Notes: written within my AU where everything is exactly the same except Perry is human, but this one can be read either way very easily, so it's up to you. Enjoy, and tell me what you think!
Warnings: canon levels of cartoon violence and Heinz's insecurities.
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The first time Heinz hears Perry's voice he stops everything he's doing and stares, open-mouthed.
This is not the brightest of moves, seeing as the reason he's hearing Perry's voice is that he's gotten in a lucky blow and Perry is cursing a blue streak. His momentary shock completely overtakes his equally momentary advantage and a moment later he's bowled over as Perry launches himself at him with renewed vigor.
Later, sitting sulkily in the rubble of his latest –Inator and holding a bag of frozen peas to his head, he realizes two things.
First: he now knows that, whatever reasons Perry had for his habitual silence, they're psychological or neurological, not physical. Heinz might have bought his degree off the internet with Charlene's money, but he does occasionally read the information booklets which come with the devices he orders. He knows that swearing, chemically and emotionally speaking, is more like laughing or screaming than like speaking; noise more than words.
Second: he now knows what Perry's voice sounds like – somehow higher than he would have expected even given the agent's slight frame, with a touch of an Australian accent and an alarmingly varied vocabulary of profanities.
He realizes he's grinning, and quickly rearranges his face into a far more appropriate scowl. Then he realizes that there's no one around to impress, and he grins again.
He heard Perry's voice.
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The second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth times are much the same. Though Heinz's double-takes are shorter each time, greatly reducing the number of bruises he ends up with, he never quite stops grinning to himself once he's defeated and sore and unobserved.
He's heard Perry's voice. He knows, intellectually, that he probably isn't the only one on the planet. Probably Frances has, maybe What's-His-Face, the intern, and probably somewhere out there Perry has friends or family or acquaintances who've witnessed him encounter something particularly aggravating and heard his vocal chords shape some of the more aggressive words in the English language.
Maybe, somewhere, there's even people who knew Perry before . . . whatever happened, who have heard him speak arguments and explanations and jokes and puns and dry, cutting remarks but that – that hurts, somehow, so Heinz doesn't think about it if he can help it.
(Anyway, he thinks sometimes, when the fog horns and the memories keep him awake and he pictures Perry's loaded looks and oh-so-telling posture and his clever fingers on the rare occasions when he feels the need to sign – anyway, those people are missing out. So joke's on them, really.)
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The sixth time, Heinz doesn't remember, which is just as well. The sound that escaped Perry's throat when his boys were in danger is something which nothing but an OWCA memory eraser could have scrubbed from Heinz's mind.
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The ninth time Heinz hears Perry's voice, he stops everything he's doing and stares, open-mouthed.
Titanium fingers tighten around the handles of no fewer than five plastic grocery bags holding diapers, baby wipes, mushy food, and the several spare parts (salvaged semi-legally from the local junk yard) needed to turn the De-Age-Inator into a Re-Age-Inator. A recently-de-aged-through-no-fault-of-Heinz's-own Vanessa is gurgling happily in his nemesis' arms, and Perry –
Perry is singing.
Perry is singing a children's song about sleeping and horses and his voice is high and clear and kind and Heinz hears his own voice, so harsh and over-used in comparison say,
"Perry?"
And he's ruined it. Of course.
And Perry blushes a little but smiles anyway and feeds Vanessa and hands him tools and it's a good day, it is, but Perry doesn't make another noise, and Heinz lies awake that night and tries to remember the song and he can't remember a single word and he doesn't sleep at all.
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Heinz stops counting, but he doesn't stop noticing, filing away the rare sounds; incoherent cursing and startled yelps and small, contented sighs. And he loves them (he can admit sometimes, to himself). Not more than he loves the expressions in Perry's dark brown eyes or the strength in his slender fingers, but he loves them all the same.
These are the ways Heinz hears Perry's voice: in curses, in yelps, in sighs; in exasperated eye-rolls and affectionate touches and urgent signing; and sometimes, at night, when the shadows of hatred and abandonment creep into his room and his heart, he hears it in the quiet creak of the door, and a small, warm hand in his, and a clear, kind song in his ear, about sleeping, and horses, and waking to a different world than you left behind.