The next day brings a text from Lawrence thanking him for watching the kids yesterday, a vague lingering feeling of something left over, and as usual, a summons from Major Monogram.
Perry rolls his eyes and accepts the incoming transmission on his watch. There's a fifty-fifty shot that he's actually going to get a mission with this latest summons. It's either that, or he's going to just have to sit there while the Major laments about how his unpaid intern messes things up constantly.
He's already sick of having to listen to Monogram's little rants, and he's only been here a little over a week. He thought it was impossible, but he actually feels a little bit sorry for the other agents.
But not too sorry. They found the apartment he's currently occupying, and broke in at some point to decorate. Now, he's got to live in an explosion of tinsel as well.
As if it wasn't bad enough that he had to put up with Danville's inane traditions outside of his temporary home. Thankfully, he doesn't have to drive around (jetpacks are truly the best thing to come out of OWCA's research and development division), because there are Christmas parades daily.
How does a town even have this much so-called "Christmas Spirit"? It's honestly rather spooky.
Unfortunately, his research on the subject has only turned up the same few things his niece mentioned. Santa comes to town, stopping to give some lucky children the chance to deliver presents as well. Ergo, Christmas spirit to the max.
Perry has to roll his eyes whenever he hears that particular fable mentioned. Is he really the only sane one around here?
Apparently so. On his watch, he can see the Major all dressed up for the season, despite it only being the second week of December.
Honestly, Christmas would be a much better holiday if the lead-up was just compressed into the span of a week. Like Thanksgiving, or St. Patrick's Day, or Valentine's day. (Now there's a horrid holiday, one absolutely overwrought by consumerism and forced heterosexual romance. Ick.)
The Major babbles on about whatever for a few minutes, before finally actually giving Perry his mission.
Go thwart Doofenshmirtz. As usual. How fun. Perry leaves his apartment and sets off towards Doofenshmirtz Evil, Incorporated.
When he arrives, he's immediately caught in a Christmas-tree stand. Bright and twinkling red and green lights wrap around him, pinning him in place. He tests the tensile strength of the lights, finding them no better than the lights he helped his family hang at the beginning of the month.
Out of absolutely nowhere, Doofenshmirtz pops up, holding a bird for some reason. It's not the weirdest thing he's seen in a scheme this month, but it's probably in the top ten.
"And a partridge on a Perry!" he sings as the bird (apparently a partridge, joy) flutters to land on Perry's fedora, clearly way too proud of himself for that pun.
Perry merely rolls his eyes in clear "kill-me-now" fashion, before shaking his head in an attempt to get rid of the bird.
"Yeesh, Perry the Platypus, have some Christmas spirit," Doofenshmirtz says as the bird merely flutters its wings. "You could at least say something."
Perry chatters.
Doofenshmirtz shrugs. "Eh, I'll take it. We'll work on it. Evil science is all about communication, after all. Which is why I decided to put my monologue into song form today!" He pulls a remote out of the pocket of his lab coat and hits a button on it. "On the first day of-"
He stops short when he realizes whatever music he had still hasn't started. "I said," he says, hitting the button again, "on the first day of- oh come on, this was working earlier."
Well, if this is his opportunity, he's going to take it. Perry wiggles one arm free, then the other, then untangles the rest of the lights from around his body. The partridge finally flaps away, alerting Dr. Doofenshmirtz to his escape.
"Manners, Perry the Platypus!" he exclaims, affronted. "You haven't even heard my monologue yet! Come on, let me sing my song. Then you can escape and punch me in the face."
Perry sighs deeply. Why is this his life. Why did he have to end up in Danville, doing this?
Either way, Doof insists, so he leans against a lab counter and motions for him to get on with it. Might as well get it over with quickly.
One inane musical number later, Perry is left possibly even more bewildered than before. Doof's evil plan is to...flood city hall with hundreds of the birds from the twelve days of Christmas song.
He's not quite entirely sure how that would enable Dr. Doofenshmirtz to take over the Tri-State Area, but that doesn't matter. This should be a simple enough plan- get the birds to turn on him, and that will destroy his plans.
See, he can do more than just blow things up. He has more tact than that. (Usually.)
While the birds attack Doofenshmirtz, Perry merely dusts his hands off and heads towards the balcony.
"Curse you, Perry the Platypus," Dr. Doofenshmirtz yells over the calls of about sixty geese (-a-laying, which is an absolutely absurd gift, Perry notes).
Perry salutes with a cocky smirk, then steps backwards off the balcony. He does a flip, just because he can, before activating his glider and soaring away.
With a look over Danville, he can see his nephews have built something large and festive. He's tempted to check it out, but he has something else in mind. Instead, he soars in the opposite direction, towards the local history museum.
If any place is going to have accurate, solid information on this strange Santa social phenomenon, it's going to be an institution of research and truth.
Besides, he's got some time to kill. It's going to be a little while until Doofenshmirtz is able to open up his coffee shop. That was a lot of birds, after all.
He folds in the wings of his glider and lands on the front steps of the museum, bending his knees to absorb the shock before he walks in.
The interior of the museum seems to be decorated for the season in a more subdued manner than the rest of Danville, thankfully. It would still be considered over-the-top in Australia, but it's much better than the rest of the city (which is unfortunately an extremely low bar).
A brief glance at a map reveals a special exhibit on Danville's history with Santa. Perfect.
Perry makes his way to the exhibit, pausing only briefly to look at a small bit on the history of the Tri-State Area.
Apparently, it was almost named Wisconsin before a John P. Trystate united two areas of land, and then the spelling got butchered over the years.
Honestly, at this point, Perry isn't even surprised. Just another par for the extremely strange course in Danville.
More surprising is the fact that the Danville history museum seems to also keep up the facade that Santa visits every year.
Even when he closely examines the photos on the walls, he can't find any evidence of any photoshopping.
Clearly, whoever edited all those images must have done an incredible job. Although Perry will admit that detecting those sorts of imperfections isn't exactly one of his strong points. The geeks in cybersecurity are much better than he is, and he's perfectly happy to let them do their thing. They don't go out in the field, he doesn't pretend to be any good at hacking, it works.
As he looks around, Perry makes sure to keep a close eye on the time. He's going to have to walk to the coffeeshop (which thankfully is only a couple blocks away), he doesn't want to be late to his date.
Perry stops in his tracks. When did "opportunity to keep an eye on his nemesis after hours" become "date"? That's absurd. Hei- Doctor Doofenshmirtz is perhaps almost the exact opposite of his type. He usually prefers people who share his level of enthusiasm towards major holidays- which is none.
Clearly, he's been spending too much time around his romance-obsessed niece.
Well, date or not (it's not, right?) he should really get going. So he leaves the museum and walks the four blocks to the Lovemuffin coffee shop.
The shop seems to be mostly empty when Perry gets there, with a few teens sitting around a table playing cards and a man with his face buried in a newspaper being the only patrons.
Doofenshmirtz waves from behind the counter when Perry walks in. "Hi there, Steven!" he says. The other person behind the counter, a teenaged girl who Perry vaguely recalls as being his daughter, Valerie or Victoria or something, rolls her eyes.
"Can you handle the counter, sweetie?" Doofenshmirtz asks his daughter, who nods, not even looking up from what must be her sketchbook.
"Oh yeah," he says, "you haven't met yet. Vanessa, this is my friend Steven. Steven, this is my daughter Vanessa."
Vanessa waves, sort of, then goes back to looking down at her sketchbook.
"Here," Doofenshmirtz says to Perry, "I just finished brewing the tea." He hands Perry a cup, and Perry takes a small sip.
Oolong. Huh. He did remember. Something in Perry's chest flutters, but he squashes it as fast as he humanly can. Flutters like that mean infatuation, and he absolutely does not like Hei-Doofenshmirtz in that way.
Together, they sit at the same table they did on Perry's first night in Danville.
Unlike Perry's first night, Hei-Doofen- oh forget it. Heinz actually wants to listen to Perry, wants to ask him questions about Australia.
At first, the questions are about simple subjects, like the weather, or what his work is like down there.
And then Heinz gets Perry ranting about Christmas being useless.
It's not exactly hard to get Perry going, which is a little embarrassing. Somehow, he doesn't feel ashamed of it like people usually make him feel. (He's been called a Grinch more times than he can count.) Instead, the faint warmth in his cheeks comes from sharing a part of him with someone he maybe, possibly, might actually consider a friend. Of course if it weren't for the evil scientist-secret agent part.
That, or the blush thankfully hidden by his dark skin tone is due to the heat of the tea. Yeah, that's a much more likely explanation.
"So you think everything about Christmas is pointless?" Heinz asks when Perry pauses his expressive signing to pick up his mug. "Everything?"
Perry nods, then stops to think. Ice skating is good exercise, and the lights are marginally interesting, but other than that, yes.
"Even Christmas cookies? Do you think those are pointless, too?"
Well, yeah? What's the point of making special cookies just once a year?
Heinz huffs, clearly affronted. "Okay, before I answer that, when was the last time you made Christmas cookies?"
Perry has to think about that for a was never any sort of holiday celebration when he was in OWCA's orphanage, and he was there for a long time.
Probably when I was four, he eventually signs. And I barely remember that.
"Wow, that's a long time," Heinz says. "Is there a story there?"
Why yes, yes there is. His parents (also OWCA agents, so there was really no question about his future career) were killed in front of him (yay for trauma), and he was shuffled into OWCA's overcrowded orphanage, where there was no time to celebrate anything.
Lawrence had been with friends that night, and so hadn't seen his own parents get shot and bleed out on the floor. He had been devastated at their deaths, but since he didn't actually see it happen, his memory was wiped and he was sent off to live with distant relatives in England. Lucky bastard.
But while he grew up with OWCA, there were more important things to worry about, so he quickly forgot all about Christmas cookies.
Doesn't mean he wants to tell that story, though. Especially not to his nemesis. So he shakes his head.
"Well," Heinz says, and Perry can practically see the wheels turning in his head, "maybe we can bake some cookies, and we'll see what you think after that."
Perry nearly declines the offer out of principle, but he stops and thinks for a second. A chance to keep tabs on his nemesis after hours like this doesn't come around that often. And besides, he isn't doing a whole lot else (other than endless paperwork) this afternoon.
So he accepts. Why not? Good way to kill an afternoon and do recon. Maybe he'll even get a raise when he goes back to Australia.
"Cool!" Heinz says, standing up from the table. "C'mon, we can go up to my apartment and bake. We can make gingerbread, and sugar cookies, and maybe even chocolate pinwheels…"
Ten minutes later, their drinks sit cooling forgotten on Heinz's kitchen table as they work at mixing cookie dough.
Heinz makes a royal mess when he accidentally sets his Butter-Soften-Inator at way too high of a setting, and again when he drops the egg carton, but Perry sticks around. For some reason.
Somehow, Heinz's klutzy tendencies have gotten under his skin, in a way that isn't entirely unpleasant.
They manage to get most of the cookie dough for the gingerbread onto cookie sheets without Heinz eating it all- although he does nab a few right out of the oven. Perry worries for a second about him burning his fingers, before remembering that he has titanium arms.
(And they're nemeses! Why does he care so much about his nemesis hurting himself?)
"See, they're delicious!" Heinz says through a mouthful of gingerbread. "I know we didn't decorate them or anything, but still. How could these possibly be useless?"
Perry sighs. Heinz, unfortunately, has a point. The cookies, despite Perry's extreme lack of baking talent, are actually decent. Okay, okay, maybe making cookies isn't stupid. But why can't you make Christmas cookies in July?
"The whole point is that you only do it once a year, silly," Heinz huffs.
Okay, then why not do it once a year in July?
"You're from Australia, don't you know how hot it gets in July? You don't want to turn o n the oven in that sort of weather."
Actually, it's hot in Australia all year, and Perry doesn't really do very much baking anyway, hence the lack of baking skill. But Perry shakes his head. The hemispheres flip the seasons, he signs, just to be obstinate.
"Oh yeah, that's right, they do. But here, it gets hot in July, and I barely want to turn on the oven to bake for the coffee shop, let alone do a lot of personal baking."
Much as he hates to admit it Heinz has a point. Perry nods and picks the cookie cutters back up, focusing on making the sugar cookies into neat shapes while keeping Heinz from eating all the scraps before he can re-roll the dough.
Thankfully, they manage to get a couple sheets worth of stars and trees into the oven before Heinz causes another disaster. This time, he forgets that the lid to the flour container is loose, and he winds up spilling flour all over the floor.
Perry focuses more on cutting out more cookies as Heinz cleans up the spilled flour, laughing and jabbering about how "this isn't the worst thing I've spilled" and that "you don't know real pain unless you've spilled fifteen jars of sprinkles on the floor ten minutes before you open".
Finally, Heinz gets most of the flour cleaned up. So Perry, of course, has to tease him about something. He looks up from the cookie dough on the counter, setting the rolling pin aside.
You've got flour all over your face, he signs to Heinz.
"I do?" Heinz asks, wiping his face on his sleeve, which only makes it worse. "Of course I do." He laughs, still attempting to wipe the flour away. "Is it better now?"
Perry shakes his head, a smile creeping onto his face despite his best efforts.
That funny feeling from earlier today returns, this time even stronger. He knows there's a label for what the flutters in his chest are, but the specific words are eluding him at the moment.
It can't be anything friendly, of course not. He's known Heinz for two weeks. Heinz is his nemesis, for god's sake. There is no reason he should be harboring positive sentiments towards his nemesis right now, no matter the stupid reactions he's having to Heinz's flour covered face.
In fact, this feeling is just him being nervous about his cover. It's got to be. 'Steven' can't last forever, it's a miracle his cover has lasted this long.
Whatever the feeling is, nerves or otherwise, it lasts all afternoon, and into the evening. Right up until Vanessa calls up from the apparently swamped coffee shop. Heinz escorts Perry back down to the ground floor, giving Perry a box of Christmas cookies on his way out.
The cookies get set on the tiny kitchen table in Perry's temporary apartment, underneath the tiny tree now sitting there. Perry pushes aside the rest of the decorations, ready to start on the world's weirdest nemesis interaction paperwork.
That stupid feeling in his chest is still there.