"Fine!" He reaches out to lean against the wall and when he sees Ford his fist clenches, he feels his short fingernails scraping against the wall because all the anger he hadn't been able to let in earlier, because there's no one to use it on, because nothing he does with his fist is gonna' help Ford out of the shit inside his own head, it's sure here now, here the moment Stan sees him. Ford looks sick, damn it, he looks sick and starving and exhausted, probably because he is all of those things, all of 'em and more, Stan can see it even better in the brighter light out here.
"Fine, I tripped, go back to-" Go back to bed, go back to sleep, where the bullshit demon eats your eyeballs so you can't even see your own brother without that look in your eyes, that look of terror so big and deep there aren't even any words for it. After Ford woke up, before he closed his eyes - Stan's seen people look that way before, not at him but near him, and the first person to look him in the eyes like he's the one dishing out all that big, deep terror was not supposed to be his brother. It wasn't ever supposed to be Ford.
"Can you even sleep?" And suddenly he's pacing, flinging out an arm and stalking to the other side of the room. "Can you eat? You got all this food an' it don't look like it's been touched, you got dust on all the cans."
And back he goes to the other side of the room again, fast and scowling. "They can feed guys like you in those 'facilities', they got IVs and needles and beds with big thick straps on 'em, guys like you go into those places and they're fed and watered an' drugged up 'till they sleep real deep every night, an' guys with lotsa' letters after their names talk to 'em every day, an' when guys like you come outta' those places they ain't guys like you no more."
It can't be called pacing, what he's doing, because it's not straight back and forth so much as the path of an eightball shot by an excited kid who hit way too hard and sent the thing bouncing against every one of the walls without coming close to a single corner pocket. The kid here is his temper, he guesses, and the pool cue in this case is that feeling all tight and tighter inside of his chest. It's a science thing, isn't it, something about what happens when you put a lot of pressure into a very small space, what is it that happens after that? Ford would know. Maybe Ford would know. He's not sure how much of anything Ford knows, right now.
"I got none of that, no little IV tubes, no fancy drugs. I could get some, I bet I could fix you up real good, an' then sit here keepin' my brother stoned out his mind for the rest of his goddamned life! If it were me, well, it wouldn't be the shock of the century, would it, me endin' up like that, but you? You? It ain't fair!"
His spinning eightball path has him in front of a little glass-fronted cabinet now, weird-shaped things in jars filling all the shelves inside it, and he can't tell what they are but he bets every single one of 'em is part of some brilliant experiment with about a million pages of flowing, illegible notes stuffed in some filing cabinet somewhere. Hopefully those notes are good, because a bunch of bits of shattered glass all spinning out and landing inside 'em like that is probably enough to ruin any experiments. Not all the glass bit it, just the one side over by the part of the wooden frame he punched, but what's left cracks a little more when he hits that frame again and the noise out of his mouth is a wordless one, a noise of frustration and pain when that second punch sends the bigger splinters and a few slices of glass he didn't quite avoid digging even deeper into that soft skin between his knuckles. It hurts but in a satisfying way and he keeps grimacing, standing there and panting at the crooked cabinet frame, not saying anything because that feeling, the satisfaction and half-release of that awful pressure tightening inside his chest, that feeling's all he's got, and he wants to pretend it's going to last.
drama drama drama drama
"Fine, I tripped, go back to-" Go back to bed, go back to sleep, where the bullshit demon eats your eyeballs so you can't even see your own brother without that look in your eyes, that look of terror so big and deep there aren't even any words for it. After Ford woke up, before he closed his eyes - Stan's seen people look that way before, not at him but near him, and the first person to look him in the eyes like he's the one dishing out all that big, deep terror was not supposed to be his brother. It wasn't ever supposed to be Ford.
"Can you even sleep?" And suddenly he's pacing, flinging out an arm and stalking to the other side of the room. "Can you eat? You got all this food an' it don't look like it's been touched, you got dust on all the cans."
And back he goes to the other side of the room again, fast and scowling. "They can feed guys like you in those 'facilities', they got IVs and needles and beds with big thick straps on 'em, guys like you go into those places and they're fed and watered an' drugged up 'till they sleep real deep every night, an' guys with lotsa' letters after their names talk to 'em every day, an' when guys like you come outta' those places they ain't guys like you no more."
It can't be called pacing, what he's doing, because it's not straight back and forth so much as the path of an eightball shot by an excited kid who hit way too hard and sent the thing bouncing against every one of the walls without coming close to a single corner pocket. The kid here is his temper, he guesses, and the pool cue in this case is that feeling all tight and tighter inside of his chest. It's a science thing, isn't it, something about what happens when you put a lot of pressure into a very small space, what is it that happens after that? Ford would know. Maybe Ford would know. He's not sure how much of anything Ford knows, right now.
"I got none of that, no little IV tubes, no fancy drugs. I could get some, I bet I could fix you up real good, an' then sit here keepin' my brother stoned out his mind for the rest of his goddamned life! If it were me, well, it wouldn't be the shock of the century, would it, me endin' up like that, but you? You? It ain't fair!"
His spinning eightball path has him in front of a little glass-fronted cabinet now, weird-shaped things in jars filling all the shelves inside it, and he can't tell what they are but he bets every single one of 'em is part of some brilliant experiment with about a million pages of flowing, illegible notes stuffed in some filing cabinet somewhere. Hopefully those notes are good, because a bunch of bits of shattered glass all spinning out and landing inside 'em like that is probably enough to ruin any experiments. Not all the glass bit it, just the one side over by the part of the wooden frame he punched, but what's left cracks a little more when he hits that frame again and the noise out of his mouth is a wordless one, a noise of frustration and pain when that second punch sends the bigger splinters and a few slices of glass he didn't quite avoid digging even deeper into that soft skin between his knuckles. It hurts but in a satisfying way and he keeps grimacing, standing there and panting at the crooked cabinet frame, not saying anything because that feeling, the satisfaction and half-release of that awful pressure tightening inside his chest, that feeling's all he's got, and he wants to pretend it's going to last.