#Carla hotpants

[loudlyhappycupcake]

Good night, stan @shironezuninja @walt-diego-rodriguez @bitter-yet-civilized @homuncvlus @twinklemaddie @rainbowlesbian @serentiydraw5678 @msking0 @sakulovejulius12 @habatour20 @billyjoelmutt @twiliartsdreams2017 @enchantedchocolatebars @homuncvlus @collector-noceda-clawthorne @cartoonfan21 @wolfie245 @untitled14360 @jeffreybrosseau @jj-the-hamster @juniperarts @angrychenyu

@broadwaygirl918 @clairaquos @illustrated-ink @torkmadox20 @minijenn @untitled14360 @miniaturejudgeturkeytree @bobiannie-blog @violetrose-art @jademz1711 @nevaehjwilliamsvaeh @jazzyrazzy157

[piningforstan]

I just recently found your page and love your work!!

can you write an angsty Stan fic where reader and Stan are still dancing around their feelings and reader finally gets the courage to confess to Stan but maybe overhears a conversation with him and Ford out of context saying he won’t date them and r is crushed? Then cue r trying to move on and jealous!Stan and then they get together somehow?

Thank you!!💕

I ended up placing this fic when Stan and Ford are still in high school before their falling out. I apologize if the timeline with Carla isn’t canon, I just wanted to include her. Also, reader is mentioned as a female a few times but this can easily be read as gender neutral.

I hope you like it!

You loved alcohol as much as you loved getting bamboo shoots shoved under your nail beds. But Carla “Hotpants” McCorkle had just broken up with Stan, and it was your duty as his best friend to support him. And if that meant drinking cheap beer on the beach with his brother, then so be it.

“I thought she was the one,” Stan grumbled. He crunched his empty beer can, belched, then reached for another.

You rolled your eyes. “You say that about every girl. Even that one you saw in a dream.”

You knew because you kept a detailed record of Stan’s revolving door of women, each declaration of love another stake in your heart. Secretly, you were pleased that Carla ended things with Stan. You could never date him in fear of ruining your friendship, but that didn’t mean you liked to see him with other girls. Especially not stuck-up bitches like Carla.

“I just dunno what she sees in this new guy.”

“He doesn’t litter?” Ford answered. He nudged the growing pile of discarded cans with his foot. Stan’s brother never drank, but he certainly lamented about how much the two of you did.

Stan continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “So what he can play guitar. Anyone can do that.”

“Can you?”

“No.” Stan angrily kicked up sand. “But I would learn if I thought I had a chance of winning her back.”

“You don’t need her,” you told him. The beer in you warmed you from the inside out, initiating the familiar tingling sensation in your legs that happened when you drank. “You’re Stan motherfucking Pines.”

Stan grinned at you. “You’re right. I don’t need her.” After slurping down the rest of his beer, Stan grabbed the bottom of your chair and pulled you closer. He pressed a sloppy kiss to your temple.

It wasn’t anything you weren’t used to — Stan happened to be very affectionate, even worse when he was drunk — but it still sent your pulse skyrocketing.

“I got the only girl I need right here,” Stan said, slinging an arm around your shoulders.

Your insides turned molten. Of course, you loved when Stan called you “his girl” but the sting of the words were especially painful in the wake of his breakup. You would never actually be his girl in the way that it mattered.

You could never jeopardize your friendship with Stan, or Ford. You had been inseparable since you were children, when Stan received a particularly nasty note about you in class and instead of passing it on promptly ate it. You took a likening to him immediately. And, since Stan was never without his brother for very long, Ford became the reasonable cornerstone of your friendship.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that you realized you saw Stan as much more of a friend. To be specific, when he successfully grew out his mullet and you fawned over it instead of throwing up in your mouth. On anyone else you might’ve. But it weirdly fit Stan, who you’d watched go from a weird, skinned-knee little boy to a weird, broad-shouldered man with dark curls that you desperately wanted to run your hands through.

Ford shattered the moment. “Why don’t you guys just date then?”

You’d both been asked the question before. It was expected, when a boy and girl were friends. Parents, nosy teachers, old ladies peering at you from wiry glasses. Usually the two of you fielded the question with various degrees of hilarity — “he gave me an STD” or “that’s my sister!” — but tonight it felt profoundly different.

Perhaps it was because you were so close, physically. Or perhaps because you had confided in Ford the secret crush you harbored on his brother. You trusted him not to tell but to hear it now, spelled out in the air, made you stiffen.

“She knows all my disgusting habits,” Stan finally said to break the silence, “I couldn’t trick her into it.”

He grinned at you in your peripheral, a certain softness in the corners of his mouth that weren’t usually there. You rallied your best grin back,

“Yeah, it would be weird. Right?” You chuckled nervously.

Stan, with unprecedented exuberance, nodded in agreement. “S’weird. I’ve seen you in your retainer. Could never fool around with you after that.”

Ouch. You pretended it didn’t feel like a blow to the stomach. “And you smoke too much. It would be like kissing an exhaust pipe.”

“See? It could never work.” Stan tore another beer off the plastic rings, drained it, then announced he was going on a walk. You watched his retreating form until you were sure that he could no longer hear you.

You whipped around. “Ford! What was that?”

“I’m sick of you two dancing around the subject. If you just dated I wouldn’t have to sit out here every few months when you inevitably get dumped because you’re with the wrong person.”

You groaned and slid down in the lawn chair, covering your face with your hands. You actually liked the smoke that clung to Stan’s clothes, the deft flick of his thumb striking up the lighter. Why did you tell him you didn’t?

You’re a coward, your inner voice accused. You panicked. It wasn’t like you could exactly agree with Ford, especially not after what Stan said about your retainer. Did he mean that?

If he did, that was worse than anything else. Not only did he not harbor a secret attraction, but he was repulsed at the idea of you together.

Stan stumbled back down the beach a few minutes later, to your chagrin. It was much easier not to think of him when he wasn’t in front of you; even like this, swaying on his feet and looking slightly green.

“Stan, are you —?”

He lurched and fell face forward into the sand.

Ford glared at you like it was your fault. “This is the last time.”

“Sure. Just get his other side.”

“Thank you again, hun.” Caryn Pines smiled sweetly at you. The small kitchen smelled profusely of her perfume and cigarette smoke, wrapping around you like an embrace.

“Yeah, of course. No big deal.”

Caryn looked at you strangely, in that way that adults did sometimes. “You’re always takin’ care of my Stanley. I know he ‘ppreciates it, even if he doesn’t say it.”

“I couldn’t leave him on the beach.” You took a bite of the babka that Stan’s Ma put out, chewing thoughtfully. “Again.”

Caryn always tried to feed you when you came over, no matter how fleeting of a visit. You had seen her sneak the food out of packages and container and pass it off as her own, but you didn’t care. It encompassed her parenting abilities — well-meaning but slightly manufactured, a desire to be the mother that she wanted to be but not exactly the drive to put in the work.

Either way, you knew she loved you like her own.

“Ya know, I see the way he looks at you. And you look at him. It doesn’t take a psychic to figure it out,” Caryn said.

Your face warmed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He’s crazy ‘bout you. I know my Stanley.”

“But what if…what if we broke-up ? I can’t lose him in my life.” Tears strained your voice. Here you were, admitting your feelings to another Pines family member except for the one who actually needed to hear it.

Caryn clicked her tongue and edged around the island, pulling you into a hug. “But what if it’s great? What if it’s everything you imagined?”

“Maybe,” you said, muffled in her side.

Caryn gave you a final squeeze. “I could only pray for someone like you for my son. Say, you don’t happen to have a sibling for Ford, do ya?”

You shook your head. Caryn made a gesture like too bad then fiddled with the coffee machine.

“Here.” Caryn shoved a steaming mug in your direction, then wiped her hands on her dress. “Take this upstairs for me, will ya? I’ve gotta check on Shermie.”

You stood rooted in place for an embarrassing amount of time, mulling over what she had said. What if it was great? Your heart jumped. Maybe she was right. You would tell Stan.

Emboldened, you crept down the hall and past the living room. The TV flickered ghostly blue lights over the couch where Filbrick snored, and you were careful to avoid the creaky stairs. It wasn’t ever said aloud but everyone knew in the house not to disturb Pa after work. He wasn’t abusive, that you could tell, but somewhere on the verge of it.

Stan and Ford’s voice drifted from their shared bedroom — Stan’s gruff, drunken mumbles and Ford’s clever quips lined with affection.

You were going to tell him. You loved him.

A hitch of agitation in Stan’s voice made you pause at the first step, just out of earshot, a silver of light falling across you from the cracked door.

The delirious, bubbly feeling of excitement in your chest fluttered uncertainly.

“Oh, would give it a rest, Sixer?”

“Stan, I just think —”

“You know how I feel about her,” Stan interrupted. From your vantage point you could see him sprawled out on his bed, one hand over his face.

Her? Meaning you?

Your grip tightened on the mug. Here it was, the universe delivering you a sign that Caryn was right. That you were right.

The view didn’t offer any insight on Ford but you could hear his desk chair squeaking as he leaned backwards, contemplative. “And how do you feel about her?”

A beat of silence, the covers rustling as Stan lifted himself onto his elbows. “She’s my best friend.”

“Uh huh.”

“And-And of course I love her.”

“Uh huh.”

“But I could never date her.”

Your blood turned cold. What? Didn’t he just say that he loved you? Whatever brief, sweet bliss you had went plummeting into the ground. You turned away, coffee in hand, unable to listen to more.

Stan stared up at the ceiling, at the water stain that looked like an elephant. Sometimes when he tried to get his feelings out, the words would run circles around and around in his head until he chased them down. It didn’t help that he had drank so much.

Towards the end it wasn’t even really about Carla anymore, but you. You, with your dumb perfect face and laugh. The way that you stuck around despite knowing everything about him, about his family, leaving him feeling raw and infested like an overturned rock.

His stomach churned. Stan waited for the nausea to pass, pinning down his words before eking out, “I would fuck things up with her. It ain’t worth it. Losin’ her. Ya know?”

God he hoped he was making sense. The room was spinning and the elephant was now doing summersaults.

“I wouldn’t let you,” Ford quietly replied. “I know you love her. I’d stop you from fucking up.”

Stan laughed, dry and brittle. “No one can stop me. I’m a one man fuck-up.”

“You’ve never been one man.”

Stan curbed his nausea enough to look at his brother. Really look at him. Any other given day and he might’ve kicked him for saying something like that. His throat bobbed. “Yeah. Yer right.”

A moment passed between them, one of those brotherly, twin moments that he hadn’t felt since they were kids. Ford clapped his hands together.

“My first declaration of not letting you fuck up is to tell her tomorrow how you feel.”

“What? Tomorrow! No way.”

Ford narrowed his eyes. Stan waved a hand and flopped back down onto the bed, resigned. “Fine, fine. Hey, can you tell that elephant to stop moving? He’s bein’ a real dick.”

After that night, you avoided the Pines family like the plague, dodging after-class visits and letting calls go to the answering machine. Your parents asked where your “boyfriend” was, as they lovingly referred to him, but it only felt like salt in the wound. Stan would never be your boyfriend. He said it himself — he could never date you.

You hated the heavy grayness that clung to you, and most importantly, you hated that the one person you wanted to talk to about Stan was…Stan. And you couldn’t. How mortifying it would be to confess something so life altering for him to say that he only saw you as a friend.

Stan left message after message, wondering what he had done and if you could. But you couldn’t bear to see him. You ate lunch in the girl’s bathroom and nearly sprinted to your car after school, peeling out of the lot as soon as the final bell rang. He tried to come by your house, too. Your parents, loyal to you no matter how much they loved Stan, told him you weren’t there.

It was safe to say that, after a month of this, they were relieved when you stepped out of your room in actual clothes. Your mother actually clutched her pearls. “You look amazing. Where are you going? Did you make up with Stanley?”

You ignored that line of inquiry. “I have a date. Not with Stan,” you added, well aware that was the follow up question.

“Oh.” Your mother’s happiness faltered slightly. “Who with?”

“Just someone from school. I’ll make sure they drop me off before curfew.” You pretended to be oblivious to their probing stares, kissing them each on the cheek before striding out the front door to the idled car in the drive.

A dark shape shot out of the driver’s seat and scrambled to open up your door. Eugene glanced nervously at your house as you climbed in. “Are you sure you don’t want me to meet your folks?”

“I’m sure,” you said, monotone.

Eugene had been interested in you for a while now, but you always hedged your answers, not wanting to commit. Last week you finally said yes. You needed to get over Stan — even though the first thing you thought of was how he would laugh at Eugene for opening your door. You could just hear his rasping, seething laugh. Pussy, he would call Eugene, and you would punch him.

Throat thickening with tears, you forced yourself to admire Eugene in the glow of the streetlights that passed by. He was classically handsome. Smart, kind. A musician. Everything that, on paper, would make the perfect boyfriend. It was incredibly sweet that he wanted to meet your parents and open your car door.

Yet all you could think about was Stan: his untamed mullet and cauliflower ears from boxing, the nose slightly too large for his face that was crooked from all the fights he instigated. The braying sound of his laugh and how he thought it was funny to snap your bra strap. The fact that, beneath the jokes and the crude humor, he was soft and compassionate and an excellent artist. He always made you laugh. He was a million things that Eugene would never be.

But Eugene was one thing Stan wasn’t.

Interested in you.

You shoved all of that down by the time Eugene pulled up to your date, flashing him your most winning smile. A drive-in movie seemed innocent enough. You were confident that Eugene wouldn’t try to make any moves, but you still directed him to park near a minivan of children.

“Want to steal some candy from them?” You asked.

Eugene’s expression shifted as if you’d suggested something morally offensive. “What? From the kids?”

“I was just teasing,” you said. You hadn’t been.

Stan would’ve happily jumped at the offer, distracting the family with one of his wild stories while you snuck a pack of candy. The two of you would then share whatever snack and giggle the rest of the movie over your cleverness.

You felt like throwing up. Why couldn’t you stop thinking about Stan?

Abruptly you shoved open the door. “I’ll just go get snacks then.”

“Wait!” Eugene’s voice was muffled, you had already shot out of the car and nearly closed the door. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I’ll pay,” Eugene said.

“It’s fine.”

You needed to get out. Needed to get away. Without waiting for any further questions, you slammed the door shut and stalked off towards the concessions. The night air was uncharacteristically cool, brushing over your flushed skin.

“Okay, calm down, you’re okay. You’re on a date with a nice guy,” you coached yourself.

“You’re on a date?”

You wheeled on your heel. Stan stood a few feet away, brow furrowed. His fur-lined jacket bulged with hidden contraband. “Stan?”

“You’re on a date?” He repeated, the timbre of his voice sinking dangerously low.

“Yes.” You raised your chin.

His jaw feathered. “I haven’t spoken to you in, like, a month. You’ve been dodgin’ my calls and avoidin’ me. What’s goin’ on? Now you’re on a date?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” you bit back.

“You don’t?” Stan barked out a scathing laugh. “You just stopped talkin’ to me without any s’planation. What am I supposed to think?”

You stepped into line at concessions. “I don’t know, Stan.”

“Talk to me.” Your name on his tongue was a prayer. “Please. I can’t take this.”

A knot formed in your stomach. You ordered for you and Eugene then brushed past Stan, ignoring his protests. He followed you to Eugene’s car. You wretched open the door, intending to fling yourself inside, but Stan stopped it. He leaned down to peer at your date.

“Eugene? Really? This guy?”

Eugene sputtered. You gritted out, “Stan. Go. Away.”

Stan’s dark gaze bounced from you to Eugene, then back to you. The look on his face was unreadable. “Fine.”

The door shut with a resounding thud. It took all of your strength not to watch him walk away. You tore off the top of a box of M&M’s and shoveled the candies into your mouth.

“Was that Stan Pines? I thought you guys were, like, friends,” Eugene finally said.

“Not anymore.” The candies slid down your throat, suddenly dry and pasty.

“Oh.” Eugene pretended to fiddle with the radio, switching through stations. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Mercifully, the movie screen flickered to life and saved you from more awkward conversation. You kept putting handfuls of candy in your mouth to keep from talking or interacting with Eugene at all. Frankly, you just wanted this date to end.

Eugene respected your space, too, which only worsened your conflicting emotions of shame and regret. You wished you could apologize to him but you couldn’t form the words.

You were jerked from your self-loathing when a huge shadow played across the screen, disrupting the movie. Yells of outrage sounded from across the grassy knoll, until the dark shape on the screen split apart. The candy in your stomach threatened to come up. The profile was unmistakably Stan’s, confirming your theory when you twisted around to spot him in front of the projector, entangled with Carla McCorkle.

He grabbed her hand, smirking at the enraged onlookers, and ran off.

Carla? Again?

Eugene examined you. “Do you…want to go somewhere else?”

“Yes. Please.”

He took you to get Dairy Queen, then dropped you back off at home. The passing shadows in the window told you that your parents had anxiously been awaiting your arrival. Eugene moved to get out, to open your door again, but you laid a hand on his arm.

“I’m really sorry. About tonight,” you choked out.

Eugene smiled sadly. “It’s okay.”

You kissed his cheek and climbed out of the car, up the stairs to your house. Eugene waited until you were safely inside before pulling away.

School sucked. You were forced to see Stan with any number of girls. In fact, it seemed as if he was going out of his way to flaunt them, the lingering touches and kisses. It burned you inside.

He preferred anyone but you.

Another month passed, each day growing more and more unbearable without your best friend, without Ford, the reliable foundation of your friendship. With the end of school approaching, so was college, the awaiting jaws of a monster threatening to swallow you whole. You couldn’t even tell them that you got accepted into your dream school.

When a hand grabbed your arm, the familiar face following, you were struck with a swell of emotions. But it wasn’t Stan. The body was all wrong, the measured expression never once belonging to him but his brother. Ford’s eyes were pleading. “We need to talk.”

“Stan can’t know about this,” you said after consideration. Ford nodded.

He brought you into a deserted classroom. You lingered near the door, not sure what to say after all of this time.

“Stan is falling apart,” Ford said without preamble. “I don’t know what happened, but neither of you can continue like this.” A flicker of vulnerability crossed his features. “I can’t.”

You inhaled. It wasn’t fair to drag Ford into this, but it was hard not to. You could never make him side against Stan. “I just…I can’t do it.”

“Do what?”

You turned your face from him, ashamed. “I heard him. That night after we brought Stan home from the beach. He said…he said he could never date me.”

Ford’s face shutters closed. “Is that all you heard?”

“I didn’t need to stick around to hear about how abhorrent the thought of dating me is,” you replied, tone bitter.

Ford flipped open his messenger bag and rifled through it, muttering something that sounded a lot like “two idiots” before finding what he needed. He handed you a folded flyer. “Stan is throwing a party here this weekend.”

“And you’re telling me this because…?”

“You should go.”

You glanced at the paper. The address stated a beach not far from your usual haunt, promising alcohol and a good time. Leave it to Stan to make invitations to a party like this, complete with crude renditions of women in bikinis. You clutched the paper. “I’ll think about it.”

Ford was halfway out the door when he stopped. “He really misses you.”

The words resonated with you the rest of the day. Sometime between meeting with Ford and that weekend, you decided you would go. Eugene told you he couldn’t go, he had to study, so you informed your parents you were going out and that was that. They let you without complaint, probably because you had been moping around the house the last two months.

Tonight you donned your best dress, black and sparkling and totally inappropriate for a beach party but when you bought it, at the mall with the twins, Stan hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off you. There had been no reason to wear it until now and you secretly hoped he had forgotten about it so you could shock him all over again.

By the time you arrived, sweat had gathered at the base of your neck and dampened your hair. You regretted wearing the dress upon seeing the other girls in their bikinis and hotpants, and made a beeline for the keg to soothe your nerves.

The beer was sticky and warm. You sipped it, wishing that instead of being here with people you didn’t know (or care about) you were with Stan and Ford on lawn chairs. The usual. Instead you gazed out upon the rest of the party and found Ford, trapping someone into listening to his theories most likely, and Stan presiding over a beer pong games.

Almost as if your gaze was a beacon, Stan looked up immediately as you spotted him. A cord of familiarity, of affection, tied you together and you could feel its tug behind your navel.

Stan stormed over to you, kicking up sand in his wake. “What are you doing here?”

“Ford invited me.”

“He did?” Stan searched for his brother, who had conveniently found somewhere else to be. “Why are you here?”

“I got invited, remember?”

“Where’s Eugene? Is he here, too?”

“No.” You didn’t feel like giving him an explanation, didn’t need to. You especially didn’t want to tell Stan that it was because you were still in love with him.

His dark eyes hardened. “Where is he?”

“What does it matter to you?”

Stan’s mouth moved as if he was biting back a retort, debating whether to say it. He raked a hand through his hair. He spit. “It doesn’t.”

You spent the rest of the party drifting from place to place, never lingering long. The bonfire funneled smoke into the air, as inconsistent and tangible as you, a ghost on the outskirts. You’re not sure why you came, why Ford invited, why you were still here. The beer had given you a nice buzz, a certain looseness in your limbs, and you decided that was enough. You started up the sandy dunes, shoes in hand, when you heard the sand behind you being displaced by footsteps.

Stan followed you, silhouetted by the fire in an orange haze. “What do you want?”

“I’m walking you home.”

“No. You’re not.” You marched off.

He trailed behind. You thought that he might get bored or fed up and leave you alone but he persisted. Only once you hit the sidewalk did you furiously spin around. “What do you want?”

“I ain’t lettin’ you walk home by yourself,” he replied.

“I walked here by myself. I’m fine.”

Stan took a few steps toward you. “Just let me do this, okay?”

“It’s your party, you shouldn’t leave,” you replied.

“Exactly. My party. I can do what I want.” Stan drew to his full height, shoulders back, reminding you that without his rounded posture he cut an intimidating figure. But it wasn’t intimidation he sought, but protection — protection of you.

Your back molars gritted together. “Fine.”

It actually felt nice, relieving, actually, to walk side by side with him. He maintained a step or two behind you, undoubtedly sensing your anger, but you didn’t correct him. You stayed like that, your strange, wordless dance all the way to your house. When Stan moved as if to follow you inside, what he would’ve done before, you barred him from the door.

“You shouldn’t,” you told him softly.

His brow furrowed and Stan shoved his hands in the pocket of his jacket. The porch awning cast him half in shadows. “What did I do? I know you’re punishin’ me but what I can’t figure out is why.”

“I’m not…I’m not punishing you.” You wrapped your arms around yourself.

“Then what? Is it your new boyfriend?”

“Who, Eugene?” You shook your head. “No, this isn’t because of him. And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“He’s not?”

“No.”

“What ‘bout yer date?”

“It was just one time. And it was a mistake,” you admitted.

“Tell me what’s goin’ on.”

Stan’s infuriatingly handsome features were set in determination. You wanted to go to him, bury yourself in his chest and let him envelope you. But that same feeling twisted, grew sharp teeth that latched on and refused to let go.

“Why? What do you care?” You fired back. “You’ve been so busy with your tongue down every girl’s throat that I’m surprised you even noticed I wasn’t around.”

Something shifted in Stan, a spark igniting into an inferno. “You’ve been avoidin’ me and ignorin’ my calls, refusin’ to speak to me without telling me why. I don’t get it. If you’re so against me, then why do you care what I do?”

You hissed back, “I don’t. But it’s hard to miss when you’re dry humping your flavor of the week in front of the whole school.”

“How do you think I felt when I saw you with Eugene?”

You paused, his words soaking into your skin. The fist of anger in your stomach loosened at the pain in those words, if only slightly. “I didn’t know you were going to be there, Stan. And I didn’t think it would matter even if you were. You could never date me.”

“What?” Stan’s entire body stiffened.

“You said it yourself,” you said. You were loathed to say the words aloud, which made you cry, which only made you angry to be crying. “You could never date me.”

“When did I ever say that?”

“I heard you,” you said. You explained to him how you had overheard the conversation between him and Ford that night. He listened the entire time, quiet and unmoving.

Stan rubbed a hand over his face. “You didn’t stick around to find out why?”

“Sorry if I didn’t want to hear how repulsive and horrible I was,” you snapped.

“I told Ford that I couldn’t date you because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. The last few months have been hell, doll. Going without you every day has been…unbearable.” Stan brushed his knuckles over your cheek, tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. “Please don’t make me go through that again.”

You leaned into his touch, eyes swimming with tears. “I’m sorry, Stan. I only did it because I couldn’t stand to be around you if you didn’t feel the same way.”

“Same way?” Stan’s mouth morphed into a tired, wistful smile. “I’ve loved you since that first day in class. Since you saw them passin’ that note and instead of bein’ upset you raised your chin.”

You faltered. “You love me?”

“Of course I love you.” Such a simple, genuine statement.

“Stan, I love you too. I’m so sorry —”

“No, I’m sorry. I should’ve just told you how I feel. I’m an idiot.”

You touched his arm. “No, you’re not. Well, you are, but not because of that. I was scared too. And I hurt you.”

“I’m tough.” Stan lifted your chin up, forcing you to look at him. In his face you saw a whole lifetime of memories, of laughter. “But you gotta promise me not to ignore me again. Messed me up so bad that Ford said he saw me stare at a wall for two days straight without sayin’ a word.”

“You? Not talking?”

“I know.” Stan shuddered. His composure softened a bit, examining you as if seeing you for the first time. “When I told you that you were my girl, I meant it. You’re the only girl for me.”

In way of reply, you grabbed the front of his jacket and pressed your lips to his.

You had kissed before, in middle school, just to get the first one over with. It had been brief and awkward, his front tooth clashing off yours. This kiss maintained the same level of comfort, of familiarity and safety, but charged with a current of passion. He kissed you like he had been waiting his whole life to do it again, pulling you into him in a frenzied manner.

Stan’s tongue ran over the seam of your lips, parting them so that he could slip inside, invited by your breath of surprise. You melted into him. Everything about him, this moment, felt right. Perfect. His hands in your hair and roving over the form-fitting dress you had worn for him, sighing and muttering praises on your flushed skin.

You didn’t stop until the porchlight flickered on and the front door ensnared you in its beam. Stan still held you to him, lips bruised, frozen. Your mother took one look at you entangled together on the porch and then sighed in relief.

“Well, finally.”

[ckret2]

I'm not sure this is where the story is going (probably not ngl) but imagine Bill and Ford getting together at the end and having to explain that to the family.

Yeah, billford is eventually happening lmao. I'm choosing to play on hard mode (NO prior relationship, crush, or attraction), so the first time I was asked about it, I wasn't sure whether I'd find a route to pull it off. But by a few months later I'd figured it out. We need to achieve four goals to make it work:

a reason for Ford to stop fearing Bill

a reason for Ford to stop hating Bill

a reason for Ford to like Bill

a reason for Ford to WANT to stop hating Bill

(Bill needs nothing, he's easier to persuade, he didn't spend half his life constructing an identity around hating Ford.)

Goal #3 is easy, Ford has plenty of reasons he COULD like Bill if Bill weren't terrible. Goal #1 was chapter 46. Goal #4 is actively in progress. We'll get to #2 eventually.

Anyway, how the family reacts depends on how & if they find out, but imo the funniest possibility is—

Listen. Lazy Susan, Carla "Hotpants" McCorkle, and Darlene. Stan's into big butts and big loose long hair, and weird/inhuman eyes aren't a dealbreaker. Canon backs me up.

This would never get mentioned again.

[fordtato]

The Gravity Falls Timeline

All of this is based on my video, but I assume not many people will want to sit through 2.5 hours of me working this out, so here's a condensed written version.

Some rules I set for myself: If the actual name of an IP, a person or an event is referenced in J3/the Show, I included it into my math for my timeline (ex: references to Ronald Reagan or The Eurythmics, or other REAL WORLD figures). If a REFERENCE is made without the actual name being referenced (ex: in the Journal, Ford mentions Phantom Bustifiers, a reference to Ghostbusters, a movie that didn’t come out in our world until 1984), I did not put that into this timeline (I know what year Ghostbusters came out, but not which year Phantom Bustifiers came out).

With that in mind, let’s begin:

The Stans are born June 15 1951.

Evidence: 

Their Bar Mitzvah happened when they were 12 (not 13, as is typical) and their birthday is on June 15th. Because a Bar Mitzvah is dependent on one’s birthday on the Hebrew calendar and not the Gregorian calendar, this means that their 13th Hebrew birthday must land on a date that is BEFORE their 13th Gregorian birthday, something that is typically more rare (the Hebrew birthday is usually AFTER one’s typically celebrated birthday).

The only viable year where this applies is 1951, when their birthday lands on Sivan 11, resulting in a 13th Hebrew birthday in May of 1964, BEFORE their 13th birthday on June 15th

The Stans find the Stan O War in spring of 1964 at age 12 (or 1961, if you think they were 10)

Evidence:

There are two viable dates for when they find the Stan o War, depending on if they’re 10 (the same age Stan was when he started writing Lil Stanley in the Lost Legends comics) or 12 (the same age as Dipper and Mabel). I think that the way the artist drew the young Stan twins in the Lil Stanley comic looks (age 10) looks slightly younger than how they look in the series (and they are designed a little differently than they look in the Jersey Devil comic, when we KNOW they have the Stan O War already), but there is evidence for both sides.

I lean toward them being 12 because they pull out a sharpie, which wasn’t invented until 64, but there is a reference to a Bruce Springsteen song in a magazine in Lost Legends, quoted by someone named “Brucey S, age 11” and Bruce Springsteen would have been 11 in 1961, so this might be 1961 (or the magazine Ford is reading from might be an old magazine.) I went with 1964, because I think 12 parallelled the ages of Dipper and Mabel better. 

Stan gets kicked out in spring of 1969 right before they turned 18. Ford starts at Backupsmore in the fall semester.

Evidence: 

Stan makes a reference to Jackie O, which means Jackie Kennedy already remarried to be Jackie Onnassis, and is also still in the public eye, something that would be progressively less common after 1969 (she also happened to visit New Jersey in spring of 1969 and that would have made state headlines, something which is probably a coincidence, but nonetheless very interesting).

Furthermore, there is a portrait of Nixon in the principal’s office, and he would have been sworn in in early 1969. 

I think 1969 is more likely than 1970 because ‘69 gives more wiggle room for Shermie to be the baby (more on that later) and for Ford to get at least one PhD.

-Stan dates Carla “Hotpants” McCorkle,(reconnecting for another date after the one at the theater in their teenage years), probably in 1971 (if this “hallucinatey” date even happened at all; if you dont think it happened at all, disregard). 

Evidence:

We know this is a later date, when stan is an adult, because his design matches the designs on one of his fake IDs from his years on the run. It was likely 1971 because that is when the term “hotpants” was used to describe those short shorts.

The hippie aesthetic also started dying down after 1972 after the Manson attacks, so I picked 71 for the Juke Joint date.

Ford graduated from Backupsmore at the very earliest 1974, MAYBE early 1975.

Evidence:

In the journal it says he went to Gravity Falls in 1975, but we know he couldn’t have graduated earlier than 74, because we know that he played DDnMoreD in college, and he says in the journal that it was copyrighted in 1974. He also says Stanley always mocked him for playing it, which literally isn’t possible, so he’s either misremembering Stanley mocking him for an EARLIER TTRPG, or this copyright is for a later edition (though I think it must be the former, since DDnMD is a clear reference to DnD which WAS copyrighted in 1974. Still. Up to you.)

This means he completed his PhD in 6 years (or, three years ahead of schedule as described in the series). I believe many of his other PhDs were honorary degrees, and didn't bother working them into this timeline. He got them later.

Stan joins Rico’s gang in the late 70s

Evidence: 

Sometime in the late 70s, Stan gets tangled up in what is implied to be the Colombian cartel, which would have been most active in the late 70s, between 75 and 79. Following his trajectory on the map in ATOTS showing his path across the country, he headed below the border toward the end of that trackline, so it was probably later on.

Ford started Journal 3 in 1981, shortly after meeting Bill in 1981. 

Evidence: 

He says he discovered his muse in 1981 in J3. He also says he is starting J3 six years after he started investigating Gravity Falls (which he did in 75). He also says early on in J3 that he is in his 30s, and he would have turned 30 in June of 1981, three days before he started J3.

There is some fuckery here on how he’s known his muse for “two years” midway J3, and the way I explain that in the video is that the first part of J3 spans nearly 2 years, and there is ample evidence that he wrote many pages out of order. This might be a page from later on in 1982, early 83, instead of mid-81. 

We know that Reagan was already in office at this point.

 Fiddleford shows up in July of 1982. Fiddleford begins making the memory gun after the Gremloblin incident later that year. 

Evidence:

We know at least a year has passed because if you track the months, they go from June, to August, and then later on down to July again when Fiddleford is called. As for the Gremloblin incident, it happened relatively close to the bunker incident (which would have been closer to summer, since it was still hot outside) but it was followed closely by the carnival, where they had squash for sale, and squash are in season after September, typically. 

First Portal Test is on January 18, 1983

Fiddleford falls through the portal, his head poking through, on January 18 1983, the day after the confrontation he had with Ford in the diner. 

Late February, 1983 - The Portal Incident

Evidence:

There are three many reasons I chose this date. Firstly, we know it is 1983 not just because it follows the trajectory of earlier dates, but because we know that Ford has heard The Eurythmics’ chart topper “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” because when he returns he says he is looking forward to their next one, and that came out in January of 83’, before he would have been sucked through.

Secondly, five weeks after January 18th, it would still be snowy in up-mountain Oregon where Ford is, but not that snowy in New Mexico where Stan is when he gets the post card.

Thirdly, we know at least 5-6 weeks have passed because Ford describes about this many weeks during his “paranoid era” in the journal (more than one instance of “a couple weeks, several weeks, a few weeks”, etc.). 

In the year 2000, Dipper and Mabel are born. 

Evidence:

I know most people think it’s 1999. And that is fine, but I have ample evidence that the show takes place in 2013, not 2012 (see below), so 2000 would have to work for their birthday.

But 2000 also gives a little bit of wiggle room to Shermie being the baby. (If you don’t think Shermie is the baby, disregard this section). If Shermie IS the baby, then if he was born in spring of 1969 (late 68 at the earliest), then you can barely fit two generations of Pines in the space between 1969 and 2000. It would mean that both Shermie and his kid would need to be 15 when they had a kid, which is … not great, but not impossible? I dunno man, take it up with Hirsch. (Or just assume the baby is Shermie’s kid. Follow your dreams).

In 2013, Dipper and Mabel visit their Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls. 

Evidence: 

The Northwest ghost died in what is described in the journal as “The Great Flood of 1863”. The Northwests are trying to keep this flood under wraps in J3, because they don’t want people finding out about the lumberjacks killed in the flood. The Northwest Ghost swore with his dying breath to come back 150 yrs after his death. 150 years later from 1863, is 2013.

The 1040 form that Stan is filling out his Tax Fraud note on in the truth-telling ep is a 2012 form. To file tax returns, you use w2s 1040s labeled under the PREVIOUS year

Sevral Timez shouts "2013"

1983 is 30 years before 2013. 

Note: This would mean that the Stans are 62 at the end of the summer, which might mean that they are "pushing 70" as Stan describes himself.

Anyways, here's the full video if you have 2.5 hours. Otherwise, enjoy this resource!

[pidgedan]

Hear me out

What if...

Carla McCorkle... as fiddleford

Fiddleford with hotpants before he start using bellbottons

[fuckable-old-man-battle]

Sorry I’ll have to agree. Stan voters are blinded by nostalgia so much that they forget how canonically BAD Stan is at flirting. Remember Lazy Susan? Remember that he was so bad at flirting that mable had to work her ass off to make him attractive? Remember how he then got freaked out by her once he did eventually charm his way into her heart?? Because he sucks??? REMEMBER HOW HE LOST CARLA HOTPANTS MCCORKLE???? Speaking as someone who used to be in the gravity falls fandom STAN IS PATHETIC AND NOT IN THE FUCKABLE WAY- OPEN YOUR EYES THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU YET

FINALLY SOMEONE SAYS IT THEYRE BLINDED BY NOSTALGIA AND SCARYOKE

[gruvu]

I drew a gift commission for @doubtingsalmon for Christmas I believe. So finally for some people. I actually drew some Starla. Might draw more. 

[ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbhhh]

👏STAN👏PINES👏DESERVES👏LOVE👏

These are quick drawings I did Today of a younger Stan Pines and Carla “hot pants” Mccorkle, I will be drawing more of them and I may quite possibly be drawing older them; maybe rekindling the romance they once had.

[gravityfallscustomplush]

"Her name was Carla McCorkle. Carla "Hotpants" McCorkle."

💕NEW PLUSH💕

Aww aren't they cute! I love the little diner set from Target, it's one of my favs.

[vulpixen]

Always the Charmer

(fanfiction for @stanuary 2021, Week one: Charm. Set in me and @sailormew4 ‘s au One Big Weird Happy Family.)

Summary: Stan’s teen daughter in need of a push to a bold direction. 

Gravity Falls 1988…

It was summer’s night when Stan decided to sit out on the porch of the shack on the sofa he kept outside instead of some plastic or wooden chair, kicking back to relax with a Pitt Cola in hand while watching the night sky in contemplation. He was not alone, however, as one of his children, Jessie, walks outside to sit with her dad. Jessie flips her long brown hair and huffs upon sitting down with her arms crossed and leg over the other. It was clear something is upsetting her. Stan faced his daughter to ask her with concern in his rough voice.

“Hey, Firecracker, what’s eatin’ at ya?”

Jessie could not stay mad when her dad wants to try to help her. She frowned and looked at her dad with her saddened amber eyes. “Well, other than Shannon being a twerp like usual, I’m just… frustrated that I can’t seem to get it out to my best friends, Lilli and Maurice, that I want to go out with ‘em. I like both and… I don’t wanna to choose between them and potentially hurt the other.” Jessie looks away from her dad, bracing for a reaction while looking at her scuffed-up boots. “Lilli has the best sense between us three and I admire how driven she is. Maurice is one of the goofiest, daring guy I know. Like ‘em both for a lot of reasons that I see in no one else.”

Stan had to take a minute to process what his teenage daughter was confiding. My daughter is growing up fast. Maybe too fast, Stan thought to himself with a sigh. He knows sooner or later; it will be the same with James his son possibly finding love. Stan wanted to be careful with what he wants to say that would help his daughter best, afraid he will screw her up and her chances being happy. Of course, he was always aware of that possibly happening throughout his and his family’s life. But he also knows all he can do is his best.

And that is what Stan will do as a man and a father. Stan looks serious at his daughter to say one word.

“Both.”

“Huh?”

“I said, both, Firecracker.” Jessie quirks a brow as if the word sounded foreign to her.

“I don’t get—"

Stan reaches to pat Jessie’s shoulder next to him. “Tell them both how you feel. Either one of them may or may not reject it. That’s it! But even if they do, it’s not the end of everything. Sometimes, you have to take a leap and see what happens. Either you make it to the other end, or not. Probably not the best metaphor, but you know what I mean, kiddo. You got my charms.” He lets out a laugh that made his daughter laugh with him. “I know it helped me woo your mama.”

“That ain’t the only thing I got, Daddy!” Jessie reaches to give her dad a tight hug, having been getting physically stronger since she was younger. “And thanks, Daddy. I’ll let you know how it goes after I tell them.”

“That’s my girl!”  

Later the next day…

Stan and his wife Carla were talking in the living room while watching tv together on their shared loveseat reclining chair.

“You think it’ll work out with Jessie telling Maurice and Lillian how she really feels about them?” Stan gives his wife a confident grin.

“I like to think so, Hotpants. Our kids deserve good folks to love and who would love and care for them back. Like us!”  Stan and Carla smooch one another in a loving manner.

The front door swings wide open, revealing Jessie with a big smile on her face and running up to hug her dad. Before Stan and Carla could speak, Jessie exclaims.

“I confessed! They BOTH say they will date me! Thanks so much, Daddy!” Stan laughs and shoulder-hugs his daughter back, bringing a big smile on his and his wife’s face.

“Ah, don’t mention it, Firecracker. Glad it worked out for you three. Maurice and Lillian have always been good in my book.”

“Same here, dear!” Carla gasps as she got an idea. “How about we celebrate with inviting them over for dinner tonight?”

“That would be cool, actually. I’ll go call them!” Jessie bolts into the kitchen and grabs the house phone.

Stan grins to a job well done.

[loudlyhappycupcake]

Gravity falls/the owl house/the Looney tunes Show best friends redux memes @shironezuninja @homuncvlus @bitter-yet-civilized @sakulovejulius12 @violetrose-art @misterygem @magical-girl-techno-genius @cartoonfan21 @catislazypeter @ihaveaguninmybackpack @mehitsjust3lla @flannycartoons @illustrated-ink @buy-some-motherfuckin-apples-iii @serentiydraw5678 @jacky-rubou @cartoonvibe @finalfortuna @fatrnai @untitled14360 @speed-force-runner @kuskicanlove @captainmagicartsfan @carolsdrawing @wiltito @garbage-of-love @gogolastar @thatonepanidiot @hkthatgffan @bluefrostyy

[dfsgasad]

Dreamscaperers

"The kid's a loser, he's weak, he's another embarrassment, I just wanna get rid of him, those are all things people said about me when I was a boy. It was terrible, I was the biggest wimp on the playground."

The first memory, the one in the playground, it had five fingers, yes, but Stan didn't use glasses then, and he doesn't have freckles, when everywhere else, he does, so why is that? Was Stan dressed as Ford for some reason? Is it actually Ford?

The second one is totally Stan, he has freckles again and you can see Ford in the bleachers, reading with his boxing gloves on.

The third is Stan too, you can see with the acne that Ford never appears to have had and the chin, because that's how his relationship with Carla "hotpants" McCorkle, but he's clearly dressed as Ford for some reason, with glasses and looking nerdy. Why? Also, he has brackets, and I've never seen him with brackets anywhere else? Did I miss something?

[kodachromantic]

Her name was Carla McCorkle. Carla "Hotpants" McCorkle.

[returntothefalls]

IQ-tie (preview)

Preview excerpt from Chapter 3 of Return to the Falls, a Gravity Falls fanfiction

Here’s the preview I promised for the anniversary!  Hope it hypes you all up for what’s to come!

Gravity Falls came to life with the lavender light of the dawn.  The birds were the first to stir, flitting out from their nests in search of the early worms and rousing the rest of the land with their cheery song.  Once the birds were on the wing, it wasn’t long until the rest of the town’s inhabitants followed suit.  Manly Dan rose with the sun and marched into the woods with his boys in tow, axes in hand and ready for another day of chopping wood.  Shandra Jimenez downed the last swallows of her espresso as the camera began rolling for the morning news while Toby Determined slept face first on the desk beside her.  Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland hit the streets in their patrol car, loaded up with enough coffee and sugary cereal to power them until their afternoon energy crash and subsequent power nap.  Business carried on as usual.  One could almost forget that the town had been besieged by rampaging vines just the previous evening.  Even the Mystery Shack, nearest the epicenter of the attack, enjoyed a morning of restful peace – for a certain value of the word.

“Sassafras is correct! That’s seven points for Dipper and one point for Mabel.”

Mabel stomped her foot in disappointment as Soos and Dipper high-fived.  Two bowls of soggy Trivi-o’s sat ignored on the table; the children had more pressing matters at hand.  Abuelita insisted on buying the allegedly-educational cereal for Soos – “brain food, mijo” – and although the cereal itself tasted suspiciously like dog food, the quiz on the back of the box at least brought a competitive flair to breakfast.

“Next question,” Soos said, squinting at the box.  “What valuable blue mineral is found in the American Southwest?”

Dipper’s raised his hand immediately.  “Turquoise!”

“Correct again, dude!” Soos said.  “I would have guessed rock candy.”

Mabel hunched forward in her chair, mouth set in a determined line.  “Watch out, boys, this next one has Mabel written all over it!”

“Last question of the box,” Soos said.  “So this one’s for all the marbles.”  Dipper and Mabel sat at the edge of their seats, their bodies tensed.  “The mythological sphinx has the face of a woman and the body of a what?”

Mabel’s hand shot up a split second after Dipper’s.  “Lion!” he said.

“Correct!” Soos said. “We’ve got a new champion of Turbo Lightning Breakfast Trivia!”  Dipper laughed and jumped out of his chair, pumping his fists.  Soos gave him a fist bump, complete with dramatic explosion sound effect.

“Aww come on!” Mabel said, crossing her arms sulkily and sinking back in her chair.  “I knew that one too!  Dipper was just faster.”

“Don’t sweat it, Mabel,” Dipper said, still grinning.  “It’s just a game.  A game I won!”  He high-fived Soos again.

“You know the nice thing about livin’ on a boat?  You don’t wake up to a house of screamin’ kids.  Screamin’ seagulls, maybe, but I can fry those up for lunch.”

Stan hobbled into the kitchen, looking rather sore and groggy – in other words, he was his usual grunkley self.  His red stocking hat was now adorned with the familiar golden symbol from his old fez, which Mabel had sewn on the night before.  Without hesitation, he picked up a bowl from the table and swallowed a spoonful of pasty cereal mush.

“Sorry, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper said.  “Trivia gets me excited.  Especially winning.”

“I knew a bunch of the answers too,” Mabel said indignantly.

Stan patted Mabel on the head.  “Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” he said.  “I know what it’s like havin’ to put up with the smart twin.”

Mabel frowned.  “You think Dipper is the smart twin?”

“Well yeah, of course,” Stan said.  “But that’s alright.  Maybe he’s the smart twin, but you’re the fun twin!  A real chip off your ole Grunkle Stan!”  He winked.

Mabel gave a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.  “Thanks, Grunkle Stan,” she said.  “Trivia isn’t exactly the Mabel Pines specialty anyway.”  

“Now what are you all standing around for?” Stan said.  “In case you forgot, a demonic salad monster took the world’s most destructive Shack tour last night.  We’ve got a lot of work to do!”

“Soos is keeping the Shack closed today,” Dipper said.  “We thought it would be nice to take some time to relax this morning.  I mean, I did get briefly swallowed by a plant yesterday. Doesn’t that earn me some down time?”

“No,” Stan said.  “I don’t care if this place is under new management, I’m not gonna stand to see the Shack left like this.  So let’s work hard to upgrade her condition from ‘miserable’ to ‘quaintly pitiful!’  Who’s with me?”  He was met with unenthused mutterings from Dipper and Mabel and a genuine hoorah from Soos.  “Good! Now someone go find my nerd brother, tell Corduroy to get her butt over here, and we’ll get this done together!”

Stan turned and left the room with Soos close behind, chattering about how happy he was to be fixing up the Shack with Stan again.  Dipper turned to Mabel and shrugged.  “Guess there are worse ways to spend the morning,” he said.  He carried his still-full bowl to the sink, cringing as he watched the wet cereal clumps swirl down the drain.

Mabel started to follow Dipper out of the room, but the Trivi-o’s box on the counter caught her eye. “Hey Dipper, hang on a sec.” Dipper looked back at her inquisitively and she paused a moment before continuing.  “Do you think of yourself as the smart twin?”

Dipper’s expression was instantly apologetic.  “Mabel, don’t take that to heart, Stan didn’t mean anything by it.”

“But it’s true, right?” Mabel said.  “You’re the guy everyone goes to for help with homework, or for advice on monster hunting, or anything like that.”

“Yeah, and you’re the girl people go to for everything else,” Dipper said.  “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about your smarts, they love you for you!”  He smiled. “Stan’s right about you being the fun twin.  That’s something to be proud of!”

Mabel nodded.  “I am happy that people think of me as a hip-hop-happenin’ girl, but I wish they would see me as both fun and smart.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re both fun and smart,” Dipper said.

“Thanks, Dip,” Mabel said, putting a hand on his shoulder.  “But you’re my bro, you have to say that.”

“Doesn’t make it any less true,” Dipper said.  “Now come on, we’d better get to work before Stan chews us out.”

“Hopefully it won’t take long,” Mabel said.  “The Shack can’t be in that bad a shape, can it?”

There was a loud knock at the back door, followed by a muffled crack.  A second later, the “S” from the Shack’s sign tumbled to the ground outside the window.

Stan walked into the kitchen, glanced out the window, and sighed.  “I’m gettin’ too old for this.”

“Mr. Pines?”  Soos’s voice called from the entry room. “There’s a nice lady here asking for you.”

Stan immediately straightened up, the corners of his mouth twisting in a sly smile.  “A woman in Gravity Falls who wants to see me? That’s a new one.”  He looked down at himself.  His once-white tanktop was stained yellow with sweat and various food smears, his boxers were tattered and threatened to fall apart at any moment, and a mysterious pulsating fungus coated the exterior of his slippers.  He turned to the kids.  “How do I look?”

Mabel waved her hand in a “so-so” gesture and Dipper simply shook his head.

“Great!” Stan said.  “Watch and learn, kiddos, this is how you charm a lady.”

Chest puffed out with confidence, Stan stepped into the entry room.  He opened his mouth to speak, but as his eyes settled on the visitor, all words froze in his throat.  Every trace of his bluster deflated in an instant.

Dipper and Mabel hurried after him, driven by concern and curiosity in equal measure.  The old woman standing in the doorway was unfamiliar to them, yet the dramatic impact she’d made on Stan was unmistakable.

Mabel poked Stan’s side, but he didn’t respond.  “He’s speechless,” Dipper said.  “Never thought I’d see the day.”

The woman gave a small wave and an even smaller smile.  “Hello, Stanley.”

Finally, Stan croaked out a strained reply.  “Hiya, Hotpants.”

Carla laughed.  “Can I come in?” she asked, grinning sheepishly. “I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

[fordanoia]

Hey, so below are the notes I initially took back when I was watching Roadside attraction.

This isn’t a ‘heres a nice detailed list of everything in the episode that made me think stan was aro’ it’s a ‘i dont want to lose these notes so im posting them.’ Whiiich since it’s 2am I’m posting now to prevent a clog up on dashboards.

No, no, no. You practice. The more girls you talk to, the better you get at it. (sounds genuinely happy and confident)

Dipper: I'm just a little worried, though. I mean is it bad to flirt with this many girls at once? I'm just tryin'a get over Wendy. I don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings. Stan: Please. That's the best part 'a flirting on a road trip. You're not gonna see any of these gals again. To moving on! (Stan and Dipper laugh)

(works every time)

(the best part of flirting is NOT SEEING THEM AGAIN)

Alright, campers. We got another day 'a breakin' laws and breakin' hearts. Everything up until now has been a walk in the park compared to our next attraction. (he’s aware that hearts are breaking? i’m prob overthinking this one actually)

(rubbing his hand upset when he sees him upset)

Dipper:Stan! You gotta help me! Everything you taught me worked too well! I think Candy just asked me out on a date! Stan:He-hey! (punches Dipper's shoulder) Look at this little champion! (he’s looking happy and then kinda baffled as dipper panics?? )

(laughs and shakes his head) Don't you see what's happening here? That's your dumb obsession with Wendy gettin' in the way of your future! If you wanna move on, you've gotta say yes to whatever comes your way. (walks toward ticket booth and looks at Darlene) Speaking of which...  ((moving on means saying yes to whatever comes your way huh.... moving on from what stan - dippers like im not ready for all this and stan just doesn’t... understand and pins it on dipper being hung up rather than well relationship stuff))

Ah ah ah! Watch and learn. (walks to ticket booth; searches pockets) Oh, I seem to have lost my number! (flirt-like) Can I borrow yours? ((he looks at darlene like she’s an opportunity then does a watch and learn thing. not to mention the tried line. ))

Stan: (whispers to Dipper) Take my advice or don't, but clearly I know what I'm doing. Darlene: (takes Stan's offered arm and walks to the entrance with him) Oh, fancy! Stan: (turns his head back to Dipper, grins, and points at Darlene) ((clearly i’m FULL OF GOOD ADVICE AND KNOW WHAT I’M DOING and isn’t this really a one up on ford who is INDEFINITELY not the social guy and here dipper is with his first social dilemma since ford’s gotten back and he needs to prove himself since the ddamd thing - points at her victoriously, SEE WHAT I’M DOING DIPPER SEE WHAT IM DOING ))

(from walkie-talkie:) Heeey, buddy boy. So remember how we were talking about my technique? Well, sometimes it leads to unexpected consequences.

...I'm about to become one. Turns out Darlene is one of those spider people. But beyond that, the date's been okay. (( i mean.... comedy effect or not ))

One minute we're having the perfect date, and the next minute she's growing extra legs and encasing me in webbing. Women, right? (( stan you honest to god do not know how to date and you trying to relate to this 12 year old boy like you DO is not working ))

Dipper: (at entrance:) You couldn't tell she was a spider?! Stan: (in cave:) I was blinded by flattery! (( blinded by flattery and thats his excuse ))

Stan: You tricked me! I'm 80% certain you don't really love me at all! Darlene: Hah! Men will fall for anything. (sing-song) You so funny, great story, I love a man with shoulder hair! Stan: You--you didn't mean it about my shoulder hair?! (( 80% certain you don’t love me bc well this could still be love???? i guess ?? ))

Darlene: (weak) Staaaannnyyy... (she pulls her human head back on) I'm sorry. I dunno what came over me. You'll let me out, right? Stan: What?! After all that? Seriously, do I look like an amnesiac? Darlene: (laughs) You're so funny. Have you ever considered becoming a comedian? Stan: You know, I actually have. Comedy is too subtle these days. My style involves more over-sized props. (walks to Darlene) Here, let me get you out from there-- The kids pull Stan away from Darlene as she turns back into a spider and reaches out to bite him. Stan: Oh, yeah. Right. ((flattery gets him again. ))

(sighs) Alright, kid. I gotta admit something. I'm no expert on women. Truth is, I've been divorced once, and slapped more times than I can remember. Confidence can buy you a lot, but at the end of the day, pickup artists tend to get our heads bitten off. When it comes to women, I'm a failure.  (( The Admission(tm): and he looks REALLY down about the last line. when it comes to women, i’m a failure. because he doesn’t know that game, because he’s NEVER gotten how it works when it’s not pick up lines ))

brainWASHING WITH MUSIC THAT’S HOW YOU WIN PEOPLE 

Stan (Narrating): (Sighs) Carla's hotpants turned into bellbottoms before I even knew what happened. (( she turned styles and i guess matched up with the guy, idk prob don’t mention this but still thats what you focus on? ))

dipper is surprised that stan believes him about the mind control theory and hONESTLY? consider stan not believing much else for him to be like ‘yes. this is the one i’ll admit to believing’

Stan: Look, if it makes you feel any better, the apocalypse is coming soon. Bury your gold! ...You've been buying gold, right? (( hey idk how youre feeling but here’s a consolation prize ))

Women. They're the real mystery, Dip. You ruin their date, drive their hippie boyfriend's van into a ravine... and somehow you're the "bad guy." (( stan i love you))

----

(Laughs; thinking:) This is going terrible. I can't think of anything to say and she.. looks weird up close. Think of a way out! (Aloud:) NON-SPECIFIC EXCUSE! (Knocks over food and runs away)

---

(Sighs and gets up) It's alright, kids. Just look away. (Kisses her hand)  (( i’d like to use this but honesty the joke really is just that shes ugly, but after she apologizes he doesn’t look sympathetic. ))

Hand Witch: Will you be my boyfriend now? Stan: Nope. Never. (While walking away from the cave) Well. I learned nothing.  

however imma utilize that this is written from stan’s idealogy and that he THINKS that the pick up line would work on that hitchiker

--

relate marilyn to being a way to get over carla mccorkcle ?

6 hour marriage

[marypsue]

Kings Among Runaways

So there's this Stanchez Summer Sizzle thing going on, and I've been meaning to write something for this ship for forever, so it was a good excuse to actually make the thing. This is partly inspired by the Decemberists' "On The Bus Mall" (I know, so punk) and partly by Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys and ended up being sort of absolutely nothing like either of them. 

Sort of falls under the prompt for alternate universes. Contains a little bit of non-graphic NSFW - they get their hands down each other's pants but that's about as far as it goes - and Rick-typical casual homophobia and use of slurs. Any errors, inaccuracies, or just plain unbelievabilities about the lives and habits of a couple of shithead teenage boys are entirely due to my being the kind of person who listens to the Decemberists.

I'm also on AO3 as MaryPSue, if you'd rather read there!

...

The poster is crisp and bright, sticking out against the ones plastered over the wall behind it, greyed and faded and weather-worn practically into tissue paper. It leaps out at Stan's eye, grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around without warning. The picture under the bold-face all-caps MISSING is dark, the image grainy, like something clipped from a newspaper. The face that emerges out of it is pale and defiant, eyes staring sullenly out from under a single furrowed eyebrow, one lip curling upwards in something that bears only the faintest, grimmest resemblance to a smile.

It's not the face, Stan catches himself thinking, of someone who wants to be found.

He can't decide if he's disappointed or relieved not to see his own face next to it.

"Eugh, they used that old yearbook photo?" Rick laughs, lurching to a stop when he notices Stan isn't beside him. "Shit, was I - was I ever that ugly?"

"Still are," Stan says, but his heart's not in it.

Rick elbows him in the ribs and then slings an arm around his shoulders, easy, like it doesn't mean anything. "Good thing we're heading out tonight, then," he says, steering Stan away from the wall of posters and flyers, from his own face. "Don't wanna make this - this - this town look at my ugly mug for too long."

"Shouldn't we take it down or something?" Stan asks, glancing back over his shoulder. He's not sure why. He doesn't look back, much, these days.

Rick doesn't bother with a backwards glance. "Nahhhh," he says, after a beat. There's a hint of snarl in his voice, a sarcastic curl that's a little tighter than usual, when he says, "It's - it's not me they’re looking for. C'mon."

The poster's gaze follows them down the street, accusing.

...

Glass Shard Beach High School was beyond the ability of the most skilled shit-talker to come up with an appropriate insult. The place was a hole, a dump, a wreck, a flaming shitpile. A quitting English teacher, school legend held, had once described it as 'like Lord of the Flies but less inspiring of hope for the future of humanity'. 

Ford loved it. Stan didn't have any idea why.

The only redeeming features of Glass Shard Beach High, as far as Stan was concerned, were the (badly outdated, but still-functional) weight room and Carla 'Hotpants' McCorkle, who'd once let Stan talk her into going to a movie with him and making out in the alley afterwards. He didn't remember which movie. He'd been too busy trying to cop a feel through Carla's crop top and accidentally dunking his entire hand into her ice-cold Coke instead.

Since the weight room'd been closed down (because of 'black mold'; Stan would believe Glass Shard Beach High would close down an otherwise-functional room because of black mold when they finally cordoned off the east wing math room) and Carla'd hooked up with some mopey long-haired loser who wore ratty flannel and looked like he'd just wandered in off a construction site, there wasn't really anything keeping Stan hanging around. Oh, sure, Ford complained about Stan 'playing hooky', but he wasn't gonna be the one to rat Stan out to their pa, and it wasn't like Stan's grades were good enough for it to actually matter if he missed a couple classes here and there. Wasn't like he was going anywhere fast anyway.

That was how he'd met Rick.

...

The Stanleymobile's been running a little rough lately, taking too long to start. Stan has to wrench the key three times in the ignition before her whine turns into a throaty rumble, the floor buzzing and rattling under his feet.

"You could -" he starts, and Rick reaches over, turns the radio up until it drowns Stan out, kicks his feet up on the dash and cranks his seat all the way back.

"Wake me up when we get to California," his voice echoes up from somewhere near the backseat.

Stan reaches over, yanks the knob until he can hear his own voice over the blare of guitar. "You asshole, you coulda just said you don't wanna science my baby's engine instead of makin' me deaf."

"Last time I touched your - your 'baby's' engine you decked me."

"Because I didn't ask you to try to turn it into a bong!"

Stan's not sure how Rick manages to shrug while lying down with both arms folded behind his head. "You just said, 'Go nuts'."

"Yeah, well, my mistake," Stan grumbles. "From now on I'll tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. Bet you'll just love that."

"Depends," Rick's voice floats up from the backseat. "Are - are - are we naked in this hypothetical future?"

Stan ignores him.

"Next stop, California," he says, and kicks the Stanleymobile into gear.

...

If Stan wasn't flunking English, maybe he'd be tempted to get poetic about Rick. He could probably go on and on, about how the guy seemed to be made out of elbows and broken bottles, thin as a knifeblade and just as sharp-edged. He could probably make up some flowery bullshit about Rick's spindly fingers and how - elegant, there was no other word for it, they looked holding a stolen cigarette, like some silent film starlet decked out in velvet and diamonds, glowing silver through the celluloid. He could spew some purple prose about the way Rick was always either in constant, frantic motion or absolutely still, like he was the fixed point the entire universe turned around. He might even be able to string together words to talk about the wrench in his gut when Rick gave him that rare, knife-edge smile, the one that meant trouble, the one that meant, good or bad, that Stan was about to get a particularly heart-thumping reminder that he was still alive.

Maybe. If Stan wasn't flunking English.

They never did much more than dick around, smoking when they could bum or steal cigarettes, breaking into the old cannery plant or the pool to hang out, getting stoned, lighting the occasional fire, running away from people who didn't want them hanging around wherever they were hanging around. It was still the best time Stan had ever had. Rick expected nothing from him, but it didn't feel - crushing, like it did coming from his dad and Ford.

It felt kinda like freedom.

...

Ford was waiting outside of the classroom when Stan came running down the hall, his arms crossed over his chest, fingers drumming impatiently against his arm and a scowl on his face.

"Where have you been?" he snapped, as Stan slowed to a halt, trying to get his breathing under control. "The exam's been over for twenty minutes. I was just about to start walking home."

"Class," Stan gasped, sucking in a breath. He'd really just run in from the smoke pit behind the machine shop, and he knew Ford knew that, knew Ford could smell the smoke and engine grease on him. He wasn't lying to Ford. He was lying for Ford. That way when their dad caught Stan, Ford could say that he didn't know, that Stan told him he'd been in class, and he wouldn't have to lie. Ford always had been a lousy liar.

Besides, it wasn't like anybody cared where Stan was anyway.

Ford's eyes slid closed, and he exhaled a long-suffering sigh. "Let's go," he said, stepping away from the wall and brushing past Stan as he started down the hallway. "I've already wasted enough time, the science fair is coming up fast and I should've started studying a quarter of an hour ago."

"Sorry," Stan muttered. "Woulda been here sooner, but -"

"Save it," Ford said, and Stan snapped his mouth shut, glaring at the back of Ford's head. He really would've been back sooner, but for some reason Rick hadn't been at any of their usual haunts, not in the scrubby patch of trees at the park or the alley behind the gas station on Main or even the pool, though Stan hadn't actually expected to find him there, now it was summer and the pool actually had water - and people - in it. Stan hadn't realised how much time had passed until he'd stopped by the machine shop to see if he could at least score any swag for the Stanleymobile so the afternoon wasn't a complete waste, and the bell for the end of class had gone off.

"Sheesh, Sixer, get a life," Stan muttered, to the back of Ford's head, scuffing the heel of his sneaker along the hallway linoleum. The rubber made an awful squeal and left a long, black mark, just like Stan had secretly, viciously hoped it would. "You waste every waking moment studying, one day you're gonna wake up and there'll be nothing left of you but books."

Ford sniffed, dismissively. “Maybe then you’d bother to actually get acquainted with one.”

Stan opened his mouth to snipe back, but then shook his head and bit it back. “Whatever. Let’s just go home.”

...

They don’t make it to California that night, of course. Stan pulls in at a shitty motel off the freeway just on the edge of Columbus, Ohio, just about smack-dab under a huge cloverleaf exchange. The roar of traffic bleeds through the sickly salmon-coloured cinderblock walls as though they’re paper.

Rick starts stripping almost the instant that Stan slams the flimsy door behind them, shucking his leather jacket and tugging off his tank top almost aggressively, like he’s daring Stan to make something of it. Usually, Stan would take him up on the dare, but he’s burnt out exhausted and can’t bring himself to do anything but flop, flat on his back, on top of the weird plasticky cover on one of the beds. There's a big, long crack in the ceiling, stretching out from the window that looks out over the parking lot and the scrub of dead, yellowed grass that fills the ditch between the motel and the highway. The paint around the crack has bubbled and warped, stained yellow and brown. Stan wonders if that's where the faint musty smell under all the stale cigarette smoke is coming from.

The crack runs right overtop of the bed where Stan's lying. He considers it for a moment, decides they're probably gonna want to sleep in the other bed.

“You know they don’t uhhhhwash those, right?” Rick points out, eyeing the cover Stan’s lying on without any particular venom. “You're lying in basically a petri dish.”

Stan manages a grunt in response. He never would’ve guessed that sitting for eight solid hours could make his back hurt so much.

Rick vanishes into the bathroom, emerges about ten minutes later after a chorus scored for rattling pipes and off-key voice. “We’re ordering a, a pizza.”

Stan grunts again. It worked so well last time.

Rick doesn't go for the phone right away, though. Instead, he drops his bony ass down on the bed beside Stan, his little weight still making the mattress dip, and starts unzipping Stan's fly.

"Whoa, wh-" Stan starts, and Rick reaches over to grab the phone out of its cradle.

"Trust me, this is gonna be hiluuuuuurparious," he says, dialing with one hand while he eases Stan's dick out of his pants with the other. He passes the phone over to Stan, who has a sudden, vivid, technicolour vision of exactly where this is going.

“No way,” Stan says, reaching over to slam the phone back into its cradle, but a tinny voice speaks into his ear just as Rick wraps a warm, slick (Stan’s mind does a brief detour into wondering just when the hell he’d had a chance to lube up, and how long he’d been planning this) hand around Stan’s traitorously interested cock, and starts stroking it into hardness with a vicious grin.

“Hello, Tony’s Pizza Planet, what can I get you?”

“Hhhhhhhi,” Stan manages. “Can - uh, can I get - ah! - aw, shit, Rick -" He has to stop, biting down on his lip and desperately trying to swallow down the moan that bubbles up his throat when Rick twists his wrist just so. "Ummm, two, ah, two pepperoni pies?”

The kid on the other end of the line just sighs.

...

The other thing about Rick was that he was easy to talk to. Sure, he’d act like he didn’t give a shit about most of Stan’s problems, but most of the time he’d actually sit there and let Stan talk, instead of just telling him to shut up and stop bothering him or trying to give him sanctimonious ‘advice’ to straighten up and fly right. When Stan admitted he didn’t have any plans beyond high school and wasn’t even sure he’d make it that far, Rick didn’t get on his case about pulling up his grades and applying to community colleges or trade schools that he’d never be able to afford anyway, didn’t tell Stan to start looking for barnacle-scraping jobs down the docks because he was gonna be doing it for a long time, might as well get some experience under his belt. Rick just took a long drag on the joint and passed it back to Stan with a curt “All of human history’ll be obliterated when this planet spirals into the sun in a couuuuhhhhhhuple hundred million years anyway, who gives a shit.”

“Right?” Stan said, taking a puff himself and settling back on the beat-up sofa they’d rescued from somebody’s curb and dragged back to the old cannery plant. Well, Stan had dragged, until Rick had thrown together some kind of gravity modifier thing that made the couch light enough for him to lift with one hand. “Wish everybody else’d get the memo.”

Rick nodded once, slow and languid.

“Like Ford,” Stan went on, taking another drag off the joint before handing it back. He couldn’t understand why anybody would’ve ever wanted to throw this couch away, it had to be the most comfortable piece of furniture ever made. “We got all these plans to fix up a boat and go treasure hunting together after high school, but now he’s so hung up on this stupid science fair, this stupid scholarship, this stupid...fucking...school -”

“West Coast Tech,” Rick interrupted, not looking at Stan. He had this look on his face, like he’d just bitten into something unexpectedly sour.

“West Coast fuckin’ Tech,” Stan repeated. He considered the rough edges of the piece of plywood propped on two milk crates that was serving as a coffee table for a moment, before deciding, “Fuck ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Rick agreed, monotone. He stared, blank, at a spot in the air in front of Stan for a long moment before giving himself a sharp shake, kicking his feet up onto the plywood and leaning back on the sofa. “Your - your brother’s a real asshole.”

“Hey, fuck you,” Stan said, without any real heat. “He’s my brother, I’m the only one who gets to call him an asshole.”

Rick shrugged. “He is, though.”

Stan tilted his head back and forth until his neck cracked. “Yeah, whatever. You gonna smoke that, or just stare at it?”

Rick looked down at the joint he’d seemingly forgotten he was holding, and then met Stan’s gaze challengingly as he took what had to be the longest drag in history, the tip flaring cherry-red with embers.

“If - if your bitch-ass twin ditches, I’ll go treasure hunting with you,” he said, carelessly, into a cloud of exhaled smoke. “Gotta beat sitting in - in a shitty classroom for another four years.”

Stan had to swallow, hard, before he could make words. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rick passed over the joint. “We still got any wafer cookies in here?”

...

"Where were you?"

Stan dropped his duffel bag on the floor of the room he shared with his twin, studiously avoiding Ford's eyes. "Boxing practice. You know that."

"What I know is that you haven't been to a single practice since September." Ford shut the textbook he'd been poring over with a snap, staring at Stan from the upper bunk. "Your coach didn't even know you're still enrolled."

Stan shrugged. "Is it so bad I want a little time to myself without Dad gettin' on my case about how lazy and useless I am?"

Ford's expression wavered, but only for an instant. "Except that I know you're not taking 'time to yourself'. You've been hanging around with Sanchez, haven't you?"

Stan didn't answer right away, ripping open the duffel bag and pulling out his gym clothes, furiously avoiding looking up at the sanctimonious expression he knew Ford would be wearing.

"So what?" he finally said, pulling out his boxing gloves and tossing them aside.

"So what? So I know you've been skipping classes too! And at this rate, you'll be held back -"

Stan shrugged, and Ford sputtered.

“Stanley, how can you be so cavalier about this? This is your future we’re talking about -”

“Yeah? What future?”

The long breath Ford sucked in could have been exasperated or exhausted. Stan couldn’t tell, without looking at him, which it was.

“You see? This is exactly what I’m talking about. This - this character is obviously a bad influence on you. Stanley, you don’t really believe - I mean, I know school’s been difficult for you, but if you just buckled down and applied yourself -”

Stan clenched a hand around the laces of his trainers, tossing them out of his duffel bag with what might’ve been too much force. “What are you, my mom?”

“No, you idiot! I’m your brother, and I’m worried about you.” Stan couldn’t tell if the sudden sincerity in Ford’s voice was better or worse than the judgmental anger. Worse, he decided.

“Yeah? Well, sounds to me more like you’re worried about me getting held back and you having to watch your own back for once.” He dumped the rest of the contents of his bag out on the floor, giving it a shake for good measure. “At least I have friends.” One friend, his traitor brain reminded him, and Stan gave the bag one last, vicious shake. “Do you know where my deodorant went?”

Ford didn’t answer. The silence from over by the bunk beds went beyond simple ‘not talking’ into the chilly slopes of ‘not talking To You’. Stan realised, too late, that he’d taken it too far.

“Okay, I’m gonna go look in the bathroom,” he said, straightening up and heading for the door. He’d been expecting Ford to bluster about the mess he’d left on the floor, but there was still no sound from Ford’s side of the room.

Stan glanced back over his shoulder before he left the room, but Ford had buried his head back in his textbook.

...

The pizza guy, when he shows up, has the dead-eyed disappointed stare of someone who's seen the full range of human weirdness and is no longer surprised by any of it. He takes the handful of crumpled bills Stan hands him without a single shift in his expression, handing over the pizzas and walking away without a word. 

"Did - did you see his face?" Rick gasps, barely stifling laughter.

"Yeah, yeah, you're real fuckin' funny," Stan mutters. He can feel how red his face must be, cheeks burning.

"Hey, don't blame me for how - how loud you get when you're just getting a handjob."

“Yeah, well, when it’s your hand,” Stan manages, despite the way his ears are burning. Rick snorts, snagging the top pizza off the stack of boxes Stan’s holding.

“Gaaaaaay.”

“Says the guy who had his hand down my pants half an hour ago.”

“Okay, just for that you don’t get any -” Rick cracks open the pizza box he’s holding, takes a sniff. “Pineapple? What - what - what kind of troglodyte puts pineapple on a pizza?”

“Maybe you shoulda been the one to make that order, huh?” Stan says, and he can’t resist a smug grin. 

He instantly regrets it at the smile that creeps across Rick’s face.

“Maybe next time I will,” Rick says, and drops the ham and pineapple pizza back on top of the boxes in Stan’s hands. “Now give 'em here. One - one of these better be edible.”

...

The first time they'd kissed, they'd been hiding under the boardwalk from the owner of the pizza parlour they’d just swiped a pie from, laughing so hard Stan’s sides had started to hurt, sand and surf working their way through the butt of his jeans, leaving him itching and soggy. They’d been cramped and aching, curled up against one of the pilings, trying not to laugh too loud and give themselves away, dripping with grease and melted cheese as they’d stuffed their faces with their ill-gotten goods. It was the hottest day of the year so far, the impending summer hanging around like a promise, making the ex-marine life washed up under the pier stink and Stan sweat in his letterman’s jacket.

He’d been happier than he could remember having been in years.

They’d both held their breath for a moment as the pizza parlour owner had stomped past overhead yelling impossible threats, tension hunching Stan’s shoulders and making his last bite of three-cheese stick in his throat. He’d been all too aware of Rick’s wiry body pressed close against him, wound like a spring, his knee digging into the fleshy part of Stan’s leg. They'd sat like that a long moment after the threats to tie their ears together and then drop them both on opposite sides of a girder had faded into the distance, just sitting and listening to the bustle overhead and the gulls screeching over the midway and out above the water, Stan holding his breath and trying not to think about the heat radiating from Rick's leg where it was pressed against his own.

Then Rick had burst out laughing, yelling something defiant and triumphant and sprinkled with swears after the retreating pizza parlour owner, and Stan had looked over at the look on his face and the boney fist he was shaking at the long streaks of sunlight that slipped down between the boards of the boardwalk and the little string of melted cheese hanging off of his bottom lip and before he could stop himself Stan had leaned over and kissed him. Full on the lips.

Kissing Rick tasted like licking the proverbial ashtray, with a nice garnish of tomato sauce. He didn't move, going still and rigid beside Stan, and Stan realised too late what he'd just done.

"Shit," he muttered, pulling back and rubbing the back of one hand across his mouth, trying not to meet Rick's eyes. "Shit, I -"

"What - what the hell was that, Pines?"

Stan made some noncommittal noise, trying to turn it into a laugh, painfully aware that it wasn't working. His entire head felt like an oversized pimple, hot and red and just begging to be popped. But he could laugh this off, right? Rick pulled crazy stunts all the time to get a rise out of Stan, it wasn't - wasn't like this was any different -

"This is how you kiss a dude," Rick sneered, and Stan didn't have time to process what was happening before Rick grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and mashed their faces together and oh. Oh. Okay.

They didn't come out from under the boardwalk until the sun was almost all the way down. No matter how hard, later, he brushed his teeth, Stan couldn't get the taste of cigarette ash out of his mouth.

...

“The science fair is today?”

Ford’s voice was clipped with impatience, cold and irritable. “Yes, Stanley. You’d know this if you ever bothered to be around for more than five minutes.”

For once, Stan didn’t rise to the obvious bait. “It’s really today?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“I know, I know!” Stan protested, raising both hands to stop Ford before he could launch into another tirade. “I just...kinda thought there was more time.”

Ford fixed him with a strange look, like he’d just been told something he’d always assumed was an apple was actually an orange. “I didn’t know you’d entered.”

“No, that’s not -” Stan shook his head. “Forget it. So, what, you need a ride?”

Ford looked like he wanted to push it, but instead, he just readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Yes, please.”

Stan was just easing the Stanleymobile’s long nose into a parking spot by the gym doors when Ford spoke again. “Stan,” he said, like he was trying to get Stan’s attention, though he didn’t turn away from the window he’d been staring out of the whole drive. “You - you do remember that the scouts from West Coast Tech are going to be here today?”

Stan tucked the Stanleymobile in against the curb and killed the engine, staring out the windshield for a moment. 

“Yeah,” he said, finally. “Yeah, I remember.”

The engine ticked softly as it cooled. Somewhere to Stan’s right, Ford let out a breath that was almost a sigh.

“We’d better go in,” he said, the door handle creaking as he pushed it open.

Stan huffed, yanking the keys out of the ignition.

...

It’s a few misspent hours later that Stan finally forces himself to roll off the bed with the crack over it. 

“We’re gonna be sleeping in the car tomorrow night at this rate,” he grumbles, pawing through his wallet. The wad of bills they’d left Atlantic City with seems a lot thinner now.

From over on the bed, Rick shrugs one shoulder, glancing over at Stan for a moment before turning his attention back to the ceiling. “Maybe there’ll be fewer bedbugs.”

“Wait, what?” Stan whips back the tacky fake-Mexican-print cover and the bedspread on the bed nearest the door, stares hard at the slightly yellowed sheets, looking for black dots bouncing. “If you get bedbugs in my baby -”

He’s cut off by the sound of Rick’s laughter, awful and grating, and huffs out a breath of relief. “You asshole.”

“You - you love me,” Rick says, with a leering wink in Stan’s direction, and Stan huffs, rolling his eyes before turning abruptly back to their wad of cash.

“We’re gonna have to fill up before we hit the road again, and I think we got about enough for two more tanks of gas.” He riffles the bills with his thumb, tapping it against the palm of his opposite hand before tucking it back inside the back pocket of his jeans, draped over the chair by the desk. “That’s not gonna get us all the way to the Sunshine State.”

“We’ll think of something,” Rick says. Stan can feel his eyes on his back. “By which I mean I’ll think of something, being the - the genius in this relationship.”

“Yeah, well, don’t count me out just yet,” Stan retorts, spinning around with his best huckster’s smile. “Still got a couple tricks up these sleeves.”

“What sleeves,” Rick says. It isn’t a question, more of a challenge.

“Oh, shut up,” Stan mutters, before crossing the room to make Rick do exactly that. With his mouth. 

...

Rick didn’t go up to the front of the gym to accept the giant, ugly purple ribbon and the trophy that the beaming science fair judge held up. In fact, when Stan looked around the gym, he didn’t see Rick’s telltale shock of blue hair anywhere at all. Probably why he hadn’t realised the guy was even entered. It wasn’t like he’d bothered to actually look at any of the other projects, anyway, beyond a derisive glance. Ford’s was the best of the lot, hands down. And Stan was only here for Ford anyway.

He kept looking, though. Anything was better than seeing the look on Ford’s face.

“Of course it would be Sanchez,” Ford muttered, on the way out to the car, the first words he’d spoken since the winner of the science fair had been announced. Stan risked a glance over at him, to see his fists clenched, jaw jutting in the way Stan knew meant Ford was grinding his back teeth together, and knew that the light over Ford’s desk was going to be on all night again. “No one else in this school could have put together a project that would have outstripped mine, no one else in this school could have stolen that scholarship out from under me - I thought you said your little friend wasn’t entering!” he snapped, and Stan realised it was the first part of Ford’s tirade that he’d actually been meant to hear.

“I thought he wasn’t!” Stan shot back. There was something simmering low in his stomach, sick and hot and aching, and he threw the Stanleymobile’s door open with more force than he meant to.

Ford just plopped himself down in the passenger seat like he wanted to personally punish the leather upholstery with his butt, crossing his arms with a huff and staring out the window. Stan rolled his eyes, but sat down in the driver’s seat himself, slamming the door behind him.

“You don’t know he got the scholarship too,” he tried, as he started to ease the Stanleymobile out of his parking spot, and Ford whirled, his eyes blazing behind his glasses.

“Oh, don’t be such an idiot, Stanley,” he snapped, and Stan stomped on the brakes to keep from ploughing the Stanleymobile’s nose straight into the rear bumper of the car ahead of him. “Why would West Coast Tech ever settle for second best? Not to mention that Sanchez’ project is right in line with their major research fields, they’re the number one institution in the world right now working on multi-dimensional paradigm theory...” He let out a hollow laugh, slumping back against his seat. “I’ll be lucky if they even bother to send me a rejection letter.”

Stan took a deep breath, checking over his shoulder before carefully inching the Stanleymobile out into the road. “Well, at least it’s not like you don’t got a backup plan, right? You and me, sun, sand, and surf, treasure and babes and really wild adventures...” He managed a grin from somewhere deep down just as Ford let out a deep, heartfelt groan.

“Stanley, I really don’t want to talk about this right now,” he muttered, pressing both hands against his forehead and dragging them up and through his hair. “I have to start working on finding a backup school, writing scholarship essays, finding a summer job, applying for loans...I don’t have time for childish daydreams right now.” He dropped his left hand into his lap, leaning the elbow of his right against the window. 

Stan didn’t think he was meant to hear Ford’s mumble of, “What is Dad going to think?”

Stan rolled through the four-way stop, trying hard to swallow around the lump that had grown in his throat.

...

“What the fuck.”

Rick looked up, and a brief flash of annoyance crossed his face before he flicked his cigarette butt to the asphalt, grinding it out with his toe. “Wh -”

Stan didn’t give him a chance to get the word out, grabbing him by the shoulders and slamming him against the rough brick of the wall. “You didn’t tell me you were entering the science fair!” Rick started to say something, his skinny noodle arms pushing at Stan’s chest, but Stan gave him another slam against the wall. “You didn’t tell me you were some kind of super genius!”

Rick gave his head a little shake before answering, like he was trying to knock a few cogs back into position. "What, you - you didn't actually think I was a dumbass like you?"

Stan barely resisted the urge to plant a fist right in the middle of Rick’s smug asshole face. "No! But I didn’t think you cared. I bet you just threw something together for the science fair the morning of for shits and giggles, right? Just for a laugh? Oh, let’s ruin that nerdy asshole Pines’ life, bet it’ll be hilarious?"

“Would you shut up? I didn’t enter the - the - the fucking science fair,” Rick sneered.

“Oh, yeah, my mistake, that’s how you won it, by not entering,” Stan snapped back. 

“Won -” Rick’s face went dark, and a flash of something sharp and cold shot through Stan, a sudden stab of fear despite the fact he easily weighed the same as two of Rick and had been taking boxing lessons since he was old enough to stand upright. “Fucking - Brewster - thinks he’s doing me some kind of fucking favour putting my name in for all this school shit -”

“Oh, yeah, the AP Physics teacher whose class you don’t even take put your project into the fair, not you. That sounds real convincing.” Stan gave Rick another shove, but it was halfhearted, halfassed. Rick’s expression didn’t even shift. “Maybe next time you oughta leave the lying to me.”

“Stan, I’m in - I’m in AP Physics,” Rick sighed. “I just - just went for the tests, it’s not like I don’t know it all already.” He shook his head, glaring at a patch of back-alley scrub bush just to Stan’s left. “Of course fucking Brewster’s fucking impressed.”

Stan bit down on his bottom lip. “Whatever. Maybe I’d buy that if your project wasn’t a goddamn portal to other dimensions. I don’t know what ‘multi-dimensional paradigm theory’ is, but -”

“- but West Coast Tech is the big name in it,” Rick finished for him, rolling his eyes. “Even though they’re - they’re at least two decades behind the times - ” He gave his head a shake. “How the fuck did Brewster even get his hands on my portal gun plans anyway? That - that thing’s nowhere near the prototype stage - unless my dad -”

“Save it,” Stan interrupted. “I dunno how stupid you think I am, but I’m not this thick. I’m out. Find some other dumbass to be your sidekick."

He gave Rick one more shove, before letting him go and walking away.

“Fine,” Rick called after him, like he was trying to sound casual but failing, his voice rising the longer Stan failed to turn around. “Like - like I need some stupid fag hanging around getting his - his - his stupid feelings in my way anyway. Maybe I’ll take that West Coast Tech scholarship and you can stay here and - and suck Stanford Pines’ dick instead! Does - does it matter whose it is, so long as you’ve got one in your - in your - in your stupid fat mouth?”

Stan didn’t look back, just flipped Rick off and kept walking.

...

Stan doesn’t snore. He doesn’t care what Rick says. The guy’s only actually spent the night with him, what, twice before their little road trip? He doesn’t get to talk.

Rick, though. Rick definitely snores. Rick snores like it’s a competition and he’s determined he’s gonna win. 

The glowing red display on the clock on the nightstand is blinking 07:38. It’s been blinking that, Stan realises, the whole time they’ve been here. He has no idea what time it is, and he’s not getting up now to find his watch. Rick might snore like he’s trying to wake the dead, but he’s also impossible to actually get to sleep and wakes up at the sound of a pin dropping. If Stan tries to work his arm out from under Rick’s five whole pounds of body weight, Rick’s gonna be up for the rest of the night and probably be the crankiest asshole this side of Texas all day tomorrow. Stan can’t deal with that shit while he’s driving.

So he lies, in the slightly-too-warm cocoon of the covers, distinctly aware of the sweat pooled under his arms and in the small of his back, of the press of Rick’s ribs against the fleshy underside of his left arm, of the sound of his breathing in the motel quiet, of the occasional flash of light and speeding shadow puppetry on the wall in front of him when the headlights of some passing car on the freeway filter through the skimpy curtains. Stan tries to take deep, slow, even breaths. He wishes he could turn the TV on without waking Rick. If he doesn’t sleep tonight, he’s gonna be useless to drive tomorrow.

It’s weird, though, trying to sleep without the soft sounds of breathing from the bunk overhead.

Stan squeezes his eyes shut, presses his face into the back of Rick’s neck, and tries, again, to take slow, deep, even breaths.

...

The worst part was the quiet.

Life above Pines Pawns was never quiet, of course, with Stan and Ford’s ma always on the phone with the rubes, but even she seemed to be toning it down. Stan and Ford’s pa, never all that talkative at the best of times, was acting like none of the rest of the family were even there. And Ford - 

Ford looked up from the books strewn across his desk exactly once, when Stan opened the door to their room, scowled, and then turned abruptly back to the page he’d been staring at. Stan noticed that the pile of hardcover, brick-thick textbooks around him looked like it’d doubled.

He didn’t ask if Ford’s eyes had got so red from staring so hard at the textbook or from crying. 

“Dad seems...quiet,” he said, instead, lamely, dropping onto his bed. “What, did I just miss all the fireworks?”

Ford didn’t respond, didn’t even turn around.

Stan glanced off to his right, puffing out a breath. He didn’t really know what he’d expected. “Look, Rick’s an asshole.”

“Do you think I don’t know that, Stanley?” The words came out tight and controlled, like Ford was making them as quiet as he could to keep from yelling. 

Stan shuffled back further onto the bed, kicking off his sneakers before he kicked both feet up onto the bedspread. “If there’s anything I can do to help -”

“You’ve done more than enough already.” The words came out like bullets, each one hurled at the wall Ford was facing. Stan didn’t even have time to open his mouth to snap back before Ford was heaving out a sigh. “Honestly, Stanley, I need to work twice as hard to prove myself if I’m going to impress any other schools into taking me, now that I already have a rejection from West Coast Tech under my belt. And for that, I need to be able to concentrate.” 

He finally turned to face Stan, and Stan felt something sink into the pit of his stomach like a bowling ball even before Ford opened his mouth and said, “The best thing you can do for me right now is leave me alone.”

...

Carla wasn’t around when Stan stopped by the skate park. Her long-haired boyfriend glared him down, so he kept walking, hands in his pockets, whistling a little like he didn’t give a shit anyway.

Rick wasn’t up at the cannery plant. Which was good. It wasn’t like Stan even wanted to see his bitch ass.

None of the guys were hanging around the machine shop, and it was too early for the boardwalk to be any fun, all little kids high on too much grease and sugar running around screaming and their parents desperately running after them. Stan bought a bag of fries from one of the food stands and went and sat on one of the benches anyway. He ended up feeding most of his fries to a seagull that kept hanging around. By the time the bag was finished off, the seagull was practically sitting in his lap.

“Maybe I could be a seagull trainer,” Stan said, to its beady eye. “Think anybody’s ever put together a seagull circus before?”

The seagull didn’t answer. It pecked curiously at the empty paper bag in Stan’s hand, translucent with grease, and then, finding no more fries, grabbed the bag and took off with a flap of its wings that nearly hit Stan in the face.

...

It was nearly a week before Stan heard from Rick again.

The first pebble hit the window of Stan and Ford’s room with a dull, faintly melodious thwonk, startling Stan out of a dream he’d been having about some kind of British dog-man and a duck that was somehow the dog-man’s brother? And a detective? Some kinda nonsense, anyway.

He thought for a moment that the noise had just been part of the dream, until another pebble rattled against the window and Stan was instantly wide awake.

It took two more pebbles before he stuck his head out the window to see Rick standing down on the street, one hand shoved in his pocket like he was daring anybody who might pass by to think he was anything but totally relaxed and casual, the other winding up to throw another pebble. Stan opened up the window just in time for Rick to let it fly. The pebble bounced off Stan’s forehead and fell back towards the street, making Stan’s head twinge.

“What the hell?” he whisper-yelled down at Rick, before spinning to check if Ford had heard him. Thankfully, Ford was passed out across his textbooks at his desk, where he’d been sitting studying when Stan had gone to bed. His desk lamp was still on.

“I told West Coast Tech to go fuck themselves,” Rick called softly up from the street, and Stan’s attention was wrenched back down to the street. “Bunch of - of - of boring old cocksuckers. Like they can teach me anything.”

“What?” Stan asked.

“I - I - I told ‘em to take their stupid scholarship and shove it right up their collective ass!” Rick said, and Stan shushed him, looking back over his shoulder in Ford’s direction. “Fuck ‘em. Who - who actually wants to spend all of their formative years in - in - in some kind of human cattle pen? School is for - for dweebs like your asshole brother.”

“Rick,” Stan started, but Rick interrupted with another pebble to Stan’s face. “Ow! What the fuck?”

“Get your ass down here, we’re leaving,” Rick called up. “If - if you’re not down here with all your shit in ten minutes, I’ll find some other lovesick idiot with a car.” 

“What?”

Ford made some soft noise from behind Stan, and Stan froze, holding his own breath until he heard Ford start breathing the slow and steady breaths of a sleeper again.

“You - you huuuurpeard me,” Rick shouted. “Fuck ‘em! Fuck your shitty schools, fuck your shitty family, fuck ‘potential’, fuck what everybody else wants! Treasure hunting, Pines! Some of your ideas don’t - don’t totally suck balls. You’re not getting me out on the ocean on - on - on a fucking boat that your dumb ass repaired, though.”

Stan couldn’t speak, for a long moment. 

“Rick,” he started, around the lump sitting hot and inconvenient somewhere around his lungs.

“Yeah, yeah. Move it or lose it,” Rick called back up, then turned and vanished around the side of the pawn shop.

It didn’t take Stan any time to throw a bag together. It wasn’t like he owned all that much worth taking, anyway. He threw in a few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, a jacket, his wallet and the contents of the little jar he’d been saving change in for dates, another pair of sneakers, his boxing gloves. He debated a moment, then slipped the family photo on the nightstand out of its frame, folding it carefully and sliding it into his wallet.

He paused, a moment, watching Ford’s back rise and fall, the rhythm steady, peaceful. 

Then Stan grabbed the blanket off the top bunk and draped it carefully around Ford’s shoulders, before hoisting his duffel bag over one shoulder and slipping carefully out of their shared room. 

He made sure to shut the door silently behind him.

...

Stan must’ve gotten to sleep somehow, because the next thing he knows, he’s waking up to sunlight streaming yellow through the open window and Rick throwing their shit back into their bags.

Twenty minutes later, they’re back on the road, speeding up and over the cloverleaf. Stan’s pretty sure they’re never going to be allowed to stay at that motel again, considering they left the room full of pizza garbage and skipped out on the bill. He can’t bring himself to care much. He really, really hopes he’s stayed overnight in Ohio for the last time.

“We’re gonna have to stop somewhere for gas,” he says, peering at the green sign hanging over the roadway, trying to pick out the sign for their exit. “Maybe we can make it over the border first, though.”

“And we’re - we’re stopping at the next Shoney’s we see,” Rick says. “I’m not going anywhere today without waffles. Hey, dipshit, our - our exit’s on the right.”

“I knew that,” Stan says, swerving into the right lane.

“Put on your fucking glasses,” Rick grumbles. Stan flips him off.

The sun pours hot through the Stanleymobile’s windows, air conditioning rattling as it gamely spits odd blasts of freezing air out the vents in the dash, until Stan can barely feel his fingers on the steering wheel even though there’s sweat dripping down his neck. Some shitty rock song is playing softly on the radio, and Rick cranks the volume up, kicking one foot up on the dash and playing air guitar as he sings nasally along to the guitar solo. The sky ahead is a perfect, crystal blue, stretching from horizon to horizon.

There’s only thirty-two hours of driving between them and California.