Work Text:
Hey, it’s me again, Harry Lockhart. I thought it was about time to do a bit of an update on things. Maybe it'll lead to a sequel. Anyway ...
“This business. Real Life — it’s boring.”
I don’t know how many of you remember, but Perry says that during the movie when he’s giving me my first detective lesson. But, who knows? Maybe none of you reading this even saw the movie, so I should probably explain the rule is Perry’s top PI rule. That’s the business. We’re Private Investigators. Well, he is, I’m sort of an assistant-cum-apprentice. Not that I was then. Then I was—look, if you haven’t already, just watch the movie, ok? It’s honestly not bad.
Whatever, anyway, Perry says that line in the movie and I can confirm it’s pretty much 100% true. I mean, I’m not sure why he calls it a rule — I’d call it a statement of fact, right, because to me a rule is something you follow or break. Not, like, a fact of life. Which this is. Anyway, point is, it’s mostly true. Maybe 90-95% true. Perry says it was 99.9% true until I “showed up like some kind of stumbling, mumbling statistical fucking outlier.” Still, this business is mostly boring, especially the stakeouts. Oh my god, the stakeouts are so boring, like you would not even believe! And this is true whether I’m there or not, no matter what Perry may tell you.
Sure, on our second stakeout after I officially started working with Perry, we kinda ended up handcuffed together in the hold of a sinking boat after I possibly, maybe accidentally gave our presence away to the bad guys by setting off a flare. And the fifth and eighth stakeouts both ended with us being chased cross country by dogs. Big, vicious, hungry, probably rabid dogs. We got away both times with our appendages intact, though Perry did lose his “faggot gun” because it jiggled free from his balls as we ran.
The quote marks are there to show that that’s what Perry called it, because it’s okay if he says that but bad if I do, apparently. I just think that’s one of the many excuses Perry likes to use for hitting me. It’s how he shows affection. I know ‘cause he once tapped out “love you, idiot” on the back of my head in Morse code with the flat of his hand. I was concussed for a week, but yeah, show of affection.
Then there was the stakeout when I got stuck under the bed in which our client’s no good, cheating, a-hole of a husband was banging his mistress. Actually, after the first ten minutes that was pretty boring, too. After the first hour I started naming the dust bunnies: Mona, Screamer and Big Boy — the Christening was heavily influenced by the dialog above. Meanwhile, Perry was hiding in the closet — I know, irony or some shit — where he found a box containing nothing but men’s wedding bands and a little red notebook filled with men’s names and dates. Perry recognized some of the names as belonging to dead or missing-presumed-dead guys!
Exactly, our cheating a-hole’s mistress was an honest to fuck serial killer!
I’m telling you, stakeouts? B·O·R·I·N·G except when they’re not. Or until they’re not. But also they’re kind of unavoidable and necessary, because they so often eventually lead to the good stuff. You know, the break in the case, or, well, more often the literal money shot. The photographic evidence of the lying, cheating bastardry the client hired us to get. And sometimes they lead to other good things, like, for example, our most recent one.
Picture it. Out stakeout venue is this dingy, empty apartment in an oughta-be-condemned building, you know the sort, doing a whole lot of nothing except staring across the street at the back exit of some dodgy club, waiting and waiting for some action on our case. We’re keeping alert with some back and forth banter, you know, talking shit to each other. I start in on how Perry is the biggest cockblock ever because we’ve lived together so long that—
Shit! I forgot to say, I don’t just work with Perry. I live with him, too. That part’s sort of important. So, yes, when we got out of the hospital I moved in with Perry while we were still recovering and I just sort of never moved out again. Perry’s place is nice, you know, featured in magazines nice. Also, he works from home and I work with him now, so it’s convenient. But of course everyone just assumes that if he’s Gay Perry then I must be Gay Harry and, well, it sorta gets in the way. Cramps my style …
So, yeah, I started telling him how he is the biggest cockblock ever because everyone thinks we’re old married couple together and no one in their right mind would consider poaching from Gay Perry …
Then I started on about how although I like women — love them — just fine, being around him so much makes it difficult to remember that because while I’m not actually Gay Harry, I’m also not, since we’re being honest, 100% Straight Harry, either. And Perry, well, Perry is bad ass, good to look at and also actually pretty damn caring. He hides that last one well under a heavy layer of sarcasm and a rich patina of mild to moderate bruising, usually on my person, but it’s true and it’s difficult not to be moved by it.
I told him all that, more or less, then I started explaining to his dumbfounded face that it wouldn’t be so bad if he himself had any interest in me because—
And that’s where the stakeout got interesting, because to shut me up he grabbed me by the back of the neck, stuck his tongue in my mouth, shoved me bodily against the nearest wall and wedged his thigh between mine.
Yup, stakeouts. Boring until they’re not.