Fic: He Was Singing (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, PG-13)
Title: He Was Singing
Fandom: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Characters: Perry Van Shrike, Harry Lockhart
Table: “If You Were” Challenge
Prompt: 09) If I was in pain I know you'd sing me soothing songs
Words: 1473
Rating: PG-13, for brief coarse language, violence, and implied homosexuality. Also, SPOILERS!
Disclaimer: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and all Characters therein belong to Shane Black & co.
Summary: The wound had not killed him, but it had come damned close. The shattered rib and torn lung had healed long ago, but sometimes, it still felt like it was still killing him.
Perry felt his eye twitch in irritation. Harry kept frowning and casting concerned glances at him across the dinner table. Thankfully, the younger man had as of yet said nothing about the blow Perry had taken earlier when the target caught them photographing him, or the consequent wincing and low hisses. It figured the bastard would have nailed Perry right in his old wound. Harry said nothing of this.
Likewise, Perry said nothing of the concern written all over the ex-thief’s face. Instead, the two stubbornly kept eating their spaghetti and discussing the important facts of the case.
When his plate was empty, Harry pushed it back and paused a moment, his eyes locked on Perry. He opened his mouth to say something, but Perry stood abruptly. He blinked as his vision turned blurry for a split second, and when it cleared, Harry was watching him, and still with the concerned puppy eyes!
“I’ll clean up, Harry,” the detective said, picking up his roommate's plate and heading for the sink.
Harry’s chair grated against the floor as he stood as well. “But it’s my turn tonight, Per,” he protested. “You cooked, so it’s my turn to wash up.”
“I’ve got it, Harry,” Perry said. “Go pick a movie or something, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Harry didn’t move. Perry ignored him and started scrubbing tomato sauce off the plates and putting them in the dishwasher. He didn’t look up, but he knew the younger man was watching him, waiting for another wince or twinge of discomfort. He steeled himself, determined not to let anything show. He was irritated with himself; it had healed months ago. Why was it still hurting at all?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The man swung around, gun in hand, and Perry didn’t think, just dove in front of the younger man, bringing his own pistol up. “Harry, no!” Two shots rang out, and his chest lit on fire. Perry dropped to the ground. Harry collapsed next to him.
He lay there gasping, eyes roving as he tried to move, to get up, to fight. He let out a groan. He couldn’t breath, couldn’t see. Every nerve was on fire. He could feel blood soaking his clothes, feel his lung collapsing, feel the bullet moving with every twitch of his body, but he couldn’t get up.
He hadn’t seen the thug with the gun fall, and now he could hear footsteps approaching. He had to get up! He was in danger… and Harmony was in danger… Harry was in danger!
Harry was on his knees, crawling over to Perry. “Come on, we gotta go!” he gasped. “Perry!”
The feet came closer, and the thug appeared, ugly sneer on his ugly face, revolver in hand. Dexter was strolling along next to him, smirking over the barrel of his own gun. They circled the downed men, guns directed at Perry’s head, but he couldn’t move. Just watch as they stopped.
“Perry. Nice to have known you,” Dexter said, smiling pleasantly. He looked over at the gasping form kneeling over the detective and nodded. “Ah, yes, Harry. From New York.”
He turned his gun - Perry was frozen, he couldn’t move, why couldn’t he move? - and fired, and Harry collapsed next to him, eyes unseeing. Perry couldn’t move. He felt like screaming, like pulling Harry’s limp form into his arms, like strangling Dexter with his bare hands…except he still. couldn’t. MOVE.
Dexter was still smiling, that cold, Hollywood smile, his gun pointed at Perry’s head now. “Ouch,” he said. He pulled the trigger.
It was black in front of his eyes when they finally tore themselves open. Perry arched his back as he woke with a strangled gasp, before collapsing back on the bed. A loud groan made his throat ache and his chest rattle. He put a hand to his ribs, even the light pressure from the weight of the limb causing tears to spring to his eyes. Teeth grinding, he sat up gingerly on the bed and tested himself. Drawing in the slightest, gentlest breath made him keel over on the bed, coughing and wheezing, wet lines of salt tracing down his face.
He could feel the attack settling in. His lungs were spasming, each twitch of pain building upon itself. He couldn’t breath, couldn’t see…every nerve was on fire…
Perry didn’t hear his door open, or hear his roommate’s feet padding across the hardwood floor. He was too focused on getting his lungs to take in air to feel the weight settling next to him on the bed, or the wiry arms taking him by the shoulders and pulling him back against a deceptively strong chest.
The first thing alerting him to Harry having entered the room at all was a warm right hand making its presence known on his brow and guiding his head back on the younger man’s shoulder. His cheek pressed up just under Harry’s jaw, and he could feel the ex-thief’s voice reverberating through his throat. It took Perry a moment before the noise in his ears faded enough to let in the soft, calm voice, and even then it still sounded distorted and far away.
“Easy, Per, you’re alright,” Harry murmured, and Perry wanted to smack him and roll his eyes, because clearly he was not alright. Unfortunately, he was too busy wheezing for breath and trying to ignore the stabbing sensation in his right side, again, again, again, tearing through every inhale and exhale.
“Relax, Perry… remember your breathing exercises? C’mon, you can do it, just breath with me, okay?
He tried to match his own breathing to the other man’s, slow and deep, in and out. His bullet-damaged lung was having none of it. What little vision he had of the darkened room silhouetted against the hall lights started to fizzle out, and it took him a moment to realize the pressure on his hand was Harry’s hand, gently squeezing.
“Easy, easy…hold it for a few seconds, and try again. Come on, Perry, you can do this. Feel my breath?”
Perry could feel it. He could feel Harry’s chest filling with the sweet air that was denied him, the brunette letting it out again in a slow stream that tickled Perry’s throat.
And he could, behind Harry’s smooth voice and the steady hands stroking back his sweat-soaked hair, feel the brunette’s terror, heartbeat racing and pounding like the hoof beats of a thoroughbred against his cheek. Distantly, Perry managed to grasp the notion that Harry was afraid.
Perry didn’t want Harry to be frightened. He wanted Harry to smile, to laugh, to always see the world with that goofy, sunlit optimism that he’d had since Perry had met him over a year ago, covered in dirt and blood at a party guest-starring some of Los Angeles’ most eligible fuck-ups.
Perry was floundering, struggling to gain a focus through the haze settling into his mind from pain and lack of oxygen, and he latched onto a single point of contact - Harry’s hand was warm, and a little moist from nervous sweat. His fingers flexed a little - Perry’s concentration briefly shattered to let his vision turn white… and then the scarred end of Harry’s half-missing ring finger brushed against the back of Perry’s own hand where it rested against the mostly mended bullet wound in his chest. Harry’s old pain pressed to his old pain…there was some kind of romance to that, he supposed, but Harry was still straight and Perry was still suffocating.
Perry could still feel Harry’s chest rising and falling against his back, sense the thief’s heart hammering away, nearly drowning out the rumbling of that soft, earnest voice. The rhythm of it took root in his mind, and he sank into it, counting out time to the motion, the beat, the melody. Harry had him, and though he normally would never admit it, he felt reassured by the very presence of his warmth and life. Exhausted, he slumped back against the younger man, let it all just float away into the music…
Slowly, his breath eased, the tightness relaxed, the stabbing dulled. Perry felt his brain start working again, his mind clearing as oxygen finally reached it unhindered and without pain. The rushing in his ears faded out entirely, and with it no longer trying to drown out all other sounds, he could make sense out of what Harry was saying.
The idiot was singing to him.
Well… not literally, but he may as well have been. Harry was speaking low and slow and soft, and his voice was tender, drawling out the words in a gentle rumble. Perry’s breathing finally evened out completely, matching the music, matching Harry. He let his eyes slip closed again in exhaustion. Harry’s voice and his bare arms were warm and strong around him.