A Bang Up Marriage Proposal

Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: forever. This is set in May of 2008 (which is when I started writing this thing, I think, it got lost in a notebook for a while). Characters are not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Hello all, it's me. Harry Lockhart. Again.

You guys already know that I am one of the most danger prone people ever to walk the face of the earth. Since I'm still alive to remind you of that, I guess you could also say I'm one of the fucking luckiest, too. So, you won't be all that surprised to hear that I ended up in the hospital yet again, right? Right.

But, you will be surprised by what happened after I got out. I'm still surprised, years later.

You see, we – Perry and me, duh, who else would I be talking about here? – were on this case. Which, again, duh. That's what we do. Bigger than a usual case, though. Bigger than all of that bullshit with Harlan Dexter that Christmas. No, really, this one had corrupt government officials, blood money, explosions, quite possibly a spy or two, for all I know. It had damn near everything.

I'm not allowed to talk about it, actually. I've said as much as Perry – and probably the government, too – will let me. You'll have to make do with my little summary of events up there. Please, pay strict attention to the 'explosion' part. That's the part that fucked me up.

Okay, so, fine. Maybe it was dumb to go running into the building while every other person was wisely moving in the opposite direction. It was dumb to walk right into the middle of the bad guy's trap. It was supposed to be a trap meant for Perry – the obvious brains of our dynamic detective duo – but Perry had evidently already gotten out of the building without my knowledge. Being the loyal co-worker, roommate, best friend, and occasional drunken bedmate I was at the time, I ran back in.

The next thing I knew I was lying in my usual hospital room – yes, I have actually been there enough times now for it to be a running joke on the hospital staff to keep putting me in the same room. It says it's number 125, but really, they should just replace it with 'Harry Lockhart – Reserved' or some other shit like that. – But, seriously, anyway. Point of the story here.

So, I'm laid up in the hospital with a concussion, a broken arm and rather ridiculous amounts of shrapnel imbedded in my shoulder – which I will likely never regain full use of, by the way. Which is just my luck. Oh, well. Least I can still shoot, ignore anything Perry says countering that, if you please. Those injuries weren't the worst of it, though. You see… I ended up in a coma for two months.

Yeah, some pretty harsh shit there, isn't it?

I don't remember anything between walking into that building and waking up and discovering that it was no longer late March and suddenly late May. Thankfully, in LA, unlike in New York, it doesn't matter much if you haven't gotten around to switching out your summer and winter clothes all that much. Unless you're Perry, or, well… anyone but me.

Also, so long as I can avoid mentioning the finer details of the case, this part will be easier to explain without me babbling on about it, so…. Here:

The first things Harry notices are all annoying: the unending beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor, the too strong scent of a heavily sterilized room, bright light against his eyelids. That's all he needs to know to know that he is in a hospital. Everything feels slow and laggy, like he's moving at half speed and that's enough to tell him that he's on the good painkillers this time around. He manages to force his eyes open and he gets overwhelmingly dizzy when everything blurs in and out for a moment before it settles back into something that is almost focus.

"Ugh," he groans, but the sound is rough on his throat. He's sore and exhausted and the last thing he wants to do is move, but it's so bright and if he can just roll over a bit - only this sets off a blaring alarm on the monitor that screams through his head. Then there's the mad rush of nurses into the room and there's a disembodied voice from beyond the curtained off doorway shouting for a doctor.

Harry is so done with this shit.

"G'way," he mumbles, fighting the hands that are trying to stop him from turning away from the light.

"Sir," someone says, pushing him back down just as he's almost managed his self-appointed goal. "Sir, please, you've been through quite an ordeal and you need to relax. You're in no shape to be moving around like that."

But he doesn't know what she's talking about. Nothing really hurts, aside from the way his muscles ache like he's just run a marathon, so he can't be that bad off. "I'm not... I don't..." he tries, but he doesn't know what to say.

But, in a flash, it all comes rushing back to him then: the bomber, the building, the realization that Perry was in danger and the running back in. The brilliant, blinding light and the searing pain that followed. "Shit," he coughs out, struggling even harder to get up now. "Shit, I... Where's... where's Perry? I need-"

"Sir! If you don't stop, we'll have to sedate you."

This does actually stop him. He knows that if they shoot him up with the knock out drugs, it'll take forever for him to find out if Perry's okay. He stills, reluctantly, and tries to will his heart into slowing down so that the damned beeping will slow the fuck down and maybe the nurses will all stop freaking out at him already.

"Where's Perry?"

"Right here, you idiot."

He heaves a sigh of relief that makes his chest burn, but he totally doesn't care.

"You would wake up the one time I show up late, wouldn't you?" Perry sighs, crossing the room as the nurses continue to poke and prod him. Harry has long since learned not be surprised that Perry can get around the rules, like the one he's sure he's breaking by barging in here right now.

"So I've been here a while?" He guesses, based on Perry's not very wintery clothing - see, he can be perceptive sometimes, thank you very much. "How long?"

Perry sighs, claims what Harry suspects is his usual seat at his bedside. "Today is May 22nd, so... 54 days, sixteen hours and twenty minutes since they dragged you out of what was left of that building," he admits, without so much as a glance at his watch, like it just a number he can automatically call to mind.

That's... longer than he expected and he sits in stunned shock for a few moments while the nurses finally convince themselves that he is more or less okay and agree to leave him alone. They promise that his doctor will be by soon to do a more thorough evaluation, but Harry barely hears them. "That long?"

But he can see it now, in the new wrinkles on Perry's face, the way Perry looks at him. "Yeah, that long."

"Shit."

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Perry demands, when a near-awkward silence has fallen between them. "I know you were out of there, why the hell did you go back in?"

"I couldn't find you," Harry confesses, "Looked everywhere, figured you must've gotten trapped inside. No one was around to help yet, so I..."

There's anger on Perry's face now, but for once, Harry isn't entirely sure it's directed at him. "So you did something incredibly stupid, what a surprise," he snaps, and oh, hey, now it's directed at him. "Damn it, Harry, are you ever, ever going to learn not to do stupid shit?"

"Excuse me, asshole," Harry snaps back, "It's not like I meant to get blown up! I was trying to save your sorry ass, how was I to know it didn't need saving?"

"Maybe because I'm not you and I can look after myself for more than five minutes at a time?"

"You do realize that I was fully capable of keeping myself alive before I met you, yeah?"

Perry scowls, "You were in prison how many times in New York? It took you how many days to get on someone's shit list when you came out here, three? You were doing a fucking fantastic job without me, right."

"Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you on that same shit list right along with me?"

"Only because I was helping you, dumbass."

"Oh, right," he frowns, he always hates that moment in their arguments when he realizes that he's wrong. "But this time I was trying to help you!"

"Well, for future reference, Harry, watching a bunch of firefighters drag your unresponsive body out the smoldering remains of a building packed with enough C4 to level a small city, watching you flatline in the ambulance, and sitting with you in the hospital for two fucking months is not something I find very helpful in any way at all." Perry's eyes fall closed for a second, and then he's shaking his head, like he's trying to dislodge an unwanted memory that flashed to mind, probably that particular unhelpful memory, if Harry had to guess.

Harry can't think of a single thing to say to that, but that's okay because Perry seems to have given up on arguing with him right now. And Perry moves closer, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed and Harry would swear he was right about the memory, too, because Perry's lips are on his in a desperate sort of kiss, one hand sliding into Harry's messed up hair to keep him in place, pull him in closer.

Harry kisses back, but he's a little out of shape after two months in a coma and so he has to pull away sooner than he really wants to. "Missed me, did you?" he asks, his head still pressed to Perry's.

Perry rolls his eyes as he pulls back, but his response is lacking its usual biting wit, "It was a lot quieter, that's for sure."

"I'll be sure to make up for that, don't worry."

Okay, that's enough of that.

This has all been very bickery and bantery and everything, but you all already know that we pretty much exist in a perpetual state of those things, so this is actually probably pretty boring for you. Sorry.

This isn't the important part, anyway.

No.

No, that came a few days later, when I'd been forced into endless sessions of brutal physical therapy and still wasn't allowed to go home.

So, we're going to speed ahead a little bit if you don't mind. If you do, well, fuck you, it's not your story, is it?

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," Harry curses, attempting the simple task of trying to get back into bed after yet another intense PT session, as two months in a coma does nothing to improve your muscles mass, nor does permanently embedded shrapnel aid in the recovery of a broken arm. "Holy fucking fuck."

"So, it's going well, then?" Perry asks, appearing in the doorway out of nowhere, as he often seems to do. Harry suspects he's paid off several people on the staff to alert him whenever Harry returns to him room.

"Fuck off."

"Not a very nice thing to say to the guy who brought you actual food," he counters, holding up the bags marked with the logo from Harry's favorite diner.

"There is not a single part of my body that doesn't hurt right now, but I will do literally anything for that burger, I promise you."

Perry obligingly hands over the bag and Harry forces his sore limbs to cooperate long enough to dig out its contents and start shoveling food into his mouth. Having had nothing but hospital food for the week he's been awake, it's like heaven.

Shaking his head at Harry's caveman-ish ways, Perry claims his usual seat but remains unusually silent, at least until he blurts out a sudden, unexpected: "Marry me."

Harry blinks, stops with the best burger in the world halfway to his mouth, and wonders which of the thousand alternatives of that sentence he could have misheard. "What?"

But Perry just glares at him, which suggests he isn't going to repeat himself. "You heard me."

He sets his food down and considers Perry carefully. "I really don't think I did, because I would swear you just asked - well, not asked, it didn't really sound like a question, but then, you don't really ever ask me things, just kind of command things at me and, fuck, anyway - did you just ask me to marry you?"

The silence he gets in response is not at all helpful because it could be that it was what he asked or it could be that the mere idea is so ridiculous it has rendered Perry speechless.

"I mean, I know that thing just passed, what? A week before I woke up and all, it's legal here now, but really? 'Things I never thought Perry would consider', for $500, Alex!'"

"Fuck, forget it, then," Perry snaps, getting to his feet.

"You- that is what you were asking?"

"Yes, you idiot, that's what I was asking."

This is bizarre still behavior for Perry, who has had lots of hook-ups and exactly zero serious relationships in all the time Harry has known him (unless Harry counts himself, which, up until this point, he hasn't), and has often mocked the mere idea of marriage, even mocked those fighting for it. "What changed your mind?"

Perry doesn't look happy about the question, but he sits back down and answers, "The whole time you were out, I was worried your brother was going to show up here and override me, take you back to Indiana or worse, take you off the machines you were on at the beginning."

And, well, that's a pretty good reason, Harry supposes. But it does not necessitate marriage - a couple of forms and phone calls could solve that problem, make Perry his medical proxy in case anything like this ever happens again (he hopes not, he's been in the hospital too much as it is). "That's it?"

"It's been a long two months, Harry," Perry answers, sounding a little more world-weary than usual. "There was a lot of time to think about things. Very quiet time."

"Damn, you did miss me."

"Yeah, I missed you," he says, "I missed your stupid questions and your insane theories and your lack of common sense and your hideous sweatshirts all over my house. I missed bitching at you on stake-outs and keeping your ass out of trouble at parties and even your fucking endless rambling. I fucking missed you because for some baffling reason I love you, you stupid, idiotic, danger-magnet of a human being, and if you ever do something as ridiculously stupid as risking your life for me again, I-"

"Okay," Harry blurts out, and the unexpected interruption has the desired effect of stopping Perry mid-rant.

The confusion is evident on his face, "'Okay,' what?"

"Okay, I'll marry you?" Harry clarifies - it's not like he ever says 'no' to Perry (well, he does, Perry just usually ignores him), and this would be a weird time to start, especially since it's something he kind of wants. He'd never really thought about it much (mostly because of Perry's prior anti-marriage sentiments, the likelihood of him ever having to think about it seemed low) but he's been married before and it wasn't horrible (at least until he got sent to prison that first time and fucked everything up) so, yeah, "Why not?"

"Just like that?"

"Would you prefer I take this opportunity to start thinking through life-changing decisions?"

That gets a laugh from Perry, at least.

Harry reaches out, pulls Perry in close enough to steal a kiss. "Yeah, just like that."

So, there you have it.

Perry proposed - sort of - I said yes, and that was that.

Eventually, they let me go home (though I still had to go back for more of those damn therapy sessions), and things slowly went back to normal. Cases, stakeouts, interviews, that kind of thing.

Some things changed, though. Perry stopped bringing home other guys, though, to be honest, he hadn't been doing a lot of that before the explosion and I'm pretty sure there weren't any hook-ups while I was out of commission, either. I stopped sleeping in the guest room, and I'd like to say Perry started being nicer, but hey, who are we kidding? I'm not going to lie to you.

Not many people here in LA know that Gay Perry married his underappreciated sidekick the first chance he got (really, they started handing out marriage certificates on June 16 and we were twelfth in line, I think) and we all kind of prefer it that way. Harmony didn't believe us when we told her - no, she actually didn't believe us, almost missed the party because she didn't think the invite was for real. I dropped a line to my parents who took the news about as well as could be expected (that is, not well at all), but my brother and his family showed up, at least. Perry's family was-

Fuck.

"Are you narrating again?" Perry asks, once again scaring the shit out of Harry with his ability to magically appear beside him.

"Maybe."

Perry sighs, shakes his head, "What lame ass story are you torturing them with this time? Not the one you're not allowed to talk about, I hope."

"No," Harry defends, "I'm just relaying the tale of your stunningly romantic proposal."

"Either you're being really sarcastic or you have lied to them entirely," he answers, moving to walk away from Harry's crazy need to share his life stories with total strangers, "Wrap it up, okay, Chief? We've got a client interview before our anniversary dinner."

"Hey," Harry laughs, "At least I didn't say something cheesy like 'It's like we were made for each other' or some other shit like that."

Perry leans down and steals a long, slow kiss, "Well, that's too bad, then. How else could I be willing to put up with you for forever?"