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The first kind hand Perry could remember feeling belonged to Carl. The baby platypus had jolted slightly at the hesitant hand stroking his back, and looked up to see that it belonged to that thirteen-year-old bespectacled boy that was OWCA’s most recent hire.
The boy withdrew his hand at the expression on the platypus’s face, eyes widening slightly. “Sorry!” His voice came out in that pre-pubescent crack that Perry had grown accustomed to, that high-pitched squeak that most of the agents flinched at, that caused Carl to apologize profusely. In fact, the vast majority of words that came out of the boy’s mouth since his subsequent hiring a month ago were apologies. He apologized too much, Perry thought privately, for excelling at a job that he wasn’t even paid for. Clumsy as the boy was, he was very good at what he did. And he was kind, too. Kinder than any other human he’d met in his (admittedly very short) lifetime.
In fact, the way that he’d just touched him… It was Perry’s first time being pet. He quite liked the sensation. So he shook his head in an effort to assuage the boy’s anxieties and pressed his fur against the bars of the cage, chattering encouragingly at him. Carl gasped quietly, hesitantly stepping forward and reaching a hand out.
”Are you sure, Agent P?”
Perry chattered exasperatedly and gently nudged at his hand with his beak, pressing himself as far against the bars of the cage that he could. Taking the hint, Carl reached his hand back in, stroking the baby platypus at first lightly, and then with increasing intensity. Perry purred in delight, nuzzling at him, and Carl’s lips parted to reveal a blinding, brace-covered smile that Perry had never seen before on the kid’s face. It was the first truly happy moment of the platypus’s life so far.
…Until it was so very rudely interrupted by the beeping of Carl’s wristwatch. Perry watched the smile drop from the boy’s face in real time, replaced by that same panic as he extracted his hand from the platypus’s fur only to find that his hand had gotten caught in the bars of the cage.
“Oh no,” Carl moaned, and Perry flashed him a sympathetic frown as the boy frantically tugged at his wrist, beginning to hyperventilate when he realized that he was well and truly stuck. To the platypus’s horror, frustrated tears started to well in the boy’s eyes behind his glasses. Oh, he was not equipped to deal with this. He inched forward from where he’d backed away into the corner of the cage to study a way to remove the boy’s hand. Deducing that the problem was the watch, he nudged at it with his beak, but Carl was too far gone in the beginnings of his panic attack to register what he was doing.
Sighing, the baby platypus realized what he needed to do. Placing one palm on the boy’s hand to keep it in place, he nibbled at the watch, hooking the metal rod through the hole and tugging at it until finally it sprung free from Carl’s wrist. The boy promptly collapsed on the floor, his now-bare cuff rubbed raw from his frantic efforts to free it from the cage.
As much as he clearly needed the time to collect himself, that was not something OWCA generally allowed, so Perry nudged the watch through the bars until it fell to the ground, where the volunteer intern thankfully caught it. Inhaling and exhaling rapidly in a quick effort to calm himself, he finally accepted the call.
”What took you so long?” Major Monogram’s voice boomed through the watch, causing the boy to flinch in response.
“My apologies, Major, I had reached my hand in to refill the water in one of the cages and I ended up getting it caught.” His voice was raised slightly in pitch, and Perry winced at its shrillness.
“In the future, intern, make sure that you open the door to the kennel to do so instead of putting your hand through the bars.” But satisfied with that explanation, the Major moved on with assigning whatever task he needed done. Perry didn’t bother listening to it, curling back up in the corner of the cage to get a nap in as Carl worked to re-fasten the wristwatch.
But he watched him with a gentle fascination shimmering in his eyes as the volunteer intern worked to collect himself in real time. Relegating his breathing, wiping subtly at his red-rimmed eyes. He wasn’t exactly good at concealing his emotions, not the way his superiors were. He was the first real human that Perry could read.
When Carl had finally deemed himself put together enough to leave the room and get back to work, he picked himself up off the ground and dusted himself off, turning to the door to leave. Perry had just begun to close his eyes when there was a light skittering of feet and a screech on the floor as the boy’s shoes stopped in their tracks. The platypus blinked his eyes open to see that the child had returned to him, an emotion on his face that Perry struggled to identify; it was something he hadn’t seen before.
He reached out, this time with his bare hand to reach through the bars of the cage and scratch lightly at Perry’s fur again.
“Thanks, Agent P.”
Ah, the baby platypus thought, smiling to himself as he chattered his acknowledgement as the intern finally left the room. Gratitude. That was the emotion that had been shining in the boy’s eyes. He’d never been thanked before.
It was nice.
And so for the first time in his two months of life, Agent P went to sleep with a smile on his face and affection in his heart. He hoped very much that this wasn’t the last time in his life that he would be pet.
(And thankfully, it wouldn’t be).