goodguygrifter | (no subject)

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Well, Stan's been crammed deeper up the ass end of nowhere before, but that doesn't mean that creeping, uneasy feeling doesn't get worse the deeper he gets into this damn forest. It's dark, it's spooky, it's -

It's exactly like the kind of forest you used to see in those old monster movies, actually. The kind he and Ford used to sit in front of, enraptured, arguing over how many pieces the monster of the week was going to tear the ditzy teenage protagonist into.

Maybe it's not the forest that's giving him such a bad case of the heebie jeebies. He can admit that to himself now that he's almost there. His car rolls to a stop and he sits there while the engine ticks cool with his hands still in their old, familiar grips on the wheel. He gets out. He shuts the door.

"No problem," he mutters to himself, watching the door of that weird, creepy little cabin like he really is in one of those old movies and something's about to jump out and grab him. "It's only been nine years. And ten months. And fourteen days. And he doesn't even want you here. That's no, no reason to, to uh..."

The doorknob of that weird, creepy little cabin door is under his hand. If his hand moves a couple more inches, he'll open it. He'll open the door, and then he'll -

You'll what? he thinks to himself. You'll what, genius?

"Aw, shit," Stanley says, and takes one step back, and then another, still looking at the door like it's about to bite him.

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For a moment, Ford looks curious, thoughtful, like he's wondering what Stan might possibly have and how it could help - but then he gives that question a little spin, turns it around in his head and takes into consideration everything he knows about Stan, and all the things he doesn't.

He blinks owlishly as his question answers itself, unable to decide how he should feel about the conclusion he's come to.

After a brief moment of consideration he decides he is both in no position to judge and also too tired to really give a shit. It wouldn't be the first time he introduced questionable substances to his system, legal or otherwise.

"...Are we talking downers or hypnotics?" He finally asks, despite being fairly certain he could be talked into taking horse tranquilizers at this point.

"Uh, I'll haveta' go see what I got." He shrugs a shoulder, this awkward, worried discomfort starting to slide through the gaps in his composure. For some reason Ford asking for specifics makes it worse, feels like they're kinda' sidling closer to the sort of shit it's important the brother who just accepted Stan back into his life don't find out about.

Stan stands, making it a little past the doorway before he realizes at least the second thing that's making this feel all weird is something he can maybe do a little bit about.

"Um, I wasn't gonna-" he lifts an arm up to lean his elbow against the wall, hoping the pause to change his posture will give him a second to figure out what it was he was gonna' say. "When I thought you were, you know."

He points a finger at his temple and winds it in a backward circle, which feels loads better than actually admitting out loud just how shitty a job he did at trusting his brother.

"I wasn't gonna', you know, actually use any of that stuff. On you. Just so we're clear. I just had it, you know. I just still had it. I- I wouldn't'a done anything with it. You, you know that, right?" He tries on a we're-all-friends-here sort of grin. 'Cause they are. Friends again. So that's good.

Ford wants, very much, to say he can take Stan at his word. He wants to say he knows his brother well enough to tell if he's being truthful or just reading a line.

He wants to say, with conviction, that Stan may be a dishonest man but he draws the line at lying to his own flesh and blood.

He wants to say this, but it's hard. Not because Stanley has given him any particular reason to distrust him, but because his ability to trust another living being has been very recently fucked all to pieces and that's not something that can be so easily fixed by a day's worth of reconciliation.

At the very least, Ford can comfortably say his brother at least deserves the benefit of doubt - not only for hopeful, sentimental reasons, but because over the past day and a half he's more than proved that he deserves it.

Huffing out a small, amused breath, Ford matches Stans's awkward smile with a smaller, wearier version of his own and cards a hand through his hair, which desperately needs a proper brushing but will just have to settle for his fingers.

"I know I wouldn't have blamed you, if you did."

He lets his hand drop back to his side, and sure enough his hair springs back up as surely as though he had never combed it back at all.

"Anyone else would've had me locked up in an asylum by now."

Stan's posture loosens and his smile widens a little in relief. That's not exactly an 'I believe you' but Stan don't get much of that these days anyway. At this point in his life not being blamed for shit feels almost like the same thing as being believed, especially when the person saying it ain't even annoyed about it. So that's okay.

He slouches against the wall, his smile going playful and the relief making him forget to watch his mouth as close as he's been trying to. He huffs a laugh.

"Like hell I'd wanna' break out of a place like that twice." He pushes off from the wall, speaking over his shoulder before he heads out to his car to get the goods. "I mean, I'd have to sneak in and get you out after five minutes, you know that right? That kinda' shithole can't handle the guys who are supposed to be there, no way they could handle you."

He gives his brother a two-fingered wave. "I'll just be a minute."

After about five or maybe ten-ish minutes he's back and spreads across the comforter an array of pill bottles. All look very neat and official, and some of that even holds up when you look at 'em close. Most of 'em even have insides that match their labels except for a couple that, in context, obviously won't. Probably Ford doesn't have much use for, say, allergy medication, or whatever. "I brought more than just downers 'cause uh, I don't know what Mr. Asshat From The Great Beyond is doin' to your head, exactly, so figured you'd know more than me about what might help."

There's a story there, in that offhand comment about having done that sort of thing before. Ford can only begin to imagine the circumstances which might have lead his brother to be committed to a mental institution, though if he had to hazard a guess, he'd say it was probably some sort of bizarre misunderstanding resulting from A. Stan's eccentric behavior or B. An elaborate scheme gone horribly wrong. Or right, depending on whether or not landing himself in the loony bin was Stan's intention all along.

After all, he had to get his hands on all those medications somehow, and Ford has never known his brother to do anything conventionally.

When the man in question returns with an absolutely obscene amount of ill-gotten prescription medications, Ford can't help but smile slightly and let out an amused exhale through his nose. It's not quite a laugh, but it's in the same ball park which has to count for something.

He swears to God, if Stanley actually went undercover as a mental patient just so he could raid a pharmacy, he'll eat his hat.

"Honestly, your guess is about as good as mine." He admits, before picking up a bottle at random and squinting at its label only to immediately set it aside once he realizes it's a barbiturate.

He's desperate, but he's not that desperate.

"As far as I'm aware there are no drugs on the market - black or otherwise - that can effectively prevent a person from dreaming."

He turns over another bottle, then another, inspecting each label quickly but thoroughly.

"So, failing that, I figure we may as well go in the opposite direction and see if there isn't something that will make my dreamscape so unstable that Bill won't be able to exert his control over it."

He pauses, looking up from one of the orange bottles to level his brother with a comically deadpan expression.

"In other words, before I go to sleep I might need to be about an eight out of ten on the Balls Scale of Trippiness."

He doesn't know how he manages to say that with a straight face, but he does, despite the powerful urge to smile at his own joke.

Stanley snorts, the snort grows into a full on laugh, and he plops himself down onto the bed, the bottles bouncing a little before the mattress settles. He grins at his brother, grins wide, disbelieving and kind of thrilled. A joke. An honest to god joke. Look at that. "By the time we finish up here you'll be a world expert on the old Balls Scale. You might even be able to make it into an official science thing. Write some, you know, big paper on it."

He picks up the pill bottles one by one, looks at the label, puts them down. "An eight, huh? You're gonna' wanna' be asleep before that hits. Think you can, uh, manage that on your own or should we try to finagle somethin'?" Stan winds the bottle in one hand and the bottle in another around each other, the hand-signal for 'finagling'. Finagling with chemical assistance. Round and round the bottle goes, and where it stops, nobody knows if your brother has a drug problem.

Right. Whatever. Drugged into a hallucination coma is probably better than going nuts from not sleeping, anyway.

Stan's laugh isn't a gentle thing - that smoker's rasp he had when they were kids has grown into a full-blown growl, and now any vocalization he makes sounds as though it's being made through a throat full of gravel. It's not exactly pleasing to the ear, at least not by conventional standards, but Ford Pines has never been a man of convention.

To him, hearing Stan laugh feels an awful lot like catching an old favorite on the radio only to realize that he can't remember all the words- which shouldn't discomfit him as much as it does, considering that's just what happens when you go without hearing something for over a decade.

Still, it's strange to Ford to think he would ever need a refresher to familiarize himself with a sound he feels he should know by heart, time and absence be damned.

"As a general rule of thumb, you should never mix prescriptions without knowing how they interact, so--"

He reaches out, aiming to casually swipe at one of Stan's hands and snatch the bottle away from him.

"Until I can verify I'm not inventing a spectacular new brand of poison, no. There will be no finagling, chemical or otherwise."

Despite shooting Stan down, he still offers him a small, amused smile.

"Besides, at this point I've racked up so much sleep debt it's a wonder I don't pass out every time I shut my eyes to blink."

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