Archive of Our Own ^beta

You’d always known you were ugly. That was an indisputable fact. There were pretty boys and pretty girls and then there was you, not quite horrendous enough to be remarkable, but definitely not one of the people who folded neatly into traditional beauty standards. Even back in Gimmelshtump where the beauty standards were different– where long pointy noses were proud traits– you’d still inherited your father’s weak jawline and skinny arms. You had the kind of face that stood out to nobody and no one and disappeared in piles of dating profiles. 

Roger was handsome, both by Gimmelshtump standards and American ones. He had a pointer nose than you did (yours was just a touch too long), and he had the kind of study chin that Americans fawned over, built like a bear or a tree trunk, and covered in muscle even on years he didn’t go to the gym. Being fat was attractive in your hometown, and Roger was broad enough that even on days your family couldn’t afford to eat he could still march widely through the streets while you trailed behind him like a worm-on-a-string, dragging your cuffed and peeling sneakers through the mud. 

For years, you’d longed to be handsome, to have the kind of pretty privilege that came from having rosy cheeks and fluffy hair, for strangers to stop and study your face instead of passing you right on by. 

You’d been so close. You’d made the -inator and shot yourself and gone out to lunch and people had wanted to seat you. Suddenly your body had rearranged itself into your childhood dreams, into the kind of face that rescued damsels– the kind of face your mother could’ve been proud of and your father wouldn’t have covered with a paper bag. 

For a fleeting moment, you tasted what it was like to be loved . And it was beautiful. 

Then Perry the Platypus had to go and ruin it. Sure, you’d technically been trying to take over the city. Sure, it was technically his job to stop you. But it still stung. You were hated again, left to slump past city hall on your ridiculously long walk home without a musical number to accompany you, secure in the knowledge that the universe was laughing at you. 

(It also stung because you’d asked Perry if he wanted to get brunch and he’d said yes which was, without a doubt, because you’d been handsome. He wouldn’t go to brunch with you normally, but there’d been something appealing enough about you being conventionally attractive that made him come. You were trying to pretend like that didn’t hurt but it did. It really did.) 

(Was Perry gay? Was he attracted to humans? Had he been attracted to you? Don’t be ridiculous Heinz, clearly not. You were just acceptable to be seen with in public, and he had a scheme to foil. Nothing more. And even if he had been attracted to you then, he wasn’t normally, and your stupid little crush needed to crawl into a hole and die.) 

You sighed, finally unlocking your door and managing to get home. Vannessa was at her mom’s, which meant the only thing that awaited you was an evening of sulking, eating ice cream on the couch and wishing you were the kind of person who had friends to go out and get fucked up with. 

It was unusual for a foiling to leave you this upset. Usually you were almost happy afterwards, closer to peace than your usual day-to-day. Once or twice Perry had even stayed over after, and those were the best days. But today he’d been reminded just how undesirable you were on every front. Obviously he wouldn’t want to stay. 

You needed to shower; you smelled like explosions and just a touch of cat vomit. The bathroom mirror greeted you, mockingly reflective, making your nose just a touch longer, your hair a bit thinner, your arms limp and mechanical in the harsh fluorescent light. You snatched a towel off the rack and flung it over the mirror. You didn’t need the reminder. 

Your body was brazenly ugly under the shower water, dotted with the thousands of speckled scars you’d accrued from years of being alive, crescents and pucker marks criss-crossing over limp folded flabby skin from the ugly years of weight gain once you’d finally had enough to eat. Most of the fat was gone but the skin never recovered, sagging into itself like rotten tomato flesh, topped with the grotesque putrid scarring on your shoulders from where the mechanical arms dug into your flesh. Mirror or no mirror, you could see yourself, and you left the shower half-done, crawling out of the bathroom and into your baggiest pair of pants as you went. 

You were settled on the couch with a pint of mint chocolate chip, just about to turn on whatever distracting television you could find, when your computer pinged from the coffee table. 

You had half a mind to ignore it, only because you weren’t in the mood to fiddle with spam or read all about Rodney’s latest endeavors (he emailed you only to brag) but you were waiting on the latest digital edition of Evildoer’s Magazine: The Blog in Email Format and also it might’ve been an email about one of the multiple packages you were expecting, and it also might’ve been good and distracting. You begrudgingly opened your computer. 

It was none of the above. OWCA had sent you an email. 

AGENT REQUEST. USED ONLY IN THE DIREST OF MATTERS. 

(This was new. This was very new. What was an agent request? Why so many capital letters? Had you done something wrong??) (Was Perry finally realizing how grotesque you were and asking to be switched? No. He wouldn’t do that.) (Would he???)

Dear Heinz D. An agent has submitted a conditions request, stating that actions undertaken in the daily routine made them uncomfortable. (Fuck.) Please cease such actions immediately, otherwise you risk terminating your OWCA nemesis contract. (Fuck fuck fuck.) 

Submitted notes from agent: (Please don’t leave, please don’t leave.)

“Please don’t use face-modifying technology. Uncomfortable to look at. Made combat odd. Real face is not ugly or horrifying and would prefer to continue with that. 

– P”

Oh. 

Wait. 

The handsome face was uncomfortable to look at? 

What? What?  

He had to be mocking you. He had to…right? 

But there it was in officially all-caps print. Official print saying that somebody preferred your natural face to a chiseled one, wanted your scruff and scrawniness over a square jaw. It didn’t make any sense but it was there anyway, and half of you immediately wanted to call Perry up and question it, and the other half wanted to call up Roger and wave it in his face (or maybe in your mother’s because here was proof that you were lovable) (okay well not lovable. Acceptable. Better than an alternative.) (There was another part of you that wanted to bury your face in a pillow and kick your feet like a schoolgirl, but you were ignoring that part.) 

Nothing had changed in the apartment but it felt like everything had. The dusk setting in was warm and romantic, draping across your faded green couch. Perry wasn’t leaving and he didn’t hate you. He liked you, as you, and while half of you still didn’t believe it, it was nice to know someone felt like that. 

It was nice to know he felt like that. 

—-

“ You’re beautiful when you smile.”  

“Perry the Platypus if you keep talking like that I’m actually going to believe it, and then where would we be?” 

Perry frowned slightly, and you got the same squirm in his stomach that you always got when he looked like he thought you were doing something wrong. 

“So which restaurant would you rather go to for dinner? We could go to that classic Italian place with the breadsticks you like– ooh that reminds me, I saw a new recipe for French bread the other day that’s supposed to form a thicker crust that I–”

“ You’re beautiful.” 

“I agree, good bread is beautiful, especially when it’s rising in the oven–” 

“ I said you’re beautiful. You.” 

“That’s pretty gay Perry the Platypus.” 

“ We’re gay. I’m gay. You’re beautiful.” 

“Perry the Platypus, don’t you think that’s too much flattery?” 

You regretted it almost as soon as you said it, from the way that Perry’s face hardened, and he got that expression you recognized from anytime you mentioned your past, the kind of expression that screamed I’m going to hurt someone.  

“I- I mean- I take it back, I promise, Perry the Platypus I was just joking around, you know me, a jokester–” 

“ You don’t think you’re beautiful, do you?” 

“I– what?” 

“ You don’t think you’re beautiful. You think you’re ugly.” 

Objectively, he was right. 

“I–” You couldn’t see a way out of this one. “I mean–” you sighed, “yeah? Sorry Perry the Platypus, it’s just sorta a fact; I’ve never been much of a looker or anything like that, you’ll just have to deal with having a below average boyfrie–” 

“ No. ” 

“No? Perry the Platypus you can’t dispute facts–” 

“ Why don’t you think you’re pretty?” 

“Why? I mean… my nose is too long? My arms are really… thin? I’m–” 

“ None of those things prevent you from being beautiful.”  

“Well actually according to most people and also traditional beauty standards they do, with the square jawlines and muscles and whatnot, hate to break it to you Perry the Platypus but–” 

“ Is a sunset beautiful? ” 

He’d officially lost you. “What?” 

“ Is a sunset beautiful?” 

“...yes? I mean technically yes? I think most people would classify it as beautiful?” 

“ Sunset doesn’t have a jawline. Sunset doesn’t have muscles.” 

“Well yes, but that’s because it’s a different type of beautiful–” 

Perry cut you off with a stare that time, the kind where he was waiting for you to put the pieces together. “Perry the Platypus I still don’t–” 

“ Shut up Heinz. Sunsets are beautiful in their own way. You are in yours. You’re beautiful when you smile at the oven for breaking your bread, when you balance a pencil above your upper lip while reading blueprints, when you cry about the characters on the TV.” He turned away while signing the last bit, and made eye contact with the floor, and you were confident if you looked hard enough you’d see he was blushing. 

Fortunately for him, you were speechless. Well, as close as you could get to it. 

“You– you actually think I’m beautiful? You’re not just saying that?” 

“What makes you think I’d lie about something like that?” 

And that was a good question. Perry the Platypus didn’t lie (except to Monogram sometimes). Why didn’t you believe him? 

“I think– I think because everybody else has always said I’m ugly?” 

“Who’s everybody else?” 

“Uhh my mother? Father? Aunt Gertrude–” 

“ So your family.” 

“Yes?” 

“ The narcissistic abusive shitheads?” 

“Perry the Platypus! They’re my family even though– even though we don’t get along sometimes. Well, most of the time. But still!” 

“ Heinz. They neglected you severely and put you down so you wouldn’t notice.” 

And that… was probably true. 

“I’m sorry they said those things to you. You deserved better. But you shouldn’t accept criticism from people who don’t love you.” 

You wanted to believe him, you really did. But you still had one more question. 

“That day. With my handsome-inator– you know, the one that you foiled somehow– how did you foil that anyway? You weren’t even there when I was at city hall, which I know because I–” 

Perry raised an eyebrow. 

“--right, sorry. The -inator. Before you foiled it, we went out to lunch. We’d never gone out to lunch together before, we’d just had it occasionally up here or like tea and stuff. Why’d you say yes that day?” 

Perry paused for a moment, started to stay something, and then stopped. 

“It’s okay Perry the Platypus, I know I was handsome-er then, you can–” 

“ No. ” 

“No? Perry the Platypus it was a handsome-inator, I had to have been–” 

“ Scientifically yes. Your chin was more square. But you lost everything that made you you. You smiled all wrong and your eyes were empty. It was horrible.” 

“Horrible? But then why did you go to lunch?” 

“ I-” he sighed, a soundless huff of air, “ it was an excuse.” 

“What?” 

“ An excuse to go to lunch with you. Up until that point, you’d only asked me outside of schemes, when we weren’t allowed to be in contact. I- Monogram would’ve killed me. But that was an excuse. To go to lunch with you, while keeping an eye on you. To foil your scheme. But it was horrible because you weren’t you.” 

“Perry the Platypus, you could’ve told me that a lot sooner! I would’ve made up some fake scheme to do at lunch or after lunch, or I could’ve trapped you or something!” 

“ You did, later. Eventually it happened so often that Monogram didn’t care anymore.”

“I thought– I thought it was because I was handsome, suddenly. I thought–” you swallowed, “I thought it was because I was acceptable to be seen with. Because suddenly I looked better.” 

You couldn’t look at Perry, but you felt him grab your hands, curling his paws into them. When you finally looked up, he was staring at you, deep into your eyes. He let go of your hands. 

“ Heinz. I know you don’t believe me but I love you, for you. The way you are now. I know how you look at yourself, but I see past that. I love your arms and I love your scars. I’m sorry I ever made you feel like that wasn’t true. I like you, just the way you are. And I’ll keep telling you over and over again until you believe it.” 

You blinked tears out of your eyes and pulled him into a hug. “Thank you Perry the Platypus.” 

You felt a tapping at your shoulder and twisted to look at his hands. “ And I’d rather go out to lunch with you, looking like you, any day.” 

“Maybe– maybe we could have a do-over then? I mean I know we’ve gone out to lunch a lot, like we literally go out all the time and so maybe it’s a stupid idea but like–” 

“ Yes.” 

“Yes, like the idea is stupid?” 

He slapped you lightly. “ Yes, let’s go out to lunch. Yes, let's have a do over.” 

“Perry the Platypus, you want to go to lunch with me?” 

“I’d love to.”