking back in when the Bayg—the Begate— Scheiße, why did I give it such a horrible name?—when it’s ready. Except I don’t know what he doesn’t know because I probably also don’t know it— does that make any sense?”

⟪Yes…and no.⟫

“Okay. Good. I mean, good enough.” Heinz’s eyes are fever bright, the look he gets when he’s running a mile a minute, caught up in some harebrained scheme, plotting himself in circles. Perry’s favorite Heinz look, probably, aside from when he laughs— get it together, Perry— “Now what I need for you to do is what you always do: get in me. I mean inside me. I mean inside my head—don’t even say it—” God fucking dammit, someone up there is trying to kill him.

⟪Phrasing,⟫ he signs anyway, if only to seem unaffected.

“I’m saying thwart me, Perry the Platypus. Find us a little hole to sink into.” Good god, fuck. “Hey. I trust you. Okay? You’ve got this.” Heinz puts a hand on Perry’s shoulder, right where it meets his neck, and why —out of everything, awkward, accidental innuendos and all, it’s that that has Perry’s brain honestly short-circuiting, his heart crawling around in his chest like a little animal and trying to scratch its way out.

Heinz turns away, snatching random (to Perry’s eyes) shit off benches and tables and surfaces that Perry’s pretty sure aren’t storage-rated, and Perry busies himself grabbing anything weapon-like that he can find and racking his brain for a spot.

He’s got it. OWCA will absolutely chew him out for it later, there’ll be reams and reams of paperwork to fill out, but there is an old listening station from the Cold War era that was used right up until the mid-nineties to surveil a pair of previous evil scientists who lived here—yeah, the building’s creepy-looking, it’s been popular for that shit for decades, go figure. Nowadays it mainly gathers dust and serves as a two-person nuclear-rated bunker (Perry doesn’t know how, either; it’s literally on the eighth floor.)

“The laundry room that’s always out of order?” Heinz muses aloud, and Perry pulls him inside. The security cameras in this hallway are also always out of order, for this exact reason. Perry strains to move one of the washers out of a corner, and Heinz hurries to help him. And then he prays that they haven’t changed the keypad combo on the hatch beneath it. “Great thinking, Perry the Platypus, I had absolutely no idea,” Heinz says in awe. “Wait, if this is here, then why didn’t the other you just disappear in here at some point and wait to hear from OWCA?” Heinz asks, once they’ve entered the dusty space and he’s taken in the rations and the decommissioned radio equipment and the…everything.

⟪Beats me,⟫ Perry signs sharply, not wanting to get into it. Heinz takes the hint, plops down on the floor, and gets straight to work.

He’s magnificent to watch, he really is. When he’s really zeroed in, he’s a blur of limbs and almost entirely silent. Heinz crunched for time and using his highest brain functions is an unspeaking, unsinging whirlwind, though his lips move in silent calculations. Perry sits beside him and does what he can, passing this or that tool or holding one part still, but for the most part he just breathes and stares without looking too conspicuous (fails, he’s pretty sure) and adores. He otherwise busies himself with drinking water, for once, and trying to get down some stale granola bars stocked in the bunker.

“Don’t you need to check in with OWCA?” Heinz murmurs at some point, a screwdriver hanging from his mouth, and he gestures at the equipment around them. Perry supposes he could, but it’s the furthest thing from his mind right now.

Thinking about anything—about being here, being home, his family so close—feels like it could break him right now. But at the same time, he should probably make sure the boys have been taken care of.

Then again, he doesn’t really want to know if they’re in danger. He doesn’t think he could finish this if he found that out. He’ll find out at the right time, and until then, he can’t risk compromising himself. One moment at a time. So he signs, ⟪I’m okay being off the grid right now.⟫

About forty minutes pass, and then Heinz holds up the thingy. Babygatinator has transformed from a flat pane of black acrylic with a bunch of tech attached to…basically still that, but it’s now become a prism, and there’s a port on the side that’s shaped the same as one of the attachments Perry remembers seeing on the dimensional gate, and even powered off, it kind of hurts his eyes to look at, the same as the gate itself.

“So,” says Heinz, and his voice is soft and intimate in the dust-muffled space, and Perry’s suddenly acutely aware of Heinz leaning in close, his nimble hands turning the object over and over, and Perry swallows stickily. “It should be able to attach to either side of the gate. I think he bought it when I told him that power port was just in case it overtaxed the grid on this side, or something—anyway, even though it can fit either side, his side would be preferable, because once it’s activated it’s gonna basically chop off the penthouse and eat it.” Perry’s eyebrows go up, and Heinz grins madly at him. “Yeah, impressive, right? He won’t even realize he’s in a pocket dimension at first, which is the point, because I’ve set up kind of a barrier where once he passes it, he’ll be stuck forever. ‘Cause I figure that the courts, or whatever, will want to interview him, but how do you do that with a guy when you go in and can’t get back out?”

⟪Good thinking.⟫

Heinz blushes a little bit, then continues. “So I’d rather not lose my penthouse, but of course we can’t have everything,” he hurries on. “Just as long as I’m out on the roof—which I should be, because that’s where the portal itself is—I should be fine.”

⟪Yeah?⟫ Perry doesn’t bother to argue with him about who’s doing what. ⟪You’re not worried about the additional power?⟫

“That’s the one thing,” Heinz says sheepishly. “I was hoping it would be in the workshop, but I’m pretty sure it’s in the apartment somewhere…there’s a Shock-Absorbinator. I don’t think I told you about that, because I was mainly using it to work out some anger issues one day— anyway— it’ll be by the fireplace. Again, long story, and I really don’t want to get into it, so don’t even ask. It already has a really convenient cable that should be able to attach right here. USB-C, see? I’m modernizing.” Perry chuckles. “Without the failsafe…who knows what will happen. But if all else fails, you know me, Perry the Platypus…I’m kind of fireproof.” Perry can tell by the way he smiles that he’s trying to appear less brittle than he feels, and he squeezes Heinz’s shoulder and signs, ⟪Damn right.⟫

“So I’m thinking…you know, you’re—I don’t know, are you okay to help out still with this, Perry the Platypus? Because I can do most of it, and I—I don’t know. If you want to go…you know, make sure your family’s okay….” Perry’s heart squeezes painfully, and he chews at the inside of his cheek, trying to get his head on straight.

⟪Thanks for that. But I’m okay here.⟫ He stands, offering Heinz a hand up to his feet. Walks casual beside him to the ladder that leads up to the hatch, then clicks his tongue softly, catching the scientist’s attention. ⟪Hey. Thanks for everything, okay?⟫

Heinz reaches out and squeezes his hand. “Don’t talk like that, okay? Like you think something is going to happen. Because it’s not, and anyway—” He sucks in a gasp of shock and betrayal as Perry snaps a handcuff around his wrist, tight, and plucks the device from his stunned grasp. “Perry,” he hisses urgently, “No. No, no. Listen to me, whatever you’re doing right now—whatever brave, fucking stupid, martyr—hero— shit you’re pulling right now, don’t. ” He yanks furiously at the cuff, which secures him to the rebar rung of the ladder, inset into the wall, and Perry allows himself to reach up and brush Heinz’s cheek with his hand for just a second before he pulls it away.

⟪I’m the good guy, not you, H, remember? It’s my job, not yours.⟫

“Please,” Heinz strains, his voice cracking, and Perry wants, god, fuck he wants to give in. He wants nothing more than to fold, to say yes to everything forever if it comes from Heinz.

Maybe in another life.

⟪Stay here. Stay safe. I’ll see you around, okay?⟫ He hopes he signs braver than he feels right now, braver than the watery fucking smirk on his face, even though he’s not brave enough to say true things right now. Of all the times to be a coward.

He can’t look back. He tries not to hear, as he hurries up the ladder and through the hatch, the scientist whimpering his name, then shouting it. He’s not strong enough, on his own, to muscle the washing machine all the way back over the hatch. He settles for a corner, enough to slow him down, maybe.

He goes as fast as he can back up to the penthouse, dodging Normbots and security cameras all the way, and then he’s at the door, and this is it—this may very well be it.

He thinks he knows Heinz; he doesn’t know this one as well as he thinks he does. Where he’d expect the Doc to be standing on the roof watching chaos reign in the streets of Danville, or even on some sort of throne being carried around by his Normbots, instead he’s sitting in an armchair by the window, smoking tobacco out of a pipe. At the sound of Perry bashing in the door, he springs to his feet and snarls, “YOU!”

Perry’s ribs feel like an ice-cold knife, twisting, and his neck and jaw are aching, too, and beyond that he’s just tired and he’s fucking pissed off, and all of this to say: there is not enough time to grab Heinz’s failsafe. There would never have been enough time. With the last of his remaining strength, he sprints for the roof door, taking a moment only to topple a bookshelf in the Doc’s path.

To his immense relief, not a single Flynn-Fletcher is anywhere nearby. The Doc must’ve forgotten, or has had trouble finding them.

When he’s near the portal, he takes a moment to make sure the Doc is watching before making a series of gestures. One of them lewd, another insinuating he’s going to unplug the other broadcasting antenna, and the final one suggesting he’s going to take a shit on the Doc’s penthouse carpet.

As the Doc clears the roof door threshold, Perry skids through the portal. He doesn’t dare look to see how close the Doc is as he frantically searches for the port where the portal frame and the revised Babygatinator line up. The seconds drag at him, each one closer to being too late, and there—THERE.

Just as his shaking hands make the connection, and the prism-thingy in the hub of the Babygatinator swirls with a sickly light, he hears Platyborg’s mechanized joints. Then suddenly his counterpart is crashing into him, and Perry narrowly manages to twist so that he hits his shoulder, not his head, and they roll, grappling for purchase, across the gravel-studded roof.

“I’ve had enough of you,” Platyborg snarls when—inevitably—he gets Perry pinned, but Perry’s not paying attention. He cranes his neck around the bulk of Platyborg’s arm—still twitching; that shock did a fucking number on him—and sees, just for a second, the very tip of the Doc’s boot clear the threshold of the portal.

And then violet light sears his pupils and a dark wave sucks him under, all at once, and there is no Platyborg above him, there is no concrete under him, there is no home on the other side, there is no twisted dimension around them. There is no Perry: there is nothing. ♢

There is nothing, he’s out of scope, out of the field, out of everywhere— and then there is Heinz’s voice saying, Get over here, big guy, I mean it, come back, and a flash of lightning scalds Perry’s chest open. Once, twice, and when he pries his eyes open, he’s—

Somewhere else. Everywhere else.

His broken body is far from him, no tether to draw him back to himself, and it doesn’t matter anyway because he’s kind of captivated. Drawn along into a thousand moments, a thousand worlds, a thousand other Perrys, for just long enough that he starts to remember this isn’t his life before being pulled along to the next one.

He’s on his back in the grass in the backyard, Phineas’s head leaned back against his belly, the pair of them watching stars wheel slowly overhead through the branches of the tree. “Hey, Perry,” Phineas says, “when you get married, could I be the flower girl? I mean, or flower boy, I guess, but ‘flower girl’ sounds WAY more official.”

Perry barks a laugh. ⟪WHEN I get married, huh?⟫

“You’re in love,” Phineas accuses. “Trust me, I know what it looks like….”

⟪Aren’t you a little young for love?⟫

“Yes, yes I am. What’s he like? Is he good to you? Does he help you with your hair? Does he have kids? Does he WANT kids? Does he—”

⟪He doesn’t know.⟫

“Oh my god, dude, I totally get it. But you should tell him, though. Being scared to tell someone you’re in love with them is supposed to be a kid problem.”

⟪Oh? Is it?⟫

“Yes! You’re really making me lose faith in the idea that adulthood will be a time of security and self-confidence, you know—”

 

“WOULD YOU STILL LOVE ME IF I WAS A WORM, SIR?”

Perry, upside down in a trap made to resemble a punching bag (very funny), blinks quizzically at Heinz, who’s struggling to get the tarp off the day’s inator.

“He keeps fucking asking me that, like what does that mean? Norm, honestly, no matter what answer I give to that question, it’s illogical that you’ve asked it in the first place. You AREN’T a worm, you WOULDN’T BE YOU if you were a worm, and even if you BECAME a worm, you wouldn’t be a WORM, you would be A ROBOT WHO HAS BECOME A WORM. Which is an ontologically different experience.”

“BUT WOULD YOU STILL LOVE ME?”

“Who says I even love you NOW?! Honestly, Perry the Platypus, the things I deal with.”

⟪Parenthood is hard.⟫

“I am NOT HIS FATHER!”

“I WOULD STILL LOVE YOU IF YOU WERE A WORM, SIR. AND SO WOULD PERRY THE PLATYPUS.”

⟪I would put you outside, where you belong.⟫

“HEY! If I was a worm, I would RESENT that—”

 

“Tell me the truth!” Heinz is stomping his foot, which would be comical if this wasn’t about Peter. Again.

⟪I already told you the truth. I only fucked him ONCE, and it was while we were broken up!⟫

“But why PETER, though?”

⟪Because YOU fucked him first!⟫

“It was before we even MET, and—so HANDS COUNT NOW?!”

⟪HANDS COUNT! THEY’VE ALWAYS COUNTED!⟫

“Oh yeah, well, then count THIS, asshole!” Heinz holds up two middle fingers, and Perry snarls in frustration.

⟪I only did it because I figured I might as well see what the FUSS was about. And there is none.⟫

“Exactly. There IS NONE. He’s a selfish fuck. And so are YOU! I can’t BELIEVE you.”

⟪Fuck you! You fucking hypocrite!⟫

“FUCK YOU! Fuck—” Heinz pulls him into a toothy kiss, growling wordlessly, and wait, oh god, this isn’t Perry’s world—(he kind of wishes it was, because goddamn)—

 

“Big fighting words from a guy who reads mpreg in his spare time,” Perry says, and Heinz goes beet red, and Perry remembers this isn’t his world either and wonders what the hell those “big fighting words” could’ve possibly been—

 

“There’s just nothing worse than this.” Vanessa’s curled up on the waiting room chair, her knees hugged to her chest, sniffling down at her lap. “Just—dad. Doing the crazy shit he does. And sometimes I hate it, and I wish he would stop, but he’s DAD, you know—I don’t know who he is if he’s not building something, I just—wish—”

⟪That he weren’t so…accident-prone.⟫

“Yeah. And like—Perry, you’re an adult, right? So, like, is there a point when you start to be an adult that you stop just, like—being angry at your parents? And you maybe have an easier time just loving them?”

⟪I…think so, yeah. It’s different for me—⟫

“Shit, sorry. I forgot about the…parents. Thing. But I just mean—I don’t know. I’m so pissed off at him every time he does this, even though it’s maybe not always his fault, his brain just goes—too FAST, like, and then safety’s like, the third or fourth concern, like GROW UP—but also, like—I get scared. I get scared that something’s gonna happen to him and the last thing I thought would be that, like, I was pissed at him because…because I had to sit in a waiting room for four hours and missed a movie, or, or he doesn’t make it to some stupid teenage thing I wanna do because he’s in a cast, and I would just spend all this time being mad at him when I—when it was—”

⟪Vanessa, hey. He’s okay, he’s fine.⟫

“I know, but—I—”

⟪Besides, I’m here. It’s kinda my job to keep him alive.⟫

“I’m pretty sure that’s the OPPOSITE of your job, Perry.”

⟪Not anymore. You know…like, fuck ‘em.⟫

“Oh my GOD, like will you guys just get MARRIED alrea—”

On and on and on. It seems like forever, but at the same time too short, an uncountable number of Perrys: lives he could have lived, worlds he could’ve lived them in.

And—almost always—Heinz. Just out of frame, or taking up the whole thing, or in a stray thought crossing his mind, and—

Perry doesn’t really believe in fate. More likely, the dice rolls that decide the universe add up to a certain number of statistical probabilities. Perhaps in all universes, it’s probable that Heinz and Perry cross paths, stick together, so probable that, from a certain perspective, Heinz is “always” there.

Nearby, or missing, or remembered, or his whole focus, beside him, against him, too far from him.

And when he finally realizes he’s back inside his body, and he’s pretty sure he’s been here for a few minutes, he’s sobbing numbly, overwhelmed and fucking exhausted, his chest heaving and sore in several new spots. There’s a metal arm draped over him, a fusion of metal and flesh under his head, and he shoves at the arm sluggishly until Platyborg moves it and lets him sit up. Perry sucks in air and expels, “Fuck.”

“Tell me about it,” Platyborg rasps, looking a bit haggard and far away, and Perry squints at him.

⟪You, too?⟫

“You mean, did I go on the Great Dimensional Reunion Tour? Yes. Yes, I did.”

⟪That sounds like something Phin would call it,⟫ Perry signs wistfully, feeling far too close to crying again. He mops his face off with a huff and looks around him.

Very conspicuously, everything above this level of the DEI building is gone.

Including a few robot satellites, which would explain the distant sounds of crashing, rioting, and whooping in the streets as the Normbots fall. All of a sudden, Perry remembers the cable connecting to the relay in his dimension, and he limps over to it and unplugs it, just to be sure.

“So,” Platyborg pants, pain tightening his voice, “what, uh—what the hell is happening? Do you know?”

⟪Yeah,⟫ Perry signs slowly. ⟪The penthouse is gone, which means—means your Doc came through. Or… someone did. Hopefully him.⟫

“Where is he?” Platyborg sounds tense and numb at the same time, like he’s afraid of the answer, and Perry sighs and sits back down beside him, facing him.

“Hey,” he tells his other self, and once Platyborg’s looking at him, he signs, ⟪Doc’s alive. He’s okay. Promise.⟫

Platyborg makes a noise that might be mmng, clenching and unclenching one hand. Perry keeps talking. ⟪He’s in a pocket dimension now. He’s not gonna be able to leave, so…I mean, he’ll be comfortable in there. The whole penthouse is in there now, which I kind of can’t believe worked.⟫

“Okay,” Platyborg says, and then he sort of whimpers, and Perry rolls his eyes covertly before struggling up to his knees and wrapping his arms around his other self’s hard-edged bulk.

Platyborg doesn’t reciprocate, and Perry’s pretty sure it’s because his wiring’s still fucked up, but he does press his head into Perry’s shoulder and shake silently.

“I’m sorry,” Platyborg whispers, and Perry works his throat, shaking his head.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It just seemed like you knew who you were, and I—I’m not sure if I ever did.”

“Stop.” Perry deeply, truly does not want to rehash the whole prison-cell, dogs-barking thing. He pulls back enough to sign, ⟪I’m serious. I appreciate your apology, but I’m pretty sure that it was just, like…really complicated self-harm, so…you’re the one who has to deal with that. Not me. And I don’t wanna talk about it.⟫

“Okay,” Platyborg says after a moment. “That’s fair.” ∀

Perry sticks around as Platyborg does some admin stuff. Ceding power back to the people, announcing the whole pocket-prison thing, decommissioning some more Normbots, that sort of thing. He doesn’t really think he’s ready to be back in his own world, yet—not until he feels back in his own self.

That whole Multiverse Montage thing was a trip.

And he’s afraid that the Doc caused irreparable damage to his tri-state area, and he doesn’t want to see it. He’s afraid that OWCA is going to reassign him now that the boys have seen him work, now that Heinz has seen the boys, and he doesn’t want to know. And he’s afraid that something happened to Heinz while he was gone, that he broke out and got found by Normbots, or didn’t break out and still got found by Normbots, and he doesn’t want to know.

But when he trades his other self the prison prism for his hat and watch, he remembers it’s his job to know the hard things. That’s who he is: that’s Perry Bartholomew, codenamed Platypus, AKA Agent P, honorary Flynn-Fletcher.

He puts the watch on. But not the hat, not just yet.

As he stands before the portal that will take him home, he tells his other self that he forgives him, even if he’s not sure he does—no, he does; he does. And then Platyborg says, “Your Heinz fucking loves you, in case you didn’t know,” and Perry’s so startled he says “What?” without even really having to try, and then the cocky bastard’s smirking at him and shoving him through the portal, which closes and disappears immediately afterwards.

Fucking asshole, Perry thinks, brushing tears from his eyes, grinning, fucking… exhausted.

He rises slowly, finding his footing on the roof, the intact DEI penthouse still rising behind it, and gazes out at Danville. A few robot corpses litter the streets, but there are fewer than he expected, and none are still patrolling. People are ripping them apart, sort of, but also mostly just going about their day, because this is Danville, after all. Today was everything to him, but will just be a blip for them; many such cases. Dark has fully fallen here, and the stars glitter out from behind wooly clouds.

He powers on his watch. There are several messages from Carl, or Major Monogram (which Carl sends from Monogram’s own watch, because he can’t figure out how to work it).

We r aware of the interdimensional portal. Ur boys have been retrieved and their memories wiped. Family told you were called out on an urgent biz trip.

Then, earlier today, Welcome back! Saw u on DEI security cam. OWCA deployed to fight robots. Perry hopes, distantly, that they didn’t lose any agents.

And then, not too long ago, Robots mysteriously stopped working. Guessing that was u? When u get back, pls report in. We need to discuss ur assignment.

Yeah, just…no. That’s OWCA-speak for “you’re being reassigned,” and Perry’s not having it.

Angrily, he types out, Did I not just save the whole goddam tri-state area? Y/N

Yes, Carl types, and then he’s quiet. Expectant. Carl’s on his fucking side, at least.

And have I not just been thru interdimensional hell? Y/N

Yes.

So when I say I will not b reassigned, to a new apartment OR a new nemesis, that is ur problem to fucking figure out or else I quit. Im going to bed. Figure it out or fuck off.

Carl, god bless his goofy heart in ALL dimensions, answers, Roger that, Agent P! :D

He wants the chaos. Little shit loves it. Let him have it, Perry thinks; he’s tired.

*

 

It’s too quiet inside the penthouse when Perry enters off the roof, the kind of quiet that feels impossible in the wake of all that’s happened, and his heart stretches out of his chest, searching, searching.

Heinz has to be okay.

He opens his mouth to call out, but words fail him. He stumbles through the apartment, looking and listening, and as he crosses the front entryway, prepared to search every room if necessary, the door flings open and he’s almost bowled over by 6 feet and 2 inches of his favorite person in the whole fucking world, and all possible versions thereof.

“Hey,” Heinz snaps, pushing away from him, and then his eyes widen and he draws him in again, holding him by the shoulders. “Perry the Platypus? My Perry?!”

God. Fuck. Perry blinks away tears. ⟪H, it’s me,⟫ he signs, and then ⟪I’m so sorry,⟫ and then he can’t sign anymore because Heinz is crushing Perry to his chest, his long arms squeezing tight, and Perry can’t even find it in himself to complain about his ribs. He just presses his face into Heinz’s chest and clutches at him.

“Jesus, Dämonenscheiße,” Heinz breathes, resting his cheek on top of Perry’s head. “ Mein Gott, I didn’t know if you would—fuck, I was going to go after you but I didn’t know if the Babygate was still on the portal—Perry, you could’ve died, or been stuck there forever! You could have died, because you didn’t get the failsafe, you idiot.” He’s suddenly pushed Perry away, just a little bit but it still hurts, and then he’s crowding him so his back is against the wall and okay, this could be—fine with Perry in a certain situation—

“You can never do that to me again,” Heinz snarls, speaking almost too fast to be understood. “Never. You Pferdescheißewerfer, you asshole, never do that to me again, do you understand me?! I thought I was going to have a heart attack, I can’t believe you trapped me, you stupid, brave, fucking hero-complex son of a bitch—” Perry, for his part, has been standing here and taking it, because he deserves it, even if he’s not sure some of these swears have ever been uttered before today, by anyone ever. And he realizes all too late that he’s staring at Heinz like the lovestruck bitch he is, even though Heinz is absolutely ripping him a new one, and Heinz bites off an angry sound and presses his face into the wall a few inches from Perry’s head.

Perry wants, so badly, to say his name, but he’s out of words for today. They all went to good causes, though. He instead tugs at Heinz’s sleeve until the man looks at him, and he’s remembering the other Perrys that he got to be for a second. The way Heinz is always in their lives, on the fringes or in the thick, whichever—and Perry knows exactly how he wants his world to be.

“Platyborg could’ve killed you,” Heinz is muttering, and, hey, that’s as good an opening as any.

⟪H.⟫

“I don’t wanna hear it—”

⟪Please. Hey, please?⟫ Perry makes an urgent little noise, and Heinz growls in frustration but ultimately looks at him. Lets him talk. ⟪Platyborg wasn’t brainwashed, you were right.⟫

“I know that, what does that have to do with—” Perry gives him a pleading look, and Heinz waves his hands dismissively and lets him finish.

⟪There was no mission, either. Platyborg chose to stay.⟫

“I…why on earth would he do that?”

⟪For you, H. For…his version of you.⟫ Heinz gasps a little.

“Well, that’s…odd—”

⟪It’s the same for me.⟫ Perry’s hands start to shake the second he’s done signing, and he’s sure his face is red by now. Fuck. This could end everything—the easy camaraderie they have, the familiarity—he’s realizing that now, yes, but at the same time he wouldn’t take it back; he’s seen Platyborg. An extreme example, sure, but he’s seen the consequences of living untruthfully. ⟪I thought…you should know—⟫

He’s cut off by Heinz—well, being Heinz, being impulsive and dramatic and just not caring if he manhandles people (and by people, he means “Perry,” because it’s mostly just him). (And for the record, Perry doesn’t care if Heinz manhandles him either.) In this case, manhandling him into one of the most mind-blowing kisses of Perry’s entire goddamn life. Not that he’s had that many.

And with Perry crowded into the wall like this, god can he think for a second about how tall Heinz is? Even with the way he slouches, it kind of breaks his brain a little, how far Heinz has to lean over, and then he stops thinking about it because holy fucking shit. The guy he’s been in love with for roundabout 5 years is kissing him. Implying that this could be entirely requited, actually, and that they could’ve been doing this, like, this whole time.

Heinz breaks the kiss, which is so not okay with Perry, and pants, “Please tell me I’m reading this right,” to which Perry just growls and pulls demandingly on his shirt until he leans back over and lets Perry kiss him some more. Which he sure takes his time doing, because he’s Heinz, and he has to gloat. “I guess I am, then? Thank god, do you know how long I’ve been wanting to do this?” Perry stills his demanding hands for a moment, caught off guard. “Five goddamn years,” Heinz whispers, right in his ear, which of course kind of just makes Perry shiver and lean heavily against the wall for a second.

They go back to kissing. Thank god. “And now I know the whispering thing’s a turn-on,” Heinz adds smugly, and Perry glares at him, but it doesn’t last long because Heinz starts running his fingers through Perry’s hair, which must be all kinds of fucked up right now. When he kisses him again, Perry just kind of melts, in a literal sense of the word, almost, he’s worn the hell out, and Heinz braces him gently against the wall.

Perry just kind of hums to himself, dizzy with sheer exhaustion, and with a low and lazy sort of pleasure that comes with being pressed against the guy he loves. Who maybe sort of loves him back, or at least wants to. His glasses are all smudged to hell, but that’s not the only reason his eyes are blurry: he is about dead on his feet.

“I think OWCA’s trying to call you,” Heinz says, and Perry notices his wrist comm flashing, buzzing. Stabs at the thing until it hangs up.

⟪Told them to go fuck themselves,⟫ he signs blearily, and Heinz clicks his tongue and cups Perry’s face gently. “You need to rest, schatz,” he says. “And I’m not letting you out of my sight right now, and I won’t hear any arguing about it.”

⟪No complaints here.⟫

“Well, that’s a bad sign,” Heinz deadpans, and then Perry’s hissing in surprise as Heinz bodily just…picks him up, like he weighs nothing, and carries him towards a bedroom.

⟪If you put me in the guestroom after how you just kissed me, I will be mad at you forever,⟫ Perry signs, and Heinz laughs. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Heinz deposits him on the mattress, then bustles around despite Perry’s cranky insistence that he stop fussing, which never works.

Perry drifts in and out of awareness as Heinz sponges off his face, dresses a few small cuts from the rooftop gravel that Perry hadn’t even noticed, and then he’s brandishing an inator and Perry’s awake enough to be alarmed. “It’s a Rib Unbreakinator,” Heinz says crankily. “It only creates unbroken ribs, which I found out the hard way, but anyway, just hold still, okay?” It feels deeply unpleasant, but a second later, Perry’s breathing easier again, and Heinz unbuttons his shirt to remove the old dressing.

He takes off Perry’s shoes for him, removes his glasses gently, his watch, and then Perry’s had enough, clinging insistently to his sleeve until he eases down onto the bed beside him. “Your ribs are still gonna be bruised for awhile, though,” Heinz mutters, maneuvering Perry onto his uninjured side and then coiling around him, pulling the blankets over. “So I might just have to make you stay here until they’re not. You know, to keep you from sleeping on that side, because I know you will, mister.”

Under the blanket, Heinz’s whole body envelops his. Long legs stretching further down the bed, his chin above Perry’s head—it’s like being cocooned. One foot of difference (and change, depending on the shoes and on the slouch) doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is. Perry finds himself tangling everything he can, arms around arms, fingers, and Heinz follows his cue and presses his calf between Perry’s, and it’s only then—octopused around the person he came back to life for—he drops into a heavy, safe sleep.

Notes:

tws: Perry has to be shocked back to life. i think that's really it? lol

this is the point where the 2 fics diverge. you can read chapter 5 of each fic in whatever order you like :) enjoy ;)

Chapter 5: i'll let you in (when i find my keys)

Notes:

don't miss ch4! if you're following this fic, you might've clicked here (ch5) by accident w/o reading the previous chap :)

 

welcome to 14k words of (mostly) fluffy, idiots-in-love smut bitchesssss!

did not set out to have this strictly be a smutfic. was more of a character study of pborg that grew into...*gestures wildly* buh. was i gonna miss this opportuniy? fuck no.

and while i could have left yall hanging after ch4...i decided to post this bc ive had a shitty fucking day and want to heal. lmao.

while we're at it, take a moment to grab yourself a feral bingo card (take a screenshot, it'll regenerate anytime you click this link). kinktober's coming up...all i can say :)

you can read ch5 of this and hard work having a soul in any order; the 2 fics have now diverged :) no tws for this chapter!

He’s been out for 20 hours, Heinz tells him, when he wakes to the sun low in the sky. That it’s sunset instead of sunrise disorients him, but he’s anchored enough; he woke up with his arm over Heinz’s waist, his face smushed into the other man’s side, so really, nothing can shake him. 

“Your agency called twice,” he reports, setting down the book he’d been reading while Perry slept. “The second time, I said some very choice words, and they haven’t called back.” Perry smirks at that, then is abruptly very aware of everything going on right now—he’s in Heinz’s bed, wrapped around him like a fucking python, because they kissed yesterday, sort of a lot, and he feels himself flushing. At the same time, Heinz says, “Y’know, I could get used to this. And call that me moving fast, or whatever, but when you’ve pined after someone for five years, that tends to happen,” and Perry huffs and wrestles himself up onto one elbow. His head reels a little from the movement, but aside from a brief wobble, he sticks it out. 

⟪Me too,⟫ he signs. 

“You too, as in you could get used to it, or you too, as in it’s also been five years for you?”

⟪Both.⟫ Perry’s face is hot, and he reflexively covers it with a palm, only to have his hand pried away. 

“Stop it. It should be illegal for someone to go through an interdimensional wormhole, twice, and then wake up looking this cute. The least you could do is let me look at you.”

⟪You’re making it worse.⟫

“Ha! All part of my evil plan.” Perry laughs, and his ribs twinge, but otherwise don’t protest. “How are you feeling?”

⟪Still all kinds of worn out, but maybe tired of sleeping.⟫ Perry rubs at the top and side of his chest, which still smart after whatever happened yesterday. He’s pretty sure Platyborg had to shock him back to life, and even more sure he doesn’t feel ready to think about how close he came to dying. Heinz hums softly and tilts his head, looking at Perry with such a soft expression on his face that Perry thinks he might break. “Yeah, it’s official, I like you in my bed,” Heinz declares. 

⟪Phrasing.⟫

“I think we’re a bit beyond that, Schatz.” Heinz reaches out and weaves his fingers through the hair on the top of Perry’s head, as if he’s done it a thousand times, and Perry melts into the touch with embarrassing enthusiasm. “Why don’t you hit my shower, and I’ll order us some takeout—I don’t know when was the last time you ate. I probably have something in my closet that would fit you?” 

⟪Appreciate it, but check under your bed,⟫ Perry signs, feeling both a little shy and a little smug. Heinz raises his eyebrows, but slides off the side and looks under. “What am I looking f—oh, hey, I don’t remember this being here before….” He fishes out the black duffel bag, holding it out of Perry’s grasp as he unzips it. “You’ve been keeping clothes here? Man, and here I’m worried about moving too fast, you’re halfway moving in.” 

Perry goes red again. ⟪That’s not—I wasn’t—I mean, after the fucking pudding incident I didn’t want to be stuck driving home all sticky again!⟫

“Yeah, yeah, sure, Mr. Subtle,” Heinz drawls, tossing Perry the bag. “C’mon, upsies. I’ve been trying to be nice, because you kind of went through hell, but you reek.” Perry pointedly does not take the hand offered to help him off the bed, until it’s almost too late, his wobbly legs not wanting to stay under him. “Okay, a bath might be the better option, then—”

⟪You’re fussing again—⟫

“I will never stop fussing over you, Perry the Platypus. You give me a great deal to fuss about.” Heinz gripes at him under his breath as he trails behind Perry to the master bathroom, looking prepared to catch him if he falls, which is very sweet but unwarranted. He’s okay now. Mostly. At the threshold, he gives Heinz a pointed look, holds it until the other man throws his hands up. “Okay, fine. But if you pass out and crack your skull open on the tiles, it’s on you, mister. Seriously, don’t, okay?”

⟪I will be fine,⟫ he signs pointedly. ⟪I will just sit down if I need to. Okay? I promise, okay?⟫

“Okay. Fine. Oh, what do you want me to order?”

⟪You know what I like,⟫ Perry signs simply, and Heinz’s mouth lifts in a fond smile. “Yeah, I do, don’t I?” Perry’s heart does a barrel roll and threatens to fly out of his chest, he’s sure it will happen, any minute now. 

*

Heinz, god bless him, got the banh mi from the fusion place two blocks over. And the spam fried rice with the chili crisp. And honestly, when asked, Perry couldn’t have really said what he wanted, but the second he sees it, he realizes it’s exactly what he wanted. If that makes any sense. 

And he eats like a man starved. Which he kind of is. 

They eat in the living room, food spread out on the coffee table, by silent agreement; of all the furniture items in the apartment, very few were shared in common by the Doc’s penthouse. Unfortunately, the kitchen table was one of those few. And even though there’s plenty of space, they end up sitting right next to each other on the floor, knees pressed together, and Perry feels like he’s in college again, nervously picnicking with a guy on the campus green. 

Anytime Heinz catches him looking at him, Perry flushes. Which doesn’t help with the whole college vibe. Not that it’s a bad vibe, it’s just kind of disappointing to know his game hasn’t improved much over the last 20 years. 

When they finish eating, Heinz migrates to the couch, and Perry takes a moment to check his watch. He really doesn’t want to think about real life right now, but he kind of has to. 

Imagine his surprise to find he has the next 10 days off. 

⟪Heinz, what did you do?⟫ he demands. 

“I don’t know, I do a lot of things, you’ll have to be more specific.”

⟪Why do I suddenly have 10 days of medical leave?⟫

“Oh, that. I’m sorry to tell you this way, but your ribs are quite broken and you’re also suffering never-before-seen, interdimensional-travel-related medical complications.” Heinz shrugs, his blue eyes twinkling, seeming the furthest thing from sorry. 

⟪And they just…believed you?⟫

“Believed me? A very reputable doctor forwarded them a doctor’s note,” Heinz says, faking offense, and Perry presses his hands to his face and makes an exasperated noise. “You deserve it! Especially with that asshole Monobrow wanting to reassign you. Yeah, he opened with that. Didn’t even check whether it was actually you answering.”

⟪He does that.⟫

“I gave him what for, I tell you.”

⟪You didn’t have to do that, H.⟫

“Consider it my apology.” Perry blinks up at him from the floor, perplexed. 

⟪For…what?⟫

Heinz looks away, picks at a loose thread in the throw pillow next to him. “For…accidentally getting those kids dragged in. Also you, but I know you can handle me, and selfishly I can’t find it in me to be sorry I had you there. But—I don’t know. This was all—a whole lot worse than I planned it to be, and I—so many things could’ve gone wrong—” 

The way he sucks in breath tells Perry it’s all crashing down on him at once, and he slides over and climbs up on the couch. Takes Heinz’s hand in his, a thing they’ve done for each other so many times but is of course different now, and squeezes it for a second before pulling away to sign. ⟪Hey. I’m okay. You’re okay. Vanessa’s okay. The boys are okay. Right?⟫

“Yeah but—I—if anything had happened, it would’ve been my fault—”

⟪H.⟫ Perry snaps his fingers, softly, insistently. ⟪The reason nothing worse happened is because you stopped it. I couldn’t have done it without you.⟫

“You would’ve found a way,” Heinz protests, but the corner of his mouth is lifting a little. “I know there’s no use dwelling on the what-ifs, just…ah, Scheiße. I just need to be more careful. And try everything I can not to end up like that other guy.”

⟪I don’t think it’s possible,⟫ Perry signs. ⟪I think you two couldn’t be any more different.⟫

“You know, a lot’s been happening recently that makes me wonder if I’m really evil at all. Or if…if I want to be.” Perry’s eyebrows go up, and Heinz makes a scoffing sound. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. There are levels, probably. All I said was I’m wondering. And all I’m saying is that that guy is the type of evil I don’t want to be. Just…perspective. Y’know?”

⟪Yeah, I know.⟫ Perry looks off into space for a long moment. Should he tell him about what happened when the pocket dimension activated, that weird shockwave? 

“What’re you thinking?” Heinz says softly, leaning over to press his shoulder to Perry’s. 

⟪H—I think I might’ve died when Babygate went active,⟫ Perry says. Does the ASL equivalent of “blurting,” actually; he didn’t really think about it. ⟪Not that—I mean, I don’t think I’m dead now— but—I think my heart stopped for a little bit.⟫

“Höllenpiss, you can’t just say that,” Heinz gasps, wrapping an arm around Perry and squishing him into his side. “Gott. Fuck, Perry…if you had asked instead of handcuffing me and running off, I would have told you that’s exactly why you needed to get the failsafe! Jesus Christ….”

Perry’s hands shake when he goes to sign again. He knows, goddammit, he knows how close he was to fucking dying. ⟪I think the other me must have saved me. Shocked me or something. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.⟫

“Oh, great,” Heinz exclaims, his tone acid, withdrawing his arm from around Perry and crossing them both in front of him, scowling. “Go ahead, tell me however else you almost died.”

⟪It was…something else. Something stranger. The other Perry had the same thing, I think. After the shockwave hit, I was—other versions of me. Just for a few seconds each time, but I think…it was a glimpse of other worlds.⟫

The heavy, pissed-off divot between Heinz’s brows slowly lessens, his face morphing into reluctant fascination, and Perry bites down on a smile. There’s his guy. ⟪I don’t remember all of it clearly, just little flashes.⟫ 

“That’s… wow. So you saw other versions of yourself?”

⟪I was them. For a few seconds.⟫ 

“God, that’s fascinating. Man, I am pissed that you got to do that and not me. Except not really. I don’t know if Platyborg would’ve revived me after everything.” 

⟪Oh, he would’ve.⟫ Perry twists his mouth ironically. ⟪Trust me…after that crazy shit we saw….⟫

“What makes you say that?”

Perry sighs, turning his body to face Heinz more dead-on. ⟪Listen. Don’t let this go to your head, okay?⟫

“No promises.”

⟪The first time we fought, I asked the other Perry why he was still there. And he said “You know why. In every world, all of us probably do.”⟫ 

“Uh-huhhh…?”

⟪Hate to admit it, but the guy was pretty much correct.⟫ Heinz cocks his head, not quite following. “Wait, but what did he mean ‘You know why?’”

⟪Turns out,⟫ Perry signs slowly, ⟪in almost every universe I saw, anyway, you’re pretty much a constant.⟫

“Oh. So we’re nemeses in literally every world.” Perry can tell he wants to ask, but can’t quite bring himself to: a constant how? 

⟪Not nemeses, just…us. But always together, in some way. And I never got a chance to see inside your head, H, but it turns out that…for every version of me, you’re the only thing that makes sense in their universe.⟫ His hands stutter, then. ⟪I don’t know if I’m—saying that right.⟫

“Perry the Platypus.” Heinz stretches his arm back over the top of the couch, back around Perry. “You’re the only person I have ever made sense to.” 

Perry feels it, then: the accumulated pressure of the last several days—the existential panic of seeing his double, the flashback, the near-death experience, the multiverse rollercoaster, and finally the sheer relief of everything being mostly okay—and before the first choked sob has even made its way up his throat, Heinz is pulling him into a tight embrace. “Aw, Perry,” he hums, his fingers combing through the hair at the back of his head, “like you just said to me, ja? Everything’s good. I’m here safe, you’re here safe. And I’ve got you, big guy. I promise I do.” 

Perry can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed. It’s a good cry. A safe cry. He can’t really remember the last time he had one of those, the last time he wasn’t fucking alone with whatever was going on, the last time he didn’t feel immediately far too vulnerable, too cracked open. 

Minutes pass, and he gathers himself. When he pulls back, Heinz cups his face in his hands. “Thank you for telling me,” he says quietly. “Are you okay? Hm?”

⟪Yeah. Just—it’s been a lot.⟫ As he pulls back—reluctantly—to sign, Perry grabs the tissue box off the side table and sheepishly cleans his face. ⟪Don’t remember the last time I cried, which can’t be healthy.⟫

“Mm. I could make an inator for that, probably.”

⟪Don’t you dare.⟫ Heinz wiggles his eyebrows and smirks, and Perry has the sudden urge to kiss that expression off his face. So he does. 

He’s shy about it at first, though. Because he’s good at pretending to be a suave bastard, but it turns out that awkward, newly-out college kid that he once was still kind of lives inside him. But when Heinz lets out a low, smug laugh while they’re kissing, Perry’s annoyed enough to get competitive about it, and he figures out how to do something with his tongue that gets Heinz clutching frantically at his shirt, so there. 

Not one to be outdone, Heinz sucks on his lower lip and manhandles him into his lap, and, okay. Perry can admit when he’s been beaten. Mainly on account of the fact that, even from his higher vantage point, he’s just about eye level with Heinz, because tall. And when Heinz breaks the kiss and leans in to whisper, “I’ve trapped you once again”—if Perry makes a noise about it, it’s between him and god. And Heinz. 

And then: “Hey,” Heinz says, “I don’t want to rush you, I was serious earlier, okay?”

⟪Rush me into what?⟫ He’s a cheeky bastard to his core. He keeps a straight face, somehow. 

“Perry. I’m serious, you would tell me if I’m moving too fast, right? Because—”

⟪Moving too fast into what, H?⟫ He can tell by the set of Heinz’s brow that he’s getting on his nerves, and he’s just about to back off and be serious when Heinz says, “Into this, you Arschloch,” and runs his hands up under the sides of Perry’s sweatshirt. 

Yeah. Into that. 

Perry says “Ouh” and Heinz growls a little at the sound of his voice and starts nipping at the side of his neck. He’s gentle, so gentle, mindful of the ring of bruises still there, of the sore spots under his shirt. “What do you want, liebchen?” Heinz murmurs into the underside of his jaw. “Tell me what you want.” 

Perry can’t deny him anything, but neither can he put it all into words. Your hands on me and my hands on you. The best of all possible worlds. To never leave this apartment again. To protect you. For you to live forever. 

Instead he says, “Heinz.” And the other man gasps, drawing his hands out from under Perry’s shirt to cup his face, looking at once overjoyed and concerned. Fussing. “You know you don’t have to,” Heinz says all in a rush. “It’s, if it’s tiring for you, or—you don’t have to—”

⟪I know that.⟫ Perry rolls his eyes and shoves at him, complaining. 

“Okay, then please say my name again. As much as you want to, as much as you can.” And he never could deny him anything. 

When he says it again, urgent and raspy, Heinz takes him by the waist and rather gracefully flips up and sideways, so that all of a sudden Perry’s under him, lengthwise on the couch, head spinning. And verdammt, it feels good to be here. Perry fists his hands in Heinz’s shirt and yanks him down for a kiss, unable to otherwise convey how perfect everything feels. “I should probably check out where Platyborg shocked you,” Heinz says slyly, and Perry snorts and shoves at him. 

⟪You don’t need an excuse to get me shirtless.⟫

“Is that so? What, you expect me to ask nicely? I’m evil.” As he’s protesting, Perry’s wriggling gracelessly out of his sweatshirt, then reclining back down in a way he hopes kind of looks effortless, natural maybe, even confident, instead of how he really feels, which is winded after such a minimal action. Last thing he wants is Heinz figuring that out and cutting this short—

“You’re tired, aren’t you.”

“No.” He glares, and Heinz grins madly at the sound of his voice. 

“Heard that. It’s okay, baby, I can work with tired.” Perry’s breath catches at the word baby. He doesn’t think he’s ever been called that. 

⟪Oh? Can you?⟫

“Mm-hmm.” Heinz’s blue eyes glitter calculatingly down at him, sussing him out like he’s a particularly enthralling puzzle, and Perry’s face heats under the attention. “You laying still for once and letting me take care of you is probably, like, one of my more frequent fantasies.” 

God, but he’s perfect. And he must’ve read a user manual on how to touch Perry. Although, really, when it comes to Heinz, the proper way to touch Perry is at all. His mouth follows his hands, trailing down Perry’s chest, and by the time Heinz is below his ribcage, he’s breathing a little harder than is comfortable, his hands knotted in the scientist’s shirt. Perhaps hearing the wheeze at the edge of each breath, Heinz takes a break, leaning back up and cupping Perry’s face in one hand. “Okay?”

⟪Just—stupid bruised ribs.⟫

“Yeah, and you getting all excited isn’t helping. Ah—” He holds up a finger, preempting Perry’s protestations. “I’m not telling you not to. Just…maybe breathe slower. Relax for me, okay? I don’t wanna hurt you.” I’d do pretty much anything for you, Perry thinks immediately, and Heinz waits until he’s satisfied before he reaches for the hem of Perry’s sweatpants. “Can we talk about you looking so cozy,” Heinz adds, almost crankily, “in the clothes you hid under my bed like a rat.”

Perry sucks in a sharp breath. “Clean more,” he says, and Heinz gapes at him. 

“Really? Really? Oh, it just figures that the fourth and fifth words you’ve ever said to me are an insult. ” Perry’s eyes go stupid and soft, he can feel it, and Heinz mutters, “Of course I was counting. And you have a beautiful voice, Schatzi. Even if I never hear it again, I’ll be grateful.” Perry melts under the praise, the tightness in his chest unwinding, and Heinz takes the opportunity to shimmy Perry’s pants down his hips. And then Perry’s feeling very much self-conscious, naked under the guy he loves, and it must show on his face, in his breathing, because Heinz slows it down again. Runs a soothing hand up and down the outside of Perry’s thigh, like he’s comforting a horse.

“It’s not just your voice,” he murmurs, his voice all low and gravelly and just, like, intimate, Perry doesn’t really know a word for what this means to him—“everything about you is beautiful to me, Perry the Platypus.” His fingers trace scar tissue—the bullet graze on his side, that one had hurt; Beijing, 2004, the weird striations in the top left of his chest where he’d needed a graft—tattoos, too, the bold pops of ink highly protested by OWCA because they could be used to identify his body, which could be a tactical disadvantage depending on the mission. He’d told them to go fuck themselves then, too. “However much of you I get to see, I always find myself hoping for more,” Heinz continues, squeezing Perry’s hip, getting a strained whine out of him. “Do you know how goddamn lucky you make me feel?” he finishes, his breath warming Perry’s face, his neck, and, stuck for words, Perry just kisses him again. 

Hopes to god and anyone else listening that it says enough. That it says I love you, and it’s so fucking big that no language can grasp it, and it terrifies me, and it feels like the safest thing in the world, and even if this is all a dream I will be better for it. Heinz indulges him for long, blissful moments, before gently prying open Perry’s white-knuckled grip on his shirt. “I know, I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and something tight in Perry’s chest releases again, things he didn’t know he needed to hear. Heinz kisses his palm, his fingertips, bites into the fleshy bit at the base of his thumb where Perry so often kneads his other fingertips, and goddammit, now he’s gonna be thinking about this every time he does that and the asshole knows it. Perry spits out a strained “Fuck,” and Heinz smirks and nips at his bottom lip, the top of his chest. “Yeah? Good? Good, because ocelots bite a lot.” 

And then he cranes his neck down, looking to where Perry’s dick is pretty much just embarrassingly hard between them, and Perry can tell what he’s thinking, in fact he’s kind of obsessed with the way the man licks his lips like he’s hungry, but—“Please,” he pants, drawing Heinz’s attention back up to his face. He can’t figure out what he needs, what he’s asking for, but like usual Heinz gets it anyway, which sends another electric thrum of safe and known feelings from Perry’s head down to his toes. (Love, the word for it is love.) “Really, you like the sound of my voice that much? That explains why you’ve stuck around for so long,” Heinz snarks. 

⟪No, H.⟫ “Just—you.” It’s like a match has been struck, something fiery and possessive lighting up Heinz’s face, his posture, and he might just growl a little as he goes back to manhandling, wedging himself in between Perry and the back of the couch. Perry shivers, cold without his clothes, without Heinz weighing him down, but not for long—the other man wraps a leg around one of his, his arm under Perry’s head wrapping down over his chest, the other one over his waist, just tangled— Perry could stand to be tangled more often. “You have no idea what you’re in for once you’re back to full health,” Heinz purrs in his ear.

“Oh?” Perry whimpers, writhing a bit as Heinz drags his fingernails slowly up the crease of his hip. 

“Yeah,” Heinz whispers. “5 years I’ve been jacking off about you, I have ideas.” Perry would swear he’s trying to say something, but all that’s coming out is a noise mostly made of vowels. “God, you’re beautiful this way, beautiful every way…easy, Bärchen, breathe slow. That’s it.” Once Perry’s got his breath back, Heinz seems intent on stealing it again, spitting on his palm and then closing it around Perry’s dick, finally, finally. Perry sucks in air, his chest spasming a little painfully for a second, then exhales “Ohmygod,” earning a growl from the other man. 

“Yeah,” Heinz rasps in his ear, “I could see myself giving up evil and devoting the rest of my life to getting you to do more of that. But you have to breathe for me, Perry. And keep breathing, c’mon—that’s it, Schatzi, sorry I’m so good at this, I make it hard, huh?” Perry growls and rolls his eyes, signs ⟪I knew this would go to your head,⟫ and Heinz chuckles smugly and scrapes his teeth along Perry’s shoulder. Fuck. His hand around Perry’s dick is sinfully slow, slowing and stopping if Perry’s not breathing well enough to satisfy him, and it would irritate him if he wasn’t so goddamn captivated by this man. If he wouldn’t let him do anything, if it wasn’t his unspoken life goal to just…surrender. And if he didn’t just want this to last. If he wasn’t still wondering, deep down, whether this was all a dream, and thus wanting to cling onto it as long as he could.

It gets harder and harder to keep himself breathing even, the air ragged in his lungs, as he gets closer. He tries to buck into the hand stroking him, but Heinz’s leg pinned around his holds him still. He can feel the other man’s wicked grin in the crook of his neck, and he snarls in frustration, which turns into a whine, and then “Heinz— god,” as the scientist flicks his wrist in a way that sends a jolt all the way up Perry’s spine. 

Heinz groans at the sound of his name in Perry’s mouth, then says, “Is this your thing, Perry the Platypus? The closer you get to cumming, the more talkative you are? Could I have been hearing you talk all this time if I had only been a little more creative with my traps, perhaps?” Really? He’s teasing him at a time like this? Who is he kidding, of course he is, it’s Heinz. Perry’s into it, Perry’s into him. “Maybe I like your traps,” Perry strains, and Heinz says, “Fuck. I’m getting addicted already, is that your secret plan, baby? Getting me addicted to the sound of your voice? Okay, Bärchen, breathe—”

“I don’t care,” Perry spits, “if I can breathe— Heinz, please—”

“Well, all right, then, how could I refuse that?” he growls. “You wanna know something about bionic arms, Perry the Platypus? They mean you’ve always got a trick up your sleeve.” 

And then his hand starts vibrating. Because of course it does, because of course Heinz would build that into his own fucking prosthetics, and it’s almost too much for a second until it’s not. Until it’s suddenly perfect, just cresting the edge of overwhelm, and he shakes, clutching at any part of Heinz he can reach as his cum splatters his belly. He hears the word “Yes” leave his own mouth, choked out and loud, and maybe he says please as well, and then a whole lot of things that aren’t words, whimpered into Heinz’s mouth as Perry cranes his neck around to kiss him desperately. He wants to say, You’re perfect, over and over again; he wants to say Thank you, he wants to say I love you— he thinks, in that supernatural-seeming way Heinz has, though, that he just sort of understands. 

As his chest spasms uncomfortably, the ghost of that hit to his solar plexus reminding him of itself, he’s dimly aware of Heinz wiping him down with a tissue, then drawing a throw blanket over him. “Take it slow, Perry, easy,” Heinz coaxes, his warmth at Perry’s back helping ground him until he shallows his breath out for long enough that the spasms ease. And then Heinz starts gloating again, because of course he does. “I never thought I’d get you like this,” he murmurs, and Perry turns over sluggishly, facing him, taking in his face through half-lidded eyes. 

⟪Like what? Naked and afraid?⟫ Heinz laughs. 

“What do you have to be afraid of, Perry the Platypus? That I’ll steal your heart?”

“Afraid I’m dreaming,” Perry whispers, and Heinz creases his brow and cards his fingers through Perry’s hair. ⟪Or that I’m still stuck in some other version of me, and here soon I’ll be back to myself….⟫ He trails off, not really remembering where he was going with that, sleepiness tugging at the edges of his brain. 

“Hm…no, this is our world, baby,” Heinz murmurs into his hairline, pressing a kiss to his forehead, his temple. “And there’s no taking any of it back, which is—I keep thinking, maybe this ruins our friendship. And then I keep thinking, maybe I don’t care, maybe it’s worth it. Maybe nothing will ever be the same, so what.”  

Perry’s limbs are heavy, his hands sloppy and uncoordinated as he signs. ⟪I would ruin a lot of things for you. I….⟫ He’s nodding off mid-sentence. He swears it’s not a sex thing, his body’s just so tired. ⟪I’m gonna suck your soul out through your dick when I heal up,⟫ he ends up saying. Too close to sleep to really care if it’s a weird thing to say, to be embarrassed. Heinz laughs, a sound that fills the whole room, fills everything, then squishes Perry to his chest, his warmth pouring through him. 

“Sleep, my darling,” he breathes, and Perry has no choice. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

*

He supposes he does have to go home sometime. It’s not that he doesn’t want to; he misses the kids, misses Linda and Lawrence—but it is a little hard, leaving the cocoon of easy touches and clingy affection that Heinz’s apartment has become. The “emergency business trip” excuse wore thin a couple days ago, probably. To most people it’d be weird to imagine he needs viable excuses for his landlords, but the Flynn-Fletchers are more family to him than anything at this point. 

So—with a few false starts, a few hours, honestly, between when he first said he should go home and when he actually left— Perry returns to the house on Maple Drive. He’d been planning on getting there before school let out, just to touch base with the adults and grab a change of clothes, but…yeah. It’s nearly dinner time now. 

He tries to sneak into the apartment over the garage, but doesn’t have much hope of being unseen—Candace is like a bloodhound or something, a real nose for hijinks, which has become more and more inconvenient as she’s gotten older. He hears, through the wall at her inhuman volume, “MOM! Perry’s home!” 

He books it the rest of the way up the stairs, just needing a second. A fresh shirt, for one thing. He swears he’s not been in there for two seconds when there’s knocking at the door, the special code-knocks that the boys like to use. With a fond sigh, he hurries to slap some concealer on his neck over the bruises (thanks, Platyborg) and then opens the door, happy to let himself be swarmed by two very amped-up boys. 

Phineas, as usual, does the talking, while Ferb just quietly holds on to Perry’s arm, waiting for answers. “Where were you, Perry? You were gone for so long this time! Did you hear about the robots that came in for a second?! I saw one outside the house but Mom wouldn’t let us go out, and then all of a sudden it just crashed into the road, and we were so worried you were caught by one of them and maybe you were dead and that was why you weren’t coming home—” The boy stops, needing to take a breath, and Perry untangles both the boys’ arms from where they’re wrapped around his own so he can sign. 

⟪I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand. It was really sudden for me too.⟫ His cover story is that he’s a regional manager for a shipping company, has to inspect stockyards a lot. ⟪There was an accident at one of the work sites, a lot of paperwork to sort out, very stressful.⟫

“Gosh, sorry to hear that, Perry,” Phineas says, his brow creased in concern, and Perry waves him off. “Did you see the robots, though? I heard people were setting them on fire, and I really wanted to go, but…it was a school night.”

⟪School’s important,⟫ Perry signs, trying to keep a straight face, and then Linda pokes her head out from the door into the garage. “Hi Perry,” she says fondly. “Glad to have you back. Dinner’s ready, come on, you three.” 

Over dinner, Perry fleshes out his cover story. Or he tries to, anyway. Candace has her eyes narrowed, doing the thing she does, trying to poke holes in everything. Perry knows she does it because she needs to know everything in her world makes sense, but it usually just makes him feel extra guilty for lying to her. “Oh yeah? You went to a stockyard and filled out paperwork and stared at shipping containers for seven days?”

“Candace,” Linda says, gentle warning in her tone. 

“Then why is there concealer on your neck?” Perry bites the inside of his cheek, feeling sheepish, and then Candace gasps. “Oh my god, you’re dating someone. FINALLY!”

Perry feels his face redden, even though, yeah, this kind of helps, and is kind of true. “Let’s try not to shout at the table, darling,” Lawrence says placidly, then looks at Perry out of the corner of his eye, slyly. Perry pokes at the food on his plate intently, just as an excuse not to sign anything. 

“Wait, why would concealer mean he’s dating someone?” Phineas asks, at the same time as Candace says, “I’m totally right, I knew it, you’re busted! Mom, I told you he’s been sneaking out in the middle of the night—”

“Perry doesn’t need to sneak,” Linda interjects gently, “he’s an adult, and maybe his personal life is his business, sweetie.” 

“But I wanna know. Perry, why didn’t you tell me? You know I’m the romance queen,” she whines. Perry coughs, then takes a few deep breaths, trying to figure out what he wants to tell them, and how. 

⟪It was very new,⟫ he signs carefully, and Candace muffles an excited shriek in her hands, her suspicious scowl turning into a grin. “So it’s not anymore? Who is he? Is he totally dreamy? How’d you meet him? Is he nice to you? What’s he like?”

The Major would hate him for doing this. The Major hates everything he’s doing right now, anyway, though. He is, as Perry eloquently told him to do, “Fucking figuring it out,” because he’s not going anywhere. So…fuck it. 

⟪He’s brilliant,⟫ Perry signs. Lets his face go just a little wistful. ⟪And he’s kind. And probably the funniest person I’ve ever met.⟫

“You have it bad, my friend,” Lawrence says softly, and Perry covers his grin with a palm. Yes, yes he does. 

⟪I’d love to introduce you, but we’re taking things slow.⟫ This is a lie, but it is what it is. They are not, in fact, taking things slow—and he stops thinking about it as quickly as possible; stops thinking about the reason he was late getting here today, which is that Heinz kissed him goodbye and said “Ich liebe dich,” as if Perry wouldn’t understand him, and that caused a chain reaction—

Okay. Really, really not thinking about it right now. 

*

Despite—or maybe because of— the fact that so much is uncertain right now, Perry finds himself thinking of Heinz constantly. Wanting to be around him constantly.

And maybe some part of it is new relationship energy, the honeymoon stage, whatever. Or maybe Perry’s thirty-eight goddamn years old, and has been in love for about five of those years, and he knows exactly what he wants and doesn’t like having to play games to get it. 

He loves his job, he really does. But he’s seriously considering quitting just so that they can have…something that’s theirs. No contractually-obligated nemesis duties. No hiding Heinz from his family, or vice-versa. Because, during the seven remaining days of his ill-won medical leave, Perry’s getting a taste of what it could be like. 

And not much is different. After all, it’s still them. But in general, they’ve told each other all the important things. They’ve seen each other at their highest and at their lowest. This is not exactly a new relationship, it’s just a new facet of the same gem. 

He really needs not to think about gems, though, about facets, about cuts or rings or—or any of that shit; there is (maybe) such a thing as moving too fast. Maybe. And it would maybe be that, theoretically, were he not doing what he’s doing: not thinking about it. 

Anyway.

In all of his time as Heinz’s nemesis, Perry’s learned every way in and out of the DEI building. There are a whole lot of them that OWCA doesn’t have eyes on, which is why OWCA hates when he uses them, which is why he often doesn’t admit he’s used them. They really come in handy during trashy soap opera marathons, or when Norm’s made too many muffins (many such cases), or Perry just needs somewhere he can sit down for fuck’s sake. Yeah, this is not a new relationship at all, and it’s easy enough to get in and out of Heinz’s place without raising any (more) alarms with OWCA (who are still majorly side-eyeing him for the two days he stayed at Heinz’s after returning). 

There’s still a lot of soap opera marathoning. There’s still a lot of dessert-eating. And there’s still a lot of squabbling. 

But there is also a lot of touching. There is a lot of kissing. Perry doesn’t think he’s gone to someone’s place intending, specifically, to make out with them since college. 

Touch starvation is real. It’s considered to be a security threat around OWCA, being as it affects pretty much every agent at some point, which is one reason there’s an environment of casual sex among the agents, why it’s recommended that single and childless agents live with families or roommates they can be close to. There are signs to watch out for. All of which Perry picked up in himself long ago and just…carried on with. Because casual sex was very, very rarely his thing, and he has trust issues on top of trust issues, and so basically he just took on more missions and tried to fool himself into thinking that coming to blows with people so often was enough. 

He’s pretty sure Heinz picked up on it, most likely because he experienced it himself, which is how the man slowly but steadily broke down Perry’s prickly barriers and acclimated him to getting manhandled, essentially. Not something he allows from anyone else, barring the kids, inasmuch as they can move him at all. All of this to say, obviously it’s a security risk, look what happened—but then, Heinz could’ve never touched him at all and he’d still be fucked up for him. 

Anyway. In the wake of their latest misadventure, Perry finds himself almost embarrassingly clingy. He kind of annoys himself with how basically, the second he gets into Heinz’s apartment, he’s latching on to him.

Today—three days before he’s scheduled to return to work—Perry tries to restrain himself, telling himself that soon he won’t have as much freedom to do this anymore. And there, again, the thought of quitting OWCA seems like something worth entertaining, if only for how thoughts about OWCA would no longer intrude on these moments. Anyway, he’s basically sitting on the couch trying to restrain himself from smushing as much of his body as possible into his…boyfriend. He supposes that’s the word for it. He’s basically vibrating with how much he wants to do it. Fuck, when did he get this soft?!

“Just get over here, Perry,” Heinz tsks, “I can tell you want to do it.” Heinz lifts his arm, beckoning, and Perry’s mouth twists—“I only get three more days of this, come here,” Heinz fusses, and that finally does it. Perry makes a little growling noise as he complies, annoyed with himself, wishing he didn’t feel the need to be annoyed with himself; in the end, Perry settles with his head on Heinz’s thigh, the other man’s arm over his belly. Heinz’s other hand plays with Perry’s hair, and all the tension drops out of Perry’s body at once. “What, does you being a cuddly guy ruin your tough guy, secret agent persona?” Heinz snarks, and Perry reads the mild insecurity under his tone and all at once feels guilty. 

Because of course Heinz would be sitting there feeling like it might be about him. Like the reason Perry’s been trying to keep himself from cuddle-bombing the guy constantly is because something’s wrong with Heinz— basically every childhood experience, and many adult ones, would prime him for that. 

Perry reaches up to cup the other man’s face for a second, make sure he’s looking at him, before signing, ⟪Yes. It’s just stupid OWCA bullshit. It’s not you.⟫

“You’re on vacation,” Heinz complains. “Why should they get a say on your cuddling habits?”  

⟪They shouldn’t. I just have issues, H.⟫

“Mm.” Heinz absentmindedly fiddles with the hem of Perry’s shirt for a moment before saying, “You know—in the middle of the night last night, I started thinking, what if this was a fluke, and as soon as you’d go back to being my nemesis, you’d realize it was just—proximity? Or stress?” Perry furrows his brow, taking offense almost instantly. “And, I don’t know. I’m the one who started it, who’s to say I haven’t fucked everything up.”

⟪I’ve been in love with you for five years, asshole, or have you forgotten?!⟫

“It would not be the first time someone realizes it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Heinz mutters, and Perry glares up from his lap. “I mean…I’m forty-seven, but clearly still insecure as hell, for one thing.” 

⟪Join the club.⟫ Perry’s signing goes sharper with his irritation. ⟪I’m sitting here thinking you’ll get tired of me being clingy a long time before I stop being clingy.⟫

“I was raised by ocelots. Touch is kind of, like, a huge deal in pack dynamics,” Heinz drawls, and Perry twists his mouth, honestly having forgotten that. “Look, Liebchen, ignore me, okay? It’s not because of you, honestly, it’s just that I know things will go back to being similar but not the same, and even though I think things have changed for the better that still scares me on some level.” 

⟪Things have changed for us before, and we still stick together,⟫ Perry signs. 

“We do, don’t we?” Heinz gives him a crooked grin, a grin he loves so much. “And this does make everything make more sense…I always kinda wondered why they kept sending their top agent after me, but given you just love me that much—”

“Hey,” Perry objects. ⟪Maybe you’re not carpet-bombing whole neighborhoods, but your inventions actually do WORK. Which is kind of a huge risk. And you’re the only real challenge I deal with most months. And it’s not just because I have to deal with how handsome you are.⟫

“You really think I’m handsome, Perry the Platypus? I kind of thought it was my sense of humor, mostly,” Heinz says, and his tone is so genuine and surprised and pleased that it kind of makes Perry’s brain short-circuit. 

⟪H…I just—look, I’m not a shallow guy, by any means, but it’s not your sense of humor that you catch me staring at you for.⟫ He’s kind of mad, actually. ⟪Would you really have just kept dating me, thinking I didn’t think you were attractive?⟫

“You’re a good guy, Perry, I don’t know, maybe you don’t need physical prowess to be into someone.” Heinz is reddening, which of course just accentuates his cheekbones and brings out the blue in his eyes and just, ugh, it makes Perry so goddamn pissed off.  

He wrangles himself to half-sitting up and drags Heinz the rest of the way down to where he can kiss him, putting all his annoyance behind it, and when they break apart, Heinz huffs, “I know you just kissed me, but I sort of get the feeling you’re mad at me, Schatz.”

⟪How could you have let me go this long without telling you how gorgeous you are to me?⟫ Perry sits the rest of the way up, just so that he can straddle Heinz’s lap and stare into his eyes. He leans back enough to sign, knowing Heinz’s hand will be there to support his back. ⟪Before I knew you well enough to love you, my first thought when I saw you was “Fuck, I’m fine with him tying me up any day.”⟫

Heinz laughs, but he’s also going redder, which is kind of Perry’s whole plan. “I’m sure that that can be arranged,” he says, but he’s not quite meeting Perry’s eyes. So Perry cups Heinz’s face gently, running his thumbs along his jawbone. ⟪You look like you belong on a throne somewhere, especially when you get really into something.⟫ He sucks in breath to speak, thinking, Of all the times, dammit. “First time I saw you really monologue,” he says, “I knew I had a problem.”

“Oh?” Heinz is dazzled, as always, by the sound of Perry’s voice, which is deeply flattering but also unfortunately makes it harder to use it for a moment after he reacts to it, this time by tightening his grip on Perry. “I guess I didn’t know I looked any different.”

⟪You do. You look like nothing in the world can stop you, and I started to get the feeling I’d have a real hard time saying no to anything you asked me. I was right.⟫ Heinz is the one to pull him into a kiss this time, fingers laced through the back of Perry’s hair. ⟪You’ve fucked up my porn preferences, too,⟫ he adds, when he gets the chance. ⟪These days, I’d rather just imagine you.⟫ 

“Mein Gott, you always were a smooth talker,” Heinz sighs, and Perry smirks and leans over to nip at the other man’s earlobe, his neck, allowing himself the indulgence of grinding down against the semi Heinz is sporting. He gets a hoarse moan for his trouble. “Poor Schatzi, we could’ve put each other out of our misery so long ago if we’d only talked about it,” he pants, and Perry hums discontentedly and tugs at his hair. “No, you’re right—no sense thinking about what-ifs. Fuck, Perry—” Heinz’s voice draws his name out tight, going hoarse and plaintive as Perry grinds down on his bulge again.

Perry doesn’t think he’s ever heard his name said like that before. He would very much like more of it. Heinz is trying to get at Perry’s fly, but he bats his hands away. 

He loves and appreciates that it’s apparently one of Heinz’s life goals to get Perry to cum as many times, and in as many ways, as possible. But it’s given him few opportunities to return the favor as thoroughly or as singularly as he would like. He knows Heinz, knows that the man is often quick to put his needs or desires below those of his loved ones—that his inators are often petty and selfish and reactive is kind of the natural balance to that. 

In a way, Perry knows getting to take care of others makes Heinz feel loved, needed—but he’s also aware that in darker moments, Heinz kind of feels like it’s all he has to offer. Like people wouldn’t keep him around otherwise. As evidenced by the flash of uncertainty on his face when Perry rejects his touch. ⟪Do you remember what I said I was gonna do to you when I recovered?⟫ Perry asks quickly, and it only takes Heinz a second to figure out what he’s talking about. 

“What—that you were gonna suck my soul out, or something to that end?” Heinz smirks, and Perry feels his face start to redden, but maintains eye contact. “I guess maybe it was a bit stupid of me to think you might not be into how I look, given a statement like that.”

⟪I’m a man of my word,⟫ Perry signs, then leans in to press his forehead against Heinz’s. “Please?” he adds, and Heinz makes a sound between a moan and a growl and drags him into another one of those swoon-worthy fucking kisses, ones that always leave Perry knowing he has a dumbass look on his face but without the mental faculties to fix it. “How can I deny you anything when you ask me like that? Just…are you sure—”

Perry interrupts him by sliding off his lap, a bit more clumsy than he would’ve liked—sue him, he’s still healing—and running his hands up the inside of Heinz’s thighs as he parts them. ⟪Ask me again if I’m sure?⟫

“That’s true,” Heinz laughs nervously, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you unsure about anythiii— oh.” Perry tries, he really does, not to laugh smugly at the reactions he’s getting as he undoes Heinz’s belt with his teeth. When you’re known as a master escape artist, you pick up tricks with… interdisciplinary applications. “God, okay, just—sure, you can just do that, of course you can, you can do anything,” Heinz pants as Perry undoes his pants that way, too, his hands free to run greedily over the rest of his body. Perry allows himself a cheeky wink, feeling like an absolute weirdo for a second after—until, that is, Heinz lets loose a string of expletives. “Scheiße. Fucking hell, you’re going to kill me.” 

Perry gets his pants down far enough to be a nuisance, far enough that he’ll be able to grip onto Heinz’s bare thighs, because he needs to feel him, and also because them being down so far is kind of a trap, when you think about it. And then he leans forward and mouths at the outline of Heinz’s dick through his boxers, and the linty feel of fabric on his tongue is unpleasant, but the heat of the man’s skin through it makes his mouth water. So does the way Heinz hisses and grapples for Perry’s hand like he needs to hold on to something. 

Thank Christ. Another thing very few people know about Agent P is that a huge amount of his swagger and unflappability is “fake it ‘til you make it,” and this is no exception. “And you get after me for being a show-off,” Heinz grumbles, and Perry rolls his eyes. 

⟪I think I’ll know I’m winning when you stop being able to make snarky comments like that,⟫ he signs, and Heinz laughs breathlessly. “Baby, I would make fun of you for making this a competition,” he pants, “except I think I’m fine with you winning just this once—” Perry gets him to cut himself off again by slipping his fingers under the waistband of Heinz’s underwear, drawing a gasp from the other man as he squeezes at his hips. Perry drags his nails into the other man’s skin just a little as he bares him, just for fun, and then Heinz’s dick is springing free, flushed redder than his face (saying something) and basically begging for attention. 

Perry can’t quite find his voice, but he mouths the word beautiful and knows Heinz gets what he’s putting down from the way he says “God,” and then Perry drags his tongue up and down the length of the thing and he feels as stupid as he always does when his tongue’s out but then he swears to god the guy whimpers, so really—he can bear to feel stupid for such a good cause. Perry bites his lip to hide another smirk, though, really, he doesn’t know why he bothers—it’s not like Heinz doesn’t take every opportunity to gloat—and then closes his hand around the shaft and strokes it once, root to tip, lighter than he knows is satisfying. “You little tease,” Heinz growls, and then he wrangles his legs around so that his pants—still hanging around his ankles—are across Perry’s back rather than in front of his knees. Which really just crowds Perry closer to him and proves which of them is better at trapping, and which is better at being trapped. 

“And how do we always end up back here?” Heinz muses smugly, reaching down to brush Perry’s hair out of his face. “I swear I wasn’t even planning on trapping y— Gott—” Perry’s glared at him, then nipped at the pads of his fingertips, then sucked them into his mouth. He doesn’t even need to sign, the message is clear: This could be your dick if you weren’t running your mouth. “You are straight out of a fantasy, Ich meine es, everything you do.” 

⟪Then stop making fun of me and let me get on with it,⟫ Perry signs, quirking a brow, and Heinz very wisely listens to him for once. 

There’s a lot of German coming out of his mouth as Perry starts to take him down, his fingers clutching at Perry’s hair, his arms, unmoored—at least Perry’s not the only one, for once—and there are some words Perry knows, some he doesn’t. He briefly asks himself whether he should tell Heinz he understands a lot of what he’s saying, but then that would force him to admit he spent hundreds of guilty masturbation sessions Googling German terms of endearment, watching German porn—yeah, maybe he’ll save it for the wedding night. Hey, Jesus Christ, he thinks, right after that—slow down, for God’s sake—

Yeah. Fat chance. 

Anyway. He knows Engel. He knows Liebling. He knows Schatzi. But it seems like Heinz is just as creative with his German love language as he is with his swears. Liebebinder is a new one to Perry. As is Herzdieb. As is “Selbstgefälliger kleiner Ficker, den ich behalten möchte.” Actually Perry’s not entirely sure that one’s affectionate.

But hell, it doesn’t matter. Every word out of his mouth, in any language, raining down on him, all while those titanium-boned hands roam every which way and his thighs tense and twitch under Perry’s arms just makes Perry love him all the goddamn more. And he tries to show it in his eyes right before he takes the dick back as far into his throat as he can, but he gets a little too ambitious and has to pull off to catch his breath and glare at the sound of Heinz laughing above him. Although that only makes him love the man more, too. 

“Don’t hurt yourself on my account, okay, I— Perry—” There it is again, his name stretched out in a pleading sort of raspy groan at the feel of Perry’s mouth easing back down onto him, and Perry feels goosebumps rise on his skin at the sound of it, his own neglected hard-on asserting itself further. “Oh, I think you liked that,” Heinz pants. 

Perry can neither sign nor speak, unwilling to let off Heinz’s dick on the off chance his voice might cooperate, and enjoying (if not needing) the way Heinz is clutching his hands, so he just sort of thinks furiously in his direction. Show me you know who’s doing this to you want me want me want me. It’s that chaotic in his head, his cognition wearing thin as this wears on, a bit intoxicated by the powerful sense of belonging he feels when he’s here. I just might quit OWCA, he thinks, I just might really, actually fucking quit. 

“I was right, wasn’t I? Perry, baby—” the gloating and the teasing dissolve into a mess of sound as Perry groans, which probably feels great on the other man’s dick, so now he’s gonna keep doing it, the asshole, he’s gonna keep saying Perry’s name like that—Perry wrests one of his hands out of Heinz’s grip and fumbles to get his own fly open, just to get some goddamn breathing room, which turns into another whine as his hand skims his erection. Jesus fuck. Saliva pools in the bottom of his mouth, his mind warring with his libido, but then Heinz laces his fingers through Perry’s hair and tugs, gently but enough. “Yes,” he’s hissing, “do it, please—” and Perry can understand what’s unspoken here: if sucking him off gets Perry this worked up (it does, god, it does) then Heinz might just believe Perry thinks he’s handsome, that Perry’s as smitten with every inch of his body as he is with his mind. 

Well, then, what choice does he have? 

Perry utilizes every fucking bit of his concentration to keep his attentions on Heinz even while he strokes himself off. He’s pretty sure OWCA wouldn’t approve of their dexterity training being used quite like this—no, actually, given their whole touch starvation treatment approach, they definitely would. Just maybe not with one’s assigned nemesis. And out of everything, with all this sensation bolting through him, he finds that what tips him over the edge is a flareup of possessiveness. Heinz is his, in a thousand ways that nobody gets to take away from him, contracts be damned, OWCA be damned, multiverse be damned— minemineminemine, he’s thinking, as he shudders. It’s not long after that that Heinz’s noises pick up in urgency, his words blurring into each other as he tries to push two languages together enough that Perry will understand him. Perry understands, all right, which is exactly why he takes a deep breath through his nose and takes Heinz deeper than is strictly comfortable for him, his fingernails digging into the back of Heinz’s hip as he struggles to keep his throat relaxed. He kind of wants to screw his eyes shut in concentration, but he focuses instead on Heinz, whose own eyes are pinned on him, and it sort of makes him feel like a god, it makes him feel loved, and he swallows everything Heinz gives him .

“Mein Gott,” Heinz groans, his body falling back lax against the couch, “I think you really did suck my soul out, if e—if even I had one…‘if even?’ You swallowed my brain cells, is for sure.” Perry leans his head over, his cheek pressing into Heinz’s thigh for a moment, catching his breath. “Your ribs, Schatz, for fuck’s sake,” Heinz adds crankily. “Komm her, lass mich—let me check.”

⟪Not even getting head can stop you from fussing for 5 minutes?⟫ Perry signs limply, and Heinz clicks his tongue and snags his jizzed-on hand, attacking it with a tissue before using it to pull him back up onto the couch. “You know, not six months ago, I recall someone making fun of me for having tissues in the living room,” he grouses, lifting the hem of Perry’s shirt without asking—who’s he kidding, he loves it—and scrutinizing the fading bruise in the side of his ribcage, the one at the bottom of his sternum. Mockingly, he says, “‘Oh, Heinz, do you cry at TV that often?’ And now look, we’ve had couch sex twice. I am going to get you into my bed again sometime soon, you know.”

When he’s tired himself of fussing, he tucks Perry under one arm and uses the other hand to gently comb through his hair, undoing the muss from his earlier grip on it. Perry’s eyes drift closed, not sleepy, just content, unused to feeling this safe with another person’s hands all over him. “You know, I’m going to be your worst ex,” Heinz hums softly, and Perry shoves at him sluggishly before opening his eyes, making sure Heinz can tell he’s being serious. 

“No you won’t. I don’t think I’ll ever let you go.” Because fuck it. He doesn’t care if it’s moving fast. He doesn’t care if it’s a bad idea. He doesn’t even care about his goddamn job anymore. He’s thirty-eight, he’s in love, he knows what he wants. 

And from the way Heinz kisses him, slow but fervent, intentional is maybe the word for it, before hugging Perry as tightly as Perry will let him, he figures at least he’s not alone in that. 

*

Perry is loath to thank the Doc for anything, but he can’t discredit the fact that meeting him instigated Heinz’s departure from his villain identity. Perry gets sent there a week or so after returning back to work (separate and apart from his more furtive, personal visits) because Heinz is moving a suspicious number of things out of his workshop at once. 

He gets caught in a trap in the first few seconds, this thing they always do. “Shit, sorry, b—ah,” Heinz makes a sheepish face, noting that Perry’s got his work fedora on, bodycam and all. “Perry the Platypus. The trap was…I just hadn’t got around to disabling that one yet.”

His eyebrows go up. ⟪Disabling?⟫

“Uh, yeah. The whole ‘evil’ thing, I think I’m done with that. It was like, one extended mid-life crisis…that started in my twenties. Though in fairness, I kind of expected to die by now, so you could still call it that—”

⟪H.⟫ Perry snaps his fingers insistently. ⟪Are you telling me you’re turning good?⟫

“I’m giving up evil,” Heinz says, his tone acid. “There is a difference between not being evil and turning good. I’m neutral, at best, okay?” With a huff, he releases the trap, and Perry stumbles out of it, grabbing Heinz’s elbow as he tries to turn away. 

⟪You’re serious.⟫

“Yeah, I’m serious. Something about seeing that other guy made me realize maybe I don’t want to be associated with such creeps. Gegrillter Scheißburger, you don’t have to make a big fucking deal about it—”

Perry interrupts him by hooking his fingers in his turtleneck and yanking him down into a kiss. At a desk somewhere, Carl is probably losing his shit. “Oh, it’s like that, huh?” Heinz pants, a wry grin on his face, and Perry sucks a breath in and says, “It’s like that.” 

“Perry,” Heinz hisses. “You know what your voice does to me.” 

⟪I seem to recall promises made about when I was back to full health.⟫

“Do you now. Can’t you see I’m a little busy?” Heinz dances away, and it’s like a chase, it’s like they’re nemeses. Which they are. Perry deploys his secret weapon, which takes a few breaths to get right, but—

He reaches his hands out after Heinz and says, “Please?” And that’s all it takes—in a second, his love is back in his space, crowding his back into the wall. 

“You,” Heinz admonishes, “are such a little tease—”

It’s at that moment that Carl’s voice, tinny and hollow, erupts from the speaker on Perry’s watch. “Agent P, I am begging you to turn off your bodycam, because for as long as it’s active I have to keep watching it. I…I will get started on the paperwork for—all this. So you guys…take your time, or whatever.” 

“I plan to,” Heinz purrs, and Perry flushes and shuts off the bodycam, powers his watch down for good measure. 

Yes, he’d kind of planned this, having initiated the kiss—his formal declaration to OWCA that he and Heinz are a Thing. But he maybe—

Got a little carried away. 

“Are we alone, Bärchen? Do I have you all to myself?” Heinz asks, and he nods, breathless, then lets out a hiss as Heinz digs his fingers into his hips and pulls him closer, his thigh sliding between Perry’s. “What do you— mm,” he cuts himself off as Perry leans up to nip at his neck. Payback. “Baby,” he sighs, and Perry knows what he’s about to say. The last few weeks they’ve gotten pretty acquainted with each other’s hands and mouths, and Heinz is about to say it’s been great—because it has— and he’s happy to keep doing it, but also that if other options were on the table—

“Heinz,” he says, not missing the gasp he always gets when he says his name. ⟪I want you—I want everything.⟫

“Oh, you want everything. What does that mean to you, hm? Because—”

⟪It would be my first time. Bottoming.⟫ He’s sign-blurting again. Fuck. He really had meant to put it more delicately, maybe be a little seductive with it, but that’s… fine. He’s only ever topped, the few times he’s actually done this, feeling strangely like bottoming was a show of vulnerability, a loss of control, that he didn’t feel safe making. But it’s different with him, everything’s different. 

“Oh, it would? Is that—what you want? Today? Is that what you’re saying, Perry the Platypus?” He really does look smug, Perry thinks crankily, and so he lifts his chin and stares him in the eyes and grinds down on his thigh and at the same time he says “Fuck me,” and he kind of feels stupid for a second, but then Heinz is laughing raggedly, looking caught off guard, and fuck yeah. Perry’s winning. 

⟪If you want,⟫ he adds, the insecurity catching up to him, and Heinz seems to take offense. 

“If I want. If I want?” He grabs Perry by the wrists and starts pulling him towards the workshop door, then through it, the rest of the apartment passing them by. “Schatzi, if you’re doubting I want you, I’m not doing my job, am I?” They pass through the bedroom door, which Heinz closes and then wastes no time backing Perry up against. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I could bottom, or we could keep doing what we’ve been doing, whatever you want is fine with me,” he rambles, and then he snatches Perry’s hat and tosses it to the ground, his nimble fingers attacking Perry’s shirt buttons with dizzying speed. “It’s because I just want you, period,” he breathes. “And if you’re gonna let me show it by being the first person to put their dick in you, then so much the better.” 

Perry growls and pushes him towards the bed, his eyes pleading, and they shed shoes and belts as they go. He gets hold of the neck of Heinz’s shirt as he’s being pushed backwards onto the mattress, and off it comes, the pair of them as in sync here as they’ve always been, fine-tuned to play off each other’s movements just as well as they are to counter them. “I’m gonna make this so good for you,” Heinz pants, and Perry whispers “I know” into his mouth, then lifts his hips obligingly as Heinz tugs at the waistband of his pants. 

Being naked in front of him is getting easier. As Heinz rolls toward the edge of the bed, reaching his hand under the mattress to grab the lube, Perry stretches luxuriously on the sheets, feeling like a fucking god when Heinz looks back at him and sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. He swiftly loses the resulting smirk, however, when Heinz starts manhandling again, settling between Perry’s legs and spreading them. “So perfect for me,” he murmurs, his hand pumping Perry’s dick expertly, teasing, before he says, “Tell me what you want, do you want to do it or do you want—”

“You,” Perry interrupts, wrapping a leg around his waist and pulling him in close just for a second. “Please,” he adds considerately. Heinz groaning softly is oh-so-gratifying, and the only reason Perry lets him up from the leg-lock is that he wants those fingers inside him, like, yesterday. Heinz warms the lube between his palms, the anticipation killing him, and then—

As he presses in, Perry remembers all at once the reasons this is kind of scary. The way it makes him feel a little unhinged. He reminds himself this is Heinz, forces his legs to relax, and Heinz leans on his other forearm, in close to Perry, and says, “Hey, hey. I’ve got you,” and Perry releases the breath he didn’t know he was holding, melts into the sheets. “There you go,” Heinz whispers, pressing kisses to his neck, his cheek. “Y’know, this is a little easier than I expected, Mr. Never-Bottomed-Before. Have you been practicing?” He slides a second finger in, the stretch definitely noticeable, though not unmanageable, as Perry moans out a “Yeah.” 

“So you’ve been planning this?” Heinz sits back up, his free hand roaming over Perry’s body, stroking his dick lightly as his fingers work to stretch him open. Perry feels a bit unmoored without the other man’s body leaning over his, and Heinz says, “Hey. Look at me, baby, I’m right here.” God, how does he always know?  

“Yeah, maybe I been planning,” Perry sighs, his words blurring into one another, trying to stay steady. “Nnh— think about you a lot, Heinz.” 

“God,” Heinz mutters, then leans over, his teeth scraping Perry’s thigh, a question in his eyes, and Perry nods desperately. The bite helps, anchors him, Heinz’s tongue running over it making his dick twitch. “So you go home at night,” Heinz teases, “and you play with your perfect ass and you think of me.” 

⟪Your ego is going to be out of control after today.⟫

“Oh, I don’t want to hear about my ego, Perry the Platypus. It’s your ego I’m interested in. Do you know how much you’ve driven me crazy since the first day I met you?” Perry gasps, his flush renewing in his cheeks. “How perfect you look, spread out on my sheets, letting me hear your sweet voice, every inch of you is just— I want to spoil you.” 

⟪You do spoil me,⟫ he signs, and then inside him Heinz’s fingers press open wider, and he hisses and knots his hands in the sheets. Right here, he thinks, reminds himself Heinz has got him. 

“Not enough,” Heinz counters, and then the tips of his fingers apply steady pressure to Perry’s prostate, a spot he can rarely reach on his own. Perry shouts hoarsely, his back arching. “Easy, Bärchen, here,” Heinz murmurs, taking Perry’s hand in his free one. Perry clutches at it, whining through his nose until he’s grounded again. “Can you take a third for me, d’you think?”

Perry nods, but tugs at Heinz’s free hand wordlessly. It’s another one of those moments where he’s not sure what he needs, much less how to ask for it, and Heinz just knows, switching the angle around until he’s got enough room to both work Perry open and put some weight on him. It probably cramps his wrist up, though, granted, it’s possible his wrists don’t get cramps. Knowing Heinz, it’s 50/50. Anyway— he doesn’t complain, keeping Perry occupied with his mouth, his free hand, roaming all over his body. “Relax, baby, breathe, breathe,” he murmurs, and Perry hisses at the new stretch. “Good?” 

The only answer Perry can figure out how to give is twisting his hips down, which kind of happens on its own, really, and it gets a shiver out of Heinz. “Yeah, I’m gonna take that as a yes,” he says hoarsely. His movements are expert, stoking the coiled heat in Perry’s gut. Perry’s fully into the bliss the next time his prostate gets hit, and he whines Heinz’s name as stars light up behind his eyes. “Oh, more of that, please,” Heinz growls, and then he turns on the stupid vibration in his arm, just for a second, and gets exactly what he wants. “Heinz, fuck,” Perry pants. “Goddamn you.” 

Heinz does a shitty job smothering his smug laughter. And then that overwhelm feeling is back, Perry’s chest feeling uneasily light and untethered, and he whimpers. “What is it, Liebchen?” Heinz says, instantly attuned, his fingers still, waiting. Perry sucks in breath, prays it’ll loosen up the words, because his hands are clamped, one to Heinz’s arm and the other in the bedsheet, refusing to unlatch. “I need,” he manages, before his throat gets stuck, god fucking dammit. 

“You need me to stop fucking around and get my dick in you? Is that what you need?” Thank god for Heinz’s undying ability to just know things. He nods, his hands ironically relaxing from the relief of being understood, and he runs them over his partner’s body, this man he knows, this safe space. He pulls Heinz down into a bruising kiss as he withdraws his fingers, pressing his thanks and his love into him with his tongue. Heinz somehow manages not to break the kiss as he slides a pillow under Perry’s hips, the smooth bastard. When he reaches for the lube bottle again, Perry catches his wrist, lightning-fast: “Let me,” he gasps, and Heinz nods, quickly shedding his pants and underwear. 

Perry lets himself luxuriate in the familiar feel of Heinz’s cock in his hand. How lucky he is to be able to call it familiar. This thing is going inside him in a second, holy fuck, and he breathes a little faster, that too-vulnerable, untethered feeling clawing up his throat until Heinz runs a palm down his thigh, his side, up to cup his jaw. “Perry,” he whispers, and his eyes are pinned the way they are when he’s looking at something he wants, looking at something important to him, something he’s untangling. “I know this is a lot for you, Schatzi. And it’s okay if today is not the day.” 

⟪Just—tell me—⟫

“I’ve got you,” he says, yes, exactly that. “And I’m gonna take care of you. Right now, and anytime, all the time you’ll let me.” Perry sighs out the breath he’s been holding, and then he says, “Please,” and it’s all he needs to say. 

The sight of Heinz sitting up tall between his thighs, lining himself up, doing that tongue-between-his-teeth thing he does just might fucking kill him. Or what might kill him is the first, intense stretch as the head of his cock presses in. Or it might be the way he digs his fingernails into the underside of Perry’s thigh, shaking a little bit. And Perry straight-up doesn’t realize he’s talking until it’s already happening, until the words are spilling out of him easier than words have in awhile, absolutely stupid words, words crashing into each other, it’s just carnage. “OhmygodHeinzyes,” is the thing that comes out of him, and Heinz tries and fails not to laugh at him. 

“You are so fucking cute,” he chuckles, and Perry glares at him weakly until he finds out from experience that the centimeter or so by which Heinz’s dick widens is enough to notice. “Okay, ohmygod,” Perry says to the ceiling, and Heinz chokes on another laugh. “Stop—laughing,” Perry pants. “This is serious, like—I think we’re getting serious.” 

“Oh? We’re getting serious? Okay, time to be serious, then,” Heinz goads, then slides slowly but surely all the way in, at least Perry thinks so, he sort of hopes so if he’s being honest, because holy fuck—

He’s out of words again, his body a shaking map of tension, and Heinz hums to himself and leans over, caging Perry’s body in his own. “Let’s just take a moment to be serious here then, you and me,” he rasps, “I’m being serious: I’m right here. I’ve got you. I love you.” Perry mewls, his hands roaming Heinz’s body, remembering, coming down to earth. “You feel so fucking good,” Heinz adds, “du bist perfekt, mein Gott. I could stay right here forever, I think. You’re like a painting, a really beautiful painting—”

“A horny painting? What are you—talking about—”

“No, one of those really tasteful nudes from, like, a historical era that is clearly painted by someone who fucking loves the naked person. I have my cock buried in you, Bärchen, forgive me if I’m not thinking clearly. Smartass.” Perry giggles into Heinz’s shoulder, and Heinz bites him on the neck. “Now who’s not being serious? I’ll make you serious,” he purrs, and then he starts moving, and Perry finds that he’s—

Here. The weird anxiety that kept choking him up, that made him feel like he was coming untethered in a dangerous way, losing himself—gone. He’s losing himself in a different way. Rocking needily into every thrust, talking a blue streak the way he hasn’t since maybe a decade ago, not really saying much that makes sense, sure, but still— Heinz is over him, around him, in him, love forming that second skin around them both, joining them. Nothing can hurt them. Nothing in the world. 

“Heinz, it was always you,” he realizes he’s saying, just the most lovesick, lost-puppy shit, he doesn’t care, fuck it, Heinz deserves to know. “Do you know that? I woulda loved you one-sidedly until I lost my mind, it’s whatever—I woulda been fine with it because I don’t think I could ever love anybody else. There’s—no room.” Heinz shudders, draws almost all the way out, the flare of his tip catching at Perry, choking off anything else he would’ve said. 

“That’s so sweet, baby,” Heinz pants, then twists his hips a certain way as he thrusts back in, some way that puts an arch in Perry’s back, makes him dig his nails into Heinz’s shoulders. “And also makes me feel kinda guilty, y’know, for the version of you that lived thinking it was one-sided forever,” he adds, sort of under his breath. “Gott, baby, I could’ve had you squirming under me and looking so handsome and making so much noise this whole time, I’m gonna have to make up for lost time, you know. Or we can switch, you know, whatever works for you.” Perry must’ve made some kind of stupid noise because Heinz threads his fingers in the back of his hair and pulls his head back, gently, and says, “Handsome, so handsome,” and okay, that’s gonna kill him. 

And then Heinz says, “Let’s see if I can time this right. Hold on to me, Bärchen, go ahead, you’re not gonna hurt me, that’s it.” And then he reaches down and takes Perry’s cock in his hand, the rhythm just a beat out of sync, enough to make Perry feel like he’s going crazy. Perry’s words are gone again, whatever’s coming out of him just a litany of noises, barnyard-type noises, mewls and bleats and other shit that he can’t say with any confidence he’s ever expected to sound like. “So good, Perry, you’re doing so good, you feel so good,” Heinz purrs, and Perry can’t get enough of him, can’t get close enough to him. “You’re close, I can feel it, I can see it, hey, baby. Look at me.” 

Perry does. It’s all he can do, aside from whimpering, which he seems to be able to do quite well. “Let go for me,” Heinz whispers, damp and close in the cage their bodies are making. “Please, bitte, let me see you fall apart.” Perry never could deny him anything, and his brain turns into a riot of color, his whole body a knot of heat and light. Heinz groans, pressing his face into Perry’s neck at the feel of him tightening up, and then he’s cumming too, his hips jerking him deeper, and exhausted as he is, Perry just preens. 

Yeah. He did that. Even splayed out underneath Heinz, sweat slicking his whole trembling body, his brain a pool of stupid gooey feelings, Perry feels powerful.  

Okay. He could get behind this bottoming thing. Even though it apparently makes him yap like a puppy on adderall. No—it’s not bottoming that does it, he knows that; it’s feeling safe. Opening up those soft parts of him that even he never sees, not looking in the mirror, not anytime else, the parts that are only obvious to him in the dark, or in hindsight: with Heinz, he can be anything, he can be everything he is, he has no choice. 

He had a choice, he made it a long time ago—staying; the rest is all just a natural consequence of foolhardy, all-in, blinding, blazing love.  

Heinz pulls out of him and they turn themselves into a tangled knot on the sheets, sticky with combined fluids, sweat cooling on their skin. “You are incredible,” Heinz sighs, running his fingers through Perry’s hair, no doubt making it worse, sex-ruffled as it already is. “You know that? You’re just amazing, Perry.” 

“Mm,” Perry mumbles, his lips buzzing against Heinz’s throat. Annoyingly, the words leave him now, as if they weren’t just spewing out easily a second ago, and he scowls into Heinz’s skin, frustrated. 

“Love,” Heinz murmurs, “hey. Speaking or not, you say enough, okay? You don’t need words for me to know what I need to know.” Perry runs his palms up and down Heinz’s back, still a bit grizzled. “Even now, I can tell you’re trying to decide whether you’d rather keep wrapping around me like a little spider monkey, or if you want to sign at me,” he adds smugly, and Perry rolls his eyes but finds himself smiling, the ache and insecurity soothed. “I know you, Schatzi. You let me know you. That is the world to me, it really is.” 

Perry suddenly finds himself holding back tears. Because there are these moments, even now—he suspects, probably there always will be—that it strikes him all at once: the fact that he took it at such face value, Heinz’s being everything to him, without ever once considering he could be that for Heinz, for anybody. 

His whole life, he’s been used to looking for the world in other people. It’s been instilled in him from a young age, from the time OWCA first took an interest in him, all the way back in that orphanage, that duty and courage are to drive him. In others, he sees something to protect, something to cherish, something to live for—and he’s used to carrying that all on his own. Bearing it. He doesn’t mind, he really doesn’t—it gets lonely, sure, but it’s beautiful, the world he sees as possible because of it. A world where everyone he loves is safe and happy and doing their beautiful, brilliant thing. 

But it’s becoming apparent that he, perhaps, is not immune to being part of that vision. That it’s possible Heinz, too, looks at him and sees the best of all possible worlds. The possibility of the best. And it feels like setting down that weight a little, or at the very least not carrying it alone, it feels like being lost in a safe way, like being safe. And he’s not sure the last time he felt fully safe— the last time his instincts weren’t laying in weight in his mind, like dormant code, ready to flip over and spring into action the very second they’re needed. 

Not until this. 

And there’s a lot waiting for him, when real life takes the reins again. Paperwork to file, not least the consequences of his very blatant show of affection on his bodycam earlier—and then there are other things to think about. Futures. Or a future. What that looks like, now that Heinz is no longer evil, now that Perry’s openly in love. The possibility that Heinz will meet Perry’s family, and that they will love each other, that the second skin love encases them in will just grow and grow. 

For the first time the future feels like his, instead of something he’s securing for somebody else. Heinz gave him that. Keeps giving him that. 

In every world Perry’s aware of, even when Heinz is missing, even when he’s aggravating, even when he’s shouting, he keeps giving him that. For better or for worse, it doesn’t matter— every version of himself that Perry’s ever brushed up against feels like the future belongs to them when he’s around. 

Not that he knows what it looks like, nobody can. But it feels like it’s there. Feels like tomorrow is a character in their story, like it’s something he can touch, like it’s something he wants to touch. And Heinz, knowing Perry as he knows him, squeezes him just a little tighter for a second and says, “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you know that?”

Perry might believe him. Someday, he just might believe him. 

 

Notes:

thank you all for coming along on this amazing ride with me! i've enjoyed each and every one of your comments, and have had so much fun digging into this AU. i've got a lot planned for kinktober, so stick around for that if you're so inclined :) seeya on the flipside! <3

Notes:

get at me on this username twt.

just you don't have to. haha jk. umnless ?

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of doubled over