Empty Apartment: Chapter 13
Authors Note: So I guess if I had to choose one chapter where the story really just starts I'd say it's this one. It'll be a real turning point in the Phineas and Ferb relationship so far, so I hope you enjoy it! Remember to let me know what you think!
Friday February 21st
Fridays were always Ferb's favorite. School was a bore, and once the weekend hit he could go to the Tavern to unwind, not to mention it seemed like everyone else had the same idea.
Plus, this weekend he really wanted to wind down. He had been helping his father every day after school in his shop, and although everything was set up, it wasn't all priced. Not to mention Lawrence was getting new shipments every few days.
The business was actually doing pretty well; it just took a lot of work.
Of course Ferb's father had given him Friday off to do whatever he needed to, since he himself was going to close up shop early. He had a doctor's appointment that he needed to get to.
As Ferb walked into English, he thought about how even he was a little tired from working at the shop. Maybe he would turn in early from the Turnpike; he wasn't working that night anyway.
He sat down in his front row seat and prepared to listen to his least favorite teacher.
When Mrs. Clearwater walked into the room she did so in a huff. She didn't look like she was having a good day, not that she ever was.
"Hello class," she said angrily as she threw her things onto her desk.
Nobody said anything in reply, but Django turned back to Phineas and gave him a look that said 'this is going to be bad'.
"I said hello class!" Mrs. Clearwater screamed.
Kids seemed to flinch back in their seats, but there were a few kids that murmured greetings. Ferb didn't move, but he raised an eyebrow in amusement.
"Today I'm going to assign you a project," she said as she walked in front of the room, her heels hitting the ground roughly as she moved.
"Umm, Mrs. Clearwater, are you okay?" A brown haired girl asked from her spot in the back of the room. Ferb recognized her as being one of the Fireside Girls.
"I'm just fine Holly." The woman answered as though she was offended to be asked.
Holly shrank back in response.
"Now, as I was saying before I was interrupted," she said shooting a glare at Holly, "You have a new project. I'm going to put you into pairs, and you are going to analyze a play of my choice." Mrs. Clearwater said, putting extra emphasis on 'my choice'.
"Do we get to pick our partner?" A boy in the back asked.
"No, you don't get to pick your own partner," she said as though it was a stupid question. "Your groups will be as follows," she said before she started pointing to kids she wanted to work together.
Ferb hung back as he waited to hear the name of his partner. He figured she'd try to stick him with an idiot to punish him for being smarter than her.
"Mr. Fletcher, you'll work with Phineas. Perhaps he can help you understand the project when you undoubtedly get confused," The woman said with a snide tone. "Sorry, Phineas."
Ferb couldn't see Phineas since he sat behind him, but even if he could he wouldn't have looked. He was snickering too much to bother.
"Is there a problem Mr. Fletcher?" She asked irritated.
"I just find it amusing that you assume I'll get confused doing the project, while I assume that you'll get too confused to grade it." Ferb said without snickering, but he had a grin plastered on his face.
Mrs. Clearwater's face suddenly became the same color as her freshly dyed red hair.
"Go to the principal's office. Now," she said with her teeth clenched.
"Well, I wasn't planning on going later." Ferb said as he stood up and grabbed his books.
A few kids looked stunned, while others held back laughs.
She had no response, but he swore that after he shut the classroom door he heard a stapler hit the wall.
He smiled.
It took awhile for Ferb to get out of the principal's office. While the last meeting he had with the man went smoothly, this one didn't go so well.
Mr. Jones was an old man, who had no hair left on the top of his head; of course he still had short grey hair growing on the sides. He wore big glasses and had a few gold teeth in the back of his mouth where he had gotten fillings years ago. He was tall and relatively thin.
He seemed to be a man of good humor, but he hadn't wanted Ferb back in his office so quickly, especially with complaints from the same teacher. He didn't want to have to settle a teacher vs. student feud. He had lectured Ferb on the importance of respecting authority figures, to which Ferb had asked if Mrs. Clearwater really deserved any respect.
That had only led to a deeper discussion of what classified a person as an authority figure and what qualities teachers should encompass. The discussion had started calmly enough, but it had turned cold about halfway through.
Ferb was a smart kid, but he was still a student, and Mr. Jones couldn't just excuse his actions because maybe Mrs. Clearwater wasn't a good teacher. In the end he let Ferb off with a warning, but told him the next time he got sent to the office by Mrs. Clearwater he would have a detention.
Ferb had accepted that before leaving the office to go to class. He had missed quite a few. He had ended up walking into his Home Ec. class halfway through, only to find Buford and Baljeet actually working well together.
He hadn't even had to help them.
Ferb had skipped lunch completely. It wasn't that he wasn't hungry, he was always hungry, but he had wanted some time to think. He went to his usual smoking place, bringing a book with him.
He smoked as he read. He wondered what play he and Phineas would have to analyze. Ferb was well versed in that sort of thing, and he wouldn't be surprised if he had seen whatever play he was supposed to analyze. He wondered if Phineas would have seen it.
He knew Phineas had to get good grades. He never got stumped in class with questions, and teachers seemed to think he was perfect. He only wondered if Phineas was a naturally smart kid, or if he was one of those kids who got such good grades by being anal about everything.
Personally Ferb could accomplish a 4.0 GPA with little to no effort. Well, he supposed holding his pencil and writing answers to his tests took some effort.
He just wanted to finish their project quickly. He had a feeling there was something off about Phineas, and it didn't exactly put him at ease.
Phineas didn't talk to Ferb about the project until art class. The time they had to talk in math was spent on Phineas filling Baljeet in on Mrs. Clearwater's latest freak out. Apparently they were fairly common.
Baljeet had been astonished that Ferb would talk back to a teacher in such a manner, but a shrug from Ferb ended the conversation. And a few seconds later Mr. Richardson began teaching.
When Ferb got to art class and got his supplies he and Phineas still didn't mention the project. Of course he had no idea when it was due since he had gotten sent to the office.
Art class went normally, with the kids trying to finish up their watercolors, which were due that day. Ferb finished his corn field and handed it in a few minutes before the bell rang. He had been finished with it for awhile, but he had just kept adding random details to keep busy.
Phineas turned in his beach scene a few seconds after Ferb. Ferb saw that on the beach he had drawn a heart that had the letters 'P' and 'I' inside it. It looked like Isabella would have more art to hang up. Ferb found it humorous that Phineas always waited until the last second to make a detail that marked it as being a present for his girlfriend.
Ferb sat at the table, looking at the clock on the wall, until the bell rang. He then got up and headed to his locker to put his things away and get his backpack. Once he was ready to go he shut his locker and started toward the door.
He hadn't walked down the street for long before Phineas fell into step beside him.
"The English project is due Monday," he said not looking at Ferb.
"What play did we get?" Ferb asked.
"The Crucible. [1] Have you seen it?" Phineas asked.
"Naked girls downing chicken blood and men sweating like stallions, of course I've seen it." Ferb said as a joke.
Phineas let out a short laugh and smiled. "Well, glad we've both seen it. Do you want to work on it tonight?" Phineas asked.
Ferb didn't want to work on it at all, but he would be helping his father Saturday and Sunday. He figured he could finish the project quickly enough to still have some fun. Of course he didn't want to do it at his house. He wasn't sure what his father would think if he saw the red head again.
"We can't do it at my house." Ferb told him.
"We can work at my house." Phineas replied.
Ferb nodded in response as they walked down the sidewalk in silence. He saw Phineas scratching his shoulder and fought the urge to slap it. It was an irritating habit.
They walked past Ferb's house on the way, and a few houses later they stopped in front of a yellow house.
"This is it." Phineas said turning them toward the front door. Once they were inside Phineas sat his backpack down and slipped out of his shoes, but kept his red jacket on. He watched as Ferb did the same, only taking his jacket off.
"No one's home, but my mom should be in an hour or two." Phineas said as he waited for Ferb.
Ferb nodded, a part of him wishing that Phineas' mom was home.
Phineas then led Ferb up the stairs and to the second door down the hall on the right. Phineas hesitated in front of the door before he turned to face Ferb.
"It's a little cluttered," he said nervously before he opened the door.
Ferb felt like his eyes were going to pop out of his head as he followed Phineas into the room.
The walls were covered with sketches of things that Ferb had never seen before. It looked like the room of a mad man.
"Yeah, uhh, I draw a lot." Phineas explained, but Ferb didn't listen to a word he said as he looked at one of the walls.
A time machine, a submarine, a haunted house, a giant mechanical dog, mechanical tops of doom, and so much more covered the walls. Each blueprint held so much detail that it took Ferb's breath away. He pulled a drawing off the wall of a rollercoaster and examined it closely.
"Look, I know it's kind of distracting, we can work downstairs-" Phineas began before Ferb cut him off.
"This would work." Ferb said in surprise. He had been running numbers in his head, wondering if these inventions and structures would work, and they did. He couldn't believe it.
"What?" Phineas asked as though he didn't believe what he was hearing.
"All of them. They would all fucking work. Every bloody one of them," Ferb said as he scanned every drawing near him. "You're brilliant." Ferb said in shock.
Phineas looked astonished, as though no one had ever said that to him.
"You could build these. Every one of them." Ferb said as he walked around looking at the ones he found the most interesting. He had never wanted his hacksaw so desperately. He had never wanted to build something so badly in his life.
"Have you ever built any of these?" Ferb asked as he starting looking at more of the drawings around the room. At some point he had pulled out a pencil and began correcting any math mistakes that had been made, not that there were many. It didn't matter that they weren't his.
"No. I've never really been able to. I wouldn't know how to go about it." Phineas said, seeming increasingly uncomfortable as he rubbed his shoulder.
"You should. You bloody should." Ferb said, still allowing his mind to process everything he was seeing. He had never seen anything like the drawings on Phineas' walls. He had never even thought of any of these things.
Eventually he just had to stop and let it all sink in. He was in such shock.
Phineas didn't say anything when Ferb finally stopped looking around the room. He just stood watching, wondering if Ferb would say anything.
When he didn't after a few minutes, Phineas finally spoke up.
"We should work on our project." Phineas suggested.
Ferb took a deep breath before he started nodding. He was here to do a project. He wasn't here to look around at all of the inventions Phineas had drawn out. But God knows that was all he wanted to do after he'd seen them.
"Okay." Ferb said as he turned around to face Phineas.
Phineas ignored the surprised and almost dazed look in Ferb's eyes as he sat down on his bed and motioned for Ferb to do the same.
Ferb shook his head and sat down beside the red head. It was difficult for him to stop looking around at the multiple drawings, but he somehow tore his gaze away to look at Phineas.
Phineas opened his mouth to speak when a chirping sound came from the doorway. The boys turned to see Phineas' pet platypus.
"Hey, Perry!" Phineas called to the creature as it walked over to him. The platypus chirped again as he allowed Phineas to pet him.
"You have a pet platypus?" Ferb asked looking at Phineas bewilderedly. Platypi were Ferb's favorite animal, but he had never expected to meet someone who had one.
"Yeah, this is-" Phineas said pointing to the spot on the floor where the platypus had been seconds ago. "Hey, where's Perry?" He asked to himself as he looked around.
Ferb looked around the room. He hadn't noticed the platypus' departure. "Strange. Moves quickly for a platypus."
"Yeah, they don't do much," Phineas said offhandedly as he shrugged, "So we need to write a two page paper about it." Phineas explained as he pulled a laptop out from under his bed, dismissing the subject of his pet.
"Sounds simple enough." Ferb replied, allowing him to change the subject.
Once Phineas pulled up Microsoft Word they started talking about the scenes and their importance to the play.
As it turned out they both knew the play quite well and had both read the book. The project went quickly, with both boy's being able to break down the scenes easily, and then figuring out how to dumb it down for their teacher.
They finished relatively quickly, taking about half an hour to write the two page paper.
Once it was typed and finished, Phineas saved it to his flash drive and told Ferb he was going to go print the paper off on the downstairs desktop computer. Ferb nodded, but didn't follow.
Once Phineas left the room Ferb took more time to look around at the blue prints on the walls. He was still baffled, although working on the English project had calmed him down a good bit.
Of course the English project had also surprised him. He had figured having a partner for the project would slow him down, but it did no such thing. He and Phineas seemed to work fluidly together, as though they could predict what the other was going to say. It was like Phineas could get inside his head, and he in Phineas'. It was a strange feeling.
When Phineas walked into the room, Ferb was still looking at his walls.
"I printed out the paper," he said holding up the stapled project as though to prove his claim.
Ferb gave him a thumbs up before looking at more of the wall.
"Do you really think they're that good?" Phineas asked in a small voice.
It was odd. While the boy could go from shy to confident in nothing flat, he had never spoken so softly.
"I wouldn't be looking if they weren't." Ferb replied.
He almost wanted to ask Phineas why he even had to ask. He seemed so insecure about them, but there was no way no one else had seen them. Phineas wouldn't allow him entrance into his room and no one else.
Phineas rubbed his shoulder and smiled lightly.
"Do you want to play?" Phineas asked pointing to the guitars that were sitting in stands in the corner of his room.
"Alright." Ferb replied.
He normally wouldn't, but Phineas was starting to intrigue him. He wasn't quite ready to go yet.
Phineas turned to grab the guitars, effectively hiding the trace of a smile that was forming on his lips.
Once he grabbed the guitars he handed one to Ferb, and they sat down on Phineas' bed and started playing the same game they had at Ferb's house, trying to play songs that the other didn't know.
Ferb sang more this time. Phineas thought that if ears could melt, his would.
[1] It's a play about the Salem Witch Trials. If you haven't had to read/watched it, you probably will at some point in your schooling, just a heads up :)