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If you want to get technical, Perry doesn’t stay totally dry on these evenings out with Heinz. He drinks a little.
That’s only because Heinz likes these late night outings with Perry to be fun, and frivolous, wants to share in the camaraderie of unwise alcohol consumption that he really should’ve retired in his 20s and will regret the next morning. Because decades of hard-earned wisdom are no match for the joy that spills out of him at the opportunity to spend a night of revelry with Perry. He only gets so many of these. Perry only has so many he can afford to give, with the way his life is built.
But if Perry snubs the drink menu then Heinz will, too, or he’ll tone it down with a light wine spritzer that’ll burn off in an hour.
Whereas if Perry orders himself a scotch Heinz feels he has permission to order the gaudiest, most ornamental cocktail they have here and critically relay his consumption of it to Perry. How they salted the rim like they’re planning to hold a Ford Fiesta rally around it in January and he’s not sure why the club’s custom-printed (who does that?) drink umbrella needs to be impaling 3 cherries and some pineapple and an orange slice, what kind of undersea fruit violence is this anyway.
And while Heinz is demolishing his drink on physical and emotional levels he doesn’t notice that Perry’s not downing too much of his own. At best you could say he’s nursing it, with a criminally neglectful bedside manner, like the kind Heinz’s mother deserves but will probably evade by way of her sweet baby boy. In part so Perry can keep a clear head. And in part because he gets a little transfixed by Heinz’s performance. It’s more absorbing than the alcohol, a superior experience.
And Heinz talks louder, and he laughs more. He becomes, objectively speaking, a more obnoxious presence at the bar.
But Perry doesn’t care to speak objectively, or at all. Because Heinz is his date. In like a funny ha-ha way, since they’re a thing that’s weird to label or summarize, nemeses turned coworkers turned nemeses again, best guy friends unwinding at Friday night happy hour after a long day of kicking each other’s bodies into sheet metal until something blows up.
But also because this bar has a “ladies drink free” thing, and Heinz maybe thought it would be fun to try his luck at it tonight, just see if he could swing it. Yolo, as the kids definitely still say, Perry the Platypus. And maybe he’s got on a sort of Marilyn wig and a diaphanous shawl and a dress, and is kind of rocking it. And maybe when Heinz placed his drink order Perry caught the bartender’s eyeline, and held it until he saw a muscle twitch in the guy’s forehead, in order to ensure that all the bar’s stated policies would be honored.
When Heinz got his free drink he took it as a win, and privately, Perry likes it when Heinz gets to win. Something his boss doesn’t need to know.
“I’ve cracked the system, Perry the Platypus,” he whispered to him, throat suffused with giggles, a hand up to hide his mouth from the bartender.
Heinz was so guileless in (what he saw as) this act of conniving deception, so kid playing house about it, so hopelessly out of touch, revelatory in this small victory — that it was very charming, in the way Heinz only ever achieves by accident.
And all of this and the way Heinz looked sparklingly down at him made Perry want to, uh, grab back the bartender’s attention and order them some hot eats.
Perry doubts this free drink acquisition plan qualifies as a dastardly plot of any kind. But it was something he felt he ought to keep an eye on. So he’s here, keeping an eye on Heinz at the bar, splitting a plate of surprisingly good mozzarella sticks with him.
“It was an experiment, you know.” Heinz dabs his fried stick in the marinara cup they’re sharing. “A social science one, a one-off. I don’t do a lot of those, as you know. I’m more of a hard science guy. Pipes and wires and what have you. This wishy washy stuff is like,” he waves the mozz stick like a mini baton, “a nice relaxing closer for the day. But not a proper scheme, I acknowledge that. Not satisfying. I mean what are you even supposed to destroy, at the end of it?”
He chortles around a bite of mozz. “My clown face, I guess.”
Perry smiles, minutely. Heinz has on a careful application of foundation, beneath the lip gloss and blush, which Perry knows is helping conceal a days-old bruise. Perry got him with a scuba fin — they’re harder than you expect.
Heinz doesn’t look like a clown right now. Acts like one, sure. Always.
“So yeah: successful experiment. I’m not gonna make a habit of this,” Heinz says, with a trailing tone. Perry senses that this is more of an instruction than anything intended for Perry.
He swirls the ice in his glass and lets it melt, permits himself the barest sip of whiskey soup.
Heinz’s chatter moves from the bar’s drink policy to the day they had today, and the one they’ll have tomorrow, and Vanessa’s AP Psychology project which she’s crushing and deserves 10 scholarships for, and how ungrateful Norm was about the new system of magnetized levitation Heinz had rigged up for his shoe feet.
“It’s like sue me for getting sick of two giant jet-propulsion holes burning into my floor every time he leaves the house. Which is more and more often, y’know, and good for him. But I guess they’re pulling in phones and powertools and cop guns and whatever, big whoop, he can scrape ‘em off. The city’s better off without those things.
“Plus, this affects me too, you know, I had to get him to come back this afternoon to find my keys. Spent 30 minutes looking for them.” Heinz swirls the martini glass, blinks at Perry. He sighfully wheels his shoulders, like he’s shrugging out of vent mode. The shawl’s got roseate blooms felted into it, in rainbow colors, and it covers most of his bare arms, slides an inch lower at the motion. “Thanks again for waiting.”
Perry nods. No problem.
“At least you can be patient. It’s a struggle for me. I was really ready to hit the town tonight. I mean god, Perry, what a week. You know the ones where nothing’s going right? And no one appreciates you? And then Perry the Platypus says he’s free Friday night and it’s like all you can think about?”
He’s grinning, bumping Perry’s thigh with his knee. Yeah, Perry knows those weeks.
“So anyway it’s all good now, whatever. We’ll work out the kinks. I think there’s a robot rave, or something, tonight, I told him be safe. Sounds like a human-conquering cataclysm waiting to happen, I know. Well, we’ll hear if there’s anything on the news.”
The night wears on and so at the end of it Perry hasn’t had much at all to drink, is the point, has kept a clear head. Which means that when he and Heinz flounce out the door into chill of night Perry doesn’t go to retrieve his jetpack from where he tossed it in the D.E.Inc truckbed.
Instead he watches with crystal clarity, from the stoop of the bar, as Heinz flops his way over to the driver side door, pitching forward like the parking lot is a funhouse under his feet. He stumbles and catches himself against the glass, laughs, craned against the sloping face of the van, blond polyester hair spilled like fettuccine across the windshield.
“What am I even thinking. Dummkopf, Heinz. You are in no state to drive.
“Perry,” he prompts with a turn, propping himself on an elbow. Perry catches the keys out of the air.
This was gonna happen. The second Perry ordered that drink, this was gonna happen. And not for the first time and not for the last. But hey, it’s a pleasure to save Heinz Doofenshmirtz from a drunk driving accident of his own making.
Perry pauses, after he hops into the driver seat. And the people of Danville, too. It’s a pleasure to save them too, from a lushed up Heinz Doofenshmirtz in a pickup truck. He cranks the engine on.
Heinz leans into the rolled-down window. “Thank you, Perry the Platypus,” he drawls with a tilted smile, one that matches the coy lean of his neck. Perry tips his bill once, a nod.
“You’re my favorite shoof... chauffeur,” Heinz says, laughing through the fumbled pronunciation. “Oh, scheisse. Too much.” He clears his throat, straightens back up. “I’ll see you on the other side, Perry.”
Heinz leaves the window. Perry hits the button for Perry mode, shaped like his foot, and the pedals piston upward to meet him. He presses the clutch experimentally. Still getting used to this, he’s only had the chance to test it out twice so far. But it feels good, like those miniature cars Carl makes for him, nice easy controls — except the shell of the truck around him is enormous, so there’s a nonintuitive mismatch of scales.
Heinz kept the stick shift, though, and the crank-roll windows, in this patchwork antique. Carl would never tolerate that. Perry wouldn’t have it any other way.
When Heinz reaches the passenger side handle there’s a yelp and a thud. Perry jumps — he’s over there immediately, opens the door to find Heinz down on the pavement, leaning into and over his splayed hands with a groan.
“Ohhh. You’ve gotta be kidding me with this. I go all night,” he says, peaky with a kind of about-to-cry indignation, “keeping just perfect balance, made it up and down the stairs, drunk even. And the last possible second! The last possible second, Perry the Platypus. It just fucking folds under me. Aaaagh. Is this gonna swell up? Did I break it?”
Perry has hopped out to kneel behind Heinz’s leg. The copious bulk of the shawl he hefts aside, and Heinz’s dress hems at the knee. His skin’s scraped open there, slick wetness in the dark, coming back plum purple on Perry’s fur in the meager light from the bar.
Heinz whines at the touch and Perry gives his thigh a quick rub, in apology. “No, my ankle. Can you see?”
Perry ghosts his paw down Heinz’s shin. It’s dark, and the only external damage he can see right now is more scraped skin down the front of his leg, pinpricking blood through Heinz’s nylons. The ankle: could be a sprain or just a twist, but it doesn’t look broken, nothing jutting.
Perry chirrs, in caution, and Heinz hisses in a breath while he unstraps the offending shoe from Heinz’s foot, then the other for symmetry.
They get slotted tidily at the floor of the passenger seat, and when Perry turns back Heinz is sitting butt down on the gravel, legs bent oddly out to keep weight off the bad foot, laughing into his elbows. “Man,” he hiccups. “It’s fine, really, it doesn’t actually hurt that bad. Just freaks you out, falling when you don’t expect it. I should be used to it.” Pause. “I am used to it. Pretty sure I went through worse this afternoon alone. You put me through a few Gs. But I wasn’t in a cute cocktail dress,” he says, opening his arms as if to show it off. “And I’m in a different headspace, fighting you. I’m ready to get knocked around. But this situation, it just isn’t fair. I mean we’re just having a nice time, here.”
Heinz is bobbing on a giddy mix of adrenaline and liquor, but Perry sees tears gleaming in his eyes. So he moves closer to his torso, slides an arm around Heinz’s thigh, for comfort.
This doesn’t have the right effect. “Hey,” Heinz gasps, shocked. “Watch it.” He cracks into wide-eyed laughter, as Perry removes his paw from his leg, where it’s possible he slid a little too far north. Thigh heat lingers on his palm, feels even hotter than his face. Perry growls, in the face of Heinz’s seismic giggles, and gives Heinz’s shoulder a rough shove. He jerks a thumb back over-shoulder: in the car.
Perry beelined straight here via jetpack, so he needs Heinz’s directions to get them back on the main drag. They’re on some run-down street west of town, that Perry hasn’t been to.
“Okay wait — yeah, we were supposed to make a left back there. I messed up. Do a U-ey.” Heinz is slouched back in his seat, comfy as he can get, his bad ankle stretched out under the dash. The drink sloshes heavy emphasis into his vowels, hits that “U” extra hard, while Perry hits it on the road with tight control, double-handing the wheel as he turns.
“It’s different at night. See that ugly brown building on the corner? From like the 70s? Vanessa had her ballerina classes there, a decade ago. I’m sure they’re long gone.”
He fiddles on a pop station, low volume, and glances up as Perry drives them past. “Yup. Dialysis place now.”
He seems to be in a good mood, thankfully, tapping the sill to the beat of the song. That’s good. Perry’s gonna have to help him upstairs though, assess the damage, before running home. It’s not ideal, staying out this late. But he can get away with it every now and again, so long as he showed up to dinner at the house that afternoon. The kids have come to accept, reluctantly, that Perry can survive a few hours out at night.
“Wild platypuses are crepuscular, verging on nocturnal,” Ferb had once explained, by way of justification. Ferb had a way of divining whatever sentiments would best support Perry’s interests at any given moment and shrinking them into Snapple cap facts. Perry was profoundly grateful.
“Aw, that’s cute. I guess that’s why he sleeps all day. Do all your friends come out at night, Perry?” Phineas had grinned at him, scrunching fingers through the fur of his forehead. “We just ask that you’re home by 11, that’s all.”
So he has a semiformal curfew, but that doesn’t usually clash with Heinz’s schedule. Tonight’s a rare exception.
Heinz is buzzed up, though Perry knows the fumes will putter out soon enough. He’s thinking he might swing by extra early tomorrow morning with a salted-up sausage and hashbrown takeout platter from the deli, to be nice.
Perry drums the steering wheel. Well, he wants to. But that might be overkill. It’s a bit much, bringing your hungover nemesis breakfast in bed, unasked. Especially when the guy’s gonna be targeting lasers at you not more than 4 hours later. Yet here Perry is, planning it out, reflexively. He should probably get a handle on that.
“You know it from here, right?” Heinz asks, to Perry’s cool nod. “Cool. Take us home, city slicker. . . . How’d you get such a good handle on the streets, anyway? I mean where do you go besides my house?”
Perry’s quiet.
“Can I tell you this thing I made?” Heinz says.
“Oh I probably shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t, cause you’ll break it. I’m just hopeless at secrets. This one’s pretty benign I think. The Spot Out Front-inator!”
Heinz does his splayed hand thing across the dashboard. Perry momentarily side-eyes him.
“Don’t behold it. You can’t behold it, it’s back at my place. And I already used it. I set it up weeks ago. You ever wonder why there’s always a spot out front? Right by the doors? I mean it’s pretty handy right, I’ve seen you park in it.”
Heinz has twisted in his seat to gaze at Perry like a doe-eyed putto from the headrest, chin propped on his crossed wrists.
“Well you’re welcome. Yeah. I got it running out the front window. Makes every car but mine go haywire if they park there. Automatic reversing, can’t turn off the engine, radio set to DWPY Country FM, max volume, the works. Whatever makes them not park there.
“There’s a family exclusion,” he adds. “For Char and Vanessa and your little platypus e-scooter. Again, you are wel-come,” he singsongs, and tilts his head into his elbow with a grin. “It’s hard to thank me, I know, with your animal condition. But I know you would if you could.”
He’s baiting Perry for a trademark beleagured sigh. Perry must be soft tonight, because he gives him one.
“Aw, it’s okay. You can send me a thank you card later. I like the ones where Snoopy’s at the typewriter.”
He’s twirling a spaghetti strand of wig around his finger, shadowed by a passing streetlamp.
“You’re kind of like him. Cute, good at dancing. I guess you kiss less girls on the mouth than him.
“Anyway don’t break it, okay? My inator?” Heinz implores.
“Like I know I overshared about it. But you wouldn’t break it for me now, now that I’m an invalid for a few days. Or weeks. Dunno how long this ankle’s gonna take. It’s starting to kill, by the way. Like it’s getting bad. Hold up, should be Advil in here.”
And he’s rooting noisily through the glovebox, napkins spilling out.
“You know they were doing elevator repairs when I left? So ein Mist, that’s right, it’s gonna be hell getting up. I don’t wanna call Norm. Did I tell you he’s started flying Mrs. Thompson up to her place? Carrying her bags and things? Never offers the same to me.” Heinz thunks his head back, giving up on the glovebox with a grunt of pain. “Ow. Is it cause I’m the one breaking the elevator every week, is that it? Because I suffer more than anyone, taking the stairs. Especially now. Gonna have a bloody stump climbing 40 flights with this. How much titanium can a skeleton take? No really, I don’t know, guess I’ll have to find out.”
Eyerolling is neither conducive to night driving nor legible to a drunken, pain-distracted passenger, so Perry fights the reflex.
But god, what an idiot. He growls, to voice this opinion.
“What, you got a better plan?” Heinz says. “Than me amputating a minor sprain? Shoot.”
Perry lolls his head back to face Heinz, at a red, and points to the truckbed with his eyes.
“What? Oh. Oh!” Heinz enthuses, springing up in his seat, hair curls cherry red in the stoplight. “Your jetpack! That’s right, I can just fly myself up. Sure, I’ll give it back tomorrow.”
Hell no. Perry growls again.
“Or you can carry me,” he amends, sheepish. “Oh! You can carry me.”
If the red stays on Heinz’s cheeks when the light turns green Perry wouldn’t know, because he’s driving.
“That’s so sweet of you to offer, Perry the Platypus.”
And it’s always like this. Perry doesn’t offer. But then he finds himself walked backwards into the driver’s seat of Heinz’s car, walked backwards into the role of his designated jetpacker. There’s only so many times he can get walked backwards into something till he has to admit he’s walking.
But then, Perry doesn’t have to admit anything. Not talking has its perks.
“Oh I feel so spoiled. This was nice tonight. No better ending, I think, than you dropping me off like Aladdin and flying off into the moon. And then RICE-ing my foot all night. I think there’s ice,” he says, trailing. “I’ll text Norm to grab some from the bodega, if there isn’t. He’ll be home around like.” Heinz pauses to count imaginary robot party hours. “. . . He’ll probably be home.”
And maybe it’s the reminder that not even Norm is waiting for Heinz at home, or maybe it’s the blood tacking under his palm on the wheel, from Heinz’s scraped knee, that’s got Perry rethinking his night.
Because really, the kids won’t be waiting up for him.
“Well what does that noise mean?” Heinz asks, as Perry pulls into a gas station.
A hat plus jacket boosts Perry’s chances at a retail counter by a good amount, like the less fur he’s showing the more a clerk’s willing to see him as plausibly human, duckbill notwithstanding.
Which is good because Heinz is left uselessly marooned at the truck. He dangles like a handpuppet out the window, while Perry hefts one bag of ice in the back and pushes the other one into his hands, before rounding to the driver side.
“You got me bonuses? This is crazy.”
He’s got the ice bag set up to cushion his foot on the floor while he rummages through Perry’s buys.
“Perry the Platypus you shouldn’t get the gas station drugs, they mark them up like bandits. Honestly.” He says this before emptying a pill packet into his hand and swallowing the contents dry, with practiced ease. Perry wonders why he bothered getting ginger ale. “What do I owe you for all this, 20, 30? 90?”
Heinz pulls out a pink pochette, the pièce de résistance of his costume tonight, and snaps it open. Perry places his paw on the back of his hand, to still it, with insistence firm in his eyes. Heinz gawps at him.
“Oh you’re absurd.”
He’s backlit by a stained glass lattice of cigarette ads, papering up the store window. Perry watches him bite his lower lip. He forgot to get the receipt. He forgot the receipt and he forgets what the total was, when they rung him up, and that’s why Heinz can’t pay him back. That’s why, he thinks, focused on a glint of teeth in darkness.
“Y’know, I’m thinking,” says Heinz.
“And this is just speaking nemesis to nemesis. Which is how we always speak. But you’d be welcome,” he says, “at any time — or more specifically tonight. To come back to my place, for a bit. Just to hang?
“And,” he adds, “because I might be something of a lame duck tomorrow. Um. No offense,” he says, stupidly. “Cause you’ve got the, sort of. Actual duck feet going on.”
“So, it would be nice. To get more time together. If you’re not sick of me. I dunno,” his voice quiets to a rasp. “Just thought I’d ask.”
Heinz’s eyes are black in the dark, just bruised absences in air, but they suck Perry in, pull air from his lungs until he isn’t breathing. Something of an abyssal dive sensation, with heat boiling deep below.
The heat, Perry realizes, is from Heinz’s hand still under his, hot beneath the leather of his palm. Heinz turns it, wraps his fingers around Perry’s paw.
“And also,” he slowly continues. “You should eat some of these snacks you bought.” With his spare hand he lifts the crinkly bag. “That’s only fair, right? Because if you leave them with me, I’ll get sick. You know I can’t control myself.”
He’s a really good guilter, Perry thinks. When he wants to be.
Which is wasted on him now, because Perry already made up his mind to stay. It’s the pragmatic thing. Heinz is injured, he’s been drinking, he needs a friend to stick around a few hours, make sure he’s all set up to recover. Really, such a lot of drama and suspense, for a common sense decision.
Perry turns back to the wheel, answers with a small affirming noise.
There’s a riot of echolocative shrieks, as Perry starts the engine. He thinks of all the pleasant naps cut short by Candace squealing on the phone. But coming from Heinz, now, they’re less annoying. Somehow. Good thing he’s belted in because Perry feels floaty, like he’s popping up from sea depths and could lift the car up with him.
“Oh my god, yes! I got you!” Heinz cackles. “My powers of persuasion, Perry the Platypus! Never doubt them! I never have.”
He’s bouncing out of his shawl, clapping his knuckles together like castanets.
“You’re coming over! Oh, we’re gonna have a sleepover!”
They’re not, but Perry doesn’t want to kill the buzz.
“I don’t know why I’m so excited,” Heinz says, laughing. “You’re there every day. But it’s like, impossible to get you to stay late.
“You’re like ‘Oh, sorry,’” his voice turns dopey and deep, “’I gotta get to my second job at the all-night waffle house.’ Well Perry the Platypus, I know you don’t work at the all-night waffle house,” he turns on him with lit up eyes, “because I’ve been there, late nights. And you aren’t there.”
Perry’s never known alcohol to work like this on anyone else. Heinz gabs a mile a minute like a teen with limited phone time, performing verbal acrobatics with his drink-jammed tongue. His grin is audible, even as he hides it behind his hands.
“I’m just so glad,” he says. “We can still be pals like this. I was worried, you know? With me going back to the old routine and all. But it’s fun, right? You agree it’s fun, we both know it is. Getting to see each other every day. That reliable rhythm, the sock-kick-punch.” He’s rubbing his hand on the concealed cheek bruise. “I missed it.”
Perry’s not gonna confirm or deny. It’s been weird, locking back into the groove, after 9 months out of it.
He had to hear from his boss that there’d been a major change-up to their relationship. It still has him off kilter. Reuniting with Dr. Doofenshmirtz the criminal schemer, kicking him into the same sideboard he’d consulted Perry on purchasing not a week previous. It was like meeting a person he forgot, all that lunatic energy coursing through his monkey limbs. It made Perry furious, wanna smash every part of him into the floorboards.
And then Heinz would ask him out for a bite afterward, his treat, glowing like Perry’s beatdown did him good. Like he used to. Like Heinz earned it suffering under Perry’s fists. And when the check came Perry would remember how Heinz had twisted and squealed under his armlock, an hour ago, and he’d pull out his card, always. Like he used to. Like he was paying for the privilege.
Maybe he was. It never felt right, coldcocking other people. Never felt as good.
Heinz keeps talking in giddy loops. “You know my house doesn’t feel inhabited without you there. It’s like a ghost town,” he says. “Well, a ghost town with Norm in it. Don’t tell him I said that,” he leans in to whisper, pointlessly. “It’s just, he’s like the robot playing the piano at the saloon while I’m sitting there all bored and missing you, spinning my pistol. Waiting around for my dueling partner.
“But it turns out I didn’t even have to challenge you to a duel,” he says. “I just had to suffer a grievous injury and win your pity, to get you to come to my house. Who knew!”
Who knew. He’d better not make a habit out of this.
“You know you could invite me to yours sometime. Just saying.”
Perry feels his eyes on him.
“Sort of unfair, right? Me always hosting? Ohhh, I know. You don’t want to tell me about your house, your cool high-tech spy pad. Top secret!”
Heinz’s smile beats on Perry, an interrogation lamp. He keeps his face a wall.
“Listen, Perry. I hate to put you on blast like this. But I’ve picked up a few things about your private life by now. Like for instance I know. I know,”
Heinz twists the end of that word into the silence. It spins like a lance.
“You’re not married.”
Perry’s heart starts back up.
“To be fair, I’m not sure if platypuses even get married. But at this point I’m willing to bet on it. It’s mostly a vibes thing. But you staying late clinches it, as far as I’m concerned. Perry the Platypus is not one to leave a lonely lover alone at night.”
Interesting. Perry wonders where Heinz gets that impression.
“But your living space?” Heinz continues. “That’s still a mystery. I picture you flying back every night to this, like, nicely dressed-up apartment. Wood interior, like those redbrick factories they converted into lofts by the river, sort of a New York writer’s flat. All your platypus panache on display, very refined.”
Perry thinks of his cat bed and bowl by the kitchen.
“You’ve got a reading room, obviously, like an old-fashioned study. Where you read up on the classics, crack ciphers in your spare time, for fun. I see you being into history, maybe philology, is that a stretch? I’ve got some obscure Drusselsteinian texts I should lend you some time.
“You’d have a subterranean dojo, for keeping in shape. I noticed the gym at OWCA was pretty busted. And you’re not a big drinker, I know, but you’ve gotta have a wine cabinet. Old vintages, for showing off to guests.”
Heinz shapes lines and curves through the air with his hands, creating his Perry dream house, blissful longing in his voice.
“And okay, maybe I’m taking it too far — no pressure, if I’m off base. I can see you living the humble life, too. You’re not ostentatious. But any space you have is just bound to exude class. So personal, so you! Oh I’d love to see it! It’d be so different from Peter’s.”
Heinz’s chatter plummets with the speed of a spun dial, underneath the click of the turn signal.
“Anyway. Some other time.” Heinz angles his face out at the road. “Wow. It’s dead out here.”
They’re a block from his place, Perry at the neck of an alley that cuts them straight to it. He rolls the truck to a stop.
And he waits for his brain to catch up with him, to play that back. Because he needs to make sure he heard it right.
“What?” Heinz asks the window, voice muffled into his palm. “We’re almost there.” He turns to meet Perry’s look. “It’s left. You turn left here.”
A silence hangs between them. “What’d I say?”
And Perry stares on, because Heinz sure made it sound like Peter the Panda has a home. And he’s been inside it.
A few seconds more have Heinz curling in on himself in discomfort, laughing. “Okay yeah, I brought him up. My mistake. Don’t be jealous, Perry. I haven’t seen him since last summer, you know that.
“Well okay, I guess I have seen him — we both have, remember that team mission in Switzerland, where the guy had the teleportation ray? And Francis was begging us to smuggle him Mont d’Or?
“But he certainly hasn’t thwarted me since I’ve gone back to my regular plotting. And I haven’t been back to his place or anything. I — I only brought that up because I’d rather visit yours, is my point.”
He’s grinning wobblingly at Perry, like it’s effort to keep it up. Perry sees the guilt clouds rolling in.
Heinz raises this specter so often, Perry’s place. This imaginary platypus apartment in his mind. Like he envisions him living in a picture book of animals going about their daily lives in miniature. It’s easy to ignore him, when he goes on this tear.
But now something makes sick sense. Maybe Heinz wasn’t so delusional, if this was what he’d seen of Peter’s life. Perry keeps probing his eyes, despite himself, craving an elaboration that he doesn’t want to hear.
“You’ve got an understated classiness that he lacks, is all. His thing — I don’t wanna call it tryhard, or tacky, I know I have no room to talk, with my decor. Ha. But, you know Peter,” Heinz says. “He has that slick sort of ‘putting on the moves’ quality. All that fluffy carpet and leather. I could tell I wasn’t the first nemesis he’d notched into his bed.”
Bed.
“Uh, he seemed practiced. Seasoned. Honestly it’s no wonder that Mystery guy got so cracked.
“I kind of assumed you’d visited,” he says, while Perry turns his head in a no. “Since I know you two . . . hit it off, around the time I stopped seeing him. Oh. No? Good. Or, I mean: Okay.”
Heinz mouths nothing, appears to be hit by the realization he’s talked too much. He turns his face back to the dash, now chewing his lip without restraint, lipgloss shearing away under long incisor pulls.
Hitting it off was a generous description for that time Perry had agreed to meet and smooth things over in Seattle, agent to agent. To tie the fiasco off with no ill will. Peter had left him his number on a Woodland Park Zoo business card, some zookeeper named Susanna on the front, his loopy penmanship on the back.
The audacity, Perry thought then, of sharing his cover so casually, even with an associate.
He hadn’t thought to consider there might be more life buried underneath, a condo, an address. A place he could invite Heinz to. Perry didn’t think that was an option.
“Look, Perry, I — I’m so sorry I brought up Peter. Honest to god. Words just slip out of me, he’s not on my mind.” He coughs a laugh. “You’re on my mind, like all the time. Seriously.”
Perry knows. He stares at his paw on the clutch.
“Maybe you don’t wanna hear that either. I get it. I’m a lot to deal with. And I’m not even sure if you want to deal with me, a lot of the time.
“But. It’s just you for me, at this point. You know? Like I’d hate for you to think,” he says, and fails. He sounds scared, like Perry’s about to dump him. Like he did something wrong.
He didn’t. Not in the last two hours. Perry’s thoughts pulse loud in his temple. He can’t place his own emotion. Anger? Grief?
He might be a little in shock, processing that Peter the Panda has a private home life, detached from any cover family or zoo enclosure. That prospect never came up at the agency.
But then, Peter was older — seasoned, as Heinz says. When they’d had that diplomatic meeting in Seattle Perry saw the sag in his face, the white fur worn and discolored like an old toy, felt the creases on his paw pads when they’d shook hands. Peter had spent long years navigating the Seattle division’s bureaucracy, he had who knows how many long term nemeses before his current jealous brat of a foe.
He didn’t have a family, Perry realizes. A human one. He didn’t have kids who loved him.
Perry could afford it, a private home. Perry has money enough to buy a seafront villa or Manhattan penthouse, to buy the batcave if he wanted. But that’s never happening, his kids are worth more than that. Well. He’d buy Phineas the batcave, if he asked.
His private world is too precious to lose. Heinz is desperate to be let inside, when he’s welcomed Perry into so much of his. And Perry can’t. Heinz doesn’t know OWCA has him in a worse trap than he could ever build.
And it turns out Peter’s had what Perry couldn’t hope for, all this time. The freedom to share his world, to play act a real person. To link his life to Heinz, in the way Heinz deserves, with all he gives and gives. In the way Perry never can.
It’s an anger Perry’s already felt for years, the backdrop of his life, ripped fresh open.
When he looks up Heinz looks devastated in the passenger seat, checkered in streetlight and shadow, still unfairly pretty in his curled hair and soft eye makeup, a liquor flush not yet expunged by his sobering panic.
Perry doesn't know what to say. There's nothing he can.
He revs out of the alley and turns, pulls them into the spot right in front of the lobby, empty as promised. Heinz tugs the fallen cowl back up his shoulders — he’s shivering, Perry realizes. He never put the heat on. They didn’t feel the cold before.
Heinz stares through the glass. “Elevator looks open,” he says. “I guess it’s fixed.”
It’s a silent ride up to the 40th floor, each of them carrying ice in their arms, Heinz with the snack bag looped around one wrist and his shoestraps round the other. Perry leads them out and Heinz follows in his stockinged feet, heavily favoring one leg, bodyweight all shifted.
Inside they take their stuff to the kitchen island, which is lit by one night-activated bulb in the dark. Perry hands up the spare ice bag so Heinz can stow it in the freezer.
“So uh,” he says, shutting the door. “You can probably head home for the night. Thanks again for the ice, and everything. Driving me home. You’re great. I had fun.” He rubs an elbow.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry I put us in a funk. Just come back tomorrow, when I can censor myself.” A wince. “Or don’t. I dunno. I’m sure OWCA’s got other fish you can fry for them this week.”
“I’d better uh,” he says, scratching his bare arms under the shawl. Perry wonders if it itches, all that felt. “Go wash up. I feel kind of stupid in this.”
Heinz slouches off down the hall, still limping. Perry watches him turn into shadow, before the bathroom light clicks on. He’s left alone with the hum of the fridge and the dark apartment.
On autopilot he pulls out his phone, squints at its screenlight. He opens it to Peter’s messaging history. It’s blank, the encrypted app they use auto-deletes. The text bubbles in his memory are loaded with mission coordination, as recent as a month ago, agency shorthand and drop points and military datetimes.
He imagines the things he wants to ask. When did you take him to your house? How many times? Did you touch him?
Perry’s thumb hangs in the air.
Of course he touched him. Perry remembers the slapmarks on Heinz’s face. Remembers claw scrapes thicker than his own, faint pink on Heinz’s skin late last summer. Remembers scarring them over till Heinz was panting and winded and utterly content, drooping his head to the ground like a well petted kitten.
But there are other thoughts, in Perry’s miserable head. He thinks of Heinz’s glossy mouth in the dark, his bitten lip. He thinks of the ways he can’t touch him.
He repockets the phone, tosses his jacket on a kitchen chair.
The bathroom door’s open, a uranium glow spilling out in the dark, from light bouncing off the sickly tile. Perry walks there dumb as a moth, leans against the doorframe.
Heinz is slumped on the toilet, crushing tissue all over his face. He’s pulling peachy paint off in swathes, hard enough to redden the bare skin, certainly enough to hurt, pre-burst vessels in his cheek breaking open again. Perry watches, unseen.
It sucks when he hurts himself. There’s no fun in that.
“Hey,” says Heinz, noticing him. “You leaving? Here for the formal goodbye? That’s nice. Don’t typically get one from you.”
He throws a wadded tissue at the can, misses. Then rakes fingertips up his scalp. The wig is removed, by its scruff, and tossed in the sink.
Heinz looks naked then, sunk back against the ceramic, deflating with a sigh. His dark hair is crushed flat, a few strands curling up around his ears. Perry wants him to fluff it.
“I don’t have a scheme,” he says as Perry walks forward, “for tomorrow. Don’t bother. But I plot best when I’m left alone, to brood and simmer on the world’s wrongs. Just gotta figure out who or what deserves my hate, apart from me. So check in with me later this week. I will stun you.”
He jazzes a hand, lifeless. His tone does not promise any imminent burst of creativity.
These pleas for Perry to leave always make a convincing case for him to stay. Perry could leave the way he does every night, consign him and Heinz to the separate worlds that OWCA forbids mix.
Or, Perry thinks, stepping closer. He could stay here in Heinz’s world a while and linger. Feel things out, here where the boundaries can blur.
Perry reaches out a paw to Heinz’s uninjured leg, at the bend. There’s a knobby hollow by the kneebone, made for his thumb. He rubs the smooth-rough polyester weave. Save for one run up the seam, this leg of the hose is intact — the other leg is shredded open, unsalvageable. This stuff’s done for. Perry snags his claw in the material, and leans in, pushes his face to the knee’s soft inside.
The nylon is a rasping mesh on his bill, unpleasant, but electric heat from Heinz’s thigh pools up through it, blips light through Perry’s head. The first touch is sharpest, when the sensory organ that is his bill has been neglected for hours.
His claw shears greedily up the leg so he can free a swath of bare skin, press his bill flush to flesh and let an ebb pulse through him. It’s sun flashing through a window in autumn.
Heinz says his name from somewhere above. It filters into his mind slow as syrup. With reluctance Perry tilts his head, replacing sensitive bill skin against Heinz’s thigh with the fur of his cheek.
“Perry? What are you.”
Heinz is watching him, with curiosity or just plain confusion, waiting for his move. Okay. Perry knows what he’s doing.
Perry steps between his legs, encouraging them to open. They do, obediently, as Heinz hitches a breath. Perry runs his left palm up the side of Heinz’s thigh, and his right palm up the other, as he slides his body closer in to him, skimming his hands up the fabric like smooth water.
Heinz’s upridden dress bunches between his legs. The cloth is diaphanous, shadowed pools of bruised maroon and raised folds shimmering pink, kiwi green swirling in from the vintage sconce above. Perry’s arms drag it higher as he goes. Above where his legs hinge Heinz’s hips cut two juts in the hot, precipitous climb of his torso. Perry dips his hands around them, grips, feels their shape through the nylon as he moves upward.
When he reaches bare skin Heinz’s stomach muscles jump under his fingers. But he doesn’t say a word, arms locked out of the way at his sides.
Perry curls his little knuckles around the elastic hem of the tights. He’s hugged intimately close between Heinz’s legs now, heart pounding, not showing it, even as bodyheat soaks into him from all sides, a contrast to the chilly tile under his feet.
Looking up, Heinz’s face is flushed dark in the room’s ice green glow. What’s blush and what’s bruise, hard to say.
Moving with slow method, Perry bunches the material under his hands and guides the tights down Heinz’s hips. He pauses, so Heinz can lift up, so he can travel further down, and the motion makes all too obvious the shape of his half-filled cock amid the peaks and valleys of the dress. Moreso when he inches the tights down the thighs, freeing what’s there, and there’s a thin gloss of sweat where Perry’s fingerpads meet skin. Not a whole lot of fat on Heinz these days. But enough to smudge under the press of Perry’s dragging knuckles.
Lower, the one leg is ripped, arced gashes in the cloth where the asphalt sanded him open. Perry rolls the nylon past the knee, gingerly. Fibers stretch across the congealing cuts and Heinz whimpers a quiet, high note, as Perry undresses him.
He works quicker to free the heel. Heinz’s ankle is swollen, not terribly so — that 10 or so minutes on ice in the car may have done him good. But Perry sees purpling blood under the skin of the heel. It’s violently dark, like an orchid blossom under pale skin. With the lightest touch he holds the end of his foot in paw, to examine it.
Heinz shakes out an exhalation. Perry looks up: Does it hurt?
He looks rumpled, folded open with his back to the cistern. His chest churns with quickened breaths, dramatic in the pink dress, all his shoulders and long neck exposed, sweat beading down.
“It’s fine,” he says. “A little tender. Be nice.”
Be nice. Perry’s being very nice.
He could be a little nicer, he thinks, eyes on the fold of the dress where Heinz is poking up. He could plunge his hands under, he could fit everything he can in his bill and suck hard enough to black out Heinz’s vision.
It’s a world of possibilities.
Perry grabs the other unpeeled leg of the hose at the toes and whips it off. This gets a pretty good “eep!” out of him. And he walks away.
Perry pulls the wooden stairs out from under the sink, opens the mirror cabinet. He extracts first-aid bric-a-brac, puts it on the counter, then runs the water over his paw till it’s hot enough to wet a handtowel.
He returns to Heinz, who laughs like he just got a punchline.
This fades into a hissing wince, when Perry pulls the wet towel over his damaged skin. There’s a long shallow scrape going up, with dried blood that Perry swabs off, and a worse gash on the knee that he approaches carefully, picking out gravel with a wet corner of the cloth. He pats the skin dry.
Perry hasn’t dealt with human injury up close like this. When one of the kids in their yard gets cut open they’re quickly crowded by a huddle of friends and parents, herded indoors. Perry knows to stay back in most cases, keep his dirty animal paws away, till they get bandaged and cleaned.
Fur cushions Perry from the worst of friction, when he falls hard against asphalt. But injuries to the bare skin of his tail, his bill, his soles, he treats in private, in his subterranean den.
The principles of skin are the same, aren’t they, human and monotreme. Heinz has nothing bad enough to stitch tonight, nothing bad enough to scar. But Perry applies the same antibacterial gel, smoothing it with a folded square of toilet tissue, down the length of the scrape. At the cut’s worst point he opens up a band-aid, one built for flexure, four leaf clover shape with a cute kitty cat in the middle, and sticks it to Heinz’s knee.
He finishes with a declarative noise in his throat, looks up at Heinz.
“Thank you, Perry the Platypus,” he says. “For patching me up.” Perry leans his head against the good knee. Heinz reaches out, at last, and rests his hand on Perry’s head. Perry lets his cheek be pushed into Heinz’s inner thigh, content, eyes closing.
“Now get outta here,” he says, removing his hand with a grandmotherly pat on the cheek. “I really, really have to piss. Sorry, Perry, I’m serious. My bladder’s gonna explode.”
Perry lingers outside the door, hears him rasp an exhausted sigh through his hands as he starts to pee. This should probably gross him out, Perry thinks vaguely.
This has all started to feel less than pragmatic. Perry suspects he’s mostly hanging around for himself, at this point in the night. But it’s hard to draw a line between Heinz’s desires and his own. There’s not much line left between them, just some queue cord placed there by other people, asinine protocols they both chose to follow. Perry and Heinz have done so much to muddle the stanchions they can’t track who’s on which side anymore.
It’s the thing they are, Perry thinks, that he’s sticking around for. It got a little wounded tonight. He wants it fixed.
When Heinz emerges Perry has set things up in the living room, for a thing to do, snack bags and water and a healthier bowl of strawberries from the fridge.
“Oh, nice!” says Heinz, as he skips over. In a dumb doglike frenzy he forgets the injured leg and yelps, trips, folds himself over the back of the couch for support. “Aughh, right. The thing.”
Perry snorts. He grabs the bowl and bounds up the couch, offers it up. Heinz picks out a strawberry.
“Good. I forgot I had these,” he says thoughtfully, chewing. “Which is weird because I must’ve bought them yesterday. There goes my functioning brain.” Heinz has his arms folded on the couch back, hunched, his shoulderblades cutting sharp angles out the low-slung back of the dress.
Perry curls his index finger at Heinz, to make him lower his head. “What?” Heinz’s eyes widen with quick-onset panic. But he does as he’s told.
Perry puts his hands in Heinz’s hair, messing it up bad. He fluffs the scent of day-worn sweat and floral soap in the air, breathes it in, not on purpose. It’s nice.
He krrrs when done, pushing Heinz away by the chin.
Heinz has nothing to say to that, staring at Perry. Perry’s glad he cleaned off the makeup so he can observe the natural flush creep up his cheeks. The shadows under his eyes, too, he missed — so much unnaturally bright concealer to make Heinz look younger than he ever has, if the 80s-era polaroids are to be believed.
His hair is full of life now, as it should be, although it’s messy and lopsided. The way it looks after fights. The wig is fine, but this is better.
“. . . Hm,” he says finally, a self conscious hand coming up to touch his neck.
“I’m not sure if I’m ready,” he says. “To set up out here by the TV. Kinda running on fumes. I don’t think I can stay up much longer.
“And I need something warmer.” He straightens up, holding his bare arms. “It’s these cold nights, you know? I start to go insane if I’m not bundled in all comfy-cozy. I’ll change.”
“And um,” he says, turned to the bedroom. “You could.” He bats his eyes at Perry, at the division of timid and coquette. “If you wanted to stay. It’s dangerous flying around at night, Perry the Platypus.”
“Actually it’s always dangerous,” he continues as Perry follows him. “Those fiery jets and your soft little feet. I’m not sure I like you using that jetpack. I mentioned that new rig I made for Norm. It’s a lot safer, I think, future-facing. I could hook you up with a way better flyer design, just saying.” He pauses at the door. “Hmm. Christmas before you know it, Perry.”
Perry looks up at him, thinking of all the pockmarks he’s burned into Heinz’s deck. Somehow Heinz has never gotten mad about those. Heinz glances back at him, and heads in.
Perry’s visits to Heinz’s bedroom have always been brief and purposeful. There are still rooms in this labyrinthine penthouse he hasn’t visited — Vanessa’s room he’s glimpsed in passing, and it’s not clear where Norm stows away. He seems to hollow out a new corner for himself with each reconstruction, like a burrowing animal who likes options.
But he knows Heinz’s room. Sleepy lavender shades, none of the 60s acid green that punctuates the space outside. It’s kept neat and tidy in a way you might not expect from Heinz, if you didn’t know him closely or only saw him at his worst, although there are a few stray shirts and sweaters he kicks off the carpet and into the closet, as he walks in.
“Drinking screws up my circadian rhythm,” he says, rubbing his temple. “Knowing me I’ll be wide awake in a few hours, get trapped watching 3 AM television. That’s when I get the station with the old Italian horror movies, it’s good. You can join me if you’re up.”
He folds his arms overhead, aiming at the back of his dress. Then he sits on the bed with a grunt, tries a low-angle attack on the zipper this time. “Perry.” He flops his arms like a doll. “Can you help?”
Perry hops up. These zippers were made for platypus hands, not human, he thinks, as he notches his index claw in the pull hole to drag it down. His other paw rises unbidden to feel down Heinz’s spine, as it’s bared. The vertebrae knobble out with the way he’s curved forward, like he’s a rock climbing wall, how can Perry not touch? It’s hard to restrain himself, he’s realizing, now that he’s crossed that boundary tonight. It’s nice feeling Heinz under his open palms, his skin heat, the way a stray scar jags here across his shoulder — and another, close to his tailbone, low. Marks of vulnerability, that Perry doesn’t notice, when he’s usually busy adding new ones.
His thumb traces the low scar and a shiver runs up Heinz’s back. Is that good or bad, Perry can’t tell. Heinz rises with a shaky huff, shucks off the last of the dress and leaves it puddled on the ground.
He’s got on a lacy pair of hipsters, streamlined for the dress. Not his usual fare. Perry should be a little concerned, maybe, that he knows Heinz’s usual fare. And the increasing frequency with which it has Perry’s face on it.
Heinz toes open the bottom drawer of a wardrobe and digs out cotton duds, in grey and darker greys. When he stands back up he pauses, with his thumbs in the band of the panties.
“You gotta stop looking at me, Perry. I can’t do this seductively.”
Perry obliges with a hard look at the window, fighting the smile.
It’s uncurtained, he realizes — the city stretches out in front of the indigo sky like shadow cutouts, pocked with twinkling lights, the moon Heinz so hates hearing songs about curved big and yellow. He watches red and white carlights trace the same city streets he drove down with him earlier. It’s a captivating view even at night, really, not blocked by any rival skyscrapers. Which is good. What would the neighbors think, seeing a man go to bed with a platypus.
That they’re both going to get a good night’s sleep, Perry posits, nodding to himself.
Perry is bounced as Heinz sits behind him on the bed. He turns.
“So. You staying?”
Perry nods.
“Cool.” Heinz’s mouth hitches in an odd smile. “I’ve thought about you sleeping over for forever. Thought it would be fun. And it probably would be, in a better context.”
He’s got his legs folded to one side, mermaid style — makes him look demure, in his soft cotton pants. Really just from the injury, Perry knows. A healed-up Heinz might be jumping on the bed with Perry’s hands in his unwelcome grip, celebrating. But now he’s subdued, on low volume.
“You’re sleepy, right?”
Perry shrugs a shoulder. He sleeps easy. Takes quick naps wherever he can get them. Agency work does a lot to drain a guy.
“Well tuck in!”
Heinz flounces back on the bed, pulls the comforter over him.
“Though I’m not opposed to reading you a bedtime story. Helps me sleep, too. I’ve been rereading — ” He snatches up the book on his nightstand, squints. “Kafka, Amerika. Well that’s no good. If you feel like getting up there’s some Eva Ibbotson on the bookshelf over there, that’s much more pleasant reading.”
Perry leans on an arm, not sure he wants to bring anyone else into bed with them right now. He looks Heinz over: he’s comfortably ruffled, hazy-edged in the low light of the bedside lamp.
“Oh come on Perry,” Heinz says with a roll of his eyes, and he folds back the other corner of the blanket. “You can’t just stare at me from the foot of the bed all night.”
Perry treads a step, uncertain, unaccustomed to being let under bedding. His fur gets places. Certain people yell.
These thoughts leave when Heinz hauls him forward, hands under his shoulders. “I don’t wanna have to treat you like a teddy bear, but if you’re not gonna move, well.”
He tucks Perry against the pillow, pats his head. Perry sends him a glare that he hopes is bonechilling, and gets a grin for his effort. That’s all it takes to flip Perry's status from relaxed to fiercely irritated. He’s such a pro at this.
With a tortured sigh Perry rolls forward into him, head bumping his chest. He rubs his face into the cotton shirt, in what he thinks is a very un-teddy bear fashion. This gets an “Oh, hey.”
Perry pushes his bill up to the skin of his neck and the motion tips Heinz into a giddy laugh, like he’s ticklish. He smells clean — Perry can tell he thoroughly soaped and washed here, after Perry did such a good job making him sweat. He feels forlorn.
But he could do it again, he considers, rubbing his fingers in a little circle on Heinz’s collarbone. Just a little close contact like this gets him speeding up, pulse pounding in his neck. Perry normally only feels it under his thumbs, choking him down into floors.
He’s got such a nice throat to hold in your paw, he thinks, bringing his up to touch the other side, to feel the arterial thrum under hand and bill at the same time.
“Perry,” Heinz gets out, tight like it’s a struggle. Funny, since Perry’s not even squeezing. “You’re so . . .”
And Perry moves his hand from throat back down to shoulder, to give him a breather.
“. . . touchy,” he finishes. “Is this going to be a new thing with you?” There’s a pause. “I mean. If it was,” and Perry didn’t know Heinz’s voice could get so small. “I wouldn’t complain.”
Perry wonders about this, resting his bill on his neck. No. Probably not. Well, it’s possible. The morning will have to decide.
Although if he tries to picture the morning, picture being wrapped up in this person, with sleep-softened limbs and claws dug in the front of his shirt, he can’t picture wanting to leave. It feels nice, this kind of touching. It’s something new. Something OWCA doesn’t pay him for. And isn’t that nicest of all, having himself an enjoyable time when he’s off the stupid job.
So without an answer, Perry resolves to keep falling backward into whatever this is.
Perry’s eyes slip closed as he allows Heinz’s skin to current into him. He’s so happy cooking in this little electric oven under Heinz’s chin that he’s slow to notice his fingers rise to hold him. They wrap unconfidently slow around Perry’s shoulders, his lower back. One of Heinz’s wrists settles at Perry’s left hip and his palm and fingers make the long trawl around to his right shoulderblade, so huge is his hand. Something wretchedly good judders up his spine.
Heinz digs fingers through the fur of Perry’s back. “It's amazing how soft you are, it’s hard to believe,” he says. “Especially since you’re so good at causing me pain.
“I can touch you too, right,” he checks, and Perry snorts into his neck. “What? What's funny?” Perry extracts himself to give a look.
A minute ago Heinz picked Perry up like a plushie. He spent the afternoon throwing him across the lab like a softball.
He makes a balled fist, mimes a slo-mo punch up Heinz’s chin. We touch all the time, you dolt.
“Oh not like fighting,” Heinz says. “That’s different and you know it.
“It’s just we don’t have protocol,” he grabs Perry’s fist in his hand. “For this sort of thing. Where it doesn’t hurt.” He opens Perry’s paw up, rolls his thumb across the fur-fuzzed back of his knuckles. “I can’t get up close like this. Can’t really study you.”
Perry lets him pull his arm in, for a better look, lets him swivel his wrist between his fingers. Perry’s palm is unfurred, same as the well-worn leather of his feet. Heinz’s thumb presses the inset of his paw and pushes upward, knuckle by knuckle, flexing the fingers out.
“Like this,” he says, feeling between his thumb and index pad the scant webbing that spans Perry’s digits. It’s much less than on his feet, ripped and scarred over from long years of violent maneuvers. “I never get to touch this. You’re so delicate here. Is it sensitive?”
Perry watches his face, the relaxed bend of his mouth, the untroubled brow, as Heinz studies Perry’s paw. There's none of the crisply hued paint he wore earlier. But the same tender feeling flowing out of him, when Perry’s in front of him, by his side at the bar, at his feet, in his hands. Perry’s so used to ignoring, deflecting, slapping back that tenderness. It runs him ragged. He’s learning he might prefer how this feels instead, letting it wash over him. Soaking in him like a sauna.
This feels nice too, Heinz rubbing his paw. But no: his webbed skin there’s mostly scarred, numb. Perry turns his paw inside Heinz’s hold, takes control. He travels to the stalk of his thumb, grips him there, and he pulls his hand up to his bill.
Heinz intuits the assignment, and draws a line with his thumb across Perry’s mouth, then up over the rim. Perry’s eyes sink closed as the touch floods heat into him.
There are several places on Perry’s body, he knows, that benefit from a good pet. This is something else, touch more intense than his own fingertips. Inviting Heinz to pet him here is either insanely dangerous or insanely greedy, Perry can’t decide, cluing him in to the secret hitch that will thoroughly unravel him.
As Heinz proceeds with slow swipes over the front of the bill he makes an “ah” of discovery. “Does this feel good to you?” He rolls his thumb in tight circles that set spiraling fireworks off behind Perry’s eyes. “Somehow you’re even softer here, I didn’t think that was possible. And I swear you’ve pecked me before, and it hurt. What are you doing with yourself, Perry the Platypus? Be kind to your little snout, okay?”
His fingertips join his thumb in kneading patterns of sensory splendor over Perry’s bill from all sides, top and bottom, middle and tip, and he can’t fight the pleased whine that squeezes through his chest. “And I’m saying that for you, not for me. Although it would be nice to not be pecked again.”
Perry squeaks a muffled chirp when Heinz travels further back, rubs his thumb over the bridge between Perry’s eyes, while his long fingers pull through the fur of his cheek. His paw slackens, drops off Heinz’s wrist to the sheets. That’s it. He’s giving up command.
Heinz hums thoughtfully, shifting himself over Perry for better access. “This is so cool. I’m so curious how it feels,” he says. “You’re welcome to touch my nose, if you want. Though I doubt it would have the same effect.”
Perry grumbles at the comment, nips his hand to make him stop talking.
If Perry was more lucid he might observe that this worked better than expected. Heinz hushes up, on a held breath. Perry tries not to complain when he pulls his hand away — then squints to watch Heinz repositioning overtop of him, careful of his hurt leg. He frames Perry between his elbows, one hand traveling up to hug his side, the other returning to his bill.
And it’s smooth satisfaction when Heinz’s thumb slides back to Perry’s lip, that has them both exhaling. Perry murmurs a noise of approval, pushing up to the pad of his human thumb, squishing into it. And Heinz pushes back with a barely voiced “wow,” presses against the upturned kiss of his lip, tests its pliability. Perry’s head melts back into the pillow.
The thumbtip presses into his mouth. Perry opens.
All he can be is docile, while Heinz’s thumb traces the wet heat of his upper bill, travels in to feel its smooth slopes. His other fingers clamp to the outer topside, keep Perry dizzy with sweetly curving pets. Perry’s never been pressed from the inside and outside like this. Heinz squeezes his upper bill, and a canopy of fairy lights pop above.
There’s no electrostimulus on the inside of Perry’s maw — just vivid sensation, Heinz discovering where the inset ridges of his lower bill become smooth round teeth. He travels over to find tongue, wet heat on his invading skin. Perry hears an “ah.” A sound of surprise, he realizes belatedly, not an instruction to open up. But Perry already did, just a bit.
His tongue is not much wider than Heinz’s own thumb, which almost spans it when he presses. Perry’s touch-drunken mind invites him to reflect on how very, very good it feels — if he can’t let Heinz into his private life — letting him into his mouth. Perry is mostly past noise by now, but he shivers out a delirious giggle, triumph like fire in his chest.
“Is that good,” Heinz reacts, reduced to a hoarse whisper, not getting it. His breath is hot on Perry’s face, the air sucked clear of oxygen between them. Perry might be regaining mental acuity, adjusted to the rhythm of this overstimulating touch, except for the head-fogging effect he gets breathing in Heinz’s exhalations.
Heinz replaces his thumb with two fingers pressing in, middle and index, rubbing the bed of his tongue. The fingerpads push up, down, with and against the grain. Perry recloses his bill and like magic Heinz is now pushing in and out, shallow fucks of Perry’s mouth.
A pleased heat crawls up his cheeks — it’s funny trapping him like this. Perry curls his tongue between Heinz’s fingers and, very gently, sucks.
“Oh,” a moan. Heinz is gasping for air, sounds completely racked. “Oh — I can’t. I really can’t, Perry. Ow!”
Perry’s eyes blink open and he finds Heinz sitting up and away from him, wincing — the movement must have hit his leg wrong. He moans a second time, from a different kind of pain.
“Yeah. Perry, I . . . need to heal this up, I need to sleep. This isn’t fair to you.”
Perry sits up on his palms, tilts his head in question. Not clear what’s unfair, apart from Heinz pulling away.
“I mean. Because I’m . . . keeping you up, too. We should both turn in.”
He meets Perry’s tilted head with one of his own. Up on his curled fists he looks pathetic, petlike, asking for pardon. His pupils are black and huge, from more than just the dim light. Perry can read him like a book.
Perry rumbles out of his own stupor, then moves closer to Heinz with an indulging nod. Yeah, sure. He should lie down. Better for his leg.
Heinz sighs in gratitude when Perry pushes him back with a flat hand, to his side of the bed. He flops his head onto the pillow, nestles in.
“Thank you,” he says, while Perry leaves the reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s just . . . I had to stop, I think. It was getting too much.” He laughs, looks away from Perry at the ceiling.
“Even though stopping is hard. I could tell that was soothing, to you. To get massaged there. I’ll, I’ll remember that for your birthday. Or the next time I lose points with you, and need to earn them back.
“I liked it too,” he says quieter, embarrassed, still avoiding Perry. He shifts his knees under the blanket.
Perry gazes at the side of his face. It’s incredible how unwilling he is to read less than wholesome intent into Perry’s actions. He should really know better, knowing Perry. Heinz can read Perry like a book, too — but he has a few blindspots.
Perry got the poor guy rock hard. Very much on purpose. Perry rubs his paw on Heinz’s collar, full of sympathy. Then he falls his head forward, landing next to Heinz on the pillow. Heinz turns to look at him, wearing a shy smile. Perry gives one back.
“I’m glad we got to get closer tonight,” he says, as Perry fits his body to his shoulder. A tangible shiver rolls up Heinz’s neck — Perry watches him squeeze his eyes shut, with a dramatic bob of his throat.
“That’s how it feels to me, anyway. I know it’s . . . hard to get close to you. It feels impossible a lot, like we just go in loops. You’re a private person, which is fine. I . . . I don’t want to be all petulant about it, call you closed-off. Like I’ve probably done 50 times.” Heinz meets Perry’s eyes.
“You can have stuff away from me. Just know I’ll be ready and waiting. Whenever you wanna share it.”
Perry moves his paw to Heinz’s chest. Heinz places his warm hand overtop.
“I’m a patient man, Perry the Platypus.” He squeezes the tangle of their fingers, gives Perry a grin that might be predatory if it wasn’t so fond. “And I’ll get all of you eventually. You’ll see.”
Perry presses a kiss to his unbruised cheek.
He pulls back to look at Heinz, who’s smiling wide in reaction with his head tucked down, his cheeks blushing black in the indigo murk, heart knocking in his chest under Perry’s palm. He’s wild and alive and happy.
And not ready to sleep, Perry considers, as he sits up.
Perry shuffles backward on his knees, inches the blanket down Heinz’s chest. He watches Perry, still aglow. “Hey,” he says, opening an arm to usher him in for another cuddle.
Not the plan. Perry moves further down the bed, flaps the blanket over Heinz’s knees. The air seems to change all at once as Heinz widens his eyes and shoves himself up on an elbow.
“No!” he says, “Perry, no — no, don’t.”
He seizes Perry’s wrist. Perry’s fingers graze his hip.
Heinz’s panicked eyes are fixed on his, as though begging them to stay there. “You don’t want to — I’m not.” He gapes, chest heaving. The flush creeps up more of his face with each second. Perry admires it.
“You really don’t want to — you shouldn’t touch me, Perry, that’s crazy. And I’m sorry for grabbing you like that.” But his hand tightens, with the apology.
Perry gives him a pitying look, then turns his eyes on the shape in his pants. There’s an obvious bulk pushing into the flannel, angling at his hip. He’s not fully tenting up the fabric — but at the barest push of Perry’s knee against his hip he can see it chub up with interest.
There’s no way he can fall asleep easy in this state. Perry’s not so sure he can either, knowing Heinz is suffering just a few inches shy of his tail. It’s like if he had let his ankle go un-iced: irresponsible, on both their parts.
But alright, if Heinz wants Perry to keep his paws off. Of course. That’s his call.
Perry lifts his free hand and holds where Heinz is grabbing him. He coaxes the big fingers loose until Heinz’s hand hangs open under his, tensed and clammy. Heinz looks distraught as he allows Perry’s paw to go free. Perry traces his hand down his palm, soothing, and he appears to shudder in relief. At the bottom of the palm Perry grips his wrist, a reversal from before. He’s always appreciated how thin and bony Heinz’s wrists are, that he can cuff them in his little fingers.
So he’ll let Heinz take care of it himself, he thinks, catching his gaze again, gentle reassurance in his eyes. He shoves Heinz’s hand down on his erection.
“Ah — !”
Heinz is cut off when Perry redoubles with both paws to take firmer control over his palm, folding Heinz’s fingers around the shape of his dick through his pants.
“What the fuck are you doing!” he squeaks a full octave higher than normal. “Perry!” He fights to pull his hand away — Perry keeps a stubborn hold, leaning all his bodyweight into his shoulders.
Which is not much weight to speak of. Perry knows this, every time he drags and slams Heinz around in their duels, that Heinz can seize him in his hands at any time, remove him. That he chooses not to is what keeps their fights interesting. Perry looks him hard in the eyes, thinking this as Heinz’s hand strains under his but does not, in actuality, throw Perry off.
With Heinz frozen in his stare, Perry pulls his heavy hand up and down, grips the wrist like a handle while his other paw encourages the fingers to wrap around the growing erection. He pushes in harder on the up, moving toward the head, and Heinz’s fingers twitch under his hold. “Ohh no, this is messed up, Perry,” he groans. “You cannot . . . “
He winces, and claws his other hand into his hair, angling back with a nice view of his white, gulping neck. “You really shouldn’t,” the hand hides his eyes as he falls back on the pillow, “be okay with me doing this.”
His hand starts to move under Perry’s guiding ministrations. A very self-satisfied smile cracks up his bill, that Heinz sadly can’t see, since he’s hiding his red-hot face behind his hand. “Christ,” he hisses, wedging his thumb around the side of his shaft while he pulls more insistently up and down the shape of his cock.
Perry relaxes his paws, leaves one on the back of Heinz’s hand as it travels up and down the jutting shape, bunching and releasing the fabric like he’s practiced the method. Perry might’ve known. He’s seen his browsing history.
“Mm . . . do you want me to do this, Perry,” he asks on a shuddering exhalation. “Are you into this, or do you just want me to embarrass myself.”
Perry can’t see a clear distinction. He doesn’t want Heinz to suffer from shame though, not really. Although a suffering Heinz can make a compelling show, Perry’s learned, even moreso with this bold new form of torture.
Perry leans forward onto Heinz’s hip, rests his folded elbows on his stomach. Heinz keeps working himself below — above he fights to keep his mouth closed, lower lip bit in his teeth. He’s just as pretty in the dark, minus any lipgloss.
With his eyes stuck on Heinz’s face Perry pushes his shirt up, so he has access to all that skin, and sinks onto his bare torso. He closes his eyes, lets the hot buzz of his skin ebb into him. Heinz could stop now, if he wanted. Perry won’t force the issue. But either Heinz is obedient to a fault or, like Perry, he’s agreed tonight’s the night for letting themselves feel good, after a day of dumb pain.
“I actually . . . don’t know what to do.” Heinz cracks an eye open at Perry, from under his arm. Perry’s lying with his bill on his upper belly. “Do I just. Keep doing this until?”
“ . . . You can touch me,” he ekes out, covering his face again. Reversing his position on the topic for a second time.
He assumes he means his cock. Perry was all set to put his paws on it, a minute ago. Before Heinz so brusquely told him off. He thinks, trailing a hand up Heinz’s stomach, that Heinz may have lost that privilege for the night.
And if there’s any skittishness buried in this decision of Perry’s, well. He’ll face that another night.
A line of dark hair leads out of Heinz’s waistband. Perry pets his fingertips through it, dips into his navel. Heinz coughs a laugh above — he really must be ticklish, Perry thinks. He amends by gnarling his fingers and tracing further up with claws bared, raking the skin up Heinz’s unmuscled stomach. Less tickly. Heinz hisses in pain — Perry can see his arm muscles flex as he grinds hard into his palm.
The hair spreads out thicker on his chest — not enough to qualify as furry, and Perry would know. But soft under the drag of his fingers. The shirt pushes higher as he crawls forward and nuzzles into Heinz’s chest, carried on the dramatic rises and falls of his breathing. His scent is stronger here, trapped in his body hair.
“Oh Perry,” Heinz sighs, hugging his free hand around Perry’s back. “You really shouldn’t do this to me. You know?” He’s gasping out the words.
“You feel so good. Your little hands, your claws. Rubbing your soft fur right — right on me, oh my god.”
He’s petting Perry’s shoulders with a merciless press now, like he’s confusing the motion with his other hand. Perry grins into his chest.
Perry traces his paw from where the hair is thickest further out to the softness of his pec. The flushed bud of his nipple perks out. Another novelty: Perry’s still a little hazy on the finer points of the human nipple. But he’ll take the opportunity to learn.
Perry smooths his flat paw overtop, feels it press back stiff into his palm. So hard, human skin can be this hard? Slow-delay heat creeps up his bill, as he remembers Heinz’s fattened cock below. Right, it's responsive, to what Perry's doing. Maybe he can get it harder. He rubs the bed of his thumb across the nipple bud, then tries a pinching roll.
Heinz gasps, his chest rolling up with the motion. Okay, thinks Perry. That’s useful.
Perry pushes himself up as Heinz arcs underneath him, newly interested. Can’t resist smooshing the soft lip of his bill to Heinz’s nipple while he works the other under his fingers. Such a cute, miniature shape, pressed against his mouth — this must be a fragment of the tender perversity Heinz feels about Perry’s own body, every part of it, every day. Perry’s bill heats more, and he sucks the bud into his mouth.
He lathes the bud with as hard a press he can manage, rolls it under his tongue, pulls back to try to suck it off the pec. Heinz’s tortured swears are a melody above him. Perry likes the nipple, he decides, dazed, it’s a great evolutionary feature.
It’s apparent from the motion of Heinz’s arm when he dives below his waistband, finally wraps his hand around his bare cock. The moan vibrates his chest, under Perry’s mouth. He pulls back with reluctance so he can watch Heinz’s face, continuing to tease a nipple with rough rubs of his thumb. He’s thrown back in agony or bliss, hand fallen off Perry’s shoulders now clutching valleys out of the sheet. Dark slicks of hair are salted wet to his brow. He’s panting helpless moans, swears, Perry’s name.
Perry realizes he’s panting too, bouncing from the violent motion as he straddles Heinz’s stomach, cooking in the air, dizzy to breathe. Heinz’s hand bumps rhythmically into his hip — the back of his knuckles are dragging through his fur, as he fucks himself in his fist. Thin, frantic fingers, that’s all that stands between him and Heinz. Perry swears he can feel the radiating heat of his cockhead on his side. Maybe he’s hallucinating — it feels very possible, at this point.
Slowly he pushes off Heinz’s chest, dismounts, sliding to his side. Heinz has more room now to pull himself off with reckless strokes. Perry sits back on his haunches, reluctant to let himself look. But finally he does, with a surreptitious tip of his neck, and he eats up the scene with his eyes.
Heinz’s cock is long, so much more than when he’s soft — and Perry’s seen him soft, on ill-fated and ill-timed visits to his loft. His long fingers struggle to contain the swollen curve of its shape, his hips quake with suppressed motion, like he’s desperate to bow up on his heels, thrust upward. He physically can’t in his condition.
Perry watches, amazed that he doesn’t even have to put in work to enjoy this, gets to spectate the action. He can’t resist putting his paw on the wedge of Heinz’s hip, smoothing up and over, down the valley that leads between his legs. Sweat tacks under his palm. Perry can't attribute it all to Heinz.
He hits the cotton barrier. Perry hooks a finger in the waistband to drag it just an inch lower, nosy. Heinz’s balls are winched up tight at the base of his cock — external, Perry's mind still spins at the concept. Human anatomy is grotesque and fascinating. Slave to his impulses now, Perry pets fingers over the velvet-soft swell of skin. He feels the organ clench and roil under his touch, like it’s alive. Transfixed, he traces his claw gently up over the curve to where the hard-muscled shaft of Heinz’s cock starts. He spans half its circumference under splayed thumb and finger, to feel it pulsate. He swallows.
Heinz is losing it from above, chanting “Perry, Perry, Perry” and “You — " and “I — " like he can’t find two words to string together, though when his tongue threatens to sound out something with a “luh” Perry’s face gets hottest, something like fury blanks out his mind. And in that state he shoves his hand over Heinz’s knuckles, as they jerk up and down his cock. He’s surprised to find them wet, dribbled over with hot fluid, now leaking profusely from the tip of his dick. The skin pulses with heat. Perry longs to feel it on his bill.
Heinz cries his name again and Perry glances up to catch his face right as he tips over. His hips buck under Perry’s arm and a thick strap of cum shoots in the air, paints his stomach.
Several more shots pulse out of his cock as he finishes, back arching off the sheet. Perry feels each spasm of Heinz’s shaft like a gun kick under his palm. His stomach is a mess of white icing, at the end of it when his cock’s emptied, and Heinz rolls his fist up the tip to squeeze out a few last drops. He takes deep hitching gulps of air — his whole torso flexes with the effort, the sweat and jizz on his skin reflect pink glints in the low light.
Perry’s paw leaves his dick, as in a trance, and he traces fingertips through the cum that decorates Heinz’s stomach, drips into his navel. He lifts his hand, watches hot goo drizzle off the end of his claw.
“You,” Heinz says at last, catching his breath. “Are insane. Doing that to me.”
Perry thinks that’s a little unfair. Heinz did all the work.
He moves up to him on the pillow, drags fingertips through the nearest dribble of jizz, the first shot Heinz milked from his cock. He swirls his fingers, likes the way it mixes into his chesthair. This would be so pesky in his fur.
He carries his messy fingers to Heinz’s mouth, meets his eyes, instructing. He sucks them clean for him. Perry’s bill tilts in a smile, as he watches him swallow.
Heinz heaves a ragged sigh as Perry cuddles into his shoulder. He’s so sweaty now. Perry is too, fur damp — he must reek of human. Guess they’ll both need a shower. It can wait. Heinz pulls his shirt back down, making the mess tomorrow’s problem, and pulls the blanket back over his waist.
“This knocks me out, you know. I’ll be out like a light soon, I’m not even gonna be able to chew you out for this.”
Good, Perry thinks, mission accomplished.
“Which is not a sex thing, to clarify. I don’t even know what to say to you, Perry the Platypus.”
He angles his arm around Perry, pulls fingers through his fur. Perry’s eyes flutter shut at the touch, and he lets himself relax under it. He needs a little calming down himself. They sit together in the bedroom’s quiet.
". . . But thank you," he says finally. "That was really good. You're incredible, Perry."
Perry places a warning paw on Heinz's neck, so he can shut him up if he has to. If he decides to keep gushing. But his voice sounds weary — Perry feels a similar langour overtake him, under the weight of his hand.
“. . . You probably don’t want to hear this,” Heinz says, quieter. “But you were better. No contest.”
It takes Perry’s head a moment to catch his meaning. Oh. So this was better. Heinz touching himself, with Perry on his bed.
There’s a queasy twitch in his gut, at the reminder of their earlier conversation, but it’s crowded out by a hot swell of arrogance. Perry beat the competition without lifting a finger. Practically.
“You’re still gonna have to find someone else to thwart tomorrow,” Heinz says, fighting his way through a yawn. “Or no, I don’t like you doing that. Maybe Francis has some papers you can file. But I’m gonna need some time, before we can go out drinking again.” He pauses, petting Perry’s shoulders with slow strokes. “Or get back to our sinuous dance of mortal enmity.
“But I might be able enough to order in, if you like pizza and movies. Hit me up.”
Perry nods. That sounds really good actually, a week basking in the afterglow of whatever this new thing is. Then back to the status quo.
But the status quo doesn’t sound quite so stifling, now they’ve thoroughly smashed this wall between them.
“I like to sleep with this on,” Heinz says, voice thick with sleep, “at the dimmest setting, do you mind?”
He means the lamp. Perry chirrs into his neck.
“I get freaked out,” he says quieter, drifting. “Thanks for staying.”
And with that, he’s out.
Perry follows.