#stan would fuck ford so hard in front of them just to make them uncomfortable

[old-fandom]

Going off of my post of Stancest being gawked at during their love making on the boat by anomaly, I raise that the same thing happens at the Mystery Shack.

Stan and Ford come home for the season with the twins. They're so busy getting themselves and the kids settled, getting ready for the busy season, getting their boat checked and upgraded after being hauled from the harbor to the Shack. All of that while having to remind themselves to stay hidden in their affections and remain relatively platonic in front of the others. They aren't at sea anymore. They do have to be careful with what they do, they don't need others poking in on their business.

So one night, after everyone has gone to bed and most things have finally settled, Stan is out back on the couch smoking. It's 1am and he thinks he's up by himself, looking into the dark woods, when he feels Ford come out. At first, it's just to check up on him. They haven't been a part in months now and so that sense of needing to be right next to each other is so strong, especially now they were romantically involved. Stan tells him he's fine then pats the couch.

Ford comes to sit next to him but Stan is having none of it. He puts an arm around him and practically gets Ford to cuddle up next to his side, which he does, but not without a whispered warning. They were still outside and the kids could be awfully sneaky when they want to be. So they sit and cuddle and relax but Stan wants more. He has been deprived of his lover, so he kisses him softly. Ford warns him again but Stan just looks at him like he's hung the stars. He's so beautiful. Stan kisses him again, putting his cigar in the ash tray next to him.

Ford...Ford is a weak man. He kisses Stan back, wrapping his arms around his neck, leaning all the way in. Finally, Stan picks Ford up and puts him on his lap, hands gripping his thighs. Ford has his hands in Stan's hair while they neck like teenagers. Finally, Ford starts kissing down Stan's neck, and Stan is immersing himself in the feeling. He's missed this so much.

He doesn't know what came over him but he cracked open one of his eyes behind Ford and froze.

A slew of supernatural creatures, some he recognized and some he did not, were standing or crouching in the yard, watching them. Gnomes, the Hide-Behind, Eye-bats, a few fairies, a random Manotaur, a unicorn, and even Steve. Ford tells that Stan has frozen up and looks behind him.

All of the beasts and the Stans are stuck looking at each other. While trying to make sure that the humans didn't see them, they never thought the anomalies of Gravity Falls would see them.

They all get sworn to secrecy by Stan, seeing how he is still revered as their Hero and because he is not afraid to punch any of them. The merpeople in the ocean were different, they didn't follow them home, but this. This was too close to home.

The rest of the summer is spent with Ford and Stan keeping a low profile in front of people and other anomalies, but no matter what they did, they always seemed to attract one supernatural entity.

Ford has chalked it up that because they themselves are anomalous separately (6 Fingers/Possible Weirdness Attractor) and are anomalous together (Incest), it attracts others to seek them out. (Ford would make deals with them to let them watch them go all the way if they will answer any and all of his research questions)

Stan thinks they are just gross voyeurs that see and opportunity and take it. (He's not opposed to fuck Ford in the woods while they watch, especially it makes them all aware who Ford belongs to.)

[fallen-gravity]

Sixty Candles

On June 15th, 1972, Stan Pines celebrates his eighteenth birthday in the back seat of his car.

or, how Stan Pines spent his birthday throughout the years.

Notes: Here is my very loose interpretation for Week 4 of @stanuary!The prompt for this week was Future with the subcategory Old, and I decided to play around with the concept of birthdays! This was a lot of fun to explore and I hope you have a ton a of fun reading! :D

AO3

At exactly midnight on June 15th, 1972, Stan Pines celebrates his eighteenth birthday in the backseat of his car.

It’s not ideal, and nothing like how he thought he had it planned from the moment he turned sixteen, but he supposes he should be thanking his lucky stars he’s able to celebrate at all. His Ma, bless her caring heart, must’ve snuck some emergency funds into his duffle bag the moment she saw Pa reaching for it before he kicked Stan to the curb.

Stan supposes that she probably intended for that money to be spent on emergency rations and gas money, but what she doesn’t know probably won’t kill her. He also supposes that he probably should’ve gotten himself a cake, but cakes are messy and he has no means of cleaning it up, so a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes will have to suffice.

He pops open the bottle with ease, and takes a large swig.

“Happy birthday, y’ asshole” he says to nobody, slamming the bottle down onto his car dashboard with more force than intended. “Hope you’re livin’ it up at home with your fancy expensive pizza and two layer cake you’ll never be able to finish on your own” He leans back against his chair, propping his arms smugly behind his head. “An’ I hope the guilt is eating you alive” he slams his hand down on one of his armrests, and reaches for the bottle on his dashboard for another swig.

Just six months ago- not even a year, just six months ago, Stan and Ford had been talking about what it’d be like to share their first drink together. They’d talked about getting absolutely wasted at the pub down the block, followed by walking to the boardwalk to ride the coaster until it made them both sick.

It wasn’t much, but it was theirs.

Stan chokes, and he isn’t quite sure if it’s the alcohol or his emotions.

“Fuck,” he coughs, and stumbles out of the car for some fresh air. In between his coughs and splutters, he takes a sharp inhale of the cool nighttime air to steady his breathing. He sighs deeply, and pulls out the pack of cigarettes from his ratty coat pocket. 

He lights one up, and leans against his car to lose himself in his thoughts as he wordlessly watches the cigarette smoke dissipate into the starry night sky. Stan gets too distracted by the sight and accidentally burns his first all the way down to his fingertips, and hisses in pain as he stumbles to light a new one.

No matter. He stomps on the burnt remains with his shoe, and grinds his emotions into the ground with them.

 ~~~~~~~

On June 15th, 1978, Stan Pines celebrates his twenty-fourth birthday in prison.

“Pines!” An officer shouts, whacking at the cell door with his baton. “Wake up. You’ve got a visitor”

Stan sits up in the cheap cot, groggily rubbing at his eyes. “Wassat?”

The officer’s keys jingle as he clicks Stan’s cell door open. “You’ve got a visitor. He insisted it was important, so we’re giving you ten minutes to talk.”

Stan’s been to jail enough times that he knows that when someone says something’s important, it really just means that they bribed their way through security so they can talk to Stan before the designated visitor hours.

But who could possibly be willing to risk getting arrested just to talk to him before eleven in the morning? Every name that comes to mind is either on the run, already in jail, or…much worse. Anybody foolish enough to try is either out of their mind, or…someone who genuinely wants to see him.

But…who could possibly want to see him? After everything he’s done, after everyone he’s stolen from, who could possibly be left that trusts him enough to bribe a police officer for his company? The police officer happens to walk Stan by the surveillance room, and he notices his page-a-day calendar is torn to June 15th.

Stan’s heart nearly stops in his chest.

It-It couldn’t be, could it?

Six years of silence, and Ford wants to break it like this? Is this some kind of joke? What kind of idiot does Ford take him for, thinking that now is an appropriate time to make amends? After all the times Stan tried writing, or calling,  or even trying to get a hold of him through Ma, now is the time that Ford finally agreed to reconvening? 

Pah. He had his chance the past five times Stan tried to pass on a happy birthday. He doesn’t care if it’ll land him ten more years in prison, the moment he sees his twin brother’s stupid face he’s spitting in it.

As Stan rounds the corner to the visitation room, though, all of his anger disappears into thin air, and if it weren’t for the officer pushing him along, he’d turn heel and sprint the other way.

“My friend!” Rico cheers with a forced smile on his face. He’s holding a large box in his hand. “It’s so good to see you again!”  He takes a seat at the small table, rhythmically tapping on the box.

Stan swallows hard, but takes a seat across from him. “It’s, uh…” he squirms uncomfortably, unsure if he’s allowed to address him by name. “…good to see you too, buddy. What, uh, what are you doing here?”

Rico laughs heartily. “What, a man cannot visit his best friend on his birthday?” He flips open the box he brought with him, and Stan flinches when he spins it around towards him. To his surprise, it…looks like a perfectly normal birthday cake.

“Would you mind giving us a moment alone?” Rico flashes a grin towards the police guard behind Stan. “I would like to sing my dear childhood friend happy birthday, but I’ve always been very shy about the sound of my voice. I promise I will be quick”.

Childhood friend? 

The officer squints at the birthday cake in the box for a moment. “Fine.” He says. “You get two minutes. And I’m staying right outside the door to prevent anything funny from happening”

“Of course! You have my word,” Rico grins, placing his hand over his heart. The officer says nothing, and for the briefest of moments Stan’s convinced he sees right through Rico’s bullshit and he’ll let Stan slip quietly back into his cell.  But after those brief moments pass, the officer shrugs as he closes the door behind him.

Rico’s fake-plastered grin slips from his face the moment the officer is out of sight.

“Alright, listen here, you walking stain upon the Earth,” Rico slips easily into Spanish. “You think you’re safe behind these bars? You think my boys still won’t burn this place to the ground to collect what you rightfully owe us? You’re gravely mistaken. We have eyes everywhere, in every corner of the globe. And don't you dare even think about running off somewhere else under a new name, Stanley Pines, because we’ll find you, one way or another”

Rico stands from his chair and pushes the cake box towards Stan. “As soon as those guards declare you a free man, we’ll be waiting for you on the outside.” He grips Stan’s shoulder as he heads towards the door. “It really is such a shame. I loved you like a brother. But you know what they say, don’t you?” He places his hand on the door, and glances back towards him. “The good ones always die young”

Before Stan has time to respond, Rico slips his fake smile back on and opens the door. “Happy birthday, my friend,” he says, slipping back into English and speaking loud enough for the officer waiting outside to hear. “I hope you enjoy your cake”

Stan swallows, defensively bringing his hands to his throat, before he carefully inspects the cake in front of him. It looks normal, as far as he’s concerned, just a standard chocolate cake with “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STAN!” inked across its surface in bright red frosting.

He contemplates. On one hand, he hasn’t had any real food outside of the slop they’ve been feeding him here for the past three months, and he’s never been one to turn away free cake.

On the other, knowing Rico…

Stan shutters. He stands to his feet, takes the cake box, and throws the whole thing into the trash can in the corner of the room.

He’d rather starve to death than risk being poisoned.

~~~~~~

Stan stopped keeping track of his age the day he started going by his brother’s name.

Sure, it wasn’t even close to being the first time he had to live under a new name. You do it enough times and you’re able to come up with an entire life story at the drop of a hat. Stetson Pinefield was from Ohio, born in the fifties in late December. Andrew "Eight Ball" Alcatraz, born in Alabama in mid-May, got his nickname from his troubled childhood that resulted from his dad getting locked up when he was only eight. It was something of a specialty, giving life to people that never truly existed.

But suddenly, all at once, Stan was forced to overtake the life of someone he loved, and it’s like he forgot how to so much as breathe. This wasn’t some sob story he could bullshit to people he’d never see again, or a name he pulled out of his ass to keep him in place just a bit longer. This is his twin brother, someone he spent every moment of his childhood with, yet someone he feels as though he doesn’t know a thing about.

Sure, none of the people in this town can tell the difference between himself and Ford, and for that he’s grateful.  But a man can only pose as his possibly-dead brother for so long before somebody starts getting suspicious.  Ford’s lived in this town for over ten years, he’s bound to have been on good terms with somebody.

Oh well. He’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it. For now, all Stan needs to focus on is scamming enough people out of their wallets so he can pay off the bills and keep working on the portal that swallowed his brother whole, and those seem to be going…well, just about as smoothly as teaching yourself three years-worth of advanced multiverse physics when you never even graduated from high school can go, but at least he’s making process.

Turns out, there’s still one more flaw in Stan’s plan that even he should’ve been able to factor in.

As much of a recluse Ford advertised himself to be to the locals of Gravity Falls, it turns out that he always receives a call from home on his birthday.

The first year Stan spends in Gravity Falls, he debates letting the phone go to voice mail. He has no idea how in or out of character it would be for Ford to answer his phone, nor does he have any idea who could be calling at all.

Eventually, though, he figures it’d probably look even more suspicious if he doesn’t pick up, and Stan isn’t willing to risk anything, even if it means bullshitting his way through a phone call for the rest of the night.

He takes a deep breath, and with a shaky hand he picks up the phone.

“Stanford?” his mother says, and to say he’s overjoyed to hear her voice for the first time in years is a massive understatement.

“Ma?” Stan replies, struggling not to slip into his own voice. “Why are you calling?”

She cackles. “Well hello to you too, birthday boy. I’m starting to think all of that research is getting to your head. Can’t a mother call her son on his birthday?”

Stan blinks. Is it…really June already? “Is that today?”

She laughs again. “See? It is getting to you! Do your poor aging mother a favor and go outside and get some sunshine. It’ll be good for you!” She quips. “Or at the very least, please, take a break and go to bed early tonight, for me”

Stan smiles. “Okay, Ma. I will.”

“Good,” she replies matter-of-factly. “Now, tell me all about what it’s like up there on the West Coast. Is it unbearably hot over there? I can’t seem to find your little town on my map. Must be why it’s so spooky, since you’re the only living soul for miles.” She laughs again. “I’m kidding, dear. I’m sure it’s fantastic. Tell me everything.”

And all at once, it’s like Stan’s a kid again. Stan and his Ma talk on the phone for hours. He figures that Ford must not call very often, so he spews out anything that comes to mind in hopes that she doesn’t see right through him. She buys it, miraculously, and when they hang up at the end of the night Stan promises that he’ll try and call home more often.

It becomes an easy pattern for Stan to slip into as the years go by. Just as long as he calls frequently enough not to raise suspicion, he can always look forward to receiving a call on June 15th every year. Some tiny part of him feels selfish for posing as his brother and lying to his mother for so long, but it’s the most connected he’s felt to any sort of family in years.

Deep down, though, he knows he can’t get too comfortable, and there’s still too many loose ends he needs to tie up before he can let his guard down.

On June 5th, 1987, just before his thirty-third birthday, Stan Pines dies in a fiery car crash.

On June 7th, he just barely misses a call from home as he’s coming up from tinkering with the portal.

“Stanford”, his mother’s voice says, lacking any of the snarky bite it usually contains. “I know that you’re a very busy man with your research, and driving all the way back to New Jersey on such a short notice is…unfair of me to ask of you, but…” She pauses to take a shaky breath, like she’s struggling not to cry. “But something terrible happened to Stanley, and…” she pauses again. “We’re holding a service for him on the fifteenth. I know that things haven’t been great between you two the past few years, and I can’t imagine a funeral would be an ideal way to spend your birthday, but…It was the only date they had available, and it would really mean the world to all of us if you could attend. I’m so sorry you had to find out this way. Call me as soon as you get this, okay? I love you.”

There’s a click, and she’s gone, and Stan contemplates his options.

Would Ford attend his funeral, if things were exactly the way it seemed? Would Ford even consider him worthy of the time? He’d said it himself: I want you to get as far away from me as possible. Would Ford be relieved that he was finally rid of him, like a weight off his shoulders?

Stan doesn’t even realize that he started crying until a tear drop lands on the counter beside the phone. Just how long has Ford been waiting to get rid of him, anyway?

No. Stan shakes those thoughts away. He can’t lose himself in those kinds of thoughts again. Every time he lets those thoughts get to him, bad things happen.

Besides…a funeral for, er, himself, may not be the most ideal way to spend his birthday, but finally being able to spend it at home for the first time in near decades, despite the circumstances, still beats slaving over an indecipherable journal in a dimly lit basement for twelve hours straight.

He takes a deep breath, and dials home.

“Hey, Ma”

~~~~~~~~

Ever since he turned eighteen, Stan found himself unable to celebrate his birthday without a sour taste in his mouth. As a kid, he looked forward to it more than anything. It was the one day a year that Pa would splurge and let him and Ford do whatever they wanted, and having a birthday in mid-June meant that there was only about a week of school left before they were free for the summer.

Most of all, it was about togetherness. Stan and Ford never had that many friends when they were growing up, so their shared birthdays were always about spending time together, because nobody else deserved to come to their party and celebrate with them anyways.

Once he was forced to spend his birthdays on the streets, Stan was starting to think that maybe he didn’t deserve it either.  Even when he did have people to celebrate with, whether that be his cellmates in prison or nameless gamblers in Vegas casinos, everything felt empty, and there isn’t enough cake or alcohol in this world that could’ve filled that void.

Those early summers in Gravity Falls were the worst years of his life. The calls from home were nice, sure, but his stomach flipped with nausea every time his mother called him Stanford. To no fault of her own, she made him feel as though her love was conditional, and that he wasn’t meeting any of the requirements.

He knows, of course, that it’s not true in the least, but Stan just wishes that wake-up call hadn’t come from attending his own funeral. Stan had gone in expecting to have a terrible time, but he really had thought that seeing his mother’s face for the first time in a decade would’ve cushioned that fall.

Turns out that it only made him feel worse, and he’d declared sometime later over a bottle of whiskey that his birthday must be cursed, and that he never wanted to celebrate it again.

~~~~~~~~

On June 15th, 2013, Stan wakes to the sound of a seagull screeching its head off outside his window. He groans, and sits up in bed to look out his window, but all that meets his eye is the vast sea. He looks then to his bedside clock, which reads 8:30am.

Grumbling to himself, Stan kicks off his covers and stands to his feet, because he knows if he tries to go back to sleep now he’ll be out cold until mid-afternoon. He ruffles through his clothing drawer and picks one of Mabel’s hand knit sweaters at random, because the Arctic doesn’t care what time of year it is when it comes to the weather.

Ford is already sitting out on a deck chair with a fishing rod when Stan steps out of his bedroom.

“Morning” Stan says as he approaches so as not to sneak up on his brother and spook him.

“Oh, good morning, Stanley” Ford smiles as Stan takes the seat beside him. “Did I wake you?”

“Unless you’re a screaming bird, then no” Stan rubs at his eyes. “How long you been up?”

Ford shrugs. “About an hour, hour and a half, I think? What time is it?”

Stan raises an eyebrow. “You sure you slept at all, Poindexter?” He holds three fingers mere inches from Ford’s face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Ford smacks his hand away. “Very funny, Stanley. I’ll have you know that I got a solid four and a half hours of sleep last night”

Stan cackles. “Woah, looks like we got a new record, folks” He stretches his arms in the air. “You make any coffee yet? I’m still not awake enough to deal with the cold”

“Oh,” Ford replies, like the question caught him off guard. He stands to his feet. “I must’ve completely forgotten” he says.

That reply does catch Stan off-guard.  Ford? Forgetting to make coffee? His practical lifeline? There must be something up.

Stan rises from his chair, frowning. “You sure you’re doing okay, Sixer?”

“Of course,” Ford replies, not turning back to look at him. “I’m just…tired, is all”

Okay, Ford knows that Stan can sniff out a lie from hundreds of miles away, so whatever it is that Ford is hiding from him must be really bad, because---

That train of thought leaves his head just as quickly as it had entered it the moment he steps foot into the kitchen. There’s a banner hanging up above the window that reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and there are a handful of multicolored balloons scattered across the floor.

And right at the center of their table sits two cupcakes and two steaming cups of coffee.

“It was Mabel’s idea,” Ford finally turns to meet Stan’s eyes, smiling. “She called me last night to try and walk me through her cupcake recipe, but…” he rubs at the back of his head as he takes a seat at the table. “It turns out that baking isn’t quite my forte” He gestures to the seat across from him at the table. “So instead, when we were still docked last night, I snuck off board to hunt down a bakery”

Ford fiddles with the paper wrapper on his cupcake. “I know it’s not much, but…” he raises his cupcake in the air like he was making a toast. “Happy birthday”

Not much?

Not much?

This is winning the lottery compared to all the other birthdays Stan’s suffered through.

He takes the seat across from Ford, and raises his own cupcake to clink it against Ford’s.

“Happy birthday to you too, Poindexter”

[kafka-ish]

stuck between a rock and a hard place | s.u.

after one fateful night, stan uris finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place when him and his friend like the same girl.

word count: 5,428

warnings/included: pining, love triangle, fem!reader 

request: (from anonymous) “could you write a bill denbrough, reader, and stanley uris love triangle? maybe where they’re always trying to one up each other for her attention? ty”

-

“I don’t get what you see in her.” Stan was eyeing y/n from across the cafeteria while Bill droned on for what must have been the fourth time that week about how amazing she was.

“Wuh-well, you wouldn’t under-st-hand.” Bill shook his head. He wasn’t about to try to convince his friend how amazing she made him feel. It was just how he felt.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t get it.” Stan squinted at the girl’s figure. Sure, she was pretty, but looks aren’t everything. “And I don’t get why you insist on sending her things anonymously.”

“If yo-you liked some-someone, wuh-wuh-wouldn’t you want t-to sh-show them?”

Stan’s gaze which was previously fixed on y/n switched to Bill. He gave him a glare because he didn’t understand. “If I liked someone, I would tell them,” he scoffed.

Bill could see where Stan was coming from. The only issue was that he was just too nervous to tell y/n, let alone talk to her. The two shared chemistry and a study hall period together but Bill still hadn’t found an excuse to talk to her. He also hadn’t found a way around his stutter. He wanted his moment with her to be perfect; no stutter, no embarrassment; just the two of them sharing a mutual conversation about whatever… and her finally realizing he’s the perfect match.

He shrugged at Stan’s remark. So, what if his friend didn’t understand? That only meant less competition.

“Hey guys!” Beverly drew both boys’ attention away from Bill’s crush. “There’s a party tonight. Whatd’ya say we all go together?”

“Count me the fuck in!” Richie was the first to reply, enthusiastically at that.

“I have a test tomorrow.” If Stan had a nickel for every time the Losers wanted to do something irrational, he’d be loaded.

“All the more reason to get drunk off your ass.” Richie Tozier had a grin on his face that there was no use wiping off.

And if Stan had a nickel for every time the Losers had convinced him into doing something stupid, he’d be stupid loaded.

The party was at who-knows-where’s house serving who-knows-what.

“Stanny! Stan the Man!” It was Richie Tozier, the convincer himself. He slurred Stan’s name and tripped his way over to the corner Stan was huddled in. “Yougottatrythis.” Richie’s words were incoherent and if he hadn’t been friends with Stan for so long, or were shoving a red solo cup full of something Stan didn’t want to know was in, Stan may have never guessed what his friend was trying to say.

“No thanks—”

“C’monnn.” Groan. “Don’t act like you’re above us, just cos yer sober.” Richie gave him a mopey look that Stan was sure was just another way to mock him.

‘Stan the Man’ did eventually take the cup. Not because he wanted to, but because of the way Richie was jerking it so much, he was afraid some of the contents may spill on his shirt, which he just pressed. Curiously, he brought the plastic cup closer to his nose so he could examine the contents inside better.

His nose twitched at the scent.

It reeked of stale beer, vodka, and was that someone’s mom’s wine?

And although the thought of drinking alcohol before an important day was tempting… Stan knew better. Making an appearance at a lame party rather than studying would be the worst of his crimes tonight. He held the cup away from his face, as far as possible, and started watching the morons around him.

They were drunk to their stomachs; happily grinding against each other to the beat of the music that blasted on the radio. They wouldn’t remember this night if they tried.

Stan, however, would remember. He would remember every detail of this boring party, where no one talked to him; where there’d be throw up in the pool to clean out the next day; where the cops would show up in an hour because the houses next door called in complaints. And Stan would be able to pass his Algebra test with ease the next day while everyone else would be using what was left of their braincells to remember how to factor an imaginary number.

“Hey!” Oh god. It was y/n. What was she doing next to him? The two barely knew each other. In fact, if Bill hadn’t taken a liking to her, or if Stan weren’t friends with Bill, he doubted he’d even know of her existence.

“Hi…” Stan looked skeptically at the girl who was practically throwing herself at him. “Do you need something?”

y/n only hummed in response. She was swaying to the song playing in the background, but her movements didn’t match the beat at all, and she looked just as wasted as the rest of the room.

“Do you speak English?” Stan’s eyebrows furrowed. He leaned down to meet her height. His eyes widened with surprise when she, once again didn’t reply, but wrapped her arm around his neck. Her touch was velvet and she smelled like roses.

Until she opened her mouth.

The potent stench of that cheap alcohol potion, Stan had briefly been intrigued by, hit his nose. He wanted so desperately to get away from her—pass her on to Bill, or something. But she placed a sloppy kiss on his lips just in time.

He’d been embarrassed to admit that was his first kiss.

You were supposed to have your first kiss with your girlfriend, or the girl next door, or best friend. Not with a stranger at some raunchy house party you were dragged to by your idiot friends. And certainly not with the girl your friend liked. But here Stan was, breaking all the rules.

There was something encapsulating about her cherry lip gloss which was smeared from when she kissed him and the way she stumbled terribly because of her inebriated state. Maybe Stan did understand.

y/n’s arm was still wrapped around his neck and her lips were dangerously close to his. He thought she was about to go in for another kiss until words made their way from her lips.

“Take me home?” Stan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This girl who he’d never met before was taking a chance on a total stranger to take her home, trusting that he wouldn’t kidnap or murder her.

“I don’t even know you.” Stan tried his best to look bored when, in reality, this offer was tempting.

“Pleaseeee.” She was now clinging to him for dear life. “I think all my friends left me.” Her pouty expression was the final catalyst to Stan’s reaction.

“In that case… How could I say no?” It was as if his whole personality flipped a switch. His once stone cold and albeit, annoyed, features washed away, revealing a kindhearted guy only the Losers really got a chance to see.

A drunken giggle left her lips and y/n’s arm removed itself from Stan’s neck only to find itself tightly coiled around his arm. This was y/n’s signal for Stan to start making his way through the crowd in order to search for the front door. A task the boy already knew would be horrible.

He started awkwardly shifting and contorting himself just so he wouldn’t have to feel the sweaty bodies surrounding him. He also made sure not to lose y/n, but that task served pretty much impossible due to how fixed her grasp on his arm was.

It didn’t take long for Stan to finally reach the front door (which was somehow trashed). Thank god his shoes, and none of the other items on his being, for that matter, had come into contact with sticky liquid or bodily fluids. But the doorknob was covered in a substance that made Stan visibly cringe when he touched it.

“God, what do people do here.” y/n, still lazily hanging on was about to open her mouth. “I don’t want to know,” Stan said, quickly, looking at her from the corner of his eye.

A laugh so pleasant it made puppies look like beasts fell from y/n’s perfect lips. The longer Stan spent with this girl, the more he found to like about her.

A crisp breeze blew its way to the two of them and Stan wondered how it was this cold already when just last week it reached the seventies. The transition from summer to fall always bewildered him, no matter how many times he’d experience it.

“How far did you park?” She grew impatient and Stan couldn’t blame her. If he were in her shoes, he wouldn’t even want to stand. Fortunately, he could see the hood of his car peeking out from behind a someone’s Ford.

“Only a few more steps.” Stan reassured. His pace picked up and before another complaint could slip out of y/n’s mouth. “Oh, look at that, we’re already here.” He opened the door for her, but she didn’t budge. “Are you… gonna get in?” Stan waited rather impatiently for the girl who was lollygagging in front of the open door.

Wordlessly, she turned to face him and held her arms open and Stan understood.

Even though he sighed, Stan still picked her up and placed her gently in the passenger seat of his car.

“Such a gentleman,” she mumbled into his neck before he parted from her. Stan couldn’t help but smile at the remark.

It took awhile for him to find her address. y/n was too out of it to form any coherent sentence besides “you must be the coolest guy ev-ur” and what happened to be the lyrics to Highway to Hell. But after (uncomfortably and frantically) rifling through her purse, after asking where her house was and y/n only pointing to inside her bag, Stan had found the tag of the purse marked with her address in pink sharpie also signed with a heart. 

Neither said much on the drive there. Stan was inexperienced with talking to drunk girls, besides Bev, and y/n looked like she was inexperienced with talking. Nonetheless, he tried to make the best of it. He turned on the radio to his favorite station and let the songs carry him through the night.

“Thanks—thank you.” y/n said once Stan had arrived at her place. He walked her up to the porch; her figure stabilized by his arms. Her eyes burned holes through his under the moonlight and Stan was rendered speechless. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” She started to sway again like she did at the party, but there was no music to dance to.

“You’re welcome.” Stan had finally mustered the courage to say, but he scolded himself internally for how lame he probably sounded.

“Well… goodnight.” y/n giggled drunkenly before her lips grazed his left cheek softly. It blossomed pink once she touched him. Could it even be considered a touch? It was so light, almost feather-like, and if Stan weren’t watching her like a hawk, he would have missed it.

The door shut with a slam and he cursed in his head for doing this to Bill and he cursed in his head the next day when his mind drew a blank on his functions test.

This was just great.

He scratched his head, as if that would somehow release the numerical knowledge he needed in order to at least get a sixty percent. Alas, it did nothing but relieve the itching on his dry scalp.

He silently racked his brain, yet nothing came. The only thing that came to mind were the events of last night. Are you kidding?

The bell rung.

Stan looked down at his paper only to find his name written neatly and compactly on the line reserved for it in dark lead and a measly ten questions out of the twenty answered. He pressed his lips together so hard, he thought they may bruise. Everyone else was already out the door, except for the slower kids in the back who took their sweet time.

“Uris.” The hairs on Stan’s arm stood to attention when he heard his name being called. He looked around to find the classroom was empty except for him and Mr. Burgess.

“Yes?” Stan looked up to the authority figure and he was wondering if he should pathetically ask for extra time on his test during another period or if he should turn it in as is.

“Don’t you have another class to get to?” Mr. Burgess was patient, but there would be another round of students filing in any minute now.

“Yeah.” Stan stood up and gathered his things. He was hasty but took enough time to put each item in their designated place. “I didn’t get a chance to finish.” Stan was aware third period was now replacing the empty seats and he lowered his voice.

“I see…” Mr. Burgess eyed the paper, both front and back, and then set it on a stack of papers from Stan’s class. “You can finish tomorrow. Either come in early or stay late.”

And at that, Stan was on his merry way to Mrs. Baker’s World Civilization class- or would be.  He stopped dead in his tracks when his path crossed y/n’s, a detail he never noticed. Her hands were covering her face to hide the blush that quickly raced to the apples of her cheeks. She was admiring something in her locker, but he couldn’t tell what. One of her girlfriends was standing with her, sharing the same giggles and same look of awe in her eyes.

Stan soon found out her blush was the work of Bill Denbrough’s when the Losers met up at lunch. They were sitting together like they always did, too engrossed in conversation to worry about what the lunch ladies’ specialty was today.

“I h-h-hope y/n luh-likes wh-what I g-guh-gave her,” Bill said all too suddenly.

“I’m sure she will,” Beverly reassured.

“What’d you get her.” It was hard for Stan to contain the jealousy that leaked from his words and instead of a question it sounded more like a demand.

“W-wuh-well usually I ju-just stick a skuh-skuh-sk-hetch in there or-or flow-flowers or something st-stupid an-and sm-small.” Bill cleared his throat as if that would rid him of his speech impediment. “Bu-but thi-this t-t-time I told her-”

“Did’ya sign your name?” Richie inquired. Usually he wouldn’t be interested in this sort of sappy stuff, but he was eager to see the development between Bill and his crush—rather, if Bill would ever grow the balls to reveal himself as y/n’s admirer.

Bill swallowed and kept silent.

“So, no.” Stan rolled his eyes. “I’m not surprised.”

Bill gave his friend a skeptical look. He was confused. While Stan was usually the most passive aggressive of the group, he was never this… insolent. But he shrugged off the countless possibilities for why Stan was acting this way.

“Are you ever gonna tell her?” Richie seemed about just as annoyed as Stan was.

“Wh-when the t-t-time’s ruh-ruh-right.” Bill looked to both Stan and Richie sternly, but the two knew better than that. When the time’s right.  

Yeah right.

Stan thought back to the scene at y/n’s locker from earlier. The morally sound thing to do would be to tell Bill. Tell Bill how y/n and her friend gushed at the sight of what was inside of her locker. Tell him how y/n’s knees were practically weak while she hid her face furiously with the sleeve of her shirt.

But nothing came out of his mouth. In fact, his mouth never opened. Stan stayed quiet for the last fifteen minutes that the Losers all had together. He stayed quiet as he stared at his salad and thought of y/n.

The y/n who was in an inappropriate state when he took her home. The y/n who was his first kiss. The y/n who was Bill’s crush.

Stan sat on this fact for a while.

He was at his desk, his eyebrows furrowed, and nose scrunched, while thinking this ridiculous inner conflict over. Something in his gut told Stan that Bill was never going to tell y/n how he felt. Bill Denbrough was not someone you’d label a coward, but god, when it came to girls, he was a pussy. On the other hand, there was something else that twisted his insides in another manner, telling Stan even if Bill never told y/n how he felt, that doesn’t mean he should swoop in either.

Stanley Uris was in a pickle.

His lips, once again, pressed against each other tightly, so tight he could feel bone. The mental wheels in his mind were turning, but no matter how far they spun, he still reached no conclusion.

An hour had passed when Stan finally looked at the analog clock that stood on the edge of his desk.

“If I tied a noose around my neck, I bet I’d come to a better conclusion,” Stan said darkly under his breath. He was still staring at the clock. It was getting late, but Richie Tozier would say that’s just when the fun’s starting.

Personally, Stan liked getting a head start on his bedtime routine. The other Losers made fun of him for it, but it kept him sane. He stretched, still sitting down and a yawn left his mouth. He padded his way to the bathroom just across the hall so he could brush his teeth and then change.

When his head full of curls hit his wrinkle free pillowcase and his arms pulled over his comforter to his chest, he assumed all thoughts of y/n would be gone. He would go to sleep, leaving the unconscious to take over his mind and body and he would forget.

He would forget the flowery scent that lingered on his shirt that night because she pressed herself so close to him. He would forget the feeling of her fingers that swept against him in the gentlest way and he would forget how he ever longed to feel them against the rest of him. He would forget that she kissed him—twice. When he would wake, he would have no recollection of that night and for all he knew, he’d never been kissed.

But Stan woke up to the burning want—no. The burning need to tell y/n how he felt. He knew he’d only known her for a fleeting moment, and it was absurd to catch feelings for someone you barely knew. But telling her would be the only way to ease the funny feeling in Stan’s stomach which seemed to be in knots lately.

At least that’s what Stan told himself as he walked up to y/n’s locker during the five-minute passing period they had between second and third period.

Luckily, y/n was there, and he wasn’t just about to confess to a slab of metal. She was chatting up the same friend from yesterday and the same glow lit up her eyes as she was explaining something to her.

“Isn’t it so thoughtful?” Stars replaced her pupils and she ran her fingers over the inked piece of parchment that was slipped into her locker from today.

“There’s no name,” her friend deadpanned. She, too, was looking at the note with y/n. But instead of fawning over the piece of work, she stared unimpressed—bored, almost.

“So?” y/n huffed. “It’s the thought that counts.”

“I think it would count more if you knew who it was from.” Stan wanted to smirk and tell Bill I told you so as he overheard their conversation.

“Yeah but—” y/n’s friend was waiting for her to finish but she stopped once she recognized the boy in front of them. “Hi!” She smiled at Stan and it was now his turn to say something.

“Hello.” He looked between y/n and her friend to which her friend then spoke up.

“I guess I’ll be going now.” And then three became two.

“What’s up?” y/n was oddly cheery considering it was eleven a.m. on a school day.

Where should I start?

Stan looked to her awkwardly and scratched his shoulder. He then noticed the piece of paper that most likely Bill had slipped in her locker that morning. It was a landscape drawing of Main Street, but there was a hidden message written within the building signs. Stan couldn’t quite make out what the message said, but he was sure it said something along the lines of: my heart beats for yours. Something Stan would never understand.

“Can you make this quick? Or maybe you can tell me at lunch?” y/n offered. The drawing was now out of sight—either back in her locker or tucked away in her backpack which was slung over her shoulder.

“I’ll tell you at lunch.” Stan felt his toes curl in his shoes and his heartbeat quicken under his skin.

y/n nodded and walked off. They didn’t need to say goodbye to each other because they’d be meeting each other in an hour, give or take.

y/n would be sitting by herself at a table in the far corner of the cafeteria. Stan spotted her easily because ever since that night it was as if the image of her was ingrained in his brain.

“I’ve been on the edge of my seat ever since you came up to me at my locker,” y/n admitted. There was sort of a shyness that carried itself through her voice that Stan didn’t recognize. She was different under the influence. Confident. Bold. Affectionate. Different. But here she was, in front of him; hunched over, exposing her insecurity of the situation. The fact that she had told him she was anxious for this moment was big for her.  

“Really?” Disbelief marked Stan’s face. Girls didn’t usually jump at a chance at Stan and Stan didn’t usually jump at the chance at girls. His studies took too much time away from his social life and the Losers proved to be enough social interaction for him, no matter how many times they’d encouraged him to get out there.

Bill, Stan, Eddie, and Richie were all hanging out in Bill’s room. Richie leaned against the cracked window while he smoked and Eddie sat next to him, taking puffs from his inhaler similarly to how Richie took breaths of the cigarette. He was cautious of the secondhand smoke he feared would enter his lungs. Bill was busy messing with his new record player.

“Record players are so old.” Eddie’s nose scrunched when The Cure started playing but no sign of malice could be detected from his voice.

“Sh-sh-shut up.” Bill laughed and joined the other three, crossing his legs as he sat.

Stan faintly recalled him then going on about y/n and he could sense the others internally groaning with him.

“T-today, her h-h-hand brushed uh-against mine when we were g-getting beakers… ff-for our lab.” His lips curled into an even bigger smile just thinking about it. But he was always smiling at the thought of her. He was now laying on the hardwood floor. His fingers were laced together and stretched behind his head.

It was just a simple interaction, but Bill remembered every detail. He felt his body transport itself to dream world.

Bill was sitting at the lab table with his two other partners—a football player named Jack and a blonde girl named Stacy. He knew as much about them as they knew about him and it wasn’t in his plans to make buddy-buddy with the two. He took the cue to leap from his stool when their teacher announced that one person from each group gets supplies and y/n y/l/n was the designated supplies-getter.

Hastily, he walked over to the cabinet where the beakers were stored. There was already a crowd of unenthusiastic students lined up to get their share and luckily, they cleared the air soon enough. It proved no difficulty for Bill to reach the top shelf, as he had done many times before, but he found it hard to breathe once another, smaller, hand came into contact with his own. Her nails were filed perfectly and painted a deep shade of blue that were chipped to infinity, reminding him of Richie. A silver band hugged her ring finger that felt cold compared to the rest of her hand that pressed against his.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, and Bill gladly stepped aside.

“You can be a sap sometimes, Big Bill,” Richie said, shaking Bill from his daydream.

Bill rolled his eyes and sat up. He wasn’t in the mood to make a jab at Richie, but it would’ve done him good. “I-ih-t’s called having a h-h-heart. You sh-should t-t-t-try it sometime.”

“Oh, it hurts me that you think I’m heartless.” Richie sighed and leaned a little too close for Eddie’s liking. “You don’t think I’m heartless, do ya, Eds?” He started making kissy faces before he doubled over into his lap.

“Shove off.” Eddie pushed him so his side was pressed into the floorboard as he continued to laugh.

“Wuh-wuh-what ab-out you Stan?” Bill turned his attention towards Stan who was listening quietly. His back stood straight, and he hadn’t changed his position since he sat down.

“What about me?” Stan wondered. He was sure this conversation was going to lead into some sort of back and forth girl talk that he had no business being apart of. It wasn’t like Stan wasn’t attracted to girls. He just hadn’t found the right one yet.

That was, until now.

The sound of her backpack unzipping made his ears perk. She was digging for something Stan couldn’t see. Maybe if he was at a different angle…

“You did this, right?” She shoved the neatly folded drawing from earlier in front of his face.

“Wait, what?” Stan looked at her incredulously and took the paper in his hands. Carefully, he unfolded it and smoothed the wrinkles out—not like there were many. He studied his friend’s work. It was obvious Bill had put great effort into it; into liking y/n. To take his credit would be a new low, even for him.

“You’re the one who’s been putting stuff in my locker!” y/n insisted. “I wasn’t really sure until a few nights ago…” Her eyes broke contact from him, all the sudden becoming nervous. “You know… When you took me home?” She faced Stan again and this time Stan was too nervous to look at her.

“No,” He finally said. He wasn’t looking at her so he couldn’t see her confused expression. Stan passed the paper back to her.

“No?”

“I mean…” Stan was wondering how to word this. He didn’t have all day, but he also didn’t know how to get himself out of this dilemma.

How do you tell someone you like them, but you’re not their secret admirer—your friend is?

“I’m not the one who’s been sending you stuff,” Stan said smoothly. Like that.

“You… aren’t?” y/n’s voice started to falter but was soon swallowed by a chuckle. “Well, this is embarrassing.” She haphazardly shoved the parchment into her bag only for her to smooth it out later in the day when she got home.

“No, it’s not.” Stan’s monotone voice served no reassurance for y/n, no matter how much she wanted to hear those words. But she didn’t say anything, only cocked her head, prompting for him to continue. “I’m not the one who’s been putting stuff in your lockers but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”

y/n’s already tense muscles relaxed at this, but she was still left with a problem.

“I was so sure of it,” she said in a mumble so low Stan almost didn’t catch.

“What’s wrong?” Stan asked. “I like you. Don’t…” Embarrassment crept up the back of his throat as the next sentence spilled out. “Don’t you like me?”

y/n nodded but didn’t say anything. She readjusted herself on her seat, robbing him of an answer.

“Do you remember what happened that night?” Nothing bad happened. Nothing even remotely, as Richie would put it, hot, happened. But it was the night that changed everything.

“Yeah.” y/n sucked in a deep breath as she remembered.

y/n hadn’t planned to get so drunk off her ass that she couldn’t walk. In fact, y/n hadn’t even planned to go out. But there she was, on a Tuesday night. Her friends had left her to suck the skin off each other’s faces and y/n had become a little too good at beer pong.

Whoever was in charge of the alcohol had no taste buds, but she needed all the liquid courage she could get, because tonight was the night. Tonight, was the night y/n y/l/n was going to face Stanley Uris.

Of course, she had known of the boy. She’d gone to the same school as him ever since she could remember. It wasn’t until this year when she was aware of his existence.

He usually stayed behind the scenes; his nose burrowed in a textbook whenever she saw him alone and when she didn’t, he was usually hanging out with the same group of friends from middle school.

Lately, however, something about him just seemed to make sense. The idea of her and him together made sense. Coincidentally, her infatuation with the boy had picked up around the same time anonymous drawings and knick-knacks had found their way in her locker.

Was it so wrong to believe that it was destiny working its magic?

Or maybe the belief of Stan being anonymous was just the workings of her silly little school crush.

Either way, she took the chance; finding the perfect time to fall into his arms. If she had confessed to him any earlier, she would’ve gotten an unwanted response.

“Can I ask?” y/n started, but Stan knew she was going to ask the question afterwards anyway. “Do you know? Do you know who’s been sending me the stuff?”

Stan swallowed. He swallowed so hard his throat burned. He didn’t want what they had to end like this.

What they had. They didn’t have anything.

“Bill Denbrough.” He looked down even though he had nothing to be ashamed of. “Do you like me or do you like the person who’s been sending you the stuff?” Stan asked. It was a fair question. An easy question. But y/n, for some reason, couldn’t tell the difference between the two.

It was clear as day that Bill Denbrough and Stanley Uris were two different people. y/n just couldn’t fathom Stan not being her secret admirer—as cocky as it sounds. For two months, she’s imagined him as the one sending her landscape sketches and confessing his love for her. Her heart couldn’t help but fall into an endless pit, also known as the void.

“I guess I just thought of you as the person sending me the stuff,” y/n answered honestly, and an odd sort of sadness washed over Stan when she said that. They were truly stuck in a catch twenty-two and he still failed to understand how he got there. “Do you like me?” The question was ridiculous, but it was reasonable for her to ask.

“Yes,” Stan said, but he was hesitant. His mind couldn’t help but track back to Bill and the countless times he had swooned over y/n. Stan may be the one telling her how he felt but he wasn’t the one who never failed to stutter her name in conversations and make googly eyes at her from across the room.

What Stan had felt these past few days was what Bill felt these past years.  

If y/n were stupid she would have accepted Stan’s answer. She would have given him his third kiss right then and there and proclaimed they were dating as they left the lunchroom. But she wasn’t stupid. She was anything but.

“I really like you.” Stan swore this was something she’d said before, but it wasn’t. It was new. It seemed as if everything was new. “Or… liked you,” y/n spoke again, and maybe the rose-colored glasses she was wearing were coming off.

Stan nodded. He knew what this meant and stood up from his seat. There were only five minutes of lunch left when he looked at the clock that hung from the brick wall and he was going to make perfect use of it.

“Good news.” Stan walked up from behind Bill who was sitting with the rest of the Losers. He ignored Beverly’s where were you’s and took a seat facing his friend. “y/n likes you back.”

[sirkkasnow]

09 Catch Your Breath When You Can

Ao3 link

07/17/13 Wednesday evening

Stan was shoulder deep in the Fairlane’s engine compartment when the kids finally made it home late that afternoon. Dipper waved and headed straight inside; Mabel came over to lean casually against the front fender. “So?”

“There’s a meatloaf in the fridge for dinner an’ we’ve got potatoes, and I guess the fixins for salad if you’re into that kinda thing.”

Mabel pressed both hands over her eyes and groaned in protest. “Nooooooo. I mean did you call her? Did you get to do your something nice whatever it was? You’ve gotta be almost done with the car!”

“Yep, almost done.” Stan straightened up with a sigh and latched the hood. “Gonna fire it up in the morning, see where we’re at. Probably a day, day an’ a half to finish up, then she’s free t’go.”

“You’re not just gonna let her walk out of here, right?” She was peeping out at him between fingers now, looking horrified. “I know you’d both regret it.”

Stan pinched his lips against a smile - his poker face was cracking. “Well, I maybe mighta lined up a flick after dinner. So if you could help keep the nerd brigade occupied that’d be great.”

Mabel produced a whistle-shrill hypersonic squeal of delight and flung herself at him for a hug. “I knew you could do it! Consider the nerd brigade well and truly distracted! You report to me on everything, got it?”

“Mabel, c’mon, it’s just a movie.” He was grinning anyway as he swiped down his hands.

The five of them gathered for what proved to be a noisy meal. One tiny nudge from Mabel was enough to derail the conversation into DD&MD worldbuilding. “Clary’s about to leave,” she said firmly, “she hasn’t gotten to play one game and we need to fix that.” Within fifteen minutes the rulebooks were scattered across the crowded kitchen table and both Ford and Dipper were talking scenarios and taking notes.

Clary had spent most of the afternoon napping. She looked crisp and refreshed, a froth of peony pink silk knotted off-center at her throat, tossing an occasional suggestion into the chaos. Mabel vanished for a minute or two as the plates were cleared. When she returned it was with arms full of scrapbooking supplies and an unsubtle jerk of the chin towards the living room.

Stan took the hint and slipped out unnoticed, setting up a dinette chair next to the recliner. He tracked down a couple of pillows and a light blanket to make the whole thing a little more comfortable. Clary showed up a few minutes later, hands in pockets, still smiling to herself. “I’ve been banished,” she murmured over the background conversation from the kitchen. “So they can surprise me in the morning.”

“Damn shame, too bad, movies are under the TV.” He punched the pillows in a mostly-futile effort to fluff them up as she knelt to sort through the cabinet. He’d tracked down the remote and gotten comfortable in the recliner by the time she waved a worn black-and-white cardboard sleeve at him: Captain Of Her Heart.

“Old-school okay?”

“Um. It’s mushy.”

“I can handle mushy.”

“It’s sad.”

“I can handle sad and I’m not in the mood for nature documentaries.” Clary slotted in the tape, fiddled with the channels until trailers for twenty-year-old New Releases! began to play, and collected a box of tissues before settling into her seat.

“You a crier?” Stan nudged her tissues with a knuckle and she gave him a dirty look.

“Insurance. Settle down.” Clary stacked pillows against the recliner’s back corner, propped her elbow on the arm near his and made herself at home. He’d seen this one a million times, an obscure classic in his opinion with some really good on-location seaside shooting for its era. Familiarity never seemed to make this one hit any less hard.

He found that it was hitting maybe a little harder than usual. The bookish harbormaster’s daughter and the rough-edged first mate she’d spent the last hour falling improbably in love with walked the shoreline under a spotlight moon, switching to closeup against a painted backdrop for their wrenching scene of farewell.

Stan stole a couple tissues while she wasn’t looking. Clary already had one clutched to her lips, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes in resolute silence. Maybe she was a bit of a crier after all, though she held it together pretty well through the last ten minutes or so.

Once the ship had departed and the harbormaster’s daughter had slipped down to the docks in the night, dressed in a man’s traveling clothes and bound for parts unknown, Clary blew her nose in an undignified honk. He would have teased her if he weren’t busy trying to do the same without her hearing him. At last she settled close to watch the brief credits. When the tape ran out and the screen went to static he grumbled and jabbed at the remote until the TV snapped off.

They rested together in the near-dark. Stan listened as the rhythm of her breathing steadied. “Good flick,” she murmured at length, in no apparent hurry to move.

“One of my favorites,” he admitted, equally quiet. “I did warn ya. If, ah, if it’d help, there’s a sequel...or I could maybe get Soos to write some kinda fix-it, he’s good at that fanfiction stuff….” He felt rather than saw the subtle shake of her head. “What, no?”

“It’d be cheating.”

“C’mon, now, there’s nothin’ wrong with chasin’ a happy ending - “

“They’re hard to catch.” He heard her swallow thickly and felt her shift to turn a little more into him. “Why the heck don’t you have a couch? I don’t want to move yet but this is uncomfortable as hell.” Stan considered bolting to leave her some privacy, then held his breath and wriggled his arm free to lay it lightly around her.

“This a little better?”

Clary drew up her legs and nestled into his side without hesitation. “Much.”

“So - we don’t have a couch because we didn’t need one until everyone was leavin’ at the end of last summer, anyway - “ He was cursing the lack of a couch right now, because the arm of the damned recliner was wedged between them and this would be a very nice post-movie snuggle without it. “I’m not sure Ford an’ I ever really thought we’d be back for more’n a quick visit. Soos hasn’t had time to update the place much.”

“You said you’d been running the Shack for thirty years. Alone?”

Stan hissed softly, dragging his free hand through his hair. “Yep,” he said just before the pause went beyond recovery. “More or less. Kids first visited last summer an’ that changed a whole lot.”

“From what I’ve gathered in town last summer was pretty lively.” He felt her smile against him. “Funny, no one really wants to talk about it.”

“It was, uh.” He groped for the right word and finally said, frustrated, “Weird.” Clary laughed softly. “Listen. I am not the one who should be givin’ pep talks, you get that? But I can promise that sometimes y’catch the happy ending.”

The house had gone quiet around them, the kids retreated to bed, Ford probably downstairs. Stan flinched in surprise as her cool hand covered his at her shoulder. “I’ll take your word for it,” Clary murmured. “And thanks. For today. Not everyone handles - “ She tugged at her silk scarf with a fingertip.

“We both got history, kid, I got no right t’pry.”

“I’ve been preemptively dumped over this, you know.”

“Hah! Just as well. You don’t strike me as the type t’date idiots.”

“No. I’m not.”

A minute or two drifted by like that, comfortable, the warmth of contact something he hadn’t slowed down to enjoy in an eternity. Stan had about found the perfect angle to pillow his cheek against her hair when she stirred. He rumbled in protest before he could stop himself, arm tightening for a second then relaxing as she sat up straight.

The wan wash of light from the hallway gilded the slope of her cheek; her shadowed eyes held a determined glint. “I’m in too good a mood to talk about ancient history, but I’d like to trade stories with you sometime.”

“Sure, but I don’t know when - “ She tilted her head in reproach and any further protest stalled in his throat.

“Stan. You made the fatal mistake of giving me your phone number.” Stan cracked a crooked grin and she went on, low-voiced and all velvet persuasion. “Let me know when you hit a port I can get to. Anywhere in the north Atlantic’s fine. If you end up someplace warm, like say Gibraltar or the Azores, so much the better. Drinks are on me.”

He almost barked out a laugh, a startled little huff like she’d just sucker-punched him. “You askin’ me out? Your treat?”

“Yes.” The practiced look of light amusement on her face faded by degrees into something more apprehensive. “If you’d like. I’d hate to never see you again.”

His brain locked up hard, spinning off into logistics and complications and the overwhelming desire to not fuck up the good thing he had going. Mercifully his mouth got out ahead, as usual. “Yeah. Definitely. I’d - really, really like that.”

She lit up in a split second of unguarded happiness for maybe the first time since they’d met. Clary leaned in too quickly to intercept, her lips grazing the stubble of his cheek as a fleeting whiff of her faded peony perfume curled into his nose. “Great. So would I.”

Stan’s hands twitched once with the sudden impulse to snag her by the waist and drag her into his lap before common sense shut that down. She couldn’t quite look him straight on as she withdrew and this time he laughed in earnest. “Oh, c’mon, counselor, y’can’t make a pitch like that an’ then go all shy on me.”

“Sure I can.” Clary’s fingers tightened in his, then slipped away as she rose. “I’d better go to bed before I say anything else incriminating. See you in the morning.”

“What, alone?”

“Stan.”

“It’s gonna be chilly, want me to drop off a couple extra blankets - “

“Stanley.”

“I got a sideline in personal furnace services - “

“Oh my god. Don’t make me regret saying anything.” The chuckle she was trying so hard to suppress laid a husky note under the words as she headed for the hallway.

“G’night, sweetpea.”

She slipped through the door with a last backward glance. He sat back to think it over, eyes closed, horrified and delighted all at once.

Mostly delighted, he decided, pressing fingers to his cheek where she’d kissed him.

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“I’d hate to never see you again.” She looks anxious, jittery with anticipation and a little sad all at once.

Definitely.

Maybe.

I just can’t.

[dubsdeedubs]

feels like we only go backwards

[A/N: Written for @stanuary Week 1: Con.  This fic deals with that theme on several different levels, and it’s definitely an experiment.

Alternatively - Stan's best con has always been fooling other people into thinking he was someone actually worthwhile.

Takes place pre-NWHS/ATOTS.]

[AO3]

Summary:

"We found him in the woods!" Mabel says cheerfully. "Dipper thought he was you for a moment, but then he -"

His hair is a shock of gray, his glasses cracked. He's wearing a rumpled combination of tattered trench coat and red sweater that looks entirely ridiculous in an Oregon summer. He's looking at Stan with a look of distant confusion that makes him look, for one strange moment, like an overgrown owl.

Stan can't breathe.

"Ford?"

So, here's the thing: Stan doesn't even see it coming.

He's been working on the damn portal for half of his life now, staying up till the ass-crack of dawn near everyday to get in those extra few hours of work, hammering in nails and wielding plates under the almost physical weight of the thing's shadow. Lately, he's been wondering if squeezing in that hour or two or twenty-three even mattered anymore after thirty fucking years of this.

And yeah, he tells himself that this wasn't any kind of road he wanted to head down on, that Ford was still out there somewhere, that it was all a matter of time. Everything he's been telling himself for the past three decades.

None of that works, because that raw nauseating feeling of hopelessness in his gut, well. That just keeps on growing, like a black hole in one of his brother's astrophysics textbooks, taking up so much of him that he thinks one day it'll just eat him up entirely.

A bit hard to muster up any kind of blind hope, after all that.

But maybe Stan really should have. Maybe not predicted the whole thing, but at least had some bit of what-if tickling at the back of his mind.

(Especially after he near had a heart attack by finding not one but two of the journals he had been looking for for thirty years, in the span of about three hours. If there was gonna be a turning point in the long sequence of screw-ups that had been Stan's life, that was probably it.)

Because what happens is this:

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon and Stan's in his boxers cleaning the fish (lizard, amphibian, whatever) tank when the kids walk in the door, carefully leading a man that is his not-quite-mirror-image by both of his six-fingered hands.

Stan looks up. The brush in his hands clatters wetly on the ground.

"We found him in the woods!" Mabel says cheerfully. "Dipper thought he was you for a moment, but then he -"

His hair is a shock of gray, his glasses cracked. He's wearing a rumpled combination of tattered trench coat and red sweater that looks entirely ridiculous in an Oregon summer. He's looking at Stan with a look of distant confusion that makes him look, for one strange moment, like an overgrown owl.

Stan can't breathe.

"Ford?" 

(Let's rewind a bit.

The days after that brat Gideon steals away the Shack and every ounce of progress Stan had ever made on bringing his brother back... those get pretty dark.

He starts thinking a lot more, and that's never been a good thing. One night he hears the kids whispering to each other a room over about having a bread sandwich - one, shared! - for dinner and do you think Stan's really sending us back home? and he knows he's blown it again. For the second time in his life, he's losing even more than he thought he still had.

And that's when Stan thinks, like a bolt through the blue - Ford would have done better than this.

Ford would never have gotten tricked by some snot-nosed kid into losing the Shack, Ford would never have had to send the kids home halfway through summer. Hell, Ford would never have pushed his brother through some insane extradimensional portal and left him there for thirty years and counting.

But Ford was gone, and guess whose fault that was?

Now Stan, Stan's been acting his brother for thirty years now and he wants to think he's got a pretty decent grasp of that particular con. After a lifetime together and apart, he knows how Ford acts, those little nervous habits that he thought no one ever noticed, the odd intonation he had when he said certain words that he had spent years reading and never hearing.

He knows what Ford thinks, how he thinks. He has to, to maintain the hardest and most comprehensive con Stan has ever had to keep going.

And if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Ford hates Stanley Pines, Stan, him.

He wasn't quite self-destructive enough to go down the long mental list of reasons why, but he knew it was more than enough.

Because why wouldn't it be? It sure was for Stan.)

The kids are saying something, but Stan's hearing aide must had finally run out of juice or something because he can't hear them at all. There's just the thump-thump rhythm of his heart echoing loudly in his ears, because that couldn't be his brother in front of him but it was, it had to be, because who the hell else in this world had his face except for Ford?

He can't look away.

"Ford," Stan says - croaks, really, because his mouth feels drier than the Sahara desert right now. He feels uncomfortably exposed. He really wishes he had kept his pants on. "Is that really you?"

He's been rehearsing the first thing he would say to his brother for three decades now, and these weren't it. The words sound stupid the moment he says them.

But his brother just keeps looking at him that same dazed way, like he doesn't even recognize him. "I don't -" He says finally, and his voice is small and halfting and afraid in a way that Stan hasn't heard in a long, long time. "I don't know who -"

And. Stan's got a brain, despite popular belief, and there's enough he's seen and heard that there's a sinking feeling in his gut telling him that maybe he hadn't gotten his brother back, not really.

"I'm Stan," he says. "Stanley Pines. I'm your brother." He pretends for a little bit longer that the thickness in his throat is just from a rapid-onset summer cold, or something. "And you're Stanford Pines. You - you remember that, at least?"

"Stanford Pines," Ford repeats, a new note in his voice. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but Stan thinks it could just be recognition.

And the way he says it - it sounds familiar, in a way that Stan has almost forgotten.

It takes a moment for him to place exactly where he had heard it - when he had last seen his brother thirty years ago, and had been struck by how deliberately proper and enunciated his speech was, as if he had wanted to prove his college education with everything he'd got. It was almost unbearably pretentious.

But this was good, good in a way that puts a grin on Stan's face even though he's still mentally telling himself not to get his hopes up. Good, because that was also something very Ford.

"And I'm Stan," He repeats, and doesn't even try to keep the desperation from his voice. He takes a step forward, all tentative. "Your brother, yeah? I know it's been a real long time, thirty years, but -"

"Of course I remember you," Ford says, and his voice is all cold fury.

Stan shuts up.

His brother's body language had switched in an instance into something well-balanced and confident, familiar in a way he could not deny. There was no doubt about it. This was all Ford now.

Which meant the quiet anger and disgust Stan could read etched clear as day in the sharp way his brother held himself - there was no doubt that that was all Ford too.

That's what made it hurt all the more.

There was nothing wavering or unsure about Ford's voice when he continues, voice low and gruff with the force of his anger. "How could I possibly forget, after what you did to me thirty years ago?"

Stan doesn't know how to reply. He tells himself it's not because of surprise. He must have run through a thousand and one variations on his brother's return, some with hugs and gratitude and maybe even a punch in the face, but he would be lying if he said he hadn't been expecting in some degree this animosity, this anger.

But still, despite it all, he had been hoping -

"What - what did he do to you?" Came Dipper's hushed voice, and Stan didn't know he could sink any lower in the ground but, well. Just look at him now.

Ford doesn't even turn to look at the kid. "He pushed me into an interdimensional portal thirty years ago, and left me there for dead."

It's like something out of Stan's worst nightmares.

"Ford," he says, and his voice sounds distant and pleading to his own ears, "It was an accident, I swear. I wasn't gonna leave you there, I've - I've been trying to get you back for the past thirty years. The portal downstairs, I rebuilt most of that from your plans and I was just about t' get it working -"

"Did you really think you could have ever repaired my portal?" Ford asks disbelievingly.

Stan stutters to a stop. He has a sneaking suspicion that there was no right answer he could give. "...Maybe. I don't know."

"Stan, you never even went to college!" His brother exclaims disbelievingly. "You couldn't even do what Dad told you to do! Why, while I was out there making money for our family, you only got by because Ma was sending you her earnings whenever she could."

Stan flinches. He hadn't thought that Ma would have told Ford that. "I followed all that stuff you wrote in those journals of yours," he tries feebly. "I got it turned on -"

Ford sighs, and Stan's words just trail off. "It doesn't matter," his brother says curtly, his expression tight. "Even if you had managed to bring me back, it would not have changed the fact that you were the reason I was stranded there in the first place."

"Ford, I -"

"You're still the person who ruined my dreams," Ford says all calm and clear, like it was simple matter of fact to him. And - maybe it was, because that had been what Stan had always figured. It's still a one-two gut-punch to hear his brother say it, just like that.

"You spent all those years obsessing over that wreck of a boat, as if I would have ever chosen not to go to college just to stay with a knucklehead like you to scrape barnacles off the bottom of -"

"Stop it."

Mabel's voice is quiet but cutting. Ford turns slowly, with an air of confusion.

Stan winces. "Mabel, sweetie -"

"I don't really know who you are, Mister," she continues in the same tone, and she keeps looking Ford in the eyes. "And I don't really know what's going on. But you can't say things like that to Grunkle Stan, even if you are the Author. And Stan's brother."

Ford looks at her for a long moment. There's a strange blankness in his eyes, as if Mabel being there had thrown him off entirely. The expression on his face is one that Stan can't read for the life of him.

He feels the need to intervene. His brother had no idea who Mabel or Dipper was, and while he knew all along to some degree how his brother was going to react to him... there was no predicting what he would do or say to the kids.

"Ford," he says quietly, "those are Shermie's grandkids. They've got nothing to do with what I did. Gimme a few minutes to explain things to 'em, and then we can -"

"Of course, pumpkin," his brother says to Mabel, distantly, almost dreamily.

He doesn't sound like himself at all. There's none of the vehement anger that had been in his voice, as if all of the fight in him had just drained right out of him.

And just like that he starts walking forward, more than a bit unsteadily, right past Stan and towards the back of the Shack. He doesn't even look back.

Stan stares for a long moment, too confused to even move or speak.

But then Ford bumps what has to be pretty painfully into the doorframe and still keeps stumbling forward - and despite that, despite everything, the sheer concern he has for his brother prevails.

He walks forward those few steps, reaches for his brother's shoulder. "Are - are you sure you're okay, Sixer?"

His brother's hand bats his away at lightning speed. "Don't touch me," Ford snaps at him, almost cowering in the way he shielded his shoulder, like some kind of feral animal snarling over their own wound.

There's something in his eyes that makes Stan draw back. "Alright, alright. I just -"

And then Ford's gone, disappeared around the corner with only the fading sound of his unbalanced footsteps in his wake. It's just Stan now, with the smoldering remains of his lifelong hopes and dreams, and two twelve-year olds who looked like they had a few thousand questions to ask, each.

Dipper starts talking first, sounding stunned, and... something else too.

"Was - was that really the Author of the Journals? Your brother?"

"Yeah, he is," Stan says, like he's trying to convince himself. He sits down, and that helps a little but not enough with the lack of breath in his lungs.

The kid's voice goes a lot more quieter. "But - where was he this whole time? Did you really push him into another dimension, like he said?" Then, with no small amount of disappointment, "And why - why is he like that?".

"I don't know, kid," Stan says, and there's no lie in it at all. He covers his face with his hands and tries to focus on the sensation of it. "He hadn't - I just don't - "

Mabel sits down on one side of him, Dipper on the other. "Grunkle Stan," his niece says reproachfully but kindly, "I think you really need to start telling me and Dipper what's going on."

"Starting right now would be good," Dipper coughs, not so subtly.

And he does, because what else was there to do? There was no point in keeping the rest of his secrets, not anymore.

It feels uncomfortably strange to be saying this stuff out loud when he didn't remember ever doing it before - about him and Ford as kids, about what happened at the science fair, and then everything that happened afterwards. And then, the postcard in the mail.

About the portal, their fight. And, with hesitance, the thirty years after that.

After Stan's done, Dipper says immediately, "There's something weird about all of this." 

Stan gives him a flat look. "Kid, you think?"

"No, not like that! It just - it just doesn't make sense. The stuff your brother said to you -" Dipper tugs on the brim of his hat unhappily. "I would never say anything like that to Mabel."

"I would never say anything like that to Dipper either!" Mabel pipes up.

He laughs at that, just a little bitterly. "Kids, I don't think either of you two has ever messed up as bad as I did."

"It doesn't make sense," the boy says again with an all too familiar stubbornness. "That couldn't be the Author. I read his journal from cover to cover, the person who wrote that was - not like this."

"Grunkle Stan, maybe that wasn't your real brother?" Mabel suggests earnestly. "Dipper and I fought off a shapeshifter a couple days ago, he could transform to look like anyone -"

Stan doesn't want to interrupt her, but it's all a bit too much for him. "Pumpkin, I've been pretending to be my brother for thirty years - I know him better than anything in this universe. That was Ford, even if he, uh. Seemed kinda out of it."

"But Stan, if he was in another dimension for thirty years and you didn't bring him back, who did?" Dipper argues.

He shrugs. "He's a genius, kid. He - probably found his own way back, that's my guess."

"After thirty years? Grunkle Stan, Mabel and I found him just kneeling in the woods, he didn't remember anything until you started talking to him. You have to admit there's something weird about that!"

Stan goes quiet at that. Then he sighs, and looks away. "Look, kids. I really appreciate what you're doing, but there's - nothing more to this. There really isn't. I made a whole lot of mistakes, and Ford has every right to be angry at me. If I was Ford, I'd hate me too. I just - never meant for you two to get dragged into this. It's ugly, but it's something between me and my brother."

"But Grunkle Stan -" Mabel tries.

She's interrupted by a loud sound, one that comes off as halfway between one of those stock sci-fi laser shots and a cat gargling up a hairball.

And -

There's almost no time to react but Stan grabs the kids and dives to the ground, trying to cover them with his body as much as he can.

- the door to the Shack explodes with an earth-shaking bang.

Stan looks up cautiously, still pushing his niblings down, squinting through the debris and settling dust. He's caught between thank God the kids are alright and that's going to be a bitch to clean up and pure, undiluted what the fuck.

He hears the sound of footsteps. Then, voices.

Familiar ones.

"I can't believe you just blew up the Mystery Shack!"

"Just a small portion of it!  Dipper, my boy, desperate times call for desperate measures, and I had to get past the locked door somehow. More importantly, however..." A pause. "My sensors are showing that it's been nearly seven hours now since he entered this dimension, which means we are on a losing race against time before anyone touches their dimensional counterpart and winds up ending this entire uni -"

The footsteps come to an abrupt stop.

"- Oh," says their owner. He's looking down at Stan like he's seeing a ghost.

Mabel tugs herself out of his slack grip and turns to look up at the newcomers. Her eyes go wide.

" Sci-fi Grunkle Stan?"  

There was no denying it, really. The guy standing in front of him has his face, and he's wearing the Mr. Mystery black suit-pants combo that Stan had a half-dozen of in his closet. The only difference between the two of them, as far as he can make out from where he was kneeling, was the seven-foot-long glowing space laser-gun the other Stan has strapped to his back.

Which, yeah, was a pretty obvious one in hindsight.

And standing next to him were Dipper and Mabel - scuffed, bruised, and generally looking like they had gone through several layers of hell in the past day, but unmistakeably them.

For one long moment, all six of them just kinda freeze, gawking at each other like a bunch of idiots because admittedly - Stan thinks in the sanctity of his own mind - what the actual fuck.

"Stay behind me, kids," the other Stan orders with an authoritative certainty that he sure wished he had right now. "Making any physical contact with your counterparts will mean the end of this universe!"

The other Dipper turns pale. "Uh, exactly what extent does that go to? Because we're all in the same room right now, and there has to be skin cells and stuff like that, right?"

The other him hesitates for a moment. "...Truth be told, the alternate universe Fiddleford didn't have the chance to go into much detail, unfortunately, but I suppose that as long as we avoid all direct touch -"

"That sounds like something we should figure out if we ever start traveling through dimensions again!" the other Mabel says brightly.

Other Stan looks a bit sheepish at that. "I have to admit, I hadn't exactly been thinking about long term consequences when we set out -"

"...Yeah, I understand exactly nothing about this conversation," Stan announces to the room.

All three newcomers turn to look at him at that, and he's struck for a moment just how tired and beaten down they all look, like they're about a few seconds away from passing out and maybe finally getting some well-needed rest.

Most of all, there's something uncomfortable about the way they look at him: with some desperate, hopeful joy that didn't seem like it could appear in response to Stanley Pines, of all people.

The other him looks the most overwhelmed. He even walks forward a few steps towards Stan, steps wobbly, and there's some wetness shining in his eyes that makes Stan want to cough awkwardly and look away until the guy had his act back together.  He doesn't know if he should be backing away or what.

"Stanley," the man says, his voice cracking just a bit at the end.

"...Yeah?" Stan tries, as if he wasn't confused out of his mind.

And just like that, the other him has crossed the remaining few feet of distance and clings onto him, arms holding him tightly and leaving him breathless in more than one way. He's really crying now, making wet sobbing noises right next to his ear and leaving a gooey mess on his top that would be damn gross if anything in the world made sense right now.

Stan pats him on the back, a bit awkwardly.

"That's not our Stan," the other Mabel says quietly. "Grunkle Ford, you know that."

Stan goes still. "Hang on. What did you just call -"

"...I know, sweetie." The man lets go of him and pulls away. For the first time, Stan gets a good look at the guy's hands. His mind goes blank.

"I - understand that on some objective level, but seeing him -"

Stan grabs one of the man's hands and brings them up to eye level, as if seeing them up front would change the number of fingers he can count on them. Then, the other.

Six. Six.

Stan lets go like he's been burned.

"Ford?"

He can't find the words, for one long moment. "But - but you were just -"

"I'm not the Stanford Pines of this dimension," Ford says gently - or maybe he's the other Ford, or not a Ford at all, and Stan really was too old to keep twisting his mind like this. "The three of us are from a universe adjacent from this one, in multiverse terms. The Stanford of your dimension is still where he was before. We're just visiting, that's all."

"Oh," Stan says dully. He doesn't know if that's a relief or not.

"If you're all from another dimension, then what are you doing here?" Dipper - his Dipper - demands, eyes suspicious. He doesn't blame the kid, considering what had happened the first time around.

"We're looking for someone," Ford says automatically. He glances at Stan, and revises, "We're looking for the Stanley of our dimension."

Stan blinks. "...Me?" He doesn't strike himself as the kind of guy who would willingly get involved in all this science-fiction stuff, other dimension or not.

It's when his brother - which he's gonna stick to calling him, even though he knew he wasn't exactly his - goes a bit quiet that Stan realizes he had said all of that out loud. "Not willingly," Ford says.

"Huh."

A shadow passes over Ford's face. "There was - an incident in our world that greatly weakened the walls between dimensions," he says. "It was an accident, and he was right at ground zero. Stanley must have... slipped right through, before we could find him."

That sounds just familiar enough to be discomforting. "And you think he's here?" He asks, just a bit dubiously. Stan's not sure how to feel about there being another one of him just walking around the place.

"We know he is," Ford corrects immediately. "He was tracked to this exact dimension. I've checked every calculation a dozen times."

...It's irrational, but Stan feels a sudden pang of jealousy for the other him. A Stan whose brother would do all of this for him.

"Huh," he says instead, keeping his voice light. "Just how detailed is that tracker of yours? It's a big planet."

"Actually," Ford says, brightening up, "we've been following the transmitter in my coat ever since we've entered this dimension! In fact, it seems -" He squints down at the glowing thingamajig he has in his hand, " - that he's. In the Shack right now," he says a bit slowly, looking up.

Stan blinks. Looks around, as if some other him was just gonna pop up from behind the fridge, or something.

"He should be right... here?" His brother trails off, looking entirely lost. He looks at Stan questioningly.

"Yeah, well. Pretty sure I would've noticed if there was another me walking around here," Stan says with a shrug.

"That doesn't make sense," Ford whispers, his brows furrowed, and keeps pressing buttons on the thing he's holding in his hand. "This works, this has to work, I did everything there was to be done, I -"

There's a rising note of desperation in his brother's voice, and Stan can't say he's too concerned about what's going on with his own dimensional counterpart, but seeing Ford break down in front of him - it makes him feel something leaden and gnawing at the pit of his gut.

"Why don't you, uh, recalibrate that thing or something and try again?" He offers weakly.

"I can't," Ford says, a raggedness to his voice. "There was just one chance. Any further travel and I tear the multiverse asunder. There's no telling what could happen, it could be Weirdmageddon or worse -"

It's pretty clear to Stan now that his brother's talking to himself more than he's talking to him, right now. There's a manic glint in his eyes. "But I could try. I could -"

From upstairs, there comes the slightly muffled sound of breaking glass.

Stan winces. So that's where his Ford went.

The Ford right in front of him snaps his head up, eyes wide. "What was that?" He demands.

"It's you," he says with a sigh. "The you of this universe, anyways."

"...Me?" His brother repeats, aghast. "I'm here, in Gravity Falls? You've fixed the portal already?"

"No, but -"

"That just doesn't make any sense," Ford says, matter-of-fact in a way that makes his expression tighten. "Within the relative timeline of this particular dimension, I should still be preparing for my final journey into the Nightmare Realm. And there's no possible way my counterpart can be on Earth without the portal repaired -"

"Yeah, well, I don't know about any of that," Stan cuts in, not even trying to hide his frustration. "He just showed up, ridiculous trench coat and all -"

"Trench coat?"

" - and it's not like he went outa his way to explain anything about the past thirty years he's been gone," he finishes. "If ya wanna know about all of that, you're gonna have to talk to him yourself."

Stan grimaces. "Maybe he'll actually talk to you."

Ford's quiet for a long, long moment.

"He told you his name was Stanford Pines?" He asks finally.

He doesn't expect that question at all. "Uh," Stan says slowly. "...Yes? More or less."

There's a look on his brother's face that Stan can't read at all.

"I need to talk to him," Ford says heavily, a tightness in his expression that wasn't there before.

(And Stan, Stan knows how to put together clues and puzzles as well as anyone out there. He's had plenty of time to learn.

Even if he doesn't know what to make of what little he could figure out here.)

"Great," he says, all false cheerfulness. "I'll show you where he is."

"No," Ford says immediately. "I - I can't explain right now, Stanley, there's not enough time for that. I'll tell you everything afterwards. But right now, please trust me when I say... this is something I need to talk to your Ford about alone."

Stan doesn't move.

"Please, Stanley."

He lets out a breath. "Fine," Stan says shortly and steps aside. He keeps his fingers crossed behind him all the while.

Ford runs right by him without another word, and for the second time that day, Stan watches his brother disappear around the corner.

Stan waits for a while after that, not too long, not too short.

Just enough time.

The kids don't say anything at all, they just watch. When he turns around, both pairs of kids look up at him quietly, with that exact knowing expression multiplied by four.

He should've known, really. Those kids have always had him figured out better than near anyone else in the world.

"You all know I'm gonna do it," he says, an expression tugging at his lips that should be a smile but burns like a grimace. "None of ya wanna convince me not to?"

None of them do.

Stan goes upstairs.

They're up in his bedroom. He hears the murmur of voices coming from the shut - locked - door.

(On one hand, that was entirely embarrassing, considering the shit he had laying around because how could he have known that his long-lost twin brother was gonna come back from the sci-fi sideburns dimension and walk right in?

On the other, Stan's been living here for thirty years. He knows how the Shack is - where to hide stuff, how to walk more quiet than any sixty-year-old man had any right to, places to see into all kinds of places. Most of all, a man had to know the place he was sleeping at night like the back of his hand. Maybe not the morally upstanding kind who didn't have to worry about people robbing him blind or shanking him in his sleep.

But Stan had never been one of those, has he.)

So he eases himself up those stairs without a single creak of wood or his bones, which he calls a damn impressive accomplishment.

The keyhole is wide-open and unblocked.

He looks inside, and the first thing he sees is the full body-length mirror he bought at a garage sale a decade ago, its surface shattered beyond recognition. Large shards of glass litter the ground, and Stan stifles a wince. Those were gonna be impossible to get out of the carpet.

Sitting on Stan's bed is Ford - the first one, the one that should have been his. He's looking up blankly into the distance, at nothing in particular.

His trench coat is off, and so are his gloves. Underneath, his hands are five-fingered and bleeding profusely.

Stan breathes out, long and slow.

(He feels a whole lot of things, looking at those.

The last emotion to come is surprise.)

The other Ford (the only Ford) is stooped over him, picking glass carefully out of his brother's hands. There's a tight expression on his face, one that makes Stan think that fixing up those wounds are hurting him a lot more than the person they actually belonged to.

They're talking, or at least Ford is. His voice is low and gruff, and even though he's technically already a participant in the conversation Stan can't help the feeling that he's violating something very private.

"- mine must have been the only identity you had left," Stan hears Ford murmur. "But it won't be permanent. I promise. It seems your memories return from triggers, and there are plenty of people and places to visit and talk to once we return to our own Gravity Falls. You'll be back to yourself in no time."

"...What if I don't want to go back?"

Stan's breath hitches.

The voice is strange, too much grit to be entirely his brother's, too carefully articulated to be entirely his own. It's too flat, too uncomfortably blank to sound like either of theirs, really.

Ford's voice comes high and strangled with surprise. "But Stanley, you have to come home. Why on Earth would you -"

"What if," says the other Stan, with the same kind of vacant contemplativeness, "I don't wanna be Stanley Pines again?"

There's a hiss as Ford sucks in a startled breath. He doesn't talk for a little while, like he has to try and get his words together in coherent form before he can trust himself to do it.

"Why not?"

"Because he's worthless," he hears the other him say, matter-of-fact in a way that makes his own stomach twist and turn. Stan sits down completely, tilts his head back to rest against the wall. "Because all he's ever done in his life is lie and cheat. 'Cause he's a useless idiot who ruins everything he touches."

"And who told you that?" Ford asks, his voice soft and dangerous.

"Don't need anyone to tell me that. I remember it." A pause. "I remember being Stanford Pines."

His brother makes an odd noise. "But I never -"

"So why are you doing this?" The other Stan interrupts suddenly, whipping his head up. His voice sounds vicious. His voice sounds like Ford's. "Why did you leave your dimension, endanger the safety of all existence, for this?"

"Stanley," Ford says slowly, carefully, "I need you to take a breath. You're not in your right mind. This isn't you. You're not doing what you think you -"

"My name is Stanford Filbrick Pines," the other Stan retorts, and he gets to his feet with a resounding thump. "And my identity is not up for debate." He pauses. "Your's, on the other hand, is a different story. You claim to be some - alternate reality counterpart of myself, but I would never do what you have just done."

"What - what I have just done?" Stan hears Ford ask, audibly stricken. "You don't think I would risk everything to save my brother's life?"

"Not when he ruined ours!"

Ford is quiet for a long time. It gets a lot harder to breathe.

"...He didn't."

"He didn't?" The other Stan demands, fury twisted on his face. "Don't you remember what he did to you? You gave him a chance to prove himself, and all he did was push you in that portal and steal away thirty years of your life! He took your name! Your house! Your reputation!"

His voice goes low. "He never could make anything of his own so he had to steal from you just to be happy."

Ford sounds pained. "Stanley, I don't think that. I never have."

The other Stan is panting now, short and ragged. "He was a waste of space," he spits out like a curse. "He couldn't do anything he was supposed to. Even in the end, he almost got the kids killed because he couldn't grow up for five seconds and just hold your damn hand."

Ford goes quiet. "You remember that," he breathes, and there's a hope in his voice that doesn't suit the circumstances at all. "Stanley, what else do you remember?"

"I remember hating him," the other Stan says darkly. "I remember hating Stanley Pines so damn much because he could never be as smart or brave enough as people needed him to be. Cuz he just kept letting everyone down because somehow, he kept conning people into thinking he was worth it. And I... "

"...I remember hating him 'cause -" He pauses, for one breathless moment. "Because your life would have been perfect if he just - had never been born."

Over on the other side of the door, Stan sucks in a breath.

"Don't say that," Ford snaps immediately. He's up on his feet now, vibrating with a vehemence that seems to shock even the other Stan. "Don't - you dare say that about him."

"I -"

"No, Stanley. Listen to me. For once in your life, just listen. You pretended to be Stanford Pines for thirty years, but you're not him. You never were."

There's a long, frozen silence. The other Stan's voice comes, and for a moment he can't recognize it because it comes low and vacant.

"Why can't you just let me be him, Sixer?" He asks, in a tone of genuine puzzlement. "Why can't you just let me be worth something, just for a little while?"

Ford flinches, but he speaks anyways. "Because Stanley Pines is worth something," he says.

The other Stan snorts in derision.

"He's worth something to the kids," Ford continues, voice hard. "He must have because Gods know they haven't slept since you were sucked into that rift, three days ago. When Fiddleford and I finally got portable dimension travel up and running, they wouldn't take no for an answer."

He chuckles softly at that. "I... have never before felt so threatened by a pair of twelve-year-olds."

The other Stan doesn't reply.

"He's worth something to those townspeople, too," Ford continues, taking full advantage of the conversation to edge a bit closer to his brother. "You know, I lived in that town for ten years and didn't remember a single name! I thought I was about to be feathered and tarred when half the population of Gravity Falls popped up at my door, demanding to know what had happened to you. Stanley, I - don't know exactly how much money you've conned from them, but I can tell you for sure that you've stolen plenty of hearts playing Mr. Mystery in that town."

"I've always been good at conning people into thinking I'm actually worth somethin'," the other Stan mutters under his breath.

"And what about me?" Ford asks, and he sounds almost amused. "Stanley, you must be in over your head if you think you can fool me for any decent amount of time."

The other Stan shuffles a bit. "I dunno," he says at last. "What - what does Ford think?"

His brother smiles, something wistful in his expression. "Ford thinks there's been far too many years wasted for us to spend anymore time bickering and at each other's throats," Ford says. "He thinks that - he was angry. Bitterly angry, because he felt betrayed and used by the one person he trusted entirely. He clung onto that for so... too many years, because he didn't want to think that he lost his brother because of an accident. Because he didn't want to think that losing his brother was because of a mistake."

He takes a breath. "Ford thinks - he didn't realize just how much he had been okay with losing, until he lost it. Until he lost you. And that he had never been okay with that, after all."

The other Stan wobbles a bit at that, and sits down carefully on the glass-shard-covered ground.

Ford sinks down next to him, puts his hand on his shoulder. His brother flinches for one brief moment, and then he lets him.

They're directly at eye-level with Stan now, and through the keyhole he can see everything. Every twinge of emotion on their faces, how Ford's hands are shaking despite his best attempts to keep them still, the way the other Stan keeps swallowing, unable to meet his brother's eyes.

"Ford thinks Stanley Pines is the bravest man he had ever known," Ford says softly, "You're his hero, because you saved him in more ways than you know. He wants him back, back in our dimension, back in our home. Back with our family, because Gods know there isn't one without you. And... more than anything else..."

He swallows. "He wants to introduce you to that Stanley Pines. The one that everyone knows, but you. The Grunkle that Dipper and Mabel adore, the Mr. Mystery that's the life of the town. The brother who he - I could never give up, not for anything."

"Because to me... Stanley Pines is worth everything."

And over on the other side of the door, despite his best efforts, Stan lets out a low sob.

Ford whips his head around, eyes bewildered-owl-wide behind his glasses.

Their eyes meet.

"Stan?"

Stan doesn't know what to do, for one long, frozen second.

Then he scrambles up, unsteady and terrified, and he runs. 

Stan sits for a long while on the back porch of the Shack, partly because he really needs some fresh air after everything he had just - after everything that had just happened. Partly because there isn't anywhere else he can go in the Shack without getting into a conversation he really doesn't want, not right now.

He watches the sun in the sky and how it shines through the clouds, and tries his very best not to think too hard about any of the two dozen things screaming and bellowing in the back of his mind.

Stan hears the footsteps first, as steady and careful as their owner.

"We're leaving for our home dimension in a few hours," says the Ford from the other dimension, who was not his and never had been. He sits down right beside him, sticking up his knees in the same position that makes them look like overgrown ten-year-olds.

"Huh."

"We - would stay longer, but with the sheer number of dimensional counterparts we have in one place, it's a tremendous risk. I... suppose we've used up most of our luck already," Ford explains. "It wouldn't be wise to hope for more."

"I get it," Stan says a bit roughly. "You gotta go. It's fine. This isn't your dimension, anyways."

"Perhaps." And they're quiet for a while, just soaking in the sunlight and breathing in the sweet scent of the Oregon summer breeze.

"I owe you an apology," Ford says suddenly. "I shouldn't have kept it from you. It is - as much to do with you as it has to do with me."

"By which you mean him. The other Stan Pines."

"I do." He pauses, just a bit. "It's - a very long and complicated story, what happened to him. What happened to us. What it comes down to is, Stanley gave up his mind to save the world. I had to erase his entire identity as Stanley Pines."

Ford sighs. "There's hundreds, thousands of ways I can put it to make it sound better than it is. I wiped his memories of himself. I destroyed his mind. But what it comes down to is... I killed my own brother."

Stan snorts. "He sure seems alive and kicking to me, Sixer."

"He shouldn't have been, not in anyway important."

And he goes quiet.

"I never expected that he would have another identity apart from his own to cling onto," Ford says. "I didn't think. But in retrospect, he - you - spent thirty years fooling the people we were closest to into thinking you were me. He had created more than a mask. He had an entire persona, built off of everything he thought I was."

Despite himself, Stan thinks back to his conversation with the man he had thought was Ford. How everything he had said seemed to be so on the nose, so exactly congruent to what Stan had always expected his brother to say to him. How 'Ford' had seized so immediately on the specific events that Stan would stay up turning over and over in his head, blaming, cursing himself.

"Yeah, I guess," he says nonchalantly.

"It seems he has a very particular idea of who I am," his brother says, voice carefully blank. "Specifically, in terms of just what I thought of him."

The wind blows loose several of the leaves from the nearby tree, and they fly past them in oddly lazy loops.

"I understand how he could have gotten those ideas," Ford says, "but he wasn't right at all."

Stan snorts. "You know I was there listening in, Sixer," he says flatly. "You know I heard everything you said to 'im. No need to repeat it for my benefit."

"Are you sure?" His brother asks, voice quiet.

For a long while, he doesn't say anything back. He tries the words out in his mouth once, twice, and then again, and they feel so unfitting and bitter in there he wants to swallow them down and let them fester, like everything else does.

But not this time, he tells himself. He doesn't have another chance.

It takes Stan five tries to get it out.

"Do you think my Ford will be like you?" He asks over the lump in his throat, raw and heavy and growing by the second. "Do you think he - thinks the same way?"

Ford doesn't reply for a long moment. Stan feels like he's forgotten how to breathe.

"There are countless theories on what the existence of a multiverse means for its denizens," his brother says finally, looking down at his hands. "There's an infinite amount of possibilities, that I can agree with. But I refuse to believe that means every possibility is equally possible. Or even that every possibility must exist in this system we all live in. After all, I can spend my entire life generating an infinite number of positive integers, and never produce zero."

"Um."

Ford looks back up, and there's a new softness in his expression.

"He will," he says, with a certainty that makes Stan's mouth go dry. "He might be angry, he might be thankless, he might punch you in the face and tell you to move out of the Shack by summer's end. I can be... incredibly foolish, to say the least. But a Stanford Pines who doesn't truly love his brother, is no Stanford Pines at all."

There's nothing Stan can say that feels right. He settles for silence, and tries to wipe away the burning in his eyes that he tells himself is his allergies acting up.

"Before I leave," his brother says suddenly, "let's go down to the basement laboratory. There's a few things I can help you with. Some... unfortunate consequences to opening the portal that we can deal with now. And... I think there are some things I want to say to your Ford, once he comes back. I'll need a pen and some paper."

He's not sure what exactly Ford's talking about, but it sounds like a good thing.

"Hey, Ford?" Stan asks, a bit roughly.

"Yes, Stanley?"

It's hard for him to find the right words.

"The other me, is he, uh. Is he gonna be alright?"

Ford doesn't hesitate. "He will be," he says confidently, like there was no other possibility out there. "He already remembers quite a bit, just... jumbled, in bits and pieces that fit together in ways they shouldn't. But just seeing Dipper and Mabel did him a lot of good, it seems."

"Huh."

"It's just a matter of time."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good," Stan says, and smiles.

[losvcr]

falling for you (reddie)

summary: the winter formal is coming around, and everyone is scrambling to find dates. eddie is hoping that maybe the signs richie’s been giving him means that richie will ask him, but is disappointed when he learns that richie has accepted another date.

pairing: reddie

word count: 2.9k

warnings: none

a/n: this is my first reddie writing and one shot (it’s fuckin’ long im sorry, i probs should’ve broke it up in parts), so i hope it’s not too horrible. i haven’t read the book yet, only seen the movie/tv series, so i don’t know all of the nuances yet! i’ll do my best <3 feedback and comments/likes are appreciated and welcomed! oh also. the losers are around 16/17, taking place in modern times. some things might be different but i hope you welcome it

OH. song of the one shot is fallingforyou by the 1975. i listened to it while writing so maybe i’ll get you in the right mood

“gaaaay!” the losers looked over towards the end of their cafeteria table, not one of them surprised to see the person behind the call was none other than richie tozier.

despite richie being the only one to not have the same lunch period as them, he still managed to get out of history to come and bother the gang.

“beep. beep. richie.” stan pronounced each word with a hard pause, a slight glare finding his features as he gripped his boyfriend, bill’s, hand tighter.

“i’m just joking around. don’t get your damn panties in a twist, staniel..” the trashmouth grinned, taking a seat in the spot that he normally sat in - right next to eddie. “besides, everyone knows i ship stenbrough so hard.” a lanky arm was tossed around eddie’s shoulders, one which he shrugged off just as quickly in protest of his behavior.

everyone was used to richie’s antics, and ignored them for the most part. though, that hardly ever stopped tozier from continuing them. “mike, have you found a date to the winter formal yet?” beverly questioned across the table, leaning into ben’s side as his eyes glossed over homework reading instead of focusing on the lunch in front of him.

ahh. winter formal. in a small town like derry, maine, a school dance was something highly anticipated. buzz generally began weeks before.

“i’m stuck between rosie and taylor. you guys think they’d be down for a threeway date?”

as it was now, bill and stan, and ben and bev were supppsed to be attending the dance as couples, respectively. the only three without dates was richie, eddie, and mike.

the dance was only a week out, and eddie found himself shifting uncomfortably at the talk of the dance. he wasn’t sure that he would attend, but a huge part of him was hoping that he would be forced to go if a certain someone asked him to be their date.

“sure they would! who wouldn’t want some mclovin from you, mike? be careful, though. having two love interests can get preeeetty messy. eds and his mom would know.”

a frown crossed eddie’s face as he shoved richie’s shoulder gently. “beep beep richie! and don’t call me that! y’know i hate it when you call me that.” the frown on eddie’s face didn’t quite match the now hammering of his heart after registering that richie had identified him as a love interest. maybe eddie was reading too much into his joking. maybe richie’s increased flirting and touches was just him trying to be more annoying than usual.

“are you and eddie p-planning on g-g-going to the dance?” bill questioned, shooting a knowing look in both richie and eddie’s direction, causing eddie’s cheeks to lightly flush a pink while averting his gaze down onto his untouched food.

richie turned his attention on eddie, a small smile finding his lips as he stared at the pretty, small, teenage boy. it had taken him a few days to decide whether he wanted to go big with his formal date invitation to eddie or not.

it would have been his first time asking eddie out.

in the end, he decided that smaller was better. eddie wasn’t one to desire the attention of everyone in the school, even though it was like first nature for richie to do everything big and loudly. in the end, eddie’s comfort with the situation was all that mattered to him - that, and if his friend said no, it would be a quiet rejection that wouldn’t embarrass him in front of everyone.

“yeah, big bill. i totally plan on it. while it’s tempting to try and outdo your big poster you made for stan, i have taste, bill.” richie took in a deep breath; it was now or never, wasn’t it?

what had eddie’s eyes snapping up from his food was hearing richie start up with an “eddie, will you–”, which caused his heart to start thumping hard in his chest once again. was he finally gonna get the invitation he had been hoping for? except, it never came.

instead, richie cut off when he was tapped on the shoulder, seeing popular and pretty girl priscilla white standing there, looking as if she was going to break at any second. “hey richie, think i could talk to you for a second?”

—

the days swept by fast, and before anyone could blink, it was saturday night. the night of the dance.

“eddie, make sure to stay out of trouble! no drinking, and no drugs! call me as soon as you’re on your way home so that i can know that you’re safe.”

eddie adjusted the bow of his tie and got out a dejected “alright, ma”, before he walked out to get into bill’s car, squeezing into the back seat with beverly and ben.

he almost wasn’t going to go. why would he want to go to the dance when he was the only loser without a date? the only reason he was going was because bill had somehow convinced him. now he sat in the backseat of the car, feeling like a bit of a fifth wheel.

it wasn’t long before they’d reached their high school, and were making their way to the winter-themed gymnasium. almost as soon as they walked inside, eddie felt himself wanting to turn back.

it was jammed packed with the moving bodies of his fellow peers, and the music was unbelievably loud. quickly, he checked into his pocket to make sure his inhaler was there. while he didn’t use it as often anymore after finding out about his asthma being psychosomatic, he still felt the need to have it just in case.

“mike! richie!” eddie made a point of holding onto beverly’s wrist as they pushed through the crowds to get to the tables, his eyes finally adjusting to the flashing lights and landing on the missing two of the seven. mike sat with two girls on either arm, and richie sat next to priscilla, the lanky arm that usually sat on his shoulder sitting on priscilla’s. eddie felt like he would throw up any second.

richie’s leg bounced nervously up and down as he awkwardly sat next to priscilla, counting down the seconds when the rest of their friends would show up. it wasn’t until he heard his name that he looked up, seeing that their crew had made it.

automatically, his eyes searched for the familiar curls and brown eyes of eddie, feeling frozen when he finally found him. he was wearing a pink tux shirt and a pair of black dress pants that were a bit too long, but still - he looked fucking amazing.

“eddie.” richie spoke up slowly, waiting to get his attention. “you look…” before he could finish, eddie was walking past him and sitting as far away as he could possibly get. ouch. was eddie upset with him?

before he could ask, he felt priscilla squeezing his arm gently, leaning in to talk in his ear. “now’s a good time to dance.” he heard her whisper urgently, and before he could protest, she was grabbing his wrist tightly and dragging him towards the dance floor.

of course, she’d want to dance on a slow song. he did not want to deal with priscilla right now. he wanted to go back over and talk to his best friend. but he didn’t have a chance to once she wrapped her arms around his neck, urging him to dance with him.

hesitantly, richie placed his hands on her hips, hoping not to get too intimate with her as they swayed back and forth. however, priscilla seemed to have other plans. he would have tried to pull back if he had known it was coming, but he wasn’t as quick as he thought he was; out of nowhere, priscilla was kissing him on the lips.

his eyes widened in surprised, and by the time he’d gotten his wits about it, he was pushing her away. ”what the hell are you doing?! i thought we agreed!” he complained in a loud whisper, his gaze turning towards the table just in time to see eddie bolting away and running out the doors. “fuck. i gotta go.”

“wait, richie, don’t–”

he didn’t wait to hear what she had to say. instead, he found himself chasing after eddie. by the time he got outside, he saw the familiar ford pulling out of the parking lot and driving off. “fuck, fuck, fuck. think, trashmouth. where would he go?” after a few moments of bumbling, panicky thinking, richie finally realized exactly where eddie went.

—

so maybe it wasn’t so bright for him to take bill’s keys from beverly’s purse without permission, but eddie just needed to get out of there. after seeing richie and priscilla kiss out on the dance floor, he felt his heart shatter into a million pieces. he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

he just kept wondering what he had done to deserve that sort of heartbreak twice in a row.

while any other night he would have never ventured out into the woods by himself, tonight was different. he couldn’t go home because his mom would ask a billion questions and probably assume the worse - so, he went to the next best thing. his and richie’s treehouse.

they had stumbled upon the abandoned structure one day while exploring together, and had made it their own. in all honesty, eddie loved to be there more than he liked to be home.

once making it inside of the familiar structure and turning on the lights, eddie sent out a text to bill to assure him that he would bring the car back before the dance was over - he just needed to get away, breathe, and quietly cry to himself.

as if to torture himself more, eddie put on a playlist that richie had made of some of his favorite song, laying on the makeshift bed and allowing the tears to drip from his cheek and nose and onto the sheets below him.

not even fifteen minutes into his self pitying party did he hear loud snaps and cracks from the latter below, causing him to shoot up into a sitting position with widened eyes as chills of fear ran up and down his spine. eddie could remember feeling this fear only once, though he couldn’t quite pin why he had been this scared before. he looked around for any weapon he could use, and just as he was getting ready to accept his fate, a head of dark curls appeared in the opening.

never had he thought he’d be so relieved to see richie.

“holy shit, richie. you scared the fuck out of me.” eddie berated, taking in shallow breaths before reaching for his inhaler and using it as richie awkwardly pushed himself inside. “what’re you doing here? i thought you were having a great time making out with priscilla white.” he got out bitterly.

“sorry… fuck… i’m so winded, give me a second, eds…”

“what? did you run all the way here or something?” eddie quickly reached up, attempting to get rid of the evidence of tear streaks on his cheeks and nose. he was so startled by the idea of richie seeing him crying that he didn’t even scold him for ‘eds’.

however, once richie was able to sit up straight, he could see the redness of eddie’s eyes and the tip of his nose. his heart twisted violently in his chest at the sight of this, feeling even more like shit.

“eddie, please. just let me explain.”

eddie watched as richie sat up, his face red from exertion and glasses fogged with heat. the boy really needed to stop smoking those cigarettes. however, his eyes couldn’t help but take in the freckles dotting his nose, those chapped, but somehow still tempting lips, and the black suit that seemed somewhat baggy on his gangly frame. it was hard to focus on the bagginess when a person got a hit of his hawaiian themed tux shirt, however.

“what is there to explain, richie? there’s nothing to say. i don’t understand why you ditched your date to come here.”

“i saw you run… just listen, alright? priscilla.. she doesn’t mean anything to me–”

“oh yeah, likely story, richie. you took her to the dance, and gave her a nice, big one. i really believe she means nothing to you.” richie sighed softly, moving closer to eddie. it surprised him that he could faintly here sweater weather in the background, but he couldn’t focus on that right now.

“okay, first of all, i didn’t kiss her. she kissed me.” he nearly facepalmed himself after saying that, but he rushed to continue on before eddie could try and retort. “second of all, you never let me tell you why i took priscilla to the dance. the reason i took her was because… okay. when she pulled me aside that day at lunch, she started… crying….”

it was stupid, yes, but richie didn’t know how to handle seeing someone else cry, especially when it came to the female population and people he cared about. it tugged at some sort of strings in his heart he hadn’t been aware existed.

“and she started complaining that that wanker of an ex boyfriend, bradley tether-” richie visibly rolled his eyes. if another henry bowers existed at their school, it would definitely be bradley. “would be taking someone else and she wanted to make him jealous. and you know how that dickhead feels about me. so being the chivalrous guy that i am, i wanted to help her get revenge…”

eddie stared at richie blankly, trying to process what the other male was saying. as ridiculous as it all sounded, was it true? was it really just a ploy to make someone jealous, rather than richie preferring to go to the dance with priscilla?

“but eddie… i didn’t want to go to the dance with her. i wanted to go with you. i was gonna ask you before priscilla interrupted.” richie finally said outloud, chewing on his lower lip in nervousness at this admission. this was his first time admitting his feelings for eddie outloud to eddie.

all eddie could do was blink in shock after hearing that, the hammering in his chest returning full blast. so richie did want to go to the dance with him.

“you’re not kidding, are you?”

after a moment, a song came on in the background that made richie perk up slightly, causing a sudden thought to pop up in his head. richie popped up to his feet, holding a hand out towards the other boy. “dance with me, eddie.” he whispered, causing eddie to stare at him in confusion.

“what are you–”

“beep beep eddie!” richie shot at him teasingly, causing eddie’s cheek to light up slightly. “stop talking and dance with me. please.”

eddie stared up at the tall boy hesitantly before finally grasping his hand, and standing up to his feet. he had never danced with anyone like this before, so eddie waited awkwardly for richie to take the lead. once he felt richie’s arms wrap snuggly around his waist, he let out a soft gasp, his arms automatically finding solace around his shoulders as he laid his head on richie’s chest.

richie placed his chin on top of eddie’s head, and slowly, they swayed back and forth to the beat of the song eddie wasn’t familiar with. it didn’t matter to him, though. he knew richie loved it. in fact, richie was singing along quietly to it.

“don’t you see me? i, i think i’m falling. i’m falling for you. and don’t you need me? i, i think i’m falling. i’m falling for you.” richie had a beautiful voice that eddie loved. the first time he heard his voice, it had been at richie’s house one day while he was in the shower, unaware that eddie had come over and heard. he had begged and pleaded with eddie not to tell anyone, going as far as to make him take a blood oath. in all honesty, he hadn’t planned on telling anyone anyway - it was a richie secret that he wanted to be the only one in the knowing of for as long as possible. besides, he was more shocked that richie was shy about it more than anything.

eddie felt himself growing more emotional as the song continued, his arms tightening around richie as he listened to the boy sing melodically along. he almost couldn’t believe this was actually happening. maybe this was all a dream.

“i don’t wanna be your friend, i wanna kiss your neck.”

at the same time, they pulled back slightly to look at each other, eddie’s eyes red once more and filled with tears of emotion. richie smiled down at him, reaching up to brush some curls away eddie’s face before he took the leap of faith - he leaned down and pressed his lips to eddie’s soft, warm ones.

both their minds went blank for a moment, swirling with a sudden togetherness.

their lips fit perfectly and moved together in sync, richie’s tongue grazing eddie’s lower lip as if to ask for permission to deepen the connection. the kiss continued for what seemed like forever, before eddie pulled back to stare up at richie in breathless awe.

“i think i’m falling for you too, trashmouth.”

————-

GOD THIS WAS UNGODLY LONG. I’M SO SORRY. not only that but i’m a piece of shit who didn’t bother to edit. but pls read and give feedback!

[marypsue]

Raising Stakes 23 / 24

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty/ Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four  

Well, I split the last chapter. Again.

I’m also on AO3 as MaryPSue!

...

The postcard was pushed under his door one morning.

It was nothing more than a simple rectangle of card paper, with a glossy picture inscribed with the words ‘Gravity Falls’ on the front and three words scrawled on the back. Stan stared down at it, turning it over and over in his hands until the two sides blurred together. 

He wasn’t sure how Ford had gotten his address in the first place - after all, it'd been nearly ten years since they'd last spoken. But their Ma always had had her own mysterious ways, and now here the postcard was, in Stan’s hands. 

Saying “Please come!”

Stan didn’t need to reread the words. He’d memorised them. But he still couldn’t tear his eyes away from Ford’s scrawl. 

“Please come!” And Ford’s name. All in quick, sketchy capitals. Like he’d had no time to write anything more. Or been too scared to write anything more.

"Who's it from?" Jimmy asked, leaning over Stan's shoulder, and Stan instinctively pressed the postcard against his chest. He felt a little stupid about it, but - Ford didn't belong in the funhouse Stan's life had been since their dad had thrown his duffel bag on the sidewalk at his feet, and Stan planned on keeping him well out of it.

"Nobody," Stan muttered. "Old friend. Well, used to be a friend."

Jimmy quirked an eyebrow, but he backed off. "You tell me if you need help with any 'old friends', all right? Old friends got a way of becomin' new enemies."

Stan couldn't tear his eyes from the postcard.

"Don't I know it," he muttered, under his breath.

...

Stan spun around.

Ford was still lying in a heap on the concrete floor. He hadn’t moved. But, as Stan watched, the trenchcoat started to shift, rising and falling in time with Bill’s harsh laughter, and Stan realised Ford’s shoulders were shaking. 

In the shadow of Ford’s collar, half-hidden under the flop of Ford’s bangs, one eye snapped open.

It glowed a sickly yellow.

It felt like Stan’s feet had been nailed to the floor. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to as Ford’s body slowly unfolded from the floor in front of him, rising like a ghost from a graveyard, Bill’s awful jack-o’-lantern grin splitting his face nearly in two. 

Bill gave Ford’s chest an inquisitive pat-down with both hands, before clapping both palms to his cheeks, one hand crawling up his face into his hairline and dislodging his glasses as the other crept down towards his neck. “Hah! Wow, that was easier than I thought! Fangs for the upgrade, Ace! Now I’ve got all your perks and a body with some actual brains -”

Stan punched him.

It was a good punch. Bill didn’t seem to see it coming at all. Stan’s fist collided with the side of his head, knocking Ford’s glasses to the floor and wiping that stupid smile clean off his face. A scowl started to replace it, but before Bill could say another word, Stan socked him in the stomach with his other fist. 

Bill doubled over, coughing. 

“Shut it down!” Stan yelled, over his shoulder, at Fiddleford, who was looking shellshocked, and Susan, who was still frozen in the doorway. “Shut the portal -”

The rest of the sentence turned into a strangled yell as Bill gripped him around the neck with both hands and squeezed. Stan met Bill's eyes, and reached out, grabbed Ford's body by the shoulders, and drove his knee up.

The noise Bill made sounded almost exactly like a broken squeaky toy somebody had stepped on.

“Stan!” Carla shouted, gripping her crossbow pistol in both hands, jabbing it in Stan’s direction. “Out of the way, you’re blocking my shot!”

Stan ignored her. As he hauled Bill up by the collar to his feet, lining up for another punch, Bill started to laugh again, loud and grating and obnoxious.

"Yeah, Stan! Out of the way! Isn't that what you wanted? To get me in an undead body so you could stake me?" 

"Shut up," Stan said, shortly, and punched Bill in the stomach again. 

Bill wheezed, again, but this time he didn't stop laughing. "Oh! Oh, this is priceless!" He thrust his head forward, until his nose nearly brushed Stan's, one too-wide yellow eye peering expectantly into Stan's. "Tell me, Fangs. What're you gonna do if I don't?"

Stan wrapped his hand tighter in the collar of Ford’s shirt, expecting Bill to try to pull his disappearing act again, but Bill just stood there, his face too close to Stan’s, grinning. 

“Well?” he demanded, and Stan gave him a shake. Bill burst into another fit of laughter. “Hey, careful! Don’t wanna hurt your brother!”

For a second, Stan felt like he’d been frozen solid from the inside out.

“You mean he’s still -” Stan stopped, shaking his head. “You’re just saying that to get me to lay off you, right? Ford’s dead. You killed him and took his body.”

Bill drew back, just enough to get a good look at Stan’s face, his eyes sweeping over Stan’s expression with obvious glee.

“Guess you two are more alike than I thought!” he said, brightly. 

Stan narrowed his eyes, but Bill’s smile didn’t waver as he leaned slowly back in to uncomfortably close range.

“I mean, not to tell instead of show or anything, but you know that’s exactly what Sixer here thought about you when you showed up, right? I mean, you seem like a guy with a sense of humour, you’ve gotta appreciate the irony!” Bill’s nose was nearly touching Stan’s again, now, but Stan didn’t dare move. Couldn’t move. “So! I’d be careful how you handle this meatsack! Who knows, your brother might want it back! Better not go breaking it!”

Stan curled his fists into the lapels of Bill’s coat. Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath that was almost definitely Carla's, but he didn't take his eyes off of Bill, who smirked back from an inch away.

“I’m not,” Stan said, shortly, and then hauled Bill up off the ground and flung him into the shutter covering the huge viewing window. 

Bill looked shocked for about half a second before his back collided with the metal shutter. There was a horrible shriek as the metal crumpled around him, and he slumped forward. 

Before he could move, Stan leapt up after him, slamming him into the metal shutter with enough force to make the whole thing shiver and shake.

“One nice thing about being undead,” Stan started, drawing back his left arm as he pinned Bill against the shutter with his right, “You get a whole lot more durable.”

Bill opened his mouth, and Stan slammed his fist into his face.

There was a crunch, and something gave satisfyingly under Stan’s knuckles. Bill howled, and spun, shoving Stan away. Stan stumbled back, his foot slipping against the edge of the desk they were standing on, and before he knew what was happening, he was falling. He slammed into the concrete floor ass-first, the breath all knocked out of him in one explosive burst. 

The portal’s hum was nearly deafening now. Stan could feel it vibrating up through the floor, thrumming in his chest almost like a heartbeat. 

“Shut it down!” he yelled over at Fiddleford, who was hovering by a wall of flickering coloured lights and buttons that looked like some kind of controls. “Sometime today would be nice!”

Fiddleford gave a frantic tug on one of the few tufts of hair remaining on his head. “I - I - I know I built mosta this, but I cain’t remember how to work the consarned thing!”

“Well, figure it out!” Stan shouted. He started to push himself up from the floor, but before he could even straighten up, something slammed into his back and he was airborne. He could hear Carla yelling, Susan’s scream, and saw the Ford-shaped indent in the metal shutter speeding towards him before - 

Stan shut his eyes just before he collided headfirst with the shutter. 

The noise the shutter made as it tore was almost deafening. The glass on the other side actually hurt more as it shattered, shards piercing into Stan’s face and shoulders as Bill shoved him through it. Stan ducked his head as best he could, silently begging for no shards of jagged metal or broken glass to stab him in the eyes. 

They burst out the other side in a spray of metal fragments and splinters of glass. Stan hit the ground first, skidding along the concrete on his chest. Thankfully, the polished surface didn’t scrape him too badly, but the impact drove the shards of glass deeper into his chest and upper arms, and his jaw cracked against the concrete so hard that he saw stars. 

A sliver of a second later, Bill landed like a sack of bricks on his back.  

Stan lay flat for a long moment, trying to catch his breath, get his bearings, muster up the energy to try to shake Bill off. There was a sharp pain in his right side that felt suspiciously like it might be broken ribs, his head was still throbbing from when he’d cracked his jaw, and all the little cuts and scrapes on his face and shoulders were starting to burn. The brand on his right shoulder was stinging again, reopened by all the punching, and the bone-deep throb in the muscle of his shoulder hadn't stopped.

“Wow, you’re right!” Bill crowed. “You really are more durable!”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you all over again,” Stan managed, around his closed jaw. 

Bill just laughed. 

There was a pop, a swish, and a thump, and Bill’s laughter cut off abruptly. Stan felt his spine suddenly freeze, thinking of Carla's crossbow pistol, but then Bill cackled again. "Gonna have to do better than that, Pansy! Though I guess I oughta thank you for taking care of this sweatervest for me! Whoof! Ol' Sixer here could really use a personal stylist, am I right?"

There was another pop and a swish of displaced air, but this time, Stan felt Bill’s weight on his back lift, and something clanged against the face of the portal. The sound it made was like someone striking a gong, deep and sonorous, cutting through even the rising whine of the portal powering up.

Stan didn’t waste any time pushing himself to his feet. His ribs and his right shoulder burned, and he nearly toppled right back to the floor when he spun to face Bill. 

Bill’s fist collided with Stan’s face like a wrecking ball. Stan stumbled backwards, his jaw lighting up in pain. Before he could find his footing again, Bill was there, with thick dark blood already crusting in a stream from one nostril down over his upper lip and an expression like murder if murder had an extremely punchable face. Stan threw another left hook, but his form was sloppy, his intent too clear. Bill just leaned out of the way, before stepping in close, pressing a hand against each of Stan's shoulders, and giving him one sharp shove backwards.

Stan took two unsteady steps back, trying to find his footing, but the worn-down sole of his sneaker slipped against something sticking up from the floor, and he tripped. His feet left the floor, and he sucked in a breath, expecting it to be knocked out of him when he wound up flat on his ass on the concrete again. 

He didn’t. 

Instead, his feet left the floor, and didn’t touch back down. Stan flailed, but only succeeded in spinning himself in midair, turning a helpless somersault. The ceiling flashed past underneath him, the floor whirling overhead - with a yellow-and-black-striped band across it. He’d seen it before, when he was untying Susan, but he hadn’t really noticed it. 

He realised, as his spin gradually slowed, that it was probably a warning not to get too close to the portal in case exactly this happened.

Stan couldn’t hear Susan’s yell over the roar of the portal. But he could see her, over Bill’s shoulder, mouth working silently, as she shoved past Carla and out into the lab. She seemed...shorter, somehow. Or just...farther down.

So did Bill in Ford’s body. And the yellow and black line.

Oh, shit.

The sound of the portal was deafening, now. Stan could see his shadow, stark and black on the floor below him, outlined in the brilliant blue light spilling from the portal behind him. 

He could feel it now, too. Not just the strange weightlessness, like falling in reverse, but a pull, dragging him slowly but inexorably backwards no matter how much he kicked and clawed at the air. Stan watched his own shadow inch backwards, over the black and yellow line, as the floor got farther and farther away, his own shouts drowned out by the thundering noise of the spinning machinery behind him.

The vicious smile on Ford’s face glinted sharply in the portal’s blue light. 

And then slipped off of his face again when Susan ran up beside him, breathing hard, and scooped the extension cord she’d been tied up with off the ground in front of the portal. Stan barely caught the sound of his name as she yelled up at him, and then swung the end of the cord over her head before throwing it at him. “Catch!”

Stan scrabbled for the end of the cord, only succeeding in flipping himself into another midair somersault. The plug thwacked him sharply in the back of his head as he tumbled by, and Stan shouted a curse that even he could barely hear over the portal. 

He saw everything in blurry flashes as he spun - the ceiling, the floor, Bill and Susan wrestling over the other end of the extension cord, the ceiling again, the huge accusing eye of the portal, outlined in a frantically whirling ring of white light, and in its depths, in the darkness in its very centre, something sparking to life - 

The extension cord wavered into his vision again, and Stan reached out and grabbed at it. This time, somehow, his hand closed around it. 

Stan latched onto the cord with both hands, pulling himself down along it. It was hard work - somehow, over the last handful of seconds, the pull from the portal had grown so much stronger, like its own upside-down gravity. The rising whine he'd heard earlier was piercing, now, rising over the rumble of the machinery. The extension cord burned the bare skin of his palms as the portal sucked Stan back, and he heard Susan yelp as the cord snapped taut.

Stan clung to the cord, but his grip in his right hand slipped, the muscles still weak after the burn to his shoulder, and he slid backwards, sucked in towards the portal. He could feel something through the toes of his shoes, a strange feeling that almost wasn’t a feeling, like if an electric shock had somehow crossed with the feeling of his foot falling asleep. He glanced back over his shoulder, and saw the centre of the portal filled with blue-white light. 

The tips of his sneakers were just starting to sink into it.

Stan yanked on the extension cord, trying to pull himself away from the portal, but when he turned back towards Susan and the others, the bottom of his stomach dropped abruptly to the concrete below. 

Susan was on the floor, curled up like a caterpillar clutching her stomach in obvious pain. And holding the other end of the extension cord, grinning like he was a cartoon cat and Stan was a mouse he’d caught by the tail, was Bill.

“You know, Fangs, I really shouldn’t keep stringing you along like this!” Bill cackled, and let the extension cord slip through his hands. Stan was sucked backwards, a scream tearing out of him before he was abruptly jolted to a stop when Bill grabbed onto the extension cord again. “Whoops!” 

“Let him go, you big meanie!” Susan yelled, throwing both her arms around Ford’s legs and - Stan blinked. It looked a little like she was trying to hug him into submission. 

“Susan, don’t,” Stan groaned, as Susan’s wording sank in. “Don’t ask him to let go!”

Bill flashed a big, innocuous smile down at Susan, before turning Ford’s head slowly, slowly, back to face Stan. 

“Turning down help, Ace? Might wanna rethink that! Cause it looks like you’re getting pretty close to the end of your rope -”

“Bill!”

Stan’s head snapped up at the sound of the muffled shout. So did Susan’s. Bill kept staring at Stan for a moment longer, his smile slowly dipping into a confused frown, before he turned to look behind him.

The crash test dummy tackled Bill around the waist.

Bill staggered forward, letting out a frustrated snarl as he tried to push the dummy off of him. The dummy clung on grimly with its single arm, wrapping both of its legs around Bill’s knees, and Bill stumbled - right over the black-and-yellow warning line. 

Both Bill and dummy left the ground, rising quickly towards Stan. For one heartstopping moment, the extension cord went slack in Stan’s hands, the portal dragging him back. Then Susan jumped to her feet and snatched the cord out of the air where it was flapping, loose. That strange electric numbness flickered at Stan's spine as Susan teetered on the edge of the warning line, the very tips of her toes brushing against the floor. “Stan! Hang on, I’ve got you!”

“Okay, but who’s got you?” Stan yelled back. 

Bill pressed one of Ford’s hands against the top of the dummy’s head, six fingers splayed, and shoved it away from him. The dummy spun backwards, its arm and legs flapping wildly, sinking down through the air towards Susan even as Bill tumbled in the other direction, heading straight for Stan. 

Stan tried to brace himself, but Bill still slammed into him like a rebounding punching bag. The impact nearly jolted the extension cord out of Stan’s hands, wrenching his shoulders in their sockets. 

For a terrifying instant, Susan slipped, skidded across the black and yellow line. The cord started to go slack in Stan's hands, and he nearly let it go. If he was falling through that portal into who knew what, then at least he wasn't going to take Susan with him.

But the cord snapped tight again as Carla ran up behind Susan and grabbed her around the waist, dragging her back across the black and yellow line. She looked up, and met Stan's eyes, giving him the tiniest of nods and just a hint of a reassuring smile.

Stan ground his back teeth together and clung grimly on.

Bill’s laughter rose from Ford’s body, and even though his back was pressed against Stan’s front, Stan could all too easily imagine the expression on his face. His shoulders shaking nearly made Bill slip away, out of Stan’s grip and into the portal’s pull, and Stan sucked in a breath before letting go of the extension cord with his right arm to wrap it more securely around Ford’s waist. Maybe his brother wasn’t in it right now, but that was his brother’s body, and there was no way he was letting it go. Ford would probably want it back.

The dummy let out a frustrated yell, kicking its legs to try to spin in midair to face Stan and Bill. “Let him go, you idiot!” it yelled, or seemed to yell, at Stan. “Send that monster back to the dimension from which he came!”

Even though it didn’t have a mouth to move, the voice seemed to come from the general direction of the dummy’s head. And though it was disembodied and strangely muffled, Stan would’ve known Ford’s voice anywhere.

Bill’s laughter only got louder. “That’s the Fordsy we all know and love! Even when you’re fighting for your life - or should I say unlife, now? - you still waste your time on grammar!”

“Ford?” Stan asked.

“Yep, that’s your brother, piggybacking off of your great ideas for once! How’s that role reversal feel, Fangs?” Bill twisted Ford’s head sharply sideways, grinning manic into Stan’s face, before wrenching it back to face the dummy - Ford. “But this little self-sacrifice act is getting old, Sixer! Giving up your body to trap me in the Nightmare Realm forever? Booo-ring!”

“Oh, good, the demon guy’s talking again,” Susan moaned, from somewhere below. “Who let him talk?”

Bill’s eyes narrowed, but his smile remained dangerously sharp. 

“Let’s make this a little more interesting!” he chirped, ignoring Susan, and snapped Ford’s fingers. 

Then he blinked, and looked over at his own raised hand as if he’d never seen it before. He was moving slower, too, like he was a stranger to his own body, and as he half-turned towards Stan, raising his other hand, Stan caught a glimpse of his eyes.

His normal, brown eyes, which widened in horrified realisation at the same time as Stan’s did.

From below them, Bill’s laughter rose again, terrible and echoing. Stan and Ford both turned to look down at the dummy, at the slash of red paint across the huge eye sketched on its face. As Stan watched, that eye flared a glowing, hideous yellow, and turned up towards them.

“Well, Pines brothers, it’s been fun,” Bill’s nasally voice crowed from the general vicinity of the dummy’s head, “but the party’s over!” His voice sank through several octaves until it was a booming bass that Stan could feel vibrating in his chest. “See you on the other side.”

“Shit!” Stan shouted, and grabbed at the extension cord, just as the dummy reached out with its remaining arm and yanked the cord out of Susan’s hands. Susan wailed, falling over the black and yellow line as she tried to keep hold of the cord. If gravity had been normal, Stan guessed she would’ve skidded flat on her face. As it was, she turned a slow somersault in midair, head over heels.

Bill raised the dummy’s hand, and waved.

Ford was shouting something in Stan’s ear, some panicked babble about what they should do, what they could do, how they couldn’t let Bill destroy the universe, but Stan barely heard him. There was a little bubble of stillness right below his ribcage, and even though he could feel the strange electric void of the portal licking at the back of his neck, all he could feel was perfect, unshakable calm.

He’d done this before. Maybe Ford knew about monsters and demons and things that went bump in the night, but this wasn’t about magic and mystery anymore. Now this was about some powerful, evil asshole trying to kill them. 

And that, Stan knew how to deal with. 

Before Bill could open his hand and let go of the extension cord, Stan looped his end of the cord around his left hand and yanked. It must have been part Stan’s own strength, part the portal’s pull, part weak gravity, but Bill shot straight toward Stan and Ford like a bullet out of a gun. 

Stan watched as that glowing yellow eye drew closer, and closer, Bill’s scream of rage trailing after it. At the last possible second, when it looked like the dummy was about to smash into both of them, he let go of the extension cord and shoved Ford to his right as hard as he could.

Bill never stood a chance. The dummy flew between Stan and Ford and straight into the heart of the portal, trailing extension cord as it vanished into the blue-white light, Bill’s scream fading slowly after it. The end of the cord whipped through the air as it was sucked through after the dummy, and then it, too, was gone.

“Stan,” Ford laughed, his face crumpling in a way that could have been either laughter or tears as he reached out across the threshold of the portal to Stan. “You idiot, you - you stupid - why did you come back?”

Stan shook his head. The blue-white light of the portal was so close now, nearly swallowing everything. It wouldn’t be long before they both passed through it. He could barely see Ford, there was no way Ford could make out the expression on his face.

“I am your brother,” he managed, and somehow even mustered up a smile.

Ford said something, but it was swallowed by the sound of the portal. That strange feeling of nothingness was spreading, up Stan’s waist and chest, and he couldn’t see anything for blue light.

But he felt it when Ford grabbed his wrist, and when Ford pulled him forwards - not out of the portal, but just enough to make the nothing-feeling retreat a little - and wrapped both arms around his shoulders. Stan froze, not sure what was happening, but all Ford did was hold him, like that, pressed against his chest. It was with mingled horror and something...else, something soft, that Stan realised his shoulder was quickly getting damp where Ford’s face was pressed into it. 

The portal gave one triumphant roar, and Stan shut his eyes.

And then his legs were on fire with the worst pins and needles he’d ever felt, and the blue light vanished, the portal clunking and shuddering through a series of ominous mechanical noises as its whine slowly trailed down through the octaves. Stan hovered for a moment, before gravity seemed to notice that he and Ford had been thumbing their noses at it and rushed in to make up for lost time. 

Both Stan and Ford crashed down onto the concrete, with a jarring thump that made Stan’s teeth rattle in his head and all of his burns and scrapes and involuntary piercings suddenly sit up and make themselves heard. He lay there, for what felt like eternity, with his brother’s arms around him, listening to McGucket hooting and hollering from the control room. 

“I done it! I dadgum done did it! I remembered how ta turn th’ thing off an’ I done it! Glory be!”

The portal was shut. Bill was gone.

Stan leaned into Ford’s shoulder, and slowly, gingerly, brought his own arms up to wrap around Ford’s waist. In response, Ford squeezed Stan’s shoulders so hard that the burn on Stan’s shoulder screamed in protest, digging his fingers into Stan’s back hard enough to leave bruises. 

Even though everything hurt, Stan couldn’t help but smile.

[rawkingbunny]

Bitter and Sick - Chapter One

Hey guys! It’s been years since I’ve written anything and decided to stretch those writers muscles and give it a swing!

–Rating: M

–Gravity Falls/Rick and Morty

~Diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Stanford Pines is forced to reflect on past regrets and experiences that bring him back to one person. A narcissistic sociopath who saved his life~

~Chapter One~

…

“Brain Cancer, Stanford? Are you shittin’ me?”

There was a cold silence in the air, the usual sound of cash registers opening and noisy tourists were drowned out by the hoarse tone in Stanley Pine’s voice. He received a few uncomfortable stares, but chose to ignore the attention.

Stanford Pines fidgeted, lifting a six fingered hand to anxiously rub the back of his neck. He used the other to nudge up the frames of his glasses. This isn’t how he’d planned it, but he’d already dug his own grave. “Stanley, Can we maybe talk somewhere a little more private?” he choked, bloodshot eyes shifting to the audience that filled the gift shop.

Stan’s eyes narrowed, and he heaved a sigh, popping his collar as they made their way to the back room. He locked frightened eyes with Wendy as they passed, trusting she would be able to handle the rush on her own.

Ford sluggishly followed, hands shaking violently as he closed the office door behind them. He shuffled his way across the shagged carpet, collapsing on the danish sectional couch in the corner of the room. He held his head in the palm of his hands, holding back tears that were long overdue.

“How long?”

Ford rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingertips to relieve a mild migraine, looking up to find his brother rummaging through one of the cabinets in the opposite side of the room. Stan had pulled out a vintage bottle of whiskey and a couple of shot glasses from the dusty storage cabinet.

He was so overwhelmed by the sudden news that he hadn’t taken time to really bother with the details. Honestly he’d never expected this to happen, not that anyone ever does. Teeth clenched, Ford rested his weary palms on weak knees. “ A year at the most…”

“Fuck!” Stan seethed, nearly dropping the bottle as he finished pouring a glass. Brown eyes flickered in Ford’s direction, fatigued with age.

Ford flinched, avoiding Stan’s gaze and staring mindlessly at his hands. “What happened to us, Stanley?”

His brothers features began to soften, wrinkled cheekbones curling to a faint smile. He chuckled, and made his way across the room. “We got old…”

Ford looked up at the sound of ice hitting glass, and chuckled as Stan towered over him with the whiskey offering. He accepted, six calloused fingers curling around the cool corners. He downed the amber liquid without hesitation, welcoming the burn that accompanied it.

“Good, ain’t it?” Stan collapsed next to him, downing his glass and releasing a mild grunt at the taste. He stretched his arms over the back of the sofa, the hand with the glass leaning lazily to the side. “We can’t tell the kids…”

Ford eyes flickered as he came back to reality and turned to his brother, finger tapping his own glass idly. “Do you think that’s wise? You saw Wendy, you know she’s-”

“-I’ll talk to her…” Stan interrupted, “They’ve been through enough hell.”

“I’m not just going to give up, Stanley. You know that, right?”

Ford stared at his brother with half lidded eyes. He’d been awake for almost three days without sleep, and the toll it was taking on him was tremendous. He thought distracting his mind with his research would alleviate the pain, but he was becoming weaker every day.

Stan’s reply was sincere as he placed a large hand at the base of his brother’s back. “I know you won’t, Poindexter…”

Ford chuckled at the nickname, slowly lifting himself from the sofa’s embrace. Stan began to rise to help him, but was halted by a gentle hand to his chest. Ford carefully dropped the empty glass on the desk, making his way to the doorway.

“Ford…”

Stan paused as his brother tilted his head to the side, hand resting on the door handle.

“…We’re gonna be ok. You’re gonna be ok…”

Ford’s eyes were shadowed beneath the frames of his glasses, but Stan could feel the sadness radiating from him.

“Of course, Stanley…”, he lied. “I mean…What’s the worst that could happen?”

The door shut quiety behind him, casting a dark shadow across the dimly lit room. Leaving Stan to ponder in his own dark thoughts. He lifted a thumb to his eyes, wiping a single tear with the corner.

Yeah…what’s the worst that could happen?

…

“Great Uncle Ford! What’s this?” Mabel Pines let out a squeal of excitement, nearly falling in an old trunk as she reached for the old book beneath.

Ford let out a heavy cough as the object brought clouds of dust with it, gingerly taking the book from her hands as he recovered, bringing it into the light. Two small five and six fingered hand prints were visibly faded on the cover, two ‘S’s’ lazily scrawled across them in both print and Stanford’s signature cursive handwriting.

“I haven’t seen this in ages, “ Ford muttered, carefully lifting the cover to reveal pages of vintage photos and Staney’s macaroni art.

Mabel curled up to her Uncle’s side, intently observing as he flipped through pages of his past.

“Is that Grandpa Shermy?” her eyes settled on a small spectacled child with a much smaller jaw line, a visual cowlick curling around his forehead.

Ford smirked and let out a low chuckle, “That’s your Grandpa alright, always pranking Stanl-”

“BREAKFAST!! WHO WANTS STANCAKES!!?”

Mabel’s attention shifted and she leapt from Ford’s lap, tugging on the sleeve of his sweater. “Come on, Great Uncle Ford! Let’s eat!”

Ford gave a half hearted smile, “I’ll be right behind you. I just need a minute, Pumpkin”.

Her small hand slid from his, not looking back as she made for the attic stairs.

Ford set the scrap book back down in the trunk, his hands hitting another mysterious object hidden beneath the dusty corners. He snatched it, brushing off the remaining dust to reveal the cover. A familiar handprint embossed on the front with construction paper, and a large #4 scribbled on the front with a marker.

His heart sank, taking in the pathetic replica before him. He licked the corner of his dust covered finger, slipping through the worn pages. Halfway he paused, settling on a memory he had kept in the back of his brilliant mind for decades. One he never thought he’d have to revisit, and one he swore to put behind him.

In the corner scribbled in a pen, quite sloppily he added, was a message from an old friend…

Thanks for the shitty memories, Six-Fingers - R

…

“Hey, Sixer! How about you show us those sick moves you keep boasting about?!”

Ford let out the hybrid of a snort, hiccup, and laugh as he took another shot. Eyes glazed over from the heavy amount of drugs and alcohol swirling throughout his system. He was in no way a light weight, despite avoiding the college parties outside his dorm every night.

“No thanks Gearheee—aaad,” he slurred, popping the cap off another beer. Unable to make out any more words out of annoyance from shouting over the high music volumes. He stammered his way past the small crowds in front of him, avoiding a cute blonde and making a note to swindle her out of her phone number by the end of the night.

Ford nearly tripped over Squachy’s tail, eliciting a loud hiss and several unintelligable slurs that mostly consisted of variations of the word “Squanch”. He lifted his hand to apologize, but was more focused on getting as far from the noise as possible.

Reaching the sliding doors to the balcony, he released a sigh, stepping out into the cold air and wiping a few beads of sweat from his forehead. He was unexpectedly greeted by the sound of fingers strumming melodic chords against a guitar.

“Surprised to see you hiding out here, Rick”, Ford rasped, his gruff voice shot from overuse.

Rick Sanchez shrugged, a blunt hanging loosely from his lips as he played a few notes on his acoustic guitar. He paused to run lanky fingers over his ripped jeans, trying to warm them in the night chill. “You fuckin’ kidding me? Shittiest party I’ve ever been to…”

Ford bit his lip, tapping a finger against his beer. “You sure you’re ok?”

“Fuck you, Sixer”. The younger man continued to strum, not even caring to look up when Ford nealt down in front of him..

“Does this offering please you?” Ford drunkenly exclaimed, holding the beer at Rick’s face.

Rick heaved a sigh and snatched it away, “Ok nerd…what do you want from me?”

“Thank you…”

Rick nearly spat his drink from all ends as he took a sip, but swallowed hard. Bringing the blunt back to his lips and inhaling. He took in Ford’s features as he sat down indian style, early signs of wrinkles curved his smile.

“You’re fucking ancient…”, Rick muttered, taking in the grey hairs that were starting to peek out from chestnut locks.

“You’re one to talk”, Ford retorted, a wicked drunk smile crossing his face. It was true Ford had 9 years on him, but Rick had already reached the ‘Grandpa’ look in his late 40s, hair already silver and forehead creased with aging. He guessed it was the years of alcohol and drugs, but had no interest in investigating further.

“I mean it, Rick. Thank You…”

The younger man strummed a few more notes, “You say that again, and I swear i’ll beat your ass into another dimension…”

“Oh, I believe you”.

“You’re hammered,” Rick mocked, placing the guitar next to him and extending his hand to offer the blunt. Ford’s nose twisted in disgust, raising a hand to decline. “Suit yourself”.

Rick inhaled again, pulling his leather jacket tighter around him. “You want to know the truth?”

Ford blinked, pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose. In the few months they’d known each other, he’d never known Rick to offer an explanation for any of his odd sporadic behavior. He was honest, brutally so, but not open about himself.

“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple”.

Rick rose an eyebrow, eyes narrowing at Ford’s poetic words. He took another puff, and flicked the blunt away lazily.

“Oscar Wilde…”

“Fuckin’ Nerd.”

Ford smiled, pulling a small notebook from behind his jeans, “Mind if I write this down? This a rare occasion. You being an open book, and all.”

Rick scowled, hugging his knees. “I’m trusting you with this, Sixer…no notes in that pansy ass journal of yours.”

His eyes widened, placing the book down on the ground without question. “Is it really that important to you?”

Rick had never looked so tense, not as long as he’d known him. Whatever it was, it had him seriously fragile in the head. Ford watched as he parted his lips to speak,ignoring the muffled sounds of the crowd enjoying shots in the next room.

“Have you ever been in love?”

He choked the words when they came out, like it was poison, running a lanky hand through silver hair. He avoided the older man’s gaze, not entirely comfortable with the conversation.

Ford didn’t even hesitate, running a hand over his shoulder in deep thought, tracing his fingers over a hidden tattoo that contained the painful answer to the question. Memories returned of a muse, of a promise that was shattered in an instant. “Yes.”

Rick looked his way, lips pursed in curiosity, but he didn’t care enough to pry. “Fuck love…”

Ford chuckled, grabbing the beer that Rick had set down between them. He downed the rest, wiping the corner of his lip with his flannel sleeve.

“I second that…”

They sat there in silence, a dark sky full of stars to entertain their thoughts. Rick strumming a few more harmonious chords while Ford rose a finger to sketch the numerous constellations.

It was at that moment, inebriated and high as a kite, that Rick made a silent vow. He would get Ford home, even if he had to tear apart the multiverse to do so.

Next Chapter

[enigmatist17]

New Beginnings (Mystery Trio) (1?)

So, I really love the whole Mystery Trio thing ^^

Coming into the small town of Gravity Falls hadn’t been on Stan Pines’ mind, but his beloved car said otherwise, and thus the man was forced to stop to make what repairs he could.

“Hey, aren’t you that researcher?” The question caught him off-guard, the man giving a confused look to the woman in front of him.

“You got the wrong guy miss, I just rolled into town ‘cause my car ain’t doin’ so good.” The woman narrowed her eyes, and Stan felt uncomfortable until a grin crossed her face.

“Oh y’all must be twins!” She laughed, Stan even more lost as he slowly went back to fixing his tire.

“Look lady, no disrespect but I have no idea who you’re talkin’ about.” He muttered, eyes fixated on his engine.

“Why I’m talkin’ about Stanford Pines, such a handsome man.” She swooned, Stan smacking his head on the hood as he turned to look at her in surprise.

“Wait what?” The woman chuckled as she gave him a grin.

“Stanford Pines, that researcher who lives in the woods. I take it you’re his twin?”

“U-Uh, yea.” He replied a bit nervously, the woman grinning.

“Well any friend of that handsome man is a friend of mine. Why don’t I get the town mechanic to tow your car to the shop, and I’ll take you to your brother?”

“Uh, look if it’s any same to you I’d rather…” Stan’s protest was quickly cut off, and thus half an hour later he found himself being dropped off near a house in what seemed the middle of nowhere, the woman waving as she left. Gripping the handle of his bag Stan nervously walked towards the front door, raising an eyebrow when he heard faint arguing from inside.

“Well I wasn’t the one who welded the component backwards!” The voice was his brothers, Stan’s heart skipping a beat as he hadn’t heard that voice in over ten years.

“If it weren’t fer yer insistin’ that we go without sleep again, I wouldn’t have made that mistake!” The voice that yelled back had a heavy southern accent, and before Stan could knock on the door there was a loud twang, followed by the sounds of two bodies hitting the floor. Dropping his back Stan nearly kicked the door down, eyes locked on the two men who were wrestling in the hallway with curses being shouted back and forth until Stan quite easily pulled them apart, tossing them into the nearest room.

“What the fuck is going on?!” He demanded, his brother’s mouth open in shock as the other man glared at the person who had disrupted their fight.

“You have about five seconds ta get out before I call the cops!” The southern male yelled, ready to go for the phone had his partner not stopped him by tackling the smaller male. “Stanferd get off a’ me!”

“You are not calling the cops on my brother.” He insisted, the two wrestling each other again for seconds before Stan pulled the smaller male off of his brother and tossed him onto a chair.

“Will you two stop acting like kids for five seconds?” He growled, his brother and the other guy glaring at each other before looking away with angry huffs.

“Stanley, what are you doing here?” Stanford spoke up eventually, getting to his feet as Stan stepped between the two with a pointed look.

“My car broke down, then some chick said you were here and pretty much dragged me all the way up here.”

“Nice ta know you have a twin.” The smaller man hissed at Stanford, who looked ready to make a go had Stan not glared at him.

“Shut your mouth or you both are being tossed out the window.” Stan said to the man on the chair, who glared back at Stan before looking away with a roll of his eyes. “Now you two, apologize or something.”

“Why should I? Stanferd says I’m just an incompetent hick.”

“Fiddleford, it is not that hard to weld a simple piece of circuity into place.” Stanford scoffed, yelping a moment later when his brother slapped him upside his head, glasses clattering to the ground as the other male burst into laughter. The poorly hidden grin on Stan’s face when Stanford straightened with glasses in hand made the older twin grin, and then laugh alongside his partner until they were both wheezing for air.

“You nerds better?” Stan questioned, the two nodding from their spots on the floor and chair respectively, Stan rolling his eyes in amusement. “Not the greeting I expected but you’ve always been one for the weird stuff bro.”

“Who are you?” The man on the chair asked, standing with his hand outstretched. “Name’s Fiddleford McGucket.”

“Stanley Pines.” He shook the man’s significantly smaller hand, offering a weak smile.

“It’s nice ta meet ya.” He smiled, both he and Stan looking over to see Ford looking anywhere else but the two of them. “Ford, explain?”

“I…It’s a long story…” He began weakly, Stan shaking his head.

“Long story short Pa kicked me out because I broke Ford’s chance to get into a swanky college.” The pair looked uncomfortable as Fiddleford glanced between the two.

“Oh…” Fiddleford winced, the twins looking highly uncomfortable. “Well…um…yer welcome to stay.”

“I can?” Stan looked surprised, the southerner nodding while offering a smile.

“Sides, I’d love to get to know ya.” This was more directed to Ford, who deciding to slip out of the room with a guilty look on his face.

“I don’t want to cause any problems bud…” Stan tried to protest, but the southern male shook his head as he pulled Stan into a kitchen that looked more like a workshop. “Whoa…”

“Take a seat will ya?” Stan nodded and cleared off a chair, settling in for what seemed to be a long night. They were unaware of Ford listening from the stairwell, the elder twins heart sinking lower and lower when he heard Stan explain that life had not been the best to him since he had been kicked out. Fiddleford listened without interruption, offering only consolation and an offer Stan never thought he would hear.

“Look, we have a spare bedroom, and we ain’t the best at keepin’ track of things. Yer welcome to live here, and all you’d have to do at most is just make sure the two of us keep track with things like eatin’ and whatnot.”

“That’s it? There’s no loophole or anything?” Stan asked suspiciously, Fiddleford shaking his head.

“I wouldn’t do that, and neither would Ford.”

“I dunno…I haven’t heard from Ford in so long, he probably still hates me.”

“No…no I don’t.” The two looked over as Ford finally walked into the room, his face only filled with guilt as he stared at his brother. “I never hated you, I was angry, but never did I hate you.”

“Didn’t stop dad though.” Stan muttered, Ford looking away with another guilty look.

“I…You can stay as long as you want.” With that Ford was gone, the sound of a door shutting upstairs resounding moments later throughout the house.

“Messed up again…fuck.” Stan cursed, Fiddleford offering a comforting gesture.

“It’ll just take time, Ford doesn’t trust so well. Heck, we’ve been friends since we started college and he still doesn’t tell me nothin.”

“Yea, that’s Sixer for ya…” Stan joked with a weak smile, the smile falling rather quickly.

“It’ll be alright, I promise ya.” Stan nodded, hoping that McGucket was right.

[marypsue]

Any Misery You Choose 6 / 6

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Epilogue

on AO3

...

When Stan wakes up, it's dark and cold and he's lying on something hard - metallic? - and rough that digs into his shoulder and hip. That's not so unusual, though - he hasn't really had a good night's sleep since he wound up on the street. 

What is unusual is whatever's holding his hands tied behind his back.

He groans, and tugs at the bands wrapped around his wrists. They’re thin and tight. Zip ties, maybe? Definitely not handcuffs, which makes this harder. He’s practiced getting out of those cuffs that came with the magic kit he’d gotten for Christmas the year Ford got the chemistry set so many times that he could do it in his sleep, probably. But there’s just enough room that, if he can turn his right hand just like this and shift his left shoulder like that -

He stops, freezing in place, when he hears the voice.

“Stanley?”

“Ford?” Stan croaks.

He can’t see anything but the weirdly grey-slatey-silver wall in front of him, but he hears someone shift, behind him. “Yes, Stan, it’s me.”

“Great,” Stan mutters, into the cold floor beneath his cheek. “You wanna tell me just what the hell’s goin’ on here?”

“I wish I knew,” Ford mutters, from somewhere behind Stan, and Stan rolls his eyes, turning his attention back to trying to work his hands free of the zip tie.

“Don’t play dumb, poindexter. You’re the one who crawled into bed with these jerks -”

“I told you already, that was a misunderstanding,” Ford says, and even though Stan can’t see his face, he’s pretty sure Ford’s gritting his teeth.

“What, like the little ‘misunderstanding’ that got me kicked out?” Stan asks, and the words sting at the back of his own throat like bile.

“Stanley -” Ford starts, but before Stan has a chance to interrupt him, he interrupts himself, biting off whatever else he was about to say.

The room is quiet around them, the kind of quiet that makes Stan think of cathedrals and five-AM airports and other high, empty places. The cold is dull and constant, seeping up through the floor into his bones, not quite enough to sting or to numb but enough to make him uncomfortable. There’s a faint, clunky whirring noise that highlights the silence, like a distant fan, and a buzz from overhead that has to be the lights, but otherwise Stan can’t hear any background noise, nothing from outside. The light is dim, watery and greenish, and he can’t tell if it’s day or night.

“Are we underground?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Ford says, shortly. “It’s probable. Look, I was trying to help get those kids out of there, I had to pretend -”

“Just can it,” Stan mutters. “Don’t wanna hear it. Let’s just get ourselves out of this mess so we can both go back to pretending the other one don’t exist.”

Ford is quiet, after that.

Stan’s wrist chafes against the tie holding his hands behind his back, and trying to twist his hand enough to get it out scrapes the plastic against a place where the skin is rubbed raw. He bites down on his tongue, trying not to curse, not wanting Ford to see him explode again.

Wait. Plastic. If whatever he’s tied up with is plastic, then -

Stan pushes, bracing himself for molten plastic dripping down his hand, but there’s nothing. Not even the warm breath of his own flames.

“Wha -” he starts, and Ford sighs.

“This chamber must be environmentally controlled somehow, or have some sort of dampening agent. Our powers don’t work here. I’ve tried.”

“Our powers.” Stan snorts. “Hey, look on the bright side, you’re getting exactly what you wanted. Now you’re normal!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ford sighs, again, like he’s the one who’s been unfairly and unreasonably treated like a villain. "I wasn't with those soldiers. I stole a uniform to help blend in, I was trying to help the others escape -"

"What'd I do or say that made you think I wanna hear it?" Stan snaps.

"I am trying to explain myself to you!" Ford shouts. "If you would just listen to me -"

“No, you listen to me!” Stan shouts. “You’re always interrupting me, blowing me off - it’s about time you got a taste of your own medicine!”

“So you would put your own hurt feelings over the lives of innocent children?” Ford says, and his voice is dark as thunderclouds.

“You know what, maybe I would!” Stan doesn’t give Ford a chance to answer, can just imagine the self-righteous look of fury settling onto his brother’s face. There’s something dark and ugly and stinging welling up in his chest, blocking the back of his throat, and it feels like he has to let it spill out his mouth or choke on it. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through since you turned your back and let me get kicked out? Do you even care?”

“This is not the time -” Ford starts, his voice sharp and tight, and Stan scoffs. 

“No, of course you don’t. You got scooped up as soon as I was outta the picture! You’re the good one!” 

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“That you're the dumbest smart guy I ever met? Any school - anybody - would be over the moon to have you, no big surprise that the public face of mutant relations came knocking the minute I was outta the picture. But who the fuck would want somebody like me as their poster kid? I’m just some - some high school dropout with nothin’ goin’ for him, and - and -” He stops. He’s not sure where he’s going with this. He’s not sure he wants to go where this is taking him. "Look, I hadda take what I could get. And - maybe they're the bad guys, but they're not bad guys, yanno? Sure, this kidnapping thing was stupid from the get-go, but..." 

"Kidnapping -" Ford pauses. "Stanley, did you - you didn't join the Brotherhood of Mutants?"

Stan shrugs as best he can with his hands bound behind his back. "Why not? They sure care a lot more about me than my own family ever did."

The fan clunks one, two, three times overhead.

“Is that why you did it?” Ford says, behind him, and Stan presses his forehead against the rough floor, breathes out. “Why you deliberately tried to hold me back? Because you felt like you were being - underappreciated? Left behind?”

“I told you a million times, poindexter, it was an accident,” Stan mumbles into the concrete, suddenly exhausted. “I never meant -”

“But you never tried not to, either!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you could have tried not to ruin the one thing that my whole life was riding on! That you could have paid a little attention to the needs of others for once in your life!” There’s a familiar note of frustration in Ford’s voice, the anger of long nights bent over AP Calculus drumming a pencil against the same paragraph over and over and over again, and the familiarity of it makes something twist painfully in Stan’s gut. “That you could have, I don’t know, put your own amusement second to my entire future -”

“Looks like you got a pretty good future right here,” Stan says, and Ford blows out an angry breath.

“I would if it hadn’t all just been shot to hell by Senator Northwest,” he mutters, at last, and Stan manages to squeeze out a bitter laugh.

“What, you’re not gonna pin this one on me too?”

“Oh, trust me,” Ford says, but the cold fury in his voice wavers slightly, revealing - if Stan’s not imagining it - the barest hint of humour. “I’m trying to.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say to that. Stan rests his head against the floor, halfheartedly tries to work his hands out of the ties around his wrists again, but gives up after a couple of tries.

“I’m...sorry. About jumping you,” he says, when the silence is starting to get almost unbearable. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen to the kids - I just saw you there, in that uniform, by that truck, and -”

“You don’t have to apologise,” Ford says, and by the sound of his voice he’s talking to his feet. “If our roles had been reversed, I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

The silence returns, the clunks of the fan eating up the seconds. It feels a little less chilly than it had a moment ago, though, and Stan takes this as a good sign.

“We gotta get out of here,” he says, resigning himself to the idea even as he carefully tries to run his fingers over the ties around his wrists, looking for joins or other possible weak points. “Got any genius ideas?”

“If only,” Ford sighs. “I tested everything I could think of while you were asleep. My powers don’t work, I can't lower temperatures in my immediate vicinity. I believe my hands are zip-tied. They’re bound behind my back with something strong, but narrow. There’s really nothing in the chamber but us - not even any kind of provision for...necessary waste disposal, which leads me to believe they’re not intending to hold us here for long. The door is a vault door, we won’t be getting it open with anything short of an explosion, and I haven’t been able to find any weak or hollow-sounding points in the wall.”

“How’d you test for that with your hands tied behind your back?” Stan asks, even as he turns the information over in his mind. “Walk around and bang your head against the wall?”

Ford is incriminatingly silent.

Despite everything, Stan can't hold back a huff of laughter.

“Okay, no hollow spots,” he says, finally, taking pity on Ford. An idea strikes him, and he says, “You said they’re not planning to hold us here for long. That means they’re gonna move us, right? That means they’ve gotta open this tin can up sometime.”

“It might just mean they’re planning to kill us,” Ford says, and the gloom and despair weighing down his voice is so thick Stan can almost feel it on his shoulders.

“Nah, if they were gonna kill us they wouldn’t have bothered sticking us in a special no-powers prison in the first place,” Stan says, trying to brush off Ford’s moping. “If they wanted us dead they woulda just shot us back on the side of the road. But here we are. Which means they want something from us. We’re valuable.”

“Oh, excellent,” Ford grumbles, and this time his voice is heavy with sarcasm as well as despair. “Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll be paraded around like sideshow freaks.”

“No, see, this means we’ve got leverage!” Stan’s grinning now, and he can’t seem to stop. “If they want something from us, then they’re not gonna kill us. They’re probably not even gonna hurt us too bad, at least not in ways that’d make us less valuable. But we don’t got the same problem.”

“I’m not engaging in murder, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Ford says coldly. 

Stan draws in a deep breath, blows it out slowly. “Did I say that? Don’t think I said that.”

“Then what were you implying?”

“We got nothing to lose. They do. We got something they want. That means -”

“We have a bargaining chip,” Ford says, slowly, like it’s starting to dawn on him.

Stan grins, even though he knows Ford can’t see it. “We have a bargaining chip.”

The fan clunks away overhead, and Stan feels like he can practically hear the wheels turning in his brother’s head. Ford’s genius brain had better be putting two and two together and coming up with a plan to get them out of here. Stan wonders, idly, what it’ll look like. Maybe they could -

Oh. That’d work.

“Hey, poindexter,” Stan says, as nonchalant as he can manage, trying not to let his excitement bleed through into his voice. He can’t believe he hasn’t considered it before, but they’re probably being watched, or at least recorded. Maybe it’d be better not to talk their whole plan out in plain language.

“Yes, Stanley?”

Stan gives his bindings another experimental twist. “Remember that time in fifth grade when we got stuck in the same class with Crampelter?”

Somewhere behind him, Ford heaves a sigh. “Yes, Stanley, though I can’t imagine why that should have crossed your mind at a time like this. This is hardly the time for reminiscing.”

Stan shrugs, or tries to, the floor underneath him hampering his movements. “Eh, no time like the present. Dad was so mad when he figured out how you’d been avoiding having to go, remember?” He stresses the last word, hoping Ford will pick up on his meaning. For all his genius, Ford can be a real blockhead when he wants to.

“I don’t see what relevance our father’s reaction to a childhood prank -” Ford starts, and then stops. Even though his back is turned towards Ford, Stan can almost see Ford’s eyes widening in realisation.

“Yeah,” Stan says, before Ford can blurt out the whole plan for the benefit of whatever security cameras or microphones might be bugging the cell they’re in. “Made Ma grounding us for a month look like gettin’ off easy.”

There’s a little huff from behind Stan that might be laughter. “I don’t remember. I just remember the whipping you got after they forced us to go to class and you broke Crampelter’s nose.”

“Hey, he had it comin’,” Stan snaps, a little too defensive. “Somebody hadda do it, things’d gone way past sittin’ down over tea and crumpets for a nice civilised chat. And he gave us one hell of a wide berth after that, didn’t he?” He grins, fierce. “ ‘sides. Nobody messes with my brother.”

Ford sucks in a deep breath, lets it out slowly. Stan feels his smile slip.

“F’r what it’s worth,” he says, to the cold ground, “I really am sorry.”

Ford is quiet for what feels like a long, long time.

Finally, he says, “For what it’s worth...I am too.”

...

Stanley is, much as it begrudges Ford to admit it, right. It doesn’t take long before a section of the wall slides aside and two figures in what looks like full riot gear, with weaponry that wouldn’t be out of place in an armed conflict with a tank, step into the room, drag him to his feet, and start to haul him away. Two more follow, pulling Stan along in their wake.

The plan is, by necessity, nebulous. It has to be, in order to be flexible enough to account for whatever unknown variables might present themselves when Stan and Ford actually try to put it into action, but it still makes Ford a little uneasy. He’d prefer to have more information, more idea of what’s to come and how to face it. He’s never been as good as Stan at thinking on his feet.

He’s also a terrible actor, which is why his heart pounds wildly in his chest as he calls, “Wait! Where are you taking me? What is this place? What’s going on? Who -”

Ford doesn’t get a response, but then, he isn’t really expecting one. He’s just trying to make enough noise that it’ll be noticeable when he suddenly stops yelling mid-sentence, rolls his eyes back in his head, and drops limply to the floor.

This trick never would’ve worked on their father, or even their mother, but it had certainly convinced Miss Shepard to send Ford to the nurse’s office to sleep it off more than once. He just hopes it will be sufficient to convince their guards. His arm is trapped painfully between his torso and the floor, and he’s pretty sure he scraped his chin open on something when he fell, but he doesn’t dare shift and risk their plan. More than only his and Stanley’s lives may depend on it.

Stan’s yelling, now, and Ford tries not to let a smile sneak across his face. His brother is a much better actor, which is why Ford is the one currently lying motionless on the floor and just trying to look unconscious. There’s what sounds like genuine fear mixed into the rasp of Stan’s voice, peeking through his anger. “Don’t you touch my brother, you bastards! What’d you do to him!?”

A heavy, gloved hand lands on Ford’s shoulder, and he nearly panics, jerking with shock. Stan’s yell of “Ford!” is as much for Ford’s benefit as it is for the guards’, a sharp reminder not to give the game away too soon.

Ford feels as though his mind has been wiped blank, like a blackboard full of junk equations when one has to start over. He can’t think on his feet the same way Stanley can, he can’t -

An idea strikes him, and he flutters his eyelids, arches his back, jerks his head from side to side. Tries to remember, to imitate, the symptoms of seizure. Silently, he curses himself, Stan, anyone and anything he can think of. This is much more acting than he’d signed up for, and he can see himself in his mind’s eye, flailing around on the floor like a caught fish flopping in the bottom of a boat. Only an idiot would be fooled by this little performance, why the hell had he gone along with this ridiculous plan in the first place -

“Shit, is he having a seizure?” Stan yells, his voice edging closer and closer to panic. As the gloved hand is snatched away from Ford’s shoulder, all Ford can think is how lucky they both are that at least one of them is a competent actor. Stan’s hysteria must thankfully be drawing the guards’ attention away from Ford’s mediocre performance, or someone would certainly have called their bluff by now. “What’d you do to him!? Leave my brother alone! Ford! Ford!”

"Don’t touch him! He might break something,” an unfamiliar voice barks, and Ford has to assume it’s one of the guards. “Cipher wouldn’t like that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to make sure they don’t swallow their tongues or anything?” Stan demands, not letting up for a second, not letting them focus on Ford, who’s starting to wear himself out with all this twitching. He’s banged his head on the floor, and it’s starting to throb, low and deep. “You did this to him! Fix it!”

“You.” The unfamiliar voice shifts, and Stan makes a noise of pain that nearly startles Ford out of the act again. “Has this happened before? What’s going on?”

“How should I know? He was fine until your guys -” Stan yelps, cutting off his own sentence, and when he speaks again his voice is breathy and choked, like he’s been winded. There’s still defiance in every syllable, though, and Ford feels a strange tightness in his chest. “No, this hasn’t happened before! Do you think I’d be freaking out so much if this was some kind of a regular thing?”

There’s a huff of a sigh from the guard, and then his voice becomes clearer again, like he’s turned in Ford’s direction. “Do any of you know first aid?”

"At least get those stupid zip ties offa him! He's gonna wrench an arm outta its socket like this!"

Ford thrashes harder, adding another jittery flutter of his eyelashes to his repertoire. He gives an extra jerk when a hand lands on his shoulder, roughly shoving him over onto his front, and tries to hold his arms still without seeming like he’s trying to hold his arms still.

There's a wrench, the plastic tie digging into Ford's wrists and grinding against bone until, abruptly, there's a snap and the pressure vanishes.

Ford flails up, lashing out as soon as his arms are free. His hands are still a little numb, his joints stiff, but his fist still connects. The guard who'd cut his bonds doubles over clutching his throat, and Ford jumps to his feet, hands balled into fists, ready to take on the rest.

At least, he's ready until he sees the gun that one of the remaining guards is holding against Stan's head.

"Make one more move, and I'll splatter his brains all over this hallway," the man says, conversationally, and Ford squeezes one fist until he can feel the crescents of his fingernails biting into the heel of his hand. 

"You wouldn't. You said yourself that your boss wouldn't like to see us injured -"

"See, that's the thing about twins," the guard says, pulling the arm he has pressed against Stan's throat tighter, until Stan's head tips back and he makes a choked noise. "You see one, you've seen 'em both."

Ford's traitor heart seizes in his chest.

Stan meets his eyes over the arm choking him, and Ford notices, with another wrench, the impressive black eye blooming on his face. Stan's gaze is pleading, and Ford has to look away.

He's been stuck in that cell for so long, pushing and pushing and pushing with that strange motionless force he's come to recognise as his power and getting no results, that he overdoes it. Ice explodes out from where he stands, slamming the guards up against the walls and encasing them in fantastic frozen waves before any of them have a chance to get a shot off. Jagged crystalline sculptures climb the walls, sealing off the hallway, cocooning them in a freezing blue-white canyon.

Ford wastes no time hurrying over to help break Stan out of the frozen grip of the guard who had had him in a chokehold. Stan looks a little shell-shocked, and when he meets Ford's eyes, his expression is painfully surprised.

“How’d you know your powers were going to work?” he manages, and Ford has to look away.

“I - I didn’t.”

"That was a stupid risk to take," Stan says, flat, shifting to take the pressure off his throat. "You shoulda just bluffed like you didn't care what happened to me."

"Then he might have shot you," Ford says, struggling with the frozen arm trapped across Stan's neck.

"So what?"

"So -"

"Yeah, so what! If he shoots me, then he shoots me." Stan tries to shrug, only for the guard's immobile body to get in his way. " 's not like I'm all that important. If your little frozen temper tantrum hadn't worked, they woulda got both of us, and then who woulda gone after those kids?"

Ford says nothing. The guard's elbow creaks ominously as he tries to raise it, and he stops before he snaps it off.

"I wasn't going to let anyone shoot you," he says, finally, when Stan doesn't say anything more.

"Thought you were all about saving the innocent kids," Stan responds, after a moment. He's obviously trying hard to sound nonchalant, but Ford can't help but hear the quaver in his voice. 

"Well," Ford replies, trying his best to keep his tone equally light, "I wouldn't be much use to them without my brother, would I?"

He has to look away when Stan sniffles, nodding when Stan grunts, "Damn allergies."

It takes some doing, but finally Stan steps free. He glances around at the devastation Ford's wrought, the occasional face distorted behind bubbled ice or outthrust limb sticking from the frozen waves, and lets out a low whistle.

"Impressive," he cracks, and Ford glowers at him. "One question: how're we supposed to get out?"

Ford can feel a flush rising up his neck.

Stan laughs, mostly good-natured, and shrugs his shoulders awkwardly. "Hey, get my hands outta this shit and I'll take care of it."

It takes several minutes to get Stan untied. As soon as Ford's bare hands touch the ties holding Stan's hands, he can feel his own powers retreating out of his grasp again. The contrast is as though he's just been blindfolded or had his ears stuffed with cotton.

"This must be what they've been using to suppress our mutations," Ford says, thinking out loud as he examines the broad twist of what appears to be hard plastic tying Stan's wrists back, running a finger over its ridged surface. The sight of his own hands against the brightly-coloured tie makes Ford shudder with realisation, and he pulls his hand away. "It's most likely a good thing that I wasn't exposed to it for much longer," he continues, giving all twelve of his fingers an experimental wiggle. "I wonder how it works...?"

"Yeah, yeah, you can nerd out about it later," Stan growls. "Like when it's not tying me up."

Ford rolls his eyes, but he turns back to the task at hand.

He finally has to steal a knife off of the frozen guard holding Stan's utility belt, but he eventually gets Stan's wrists free. Ford tucks the broken tie into his pocket as Stan rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, and turns to size up the wall of ice Ford's created blocking off the hall. It towers over them, a foot thick if it's an inch, glacial blue. It would take hours - if not days - to melt on its own.

Stan interlaces his fingers, stretching his arms out to their full length and grinning as his knuckles crack.

The fireball that blooms out from his palms is almost as tall as he is and, for the moment it takes for it to burst against the wall of ice and melt a hole in its centre, sucks all the air away.

"Was that...strictly necessary?" Ford asks, before noticing that Stan's still wearing that shit-eating grin. "Oh. Showoff."

"Says the guy who just turned this place into an igloo," Stan says, giving his shoulders a shake. "So where d'you think we'll find those kids?"

...

The fight is over in less time than it took Stan and Ford to come up with a plan to get out of their cell. Finding the kids, as it turns out, is a simple matter of following the yelling and gunfire - they’ve somehow managed to get out of wherever they’re being kept, and by the looks of things, they've held their own against anyone who's tried to put them back. And they’re not alone. 

Even though Stan’s seen them what feels like a million times on the news, there’s something really amazing about seeing the X-Men in action. The only thing more amazing is probably seeing them and the Brotherhood working together.

“I got Pacifica to call for backup. But it wasn’t like we were just going to sit around!” the boy who’s basically glued himself to Ford explains, enthusiastically, after the dust has cleared a little. He’s staring up at Ford like Ford just went to the moon and came back, so he’s not looking where he’s waving his hands and ends up nearly smacking Stan in the chest. 

Stan draws back uncomfortably, looking over the kid’s head and catching Nighthawk’s eye through the crowd. Wendy looks up, too, and smiles in Stan’s direction, and Stan manages a smile back before turning back to Ford’s new adoptive little brother or whatever. He’s guessing the kid wasn’t the only one who went for backup. 

He wonders, absently, what happened to Nighthawk’s parents’ car.

“Of course not! No hero ever saved the day by waiting for someone else to come to his rescue,” Ford agrees, and Stan catches himself trying to roll his eyes when his swollen left eye twinges. Dammit. He’s gonna have this shiner for weeks. “This is - remarkable. You organised yourselves to break out? How did you get past the guards? Out of the cells?”

“They came to take Pacifica,” the boy - Dipper - says, with a glance over at Stan. “She...convinced them that she was the only one they let out.”

“So they didn’t lock your powers down?” Ford asks, and Dipper winces.

“No, they definitely did that. They just - Pacifica’s family’s really dedicated to keeping her mutation a secret.” Dipper gives Stan another glance, and Stan realises he probably thinks he’s being sneaky about it. “You never told us you were a twin too.”

“Wait, this ‘Pacifica’ you’re talkin’ about,” Stan says, looking from Ford to his mini-me. “You don’t mean -”

The rest of his sentence gets cut off when a girl who looks eerily like a female version of Dipper, only more rainbow-y and covered in glitter, appears out of nowhere and flings both arms around Dipper's neck. A blonde girl with a look like she’s just smelled something bad and she’s trying to work out where the stink’s coming from follows in her wake, stepping uncomfortably back like she's trying to blend into the crowd. 

"Mabel - gah, gotta breathe," Dipper chokes out, and then gives a very undignified squeak as Mabel gives him an extra squeeze. 

"You're okay! You're all okay!"

"Yep, nobody's dead - except for me, if you keep squeezing my ribs like that -"

“Candy! Grenda! I found them!” the brunette girl - Mabel - yells, and two more girls come thundering through the crush, the larger of the two shouldering people aside as the little scaly one ducks and weaves her way in between them. They pile on top of Mabel as well, turning her hug into a group hug.

Finally, they break apart, and Mabel lets go of Dipper, who sucks in a huge breath and slumps forward with exaggerated relief, to turn to beam at Ford and Stan. “You didn’t tell me you had a twin!” she admonishes Ford, grinning at Stan, who suddenly feels a little like he’s been cornered by some kind of large predator. “Hi! I’m Mabel, I’m thirteen, and I make all my own sweaters!”

Ford nudges Stan in the side with one elbow, and Stan gives a slightly frozen smile. “Hi, uh, Mabel.” He extends a hand, not sure how to greet a thirteen-year-old force of nature and finally settling on a handshake. “Stan Pines. This here nerd’s my gah!” 

His sentence ends in a yelp when Mabel, ignoring Stan’s extended hand, leans in to grab both Stan and Ford into an enormous group hug. Ford glances over at Stan over Mabel’s head, and Stan figures from his expression that this is a pretty typical Mabel introduction.

“Nice - nice to meet you too, kid,” he says, and reaches awkwardly around to give Mabel a pat on the back.

“Whoa, what’s going on over here?” a familiar voice drawls, and Stan looks up to see Wendy, dragging Nighthawk by one hand and aiming a teasing half-smile in Stan’s direction. “Family reunion? Seriously, man, you’ve been holding out on us, I didn’t know you had a twin.”

“Is every single person I talk to from now on gonna say that?” Stan snaps, but there’s no bite in it. “Yeah, the slightly-worse-looking version of me over there is my nerd brother. Ford, this is Wendy, she could kick your ass and not break a sweat. Oh, and Nighthawk, he’s a greasy, scrawny loser who thinks he’s hot shit, but we keep him around for some reason anyway.” 

Nighthawk huffs out a breath that shifts his flop of dyed-black bang and yanks his hand back from Wendy, crossing his arms over his chest instead.

“...charmed,” Ford says, finally. Wendy winks at him, and laughs when he turns red.

“I - don’t think I remember seeing you around school,” the kid - Dipper - blurts out, and Stan realises he’s even redder than Ford. Nighthawk scowls, and drapes one arm possessively over Wendy’s shoulder.

“That’s probably ‘cause I’m a dropout,” Wendy says, like it’s nothing, and then, to Stan, “Hey, looks like we’re getting ready to ditch. Don’t really wanna be here when the feds show up. If you’re done catching up...”

She jerks a thumb over her shoulder.

Stan looks down at the kids, who are looking expectantly up at him, and then at Ford, who’s got a nearly identical expression on his face.

“So, uh, guess I oughtta...” Stan starts, gruff, forced nonchalance bleeding out of his voice as he looks away and rubs the back of his neck with one hand.

“You don’t have to -” Ford starts, at the same time as Stan, and bites the rest of the sentence back. He meets Stan’s eyes, and for once neither of them looks away.

“Nah,” Stan says, at last, turning away with a little shake of his head. “ ‘m not really cut out for this school stuff, you know that.” 

“If it’s the money you’re worried about, that’s not a - half of these kids are here on scholarship. Stan, I’m here on scholarship. They just want to help -”

“Hey, nerd, save the recruiting campaign shit for someone who cares,” Nighthawk snaps, and Stan tries again to roll his eyes, wincing at the stab in his left eye. 

“Shut up, wouldja?” He gives his head another shake, turning back to Ford. “It ain’t that. I just -” Ford’s looking wounded, and Stan bites down on his bottom lip. “It looks like you got a good thing goin’ for you here. I don’t wanna mess it up for you.”

He doesn’t hit Ford, but from the look on Ford’s face, nobody’d ever be able to guess.

“Is that what you think I want?” Ford asks, quiet, and Stan shrugs, sharp and short, like it hurts to move too much.

“Isn’t it?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” a high voice says, and Stan and Ford both look down to see Mabel glowering at them with her hands on her hips. “Both of you need to hug it out. Now.”

When neither of them move, she adds, with a clap of her hands, “I’m not joking!”

“She’s really not,” Dipper agrees. 

Wendy lets out a huff of something that sounds suspiciously close to laughter. “Kid, I like your style.” She nudges Nighthawk in the ribs with her elbow, drawing a yelp out of him and making him jump. “Wonder if that’d work on our fearless leader and Xavier.”

Stan looks up and meets Ford’s eyes, and wants to laugh himself. He guesses that the deer-in-headlights expression Ford’s wearing doesn’t look all that different from the look on his own face.

"Look. Mabel," Stan says, finally, kneeling down to face the girl. "Thing is, my brother'n me...we got a lotta history. I dunno if we're ready to just hug it out."

Mabel's eyes are enormous and shimmering. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't try!"

Ford gives his glasses another adjustment even though they don’t really need it.

“Mabel, perhaps this is not the time -”

“This is the only time!” Mabel looks from Ford to Stan, and Stan wants to punch his own stupid heart. He’s known this kid for, what, five minutes? He shouldn’t be looking at that kicked-puppy expression and thinking he can’t bear to disappoint the kid any more. “You two are twins, but you never even mentioned each other to your friends, and now you’re about to go in two separate directions and maybe never see each other again except when you’re fighting! If there was ever a time for you two to hug it out, that time is now!”

“Mabel, the FBI is literally on its way here right now,” Dipper says.

“Not what I’m talking about!” Mabel shouts.

Ford looks at Stan.

Stan looks at Ford.

“Sure, why not,” Stan says, finally, straightening up and holding out his arms. “C’mere, poindexter.”

“This is preposterous,” Ford mutters, but he shuffles forward into Stan’s arms, letting out a squeak when Stan grabs him and squeezes him as hard as he possibly can. Stan hoists Ford up off his feet, spinning him around in a circle as Ford struggles and protests, this is undignified, they’re grown men, Stanley - 

“Fine, fine,” Stan sighs, at last, setting his brother back on his feet. 

He doesn’t let go right away, though, and Ford, for all his whining, doesn’t either. In his head, Stan’s aware that there are people looking at them, that Nighthawk’s going to make fun of him for this for the next century, that this whole thing is kind of ridiculous and girly and stupid and what would Dad think? and that the feds are going to be here any minute and -

But Ford’s got his chin pressed into Stan’s shoulder and both arms around him, and he’s real and solid in Stan’s grip, and there’s an inconvenient lump in Stan’s throat even though his face hurts where his left eye is pressed up against the side of his brother’s head, and for the first time since he got kicked out he actually feels safe. Actually feels warm.

“That’s right!” Mabel says, and if the triumph in her voice sounds a little smug, Stan can’t bring himself to care. “Hug it allllllll out!”

“Can we leave now?” Nighthawk mutters. Everyone ignores him.

Ford finally pulls away, stepping back from Stan and giving himself a quick once-over, straightening his glasses and attempting, with little success, to unrumple his shirt.

“If you really don’t want to stay,” he says, pulling his glasses off and polishing them against the hem of his shirt, “then I won’t try to tell you what to do. I - think it’s good for us. Having our own lives.”

Something in Stan’s chest squeezes tight, compressing the air out of his lungs in one short, vicious burst, but Ford isn’t done talking. “But I don’t think that means we can’t be part of each other’s.” He finally looks up, meeting Stan’s eyes. “You’re welcome to visit any time.”

Stan sucks in a breath. It feels like his first in a very, very long time.

“Only if you promise not to talk politics,” he says, and is rewarded when Ford cracks a small smile.