Chapter Text
"Well… I think I have feelings for Isabella," Phineas confessed, and Ferb, for a brief moment, felt numb, like he was no longer connected to his physical body, floating away from himself before it all came crashing down.
He'd been dreading this day for a long time now, and it had finally come. He wouldn't say he wasn't ready; after all, he'd been expecting the shoe to drop since before he'd ever even developed feelings for Isabella. The second he started crushing on her, he'd also started mentally preparing himself for heartbreak.
Still, it hurt more than he'd expected.
"You should tell her," he told Phineas. He loved his brother more than anything, and all he wanted was for him to be happy. If it meant pushing his feelings down so they never saw the light of day, he'd do it.
{Quiet}Dad stopped them as they were coming home from school, and he and Phineas talked for a while. At one point, he shot Ferb a look to check if he was okay.
Ferb thought he was, but sometimes it was hard to tell.
⌈{Smile, Nod} - Name-Sign{meaning Ferb} - Borrow - While{sucked-in cheeks to indicate small}⌋ {Quiet}Dad signed. ⌈Recently - Car - Noise - Odd - Inspect - Quick⌋
Once Phineas went upstairs and the two of them went out to the garage, {Quiet}Dad pulled Ferb in for a hug. When they parted, he asked, ⌈Feeling - Kid - How{question-mark, look of concern}⌋
Ferb pursed his lips slightly and tilted his head.
{Quiet}Dad slowly nodded and squeezed his shoulder. ⌈I - Love - You⌋
He blinked, and his dad smiled back.
⌈Now - Car{question-mark}⌋ {Quiet}Dad signed.
Things actually weren't okay.
He knew how much the idea of Phineas and Isabella dating hurt, but he hadn't realized how little control he'd have over his reactions in response to that pain.
A second conversation with {Quiet}Dad had him feeling a little less all over the place, thankfully.
While the two of them had talked – as much as they ever actually talked to each other – Ferb worked on centering himself once more. He hated having emotional outbursts and hated feeling out of control, and he needed to do a better job of hiding his feelings from his brother.
{Quiet}Dad sat patiently, passing him tools and equipment and parts, as he assembled the rest of the mechanical butterflies Phineas had been making for Isabella.
Ferb also took the time to make the planned glow-in-the-dark flowers, then arranged everything just so. Isabella deserved the best. Even if he couldn't be the one to date her, at least in this small way he would get to be the one 'giving' her flowers.
When all that was left was to wrap them, he felt much better than when {Quiet}Dad had originally come upstairs.
"Thank you," he whispered.
{Quiet}Dad just kissed him on the top of the head before heading back downstairs.
As soon as Phineas left to go ask out Isabella, Ferb was left alone with the twisting, painful guilt curling up along his insides and eating him alive.
He never lied to Phineas, but…
It was the only way to protect his brother from him.
Ferb was a terrible person for crushing on the one girl that would never be interested in him, the one that had only ever loved his brother for years and years, the one that his brother now liked back.
He headed downstairs to see if he could find a distraction. Maybe he'd replace the break-pads on the car now, instead of letting {Quiet}Dad do it over the weekend.
In the kitchen, {Inventor}Dad was pulling on his shoes. "Hey, kid," he said when he spotted Ferb, "I'm running to the store real quick. I'm making that fancy mac and cheese for dinner, the one your dad likes, but I realized I forgot to get Gruyere. Hey, you know, that's a funny word, Gruyere. Is it French? I never really pay attention to the flags on the labels."
"It's Swiss," Ferb said quietly.
"Even funnier," {Inventor}Dad said. "Now come on. If we don't get going now, dinner's gonna be late. While we're going, I'll tell you about the time I went backpacking across Europe."
The next day, Phineas was noticeably off, and it only got worse after he and Isabella went to find more games for their game night.
Ferb tried to figure out what was happening, but then Phineas disappeared to talk to {he assumed Quiet}Dad and never came back.
The minutes became hours, and soon it was nearly midnight, and still no Phineas.
At one point, he'd heard {Inventor}Dad yelling to Dad about 'his son' taking his place in bed, so Ferb was left to assume that Phineas wouldn't be returning at all that night. He tried going to sleep, but it felt impossible without the quiet sounds of his brother's existence coming from a few feet away.
Quietly, Ferb climbed out of bed and crept down the hall to {Quiet}Dad and {Inventor}Dad's bedroom and inched open the door.
{Quiet, but Very Loud When Sleeping}Dad was snoring away, and Phineas was curled up tightly in bed next to him, his brow creased and his sleep obviously troubled.
Neither of them ever slept well when apart.
Even if Phineas was mad at him – though Ferb couldn't figure out why, but it was the only thing he could think of as being the reason for everything – they both needed quality sleep, so he snuck into bed next to his brother, falling asleep almost instantly.
"I miss you when you're not there," Ferb admitted to Phineas the next day. He should be better than that. He was 18 now; they'd be going off to college soon. He couldn't be codependent on his brother for the rest of their lives.
"I do too," Phineas said, and it meant everything to him that his brother understood. "But I promise, I'm never going to leave you. As long as you want me there, I will be."
He couldn't promise that. That's not how life was supposed to go for siblings. But… Phineas could make the impossible possible every day, so why not this? Ferb remembered what Phineas had said a few days earlier: If growing up means I lose you, then I refuse.
So he let himself confess, "Always. I want you there always."
"Then I'll always be with you," Phineas said, his words sounding like a promise.
Ferb, beyond all common sense and reason, trusted that it was a promise Phineas would keep.
Friday afternoon, Ferb worked to get everything squared away for Phineas and Isabella's first date. Just like the flowers, it had to be perfect because they both deserved the world.
His job moonlighting as a food critic left him with a lot of contacts in the restaurant industry, and he made sure to get the two of them the best table at the restaurant Phineas wanted to go to.
As their reservation time came, though, he made sure to stay in the back, talking to the chef. If he were better, stronger, he'd make sure the two of them got seated alright and were well taken care of, but he didn't think he could bear to see Isabella dressed up and making eyes at his brother.
However, when Phineas burst into the back saying there was a problem, of course he was going to help, even if it broke his heart more in the process.
Phineas led him through the dining room, and Ferb's breath caught in his throat at the sight of Isabella.
She was even more beautiful than he'd imagined she'd be. Her hair was pulled away from her face, letting her features show, but the rest of it fell in soft, thick curls around her shoulders. She so rarely wore her hair in anything other than the same style over and over that Ferb could barely focus on anything but the desire to touch.
His brother's words only half-registered, even though he was listening, because none of them made any sense along with the way Isabella was looking at him.
"You knew?" he asked Phineas. He thought he'd done a better job concealing his feelings than that.
It turned out, definitely not. His brother knew him too well.
"And… you really want to date me?" he asked Isabella, slowly taking the seat across from her.
"Um… yeah," she said. When her cheeks turned a soft pink, his heart stuttered in his chest.
Ferb couldn't believe it.
Phineas ducked out, leaving them alone, and he didn't know what to do.
He hadn't been expecting this.
"What's good here?" Isabella asked him.
He blinked a few times to refocus.
He was on a date with Isabella. He needed to get it together.
His chest filled with warmth as his stomach fluttered. He was on a date with Isabella!
Quickly, he wracked his brain for every food he could remember her ever liking versus the things he knew she didn't; then he cross-referenced it with what he knew were the best dishes on the menu. It was the work of only a moment before he reached across to her menu and tapped the perfect dish for her.
"Yeah?" she asked, eyes glancing over the description. "That does sound really good, actually." She looked up and smiled brightly at him. "Thanks, Ferb."
After the waiter came and took their orders, Isabella laughed awkwardly and told him, "I'm not really sure what we're supposed to talk about. I've never been on a date before, you know that, so you'll have to help me out here."
Ferb had dated a couple girls before, back when he was figuring out the whole puberty thing and started finding them pretty, and there'd been a date here and there as high school went on, but he'd never felt anything close to what he felt for Isabella, so he wasn't sure either.
What did people who'd been friends their whole lives talk about on their first date?
He wasn't afraid to let her know he didn't have a clue. Relationships were built on trust and respect, and he knew she wouldn't make fun of him for not knowing, so he shrugged and tilted his head, quirking his lips.
"I'm glad it's not just me," Isabella said, laughing again. "Well… Oh! I know what we can talk about! So I know you and Phineas have been getting letters from places asking you to go to their school, but how about the places you actually applied to?"
After that, the two of them talked for hours – or, Isabella talked and Ferb communicated in his own way – the conversation flowing smoothly. He barely noticed the food he ate, and although they'd gotten desert, he couldn't remember what they ordered.
Once their plates were cleared away, he felt his confidence recover enough to hold her hand across the table.
It was so soft and small in his.
Ferb couldn't believe everything was working out for him.
He was on a date with the girl he'd been in love with for ages, his brother agreed to go to the same university as him in the fall, and no one had to get hurt for any of it to come true.
He'd been so prepared for heartbreak that he was at a bit of a loss for what to do with his happiness.
Embrace it, he supposed. It was all he could do.
He smiled and squeezed Isabella's hand.