Chapter Text
“Maybe we could make the nanobots again, and then I can make them spell out… something.”
Phineas collapsed on top of his bed, burying his face in his blankets. He had spent all morning trying to come up with a right way to confess/ask Isabella out, and it seemed that his creativity had chosen that day out of all days to abandon him.
“Again, I’m telling you that she might enjoy something simpler,” Ferb said matter-of-factly. Phineas couldn’t see his brother, what with having his head in his blankets, but he knew he probably looked annoyingly unbothered. “Remember her birthdays?”
A lightbulb went off in his brain. “Her birthday, of course!” He sat back up. “That gives me the perfect idea!”
“Taking her out for ice cream?”
“Building a giant butterfly garden!”
Ferb chuckled. “That’s… not what I meant. But sure, let’s go with that.”
Emboldened by his brother (reluctant) approval, he set off on his brainstorming journey. If he wanted to do this right, he would need to pull all the stops. Hadn’t Isabella liked that one picnic they went on as kids? He could do something with that. He could build his butterfly garden right in the backyard, and set up a picnic in the middle. He would show it to her and explain why he’d built it and…
Phineas couldn’t think of what happened next. Mostly because the next step hinged entirely on whether or not Isabella liked him back– or was at least willing to give the relationship thing a shot.
The main point of his whole plan, though, was assuring her that he could always be her friend. He could, despite his feelings, take the thought of not being her boyfriend. But he wouldn’t bear the idea of not being her friend.
“Ferb, I know what we’re gonna do tomorrow!”
- · ─ ─ · ·
“Okay, Ferb, we’re almost all ready to go. We just need to find some ants to turn into butterflies,” Phineas said, crossing the “Plant variety of pink flowers inside the conservatory” item of the list. The food was already made and in a basket, and all that was left was to fire up their modified sorbet machine to “make” the butterflies.
The effect would run out in 12 hours, so that left more than enough time for Phineas’s plan (he wouldn’t dare to say “date”) to end and ensured that there would be no permanent effects on the world butterfly population. It was foolproof!
Ferb turned on the sorbet machine to the correct settings and pointed its ray at their backyard’s anthill. In only a few seconds, butterflies of all sorts of colors filled the beautiful conservatory they had built. It was undoubtedly one of the prettiest things they had ever spent a vacation day working on. Phineas couldn’t wait till Isabella saw it.
“Nice work, Ferb! I think she’s gonna love it!”
Ferb smiled at him. “I guess you’ll tell me how it goes. I’m headed out.”
And so Ferb left, leaving Phineas with no excuse to not go up to the Garcia-Shapiro house and invite Isabella over. He squared his shoulders and tried not to lose his cool. It couldn’t go too terribly, right?
Before he could make up some terrible rationalization as to why he should invite his whole friend group to the picnic, he pulled himself together and headed towards the house across the street. He rang the doorbell and was greeted by none other than Isabella herself.
She looked surprised to see him, in her pink soccer team hoodie and wearing hair completely down. Isabella so often looked polished to perfection– like the leader she was born to be and actually was– that Phineas couldn’t remember the last time she looked so… casual.
Beautiful , he wanted to say, simply because it was the first word that came to mind. Another I love you got stuck in his throat.
“Phineas? Uh, hey! I wasn’t expecting you. We didn’t schedule anything, right? Cause I was working on that English essay and completely lost track of time and…”
(I love you)
“No, it’s okay! I actually was wondering… If you’d like to take a study break? I have something fun to show you.”
“Oh!” Isabella smiled at him. His heart skipped a beat, right on cue. “Well, you know what they say about not taking breaks.”
“It won’t keep you long!” Phineas guaranteed, even though he kind of hoped it would. “Or, well, it can last as long as you’d like. It’s your call.”
She nodded, giggling. (I love you) “Alright. Lead the way,” she said, offering her hand.
He took it gladly, trying to not read into the gesture. So, they held hands. Friends did that. It didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“Okay, rule number one of surprises is no peeking!”
“I solemnly swear to not peek, then.”
Phineas led her across the street, downright giddy to find out what her reaction would be like. He opened the gate to the backyard and…
Found a backyard.
What had happened?
“I don’t understand.”
“Phineas?” Isabella said right as he dropped her hand. “Can… Can I look now?”
“No! I mean– Something went wrong! I just… Maybe…” He looked around, but there was no explanation. It was like a ray had fallen out of the sky and made the backyard look like it had a day before. His heart sank to his stomach. “You can open your eyes, there isn’t anything to look at.”
Isabella opened her eyes and turned to look at him. “I’m guessing the surprise disappeared?” she asked softly, not unkindly. And she looked understanding, not even a bit disappointed, and perfectly like Isabella , which was all she ever needed to look like.
Phineas could’ve kicked himself at that moment. This was Isabella! She deserved every bit of the grandiosity from his invention, and then some! He knew she would’ve loved the conservatory and the butterflies and the picnic. She deserved that kind of perfect day.
A breeze blew past them just then, disheveling her hair a little. She tucked it back behind her ears. And… Phineas kind of hated himself for not being able to do this one nice thing for her, even though it wasn’t really his fault it had disappeared. Still…
(I love you)
(I love you)
(I love you)
The words were on the tip of his tongue. The wave of emotions– frustration, disappointment, admiration, love – it was just all too overwhelming.
(I love you)
(I love you)
“I love you!” he blurted out. They both froze. Even the spring breeze seemed to still. Her expression was unreadable, but maybe that was because he was too busy panicking to puzzle out her reaction.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. None of it was. He had a plan , and it all fell through, and now he couldn’t stop talking.
“I love you, and you can do whatever you want with that information. But I needed to be honest with you, and I had a better plan for this, but… There was a butterfly garden in a conservatory and a picnic with all your favorite foods, and it was supposed to be really great but it all disappeared somehow and I–” He looked around the plain backyard, with no remaining sign of what he had spent all morning and half of the afternoon doing. “I’m sorry. It was supposed to be beautiful.”
He looked back at Isabella’s stunned face, not really knowing what he could expect her to say.
“You… You love me?”
“Yeah,” Phineas said, rather lamely.
“And this isn’t some sort of vivid daydream, right?” She said, stepping closer and taking his hand.
“No, it’s real,” he said, squeezing her hand to make his point. “There would’ve been cupcakes about it but… Wait. You’re not rejecting me?”
Isabella just stared at him. There was a beat of silence. Then, she smiled. Not her usual kind of smile, but the smile of someone who was trying not to laugh.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, sounding like she was in disbelief. “You thought… I might’ve not loved you back?”
“Well, it was a possibility! What was I supposed to do? Read your mind?”
“First off, you probably could’ve found a way to read my mind, but you’re way too ethical of a scientist to actually do it,” she said. And yeah, she had a point. “Secondly… I’ve been in love with you since we were seven.”
It was Phineas’s turn to stare. “Oh. But… But how was I supposed to know that!? My mind-reading point still stands!”
Isabella laughed, and Phineas bit his tongue to keep himself from saying “I love you” again. “I was so obvious! Phineas, everyone knew it! You didn’t act like you noticed and I… I kinda just thought that was your way of blowing me off.”
The idea of him rejecting Isabella actually hurt his brain. Phineas dropped it immediately.
“So… all this time that I’ve been trying to tell you how I feel this past year–”
“This past year ? Did I become the oblivious one!?”
“You liked me back the whole time. Hell– You liked me back before I even knew I liked you!”
Isabella laughed again. It was probably funnier to her than it was to him. He had been the one bracing himself to mend back their friendship for apparently no reason. But with her laughing, it was impossible not to join in.
“Okay, we need to talk about this.” Isabella said, reigning back in. “Now that this is in the open, I have so much to tell you.”
“Ditto,” he said. “And, because my planned date was ruined, I’ll fix that right now. Isabella, will you go out for ice cream with me?”
“Why, Phineas Flynn,” she said playfully, “are you asking me out on a date?”
Phineas grinned. He took her hand once more, now knowing exactly what it meant.
“Yes. Yes, I am.”