#i've missed these characters so much but i wasn't feelin anything i tried to write

[portalford]

Nothing to Stop Us Now

AO3

“If I see one more purple mosquito thing, I’m gonna fling myself out of this tree,”  says Stan, scratching furiously at a souvenir from one of the aforementioned pests.  He’s pretty sure he killed that one, and that helps a little.

Just a little.  It still itches like the blazes.

“That would be regrettable,”  says Ford, not looking up from his sketchbook.

“You sound real regrettable,”  Stan mutters.  He gives up on the bug bite in favor of better entertainment: baiting Ford.  “This is your fault.”

Ford, unlike the bugs, doesn’t bite.  “If I remember correctly,”  he says, in a tone heavily implying that he’s never forgotten a thing in his life (which is absolutely untrue) and still without looking up from his damn drawing, “I was perfectly happy to stay in my study and had no comments about ‘stretching my legs’.”

“Don’t quote me at me,”  Stan snaps.  “You needed to get outta that dusty closet anyway.”

Ford finally takes his eyes off his page, but it’s only to lean out for a better look over the branch he’s sitting on, far enough that Stan is tempted to yank him back before the idiot falls.  “It’s fortunate that it isn’t able to climb trees, at least,”  he says, going right back to his drawing.

‘Fortunate’ is not a word Stan would apply to any part of this situation.  It’s hot, he’s thirsty, he scraped his arm climbing this tree, the branch he’s on is too skinny for his butt, and there’s two rows of sharp, slobbery teeth about ten feet below his ankles.  

Ford, predictably, has ignored these and every other grievance Stan has tried to air over the past five minutes, so Stan just snorts.

Ford ignores that, too.  He just says, “Watch out for the seedpods—my research indicated that these pods release a smell similar to hydrogen sulfide if they’re crushed.  Probably to deter predators,”  he adds, mostly to himself.

“Hydrogen what?”

“Rotten eggs, Stanley,”  Ford says solemnly, before getting sucked back into his drawing.

And yeah, Stan’s feeling pretty petulant right now, but he’s not gonna make this experience worse.  He scoots over a little, just to be safe.  Now he’s sitting on a really knobby, more wobbly, part of the branch.  Fantastic.

Stan’s pretty much over his fear of heights these days, but he’s definitely got a normal, healthy, self-preservational fear of falling.  Especially when it’s a long drop and a short stop to being a devil dog’s lunch.

Said devil dog is still staring at him with all three of its ugly yellow eyes, tongue lolling hungrily over ugly yellow teeth.

Ford, who wouldn’t know things like ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ or ‘self-preservational’ if they bit him with all the teeth in the world, teeters out over thin air again.  He’s higher up and to the left, on a branch that looks even thinner and more uncomfortable than Stan’s, but he hasn’t said anything about it.  Stan doubts he’s even noticed.  “I wonder if there are more of them.  Surely they would have heard the racket and come looking?”

“Ford, I will literally give you a dollar to shut up,”  Stan says.

That, of all things, gets Ford’s attention.  “Really?”

“…Would you go for fifty cents?”

“No, I was just shocked that you were offering to part with money for any reason.”

“Yeah?  Well I was shocked that you were offering to shut up for any reason.”

Ford flashes a smile, sharp and challenging.  Stan’s about to meet him with another insult when the devil dog, apparently unable to handle not being the center of attention for ten seconds, rears up on the tree trunk and makes a noise like a stuck pig.

Stan makes good and sure he’s got a solid grip on the branch before screaming back.

The thing squeals louder and lunges, jaws snapping shut just below Stan’s boots.  Stan promptly pulls his feet up on the branch.  These are new boots, and if they get chewed to pieces before he’s even broken them in—

His perch shivers and bounces as Ford scrambles to his feet above him.  “Stanford for the love of God and money sit down.”

Ford does not sit down, choosing instead to hang halfway off the branch, talking all the while about “cross-species” and “evolutionary advantages” and other stuff Stan doesn’t bother to follow.

Instead, he finds himself a long twig and swats Ford’s leg with it, hard.

Ford cuts off, glaring.  “What was that for?”

Stan pokes him again.  “I know you’re super excited about this dog thing, but I am tired and sweaty and almost lost a chunk of my leg climbing this tree that I’d really like to keep and please sit down.”

Ford sits, and he even has the grace to look somewhat contrite.  He promptly ruins this by saying, “iI’s not a dog, Stanley, it’s—”

“Sixer, I literally could not care less.”  There’s a moment of silence while Stan nurses his physical bug-related injuries and Ford nurses his mental Stan-related injuries.  Stan sighs.  “Sorry.  Rough day.”  It’s more explanation than excuse, but it’s the best he’s got right now.

The devil dog yips.  Stan almost wishes he was a bit lower, just so he could try to kick it in the face.

“It’s fine, Stanley.”  Ford leans over to put a hand on his shoulder.  Stan doesn’t waste his breath telling him to stay put, because the last six warnings have made no impact whatsoever, and it’s kinda nice anyway.  “This creature is fascinating, but there are plenty of of other anomalies that can be studied without resorting to hiding in a tree.  Besides,”  he adds, sitting back and waggling his sketchbook,  “I finished my drawing.”

Stan rolls his eyes, but he can feel a smile coming on in spite of himself.  Ford has always been the most uniquely frustrating person Stan’s ever known—and Stan has known a lot of frustrating people, himself included—but there’s a kind of oblivious honesty to his frustrating-ness that Stan hasn’t found anywhere else, did without for thirty years, and would really like to never be without again, regardless of how much Ford pisses him off at times.

“Well, as long as you got your drawing.”  Stan looks at the devil dog.  The devil dog looks back.  It feels really unfair that it’s got three eyes to stare with, but that’s life for you.  “What do you wanna do about this?”

“I would suggest running for it, but that didn’t prove especially effective the first time we tried.”  Ford considers the monster below.  It hisses at him.  “Also, it’s ready for us now.”

“It’s gonna take us time to get down this tree, too,”  Stan says.  He really doesn’t want to lose these boots.  Or that chunk of his leg.  Or anything else, really.

“Hm.”  Ford stands up.  “If I can jump on it, I think it would stay stunned long enough for us to get a head start back to the Stan O’ War."

“Okay, hold up,”  Stan interrupts, loud enough to make the dog squeal.  He ignores it.  “I’m heavier’n you—if anyone’s gonna jump, shouldn’t it be me?”

“An additional nine feet should give me enough velocity to match your weight on impact,”  Ford says, like this is a reasonable thing to be talking about.  The way he’s eyeing the branch over his head is worrying Stan; he decides to nip this whole thing in the bud before Ford gets really into it.

“Yeah, no.  Way too many ‘should-be’s’ in that plan, bro.  I want to get out of this with all my bits attached.”  Redirect, redirect, redirect— “How about we throw sticks at it?”  Fantastic plan, Stan.  That’s gonna win awards for sure.

Somehow, it does.  Ford brightens like Stan said something genuinely smart and impressive.  “Stanley, that’s brilliant!”

“Throwin’ sticks?”

“What?  No, not sticks.”  Ford reaches up for one of the fist-sized green pods from the foliage around them.  “These.”

The last fifteen awful minutes are suddenly worth it, and better.  Stan knows he’s grinning like a moron and he doesn’t care.  “We’re gonna stink bomb this dog?”

“We are.”  Ford’s got that crazy glint in his eye that Stan recognizes from their wilder childhood escapades, and he doesn’t even correct Stan about the dog thing.  He hefts the pod in his hand.  “How’s your throwing arm?”

Stan puffs out his chest, brandishing a stinkpod of his own.  “You’re lookin’ at the reigning dart champion of Joe Shmoe’s Bar and Grill.”

“That was forty-odd years ago, and you cheated.”

“Still won!”

Ford rolls his eyes.  

The best way to shut the critics up is with a practical demonstration, so—

Stan lets it fly.

It hits the dog square in its ugly face and bursts.

“Moses that’s bad.”  Between the dog’s shrieking, the awful smell, and the shakiness of his seat, Stan’s not sure if he’s riled up or terrified.

Probably both.

“Impressive throw, though,”  Ford says, lining up a headshot of his own.

Thirty seconds and about half that many stinkpods later, the devil dog is but a distant memory.  Or would be, if not for the lingering stench and fading squealing of its flight.

“That’s right!”  Stan shouts, high enough on adrenaline and the choking smell that he doesn’t feel any kind of worry when he leans out over nothing.  “Tell your friends!”

“Here’s to hoping he has no friends,”  Ford replies, flinging his last stinkpod into the woods.  His mostly-level voice does nothing to hide the fact that he’s practically vibrating where he stands.

“Hell yeah,”  Stan says, fervent.  

It takes him a minute to get down, what with his legs being almost numb from sitting on that useless skinny branch for so long.  Ford has an easier time, probably on account of his near-constant jittering and jumping around.

“So I’m all for coming back here with my knuckledusters,”  Stan says, after a moment where they both just sort of stand there staring at each other across burst and battered stinkpod shells, “but can we do it tomorrow?”

“That might be for the best,”  Ford says, lifting his arm over his face and wrinkling his nose.  “I’m going to try that new odor remover I’ve been working on,”  and Stan didn’t know about that but he’s not even a little surprised,  “because I like this coat.”

“You might wanna use that stink cleaner on yourself too, Sixer,”  Stan says as they’re walking back down the beach.    “You smell like a skunk’s nightmares.”

“You could use a bath yourself, Stanley,”  Ford replies, and trips him into a tide pool.

Stan yanks him in after, and he’s laughing all the way down.