Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation Chapter 4, a phineas and ferb fanfic

A/N: Happy Independence Day guys (I'm British, so no day off for me :( )! Hope you like the next chapter. We might soon reach the limit of what's actually been written, but if updates slow down they will be replaced by another fic that might help keep people busy while we get on to writing more :).

"Ferb..." Phineas rubbed his hand up and down Ferb's shoulder with a look of gentle apology on his face. "I don't wanna say that I don't trust you but... things change. Right? They changed when we were kids and they'll change again. I need a permanent fix for this. If I can find something, anything, that'll stand up to clinical trials and medicate me enough that I can work my way out of this I have to take it. Do you know what it's like to have a thousand awesome ideas but be totally unable to finish them? It sucks! And it's killing me!" He did his best to grin, and if he hadn't been battling a crush he'd already have taken the older boy's face so he could talk to him with more intensity. Instead he ducked his head under Ferb's chin and squeezed their hug tighter. "Stop talking - you're wearing yourself out."

Ferb nodded with a soft laugh about speaking, but he didn't let Phineas go just yet. He also had more to say, but he did need a break. He'd spoken more now than he had in the past year, and he would stop when he had said all he needed to say. All of it had piled up over so long, it hurt keeping it in. "I'll wear myself to strep throat for you if I must," he almost whispered, letting his voice have a bit of a rest. The remainder of his words were just as quiet. "I'll have to go home to do commission work, but I swear to you, every other waking moment of mine will be here with you. I'm not ready to make a liar out of myself yet, Phineas. Especially when it comes to promises I make to you."

Phineas nodded with a tired smile. "Sure, don't worry about it. You wanna get a coffee tomorrow morning? Say... noon?" The old Phineas would have asked to meet up far earlier, but these days he found it hard to roll out of bed any earlier. And those drugs weren't going to test themselves, so he was more willing to chase Ferb out than he otherwise would be, and planned for the chemicals to keep him awake longer. He gave him a tighter squeeze and then pulled back. "Besides, I don't have a spare bed and you do not want mine!" He gave Ferb's throat a playful rub with his finger, grinning cheekily. "No more speaking. Hey..." He squinted and looked around the room. "Where's Perry?"

Ferb glanced around for their smallest family and found him gone like usual. He was once again young and nothing was wrong. For the moment, everything was as it should be. He shrugged when he looked back to Phineas. The phone at his side buzzed, and he sighed and dropped his head back in frustration. He pulled it from his pocket and made a face at the screen. He had a project waiting for him at home. He sent Phineas an apologetic look. Still he found the pen he'd cast away and lifted it, taking it to the back of his hand and jotting down on his skin 'Phineas - Noon'. He gave his brother his smile again, always small and a little sleepy in his older age. He pulled Phineas back into one last, tight hug.

By noon the next day Phineas had made no attempt to contact Ferb, which was odd considering that they had traded numbers, emails and all sorts of other communication addresses necessary to keep in contact. Phineas was naturally chatty and clingy, so it was normal to assume he would call before they next met. The day was hot and bright, the ghetto district of Danville chatty and full of life, and Phineas' apartment block was screaming with loud rap metal music. When Ferb arrived there was an obese woman slamming her fist against his front door, yelling through it.

"Damnit, Phineas! Open the damn door! Turn down your damn music!" She looked about forty and didn't seem like a bad person. She seemed more like she tolerated a lot of crap from Ferb's little brother and was, as usual, taking matters into her own hands.

As Ferb neared Phineas' apartment block he had Perry seated on his shoulder. His morning had been incredibly interesting to say the least. The night before, he'd finished his commission easily. It was a simple job. Then, he slept as soon as he was done. He wanted to wake early and be ready for coffee, because at least when it came to visiting or staying with Phineas, he did not lie to him. He would continue, of course, to lie about who he worked for.

As would Perry, it would seem.

In the morning, the first thing he'd woken to was his alarm. A very dull, quiet beep was all it took. He was a light sleeper. Then, he walked to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. He changed into a comfortable set of oversized clothes, walked back out into his one room apartment, and there was Perry in the middle of the room. "...Perry?" What on earth was he doing there? He couldn't be here, he had to stay and keep Phineas company. The last thing he wanted was for Phineas to be fully alone. "You need to go home, Phineas needs you there..."

Perry wished he had the power of speech, some way to ease Ferb into the secret he was about to tell him, but unfortunately he only had body language and subtle expressions to put his thoughts across. He stood in the middle of the floor as the pet Ferb knew him as, then after a pause hung between them he drew himself up on his hind legs. His dull expression cleared to sharp intellect. He reached behind himself and pulled a hat out from nowhere, then placed it on his head and adjusted it until it fit. Then, finally, he pulled a small card out of a pocket hidden in his fur.

He walked up to Ferb with perfect ease, but with a look of sincere apology. It was regrettable that Ferb had to find out this way, and even more regrettable that they had spent almost a decade together with such a secret between them, but knowing that his plan to involve Ferb with the CIA had worked filled him with hope regardless. The card he gave to Ferb was his identification with O.W.C.A, an offshoot of the CIA, and once Ferb had looked it over he gave the boy a short bow.

The moment Perry stood, Ferb was still as a statue. For a fleeting moment what was happening wasn't actually happening, but as the gears began turning in his head, it was clear that a lot of questions he had from his youth were suddenly answered. 'Where's Perry' indeed. He took the card and read its contents before glancing back down to Perry and feeling a measure of warmth at that bow. Perry was trusting him with a very important secret that he obviously had never told Phineas, since Ferb knew he wouldn't have heard the end of it if he had. It wasn't like Phineas couldn't keep a secret, it was just that Phineas never felt the need to keep a secret from Ferb (that he knew of at least). He tilted his head at his old friend and slowly got down to his knees to be closer to level with Perry. He held his hands up as if to show nothing in them, and then produced a thin wallet from nowhere. Slight of hand was something he learned over time of being good with his hands and needing to be stealthy. It also did a handy job of keeping its location on his person a secret. He let the wallet drop open and showed him his CIA badge. For the photo, he'd had to cut his hair to a professional length, but immediately after, he was asked to grow it back out. Ferb complied mostly because he preferred it that way. He gave Perry a quiet, understanding smile.

Perry gave Ferb a smirk of knowing and a little nod, making it immediately clear that he knew what Ferb did. And immediately clear why. Another rattle through his impossible pockets and he drew out a remote, then waddled over to a small projector set up at the side of the room. He wheeled it to the centre and pointed it to a blank wall, then switched it on and settled back with his young ward. Glancing up at Ferb to make sure he was watching, he pressed the first button.

He ran through a few slides he'd requested off of Major Monogram. There were stills of his adventures in Danville throughout the years. It showed him paragliding, diving into volcanoes, and routinely evaporating the inventions Ferb and Phineas made each day before their parents could discover it. It explained everything. Then, once Ferb had taken those in, he pointedly began another. This was much shorter because he hadn't wanted to dwell on it too long. It showed what he'd been doing to tend to Phineas, almost like he was trying to prove to the boy that he'd been taking care of his step brother as best he could. It showed him dismantling his chemistry set over and over again in the night, licking his forehead during terrible hangovers and acting as a patient stuffed animal on nights were Phineas was in need of a particularly emotional cuddle.

Then, when it was all done, he turned it off and turned to Ferb with another look of understanding. His eyes held endless wells of affection for the green-haired kid. He looked at Ferb as if he were his son, loving every inch of him and wishing he could have been there during his pubescent years. There was so much he had missed out on and he wished he could communicate how much it had hurt to have not been present.

Ferb watched the presentation intently, finding himself grinning more and more as the shots from the past explained so many mysteries. The smile fell as the slides turned to Phineas' current situation. His muscles tensed, but he stayed the course and watched through to the end. It went dark and Ferb sighed, finally dropping his gaze. Every bit of him screamed that he should have been there already, and now that chant was a cacophony in his head. The look he returned to Perry was an apologetic one. Perry shouldn't have had to do all of that by himself. He shouldn't have had to do that at all, and he wouldn't have had to if Ferb had just... called. "This is my fault..." He muttered, forgetting for a moment that Perry understood everything.

Perry frowned and took gentle hold of his knee. It wasn't Ferb's fault- Ferb had been growing up with his own problems. Whether or not they had been as destructive as Phineas' wasn't the point, the point was that Ferb had been a child. Children weren't expected to save other children, and Perry tried to convey that. For a moment he looked sad. He hadn't wanted to see the kid join the government, but it had been the only way to dip his fingers into Ferb's life and stop him from turning out like his brother- he hadn't known what else to do. Finally he chittered and climbed up the boy's body, gripping his little hands in Ferb's baggy clothes until he was perched on his shoulder. He had originally only clambered up there to use Ferb as a mount, but before he could stop himself he had started purring and rubbing his head against the boy's. He'd missed him terribly. He remembered when Ferb was little, with his ridiculously high trousers and constant adventuring. At the time he'd been excited to watch Ferb grow up, to see the string of inevitably star-struck girlfriends and aced exams until he made it out of an awkward puberty and blossomed into a young genius. He'd missed everything, but at least Ferb had emerged just the way he'd always dreamed he would... just a little sadder than he'd expected. But that was fine, his purring implied, that could be fixed.

Ferb bit his lip and leaned against the nuzzling. It felt like a fatherly affection, something he'd not felt in a little over a year. It was a type of relation he'd missed, even if he and his father were constantly in contact with the older man receiving updates about all the things he was allowed to tell. He squeezed his eyes shut and lifted a hand to scruff the back of Perry's neck. He'd hoped that that didn't seem belittling in any way, since Perry was now clearly much more than just a pet. He'd always been family, but he wasn't some blank creature blowing in the wind of Phineas' storm of a life. He was trying to help. He was also getting old. He couldn't do very much for Phineas forever. Ferb had to be there. "We have to go to Phineas."

Perry gave Ferb an urgent chitter. He hadn't wanted to rush this intimate moment but he'd picked tonight for a reason. His humanoid hand pointed firmly to the door and silently begged Ferb to leave as soon as possible, because although he trusted Phineas not to poison himself short-term (he wasn't just throwing anything into his body) he was still doing harm to himself and it needed to be stopped. His beaver tail flapped with idle nerves and tapped rhythmically against Ferb's shoulder blade. Before Ferb could leave his apartment he whipped the hat off and resumed his look of a dumb animal, all his bones relaxing and making him into a warmer, heavier weight. It occurred to him that his life had changed permanently and that, finally, he might be able to have a real relationship with the boys he considered his children.

Ferb had attempted to catch a cab, but they refused to let him on with a pet so he'd power walked the full way there. At one point once he'd hit Phineas' area of town, a man had made an attempt to mug him, which was a poor decision as the man wound up unceremoniously tossed unconscious into a dumpster two alleys over from Phineas' building. As he walked up the stairs, he did indeed note the loud music, and he also noted the woman making a weak attempt to bust down Phineas' door. He silently walked up next to her, a good foot taller than her, with his hands in his pockets and a look of displeasure on his face.

The woman glanced up and down Ferb's body, lingering on the platypus riding on his shoulder. After a blink of confusion she squawked, "You his latest boyfriend? Get him to turn down his goddamn music before I call the cops! I've been hammerin' for hours! It's insane, is what it is! How does someone sleep through this shit?!" The fact that she wasn't deriding Ferb for being potentially gay put her above most denizens of this place, but she was clearly at the end of her tether. Phineas had put on an album almost ten hours ago and it had been cycling ever since- though the music was more screaming and driving guitars than anything else and it was hard to tell where one song ended and another began.

Ferb understood the woman's need to be angry, but he was still very defensive of Phineas. He didn't even spare the comment she made about boyfriends a thought and instead, squinted his eyes at her and pointed down the hall as if for her to leave. There was something about his command that said that the problem would be dealt with, but the overwhelming majority of him said to leave it alone. He could use his towering stature to be intimidating if he needed it. It was an overall change that affected how people reacted to him. It was something he learned to do in school to keep people from talking to him so he could get work done. It also gave the girls in school, his age or otherwise, the idea that he was some mystery to behold and a sort of goal, like a tree daring to be climbed. He was just a tree that was good at dodging advances and ducking into dark corners to keep from being followed.

The woman snorted and held up her hands in submission. "Alright, alright, beanpole. But if that racket ain't gone in ten minutes I'm bringin' in the police." With that she turned and made her way back downstairs, grumbling loudly as she disappeared into the apartment beneath Phineas'. Perry watched her go out the corner of his widespread eyes and made himself comfortable on Ferb's shoulder.

Phineas was passed out inside, but he had fallen unconscious with a deep sense of fulfilment that he had lacked for years. He was slumped over his coffee table, legs splayed to the side, with his head in his arms as completed projects lay scattered around him. Completed laser pistols and high-tech guns were the majority- shells he'd been meaning to fill for a while- but he hadn't stopped there. He had built a polished-looking play area for Perry in one empty corner that looked better than anything that could be bought for a cat, he'd knitted three sweaters and he'd even built two shiny new skateboards that stacked beside the front door. They had jet engines attached to them. It had taken his toll on him though and the backs of his hands were smeared in blood, as were his arms. He'd been repeatedly wiping away a nosebleed all night, and the remnants of this blood smothered the space beneath his nose. He also looked very pale.