Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Heinz smiled as Perry pulled back from their kiss but still stayed within reach, in his orbit. His hands brushed against the smooth fabric of Perry's work vest as they drew back from the other man's waist, the fingertip sensors registering the texture distantly.

⌈Let's eat,⌋ Perry signed to him, still smiling brightly.

He turned his head and looked over his shoulder at Perry's family assembled in the yard; the kids seemed mostly oblivious to anything that had happened between the two of them and Francis, but the other two adults were not-so-covertly watching them, and Heinz felt a twinge of discomfort deep in his stomach.

Pushing through his anxiety, he looked back at Perry and forced another smile, saying, "Okay, let's eat."

As they walked over, Linda – he still had a hard time reconciling the woman he went on a single disastrous date with over twenty years earlier to the woman in front of him – smiled and said, "It's a good thing you two didn't take too much longer. I think Ferb's about to have another growth spurt, the way he's eating."

Perry signed back, pouting slightly, but Heinz couldn't follow; none of the signs made sense.

He wished he'd known sooner; he would've already worked to learn BSL. He couldn't- He didn't want Perry to leave him behind.

Perry immediately turned and repeated himself for Heinz in ASL, ⌈He's going to end up as tall as {name sign, probably the British man – Lawrence} at this rate,⌋ but Heinz worried. How long before Perry grew tired of doing that, always waiting on Heinz to catch up?

"Kids tend to do that, hon," Linda said, after Perry finished signing again, chuckling.

"There's nothing wrong with that, I say," Lawrence agreed. "Though, I suppose we might need to start buying more groceries."

Both Linda and Perry playfully groaned.

Perry turned to look at him, signing, ⌈You wouldn't believe how many groceries we buy already. We have to go to the store three times a week to keep the fridge stocked as it is.⌋

Linda shifted to look at him too, and Heinz felt like a butterfly pinned and on display. He really preferred not having the attention on him. There was so much pressure right now to perform the right way and say the right things; he had to make sure Perry's family liked him.

"Go on and make a plate for yourself, hon," Linda told him. "Make sure to take as much as you want now, before the kids eat it all."

Perry took him gently by the hand, Heinz noticing the sheer warmth of his grip, and lead him over to where the food was set out.

Always nervous, always worrying about being judged, Heinz put just a few things on his plate. He should be watching his weight anyway. If Perry was going to date him, he should try to look his best, even if there wasn't much he could do to make himself look better. Plus, he was starting to feel queasy; he wasn't sure how much he could eat.

Perry looked down at Heinz's plate and gently removed it from his hands, putting more food on it before passing it back to him.

"No one said you have to do that, Perry the Platypus," Heinz snapped, feeling unable to stop himself.

Pausing, Perry looked up at Heinz, before setting his own plate down on the makeshift buffet table and signing, ⌈Heinz,⌋ and his heart fluttered at the sight of his name sign, ⌈I promise everything is okay.⌋

His nerves kept climbing though, his heart racing as he began to feel sweaty and panicky. "You can't promise that," he hissed. "This is your family, Perry. I have to- I have to-" He felt like he couldn't breathe. Where had that come from? He'd been fine two seconds ago. He'd been fine.

Taking his plate away again, Perry put it next to his own, taking Heinz by the hand and leading him inside; he was helpless to follow, stumbling along behind Perry, up a flight of stairs into a bedroom, before being gently guided to sit on the bed.

Perry crouched down on the floor at his feet, getting back into Heinz's line of sight and signing, ⌈Breathe.⌋

And Heinz gasped in a breath, followed closely by another and another, breathing in time to Perry's continued signing of ⌈In, out.⌋

He was rocking in place, slightly out of sync with his breathing; his hands were clenched tightly in the fabric at his thighs. But he kept trying to breathe like Perry told him to do.

It wasn't working, though. He couldn't get his brain to shut up; it just kept shouting at him that he was going to fail with Perry's family and lose the only person who ever stayed, just like he lost everyone and everything else good in his life. That there was no way he could keep Perry.

How was he supposed to talk to Linda and Lawrence? How did he make himself presentable – acceptable – for them? How did he make them like him when so many people couldn't stand him?

And everything was changing so fast! He'd only learned about Perry's family a few days before, and now he was having to try and integrate himself into all these people he hadn't known existed; he'd had no opportunity to warm up to the idea of any of this.

He couldn't help himself; the long, high-pitched keening noise he began to let out was surely annoying. Surely Perry the Platypus hated it.

Heinz curled further into himself, trying to hide himself, make himself as small as possible.

He'd never had this happen in front of Perry before. He'd always managed to contain it as long as possible, to only have these breakdowns after he'd left for the day.

It was so embarrassing!

Perry must've thought so too, because he stood, and Heinz resigned himself to that being it. He was finally too much.

Then he felt the bed dip beside and behind him, and Perry draped himself over Heinz's back providing instantly soothing heavy pressure, wrapping his arms tightly around Heinz's waist and chest, holding him close in a hug.

And his brain stopped spiraling so hard.

Perry started breathing pointedly against Heinz's back, taking loud deep breaths in and out, and Heinz tried his best to match him.

By the time he finally caught his breath and calmed down, he was feeling deep twinges of embarrassment in his chest and the pit of his stomach, a different kind of anxiety that left him not wanting to face Perry again.

"How humiliating. Right, Perry the Platypus?" Heinz asked weakly, self-deprecatingly trying to get out in front of it.

Perry moved to sit next to him, grabbing a tissue box from the nightstand and passing it over. After he loudly and grossly blew his nose, Perry gently shifted him so they were facing each other. ⌈It's not, Heinz. I'm sorry you had a meltdown. I should've noticed sooner that you were getting overwhelmed,⌋ he apologized.

Heinz let out a noise that was more scoff than laugh and said, "I shouldn't have had one in the first place."

Before Perry could finish his first sign, Heinz cut him off and said, "So there, Perry. You've seen me now. How I really am. It's too much, right? I should just go." At least now it was over; he didn't have to constantly wait for the other shoe to drop on their relationship.

He tried to stand, but Perry clamped a firm hand down on his arm and yanked him back onto the bed. ⌈Heinz,⌋ Perry signed, stone-face. ⌈Heinz. Have you met me?⌋ he asked.

What? "Of course I've met you, Perry the Platypus!" Heinz said incredulously. "What are you even talking about?"

He watched as Perry pinched the bridge of his nose in his hands and took a deep breath, before looking him in the eyes again, signing, ⌈Heinz, literally half of this family is autistic. I didn't say a single word to you for three years, and you think I'm 'normal'?⌋

Oh.

Suddenly a lot of things made a lot more sense, in his mind.

"Well, why didn't you tell me sooner?!" he accused, pointing his finger at Perry.

Perry just sighed and grabbed his raised hand, squeezing it with just the right amount of pressure, before lowering it to the bed between them and signing, ⌈Do you want a few more minutes before we go back downstairs?⌋

"Yes, please," Heinz whispered into the space between them. "… Can I have another hug, Perry?"

Immediately, Perry's arms came up and wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him in against Perry's broad chest, and he nuzzled closer, taking comfort in the other man.

"I'm sorry," Heinz murmured against Perry's chest.

Slowly and methodically, Perry wrote, «Nothing to be sorry for,» against his shoulder, and Heinz melted even more into him.

He really didn't deserve Perry.

The two of them sat like that for what felt like forever, but it also felt like it hadn't been enough when Heinz finally forced himself to pull away. "Vanessa is probably getting worried about how long we've been gone," he said.

Not that he believed it. She probably hadn't noticed, the way she was having fun with the other girls, but he would bet that Linda and Lawrence had noticed, and he didn't want to make a bad impression by disappearing for ages during the first get-together he came to.

⌈If you're sure,⌋ Perry signed, looking him over carefully.

Heinz made himself shift back a bit more and nodded, saying, "Yes, yes, no need to be such a worrywart, Perry the Platypus." He was finally registering his surroundings, and he turned to look around the room.

"Wait, is this your room?" he asked, though he didn't suppose who else's it would be. He took in every detail, mesmerized by this glance into Perry's mind and life.

It was clean but cluttered; there were no clothes on the floor, and the bed was made to military standards, but the dresser was covered in mementos of life: framed photos, handmade cards, a vase of paper flowers clearly made by child hands, all surrounding a small TV with built-in VCR. A skateboard leaned against the wall by the door, along with a helmet, and an armchair sat in the corner next to a small bookcase stuffed full of paperbacks. It was cozy and somehow so very Perry.

Once Perry was back in his line of sight, the other man signed, ⌈This is my room. Did the boys show you around, or did they take you straight up to their room earlier?⌋

"Oh, they were pretty focused on showing me their blueprints," Heinz told him. "I barely even saw their room before I had a stack of papers shoved in my face."

⌈Let me give you a tour then,⌋ Perry signed, standing from the bed. ⌈Come on.⌋

He led the way out into the hall. The door across from his got a ⌈{name sign – different from earlier, Linda?} and {Lawrence's – he presumed} room.⌋ Then next to his room was ⌈Bathroom,⌋ and with a gesture, the room left at the other end of the hall, on the other side of the boys' room was ⌈{name sign}.⌋ Heinz just filled in the blank that it was the girl's – Candace's.

Perry seemed to realize what he'd been doing, though, too. ⌈Fuck,⌋ he signed, looking apologetically at Heinz. ⌈Sorry. I'm just so excited that you're here, and it feels so natural, that I keep forgetting,⌋ he told Heinz.

He melted inside, just a little. "It's alright, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said, smiling at his boyfriend. (In the background, buried beneath the stress and anxiety, his brain was setting off bells and alarms in excitement at the realization that that's what Perry was. He couldn't believe it.)

Perry ran him through the name signs quickly, spelling each person's name and showing him the sign, not just for the ones Heinz had already seen but also the one's he hadn't yet. Once he'd shown them all, he gestured to the stairs and signed, ⌈Do you want me to show you around downstairs too?⌋

"Sure," Heinz agreed.

His brain was telling them he had to go outside, but it was also saying that would lead to his certain doom, so the rest of the tour it was. Plus, he didn't want to go out in front of Perry's family almost certainly looking blotchy and definitely looking like he was just crying.

He didn't pay that much attention during the tour of the downstairs, to be honest, though it wasn't like he was missing much. It seemed like the ground floor of the house was fairly open, with large arches connecting the main living areas, no nooks or crannies to get lost in, nowhere to hide.

Not that he started looking for them the second he heard the back door open in the kitchen while he and Perry were standing in the den; he would never do that. And he would definitely never contemplate leaping over the back of the couch to hide behind it.

Through the small service window into the kitchen, he could see Lawrence walking toward the living room, probably looking for them. Heinz shifted half a step to put Perry between him and the doorway, causing the other man to look askance at him, but he waved him off.

As Lawrence entered the room, he looked at both of them with a broad smile, saying genially, "Hello, lads. I came to see where you'd gotten off too."

Perry didn't say a word, just looking over his shoulder at Heinz.

"Oh, yeah," he said awkwardly, wringing his hands together. "I just needed the... bathroom, then Perry the- then Perry and I got a bit distracted with a tour of the place," he lied.

It was going to take him a while to get used to not calling Perry that around his family. Or was he supposed to stop doing it all together? Perry wasn't an agent anymore, so he wasn't 'The Platypus' anymore either.

But he'd always been Perry the Platypus…

Something to ask him later, Heinz supposed, shifting uncomfortably.

"No worries, then!" Lawrence said easily, still too cheerful. "You know, Heinz, I didn't get the chance to ask. Perry had informed me that we've met before at one of my talks, but I hadn't been able to recall when, until it just hit me! It was that rather strange one I did where I believe I was crowned king of the pharmacists? I still don't know how I ended up signed up to speak there…" he said, trailing off, brows furrowed.

Instantly, Heinz knew. "Hey! You're that guy!" he said, pointing his finger accusingly at Lawrence. Perry put a hand on his arm, but he shook him off. "You somehow won against me and Rodney at the Pageant of Evil! You know how hard it was to become leader of LOVEMUFFIN again? Rodney – Rodney of all people! – ended up in charge for a month after that! He was absolutely insufferable."

⌈Heinz!⌋ Perry signed sharply.

"Oh dear," Lawrence said, frowning slightly. "I'm sorry to have caused you trouble. As I said, I'm not sure how I ended up signed up for such an event, especially since you said it was for… evil? I'm really not one to go for that sort of thing."

Rolling his eyes, Heinz said, "Yeah, we could tell; you're kind of a goody-two shoes. You only won because of my evil-inator that Rodney stole and turned into an -inizer." He nearly spat out that last word. Seriously, screw Rodney. He was lucky Heinz gave him control of LOVEMUFFIN again, instead of passing the title onto someone, like, say, Dr. Diminutive.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Perry's face turn stony as he puffed up in indignation, but what did he expect? Heinz was never going to be the presentable, bring-home-to-your-family type. Might as well nip that idea in the bud right here and now.

Lawrence gave him an odd look before shaking his head slightly and smiling crookedly. "You know, I suppose I'm expected to be insulted by that, but that's alright with me. I try my best to be a kind man, so I'll just take it as acknowledgment of that. Either way, old chap, were you nearly ready to join the rest of us in the back garden again? I'm not trying to rush you, but I am worried the boys are about to go scavenging off your plates if you don't come back out to guard them soon."

Heinz felt a bit like he'd been hit over the head with a 2-by-4. He insulted the man, got in his face, argued with him, and the guy just… glossed over it? Where did Perry find these people?

With barely a pause for breath, Lawrence kept talking, "I had also quite been hoping to get to speak with you some more. Perry obviously had mentioned your existence, but we never got much in the way of details. For example, I only found out our daughters were already friends the other day! Such a small world." The man took half a step closer, placed his hand between Heinz's shoulder blades, and started guiding him to the backyard.

And Heinz let him!

The whole world felt topsy-turvy, but he grabbed onto the one thing he did know. "Oh, yeah! When Perry the- When Perry told me, I couldn't believe it. Our little girls, already friends! And they're already thick as little thieves together," he said, a broad smile on his face from getting to talk about Vanessa. "It's going to be hard to pry them apart tonight when its time for us to leave."

"Yes, right! First day of school tomorrow," Lawrence said, nodding, holding the back door open for Heinz. "Always such a difficulty to get them to adjust again. Well, not to speak for Perry, but you both are more than welcome to stay the night. We have quite the nice cot we can set up in Candace's room for Vanessa for now."

He started sputtering and shaking his head. "But- And the girls- School-" He swallowed hard, wringing his hands. "You're acting like we're moving in today. Perry and I aren't-"

Lawrence paused, taking a step further from the group and pulling Heinz along with him, and said in a low voice, "Heinz, I'm going to share this with you because I believe it's important that you understand. Perry has never been interested in another person the way he is you. Nor has he ever introduced anyone to our family, friend or date alike. If he trusts you enough to be here, you're already part of the family.

"I don't say this to scare you off, but so you understand: if you wished to, both you and Vanessa could move in whenever you wished, and neither Linda nor I would have any objections. Our only concern is the children, and the boys seem to adore you, and Candace likes you, which is quite the feat when it comes to teenage girls, as I'm sure you're aware. So. Do with that information what you will."

Heinz took a deep breath and asked cautiously, a small frown curling the edges of his lips downward, "You're still okay with it even though I'm kind of a jerk?"

With a light chuckle, Lawrence nodded. "Nobody's perfect," he said, shrugging. "Like I said, Perry cares about you a great deal, and that's what matters. Linda and I would do anything to make sure he was happy, and you make him happier than I've ever seen him."

His cheeks started to burn like they'd been set aflame, and he was certain he was as red as a fire truck now. Looking around to avoid meeting the other man's eyes, he saw Perry, now being climbed upon like a jungle gym by the younger kids. He must've been grabbed as soon as he came out after them; Heinz had wondered where he'd gotten to during their conversation.

"Either way," Lawrence said and interrupted his thoughts, patting him lightly on the arm, "we're happy to have you as long as you'd like to stay tonight. And if the two of you do end up staying the night, Linda would be happy to drop Vanessa off at school in the morning along with Candace."

"Oh geez," Heinz said, mind wandering.

Lawrence's brows shot up, and he asked, "What?"

"I just realized," he told the man, "I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. Almost every day for three years, I've spent my time building -inators for Perry the- for Perry to come thwart me, but now I don't know what to do instead of that."

"Well..." Lawrence said thoughtfully. "I suppose if you have any interest in antiques, you're welcome to come with me to the shop when I go to work in the morning."

"You work in an antiques shop?" Heinz asked.

He didn't know why he was surprised; the man seemed exactly the type.

"Yes!" Lawrence said, smiling brightly. "Perry, Linda, and I co-own a shop downtown: Flynn-Fletcher Antiques. It's primarily Linda and I that run it, since Perry's always so busy with his job, but maybe now that he's quit, he can spend a bit more time there with us."

Heinz shifted uncomfortably. "I- I didn't know Perry was into antiques," he said, feeling wrong-footed again out of nowhere.

Then Lawrence chuckled and shook his head. "He's really not," he told Heinz. "He just helped with the funding and comes by from time to time to move the heavier pieces for us. It was mostly my dream – I was a history professor before we purchased the shop – and he and Linda have been so supportive."

He felt his stomach unclench. "That sounds like a bad joke," he said awkwardly. "A secret agent, an astrophysicist-slash-pop-star, and a history professor buy a shop."

Lawrence laughed again. "It really does, but Perry just wanted Linda and I to be happy with what we do in life, and Linda wanted to do something that allowed her to focus on the children first and foremost. Up until recently, I was able to do the day-to-day running of the shop primarily by myself, while she mostly helped with the bookkeeping and sourcing and whatnot," he said.

Nodding, Heinz went back and thought over the original offer more. "I don't know if I like antiques, but I also can't say I dislike them," he said. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to come by your shop tomorrow."

He watched the other man blink for a second before adjusting to the shift in the conversation with ease. "No worries if you don't," Lawrence said genially. "There's no pressure either way, but it will be nice to get to spend more time with you. For now, though, I believe Perry has been trying to get me to let you out of this conversation for some time." With a smirk, he added pointedly, meeting Perry's eye from across the yard, "But if he wanted that, then he should've come over and said something himself."

Heinz saw Perry scowl, the look incongruous with the laughing child thrown over his shoulder, and realized he must be able to read lips.

Clapping Heinz on the back one last time, Lawrence said, "I believe you and I are going to get along quite nicely, Heinz. It was a pleasure getting the chance to finally speak to you. Feel free to come chat with me again whenever you'd like," before heading back to where Linda was sitting at the picnic table.

Chapter Text

As Heinz walked over to where Perry was, he felt – and heard – his stomach grumble in hunger.

Perry had to have heard it too, because as soon as Heinz was close enough, he signed as best he could with one of his sons piggy-backing on him, ⌈Linda's been guarding our plates for us since we went inside.⌋

"Why aren't you eating then?" Heinz asked him, brow furrowed.

He got a vague wave, a frown, and a slightly tilted head back, and he cooed, "Aww, you didn't want to without me? How sweet of you, Perry the Platypus."

"Dad always waits until everyone's at the table to eat," the red-headed boy – Phineas, Heinz reminded himself – said from his spot draped over Perry. "It's rude otherwise, he says."

"Your dad's right," Heinz agreed, the words feeling strange and foreign in his mouth in connection to Perry, but not so foreign it was off-putting, just… something that he would get used to in time.

"Of course he is! Dad's always right!" Phineas said with the sort of confidence in a parent that only a young child could have, and Heinz envied him in a way.

Perry smiled and nodded, before patting his kid on the knee twice, causing the boy to slide off him. ⌈I try to be, but I'm not perfect,⌋ he signed. ⌈I just have more life experience. Now let me go eat. I haven't had anything yet today.⌋

"Dad! You're always getting on my case about not eating all my meals!" Phineas scolded. It was adorable to watch stern Perry the Platypus get glared at by an elementary-schooler.

⌈That's because you still have growing to do,⌋ Perry argued back. ⌈Now be gone!⌋ he signed playfully, shooing the boys in the direction of their friends, who were playing further across the yard.

The green-haired boy – Ferb – grabbed Phineas's hand and pulled him away.

It dawned on Heinz. "I thought you used BSL with your family," he accused, not quite sure what he was accusing, but feeling lied to anyway. That had definitely been ASL.

⌈I do; Candace only knows BSL. Linda and Lawrence's ASL is conversational at best. The boys, though, are fluent in ASL, so I figure when it's just them around, I can use it so you know what's going on,⌋ he told Heinz, offering him a soft, sweet smile, one he rarely saw on his nemesis's – boyfriend's – face.

"That's… very thoughtful, Perry the Platypus," Heinz grumbled. He felt like he was going through an emotional rollercoaster that afternoon, and he was more than ready to get off.

Perry just kept smiling and nodded, coming over and wrapping an arm around his waist then leading him back to the picnic table where it was just the adults sitting there. When Heinz hadn't been looking, the girls had moved to lounge underneath the tree and were sitting around talking.

His chest felt warm at the sight of Vanessa looking so happy, smiling and laughing and not putting on that fake emotionless look she tried to wear so much to seem cool.

He sat on the bench across from Linda when Perry nudged him into place, and the woman gently nudged his plate in his direction.

"Here you go, hon," she said, smiling at him. Turning to Perry, she pressed another plate in his direction, telling him, "I caught Ferb stealing your fruit, so I'm sorry, but he managed to eat all your grapes before you got any."

Perry pouted and poked at the remainder of his fruit salad.

"I know," Linda said, her tone sympathetic, but her face still smiling broadly. "He's such a little scamp sometimes."

"Vanessa was like that at that age too," Heinz said absently, then suddenly he had three sets of eyes on him again, and he swallowed harshly.

When he didn't speak, Perry gave him a slight nudge, and he cleared his throat before saying, "She had a phase for, like, two years where I think she thought food tasted better if it was other people's. I was constantly having her take food off my plate even if she had the exact same thing on hers. Charlene complained about it all the time too, so it wasn't just me she was doing it to."

Linda laughed a little and said, "Kids, right? I love ours to bits, but they do the strangest things sometimes."

"I don't know how you guys have managed with three," he said, shaking his head. "I love my little girl more than anything, but some days it's hard enough with one, and now I have Norm, too." Not that Norm was his kid.

"It helps that there's three of us," Lawrence said.

"Mhm," Linda agreed. "Plus, my parents live just outside town, and they've been great to have nearby."

Ah. Figures.

"You and Charlene have done a great job, though, raising Vanessa. She's a really lovely girl," Linda told him.

⌈Linda is friends with Charlene,⌋ Perry signed quickly.

"Wait, really?!" Heinz gasped, nearly dropping his latest forkful of food. "Is your family secretly in every part of my life? How did you manage to hide all this?!"

⌈Luck,⌋ Perry told him with a shrug.

Heinz saw Linda looking quite confused, before Perry signed something to her, and she said, "Oh! Friends. Yes, Charlene and I go to the same cooking class!"

Looking at Lawrence, Heinz said grumpily, "You better not be about to tell me you're friends with Roger or something."

"Hm? No, I don't know any Rogers," Lawrence said, shaking his head.

"He's my little brother, and he's the mayor, and I can't stand him," Heinz spat out, stabbing violently at the potato salad on his plate.

"Ah, well, we haven't had the opportunity to be acquainted with the mayor, no, so I feel as though you're safe there," Lawrence told him.

"Good," Heinz said firmly, shoving another bite of food into his mouth. A second later, he realized he was being rude to Perry's family and said, "The food is good."

"Thanks, hon," Linda said. "We've had a lot of practice cooking for a bunch of people in a short amount of time. The kids are always having their friends over, and you're welcome to join us anytime too," she let him know with a smile. "Just let Perry know before you swing by so we can make extra."

Seriously. Why was Perry's family so nice? To him.

He didn't deserve it.

How many times had he inadvertently put Perry's family in danger with his schemes and -inators? If she knew, would she still be so nice? He thought the answer would probably be no.

"Thanks," he said, tone flat.

"Of course!" she said, and did she ever stop smiling? She was so cheerful it was bordering on ridiculous, but he wasn't even mad about it.

The four of them lapsed into quiet for a moment, and maybe it was just Heinz feeling a little awkward, because the other three didn't seem to notice.

"So…" he said, uncomfortably, to break the silence. He looked down at his plate, surprised to see it already empty. "Oh."

Linda briefly looked down at it too and asked, "Are you still hungry, hon? I made sure to set you aside a slice of pie earlier, so I can go get you that out of the fridge if you want."

Seriously.

Perry gestured for her to stay put and stood, grabbing both their plates and heading inside.

"… Did you get a chance to read last month's Journal of Astrophysics?" Heinz asked Linda, grasping for any bit of conversation he could make to feel less awkward.

"Yes!" she said enthusiastically. "Especially the article with the latest research on dark matter! Sure, their actual data wasn't terribly impressive, but I think it's an important building block for further studies."

At that, the two of them started chatting away just like they had a couple days previous, conversation flowing easily as they got back on a common interest.

At one point, he absently heard Lawrence say to Perry, "You know, I haven't the foggiest what they're talking about," but he was too busy arguing with Linda about what the correct interpretation of the latest imagery from Danville University's radio telescope array was. She thought it might be galactic winds, but Heinz was fairly certain it was something new.

It felt like he blinked, and suddenly the sun was hanging much lower in the sky, just tipping into sunset.

"Oh, geez," Linda said, looking around the backyard.

Heinz took a look too and saw that they were the last two sitting out there, the lights having been turned on in the house and the sounds of the kids faintly drifting out from cracked bedroom windows.

"Everyone headed in without us," she said with a chuckle. "We should probably head in too. Make sure to grab your plate, hon."

He looked down and saw that he'd somehow eaten his entire slice of pie without even noticing that he'd been given it in the first place. Huh. Standing, he grabbed his plate and followed her inside.

"Just go ahead and put it in the sink; I'll take care of clean-up later," Linda told him.

As Heinz dropped his plate in the sink along with the others, he said awkwardly, "We should probably get going now, before it gets too late, since there's school tomorrow."

"Well, not to speak for Perry, but you and Vanessa and Norm are more than welcome to stay the night, and I'm happy to take the girls to school in the morning," Linda told him.

"Yeah… Your husband told me the same thing," Heinz said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I don't know. Vanessa doesn't have clothes for tomorrow, and her backpack's still at my apartment."

Just then, the girls – sans the third one; maybe she'd gone home? – came stumbling into the kitchen, giggling.

"Oh, hey, Dad, Mrs. Flynn-Fletcher," Vanessa said. "We came down to get something to drink."

"I was just saying it's about time to head home," Heinz told her, a slight frown on his face; he hated disappointing her.

"Oh, c'mon, Dr. D. Can't Vanessa please stay the night?" Perry's daughter – Candace, Candace, Candace; he needed her name to stick in his mind, unlike Vanessa's friends' names – pleaded. "I still have a pair of her clothes from that dry cleaner mix-up, so she even has clothes for school tomorrow."

"Candace," Linda scolded, "if Heinz wants Vanessa to go home, that's his decision to make."

Vanessa turned the puppy-dog eyes on him and asked softly, "Please, Dad? I promise we won't stay up too late so I'm not tired tomorrow."

He was never able to say no to her… Letting out a sigh, he said, "Fine. But you need to follow house rules, so no arguing about whatever time lights out is at and you need to make sure you're up early enough tomorrow to pick up your backpack from home."

The girls cheered, and Vanessa ducked in, hugging him quickly and saying, "Thanks, Dad! You're the best!"

"Candace can show you where the spare toothbrushes are, honey, and I'll get Lawrence to bring the cot upstairs for you," Linda said.

As the girls grabbed their glasses of water, Heinz turned and asked Linda, "Do you want me to send Norm home? He has to sleep at night, and it doesn't really seem like you have another place to put him."

Linda's brow quirked up as she said, a touch disbelieving, "But he's a robot."

Shrugging, Heinz told her, "He's powered by a squirrel, not a battery. I… don't really know what I was thinking with that one, but it is what it is."

"Wait, you have a squirrel locked inside Norm?" she asked, suddenly looking alarmed.

"No, no, no!" Heinz hurried to correct, not wanting Perry's family to think he had been a monster. "The squirrel can leave whenever it wants; Norm's chest plate opens from the inside too. But I feed it, and it seems to think that's a good enough deal because it keeps coming back whenever it leaves to take a break. Honestly, I think it told other squirrels about the deal? Because it doesn't always look like the exact same squirrel every time, but like, I'm not about to go interrogating it about its identity," he said, falling into an anxious ramble.

"Well… I guess as long as it's… happy in there?" Linda said. "Um… Would Norm like to power down – sleep? – in a bed? The loveseat in the sun-nook – the little room off the den – is a fold-out for when my parents visit."

Heinz waved a hand dismissively and said, "That'll be fine. I'm sure he'll think it's exciting or something like that."

"Does- does the squirrel need anything?" she asked awkwardly.

"Nah," he told her. "I just stocked up its supplies, so it'll be fine in there. And, uh, I guess, don't worry about it getting out and causing trouble or anything. It's pretty well-trained."

"I… hadn't been worried before now, but alright," Linda said. "Okay, I'm going to go get those things taken care of. Let one of us know if you need anything else, hon."

She wandered off, and Heinz took a second to take a couple deep breaths and re-compose himself before heading in the same direction to look for Perry. At a glance, he saw Linda now talking to Lawrence in the den, but no Perry, so he went upstairs.

Heinz could hear Norm and his complete lack of an inside voice chatting away in the boys' room, but he ignored it, heading to Perry's room, finding him sitting in his armchair, already in his PJs, reading.

As soon as Perry saw it was him, the man smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and set his book aside, standing and greeting him with a brief kiss.

He was never going to get used to that.

Their faces still tipped close together, Heinz whispered into the space between them, "Hello again, Perry."

Pulling back slightly, Perry signed to him, ⌈Did you enjoy your chat with Linda?⌋

"Yeah," he said, then corrected, "Well, she was completely wrong about some things, but it was nice to get to debate science with someone who doesn't only look for ways to use it for evil. I swear, the other scientists in LOVEMUFFIN were such a snooze-fest to talk about that stuff with." He rolled his eyes at the memories of all the times he'd tried to bring up the latest scientific journals with Rodney and the others.

Nodding, Perry patted him gently on the arm, giving him a sympathetic look. ⌈Were you headed home now?⌋ he asked after a moment.

"Um…" Heinz rubbed the back of his neck. "If it's alright with you, I figured I'd stay the night? Both your friends already suggested it up as an option, so I guess if it's not alright with you, then take it up with them. They're the ones out there offering up space in your bed."

Perry immediately shook his head and signed one word, ⌈Stay.⌋ Before Heinz could blink, he turned and dug a set of pajama pants and a t-shirt out of the dresser and passed them over.

Stiltedly, Heinz took the pajamas. The thought of wearing Perry the Platypus's clothes had his cheeks flushing and burning red.

He was lead to the bathroom, passed a fresh toothbrush that Perry had dug out of the cupboard, and left to get ready for bed.

Methodically, he brushed his teeth and changed, poking at the synthetic skin covering his left arm in the process. The adhesive had come free for a small stretch where it joined with his residual limb, but he wasn't home to fix it. He firmly covered it with the t-shirt sleeve and just told himself not to pick and poke at it. Out of sight, out of mind, as people said.

On his way back to Perry's room, he knocked on Candace's bedroom door and said goodnight to Vanessa, then he stopped by the boy's room and told Norm to go to bed, letting him know where Linda had set up a spot for him and watching him lumber down the stairs.

Before he could enter Perry's room, the man exited it, shooting Heinz a smile and signing, ⌈I have to tell the kids goodnight. Be right back,⌋ and Heinz watched as he ducked into the boy's room.

Geez, Perry was such an attentive, caring father; no wonder he was so good with Vanessa. It was doing things to Heinz's heart.

He went into the bedroom to wait for Perry, looking at the years worth of cards carefully, lovingly displayed on the dresser, seeing as the handwriting slowly progressed from the first clumsy letters of kindergartners to the slightly more polished handwriting of older children, noticing all of them said 'Uncle Perry' instead of 'Dad' like the kids clearly called him now. Something to definitely ask about later.

By the time Perry came back in, he'd shifted to looking at the assorted family photos placed throughout the room. "You know," he told Perry, "I'm still having trouble recognizing you without the hat. It took me way too long to realize that you're actually in some of these and you don't just have some random guy photographed with your family."

Perry rolled his eyes at him and gave him a shove in the direction of the bed.

"Geez, Perry the Platypus, I thought my days of you pushing me around were over now that I'm not evil anymore, but I see that I'm just stuck with you acting like this," Heinz grumbled, climbing under the covers while Perry settled in on the other side.

As soon as Perry looked comfortable, Heinz rolled on top of him, stretching out and covering Perry's body with his own, taunting, "Haha, gotcha, Perry the Platypus! I've trapped you with the social convention of cuddling. There's no way you'll escape this one. After all, it'd just be plain rude."

Rolling his eyes again, Perry made that 'krkrkr' noise he'd always found adorably cute and wrapped his arms around him.

"Oh no! You've trapped me back?! Well, let me just say, this situation is unprecedented, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said, nuzzling his head into Perry's shoulder. "Though not unwelcome, I suppose."

As he laid there against Perry, he felt the tension that had been held tight in his shoulders all night finally release. Perry knew him at his worst, had seen all the bits of Heinz that he never showed anyone else; there was so much less pressure when it was just the two of them together.

One of Perry's hands shifted and pressed more firmly against his back, and it took Heinz a second to realize it was curled into a one-handed ⌈I love you.⌋

He sighed and melted further into Perry. Saying it back was a bit harder, the words feeling a little choked, but he whispered, "I love you too, Perry," followed by pressing a kiss to the nearest bit of exposed skin that he could reach, just above the collar of Perry's t-shirt.

He felt warm inside with happiness bubbling up in his stomach at being able to cuddle and kiss and touch Perry like this – he'd been dreaming about it for months, and finally things were coming true for him – so he pressed another kiss, then another, to Perry's neck, working his way up to the other man's jaw.

Just before he could press a kiss there, though, Perry rolled them onto their sides and scooched back a little ways from him, and an anxious pit formed in his stomach. Had Perry not liked that? Did he do something wrong?

Before Heinz could open his mouth to ask, Perry's hands started flying, signing, ⌈I haven't had sex in over ten years.⌋

"O-… kay?" he said slowly, anxiety being replaced by confusion. "Did you- Perry the Platypus, is that what you thought I was trying to do?! Because as handsome as you are, I wasn't going to try for that for the first time in a house full of our kids, especially not since we just started dating," he hissed out, trying to keep his voice low, because kids.

Perry looked more anxious than Heinz had ever seen him before, his hands shaking slightly. ⌈No?⌋ he signed hesitantly. ⌈No,⌋ this time more firmly. ⌈It just got me thinking.⌋

"Alright…?" Heinz said, still not seeing the problem. "I mean, it's not like I've been having a lot of sex since I got divorced – you've seen how all my dates have gone – so I'm sure it'll be fine."

⌈I'm worried that the first time we have sex, you'll hate it, and then you'll hate me,⌋ Perry told him, brows deeply furrowed, starting to get a panicked look in his eyes.

"Perry," Heinz said softly, trying to calm him down. "Perry the Platypus, the closest I'll ever get to hating you is having you be my nemesis. Even though we quit, I think you'll always be that to me. And I still love you anyway, right? You managed to get me to fall in love with you when I was an evil scientist and you were the agent sent to stop me." It was strange to be on the other side of the reassurance for once, but he could – he would – do this for Perry.

⌈I don't look like other men, and my body hasn't been the same since I gave birth, and I haven't had bottom surgery,⌋ Perry rambled, not acknowledging Heinz's words.

"Well, one, I like the way you look, and I think you look pretty manly to me. A lot manlier than me, and I was born with the right parts," Heinz told him. "Two, I know what pregnancy does to a body, and that's not really an issue. I like you for you. And three, I don't really care what you have and haven't had done. Your body is yours, and since I like you, I'll like it.

"But there's no pressure for us to do anything soon. You know that right?" he asked, gently reaching out to run a hand comfortingly down Perry's side. "We can wait however long you need to feel comfortable, and if that never happens, I'm not going to be upset at you."

Perry took a shuddering breath in and nodded, shifting back into Heinz's space, and he promptly wrapped his arm around the other man, holding him close.

"Let's talk about something else, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said. He paused for a second, trying to think of another topic, something lighter that wouldn't work its way back into another upsetting conversation.

Before he could come up with something, though, Perry's fingertips trailed up his arm, brushing against his 'Evil' tattoo and tapping twice on it.

"Oh, yeah, I suppose I should probably get rid of that now that I'm not evil anymore, huh?" Heinz asked, glancing down at it. "You know, there's one upside of my arms being prosthetic that I never thought of before."

Perry raised his brows.

"No need for me to get a cover-up or painful laser removal," he told him, wincing at the thought. "I just need to make a new skin cover for it! Or… I suppose both arms. Otherwise, the texture will be different, and it'll feel weird. Oh, I'd just hate that."

He got a small smile back at that.

Perfect; it was working. "Maybe I'll put a different tattoo there instead," Heinz said. "I've kind of liked having one; it makes me feel pretty manly." He paused for a second before smirking and saying, "Maybe I'll get a tattoo of a platypus."

Suddenly, Perry was 'krkrkr'-ing again and lunging at him, and he went limp as Perry rolled them around on the bed, playfully beating up on him. Heinz couldn't stop laughing, especially at Perry's indignant expression.

After he'd been thoroughly 'subdued,' Perry flopped down on top of him in a reversal of their earlier position.

The two of them laid there quietly for a long moment, one of Heinz's hands gently rubbing up and down Perry's back. The pressure of the other man laying on him was slowly making him sleepy, feeling like one of the most soothing sensations in the world.

He only realized that he'd dozed off when Perry moved to lay in bed next to him, turning off the lamp and pulling the covers over top them.

"Goodnight, Perry the Platypus," he mumbled, rolling over and curling up against Perry's side, falling asleep again almost instantly.

Chapter Text

Heinz woke up the next morning to the sound of someone knocking on the door, and it took him a second to realize that he was in Perry's bed, in Perry's house.

Linda's voice came through the door, calling, "Breakfast is ready, you two!"

He'd never seen Perry first thing in the morning, but he watched as the man rolled out of bed, almost on autopilot, groggily stumbling around the room and throwing on a pair of slippers.

While Perry did that, Heinz got up and stole the man's robe off the hook on the back of the door. He preferred to be a bit more covered around people he was less comfortable with, especially with his one arm cover coming loose.

On his way past Heinz, Perry pressed a sleepy kiss to his cheek, leaving him to fumble trying to tie a knot in the robe's belt.

It was only a second more before he was out of the room, following Perry down the stairs into the dining room. The table there was longer now than it had been the night before, a leaf having been added to the middle and three more chairs set out.

"Good morning," Lawrence greeted, looking up from the newspaper he was reading. He was echoed by a chorus of greetings from the kids and Linda.

Heinz watched as Perry, on the way to get himself coffee, pressed a hand to Lawrence's shoulder and a kiss to the top of Linda's head, and his stomach twisted in jealousy.

No, no, no! Bad emotions! He couldn't let himself get jealous of Perry's friends, because he knew Perry would pick his family over him.

Still, he kept watching as Linda said softly to Perry, "Love you, hon," and he signed it back effortlessly.

As Heinz took the seat next to Vanessa, he tried to redirect his attention and keep himself distracted, saying to his daughter, "Good morning, pumpkin. Did you sleep alright? Are you excited for your first day back to school?"

"Dad," she groaned. "I just woke up; ease up on the questions, please." She chugged some of her orange juice before answering, "Yeah, I slept fine. And school is school, so not really, but it is what it is."

"Oh! Do you want to sit together at lunch?!" Candace asked excitedly on Vanessa's other side. "You can meet Jeremy." He swore he could see hearts in her eyes at that.

Turning, he whispered to Perry, who'd just sat down next to him, "Who's Jeremy?" He assumed it had to be a crush, but was he a good guy? Or should Heinz be worried like he did when Vanessa hung around that Johnny boy?

⌈Her boyfriend,⌋ Perry told him. ⌈Good kid.⌋

"I wish Vanessa would pick better crushes, like your little girl seems to have," Heinz grumbled, speaking lowly enough that she hopefully wouldn't hear.

At that, Perry suddenly got a haunted, far-away look in his eyes and shook his head slightly.

He… didn't know how to take that, to be honest. Maybe a bad memory of a past crush of Candace's? Before he could ask, Lawrence interrupted them.

"So, Heinz, were you still interested in coming with me to the shop today?" he asked.

Shrugging, Heinz said, "Sure, I guess. It's not like I have anything better to do." Then he asked Perry, "What are you going to get up to today since you no longer have to come thwart me?"

"I was actually hoping, hon, that you could come run errands with me," Linda said to Perry, interjecting.

⌈That,⌋ Perry signed to Heinz with a little flick of his hand.

"Ugh, errands," Heinz scoffed. "I do not envy you, Perry the Platypus. All those people and the lines. And I always seem to get stuck waiting on somebody who wants to spend a million years deciding between skim and one-percent, when I just want to grab a gallon of milk quickly and get out of there."

Perry just patted him consolingly on the knee and went back to drinking his coffee.

Heinz huffed and grabbed himself some toast from the platter in the middle of the table, munching on it grumpily.

Soon breakfast was done, and the children scattered to get ready for school (and Norm went outside to do… something), returning shortly after, now changed with backpacks in hand and Ferb with an extra bag held out to Perry, who started signing away quickly, herding the kids toward the backyard, leaving Heinz a little lost.

"First day of school pictures," Linda told him. "Perry's been taking them out back by the tree since as long as Lawrence and I have been married, back when it was just Candace in school. I'm sure he'll take some of Vanessa for you too."

"Good luck to him on that," Heinz said, rolling his eyes. "I love my little girl, but I've never been able to get her to want to be in a photo ever, and the ones I do manage to take, she's never smiling. Even her sweet little kindergarten photos that Charlene took, there's just a big scowl on her face."

Linda and Lawrence chuckled at that, with Lawrence saying, "Ferb almost never smiles in photos either, so I'm sure it'll be alright."

"Yeah…" Heinz said. "He really gets the stoic, silent thing from Perry the- from Perry, but cranked up to ten, doesn't he?"

The couple looked at each other, before Linda answered firmly, "He just takes a bit to learn how to read, but it's okay. We love him just the way he is."

"Plus, Phin talks enough for the both of them," Lawrence added.

"Hey," Heinz said, holding his hands up defensively. "I wasn't saying it was a bad thing. Just curious."

"… It's okay," Linda said with a sigh. "It's not that we really thought you would; it's just that it's been such a struggle with just about everyone."

"Mm," Lawrence hummed in agreement. "The school, his first few doctors; everyone seems to have an opinion."

Scoffing, Linda said, "They all want us to send him to a speech therapist, but he speaks just fine; he just doesn't do it often. And we're not going to force him to talk if he doesn't want to. If he needs something, he tells us, and that should be enough."

"I mean, you're not wrong," Heinz said, agreeing that Ferb seemed he was getting by in the world just fine as he was, at least from what he'd seen of the kid so far.

Just then, Candace poked her head in through the door and said, "We're all done with photos, Mom."

"That's my cue," Linda said, standing from the table. "Want to come say bye before I take them to school?" she asked him and Lawrence.

"Of course, darling," Lawrence answered, and the three of them headed into the backyard.

Heinz bee-lined to Vanessa where she was talking to Norm. "Oh, sweetie-pie, look at you!" he said, scooping her up into a tight hug.

"Dad," she complained but hugged him back.

"Your junior year, already! Before I know it, you'll be going off to college and leaving me all alone," he said, wiping away a non-existent tear and ignoring Norm's "You'll still have me, sir!"

"It feels like just yesterday your mother and I were sending you off to school for the first time!" he told her.

"You're not alone, Dad, even when I go to school," Vanessa told him, shaking her head. "Norm's here, and now you've got Perry too."

"I do have Perry, don't I?" Heinz said, smiling and feeling warm at the thought. "But still, I'll miss you lots and lots."

She rolled her eyes at him and said, "That's two years away, Dad. I'm not leaving just yet."

Ignoring her, he pulled her into another hug. "I love you, pumpkin," he told her.

"I love you too, Dad," Vanessa said, squirming out of his grasp but not without pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Now you have to let me go; we still need to pick up my backpack from the apartment."

"Okay, okay," he reluctantly agreed. "Have a good day at school."

It was only a moment longer before Linda was shuffling the kids off to her station wagon, and Heinz was left standing around with just Perry, Lawrence, and… No Norm.

He must've wandered off to somewhere else, and Heinz wasn't going to bother worrying about it. Norm was a big robot and could take care of himself.

"So," Lawrence said cheerfully, clapping his hands together. "I suppose you'll need to get dressed before we head over to the shop. Would you like to borrow a change of clothing? I'm almost certain we're closer to the same size than you and Perry here."

The thought of wearing something other than his usual day-to-day outfit for a non-special reason made Heinz cringe, and he said, "No. I think I'll be fine. I have a Clothes-Refresh-inator in my lab-coat pocket, so I'll just run that over yesterday's clothes."

"Ooo, what an amazing invention," Lawrence said. "And terribly handy too; I can't tell you how much laundry we have to do in our house, but it often times seems endless."

Perry shot Heinz a long-suffering look and nodded his head. It was so strange and fascinating to get to see domestic Perry the Platypus, and Heinz couldn't get enough of it. All those little things that Perry had listened to him talk or complain about for years, he was finally getting to see Perry deal with them too. It felt like he'd been reading a book this whole time while only being able to read one side of the pages, but the other half had just been revealed.

Remembering he needed to answer, Heinz told Lawrence, "Yeah, well, it's good in a pinch, but it's hard on the seams, so I try not to use it too often."

"Ah, what a shame," he said, wistfully. "Well, I suppose I'll see you back down here shortly and then we can head out?"

With a nod to Lawrence, Perry grabbed Heinz's elbow and lead him back inside the house and up to his room.

"You know, Perry the Platypus, you don't have to manhandle me. You could just ask nicely, and I'd follow you," Heinz grumbled, not really upset, but it was their dynamic for him to complain about the things Perry did.

He didn't get an answer; instead, Perry just tossed him his clothes from the day before and signed, ⌈Get dressed and brush your teeth. The shop opens soon.⌋

"Oh, so I don't even get any good morning kisses? Just a 'get dressed and get out of my house, Heinz' from you? Making me do a walk of shame in yesterday's clothes," he griped and teased.

Perry rolled his eyes and stepped closer, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to his lips, and Heinz was stunned.

"I… I wasn't actually expecting you to do that, Perry. I still have morning breath," he said, reaching up and touching his fingertips to his lips.

Rolling his eyes again, this time more dramatically, Perry made a dismissive gesture and turned to gather himself fresh clothes out of his dresser.

Heinz paused for a moment, just watching him, until Perry caught on and shot him a little glare and shooed him. "Oh, right. Getting ready to leave," he said absently before heading to the bathroom.

One Clothes-Refresh-inator use later, along with the borrowing of a few of Perry's toiletries – he felt warm inside, smelling the way Perry always did, the scent of his deodorant now clinging to Heinz – and he was set for the day.

Perry caught him just outside the bathroom and signed to him, ⌈Have fun with Lawrence and have a good day. I love you.⌋

He didn't know how Perry signed it so easily to him. Every time he went to say it back, he still felt the lump in his throat that he had to force the words out around. "I love you too, Perry. Try to have fun with your errands," Heinz said.

One more quick kiss later, Perry ducked into the bathroom, leaving Heinz standing alone in the hall. He hesitated for a moment before making his feet move to lead him back downstairs to where Lawrence was waiting.

"Ready to brave the wild world of antiquing?" Lawrence asked him excitedly as they headed out to the car.

"Is- is it that 'wild'?" Heinz asked, confused. "It's just a bunch of old stuff."

"See that's the beauty of it," Lawrence told him. "It seems like it's just a collection of old items, but it's the people involved that really make it special! For example, there are networks of antiquing enthusiasts across the Tri-State Area, each with various affiliations and alliances and feuds. Honestly, it's all a bit territorial for my taste, but there is a sort of excitement in navigating it all."

"Huh," Heinz said, brows furrowed. "Who knew antiquing had so much drama. And I used to regularly work with theater performers." Still, maybe it was something to keep him occupied. A real-life soap opera.

"Oh yes, and then there's the customers. Quite a few of them like to gossip," Lawrence told him. "Just wait until they find out about yourself and Perry; I'm sure they'll be chatting about that for months."

Heinz hesitated for a second before asking, "Why?" He had his speculations; maybe they would think he wasn't a good enough catch for Perry, which made the most sense to him.

"Primarily because half of them are convinced that my own wife is cheating on me with him," Lawrence said with a chuckle. "They've been waiting for us to post a divorce notice any day now."

He accidentally inhaled his saliva and started hacking up a lung. "What?!" he choked out as soon as he could breath. That was not at all what he thought it could even possibly be.

"Many of the patrons of our shop are convinced that either my wife and Perry are secretly sleeping together behind my back, or that we're in some sort of scandalous pseudo-swinging relationship," Lawrence said, smirking, "which of course we're not, but none of them wish to believe that. Heaven forbid Linda be friendly with a man that isn't me. Though, I suppose it doesn't help that we all live together and are raising the children together… And I suppose you've seen how close we all are."

He was still talking, only raising so many questions in Heinz's mind, saying, "I'm sure it'll get worse too, now that the children are also calling him Dad. At least before there was a bit of distance, though I'd rather our family do what makes us happy, instead of what keeps others from talking about us, so we'll just weather through as we have with everything else, I suppose."

"Yeah, I meant to ask Perry the- Perry about that," Heinz said, latching onto the one thing he could follow in all that and the fact that he might get his questions answered.

Lawrence glanced at him and asked, sounding confused, "About what?"

"The cards in his room that say 'Uncle Perry' but they call him 'Dad'," Heinz said.

"Oh, yes," Lawrence said, nodding. "It's really Perry's story to tell, since he had his reasons, but up until recently, the children didn't know he was Ferb's other parent. When he got pregnant, his career was much more dangerous, and he thought it'd be best if he wasn't involved in Ferb's life as a parent. Actually… Looking back, I assume he started to change his mind around the time he met you."

"And they just… started calling him Dad when they found out?" Heinz asked. They had two parents already, but they just accepted Perry as a third, without hesitation? He'd always thought of parents as something one was assigned and stuck with in life, not something nebulous that could grow and change. Sure, Ferb, as Perry's biological kid, might have wanted to change how he referred to Perry, but the other two?

He could see it if they'd been calling Perry that for the majority of their lives, just a third assigned parent instead of the average two, but… Heinz's mind kept getting stuck on the idea for some reason.

"Perry has been acting as one in all but name their whole lives, and the children love him as much as they love Linda or myself. I think to them it was more an acknowledgment of a role he was already fulfilling. And, well, Candace still calls him by his name about half the time; though, I suppose that's to be expected since she's much older than the boys. More of a change for her." Lawrence looked thoughtful for a moment, then told him, "In general, though, I don't know that the children thought much of it, really. After the initial surprise."

"Huh," was all Heinz could manage to say.

"You know," Lawrence said, just as they pulled into the parking lot of what Heinz assumed was the antiques shop, "thinking about everything from the perspective of an outsider, I suppose it is rather exciting and dramatic, our lives. It all feels quite normal from my point of view, though."

Climbing out of the car and following Lawrence to the entrance, Heinz said, "Yeah, I mean, I get it. I was an evil scientist, which I'm sure other people think is interesting, but it was mostly a lot of routines, and the other evil scientists in town were so annoying to deal with and super boring."

"But you gave up evil for Perry," Lawrence stated.

"I gave up evil for Vanessa," Heinz corrected because he had. If she hadn't had any issue with it, it probably would've been a lot longer before anything changed. "Perry just showed me it was an option."

As the lights were switched on in the business, Heinz took a look around at all the merchandise on display. "Nice place," he said.

"Thank you," Lawrence said, but he didn't let Heinz redirect, instead bringing them back to the previous topic. "You know, it's very honorable to have done that for your daughter."

Heinz scoffed. "I love my little girl, and I don't ever want to hurt her. If my being evil was doing it, then of course I was going to stop."

"Of course you would," Lawrence agreed, nodding and smiling. "Because you're a good father."

The acknowledgment made Heinz's insides twist up as his face reddened. All he could do was nod once, sharply, and turn to wander through the shop, abruptly leaving the conversation.

Since the day Charlene told him she was pregnant, all he'd ever done was try to be a good father. He knew he didn't always succeed – both of them had been terrible at communicating with each other until Perry started helping them along, so Heinz had just been making his best guesses up until then – but he cared.

Heinz spent the next hour or so lurking in the corners of the shop, watching Lawrence out of the corner of his eye and avoiding the other man as he went about opening the store for the day, but he couldn't avoid him forever. Once Lawrence was standing behind the counter, the inner workings of an antique pocket scattered about in front of him, Heinz finally approached him again.

"Did you enjoy your look around?" Lawrence asked, not taking his eyes off the watch as he carefully placed another piece inside it with tweezers.

He just shrugged and leaned over to look at the watch too. "Don't put that gear back in there. One of the teeth is chipped, see? The whole thing's going to stop working in a few months when it finally gives out," he told the other man.

Lawrence adjusted his glasses and lifted the gear closer to his eyes to inspect it. "Oh, nice catch! I never would've noticed that one," he praised, setting it aside.

"I suppose I'll have to purchase some replacement parts before I finish this repair, so I might as well set it aside for now," Lawrence said, shifting everything carefully to the side before finally looking at Heinz. "So-"

He was cut off by the ring of the bell above the door as the first customer of the day entered the shop, a bitter-looking old woman of the sort that would yell at kids playing in the street back in Gimmelshtump.

"Ah, Mrs. McGillicuddy," Lawrence said, and while his tone was outwardly cheerful and friendly, Heinz detected a hint of tightness to his voice.

Instantly – and he didn't really know why – Heinz was glaring at the old woman, backing Lawrence up even though they didn't know each other that well. Perry cared about Lawrence so he'd make an effort too.

"Lawrence," the woman – Mrs. Whatever-her-face-was – drawled in a scolding tone, "I tried coming by the shop the last two days only to find it closed without a single sign on the door for explanation."

"Yes, well, there was a family emergency, and I did not have the time to come by to leave a note. I'm sorry to have wasted your time in coming out here," Lawrence said stiffly.

Heinz's brain went spinning for a moment trying to think of what kind of emergency Perry's family could've even gone through two days ago before remembering that, oh, yes, most people considered their daughter being kidnapped by aliens as a lot more traumatic than he did. In his mind, Vanessa had been fine, and Perry had helped rescue her, so he hadn't been too scared.

The woman's face twisted up into something approaching sympathetic as she said, "Oh, no! I hope it wasn't anything too bad…" and he could tell she was fishing for information.

Lawrence just shook his head, though, and said, "It's all been taken care of, thankfully. Now, how may I help you today, Mrs. McGillicuddy? I haven't gotten any new china in, unfortunately."

"Oh, I just want to take a look around," she said, waving a hand dismissively. "Plus, you were busy with this gentleman when I came in. I wouldn't want to keep you from other customers."

"Hm?" Lawrence asked, confused. "Oh! Heinz isn't a customer."

"Oh?" the old lady asked, looking suddenly interested again.

So, Heinz knew he had a big mouth, and he probably liked to show off and brag too much, but Lawrence had already mentioned the customers finding out, so he figured he'd be safe when he said, "I'm Perry's boyfriend."

The woman's brows shot way up and her jaw dropped open. "Not Perry, your little friend, Lawrence?" she asked the other man.

Lawrence sighed so quietly Heinz almost missed it, before answering, "Yes, my dear friend Perry is dating Heinz."

"I didn't know Perry was a… homosexual," the woman said, practically whispering the last word, side-eyeing Heinz, who rolled his eyes.

"It wasn't a secret, Mrs. McGillicuddy," Lawrence answered, tone starting to dip into something closer to 'long-suffering'.

"Well, it certainly seemed as if it was," the woman said. "What with the way he-" she abruptly cut herself off and cleared her throat before saying more delicately, "He was so terribly charming around the other ladies."

Then Heinz remembered what Lawrence had said earlier about the gossip and snorted, interrupting with, "Ah, you mean the way Perry acts around Linda."

The woman – Heinz still couldn't be bothered to remember her name – let out a little huffed noise of indignant surprise, but Lawrence burst out into laughter that was poorly concealed with fake coughing, and Heinz smirked at him.

"I never said any such thing," the old lady sputtered, drawing up to her full (minuscule) height. "And I would never imply such a thing either."

But he could tell she was straight-up lying. "Mhm, keep telling yourself that," he sassed back. "Anyway, were you going to buy something or look around, or were you planning to keep fishing for gossip?"

She huffed again before stomping off to another part of the store, far away from him, and Heinz began to worry that maybe he'd gone too far.

He frowned, turning to Lawrence, apology resting against his lips, ready to be spoken, when Lawrence said, with another small chuckle, "Thank you, Heinz."

"What?" Heinz asked blankly.

"While I normally wouldn't condone scaring off the customers, Mrs. McGillicuddy has been coming into the shop at least twice a week for years now, always looking to spread gossip and make an awful muck-up of everyone else's personal lives. Linda always tells me I'm too polite to her, but I have quite a bit of difficulty attempting to be rude, as you saw at that one event that I accidentally crashed of yours," Lawrence explained.

"Yeah. Like I said yesterday, you're a goody two-shoes," Heinz said with a snort. "And too earnest." His mouth was running away on him again, so he quickly tried to rein it in. "I mean… Ugh," he sighed, not sure how to fix it.

"It's alright," Lawrence said, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder. "I'm well aware of my failings. It's hard not to be at our age."

"See?" Heinz asked loudly, pointing at Lawrence. "This is what I mean! All I've done is be a jerk to you since we met yesterday, and you just keep forgiving me and making excuses and letting it go. What is wrong with you?"

Lawrence squinted slightly at him before just saying, "Ah. I see."

"What?" Heinz said defensively, glaring at him.

Slowly, Lawrence removed his glasses, cleaned them on the hem of his shirt, and carefully placed them back on his face, making Heinz's anxiety worse the whole time while he waited for an answer.

"Heinz, you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that if you are yourself that Linda and I will, hm, what? Try to convince Perry to stop dating you? Tell you that you're not welcome around our family?" Lawrence asked him. "All because you happen to be a bit rude?

"Let me ask you something, Heinz," he said, and it felt like Lawrence was looking into his soul, and he hated it.

"… Fine," Heinz agreed.

"I know you see me as a 'goody two-shoes' as you put it, but do you feel that Linda and Perry are perfectly polite and kind people at all times?" Lawrence asked, one brow raised.

"Well… no?" Heinz said, unsure. He didn't know Linda well enough to properly judge, but Perry… "I mean, Perry can be kind of sassy sometimes, and a bit of a jerk."

"Right! He is. And Linda is prone to sarcasm and picking petty fights over the silliest of things." Lawrence said. "So you'll fit right in." He smiled at Heinz.

"But…" Heinz said, trailing off, not sure where he was trying to go with his argument.

"There are very few things you could do that would have me and Linda write you off entirely, and the fact that Perry has brought you around our family means he doesn't think you to be capable of them, Heinz," Lawrence told him. "I trust Perry implicitly; he would never do anything to hurt us, and therefore, I trust you. Whether you act like a bit of a berk sometimes, or have a prickly personality."

Lawrence paused thoughtfully for a moment before saying, "I told Perry something a while back, when he first told me how he felt about you, before you were dating, and I think it would do you some good to hear it now. I said that no family gets along perfectly, and that as long as you were willing to… make an effort, essentially, then we would as well."

Heinz froze, not sure what to say, then deflected, "You don't have to tell me that families don't get along perfectly." Swallowing harshly, he added, "But… I'm not…"

Lawrence patted him on the arm again and said, "You are already a part of our family. As I said last night, you and Vanessa and Norm could move in immediately, and we would make room for you. I'm sorry if it seems fast, but… Perry really is an all-or-nothing kind of person. All three of us are, really. For example, Linda and I married less than a year after meeting, and while Perry isn't a part of our marriage – well, he is, but not in that way, as you obviously know – he changed his name to match ours at the same time."

He blinked and shook his head, "Sorry, I'm starting to get a bit sidetracked. I've never been the best about staying on topic." He laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. "All this is to say: if Perry cares about you, then Linda and I do as well, with all that it entails."

Heinz was back to being bright red and feeling overly flushed and unsure what to do with himself. He couldn't flee into the depths of the store – that woman he'd just fought with was somewhere in there – but he couldn't stay here, with Lawrence and his weird and insightful comments.

Taking one more long look at him, Lawrence said, "Ah. Hm. If you'd like some coffee, there's a coffee maker back in my office, Heinz."

He took the out and said, "Sure, coffee sounds good. Point me in the right direction."

Lawrence gestured to a door behind the register, and Heinz was around the counter and into the office in a flash.

A few hours later, Lawrence came to find him, lunch for both of them in tow, and Heinz ate with him, all while being much, much quieter than he ever was, simply listening to the man ramble on about some story about a fish.

After that, feeling like he had a bit of distance from the emotions that had made him hide in the first place, he spent the rest of the afternoon following Lawrence around as the other man worked, watching him do minor renovations to items before putting them out for sale, seeing him talk with the few customers that came in – apparently it was their slow day, and traffic would pick up later in the week – and talking about whatever else came to mind.

They actually ended up getting along pretty well, when Lawrence wasn't reading his emotions and telling him things he wasn't prepared for other people to know. Honestly, beyond that small moment of clarity, Lawrence seemed like… a bit of a ditz.

He got sucked into his work easily, more than once forgetting Heinz was there, missed quite a few of the social cues that Heinz had given off, and was, quite frankly, really bad at math. (That last one drove Heinz crazy all afternoon, watching Lawrence slowly and methodically typing numbers into an ancient-looking calculator to do simple math for things like making change. After the second time, Heinz started just flat out telling Lawrence the amount before he could even get out the calculator.)

But it was all… tolerable. More than, really.

Lawrence listened to his stories and told good ones in return, was patient with Heinz's mercurial moods, and made an effort to make sure Heinz felt included.

By the time Lawrence closed up the shop in the early evening, Heinz understood why Perry cared so much about the other man.

The two of them rode back to the Flynn-Fletcher house together, entering to find it bustling. The kids – even Vanessa! – were all doing homework at the table – which Heinz found surprising; he'd always struggled to get Vanessa to take her homework seriously – and Perry and Linda were working in tandem to make dinner.

A chorus of greetings welcomed them, and Linda flitted over for a brief second to press a quick kiss to Lawrence's lips, and Heinz looked over to Perry, getting a warm smile and a wave in greeting.

⌈Stay for dinner?⌋ Perry signed, and Heinz could only nod in response.

"Hi, honey," Linda said to him, once she was back at the counter and back to chopping veggies. "Hope you like meatloaf."

Heinz shrugged and told her, carefully trying very hard not to offend her with Perry standing right there, "I always like mine best, but I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Oh?" Linda asked. "Secret family recipe?"

He nodded. "Great-Grandma Gretel's recipe," he said and saw Perry roll his eyes. "Don't give me that sass, Perry the Platypus! You didn't even try it before you thwarted me that day!" he complained.

Linda looked confused and looked between them, but Perry just waved her off.

"Well… I hope you enjoy it either way," she said after a second.

Dinner ended up being pretty delicious, and he hated to admit it, but Linda's meatloaf recipe was just as good as Great-Grandma Gretel's recipe, and it wasn't even cooked with hate!

After they'd finished eating, he was dragging his feet, reluctant to leave. Perry's family was so nice and made sure he always felt involved, asking him his opinion and making sure to include him in the conversations.

But routine and stability were important to kids, at least that's what the parenting books he'd read way back when said, and so he wanted to get Vanessa home and back to her regular routine, what with school being back in session, so at about 8 PM, he drove them back to his apartment.

"I really like the Flynn-Fletchers," Vanessa said quietly on the ride back.

"… I do too, sweetie," he said.

Chapter Text

"I'm going to take you out tonight, Perry the Platypus," Heinz stated into Perry's voicemail a couple days later, having called him just after finishing breakfast. "Be ready at seven-thirty, and I'll come pick you up. No need to dress up."

As soon as he hung up, he went to get everything ready. It was their first official date, and it had to be perfect.

By the time he rolled up in front of the Flynn-Fletcher house, though, it had already been a long day. First, he got his truck freshly washed, and then promptly had to get it re-washed because a flock of pigeons decided to hang out on it at his second stop, absolutely coating it in bird poop.

His second stop had been for snacks, where he found the store was all out of both his and Perry's favorites. The manager claimed their regular shipment of almond brittle and other candied goods was delayed due to a manufacturing issue, and if Heinz was still evil, that would be enough for him to make an -inator, for sure.

After that, it was time to pick up his dry cleaning so that he had a crisp, clean lab coat to wear for the date, but it turned out there'd been a mix-up, so none of his clothes were going to be ready until the next day, so he was stuck wearing his slightly funky, wrinkled, laundry-day lab coat that was one more use of the Clothes-Refresh-inator away from falling completely apart.

He sincerely hoped that the day was front-loading all his bad luck so that he could have a nice, smooth date with Perry that evening. And it seemed like that might be the case as he made it to Perry's house alright! Nothing had gone wrong on the way there, so things were looking up.

He stepped up to the front door with flowers in hand – before he'd left, Vanessa had told him that he really should bring some, so he'd picked up a basic bouquet from the grocery store – and knocked.

Perry was the one to open the door, barely swinging it open enough to slide through, quickly shutting it behind him. In the brief second Heinz could see inside, he spotted Perry's entire family sitting in the living room.

He looked down to the flowers in his hand and pushed them closer to his boyfriend. "You should really put these in water, Perry the Platypus. Otherwise, they're going to wilt."

⌈Yes, but Linda is right inside, eager to take pictures like we're two teenagers going to prom, and the others all want to ask you a million questions about our plans, so if we don't go now, we'll never make it to our date,⌋ Perry told him with a bright smile and a 'what can you do' expression. He took the flowers and signed, ⌈Thank you, though. They're beautiful.⌋

"You're welcome," Heinz said and proceeded to awkwardly continue standing on the front step without moving.

Perry looked at him for a long moment with raised brows before tilting his head in the direction of Heinz's truck.

"Right, yes, our date," Heinz said, turning and stumbling his way toward the truck, where he politely held the door open for Perry before getting in on the driver's side and heading toward the drive-in.

Heinz stopped just before the turn for it and said to Perry, "I figured the movies would make a good first date, so I'm taking us to the drive-in, but honestly, the prices are just ridiculous for tickets anymore. So you should hop in the back so we can get in on one ticket."

Perry looked at him blankly for a long moment before rolling his eyes. ⌈No.⌋

"No? Perry the Platypus, don't you agree it's nice to save a little money? I even brought snacks so we don't have to pay for overpriced concessions!" Heinz argued.

His boyfriend sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he'd gotten that out of his system, he told Heinz, ⌈I'll pay.⌋

"No, no, no! I asked you out, so I'm going to pay! I just think it's silly to spend more than we have to," he insisted.

⌈Heinz, just drive,⌋ Perry signed sharply, and Heinz grumbled, but he put the truck back in gear and drove the last bit of the way to the drive-in.

At the ticket booth, he had trouble getting his wallet out of his pocket, and before he managed to pull it out to pay, Perry was already stretching across the cab and holding a twenty-dollar bill out of the window for the attendant to take.

"Hey!" Heinz whined. "I said I was going to pay!"

Perry took the change offered by the attendant and leaned back in his seat before signing, ⌈It's fine, Heinz. Let's go find a spot.⌋

Heinz grumbled some more but drove them further into the lot.

They ended up finding the perfect spot, not too close to the screen, but not too far either, and fairly close to the center. As they parked, Perry leaned forward to start fiddling with the radio to tune it, but Heinz put a hand out and stopped him.

"One second, Perry the Platypus!" he said.

He twisted in his seat and reached into the back, pulling out the -inator he'd packed specifically for this purpose, explaining, "I know they don't have those little speakers that you put in your car anymore, and that you're just supposed to tune your radio into the station, but I think it always comes in a little fuzzy, so I made this! A Drive-In-Speaker-inator!"

He showed off the -inator to Perry.

Perry looked at it for a long moment, before slowly signing, ⌈Have you… tested it?⌋

"Of course!" Heinz said, offended. "Well… The last version worked. This is version three-point-oh! It should work just fine."

He pushed open the car door and stepped out, explaining to Perry as he attached it, "You see, Perry the Platypus, the poles are still here for the connections, so I just need to hook this up here." It took barely any time at all before the -inator was in place.

Now he just needed to turn on the receiver in his truck, and they'd have crystal clear audio for their movie!

Heinz almost missed the crackling noise, but Perry must not have, because suddenly he was being yanked back into the truck hard by the tail of his coat, falling onto Perry just as the post burst into flames.

"Well then," he said, staring at the pillar of fire.

Another crackling noise and one by one all the other posts across the drive-in went up in flames too.

"… Oops."

Perry sighed just as the screen burst into flames too.

"We should probably get out of here," Heinz said, getting a slow nod in response along with a exasperated expression.

It took a bit to leave, what with the fire trucks and the other patrons trying to flee, but eventually they were back on the road.

"So where do you want to go, since that was a bust?" he asked Perry.

Perry immediately signed back, ⌈Can we just go home?⌋

And Heinz's heart broke.

"Of course, I can take you home, Perry," he said, trying to keep it together. It figured that the first time he tried to take Perry on a date would be the last.

He was barely holding his tears in when they pulled up to Perry's house. "Here we are," was all he said, not sure what else to say to his best friend and nemesis of over three years at the end of their relationship.

Perry let out one of those squeaky little airy laughs that Heinz had only heard a couple times but loved so much and raised a brow at him, signing with a smile, ⌈Aren't you coming in too? I didn't think you'd ditch me so early on our first date.⌋

"What?" Heinz asked, feeling like he'd been hit upside the head.

Perry looked into his eyes for a long moment before seeming to come to a realization and nodding. He signed with a much softer and gentler smile this time, ⌈I figured it'd be easier and safer to just have a date in. So come on; let's go have a picnic in the backyard. Grab those snacks you mentioned.⌋

Heinz followed Perry into the Flynn-Fletcher house on autopilot, noting that his family had dispersed since they left, only finding Linda in the kitchen cooking something when they entered it.

"You two are back early," Linda commented.

Perry signed something back in BSL that made Linda chuckle before turning back to her cooking, and Heinz worried for a brief moment that they were laughing at him before Perry signed, still smiling, ⌈I told her that we went to the drive-in and our date ended pretty similarly to how your guys' had, but that it's all good. I'd rather have a date in, anyway. Let me make us a couple sandwiches, and then we can go out back.⌋

He watched Perry assemble the food, not knowing what to say or how to react after his emotional whiplash; he was just so grateful that they weren't splitting up and he wasn't losing the person who was dearest to him after his little girl.

It didn't take long for Perry to make the sandwiches – making Heinz's exactly how he liked without even asking; Perry knew him so well – then he grabbed a blanket from the hutch near the door to the garage, and soon Heinz was being ushered outside and sat down on said blanket, his sandwich pushed into his hands.

The stars were just starting to come out in earnest, and sitting there beneath them with Perry felt better than any date he could've tried to plan.

His dread was finally starting to disperse, and he felt less like he'd start crying if he tried to talk, so he said to Perry, "So, you like quiet dates."

⌈You know I'm not a flashy person,⌋ Perry signed. ⌈But I know you like going out, so I'm happy to do it for you.⌋

Heinz's eyes prickled again at that. "Thanks," he said, swallowing down his tears. "… You know, I thought secret agents were supposed to be flashy. They always are in the movies, with their suits and cars and whatnot."

Perry snorted and rolled his eyes. ⌈They're supposed to be secret. It's in the name. And either way, I'm not one anymore, so it doesn't matter,⌋ he signed.

"You aren't, are you?" Heinz said slowly, thinking about what he'd been wondering that first night. "Do you… Do you want me to stop calling you Perry the Platypus?" It would be really hard for Heinz to stop, but he would if that's what Perry wanted. It was the man's agent name, and he wasn't one anymore, like he'd said.

Perry just looked at him like he was stupid, though.

"What?!" he asked defensively.

His boyfriend sighed and told him, ⌈You do understand that wasn't my agent name, right? That was your nickname for me. So why should you stop?⌋

"Oh," Heinz said. But Perry was right, wasn't he… Thinking back to that first day they'd met, his card had him listed as Agent Platypus, and all the memos Heinz had gotten from OWCA just said Agent P. He'd just been calling Perry that for so long he'd forgotten it wasn't his official title. "Okay then," he said, finally smiling.

The two of them continued talking for hours – well, Heinz talked, and Perry mostly communicated non-verbally, only interspersing their conversation with the occasional signs when he seemed to feel it necessary.

It felt like Heinz blinked and all of a sudden it was nearly midnight, all the lights off in the house behind him, their only light the small light above the garage and the stars.

"Oh no, Perry!" he said, distressed, looking at his watch to double-check that he had the time right, not believing it. "I have to get going now. Vanessa is at home, and I need to make sure she gets to school alright in the morning." But he really didn't want to leave.

⌈Hey, it's okay,⌋ Perry signed with a gentle smile. ⌈I'll come by tomorrow after the kids have headed out, and we can hang out some more.⌋

"Are you sure?" he asked nervously. He didn't want to pull Perry away from his well-earned rest either. Perry had been fighting him near-daily for three years now; if anyone could use a vacation, it was him.

⌈Yes. I promise,⌋ Perry told him, crossing his heart. ⌈We can watch the new episode of General Days.⌋

"Right!" Heinz said, suddenly brightening up. "I can't wait to see what's going on with Andy's evil twin!"

The two of them stood, and Heinz kept rambling about his theories for the new episode as Perry walked with him to the truck, where they both paused by the driver's side door.

"So I guess this is it," Heinz said, drooping again.

⌈I'll see you tomorrow,⌋ Perry promised him.

"Tomorrow," he agreed.

Perry crowded him in against the truck door and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to his lips, and Heinz was never going to get used to being able to kiss him. He wrapped his arms around Perry to keep him close for as long as he could, and the two of them stayed there, held in a gentle embrace.

When Perry finally pulled away, Heinz leaned in to follow after him, not quite ready to let him go, but Perry pressed one last brief kiss to his lips and took a step back.

"Perry…" Heinz whined lowly.

⌈You have to go home now, Heinz,⌋ Perry told him, shaking his head sympathetically. ⌈But I'll be over in the morning.⌋

Reluctantly, Heinz nodded and opened the car door, climbing in but quickly rolling the window down so he could lean out and press one last kiss to Perry's lips. "Goodnight, Perry the Platypus," he said and pulled out of the driveway.

Despite all the bad luck, the night had turned out pretty good.

That Saturday, Charlene was finally back in town from her extended vacation, having missed literally all the drama of the previous couple weeks. Maybe that was for the best, not having her see Heinz turn everyone in town into clone zombies or having to deal with their daughter getting kidnapped by aliens.

Kidnapped? Abducted? He couldn't decide. It didn't really fit the standard 'alien abduction' criteria, so he supposed it was more of a kidnapping than an abduction, but it seemed so bizarre to say 'alien kidnapping.'

He was getting sidetracked.

Charlene was back, and she called Heinz, asking if he wanted to do their normal custody hand-off at a restaurant to catch up. Probably so she could brag about her trip…

That wasn't fair to Charlene. She cared about what was going on his life; she probably was actually very interested to see how the two of them fared being stuck together for two weeks, the longest Heinz had had custody of Vanessa for since the divorce.

So much had changed since she left too, beyond the obvious crazy events.

He and Perry were actually dating now, not just flitting around each other, which was the biggest one. Perry was the first person he'd gotten truly serious about since the divorce, and he wasn't sure how to tell Charlene.

Sure, she'd almost certainly be happy for him, but then there were so many other questions he'd have to answer.

By the time he and Vanessa were standing outside the doors to the restaurant that Charlene had picked out, waiting for her to arrive, he still hadn't figured out how to explain it.

"It'll be nice to see Mom again," Vanessa said, and yeah, it probably would be. It was why Charlene was getting Vanessa back even though it was the weekend, his normal custody days; because she'd been away for so long.

"Mhm," Heinz agreed absently, still thinking about what he was going to say.

"She's going to freak when she hears about you and Perry," she told him. "In a good way, I mean."

"Ugh, don't remind me," he said, rolling his eyes. "It'll be all 'tell me all about him' and 'how did you two meet?' and 'does he know about the puppets yet?'"

"Well… yeah?" Vanessa said, looking at him like he was the crazy one. "Of course Mom's going to ask questions. She cares about what's going on in your life, Dad."

"Well I don't like it," Heinz huffed, crossing his arms.

"Well, I don't think you're going to get out of talking about it," Vanessa said with a short laugh. "She's going to want to know what we've been up to since she left. And she's especially going to ask about my first day of school, and like, we kind of spent the night at his house, the night before, so I'd say that's pretty relevant information."

"Mm, no," he argued, just to be contrary. "I don't have to tell your mother anything."

"You're being ridiculous, Dad," Vanessa told him, rolling her eyes at him.

Just then, Charlene's car parallel-parked at the curb in front of the restaurant, and she stepped out.

"Vanessa, honey!" she said, smiling brightly at their daughter. "I've missed you! And Heinz, it's so good to see you again." She was cheerier than usual, but Heinz attributed it to her vacation. He'd be happier too if he spent two weeks in the tropics.

"Hi, Mom," Vanessa said, briefly hugging her mom.

Heinz patiently waited for them to finish their greetings, only tapping his foot a little while he stood there.

As soon as they were separated, he cut in, saying, "I'm starving, so let's go eat."

It didn't take long for them to be seated – Charlene had apparently made a reservation ahead of time – and Heinz perused the menu while Charlene and Vanessa chatted, only partially listening to his daughter talk about her friend group drama and that Johnny boy.

"And Candace and her friends have started sitting with us at lunch," Vanessa said, causing him to focus back in immediately.

"Oh? Who's Candace again, sweetie?" Charlene asked her, looking lost.

"My new best friend," she said, smiling, and Heinz smiled too. It made him so happy to see her getting along so well with Perry's daughter. "And Dad's boyfriend's daughter."

The smile fell off his face, replaced by a grimace.

Charlene's brows shot up to her hairline, and she turned to him. "You're seeing someone, Heinz?"

Reluctantly, he nodded, not looking forward to the grilling he was about to get. "Yeah…" he said.

"Are you… going to tell me anything about him?" Charlene pressed. "Or am I just supposed to guess?"

He must've taken too long to respond, because Vanessa cut in, saying, "His name's Perry, and he's a really nice guy. He's got three kids; Candace is a year younger than me, and Phineas and Ferb are ten, I think."

Charlene's eyebrows were still sky-high and hadn't come down once during the conversation. She asked him, voice a touch disbelieving, "Three kids? Two of them twins?"

Heinz knew what she was thinking. He'd been so nervous about having more than just Vanessa when they talked about having kids, so they'd agreed on only one, and suddenly he was dating someone who had three more.

"I… don't think Phineas and Ferb are twins," Vanessa corrected, sounding a touch unsure. "Right, Dad?"

He wasn't surprised she didn't know for certain. From what he'd experienced talking to the kids, they made no distinction it seemed as to who was whose biological parents versus step-parents versus whatever one would consider Perry to Linda's kids.

Before he could answer, Charlene scrunched her nose up and said, "Oh, I can't imagine having had two pregnancies in one year. That had to have been rough for their mother."

Heinz rubbed at his face and said, "That's not-" He sighed. "They're not all Perry's kids; they're-" He didn't know how to explain without stumbling over his words and implying things that weren't true and making a mess of it.

Deciding to start over, he said, "You know your friend, Linda?"

"Well, yes," Charlene said slowly. "But how do you know about Linda?" It took a moment, but he saw the gears turning in her head, and finally she said, "You're dating Linda's Perry?!"

He nodded.

"Lucky you," Charlene said, smirking at him as she sent him a wink. "From what Linda's told me, he's quite the catch."

"Ew. Please don't talk about Perry like that," Vanessa said, scrunching her nose up, looking identically to how Charlene had earlier, and it was things like that, that meant no matter what issues he and Charlene had, he could never hate her, because it would mean hating parts of his little girl.

Charlene rolled her eyes and told Vanessa, "I didn't say anything that scandalous, honey."

"Yeah, but you implied it about a guy who's like my second dad!" she said, still looking grossed out.

Charlene went wide-eyed and turned to Heinz, asking incredulously, "Just how long have you been seeing him, Heinz? Were you not going to tell me?"

He started sputtering. "What? But- No!"

His daughter covered for him, quickly correcting and telling Charlene, "They only just got together, Mom; don't worry. But Perry and Dad have been friends for years."

Well, that wasn't quite true. They'd been nemeses for years, and Heinz thought they really only started being true friends near the start of summer, but if it got Charlene off his back…

"Oh," Charlene said, nodding. "Okay. Well, I suppose then you're really not going to scare him off at this point, are you?"

At that, Heinz scoffed. "You never have any faith in me, Charlene," he grumbled.

She raised her brows and asked, "Does he at least already know about the puppets?"

Heinz threw his hands up in the air. "And there we go! What did I tell you, Vanessa?" he asked loudly and melodramatically, partly to his daughter but mostly to himself.

Charlene let out a deep sigh and gave him a moment before brushing past his dramatics and said, "In all seriousness, Heinz, I'm happy for you. I hope the two of you work out and are happy together."

He shifted in his seat and frowned slightly, then said, "Yeah, I really hope so too."

"Don't worry, Dad," Vanessa tried to reassure. "Perry cares about you a lot, and I think you two are perfect for each other."

"Thank you, sweetie," he said softly, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder.

The rest of the dinner went fairly smoothly, with Charlene asking a few more questions about Perry and their relationship and Vanessa trying to keep him from sticking his foot too far in his mouth, but eventually the bill was paid and they were standing outside the restaurant again.

He and Charlene stood around chatting while Vanessa grabbed her bag from his truck with the few things she ferried back and forth between their places, but before long, they were gone and he was all alone again.

Heinz didn't really want to go back to DEI, where all he could look forward to was a silent and empty apartment – Norm had gone off somewhere that morning; Heinz was fairly certain that his occasional disappearances were to hold clandestine visits with Rodney's robot, Claire? Carla? Actually, he was pretty sure it was Chloe – but he didn't have anywhere else to go.

Until, he realized, he did.

Pulling out his phone, and anxiously debating with himself for close to five minutes, he sent a text.

To: Perry the Platypus #[ ]">
» Can I come over?

Chapter Text

It felt like years had passed before he finally got a response back. The whole time, he was beating himself up for sending it. Perry was going to think he was too clingy and needy; he just knew it.

From: Perry the Platypus #[ ]">
» Ofc, back doors unlocked, just come in when u get here, ILY, P.

He… didn't recognize those acronyms, and he didn't really want to look stupid to Perry. (He knew he looked stupid all the time in front of Perry, but this was different.) So as he started up his truck, he sent one more text.

To: Vanessa
» Sweetie, can you tell me what these mean? 'ofc' and 'ily'

His phone quickly dinged.

From: Vanessa
» Of course, I love you

To: Vanessa
» I love you too, sweetie, but what do they mean????

From: Vanessa
» No, I mean, yeah, I love you, but that's what they mean. 'Of course' and 'I love you'

Heinz flushed bright red. Oh.

Carefully he tapped out «See you soon. I love you too» to Perry along with a thanks to Vanessa and put the car in gear, heading out to the suburbs.

He pulled up at the Flynn-Fletcher house not long after, parking behind their station wagon, and walking around the house to the back door, where he hesitated.

Perry had said to just walk in, but he felt awkward and uncomfortable doing so. Sure, Perry had a key to his place and came in without knocking all the time, but his apartment was different. He didn't have half a dozen people living there that might not know Perry was coming over.

Heinz thought about knocking, but then that might also upset Perry, since he had said to come in when he arrived.

He stood there anxiously wringing his hands, debating what to do for far too long; to the point where he contemplated turning around and just heading home, sending a text message to Perry that, actually, something had come up and he couldn't come over anymore. But then, the back door swung open, causing Heinz to startle and jump back.

⌈Were you planning on standing out there all night?⌋ Perry signed, one brow raised.

"Perry the Platypus! Were you trying to give me a heart attack? You can't just sneak up on a guy like that!" Heinz scolded.

Perry gave him an unimpressed look, complete with pursed lips, before stepping to the side and waving him in.

"How did you even know I was there? You would've looked quite ridiculous opening the door like that if no one had been there, Perry the Platypus," he told his boyfriend as he entered.

⌈Headlights,⌋ was all Perry signed back, leading the way deeper into the house.

Heinz noticed Perry was dressed in his PJs already, walking around with Ducky Momo slippers on his feet. "Were you about to go to sleep? I'm sorry if I dragged you out of bed," he said, back to wringing his hands.

Perry looked back at him and shook his head, just waving him to keep following.

Somehow he'd missed the voices in the other room, but as they entered the den, Heinz saw the rest of Perry's family sitting around the TV chatting.

"Oh, Heinz!" Linda said, smiling brightly at him. "You're just in time for family movie night! You can be our tiebreaker." She scooted closer to Lawrence to free up a little more room on the couch and patted the cushion next to her.

"Hi, Dr. D!" Phineas said with a wave from where he was stretched out on the floor, his brother sprawled out next to him. "Dad said you had a thing tonight so you wouldn't be able to come, but it's super awesome that you made it!"

"Too bad Vanessa couldn't be here, though," Candace added with a pout. She was reclined on a bean bag chair in a position that made Heinz's back hurt just looking at her, and he envied her youth, just a little bit.

⌈She's at her mom's,⌋ Perry signed and nudged Heinz toward the couch.

"I- I didn't mean to interrupt," he stuttered out, stumbling over his feet as he walked over and sat on the couch, flopping down too hard and ending up too close to Linda. Perry following behind him and sitting down in a much more controlled manner; in comparison, he looked like a clumsy buffoon.

He didn't get judged, though, like he would be with other people. Linda just patted him on the knee and smiled at him.

"Oh, you're not interrupting, old chap," Lawrence said amicably.

"We wanted to invite you, but Perry told us you had dinner plans with Charlene and Vanessa, and we didn't want to make you feel bad for missing out on this because of that, so we figured Perry would just invite you starting next week," Linda told him.

"But-" He looked around the room full of people who seemed happy to see him and couldn't make it make sense. "But didn't you say it was family movie night?" he asked.

"Well, duh," Candace answered, rolling her eyes.

"Candace!" Linda scolded.

"I'm just telling it like it is, Mom," she sassed back, causing Linda to let out a exasperated sigh and pinch the bridge of her nose.

⌈Of course you're welcome to family events,⌋ Perry signed, offering him a gentle smile. ⌈We just didn't want to stress you out about missing the first one you were invited to.⌋

"Like Mom said, though, Dr. D, now that you're here, you can help us pick the movie!" Phineas interjected excitedly. "Dad and Candace and I voted for this one," he said, passing the first VHS case over, a generic-looking rom-com movie. "And Mom and Dad and Ferb voted for this one," and he passed the second case over, an old black-and-white movie of indeterminate genre that'd probably have him snoring in the first twenty minutes.

He immediately knew which 'Dad' was referring to which by the movie choices, but man, was that going to get confusing if he kept hanging around the kids.

"This one," Heinz said, shaking the first movie's case for emphasis. He could always go for the drama and the chaos of a rom-com; though… he wasn't sure why a ten-year-old voted for it too.

"Awesome!" Phineas cheered, his whole body doing a cute little wiggle, and he slid the tape into the VCR, already pulling out the remote to fast forward through the trailers.

"Darn," Ferb said quietly – his little British voice, as always, taking Heinz off guard. It was just so odd. Perry said they'd come to America when Ferb was still a baby, so why did he have a British accent? Ferb continued, "I've been wanting to rewatch that one for a while."

"It's okay, Ferb. I'll watch it with you tomorrow," Phineas said, patting his brother on the back.

Heinz stared at them for a moment. He didn't know what it would be like to have a brother that he wasn't in constant competition with, what it would be like to have his brother comfort him and offer to rectify things even when he beat Heinz. The boys' relationship seemed so alien to him, but…

He knew it was Perry's doing. Perry would never pit his kids against each other. Instead, he actively encouraged them to get along. He didn't seem to have a favorite, either, even though only one was biologically his, and it would be easy (and obvious) to prefer his kid above the other two.

But over the past week, any time Heinz had seen Perry interact with the boys, he treated them exactly the same, and he'd given the same amount of care to his daughter. He even added Vanessa to the fold almost seamlessly, treating her on par with the other kids without hesitation.

Was that what being a parent to more than one kid was supposed to be like?

Heinz had thought there was no avoiding having a clear favorite if he'd had more than just Vanessa, but clearly, Perry didn't hold some imaginary competition in his mind for a winner amongst his kids and leave the others to be treated second-rate.

He only tuned back in to what was going on in the room when Perry wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in against his side.

When he looked up at Perry, the other man raised a brow, and Heinz simply shook his head to let him know he didn't want to talk about it right then, getting a slight nod in response followed by Perry going back to watching the movie that had started at some point when he was spaced out.

And Heinz's thoughts turned inward again.

By the time the end credits rolled, his mind had been left to spin and spiral for nearly two hours, and Heinz was feeling dissociated from himself, almost like he wasn't in his body anymore.

How wrong was he about other things if he had been wrong about this?

He felt odd and floaty as he listened to Lawrence clap his hands on his knees and say, "Alright boys, Candace! Off to bed! Just because it's the weekend, doesn't mean we can stay up too late. Wouldn't want to throw off our sleep schedules," followed by him ushering the kids upstairs.

Linda turned to Heinz and patted him on the knee again, saying, "I'm so glad you could make it, honey. It was nice to have you here," before she too, headed upstairs.

Then it was just him and Perry.

⌈What's wrong?⌋ Perry signed as soon as they were alone.

"Are… are all families like this, Perry?" he whispered.

Perry made a face and signed slowly and thoughtfully, ⌈Not always… but I think this is what a healthy family is supposed to look like.⌋

"I-" Heinz felt himself choke up, like he couldn't get the words out no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to explain to Perry about his feelings regarding his mother and Roger and how it compared to what he had seen ever since Perry introduced him to his family, but… He just couldn't.

Perry gave him an inquisitive look, but Heinz could only shake his head again. He'd just try to explain again later.

With a gentle, sympathetic smile, Perry nodded and stood from the couch, holding a hand out to Heinz, gesturing to the stairs with his other.

"Yeah, sleep sounds nice, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said, taking his hand.

As they laid in bed together that night, Heinz wondered why he was suddenly having so much trouble talking to Perry when it had never been an issue before…

Early the next morning, Heinz woke up with a jolt. His normal nightmares didn't seem to want to let him have a restful night's sleep, even with Perry there. Turning his head to look at the clock on the nightstand, he saw it was just after 4 AM, and he knew he wasn't going to be able to get any more sleep in.

As sneakily as he could – which wasn't much, but it still seemed to work – he climbed out of bed, trying to not wake up Perry, and headed into the hall.

It felt… awkward, to walk around Perry's house in his borrowed pajamas, at an hour when everyone else was asleep, but he also knew that if he had tried to stay in bed much longer, his skin would've started crawling until he got up anyway, and then he would've definitely woken up Perry.

He shuffled his way down the hall, taking in all the family photos in the dim light of the small nightlight plugged in near the stairs.

A floor board creaked, and he froze, before realizing it hadn't been one of the ones he was standing on, and he froze even stiller somehow, barely breathing.

The door to Linda and Lawrence's room slowly swung open, on near silent hinges, and Linda, wrapped in a robe over her PJs, stepped out. Her eyes met his, and she paused for a moment, before quietly closing the door behind her and coming over to stand next to him.

"Couldn't sleep either?" Linda whispered, smiling softly at him.

"Sorry if I woke you up," Heinz whispered back, frowning slightly.

"No, no," she said, waving a dismissive hand. "I just have trouble sleeping sometimes… Want to come downstairs for a cup of tea with me?"

He nodded, and as he followed her down the stairs, he said, "Tea isn't very American of you."

Linda looked up over her shoulder at him and rolled her eyes playfully. "Well, I am married to a proper Englishman. He gets our tea imported and everything. No American tea brands in this household," she told him.

They entered the kitchen, and she flipped the lights on, puttering about, pulling out mugs and a box of tea bags among other things, while Heinz stood and watched, affixed near the counter.

"Well, I wouldn't know either way," Heinz said with a shrug. "Drusselstein wasn't really big on tea, and I mostly drink coffee. The only tea I keep at my place is for Perry."

"That's sweet of you," Linda said, filling an electric kettle with water and setting it to boil.

Heinz scoffed. "If I didn't keep it there, he'd just bring his own and find somewhere to stash it anyway," he said, brushing her off.

She still smiled at him anyway, like she knew the truth.

"Yeah, yeah, fine. I keep it because I know it makes Perry happy," he told her grumpily.

The kettle started to boil, and Linda poured the water into their mugs, saying, "You make Perry happy. Whenever he gets to spend time with you, he comes back smiling like crazy. I think the tea is just a bonus."

His stomach squirmed uncomfortably, and he was ready to be done talking about this.

Luckily, Linda seemed to sense that too, because she shifted topics, asking him, "So you said something the other day about a family meatloaf recipe?"

That he could talk about. "Yes! My Great-Grandma Gretel's recipe, passed down to my Grandpa Jose, then to Mother. I finally learned it recently," he told her. "It was always a special treat to have it." Mostly because Mother almost always served his portion to Father and Roger.

"Oh?" Linda asked curiously. "Is it a Drusselsteinian variation on it? Mine is more traditional Americana, but I always like hearing about how other people cook it."

"No," Heinz told her. "Well, I mean it isn't like American meatloaf, but American meatloaf is a variation on German meatloaf, which was a variation on Drusselsteinian meatloaf, so ours is the original," he said, a touch pompously. "But what makes it special is the secret ingredient."

Linda leaned in with a brow raised. "You know, I've competed in and judged meatloaf competitions before. Most people's secret ingredients aren't really that secret," she told him with a smirk. "Let me guess, since you said it's a traditional Drusselstein meatloaf…" She tapped a finger to her chin. "My initial thoughts were boiled eggs or maybe bacon, but your family seems a bit more unconventional than that. Dried doonkelberries for a sweet element? Or maybe pickled gherkins for a bit of acid."

"Wrong and wrong," Heinz answered smugly.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. What about… veal?"

"Nope!" Heinz said, popping the 'p'. "You're never going to get it."

"So why don't you tell me?" Linda said, a little sharply. "Instead of leaving me guessing all day."

"Where's the fun in that?" he asked her, and now he was the one smirking. "But I suppose… Well, I don't think you could manage to cook it even with the recipe." He knew he was just riling her up now, but she'd been so fun to argue with at that first dinner he'd had with the whole family.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked angrily, frowning at him.

"The secret ingredient…" Heinz said, leaning in and waiting until she had too, before whispering, "is hate."

Linda abruptly leaned back and glared at him. "You can't cook with hate. I know people like to say their secret ingredient is 'love' but you can't cook with that either!"

"Sounds like you need to practice your cooking skills more then," Heinz said with a casual shrug.

"Dammit, Heinz, I'll show you cooking skills," she huffed, pushing away from the counter and angrily pulling pots and pans out of the cabinets and ingredients out of the fridge. "Get over here and sous for me."

She roped him into chopping and stirring and made him watch every step of her process, asking him regularly, "Does this look like I don't know how to cook?" And they kept bickering the whole time. He'd swoop in and taste something and complain about this or that aspect; she complained about his knife skills (which were perfect; he had perfectly calibrated robotic hands – he could chop an onion better than many professional chefs).

He loved it.

By the time the rest of the household started waking up, there was a veritable breakfast feast set out on the dining table, the two of them having goaded each other into making more and more elaborate elements to serve.

A groggy-looking Perry was the first to shuffle into the room, and he froze, looking around at all the food on display. ⌈Is this where you've been?⌋ he signed grumpily.

"Good morning~, Perry the Platypus!" Heinz said, smiling happily over at his boyfriend. "Yes! Linda and I were just debating the best way to cook a hollandaise sauce."

"There's only one way, Heinz," Linda interjected angrily from behind him. "You can't just go messing with the composition of it; then it stops being a hollandaise."

Immediately, Heinz turned, ready to continue their bickering where they'd left off.

Except Perry cleared his throat as soon as he'd pivoted, so Heinz looked back at him, seeing him standing there with his brows raised and his hands on his hips.

"What, Perry the Grump-apus?" Heinz asked snarkily. "Can't you see I'm busy trying to prove her wrong?"

"You're not proving anything!" Linda said. "Everything you've said so far this morning has been factually incorrect."

He opened his mouth to argue back, but Perry let out a deep sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. ⌈You're both Lawrence's problem this early in the morning,⌋ he signed, before turning on his heel and leaving the room, and Heinz saw him go back up the stairs through the dining room doorway.

"Well, look at what you've done," Heinz complained, gestured wildly at the doorway. "You scared him off."

"I scared him off?" Linda asked, brow furrowed. "You're the one insisting you have to be right about everything."

"Nuh-uh," he said back.

"Uh-huh," she said, and then suddenly they were like five-year-olds, just 'nuh-uh'-ing and 'uh-huh'-ing at each other back and forth, Heinz sticking his tongue out at her at one point.

"You are just so frustrating!" Linda snapped, smacking her hands down against the counter.

"I'm the frustrating one?" Heinz asked, incredulous. "You're the one who's being a hollandaise purist!"

There was another cleared throat behind him, and Heinz turned to see Lawrence standing in the doorway.

"Tell her that a hollandaise doesn't have to just be egg yolks, butter, and lemon juice," Heinz demanded.

"Um…" Lawrence looked between the two of them, seeming wholly unprepared to deal with them too. "Well, Heinz… I hate to tell you this, but normally I'd just side with my darling wife. Though, in this case, unfortunately for both of you, I don't know enough about the making of hollandaise to say either way."

After a moment's pause, but before Heinz could argue more, Lawrence added, "Also, were you two planning to continue arguing all morning while this food grew cold, or was one of you going to come wake the rest of the household at some point?"

Immediately, Heinz touched his fingertip to his nose and said, "Nose goes."

Linda made a noise of frustration, and Lawrence looked between the two of them again and said quietly, "I see what Perry was going on about now," before also turning and leaving the room.

"You can't both ignore us, Lawrence," Linda shouted after him.

There was a long moment of silence between the two of them, and Heinz awkwardly stood there, waiting for something else to happen, then looked at the table laden with breakfast foods and said, "He was probably right that we should get the others down here to eat all this before too long."

Linda sighed and said, "You're right. I suppose I'll go wake up the kids if they're not already up and try to convince our boys that it's safe to come back downstairs." As she passed him, she ran a soft, soothing hand along his back. "Be right back," she told him.

Heinz flushed at the casual way she'd called Lawrence and Perry 'their boys', as if he was part of this little group they had. Even though they'd spent the last – geez, had it really been that long? – hour and a half arguing about every single topic that was brought up, she still included him, treating him gently and… lovingly.

Everyone else tended to get sick of him when he acted like himself the way he did with her, but she… enjoyed it, maybe?

Man, Perry's family was weird.

Chapter Text

A few days later, while Perry was busy at the antiques shop, and he was bored and a little lonely, Heinz finally finished drafting up the plans for a Language-Learn-inator. The longest and hardest part had actually been the initial coding of the software to synthesize all the knowledge, honestly, since he'd already had blueprints for other -inators that put information into peoples' heads.

But now, he was able to speed up his BSL practice, and skip those awkward introductory stages of language learning that he'd been stuck in.

Just as he was tightening the final bolt on the Language-Learn-inator, he heard a knock on the lab door from the small lobby that contained the elevator. He wondered who it could possibly be. He wasn't expecting anyone, and anyone who it might be had keys.

Swinging open the door, he found Agent S (Sergei the Snail, not Clement the Squirrel that he'd heard about in poorly conveyed Spanish from Dr. Killbot).

"Um, hello, Sergei the Snail…" Heinz said, staring at the grizzled old agent that he'd fought once before. "Can I… help you?"

"I thought you'd given up evil, Dr. Doofenshmirtz," Sergei said, pushing his way past him into the lab.

"Uh, why don't you come in, I guess," Heinz said sarcastically to the now empty doorway, before turning to face Sergei again. "Yeah, I have. And I'm sticking to that."

Sergei was looking over the -inator in the middle of the lab, poking at various pieces of it and inspecting every inch. "Then what's this? And why did it trigger OWCA's -inator alarm?"

"Well I can tell you it's not evil," Heinz told him, pouting. "It's a Language-Learn-inator. So I can learn British Sign Language faster. No evil uses there," he said pointedly.

"Hm…" Sergei said, prodding at the -inator a bit more. "I'll let OWCA know then," he said, turning to leave.

"Seriously. Tell them I gave up evil for good. Well, not for good, but permanently," Heinz said. "I'm done with it. I just want to be left alone."

Sergei stopped in the doorway. "I will. And by the way… Thanks for winning me a lot of money in the OWCA betting pool. Most of the other agents were more than a bit cynical about how you two were going to turn out, but I figured if anyone could pull it off, it'd be Agent P."

Then he left, all while Heinz was still trying to sputter out a response.

Later that evening, when Perry swung by to pick him up for their date, he answered the door and saw his boyfriend holding out a small bouquet.

Gently he took it, admiring the blossoms, before setting it on the side-table and signing ⌈Thank you for the flowers. They're beautiful⌋ in BSL.

Perry's eyes lit up, and he started smiling so broadly they crinkled at the edges.

Perry invited him over again for dinner the next evening, and Heinz was… not necessarily eager, but he was happy that he wouldn't be spending the night alone again.

Norm was around too, so they went to the Flynn-Fletcher's together. Heinz let Norm change into his truck mode to get them there, figure he should let him feel helpful – but also, he didn't fit in Heinz's actual truck.

Once there, Norm was quickly pulled away by the boys, who were eager to see their… brother.

Heinz was still getting used to that, the idea that Norm was already part of Perry's family. It made his insides twist uncomfortably, and he couldn't understand why everyone was indulging Norm's ridiculous ideas. He put up with it, though, since Perry didn't seem to mind.

"Heinz, hon, any chance you want to come help with dinner?" Linda asked him, coming out of the kitchen.

He'd been standing awkwardly in the living room, unsure what to do since Perry hadn't been there to greet him, so he jumped on it. "Sure," he said.

"Sorry about that," Linda said as he followed her.

"Huh?" he asked, having no clue what she was going on about.

"Our boys are off playing with their toys," Linda told him, with a besotted smile. "Lawrence bought this new model plane set, and he roped Perry into putting it together with him."

"It's okay," Heinz said, pulling on an apron to help her with dinner. "I hope Lawrence likes the-" He froze when he saw what she was doing. "What are you doing to those poor meatballs?!"

Candace burst into the kitchen and said, "Oh my gosh, stop bickering like an old married couple for two seconds, please! We've got bigger fish to fry than how Mom cooks spaghetti or whatever."

Linda let out a long-suffering sigh and asked her, "What is it now, Candace? If it's about something the boys have built, remember that your dads and I discussed the rules on that with them, so now I only want to hear about it if they're not following those."

"No! Ugh," she whined. "But I still think you're not being strict enough with them! No, this is about Vanessa."

"What about Vanessa?!" Heinz asked, instantly panicked. Had something happened that Charlene hadn't told him? Or maybe Charlene didn't know?

"It's that stupid ex-boyfriend of hers," Candace said, rolling her eyes. "He's been trying to get her to go out with him again."

Heinz saw red. "I don't care that I gave up evil. If that little jerk has been harassing my baby girl-"

Candace waved a hand flippantly. "No, it's nothing like that. He just keeps hanging around, being annoying. And he hasn't said anything outright, so Vanessa hasn't been able to give him an actual 'no' without seeming like a…" She paused, looking at her mom. "Like a jerk."

It was Heinz's turn to roll his eyes. "Teenage boys are the worst. I should know, I was one once."

"Jeremy's not!" Candace argued. "Jeremy's amazing." She got a dreamy, far-away look in her eyes, and next to him, Linda let out an exasperated sigh.

"I know, honey; you've only told us a million times," Linda said from across the kitchen where she had gone back to cooking.

"Yeah, but Dr. D hasn't heard. And he's never met Jeremy," Candace said.

"Candace, honey, don't you have your friends to gush about him with?" Linda asked.

Heinz waved her off. "It's fine. I'm sure I'll hear it all sooner or later, " he said.

Candace took that as her invitation to talk both his ears off about this unseen boyfriend of hers until dinner was finished cooking. She even started showing off grainy photos of him on her flip phone, and Heinz just about had a conniption when he realized it was the kid that he'd been paying to give him guitar lessons.

Perry's life really had been intertwined in nearly every aspect of his.

Linda eventually had to interrupt Candace after the table was completely set, food and all, and everyone else was sitting at it waiting, saying, "Honey, I'm glad you love Jeremy. He's a very nice young man, but it's time to eat dinner now."

After dinner, Perry hauled him off, signing, ⌈I haven't seen you in a while. I want some alone time with you.⌋

"I hope not for what I think you're implying, Perry the Platypus," Heinz hissed, pausing as they walked up the stairs. "Like I said that first night, I don't really think a house full of kids is a good time or place. Especially after what happened last time we tried."

Perry rolled his eyes. ⌈Firstly, get your mind out of the gutter all the time. Secondly, that doesn't stop Linda and Lawrence,⌋ he signed. ⌈And you can't say you and Charlene never had sex while Vanessa was home.⌋

He sputtered, "Well, no, but-"

⌈Anyway,⌋ Perry cut him off, pulling him the rest of the way up the stairs, ⌈I just want to cuddle.⌋

"Oh," Heinz said. "Well, I won't say no to that."

Of course, though, as soon as he entered Perry's room, he got side-tracked at the sight of the recently rearranged cards on the dresser. "I keep forgetting to ask you about these," he said.

Perry raised a brow.

"Lawrence told me a little bit, but he said it was your story to tell," Heinz said, poking at one of the cards and looking over his shoulder at Perry. "Why you couldn't be Ferb's dad at first."

Perry froze, looking wide-eyed at him, and Heinz, cursed with chronic foot-in-mouth, turned and said, "Because I love Vanessa more than anything, and if I had to pretend to not be her dad, I don't think I could do it."

Perry's hands came up to sign, but he still seemed at a loss for words. ⌈I…⌋

And Heinz realized how that might sound. "I didn't mean it like that, Perry," he said, slightly panicked, trying to figure out how to fix it.

Nodding, Perry visibly steeled himself. ⌈I know,⌋ he signed. He paused for a moment before gesturing to the bed.

"Yeah, we can sit," Heinz said, doing just that.

The two of them sat there quietly for a while, and it took all of Heinz's willpower not to just talk and fill the silence. It was so uncomfortable waiting for Perry to say something, but he knew – he knew – that his boyfriend clammed up when he was on edge. Heinz couldn't rush him, no matter how much he wanted to.

⌈I love my kids more than anything,⌋ Perry finally signed, with a firm look at Heinz.

"I know, Perry, " Heinz reassured him. "It's obvious the second anyone sees you with them."

Perry nodded. ⌈I didn't see myself surviving my job,⌋ he told Heinz.

"What?" he asked, alarmed. He'd known Perry had thought his job was too dangerous, but he hadn't realized Perry had resigned himself to his death!

⌈A… fairly high percentage of OWCA agents die on the job. It's why they pick orphans. People without ties,⌋ Perry signed, face very serious. ⌈So when I found out I was pregnant, I had three choices. One, leave OWCA to be a parent – which I thought I couldn't do. My job was important; I felt like I was keeping so many people safe, and that my desire was selfish.⌋

⌈Two, I could stay with OWCA and have my son. But I thought I would die while he was still a child, and I already loved him too much to put him through that.⌋

Heinz was silent during Perry's explanation. He felt like he couldn't say a word. He couldn't interrupt one of Perry's rare backstories.

⌈My third option, the only one I really felt was feasible at the time, was that I stay with OWCA and keep my son, but he couldn't know the truth. If I didn't tell him I was his parent, it would hurt less if I died, right?⌋ Perry explained, looking lost and hurt, more than Heinz had ever seen on him.

⌈Looking back, I know he still would've been devastated. Just because I didn't call myself his dad didn't mean I wasn't,⌋ Perry signed. ⌈So maybe I would do things differently now, but I don't regret how things turned out.⌋

He didn't know what to say. Heinz knew anything that came out of his mouth right now would probably be wildly inappropriate, so he just reached out and pulled Perry into a hug. All of his boyfriend's muscles were hard as rocks, so tense he seemed ready to pop apart at the seams, and even with Heinz hugging him, he didn't relax.

"Perry?" Heinz asked quietly, pulling back, worrying he'd done the wrong thing,

There was a long pause before Perry told him, ⌈I want to fight someone.⌋

"A… specific someone?" Heinz asked, confused and concerned.

Perry shook his head but didn't sign anything else.

Heinz stared at him for a long time, trying to figure out what was going on in Perry's mind. Then, it came to him. Maybe Perry missed getting to fight him everyday? Thinking about it, he was sure it had probably been a good way for Perry to vent his emotions.

"Do you want to spar?" he asked. "I know I've never been the best at fighting, but I can put up a struggle if I need to."

Perry stared at him wide-eyed, slowly signing, ⌈You'd do that for me?⌋

He shrugged. "I like being your boyfriend, but… I miss being your nemesis too," he admitted, realizing he missed the fighting too. "I don't want to go back to being evil, but I wish we could be both."

Perry tilted his head to the side and had a look in his eyes that Heinz took to mean he missed that too. Then, abruptly, Perry stood and held out a hand to him.

He stood too and took Perry's hand, and he was lead out of the room.

In the upstairs hallway, they passed Norm and the boys, and Phineas asked, "Where are you going, Dad, Dr. D?"

"I'm going to fight your dad!" Heinz answered enthusiastically, still being pulled along.

"What?" Phineas asked blankly, but all three of them followed them downstairs and out to the yard, where Perry dropped his hand, turned, and squared up.

"So, how do you want to do this? Ah!!" He started fighting back quickly as Perry flung himself at him.

The boys and Norm each picked sides and cheered their choice on as they spared, but it wasn't even close to being an equal fight. Heinz ended up feeling a bit bad for Phineas, who had picked to cheer for him.

Heinz was scrappy, so he kept it going for as long as he could, but Perry turned every swing he made against him, and before long, he was laid flat and feeling exhausted, pinned by a barely ruffled Perry.

His boyfriend pressed a quick, smacking kiss to the side of his face, and when he pulled back, Heinz could see a broad smile stretching across his face.

"I love you," Heinz said, saying it first for the first time, and Perry's smile grew even wider.

That was all the moment they got, though, because then they were swarmed by the boys and Norm, who were all amped-up from watching their fight.

Heinz and Vanessa went over for dinner at the Flynn-Fletcher house again that Saturday, planning to also stay for family movie night. Linda had cooked, and the food was delicious; it was only as they settled in to pick the movie that the issues started.

He had been feeling a small prickling feeling in his right arm since just after they'd sat down to eat, but at the time, he'd ignored it. He had nerve damage on that side since the original amputation hadn't been cleanly done in a hospital like his left one, so from time to time, he got little pains there.

The pain had been growing slowly worse all night, but it had still been tolerable. He'd just figured that the growing fall chill was exacerbating things like it sometimes did.

But as he flopped down on the couch, ready to voice his opinion for that night's movie choice, he felt a small jolt in his arm, followed by a sharp, electrical pain.

Not wanting to scare Vanessa or the other kids, who were all digging around in the TV stand looking at VHSes, he bit his lip hard and only let out a muffled groan of pain as he clutched at his shoulder, but Perry had caught on that something was wrong instantly, turning from the kids and looking him over immediately.

Heinz ignored him, instead scrabbling to yank off his lab coat and push up his sweater sleeve, peeling at the edge of the synthetic skin to get a hand on the release clasp.

"Is something wrong?" Linda asked, hovering in the background, sounding concerned.

As soon as Heinz hit the release, he yanked the whole arm off and saw what the problem was. A wire seemed to have gotten pinched and frayed last time he'd put his arm on, and had finally started shocking him.

He heard a couple gasps from the rest of the Flynn-Fletchers, and he looked up to see them all frozen and looking at him, the adults staring at him in shock, Linda with her hands clasped over her mouth, and he was just sitting there with his arm detached in his hand.

"… Whoops," he said.

Heinz felt uncomfortable. Perry hadn't seem him without his prosthetics yet, and he doubted any of the others even knew he was missing both his arms. Well, except Vanessa, obviously, who looked vaguely concerned about the whole situation but not surprised at all.

Phineas was the first to speak. "You've got a robotic arm?" he asked, sounding in awe and shuffling closer to look at it.

"Phineas!" Linda said, scolding him lightly, slowly getting over her shock.

"It's all good," Heinz said. "Yeah. I mean, I've got two. Both of them are fake." He swung the arm he was holding up to tap against his left one, causing it to make a metallic-y thunking sound, then he held out the arm for Phineas's inspection.

"That's so cool," Phineas said, looking it over. "Oh, was it shocking you?" His little hands had clasped around the connector section of the arm, and he was looking closely at the sparking wire. "That's why you took it off?"

"Yep," Heinz said, nodding. "Not real fun to have electrified metal attached to you." He waved his right residual limb to draw attention to the metal socket there where the prosthetic attached to.

He was feeling a little self-conscious about his arm being exposed, but Perry's family had to learn eventually. Here he could control the information… He just wished the scar tissue wasn't visible.

The scarring on the right side was a lot worse than on the left, courtesy of the boulder having heavily scraped up his arm in the process of pinning him. The synthetic skin usually covered it, Heinz having designed it to overhang more than the one on the left side did, but now the harsh knotted scars were visible for Perry and his family to see.

"Dad, do you need any help?" Vanessa asked, coming closer and looking at him in concern.

"I'm okay, sweetie," he tried to reassure her through his growing anxiety. "I just need to…" He wedged the arm between his knees to hold it still as he finagled his fingers into the tiny slot for the power switch.

As soon as he hit it, the wire stopped sparking, and he considered whether he should just reattach his arm and deal with the dead weight until he could get home or if he should deal with being down an arm, feeling uncomfortable the rest of the night with his empty sleeve.

"Ferb and I can help you repair it!" Phineas offered, smiling brightly at Heinz and not seeming put off at all by anything that had happened. Ferb nodded.

"Boys, I don't know if that's the best idea," Lawrence said, sounding unsure.

"Your dad's right, honey. I know you two are smart, but this seems a little… advanced," Linda agreed.

Heinz chimed in, "Nah, I've seen these two's work. I think they'd only need a couple minutes to figure it all out if they saw the internals. They're really smart." And he watched as Phineas's smile grew to stretch across his whole face.

Realizing he didn't have to choose between a dead weight or an empty sleeve, because the boys had the tools he would need, he asked them, "Can I borrow a few things to fix this real quick?"

"Sure!" Phineas said, grabbing him by his remaining wrist and leading the way. "Come on up to our room; we've got a soldering iron and a bunch of wiring options up there."

The two of them were followed by Ferb and then Perry, all of them heading to the boys' bedroom, where Heinz found exactly what he needed set up at their desk.

"Wow, it looks like you were expecting me to have this problem," he joked, looking at the still set-up equipment.

"Ferb and I were building a drone earlier," Phineas told him.

"Oh, nice," he said, while he clumsily maneuvered the synthetic skin off the arm one-handed. "What for?"

"Dad likes to take pictures. We figured he might like a few aerial shots of our bigger projects," Phineas said.

Heinz looked over to Perry, who seemed to have not realized that's what the boys had been doing, because he looked so touched. "That's nice of you two," Heinz said. "Now… do you want to see how this works?"

Both Phineas and Ferb crowded in close as he plonked his arm down onto the tabletop. Step-by-step, he explained all the internal parts he was checking to make sure that only that specific wire had been damaged by being pinched and that it hadn't yanked on anything else inside. Once he'd verified that, replacing the damaged wire actually only took a couple minutes, even while down a hand, and this time, he made sure it was carefully tucked back into alignment so the problem wouldn't happen again.

Once everything was fixed, he did his best to slide the skin back on the arm then wedged his fingers into the small slot at the top to turn it back on.

No sparks!

He hated that he was having to put his arm back on without any adhesive to hold the skin in place on the top, but his sleeve would have to do, now that his arm was repaired.

As he set the prosthetic against the socket and twisted it slightly to lock it into place, Phineas said, "You know, your arm's pretty cool, but there's definitely room to make a few improvements if you wanted."

In the background, he could see Perry cover his face, so Heinz was curious what the boys were going to suggest. "Such as…?" he asked.

Ferb whipped out a small stack of blueprints and pressed them down onto the desk, smoothing the curling edges flat. When did they manage to draft these? During his demonstration?!

"Well, Ferb thought lasers in your fingertips would be cool, but I told him anything that could be used a weapon probably shouldn't be part of your hands, just in case of an accident," Phineas said, pulling away the top blueprint and crumpling it up.

When did they talk?! They'd been quiet the entire time he'd been showing them his arm!

Heinz looked wide-eyed at Perry, who just shrugged. He was such a schnitzel!

"Then I remembered you like to cook, so we thought maybe built-in, retractable kitchen gadgets, like a whisk or a spatula," Phineas continued, pointing out the appropriate spots on the blueprint. He pulled that one away and passed it to Heinz.

"Also, as an inventor, Ferb figured maybe you'd like having a screwdriver and-or wrench handy at all times, so we came up with an alternative option where you have those instead of the kitchen tools." Phineas showed off that blueprint as well. "And if you like both of those, you said both your arms are robotic, so you could do one for one side and one for the other!"

Heinz stared long and hard at the blueprints. "… Kid," he eventually said, "I get it. I think these are great ideas. But these are my arms. I think they're good for now, without adding any extra features."

"Okay," Phineas said, not even looking the slightest bit disappointed. He just nodded sagely and said like a little businessman, "We hear your feedback, and we'll take it into consideration. I'll just leave these with you, though, in case you change your mind." After taking back the one he'd handed Heinz, he carefully rolled up both the blueprints together, placed a self-adhering paper band around them to keep them from unrolling, and passed it back to Heinz.

He shot Perry a bewildered look as he took the offered blueprints, and Perry shrugged again, with a lovingly resigned sort of expression on his face.

Then Perry clapped and got the kids' attention back on him, and he asked, ⌈Back downstairs for a movie?⌋

"Yeah!" Phineas cheered. "I finally decided which one I'm voting for this week!" And he scampered out of the room.

Ferb went to follow but stopped at the doorway and looked back at the two of them. "You know," he said, "he says that every time, but he only ever votes for the same four movies on rotation."

Perry let out a sigh and nodded. ⌈We still love him anyway,⌋ he signed, with just a hint of snark.

Nodding once firmly, Ferb left the room.

"Well…" Heinz said. "Shall we?" He gestured toward the door.

Between the eight of them, they decided on a movie, watched the whole thing – Heinz thought it was a snooze-fest; Vanessa, the traitor, had sided with Lawrence's pick, and Heinz was not at all interested in the old detective film they ended up watching, dozing off on Perry's shoulder a few minutes in – and then the kids headed up to bed.

Normally, they, the adults, headed up then too, but Linda and Lawrence stayed seated on the couch while the kids went upstairs.

Heinz's stomach knotted at his spiraling thoughts as he tried to figure out what they'd want to talk about. Clearly something to do with his arms, but what?

Linda shifted on the couch to be looking at him more directly and reached out to place a hand on his knee. "Hey, hon, everything all good after earlier?" she asked, looking at him softly. "I didn't want to ask in front of all the kids, just in case."

His brow furrowed, and he looked between the other three. "Uh, yes?" he said, confused. "I got it all fixed, and everything's fine now."

"I understand that," she said, nodding slowly, "but I'm sure having that happen in front of everyone was stressful."

"Well, I'm fine," Heinz said, a touch sharply. "I'm sorry that I let it happen."

"No need to apologize, Heinz," Lawrence said, looking at him with concern. "We were just worried about you. At least, we were once we got over the initial surprise. Perry had been pretty tight-lipped about this all."

Heinz rolled his eyes, feeling a little back on even keel now that he had a subject to talk about that he knew. "Perry's tight-lipped about everything," he complained.

"Yes, yes, he really is," Lawrence agreed.

"He barely told us anything about you, and still doesn't," Linda said, shooting Perry a playful glare. "It's like pulling teeth."

He opened his mouth to make a quip about his numerous backstories, to see if sharing anything about how he'd been raised by ocelots or lost his arm on an ill-advised hike or spent his childhood stuck acting as a lawn-gnome would scare them off, but the words wouldn't come out. They felt stuck in his throat, no matter how much he tried to force them out.

Eventually he gave up and said in a lackluster tease, "Yeah, Perry's the worst."

Chapter Text

Heinz continued spending his days trying to keep himself occupied as best he could, with Perry coming over as often as he could manage. Perry had been busy helping Lawrence with the shop, though, getting things done that Lawrence had apparently been putting off for various reasons. Heinz himself hadn't been back to the shop since that first time, still feeling unsure around the other Flynn-Fletcher adults from time to time.

But he'd kept going to Perry's house and talking to them and getting to know them, and he was slowly warming up more to Linda and Lawrence.

They'd just seemed too perfect at first… He hadn't been sure how to take it. He liked them, but then he'd get nervous about how they saw him and back off again, but he'd finally stopped doing quite so much of that.

Honestly, things seemed to be looking up for him. He had more friends than he'd had in a long while, he had a boyfriend he loved, and his relationship with his daughter was better than it'd been in years.

Then, on a random Wednesday, he got a knock on his apartment door.

Heinz swung open the door thinking maybe it was Perry making a surprise visit and having forgotten his keys or maybe it was even the Fireside Girls, trying to sell him cupcakes. Instead, it was Roger.

"You!" he gasped loudly, before slamming the door in his brother's face.

There was a second knock, this one much quieter and slower, and Heinz took a deep breath before opening the door again.

"What do you want?" he barked out, glaring at his brother and pointing a finger in his face.

"Can I come in, Heinz?" Roger asked, sounding depressed, and that made him actually take in his brother's appearance. Roger's normally perfectly gelled hair was drooping into his face, he had bags under his eyes, and he wasn't wearing a suit jacket like he usually did – his shirt was even wrinkled.

"… Fine," Heinz said tersely, reluctantly stepping aside to let Roger into the apartment. Ugh, he was regretting having given up evil right about now, wishing he could use an -inator to make Roger go away.

"I needed to speak with you," Roger said, shifting about listlessly, nothing like his normally tightly-controlled actions. After a moment, he walked over to Heinz's couch and took a seat.

"Don't bother asking if you can sit, why don't you. Just come on in and make yourself at home," Heinz grumbled and sat down at the furthest armchair from the couch Roger was on. "So what did you need?" he asked with a frown.

Roger hesitated for a long moment, his lips moving slightly, but no words coming out, until he said, "I came by to let you know I've stepped down as mayor."

Heinz raised an eyebrow. "Big whoop. So you're not famous and powerful anymore. What's that got to do with me?"

He watched as Roger let out a long sigh and rubbed at his face before saying, "Heinz, why do we always have to do this?"

"Do what, Roger?" Heinz asked angrily. "What do you think is even happening here? We barely talk, and all of a sudden you come here to complain about something you chose to do! What do you want me to say?"

"Heinz!" Roger snapped. Then, after taking a deep breath, he said much more evenly, "I am trying. Please."

"Fine," Heinz said sharply. "Just what are you trying to do? I'm listening." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and legs.

"I…" his brother faltered, swallowing visibly. "I have been… struggling lately, with my… mental health," he said, careful with his words. "And I realized that maybe we should have been talking about some things that we've been avoiding bringing up."

He felt his stomach roll before it exploded with butterflies. Whatever Roger was getting at, he wanted no part of it. "I think we're good on the talking. No need for us to chat," he said.

"Heinz…" Roger said sadly, looking him deep in the eyes. "You can't honestly believe that."

"Hm…" Heinz hummed, pretending to look thoughtful. "No, I think I'm right," he said, shaking his head. "So you're having personal issues. Get a therapist. I can make you a recommendation for one I've heard good things about."

"Look, I know we've never been especially close," Roger said, completely ignoring what Heinz said. "But I've always wished we could be, and I am trying to reach out to you right now."

"It seems like too little, too late, doesn't it, Roger?" Heinz hissed. "You've constantly pushed me away for our whole lives, and now you've come back begging for us to be friends?"

Roger looked exasperated and exhausted, but Heinz didn't care. He had no right!

"Heinz, when have I ever pushed you away?" he asked. "All I've ever wanted was for us to be friendly."

"Oh, how about every single time we've ever interacted since you were born?" Heinz said, rolling his eyes. "If you insist on a specific example… How about the time I asked you if we could play kickball together in the backyard, and instead of kicking the ball to me, you kicked it into the woods instead?" He still remembered being yelled at by Mother and having to try to find the ball in the dark.

"Heinz…" Roger said, face twisted up in an emotion he couldn't recognize. He'd never seen it on his brother before. "I wasn't even in school yet then. It was an accident."

"Sure, sure," Heinz said, rolling his eyes. "That's not what Mother thought when she blamed it on me."

"I-" Roger paused, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm sorry Mother did that to you, but you have to understand, I had no control over that."

"No, of course you didn't," he said, laughing harshly. "You only went along with everything she said and never spoke up against her."

"And just what was I supposed to say, Heinz? I was five years younger than you; I barely understood what was happening for most of it," Roger defended, and Heinz didn't want to hear it.

"Of course you didn't," he said sarcastically.

"Look, I know it was tough for you during our childhood. I know. But have you ever considered what it was like for me?" Roger asked, staring Heinz in the eye.

"Mother loved you!" Heinz shouted back angrily, fed up with Roger's denials. "She always loved you!"

"At what cost!" Roger snapped. "I had to watch every day how she treated you and know that if I ever slipped up or made her angry, I'd be right there with you." He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "I know I didn't have it as bad as you, but I spent my entire childhood terrified of her. So I'm sorry I didn't speak up to protect you, Heinz. That was wrong. But I couldn't."

Heinz's stomach dropped. "Get out," he said, nearly in a whisper.

"What?" Roger asked, looking confused.

"Please get out, Roger," Heinz repeated, still in a quiet, blank tone, standing robotically and walking over the door, swinging it open, and gesturing to it.

Hesitantly, Roger stood from the couch and walked toward the door but froze a few steps away. "… I'd really hoped we could talk, Heinz," he said.

It took Heinz a second, but he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Mhm. I'll call you in a few days. Just please get out now."

Roger paused for a second more before taking another step toward the door. "I'll be waiting for it… Thank you for your time today," he said.

"Uh-huh," Heinz said, nodding on autopilot. "Good talk," he added, not really meaning it.

His brother stared at him a moment longer then stepped out the door, Heinz quickly closing it behind him. He turned and slumped against the door, sliding down it to sit on the floor, and stared blankly across the apartment.

Eventually he managed to pull himself together enough to slide his phone out of his pocket and shoot off a brief text message.

To: Perry the Platypus #[ ]">
» come over asap

His phone took barely a couple seconds to buzz back with a «b rite thr», and Perry must've broken a million traffic laws, because a panicked knock sounded on his door only ten minutes later.

Heinz scooted to the side to lean against the wall instead, just as he heard a key turn in the lock, and then the door swung open with considerable force. Looking up, he saw Perry looking around a touch frantically, and he reached out to tug lightly on the hem of Perry's shorts to get his attention.

Perry's eyes shot down to him, and he stepped to the side to close the door then crouched down to be eye level with him. ⌈Heinz, what's going on? You had me worried,⌋ he signed.

"Roger stopped by," was all he could manage to get out. His thoughts had been spiraling since the second Roger had said what he said, and Heinz… didn't know what to do.

Shifting, Perry moved and sat down next to him, pressing along his side, giving Heinz comfort that he fully took advantage of, leaning back against Perry.

⌈Why?⌋ Perry asked.

"He… he said he wanted to talk," Heinz said, trying to explain, trying to parse out how his life felt like it'd been turned upside down from a conversation that had lasted less than fifteen minutes.

Perry gave him a second but, when no more information was forthcoming, prompted, ⌈About?⌋

"Well, at first it was to tell me he stepped down as mayor, but then it all went sideways," Heinz told him. "I think… I think he was actually trying to reach out to me." He couldn't stop thinking about how Roger had looked. "… He apologized for when we were kids. He said… he said he'd been scared of Mother."

Wide-eyed, Perry made his 'krkrkr' noise and reached out to rub Heinz's back.

"I thought…" Heinz started, but before he could get his thoughts out, he felt choked up, like he couldn't speak, just like so many other times over the last few weeks.

Making a frustrated noise, he yanked hard on his hair.

Instantly, Perry was making soothing noises and trying to coax his hands away from his hair, but Heinz was just so… so… fed-up!

He'd never had trouble talking to Perry before and now, all of a sudden that they were dating, he couldn't get his words out? They should be talking about things more, not less! That was what people in relationships did, wasn't it? So why could he not just say what he was thinking?!

Heinz felt like he was on the verge of another meltdown, so upset because his brain was stopping his mouth from working.

Perry was still making the soothing noises but had shifted instead to wrapping his arms around Heinz and holding him almost painfully tight, the sensation helping to ground him.

They stayed like that a long time, Perry holding him close until he'd managed to calm down enough, and when they pulled apart and Heinz still didn't have any words to say, Perry just smiled gently at him and signed, ⌈How about we have lunch and watch our soaps? We can try again later.⌋

Over the course of the day, he kept trying and trying and trying again to tell Perry what was wrong and what he was thinking, but he kept feeling like the words were getting stuck in his throat, each time getting more and more frustrated with himself.

By the time they laid down for bed that night – Perry having agreed to stay over – Heinz was fed up with himself and with the situation, stewing in silence in his self-directed anger until he couldn't keep his eyes open any more and passed out.

Only to wake up a couple hours later from one of the worst nightmares he'd had in months.

He could still feel the grief and confusion and pain of having lost his arm as a boy right at the top of his mind from his dream, and he rolled over and screamed into his pillow.

Next to him, Perry bolted upright in bed, instantly on alert and looking around, before turning to look at him in confusion.

"I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!" Heinz said angrily.

⌈What's wrong?⌋ Perry signed, looking confused and concerned.

"This isn't working. Why can't I talk to you? Why are my nightmares back? It wasn't like this before," he said, punching at the mattress just to try and feel something other than the heavy swirl of negative emotions that was threatening to overtake him.

Even while seeming still a bit groggy, it was like a light-bulb went on in Perry's head; Heinz could see his eyes light up as the other man climbed out of bed and dug in Heinz's dresser.

"Are you ignoring me?" Heinz asked petulantly, even though he knew Perry wasn't. He was just feeling bitter and somehow still so lonely even though he'd never been closer to Perry, and he was taking it out on the man.

Perry finally must've found what he'd been looking for because he spun around and climbed back in bed, a wad of fabric clutched in his hand. Reaching out, he grabbed Heinz's hands and pressed the fabric into them.

Unbundling it, Heinz found… a tie.

"What am I even supposed to do with this?" he asked grumpily.

Perry offered out his hands, wrists together, and Heinz could only stare blankly.

After a moment, Perry let out a sigh and signed, ⌈Tie me up,⌋ before offering his hands again.

"This isn't the time for weird sex stuff, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said, deflecting from the uncomfortably emotionally-charged energy coming off Perry that he didn't know the reasoning for.

Sighing again, Perry took the tie back from him and, with a few deft twists of his wrists, had himself pretty convincingly wrapped up. Then, before Heinz could blink, Perry flopped over, made a grumpy 'krkrkr' noise, and glared in that way he did whenever he had been trapped.

"I've… trapped you, Perry the Platypus?" Heinz said, confused. Then it clicked, and a smile grew on his face, slowly stretching from ear to ear. "I've trapped you! And now you have no choice but to listen to my monologue!"

This time when he went to talk, the words just flowed out of him, the way they did whenever he'd told Perry one of his backstories in the lead-up to introducing the -inator of the day.

Heinz started rambling, explaining to Perry, "So Roger came over today, and he was all 'blah, blah, my mental health's been bad, I stepped down as mayor, you should take pity on me, Heinz,' and of course, I wasn't having any of it, and he was trying to say that he'd always wanted to be close to me and no, of course he never pushed me away, I'd just imagined all of it."

His boyfriend, unlike when they'd been talking recently, didn't sign a word, and it felt so easy for Heinz to keep talking, to fill the space and explain his thoughts as he said, "But then, that's when he said he'd been scared of Mother our entire childhood, and I… I hadn't noticed, Perry the Platypus. I had been so focused on everything going on with myself that I missed that somehow. And…"

He swallowed, but the lump in his throat wasn't from the words not coming out, it was just from trying to hold back tears. "I thought siblings would always fight; I thought that's what they were supposed to do, but I see your children, Perry, and I realize that they're supposed to look out for each other and… He never looked out for me, sure, but also, I never looked out for him. I just let Mother say one thing and took it as gospel, and because of that, I've spent my whole life stewing in jealousy and never realized any differently.

"I'm still mad at him. I think I'll always be mad at him for it, but… he was having trouble too," he finished.

Perry looked at him sympathetically, and Heinz scoffed as he wiped away his tears. "I don't want your pity, Perry the Platypus."

Heinz took a deep breath and said, "I don't even know where to go from here with this, but I couldn't look him in the face after he'd said it. I just made him leave, and I told him I'd call in a few days, but I don't know how I'm going to get through it… Now would really be a nice time to build an -inator to deal with it instead."

Perry didn't move an inch, and Heinz stage-whispered, "That was your cue to break out of my trap."

At that, Perry burst into action, the tie fluttering through the air. Before Heinz could watch it fall to the floor, Perry was in his face, tackling him to the bed but in a much less aggressive fashion than when they fought. His boyfriend only pushed him down enough to forcefully cuddle him, manhandling his limbs into the desired positions.

"Oh no!" Heinz said playfully, feeling so much better now that he'd gotten the words out of his mind and off his chest. "Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"

Perry was fully laying on top of him at this point, and the pressure was soothing Heinz back to sleep as quickly as it had that first time, his earlier nightmares a distant memory.

"Thank you," he whispered to Perry, pressing a kiss to the side of his boyfriend's face, "for everything that you do for me."

Against his ribs, he felt Perry's hand shift and press into his side, a heart carefully drawn with a fingertip followed by a his hand formed into an ⌈I love you⌋ taking up residence near his heart.

He'd said it back enough times to Perry now that it felt a little smoother coming out as he said, "I love you too."

Heinz cursed himself a few days later when he finally forced himself to call Roger then realized he couldn't find his brother's number anywhere.

He'd put off calling Roger as long as he could but the guilt kept growing and growing in the pit of his stomach, and every time he'd managed to put it out of his mind, he saw something that reminded him of Roger and brought all the feelings back to the surface.

That could've kept going on forever, if Heinz had let it – and he was going to – until Perry had glared at him for his fidgeting during their TV time.

"I'm supposed to call Roger," he had told Perry. "I told him I would."

Perry had sighed and reached over and dug his hand into Heinz's pocket, pulling out his phone and handing it to him.

And now he was digging around in his lab looking for Roger's cell number.

He'd never bothered saving it in his phone because he'd never wanted to call his brother before, and he'd thought that would never change. Sighing, he flopped down at his desk and gave up looking. Instead, he pulled up the contacts on his phone and called the one person he'd wanted to avoid asking.

"Hello, Heinz," his ex-wife's voice came down the line. "What are you calling about now? If this is about extra alimony for the month, I thought we'd be past that, what with your new boyfriend."

Heinz pulled a face at that, spitting out, "You make Perry sound like some kind of… whatever it is the kids say – sugar daddy. Blech."

"No, I suppose he wouldn't be, would he?" Charlene asked neutrally. "Linda told me he quit his job to help with the shop more. Though she didn't say what he'd been doing before…" She was fishing for information; he could tell.

"Government work," was all Heinz was willing to tell her, not wanting to get into the intricacies of his and Perry's previous nemeses relationship at the moment. "He wanted more time with his family." … Among other things.

"That's what Linda had said," Charlene said, letting it go without pressing him for more than that. "By the way," she added, "she and I had a nice chat about you at our last cooking class."

His stomach twisted up in nerves. "Oh?"

"Heinz," she sighed. "I meant it when I said it was nice. Linda had been telling me about how well Vanessa has been getting along with her kids, and that she was happy with how things have been going, and she got to talking about how well you've been fitting in with their family and how nice it was to have you around… I'm glad you're finally finding what I know you've always wanted… I'm sorry I couldn't give it to you, but it's good that you found someone who could."

Oh.

He had a lot of thoughts all clamoring for attention. He'd thought Perry's family was mostly tolerating him, but Charlene made it sound like Linda was… glad he was dating Perry and hanging around all the time, which surprised him because he was constantly picking fights with her.

And Charlene… sounded remorseful about not being able to be what he'd needed.

Their divorce had been fairly fraught with tension – Heinz for a while had been terrified about what it meant for his ability to see Vanessa and… hurt, about Charlene leaving him. He'd thought marriage meant she'd be the one person to never leave him, but that didn't stop it from happening anyway.

Looking back now, though, with the distance of time letting his emotions cool, he could see she never actually left. They just stopped being married. She still answered all his calls, checked in on him from time to time, made sure they parented Vanessa together, unlike other divorced parents. And she always made sure he was taken care of, sending him money whenever he needed it…

They just couldn't be together like that, it seemed.

Which… he didn't regret now. He had loved Charlene. Still loved her, but now out of their connection and shared past instead of passion. But he was so much happier with Perry than he'd ever been with Charlene, and he hadn't even realized that was possible.

"Heinz?" Charlene said.

"Sorry. I got lost in thought," he told her. "Um… thanks… I… I hope that guy you've been seeing – Sam – makes you as happy as Perry makes me."

There was a moment of silence from the other end of the line before Charlene said softly, "Thank you, Heinz. That's very kind of you."

The two of them sat there quietly for another few moments, not in awkward silence, but an odd, shared peace that they hadn't managed in years.

Eventually, Charlene broke it by asking, "So… if you weren't calling about your alimony, what were you calling about?"

Heinz frowned, his good mood draining away again at remembering just why he'd reached out to her. "I needed Roger's number," he told her. "I can't find it anywhere, and I don't want to call and ask Melanie. She hates me. She'd probably give me a fake one." And would Melanie even still talk to him now that Roger had stepped down?

"You need to call Roger?" Charlene asked incredulously. "What do you need to talk to him about?"

"I…" Heinz didn't know how to answer. "He came by the other day to talk, and… Well, I told him I'd call him later. And… it's later."

"O… kay. Well, give me just a second to pull it up," she said.

A couple minutes later, he had Roger's number written down on a scrap of paper in front of him, Charlene had said goodbye, and there was a growing sense of dread in his stomach at the thought of having to call his brother.

He couldn't bring himself to go back downstairs and face Perry's disappointed expression if he didn't call Roger, though, so he forced himself to dial and press call. There was barely any time for the anxiety to build as the phone rang, because Roger picked up during the second ring.

"Heinz! You called!" he answered, sounding… relieved.

Heinz supposed he didn't blame him for thinking he wasn't going to call. He'd done similar things before, after all. "Roger," he said, a bit tersely.

"I had really been hoping you'd actually call me," Roger told him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Heinz snapped before he could stop himself. "What? Did you think I lied to you?"

"No… Heinz…" Roger said exasperatedly.

"You wanted me to try. Here I am. Trying, Roger," Heinz said, his tone biting.

Roger sighed and said, "I'm sorry. Let's start over again, please… Heinz, thank you for calling me like you said you would. I appreciate it."

"You're welcome," he said through gritted teeth.

"Was this call to continue our conversation from the other day?" Roger was putting on his politician voice, and it was setting Heinz's teeth on edge, but like he had said, he was trying, so he didn't comment on it.

"What else would I be calling about?" Heinz asked him. Okay, well, he was trying, but it was really hard, so his words were still coming out like daggers.

"I don't know, but I had hoped that was what this would be about," Roger told him. "I… apologize for coming over on Wednesday without calling ahead first. That was rude of me."

"Ugh," Heinz groaned, rolling his eyes. "Whatever. Apology accepted." He took a deep breath and braced himself for the absolute slog this conversation was going to be. "So you had come by to tell me about stepping down as mayor?"

"Yes!" Roger said, sounding surprised. "Yes, Heinz, I'd come to let you know I was stepping back to focus on some of my personal issues."

Heinz bit back his initial reaction to ask what kind of personal issues Roger could even possibly be having with how perfect his life was and instead asked, carefully forming each word with precision, "What kind of personal issues?"

There was a moment of silence. "Thank you for asking," Roger said softly. "I realized… I didn't want to be mayor. I thought it was making me happy, but it wasn't; it was doing the opposite."

"Sure, sure," Heinz said, not really caring, but trying to force his way through the conversation. He wanted to be able to go back downstairs and tell Perry that he and Roger had had a productive talk. That was his goal.

"Really it had been Mother pushing me to do it…" Roger told him. "I had just been trying to make her happy."

"Yeah, well at least you succeeded," Heinz said bitterly.

"Heinz… Please don't be like this," his brother pleaded. "I don't want Mother to keep coming between us like this any more."

"… Fine," Heinz agreed after a moment. "… I'm sorry I didn't realize how things were for you with her," he told Roger, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.

Roger sighed. "I'm not surprised you didn't, though, Heinz. She and Father treated you horribly… I forgive you. There's no way you could've noticed with how things were for you," he said. "I'm sorry again I didn't speak up for you."

Heinz took a steadying breath and admitted, "You were right last time we talked. You were a lot younger than me, and you didn't know any different." It hurt deeply to say that, like he was carving into his own chest and pulling out the barbed lies he'd told himself over the years, but it felt like something he had to do.

A quiet beeping sounded over the line followed by a rustling noise, then Roger said, sounding deeply remorseful, "I'm sorry, Heinz. I have an appointment I have to go to now… Could we talk again later?"

"Yeah, Roger. I'll try to call you again soon," he said.

"That would be nice," Roger said. "Goodbye, brother."

"Bye."

Heinz hung up the phone, curled in on himself, and cried.

Chapter Text

Heinz was working on another one of his inventions that day. He hadn't stopped building and inventing since he'd given up evil, but it had slowed down significantly as he struggled to think up non-evil things to make. Plus, Perry's boys wrangled him into joining them from time to time, so that had been helping scratch the inventing itch.

Today was an audiology-based -inator, since he figured his optometry one had been doing pretty decently as far as getting him royalty checks went.

He'd realized the day before that, although Charlene would likely keep sending him alimony checks as long as he needed, and Perry picked up any remaining slack, he maybe needed at least a little income of his own. It was so embarrassing to ask one of them for money if he overspent for the month.

So, an audiology -inator it was. Something to automatically test the ears instead of those slow, boring 'press-when-you-hear-a-beep' tests that they were currently using.

Unfortunately, today was also one of those days where Norm was actually around and 'trying' to be helpful.

"Norm, stop moving! You keep getting in my way!" Heinz scolded, as Norm walked right into his path for the fourth time that hour. "Just go stand over there until I tell you I need your help."

"I am just trying to be helpful, sir!" Norm said but stepped aside.

Then again, a couple minutes later as he was carrying a metal panel across the lab, Norm got in his way again. "Norm, stop! I'm trying to get this built before Perry comes over for lunch, and you're slowing me down!" he said angrily.

"I'm sweeping up the dropped screws so you don't slip, sir!" Norm told him, broom in hand.

"I didn't ask you to do that!" Heinz told him harshly.

Then another few minutes later, as he came back with a different wrench, one shaped for the special bolts he was using that he'd forgotten to grab, Norm crossed his path again. This time, as he stepped to one side to go around Norm, Norm stepped that way too. Same when he stepped the other way. He and Norm were locked in a stalemate of trying to go around each other, and Heinz was done!

"Norm, stop moving. Just, you're getting in the way. Norm, stop! Stand still for a- Norm, just- Norm! Norm! Bewege dich nicht!" Heinz snapped, feeling his mouth moving before his brain consciously caught up with it, and as soon as he realized what he said, he dropped the wrench in his hand, barely hearing it clatter to the floor.

"Sir?" Norm asked, but Heinz didn't respond.

He turned and fled, locking himself first in his bedroom, then closing himself into his bedroom closet, sitting curled up on the floor among the assorted boxes and trying not to completely melt down.

When had he become his parents? He wasn't- He wasn't a good father at all. He was just playing out the same stories from his childhood, taking it all out on Norm instead.

He hadn't even noticed when Norm had stopped calling him 'Dad', instead only calling him 'sir' unless Perry was there and he was referring to them together. He'd made a person and treated him so poorly.

Heinz hadn't wanted Norm to call him 'Dad', but that's what he was. He was Norm's father, and he couldn't even be bothered to try to be it. He just treated Norm like a burden even though he was the one who made him.

Just like Mother and Father treated him…

Norm constantly tried to win his approval, and he'd never bothered to give it, always brushing him off or pushing him away, just like he'd had done to him when he was a boy.

He was no better than Mother.

His breath was coming quicker and quicker, and his heart felt like it was racing out of his chest. His stomach was so tightly knotted that he was worried he was going to puke all over the floor of his closet.

How was he ever going to fix this? He couldn't. He was a terrible person.

Even when he'd been evil, he thought at least he wasn't a monster. But he was.

A knock sounded on his bedroom door, and he was terrified it was Norm. He didn't know what to say if it was. How would he even start that conversation?

He heard the lock click open, followed by the quiet footsteps he recognized as Perry's across his bedroom floor, headed toward the closet.

When had Perry gotten here?

He was gulping in breaths now, trying desperately to get enough air. His head was spinning, and he couldn't focus.

The closet door slid open the tiniest bit, letting in a brief moment of harshly bright light, before Perry slid inside, squeezing in next to him and shutting the door again.

He felt more than saw one of Perry's hands reach over to hold his, while the other traced on the back of his hand «breathe». Perry took a loud, exaggerated, slow breath in then out, over and over again, while Heinz tried his best to match him, slowly calming down in the process.

Once he felt like he could make his mouth form words properly without falling down another spiral of panic, he choked out, "You're here early."

«Norm texted me» Perry wrote on his hand.

"I messed up, Perry," Heinz confessed at the mention of his son. "I messed up big time, and I don't know how to fix it."

Heinz couldn't see his expression in the darkness, but he felt Perry's hand tighten around his. «What happened?» Perry wrote.

He took a shuddering breath in. "Norm's my son," he explained, hoping Perry would understand him the way he always did.

Perry let out a slow, smooth stream of breath, not quite a sigh, but close. He wrote, «He is.»

"I hadn't realized," he told him, staring blankly at the opposite wall of the closet that he couldn't quite make out.

«I know,» Perry wrote.

"I've been treating him terribly," Heinz said.

… And Perry paused too long.

In that moment, Heinz knew all his worst thoughts about himself were true. "I'm as bad as Mother and Father," he said, flatly.

«NO!» Perry wrote forcefully, poking his finger in hard on the point of the exclamation mark.

"I have been, Perry," Heinz argued, shaking his head. "I've been treating him just how they treated me." His eyes were welling up again with tears.

He heard the rustling of fabric and felt Perry shift, followed by the closet door opening, Perry having leaned forward and pushed it open.

Now visible in the light from the bedroom, Perry signed sharply, ⌈You are not your parents. Yes, Norm should have been treated better, but you realized you were in the wrong, and now you're going to change, right?⌋ He paused, an uncertain expression crossing his face for a brief second before he was back to the stern, assured face he normally wore as he asked, ⌈Could you see your parents ever doing that?⌋

It didn't even take Heinz a second to know the answer, but it took him longer than that to admit it to himself. "… No," he said. "They wouldn't… And of course I'm going to change."

⌈I know, Heinz,⌋ Perry told him, smiling softly at him. ⌈You'd never do anything to hurt your kids. Not knowingly.⌋

"But I didn't know. How could I have been so ignorant?" Heinz asked, reaching up and yanking angrily at his hair.

Perry reached out and carefully untangled his fingers from his hair, squeezing them gently before pulling away to sign, ⌈You have a lot of issues that you're going through yourself. I knew you didn't realize, and I'm sorry. I should've said something sooner. I'm in the wrong too, for letting it happen.⌋ He had an expression of deep hurt on his face, like he was blaming himself.

Heinz shrugged. "I don't know how much I would've listened," he admitted quietly. "… And I don't know how I'm going to fix it now."

⌈One day at a time,⌋ Perry told him. ⌈We'll get through this, and I'll help you every step of the way. First, though, is starting to treat Norm like your kid.⌋

He nodded slowly. "… I can do that."

He didn't know how to do that.

After his talk with Perry, once he had calmed down, the two of them, instead of going out for lunch like they'd planned, decided to stay in and eat lunch with Norm, figuring that would be an initial step in the right direction.

Perry'd had to leave after they finished eating, though, and then suddenly Heinz was all alone with Norm.

"So…" he said awkwardly, wringing his hands.

"Will you be going back to your inventing now, sir?" Norm asked cheerily, seeming unaffected by everything that had been happening.

"Um, no," Heinz told him. Inventing was the furthest thing from his mind right now, after the morning he'd had. "I was actually thinking… Did you want to do something together?" he asked.

"You wish to spend time with me, sir?" Norm asked, and neither his expression nor tone changed, but he seemed brighter, happier somehow.

"Yeah," he said. "Um… whatever you want to do."

He heard a faint humming sound, and he was pretty sure that was Norm, actually vibrating in excitement now. "I have always wanted to play catch with you, sir!"

Heinz nodded slowly. It was such a simple request; one that was more than doable. Why had he always said no? "We can do that, sure," he said, and Norm immediately turned to the door. "… And Norm?"

"Yes, sir?" Norm asked, looking back to him.

"You can stop calling me sir," he told him.

"But then what will I call you?" Norm asked, somehow conveying confusion even with his limited vocal range.

"Well…" Heinz rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm your dad, aren't I?"

The humming grew even louder, and Norm tramped back over to him, scooping him up into a tight hug, saying, "You are indeed, Dad!" He swung Heinz around in excitement, and Heinz didn't say a word, even though it was unpleasant and uncomfortable. He could give Norm this after everything he'd done. "This is the greatest day of my existence!"

Heinz woke up a few days later, having one of his worse days. The days where his skin felt too small for his frame and his negative thoughts spiraled without end. Normally he'd just build an -inator to vent his frustrations at himself into something, but he couldn't do that anymore, so instead, he curled up under the covers and let himself drown in his self-hatred.

He hadn't realized how much time had passed since he'd woken up until there was a quiet knock on the door, followed by Perry stepping into the room.

"Ah, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said flatly, staying curled up on his side and not meeting the other man's eyes, his gaze affixed around his boyfriend's knees. "I see I've forgotten to get lunch ready in time."

Perry sat on the bed near his head and ran a hand through Heinz's hair. If he signed anything, Heinz wasn't looking. He refused. He couldn't bear to have Perry tell him what he already knew about himself, how he was lazy and good for nothing.

His boyfriend made that rumbly 'krkrkr' noise that Heinz normally loved, but instead of turning his face up to see what Perry wanted, he curled his face down into the mattress.

A sigh from Perry. «What's wrong?» was written on his shoulder.

When he refused to answer, an ⌈I love you⌋ was pressed against him before Perry's hand went back to running through his hair.

"I have to be the worst relationship you've ever had," Heinz mumbled into the bedding.

Perry let out a small confused noise.

He turned his head and said, "I'm a terrible boyfriend, and I don't even understand why you're dating me. I said 'I have to be the worst relationship you've ever had'."

There was another 'krkrkr' noise, this one more indignant sounding, before Perry shoved him over to be laying on his back.

"Hey!" Heinz objected, but Perry ignored him.

⌈Heinz, I love you,⌋ Perry signed forcefully, glaring at him.

He rolled his eyes. "Your mistake then, Perry the Platypus," he said.

⌈You are also the only person I've ever dated. The only person I've ever wanted to date,⌋ Perry told him. ⌈I've told you I haven't been interested in other people, and I know my family's told you that I've never brought anyone around, so I don't know where this is coming from.⌋

Heinz sputtered. "You-" he tried to say, but his brain was having trouble comprehending. "… No one?"

⌈What did you think any of that meant?!⌋ Perry asked him incredulously.

"I thought you meant like in the way that I say I didn't really date! In that nothing got past a first or second date, you didn't try that often, and you didn't have anything long-term!" he said, flailing his hands around as he gestured wildly. "Not that you've been practically a monk for 10 years!"

Perry pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh before looking him in the eyes and signing, ⌈Fine. Heinz, I have never dated anyone. Not before Lawrence, not after Lawrence, not even Lawrence. I was never interested in anyone else. The only person I have ever wanted to date is you. So no, you are not a terrible boyfriend. I fell in love with you knowing exactly what I was getting, and I'm happy with our relationship.⌋

"Oh," Heinz said softly, as things clicked into place in his mind.

As much as he'd slowly been growing more secure in his relationship with Perry, there'd still been little niggling doubts in his mind as to why Perry had picked him of all people. Sure, he'd been told that Perry hadn't been super interested in dating a civilian or a fellow agent back when he'd been an agent himself, but he gave up a lot to be with Heinz instead, and Heinz had always wondered why.

It sounded like Perry had fallen just as hard as he had – and probably more unexpectedly…

Those were all thoughts for a different day, though. For now, "Could I have a snuggle, Perry the Platypus?" he tentatively asked.

He wanted to get rid of his bad feelings, and it seemed like Perry wouldn't mind helping him out.

Perry nodded and wiggled under the covers next to him, pulling him in close and giving him exactly what he'd asked for.

As he and Perry were prepping dinner together at the Flynn-Fletcher house – and since when had he become such a large part of their household that he was to the point of cooking in their kitchen?! – Perry asked him, ⌈I know it's on a Wednesday, so you wouldn't normally have Vanessa, but is there any chance she and Norm would want to go trick-or-treating with the boys and Candace?⌋

"Aren't the girls a bit old for that?" Heinz asked. While he wasn't really one to pay attention to societal norms and rules, teenage girls definitely did.

Perry shrugged and signed, ⌈Sure, but Candace gets away with it since the boys are still young enough. As much as she complains about being 'too mature' for it, I think she likes getting the free candy. Vanessa probably would too.⌋

"I'll ask her then," Heinz said. "Plus, I know the custody agreement technically says that I can only have her on the weekends and alternating major holidays, but Charlene doesn't mind if I want her to stay over more. We just wanted a structure and routine that Vanessa could rely on so she had stability."

Nodding, Perry shot him a smile. ⌈Okay. Also, I know it'll be a school night, but if she wants, she can spend the night here. I think Candace is planning to go to a party after trick-or-treating finishes up for the night, and then if Vanessa wants to go too, you don't have to worry about hauling her home so quickly.⌋

"Ugh. A party? Perry the Platypus, have you vetted the people for this party? How do you know what your little girl's getting up to?" Heinz asked, anxiety burbling in his stomach.

Perry rolled his eyes and signed, ⌈Calm down. It's not a party party. Just a few of Candace's friends are going to hang out at Jeremy's house, who,⌋ he interjected before Heinz could say anything, ⌈is a good kid, and I trust Candace to contact me and let me know if something goes wrong or she gets in over her head. Just like I trust Vanessa to do the same.⌋

"You're right," Heinz grumbled. "It's just so hard to watch my little girl grow up."

After a sympathetic pat on the arm, Perry signed, ⌈I know it is, but we have to trust that we raised them right and that they'll make the right choices and come to us for help if they need it.⌋

"Just how the heck are you such a good dad, Perry the Platypus?" Heinz asked dramatically, leaning to the side and flopping himself against Perry's shoulder. "It's doing things to me."

Perry's shoulders shook as he near-silently laughed, just quiet puffs of air accompanied by the tiniest squeaking noise sounding on the exhale, and Heinz fell further in love.

Later that night, as Heinz went up to join Perry in his room for the night, he stopped at the top of the stairs and looked around the upstairs hall, swearing something felt off, but he couldn't put his finger on what.

Perry turned back to look at him, one brow raised, then must've realized what Heinz was wondering, because he signed, ⌈We finally got the addition put on the house.⌋

"I swear it didn't look any bigger from the outside, Perry the Platypus," Heinz said, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he actually noticed the extra doors off the hallway.

⌈I don't know the science, but the boys said something about extra-dimensional folding?⌋ Perry told him with a confused shrug. ⌈The house got bigger on the inside, but not the outside.⌋

"Huh," Heinz said, feeling very surprised. "They figured that out? At their age?"

⌈They're very smart,⌋ Perry signed, smiling.

"Yeah, they really are," Heinz said, still awed by the science involved in it. "… Why did you need an addition again?"

Perry blushed a bit, and Heinz couldn't tell why because his answer wasn't in any way embarrassing or weird? ⌈We really needed a home office and another bathroom now that the kids are getting older. And a guest room, among other things,⌋ Perry told him. ⌈The boys maybe went a bit overboard adding space to the house since they actually had permission to do it.⌋

"Yeah, from what I know about them, that sounds about right," Heinz said. Then he shrugged and ignored whatever weirdness Perry had been putting out. He was ready for bed.

More days passed and Heinz found himself at home alone again with Norm. That'd happened a few times since his realization, and every time, he consciously tried his best to be a good dad.

It was hard.

At times, he slipped up and snapped, before beating himself up all over again about it, but today he was going to try again to make things up to Norm.

Perry had said the boys' school was going to have a bake sale, and Heinz figured baking together would be a good way to connect with Norm. After all, he liked baking, right? At least, that seemed to be the case.

"Norm?" Heinz called into the apartment, having just gotten back from running to the store for baking ingredients.

"Yes, Dad?" Norm called back, thumping out of his room.

He hefted the paper bags a little higher in his arms to show them off and asked, "Do you want to bake some muffins together?"

"Do I?" his son – his son – asked eagerly, quickly coming over and scooping the bags out of Heinz's arms. "This is so exciting! I like baking muffins!"

Heinz followed him into the kitchen and said, "I know you do, so I bought the stuff to make double chocolate ones and lemon-blueberry ones. Perry's-" He paused and remembered how they'd been acting together, what he'd avoided acknowledging out loud, even if he knew it in his head. "Your… brothers have a bake sale coming up, so I figured we could make something for it. Together."

"These are for Phineas and Ferb?" Norm asked brightly. "Then we will have to make sure they are extra delicious!"

He knew the basics of how to make a muffin, but he knew how much Norm liked to be helpful and knowledgeable, so he asked, "So where do we start?"