Work Text:
No one wanted to be the first to address the elephant in the room.
They had all gathered in Dan and Phil’s lounge to discuss Moose’s sudden disappearance. Pheal couldn’t quite articulate how phey felt, only that the persistent pressure in the pit of pheir stomach signaled something was wrong. It was the same feeling phey got when a sound was slightly off-key, or when a room was arranged differently than usual.
Pheal sat very still on the edge of the couch with pheir flippers folded together so tightly that the seams along pheir sides pulled. Phey could feel the stitching, from the tiny ridges to each uneven knot. This always happened when phey were anxious.
The phouse was always warm in the winter. Too warm, even. It smelled faintly of coffee grounds, soil, and whatever Papa Phil had most recently burned in the toaster. It hummed with life. Voices echoing up the stairs. The soft electronic whine from every plugged outlet. Laughter drifting from the rooms.
Buzzing. Beeping. Tapping. Clicking.
There was noise everywhere in the house. Persistent but not loud. A constant reminder of life within the walls that Dan and Phil built to be their home forever. Now, despite being full of people, it felt empty. Dead. Pheal’s breath caught, and phey swallowed down the thought.
Dan and Phil were not home.
This, on its own, wasn’t cause for alarm. Since getting the new studio, and since they allowed themselves to exist openly as a couple, they were out of the phouse more often. It almost felt like tour again. Pheal tried to catalogue the facts instead of panicking. There was nothing wrong with this change. Pheir fathers were the happiest they’d ever been.
This did not mean disaster.
But Pheal’s stomach twisted all the same.
The others felt it too. That was why they had come so quickly when Pheal called the emergency phamily meeting. Dan and Phil hadn’t said anything was wrong, but they also had not said that nothing was wrong, and that omission left far too much room for speculation.
Pheal feared the worst.
The round coffee table in front of phem was covered with perfectly arranged snacks. The crisps were lined up in neat rows, all still sealed. The bowls of sweets were filled to the top without leaving any gaps.
The fruit that phey had cut and displayed on new plates had begun to brown at the edges.
No one was eating. No one had even come close to the table.
That confirmed it enough for Pheal. They were older than phem; Dan and Phil probably told them the truth about where Moose was, and they didn’t know how to tell phem.
Pheal turned pheir head slightly, focusing on the corner of the room where the curtains met the wall. If phey looked away quickly enough, maybe the tears wouldn’t come.
Across the room, Phandom paced.
They were bright green.
A radioactive green that gleamed glossy under the lights like fresh paint. It clashed terribly with the neutral walls and beige floors. They caught Pheal’s eye no matter where phey tried to look.
They were also barefoot.
Each step made a faintly tacky sound as green-dyed feet left behind oval footprints. The tracks looped across the hardwood, circled chair legs, and doubled back toward the windows.
Phandom seemed blissfully unaware of this.
They moved through the lounge and kitchen with open-mouthed awe, green fingers stopping just centimeters from surfaces as though they were afraid of damaging something sacred.
“I can’t believe I’m actually in the Phouse,” they said breathlessly. Their voice echoed as they moved toward the stairs. “The phairs. The phlants. Oh my god, is that a photo from the tour? I’ve never seen that one—”
“Phandom,” Pheal said.
Pheir tone was more clipped than phey expected.
The white cushions under pheir body were warm from all the bodies in one space. Heat pressed against pheir plush skin and made every movement feel heavier than it should have been. Phey focused on keeping pheir flippers folded together and pheir seams aligned. Breathing neutral. Natural.
Phandom acted like they didn’t even hear phem. They stepped carefully over Dab and Evan, who sat on a blanket on the floor with a sleeping Devan cradled in Evan’s arms.
“And these phramed photos,” Phandom continued, scurrying over to the photos hung on the wall. “No pictures of me…” They gnawed their lip. “Which, you know, makes sense, since we…yeah, it’s fine…actually—”
They rummaged through their pocket until they found their phone.
“I’ll just take a selfie and print it out and—”
“Are you just not going to talk about it?” Pheal snapped, standing so suddenly that the cushions tumbled to the floor.
Even the air in the room seemed to still.
Phandom froze mid-step with one green foot suspended above the floor. A bead of dye slid slowly down their ankle.
“Oh,” they said. “Right. That.”
Pheal let out a breath and sat back down. Pheir heart thudded in pheir ears. At least one problem would be addressed.
Phandom waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t need to worry. Dab and Evan blindfolded me on the way here. I still don’t know where Dan and Phil live.”
They set their foot down and continued the trail of green footprints.
Dab raised an eyebrow at Pheal, and all phey could do was shrug. Phandom really took after their fathers sometimes; if they didn’t want to address something, it wasn’t going to be addressed.
Phey opened pheir mouth to steer the conversation back to Moose when a deafening roar split the air outside. The sound rattled the windows and vibrated straight through Pheal’s stuffing.
The front door burst open. Cold air rushed up the stairs, carrying with it the smells of exhaust and oil. The sudden temperature shift made Pheal shiver.
The Golden Pig took the stairs two at a time with his boots thudding hard against each step. Pheal noticed immediately that he hadn’t closed the door. The busy sounds of London reached the lounge at the same time the Golden Pig did.
Golden Pig entered the room with sunglasses on and a leather jacket slung over one shoulder, grinning as though he had arrived right on cue.
“Hello, party people.”
Pheal stared at him.
“Why,” phey asked, trying to keep pheir voice even with all the new sensations added to the already overstimulating room, “do you have a motorcycle?”
“Growth,” Golden Pig replied, flashing phem a megawatt smile. Pheal waited for him to say more, but instead he simply tossed his keys onto the counter. They hit the surface and bounced, clattering loudly.
The sound echoed too long in Pheal’s ears.
Dab muttered something in Simlish to Evan that made him bark out a laugh. He immediately clapped a hand over his mouth.
Pheal joined Dab and Evan in watching Devan stir slightly in his father’s arms.
The baby hadn’t woken up when Golden Pig entered, so Pheal hoped and prayed that something as innocuous as Evan laughing wouldn’t wake him up.
No such luck.
Devan’s high-pitched wail rang through the air. It shot through Pheal’s head like a needle. Phey winced as Evan frantically rocked the baby and whispered apologies that did nothing but make his son cry more.
As if nothing were amiss, Golden Pig strode over to where Phandom was standing. He placed his jacket down on a side table (where Daddy Dan would definitely complain about it later, Pheal noted) and lowered his sunglasses.
He squinted at Phandom. “Why are you green?”
Phandom went to give Golden Pig a hug, but he slipped out of their reach just in time.
“Where’d you get the motorcycle from?” Phandom asked, moving on as if Golden Pig hadn’t just rebuffed them.
Golden Pig shrugged. “Somewhere. Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Yeah, people give me stuff sometimes. I wake up after a party and just have new things,” he said, leaning on the counter.
Phandom clutched a hand to their chest. “I can’t believe it. I’m really here. In the Phouse. With the Golden Pig.”
“Oh yeah,” Golden Pig said as he pulled off his glasses. He made his way to the liquor cabinet and sorted through the bottles. “Isn’t there a restraining order? How are you here?”
Before they could respond, what sounded like a thousand footsteps thundered up the stairs. Lion and Lioness burst into the lounge, breathless and flushed. Their coats were already half-off. Their twelve children poured out around them, already bouncing with energy.
“We’re so sorry we’re late,” Lioness began as one child tugged her arm and another leapt onto her back. “Could we—”
The noise was too much for Pheal to take all at once. The voices rising above each other. The baby crying while both of his fathers tried to soothe him. Phandom’s awed muttering and Golden Pig’s boisterous bragging.
It was too much.
Too much.
Too much.
It was like a million tiny zaps were hitting Pheal’s brain at once. Pheir skin prickled like phey were being electrocuted.
“Could we leave the kids in the back garden?” Lion finished for his wife.
They didn’t wait for an answer. They swept their children up and made their way downstairs and out the back door.
Pheal really considered locking phemselves in pheir room and refusing to participate with pheir family any further.
Another commotion erupted outside. The voices sounded different from Lion and Lioness.
Pheal shot to pheir feet. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Nobody closed the door. Those are probably stalkers or—”
Dil Howlter appeared at the top of the stairs with Tabitha, Dalien, and Erika Pancakes.
That was too much.
Pheal was in Dil’s face before they fully entered the room.
“Why did you bring her?” phey demanded, pointing at Erika. “The invitation said phamily only.”
Dil placed a gentle hand on pheir flipper and gave a small, sad smile.
What followed was a flood of Simlish. Dil’s impassioned speech was emphasized with hands slicing through the air, then a palm pressed to his chest. Then outward, as if he were offering his heart to the room. The cadence rose and fell. Tabitha’s eyes shone with tears. Dab sniffed loudly. Evan wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and hugged Devan close. What Dil said had even managed to calm the baby down.
No one else reacted.
Dalien moved from his parents’ side mid-monologue and stopped in front of Phandom.
“Sul sul,” he said. Then he gestured at Phandom’s very green body. “Yeba?”
Phandom beamed at him. “Dalien! How long has it been? How’s the polycule going?”
Dalien groaned and threw his arms in the air in frustration as he launched into a rant. Moodlets appeared over his head as he went on.
Worst Day Ever.
Feeling Smothered.
Uncomfortably Wet.
His hands flailed as the words tumbled out. He ended with what sounded like a question and looked expectantly at Phandom.
Phandom grabbed his arm and pulled him into a tight hug. “I’ve missed you so much,” they said.
Green dye smeared across Dalien’s shirt.
He recoiled, letting out an inelegant sound, and backed straight into Golden Pig, who was pouring something a deep purple-blue into a too-large glass. He passed it along to Dalien with a smirk. Dalien lifted the drink to his nose and gave it a cautious sniff. He gagged and shoved it back at Golden Pig. The drink sloshed over the rim of the cup, and a few drops slid down to the floor.
Golden Pig threw his head back and laughed.
The coil in Pheal’s chest tightened. Phey struggled to get air into pheir lungs as the room seemed to be pushing in on them. Every sound cut in pheir ears; phey felt every seam on pheir body, every hair on pheir skin.
Phey willed phemselves not to cry at the overstimulation.
“Guys, this is about Moose,” phey said, pheir voice trembling despite the effort. “Can we please talk about Moose?”
No one answered.
Too caught up in their own worlds.
Suddenly, Pheal was young again—a newborn thrust into a world that was too large and too loud. The new environment was overwhelming in every way. Pheir body had rebelled against the change, going from the quiet order of Japan to the hectic world of the Howell-Lester household. The adjustment had been difficult. Pheir dads tried, but they couldn’t stop being who they were. The shouting. The laughing. The constant noises from their video games and their computers and their phones.
Some days, it was unbearable.
But Moose had understood.
Moose had bought phem pheir first pair of noise-canceling headphones. Moose had taken phem on long walks when the phouse became too wild. Moose had always been there when phey needed peace and stability.
Except now.
Tears burned behind Pheal’s eyes. Phey sniffed, and one escaped anyway, sliding down pheir round cheek. No one noticed. No one stopped.
No one cared that phey were crying.
A loud crash came from the back garden.
Everyone froze and then leapt to their feet. When the screaming started, everyone ran down the stairs and out the back door.
The scene that greeted them made the adults of the phamily halt. The Phabubus had Pancake Pancakes cornered near the hedges with their tiny hands grasping her fur. Nearby, Lion’s children had swarmed Nuki, shouting with glee as he struggled to escape on his short, frantic legs. The air smelled of grass, churned dirt, and something faintly burnt.
Phandom stepped out of the doorway last.
“Where’s Wig?” Phandom asked, trailing green dye behind them as they moved toward the grass. The color didn’t quite blend in with the lawn, which Pheal noticed immediately. Everything was suddenly too bright and too off.
Pheir jaw tightened.
“He’s with Dan and Phil. At the studio,” Pheal said. “They’re recording a new episode.”
The words tasted bitter. Phey had tried hard to get past the jealousy; phey’d identified it, named it, and practiced letting it pass. There were more phildren now. The phouse was more of a home than ever. That was fine. Manageable.
But it still hurt that pheir dads took the axolotl everywhere the way they used to take phem. That particular ache lingered no matter how hard phey tried to let it go.
Phey swallowed the feeling down. This was not the time for that.
Phandom stared at phem. Their eyes went wide, like the sentence needed time to fully load.
“A…new episode?”
Dalien made an impatient gesture, as if to say obviously.
Phandom dropped to their knees. Wet grass soaked into their pants, and Pheal flinched at the sound of their palms slapping the ground. Phandom tilted their face upward and wailed.
“We don’t have to be green anymore,” they sobbed. Tears cut clean paths through the dye on their face, streaking down in uneven lines. “Our dads are coming home!”
The relief in their voice was almost painful to hear. The phouse still felt wrong without Moose there.
From inside the house, Dan’s voice called out, “Is someone in the back garden?”
Phandom screamed.
“The restraining order!”
They scrambled to run, slipping wildly as green-stained feet slid on wet grass. The Phabubus shrieked with delight and chased after them, nipping at Phandom’s ankles. Now free from the terrors, Pancake Pancakes bolted for the house. Her claws tried to get traction against the slick rock. She slid across the stone patio and collided hard with Erika, who stumbled backward with her arms flailing. On the way down, she hit an outdoor lamp.
The explosion was deafening.
Nothing made sense to Pheal. Glass shattered outward in every direction. Heat followed, and phey watched in horror as fire ran up the still wet grass and plants as if the garden itself had decided to burn. The smell in the air changed instantly. Smoke. Melted plastic. Scorched greenery. Pheal’s heart hammered in pheir chest. Everything was unraveling. Phey tried to breathe.
Around phem, the others screamed.
Adults dragged children back, and shouting seemed to come from every direction. Everyone moved as far as possible from the fire.
Except the Sims.
They ran toward it instead, pointing and jumping and shouting over one another. Devan wailed in his father’s arms.
It was too much.
Too loud.
Too fast.
Too many things happening at once with no clear order.
Pheal stood frozen with pheir eyes darting, trying to contain the chaos. And failing.
Too much.
Too much.
Too much.
The terror phey had carefully boxed and shoved down inside phem finally broke free.
“I think Moose is dead!”
Everyone stopped and looked at phem. Pheir tears spilled out, and pheir siblings rushed over, crowding phem with words of sympathy and encouragement. The distant noise of London, of cars and bodies and movement, seemed to drop away. Pheal shrank back as pheir siblings drew close. No, no, no, phey thought. Too close. Please—
“Who’s dead?”
Pheal turned at the sound of Moose’s voice. He was there, in person. Phey ran over and collapsed into his arms.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dan said, running with a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. “Can’t leave you fuckers in the house alone for ten fucking seconds.”
“Daniel, the grandkids are here. You shouldn’t swear,” Phil said. He scooped up Nuki from the sea of young lions terrorizing him and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Phil looked out at the damage done to the garden. Pheal turned in Moose’s arms and immediately clocked that Phandom had hidden themself somewhere. Phey briefly wondered if they had been successful in hopping over the hedges.
“Now,” Phil said, stroking Nuki’s back, “what’s going on here?”
Everyone started talking at once. Pheal clapped pheir hands over pheir ears and winced. Phey felt the vibration of Moose’s voice as he shouted over the commotion.
“Everybody, shut up!”
The talking stopped immediately, and everyone turned to look at Moose.
“Now,” he said, giving Pheal a gentle pat on pheir back, “Pheal, why did you think I was dead?”
Pheal choked back a sob. “You disappeared for days, and no one knew where you were, and—”
Moose hushed phem softly. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m okay, see?” he said. “I was dealing with a bad hangover. Golden Pig, Richard, and I were binging Heated Rivalry with some, uh, illicit substances, and I was just sleeping it off.”
Pheal glared at Golden Pig. “You knew he was alive? Why didn’t you tell us?”
Golden Pig lifted his glass and smirked. “Because I like being around this family. You guys are fucking insane.”
Dan dragged a hand down his face. “And this is why we don’t invite everyone over at the same time.” He set down the fire extinguisher and let out an annoyed grunt. “Okay, we just came back from a very busy shooting day, and we just put Wig and Bleak Bunny down for a nap. So why don’t you guys make yourselves useful for once and—”
Phil stepped in, sensing that another swear-laden storm was coming. “What Dan is trying to say is we would really appreciate it if our lovely children would stop trying to burn our house down.”
Dan gave Phil an unamused look, which Phil responded to with a bright smile. Pheal didn’t miss the way the ends of Daddy Dan’s mouth twitched upward.
“All right,” Dan said, dropping his shoulders. “You guys better clean this up, or you’ll be as dead as you thought Moose was.”
Moose tapped Pheal gently on the shoulder. Pheal looked up at him.
“You wanna go for a walk and get away from all this chaos?” he whispered.
Pheal nearly burst into tears again. Phey nodded, and Moose smiled.
They walked into the house with their fathers right behind them. As Pheal and Moose made their way to the front door, phey heard Phil whisper to Dan, “Why is Phandom green?”
Pheal shook pheir head and chuckled.
Pheir family was overwhelming, but phey still loved them all the same. And Golden Pig was right.
They were fucking insane.