KKBB Prompt Fill: Touch
KKBB PROMPT FILL: TOUCH
For the KinkKinkBangBang Meme Prompt:
Wordy prompt is wordy. :X
Since Harry is notorious for getting injured and/or maimed whether he is and whatever he's doing, Perry usually ends up being the one to patch him back up. But, after a while, Harry starts to notice that Perry will place his hand on his thigh or hold his cheek in the palm of his hand. Harry is appalled by the strange touches but -at the same time time- doesn't want them to stop.
However, after a surveillance job gets out of hand, Harry is seriously hurt and Perry angrily hurls insult after insult at him because he won't admit -even to himself- that he was worried. Harry gets upset and defensively points out Perry's habit of touching him, which somehow results in hot makeouts.
"Ow! Ow.Ow.Ow.Ow...OUCH!" Harry said as Perry cleaned away at the cuts on his face with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. "Jesus, Perry! Stop!" He pullled back.
"Do you want them to become infected?" Perry sounded exasperated and placed his hand to Harry's cheek, turning it so he had better access to the abrasions he hadn't touched yet.
"No." Harry winced slightly. "But..." he gritted his teeth. "This hurts."
"Well if you'd learn to keep your mouth shut and stop provoking people who wanna kick our asses in tight situations..." Perry dabbed away. "Fuck you, Harry..."
"Yah, fuck me." Harry rolled his eyes. "You say that like you're talking about the weather."
Perry pulled back and cocked his head slightly, admiring his work. He sighed. "You're a mess, Chief."
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"Just take your Goddamn jeans off!" Perry yelled.
"I'm fine!" Harry yelled back, holding the ziplock bag filled with ice to his head.
"I need to make sure," Perry said. "You had the shit beaten out of you with a metal bat, you know."
"Yah, I kind of remember," Harry replied sarcastically. He sighed and stood up, using one hand to fumble with the zipper of his pants.
He wriggled out of his jeans and Perry shook his head, eyeing the bruises and red marks on his thighs and calves. He stared at Harry. "You are such a dumbass." He knelt down and gently brought his hand to one of the larger purple marks on Harry's thigh.
"It's your fault," Harry muttered. "You let me go on a survelliance by myself."
Perry stared up at him, frowning. "You begged."
"I didn't beg," Harry said, even more quietly.
"You did so," Perry replied, fingering more of the bruises. "And why in the hell did Thompson take a bat to you anyway?"
"He said he thought I was breaking in," Harry said, wincing slightly as Perry pressed his fingertip to one of the bruises. "I tried to get back to the car, and then he tackled me, and I think he was trying to break my legs or something. I dunno."
"I love how you're so casual about it," Perry snorted. He stood back up. "Nothing can be done for bruises. You're just going to be sore for a while." He gave him a light slap on the shoulder. "Sorry, Chief."
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"Oh God...!" Harry stared at the doctor as Perry entered the room. "You let him in? I specifically said don't let Perry Van Shrike in-"
"I pay for you fucking medical bills!" Perry snarled. He looked at the doctor. "How bad is it?"
"The surgery went well," the doctor said, sounding a little nervous. "Luckily the bullet struck him between the shoulder and collarbone. Any higher or any lower and it would have been worse." He looked at Harry. "He also has six stitches on his ankle from the fall."
"Look, I'm sorry I ran the other way," Harry said. "I'm sorry I chased the bad guy-"
"Thank you, Doctor." Perry sighed.
The doctor seemed to take that as a cue to leave, and the second he was gone, Perry exploded. He picked up the guest chair and hurled it across the room. Harry hardly even flinched.
"I told you to stay with me!" Perry all but roared. "I told you whatever you do, follow me, and what do you do? You round the corner and follow the guy with the GODDAMN GUN!" He kicked the chair he'd thrown.
"I already said I was sorry," Harry said, rubbing his fresh injury.
"You should be sorry!" Perry retorted. "But I know that you're not! You're too stupid to even know that you're stupid! We have all of LA's fucking hospital staff memorized because you can't fucking take care of yourself!"
"That's not true-" Harry said, but Perry didn't stop. He was on some sort of crusade.
"I have to watch you like a..." Perry faltered, still enraged. "Disobodient toddler in the mall!"
"So what are you saying?" Harry became angry too. Not as angry, but his voice tingled with a fight. "I hear it all the time from you. I'm stupid, I don't know what I'm doing, I can't figure things out..."
"And yet no matter how many times you hear it, you wind up in a hospital with stitches and bullet holes," Perry said, laughing, though nothing about the situation was funny.
"Well, I'll move out. I'll get out of your Goddamn life and leave you alone," Harry told him. "Will that finally make you happy? Then you won't have to pay for any hospital bills or-or clean cuts on my face or check me for bruises like it's a normal routine."
Perry seemed to soften just a bit, almost like a flicker. He let Harry's words sink in and then found where he'd mislaid a fraction of his anger. "Harry, I-"
"If it makes you so fucking mad, then why do you even bother to patch me up afterward?" Harry asked. "If I'm such a nuisance to you?"
More anger seeped out of Perry. He'd always dreaded the moment they'd have to confront it. No matter how much Perry bitched, he always made sure Harry was taken care of. He always doctored him up. A normal person, even a friend, would evenutally let somebody learn their lesson by leaving them alone, but Perry had never been able to do that. Not with Harry.
"I am so fucking pissed at you..." Perry looked away.
"I'll move out, " Harry repeated, muttering. He flopped onto the pillows. "Don't worry-you won't have to deal with me."
Perry opened his mouth, but no words followed. He tried again, and Harry noticed. Before any of them could say anything again, a nurse walked in and began fiddling with Harry's medical equipment. Perry sat down in the guest chair and sighed heavily through his nose.
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"Hey..." Harry walked into Perry's office, and leaned one side against the doorframe.
"Hey." Perry didn't look at him as he sorted through files.
It had been two weeks since Harry had gotten out of the hospital, and Perry had hardly uttered a word about cleaning his wounds or taking his antibiotics. At first, Harry liked the lack of nagging, but after several days, he began to wonder if Perry had honestly just stopped caring.
"Look." Harry sighed. "I'm sorry I fuck up routinely, okay? It just always seems like a good idea at the time to try and do things myself."
"I'm not mad anymore," Perry muttered, hilighting something on a document.
"Clearly you are," Harry pointed out. "You haven't touched me since our fight in the hospital."
Perry turned around and frowned, raising one eyebrow. Harry rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. He tried again, "Okay, that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean."
Perry leaned back in his chair and stared into space. "No, Harry, you were right."
"I was?" Harry's voice raised slightly. He shook his head. "About...what?"
"Everytime something happens to you, I'm right there hovering over you-" Perry used his hands for emphasis, pantomiming something similar to looking into a crystal ball. "You're not a child, and I shouldn't treat like one. It's not fair."
"What are you saying?" Harry asked quietly.
"I'm not going to bug your ass anymore," Perry said, shrugging. "I should give you your space, and when you make mistakes, I'll do the adult thing and..." his voice trailed off and he turned his back once more to work.
Harry walked over and sat down on the loveseat to the side of the desk. "Perry, you didn't do anything wrong. It was me. It was always me."
Perry opened his mouth to speak, but Harry held up his hand and said, "Just let me finish. I'm almost done. I swear."
Perry waited silently.
"If something happened to you..." Harry said carefully. "I mean, like, you know-the time you got shot, for instance-" he looked down at his hands. "I'd be upset too. It's not normal not to want to beat the shit out of someone you care about when they don't take care of themselves." He frowned thoughtfully. "Themself. Their self. Itsel-No, that's definitely not it..."
Perry smiled slightly. He sighed. "I do worry, and I do want to beat the shit out of you every single time." His smile faded. "But, Harry, I'm going to be honest with you...something else you said bothered me..."
"Something else?" Harry broke free of his inner-grammar crusade.
"It's hard to explain, but you asked why I bother to patch you up at all," Perry started, tapping a pen against his bottom lip. "At first the answer was simple, but it wasn't really the right answer."
Harry could tell he was speaking more to himself than actually having a conversation with someone else. He nodded anyway and continued to listen.
Perry finally looked at him. "Harry, I think I'm in love with you."
Harry raised his eyes to meet Perry's. "You think...what do you think?" He squinted skeptically and cocked his head slightly. "Wait, you said you-"
"I've never been in love," Perry said. "So I don't know, maybe I'm not." He tossed the pen onto the desktop. "But when you get hurt, I get this remorse that I've never felt before, and this fear that I didn't even know I could feel, and when I nurse you back to health, I feel this joy that I didn't even feel when I made out with Billy Zane at some party."
Harry stared at him.
"We were both really wasted," Perry explained.
"Ah." Harry nodded.
"Anyway, it's the only logical conclusion I can come up with," Perry sighed. "And that's why I stopped touching you. I was scared. I didn't want anything to come between us."
For several minutes, neither of them said anything. The AC hummed loudly, making their silence louder than anything.
"I'm flattered," Harry finally said. "I mean, I'll bet a lot of guys-gals too, would like to hear something like that from Perry Van Shrike."
Perry smiled a little. "Maybe."
"If I said that I kind of, sorta maybe thought the same thing about you, would that make me gay?" Harry asked meekly, his eyes big and glittery and intense.
Perry shook his head. "You couldn't be gay if you tried." He frowned. "Wait. What?"
"Perry..." Harry uncrossed his legs and removed himself from the loveseat. He moved the short distance between them and leaned down to brush his lips over Perry's. At first, Perry instinctively tried to back away, but could only go as far as the back of the chair. Harry's kiss was awkward and clumsy, but Perry didn't mind because that was Harry in general.
"I guess we think the same things, huh?" He asked, pulling away, grinning.
The End...