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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This is - well, it's not good, exactly, but it's okay. It's workable. Stanley isn't actively shouting and insisting he needs to go to the hospital, or worse, asking more uncomfortable questions he doesn't want to answer. He seems to be taking things in stride, which Ford hopes is a sign that he's finally getting used to this absolute shitshow that is his brother's life, and not just a finely-crafted veneer masking his internal panic.

But then, Ford knows better than to put too much stock into the former.

"I believe," He begins, as he gathers up the clothes shoved his way. "That this would make a nice Kodak Moment if I weren't half naked."

He knows damn well that he's dodging the question, but Ford is as socially awkward and body-conscious as he was when they were teenagers, and he really doesn't feel like having a deep, personal talk while he's stripped to the waist and covered in -

Yeah. It's. It's not comfortable for him, having this talk with Stan close enough to see things in full-detail. It looks worse up close, so much worse, and something tells Ford that his brother knows exactly how deep you have to cut to create marks like these.

He knows covering up isn't going to make Stan magically forget what's under his clothes, but damn it, they can both make an effort to pretend.

Stan looks into his brother's eyes for a moment, looking for something. But he can't push. If he pushes, this little idea he's crafting, the story that everything is alright here, is going to fly right the hell apart. Stanley knows a little something about shoddy craftsmanship, after all, and just how far you can push it. If Ford ain't giving this to him, he ain't getting it.

He turns away with a bark of what's meant to be laughter, and rubs at the back of his head. "Yeah. They don't sell them kinda' greetin' cards at Kodak, do they?"

When he stops at the door he holds onto the frame, just like he did last time, but unlike last time he doesn't look back. There's a big black screen between him and Ford, or there might as well be. The guy's earned a little privacy, alright?

"You, you feel up to goin' into the kitchen? Or are ya' about to, you know..." He hesitates over this next word, and then decides the best way to handle it is to turn it into a joke, turning his voice sly and amused. "Faint again? Just tell me when you feel a swoon comin' on, I gotta' have time to catch ya'."

Oh, thank god Ford wasn't so sure he'd be able to dodge that bullet, but thankfully Stan doesn't press him for an actual answer. At least, not for now he doesn't - who knows if he'll bring the subject back up later on. If he does, well, that's a problem for Future Ford to deal with. For the time being, all he has to worry about is getting dressed and covering up any evidence of what happened the last time Bill decided to pay him a visit.

Or most of it, at least. He should have asked Stan to grab him a turtleneck, or something with a collar - unfortunately for them both, what Ford has in his hands is a t-shirt. One of the very few he owns. God, out of all the things Stan could have grabbed, how did he manage to find the one thing that doesn't cover his neck?

"I'm not a damsel in distress, Stan." There it is again, that fond, exasperated tone.

"And you're no knight in shining armor. More of a rogue, really. Probably the scoundrel subclass if we really want to get technical."

Why yes, yes that is a reference to DD&D, and no, Ford does not expect Stan to get it. He's just thinking out loud, trying to fill the silence with nonsense and filler because he just...doesn't like when things go quiet between them. It's intensely uncomfortable, listening to the silence whilst being painfully aware that there's countless things Stan wants to say to him, and vice versa.

Once dressed, Ford passes a towel over his damp hair one last time before tossing it carelessly into the hamper behind him. He doesn't bother trying to brush the mess on top of his head - he knows better than to even bother with it right now. It's not like there's anyone around he has to impress - he's fairly certain Stan's opinion of him can't sink much lower than it likely already has, considering everything that's happened.

"Also, for the record? I didn't faint."

Clearly this is a very important correction to make, which is why he punctuates the statement by lightly bopping Stan on the arm with the back of his hand.

Stan's grin is surprised and genuine, at least until he turns it to Ford and sees- yeah. Yeah, he sees. "No, but I might," he mutters, and he's never been squeamish, he ain't about to start now. It's just that the blankets need straightening, that's all, and Stanley ain't the best at keepin' things straight and neat and all that shit so he's really gotta' pay attention to the way that he does it. Makin' a bed ain't for the faint of heart.

"You, uh, you never told me if you're hungry. Are you hungry? There's food." Food which Ford owns. He knows there's food. What else? Okay. Okay. "It really does help, believe you me, after, ya' know, for you to grow all that blood back. Don't wanna go takin' a dive facefirst into a briefcase of someone else's hundreds, haha, um."

That's no better, is it? Shit, he's usually better at distracting people than this, why is he so freaked? It's just a scar. It's just a scar. It's his brother's scar, and it was deep, deep, and it was carved into him.

"Okay," he says, very quietly, to himself. He takes a deep breath, says it again, and his voice shakes a little less this time. It's fine. It's all fine.

If Stan thinks Ford doesn't notice the way his smile fades when his eyes turn to his throat, he has another thing coming.

He notices. Lord, does he notice. How can he not? It's been so long since he's seen his brother smile - of course he would be painfully aware of anything that took it away. The damage has already been done, but Ford still finds himself rubbing self-consciously at the side of his neck anyway in a lame attempt to cover the dips and raised edges that have Stan so shaken.

He watches from the doorway as his brother tries to distract himself with mindless busywork, not wanting to get too close lest he give him the opportunity to catch another glimpse of the other-worldly writing carved into his skin. Ford tries to think of the positives, counts himself lucky that at the very least Stan doesn't know what those symbols actually mean. Something tells him if he did, he'd be far more livid than he is now.

Considering how shaken up Stan already is, making him angry on top of everything else is the last thing they need.

Awkwardly, Ford clears his throat, unsure what to say. Part of him wants to say something reassuring, to try to ease his brother's mind since it's clearly still fixated on...yeah. That. But at the same time, it's so much easier to just dance around the issue, to change the subject and pretend that everything is A-Okay.

It's not till he hears how shaky that second 'okay' sounds even after taking that steadying breath that Ford knows what choice he has to make.

"Come on, Stan, I carved my head open and you're worried about something that's already healed over?"

It's a joke, or at least, that's what it's meant to be. It's not all that funny, really, as evident by how Ford has to force some cheer into his tone as he says it.

"You think you'd be more concerned about the potential sepsis, not the cosmetic damage."

Oh, wait, shit. He took that a little too far - shouldn't have mentioned the possibility of infection and organ failure. Whoops.

Luckily for Ford - for both of them, maybe - sepsis doesn't mean the same thing to Stan that it does to him. To Stan sepsis is something doctors say on TV, and he is so used to dismissing it as meaningless PHD talk that the word doesn't really penetrate, and he is too focused on keeping his shit something almost like together to notice Ford's 'oh shit' moment on saying it.

He's too focused on other things, too. On the thoughts floating around in his head, dangerous ones, because the plaster of normal Stan's tried to put over all this is cracking. It feels like the truth is about to spill out from behind it, at least some part of the truths they've been skating over since he got here.

"I ain't worried about your pretty face." He glances back at Ford, then down, and then, "I shoulda' been there," he says, real quiet.

"Whenever that happened. Wherever it was. If I'd been braver, if I'd called- I had your number, same way I got your address. You need to call that school a' yours, tell 'em to up their security, 'cause it really blows."

He swallows and turns around to sit heavily on the side of the bed, looking up at the ceiling. "Back when you lived there, in your dorm. I had your number, and I'd call it sometimes when things got uh, got rough, an' I had enough change. But I couldn't- I couldn't. You always sounded, you sounded normal. You were never meant to know about that stuff. You, you were meant to go to college and wow everyone with your big old brain and change the world, and I'd- Once I could come back- Then everything'd be fine. It woulda' been, if I'd done my part. But I blew it. I blew it again. God, I'm sorry. It don't change nothin', but-"

His chest moves with a couple big, quick breaths, and for about the dozenth time in the past twenty-four hours his eyes are less than dry. It's got to be somethin' in this room, dust or something. There's no other reason two grown men oughta' have to tear up so much.

Edited 2015-12-31 00:02 (UTC)

There it is again, that horrible sinking feeling in his gut that's reared its ugly head every single time their conversations take a downward turn. It sits heavily in his stomach, twists him up inside till he feels like he's gonna be sick. How did things come to this? How did they reach the point where just being in the same room together inevitably broke one of them down?

Ford wishes he knew. He wishes he knew how to fix it, to backpedal and erase whatever steps they took that lead them to this point. But then, wishing doesn't do a damn thing to make anything better, and neither does standing there like a jackass because - big surprise - he's no more prepared to handle this situation than he was the last time it happened.

He doesn't know what to do and he hates it, because he always knows what to do. He's the smart one, the brainaic, the older brother. He's supposed to be able to make everything better but he can't because there's just no fixing this.

"...Stan?"

He finds himself taking a halting step forward, unsure what he plans to do once he reaches Stan, but feeling compelled to go to him all the same.

"You--you don't actually think any of this is your fault, do you?"

He swallows, dreading the answer despite already knowing full well what it is.

Stan barks something breathy and not at all amused, then sniffs and wipes at his face, and he's too deep in his own shit to think twice about what it means that Ford even asked. "If I'd been here, if I'd just had the balls to stay on the damn phone for more than two seconds, you think you would have-"

He turns to Ford then, his angry gaze flicking down to those scars and back up to Ford's face. He remembers then that they're pretending his brother didn't do this himself, that there's no terrifying shadowy enemy living inside his brother's own mind, and that pretense, at least, he can keep up a little while. If it lets him stay here, keeps Ford from gettin' mad enough to try and kick him out, he'll pretend. (Could Ford have done that to himself, though? Could anyone? He cut his own damn head open, so- Stan doesn't know. He doesn't know anything about just what it is his brother can do.)

"You think anyone would have got to you that way? It's my job to look out for you. That's what I'm good for. But I was too scared and now you-" He waves toward his brother's neck, his face twisted up in anger and pain. "You can't unknow that kinda' thing. Whatever you been through, I was too- I coulda' been there, if I tried. And now you, you can never unknow it."

Then he leans forward and puts his face in his hands and keeps taking those big, quick breaths because what else is there to say? Ford may be the one who's good with those big words and the stupid-complex nerd theories, but Stan thinks he's covered all this pretty well. He don't know what Ford's gonna' do, now that Stan's made him see all this clear, but whatever it is, it won't be too far off the mark. Whatever it is, he kind of doesn't want to see it.

"You could've--" Ford repeats the words, his voice quiet, hushed.

His brow furrow, his mouth working on words that get tangled up in his throat. He finds himself moving, crossing the room in a few quick, uneven strides. He doesn't know what he's doing when he reaches his brother, doesn't know why his hands are reaching for his shoulders and gripping tight.

"Don't." His voice is still hushed, though there's firmness there that replaces the incredulity from before. "Don't you dare put this on yourself."

He sounds angry now, though not at Stan. No, what he's angry at is something intangible, something he can't rage against physically so he'll have to settle for growling at his brother instead.

The hands on his shoulders make him tense, make his whole body tense, his back and shoulders and legs all ready to - well, ready for something, ready for whatever, ready to move, and his eyes are wide. It's his ears that aren't getting with the program, because the words, they don't fit.

Nah, he heard right, it's Ford that isn't with the program. "You don't get it. That's what I'm for, steppin' up to take the hits so you don't have to, you oughta' know that. I shouldn't of cared whether or not you'd even talk to me, I shoulda' just come. I thought you were safe with your degrees and your fancy grant, and look! Look how wrong I got it. You shoulda' had better than this, this creepy little shack in a creepy little forest dealin' with all this - whatever the hell this is, it don't matter, dealing with it on your own! You shoulda' got better than this, and you didn't, and whose fault is that?"

Stanley pokes at Ford's chest now, still breathing hard but tears forgotten in the indignity of his brother being so dumb about such an obvious thing. "I shouldn't have ta' walk you through this, pointdexter, you know this one."

"...Whose fault? Whose fault?"

His voice cracks at the end there, but he's too busy fuming with righteous indignation to care that his voice went up a few octaves in a way it hasn't since he was thirteen and puberty was kicking his ass up and down the stairs.

Ford shoves hard at his brother's shoulders in an attempt to shove him back down onto the bed, because he has not been this angry in a long while and so help them God, Stanley is going to sit down and listen.

"You're not my keeper, Stan! You don't get to take credit for my mistakes, you can't just--" He trips over his words but keeps going, to incensed to stop.

"You can't just disappear for ten years then come back into my life when it's already--a-after I've---"

God damn it, God damn it. Now he's got to blink hard against the stinging feeling in the back of his eyes, take a leaf from Stanley's book and drag in a breath to steady himself.

"You don't get to come here and tell me what I deserve when you don't know what I've done."

And there it is, the catalyst of his anger, the source of his frustration towards his brother for daring to place the blame for how his life turned out on himself: some not-so-small part of Ford genuinely believes that he's simply reaping what he has sowed.

Edited (typo) 2015-12-31 05:47 (UTC)

The shove makes Stan grimace, his expression going all threatening without even thinking about it. If this were anyone else - maybe even if this were just another conversation - he woulda' come back at that shove with a punch, and a hard one. But after baring his mistakes, making it so clear to Ford how he's failed him, all Stan does is let himself fall back on the bed, feels his arms tense but just uses them to catch himself on the mattress.

"You got one thing right, I am too late, too late by years. That's the thing. Whatever you done when I was off - you know, when I was uh, when I was away - you shouldn't of had to. Whatever you've done, it don't matter. I've done plenty a' shit too ya' know, real nasty shit, but you - you're different. You always deserved a better life, and you shoulda' had your brother there makin' sure you got it. Maybe I don't know the details exactly but I know that much, that's all I need to know. Come on, is it the blood loss talkin' or what? You never used to be this slow on the uptake."

Whatever you've done, it don't matter.

It don't matter

Ford can feel something twist inside him, twist and snap like a fractured bone. His brother, his stupid, hopeless, loyal brother is sitting there and telling him he deserved better than he got despite - despite how his own life turned out. Despite Ford being too hurt to speak up, too much of a coward to say anything to their father on their worst night of their lives. He could've, he could've said something - it wouldn't have made any difference, once their father set his mind there was no changing it - but he should've done it anyway. He should've done it but he didn't and Stan is here forgiving him for that, blaming himself for not being around, and--

And he has no idea. He has no idea how misplaced his forgiveness is.

Ford feels lightheaded, suddenly. There's a strange buzzing in his skull, like his head is full of static. He finds himself feeling unsteady on his feet, and so he reaches forward to take hold of his brother's shoulders for balance.

"Stan." His voice has gone quiet again, and there's a watery quality to both his tone and his eyes that belies just how distressed he feels at the moment.

"Stan, I nearly destroyed the entire world."

His fingers tighten their grip on his brother's shoulders, both to emphasize the severity of his words, and because he just really needs something to hold on to right now.

"You--you're not to blame for any of this. You're not the guilty party here. I-I know, I know you think things should have turned out differently for us, for me, but..."

He swallows hard, tries to ignore the stinging in his eyes. He's never said this out loud before, never wanted to admit it to himself let alone anyone else, but Stan needs to hear it.

"I've gotten what I deserve."

Stan meets Ford's eyes, and his expression is drawn and worried because Ford's tone is, Ford says it like it's something awful they oughta' be worried about. But the actual words, they're - what does he even do with them? There are a lotta' things Stan's had to worry about, and some far, far more than others, but I nearly destroyed the world is so far out from anything he's ever considered real that it's-

Well, he's been thinking about that old show a lot lately, The Twilight Zone, and he thinks that's only gonna' keep happening. Maybe Ford lives in the Twilight Zone. Maybe he thinks he does.

Stan's expression, his whole posture, is sort of frozen. Guys grab you on the street talkin' about the end of the world you shove 'em off and keep walkin, but your brother? Sayin' it real earnest, almost cryin' about it? Shit, what do you even say?

When Ford gets to that last part, though, then Stanley knows what to say. He don't think for a second about what to say to that.

"Don't you ever say that. Don't you ever say that," he says, and reaches out to cup the back of Ford's neck and try and pull him in. "Now sit down, right here next to me. I'm gonna' give you a pass for what you just said, because you look like you're about to faint and probably got no idea what you're sayin'. But I hear it again, and we're gonna' have words."

"Don't matter what kinda' mad scientist shit you did, or didn't do, or, or whatever. No one talks about my brother that way." He really focuses on Ford's eyes then, trying to get Ford looking back, and for a second Stanley almost couldn't be further from the guy who'd made that weepy confession a minute ago. There's somethin' here his brother needs protecting from, even if it's a small thing, and Stanley can do that. It's the most natural thing in the world to do it. "Huh? You hearin' me?"

Ford goes down without a fight, that tug on his neck throwing him so off-balance that he has to sit down next to Stan if only to keep from falling flat on his ass. Even if he had wanted to put up a fight and keep on standing, he wouldn't have been able to - his brother's grip is strong, and Ford hasn't been at the top of his game for...well, for a while.

It doesn't help that what Stan is saying, what he genuinely believes, is making something inside Ford's chest constrict so tightly he's afraid it's going to burst.

Even after everything that has happened between them, despite all of the hurt and the betrayal, despite the years of separation, despite never reaching out to offer help before selfishly asking for it - His brother is still here, defending him from harsh words just as he had all those years ago when Glass Shard Beach was still their home.

All at once, Ford feels as if the air has been knocked out of him. He tries to keep his face straight, tries to keep looking his brother in the eye, tries to summon up words to respond to his question, but he fails on all fronts. He looks away, and as he does his shoulders drop and his head bows as if gravity has increased upon him tenfold. He shuts his eyes, puts the back of his fist to his mouth and sucks in a deep breath as he stifles a sound that would have doubtlessly been pathetic if he didn't strangle the life out of it before it could leave his throat.

After a moment he blinks hard, forces himself to pull himself together, goddamn it and sets his jaw. When he speaks next its through gritted teeth, and he speaks more to the floor than to his brother.

"...Why can't you just hate me?"

That would make this - all of this - so much easier to bear.

"What?"

No, really. What?

Stanley hunches over, craning his neck in what's probably a useless try at meeting his brother's eyes, and the hand still on Ford's neck is something Stan doesn't even think about, let alone consider removing.

"Look, you did some stuff. To me. And before I understood, I mean, before I knew-" Before he knew, he means, just how bad things got for his brother here, how bad it'd got inside his brother's own damn head, although it seems too cruel to say so out loud. "I didn't always- look, I mean, I wasn't always thinkin' of you with a song in my heart, alright? But I never hated you. I don't know what you did to the world, but what you did to- I mean, it was gonna' be fine. I'd make it big and then we'd talk again and, and everything woulda' been fine."

Stan hesitates and when he talks again his voice is cautious, small and confused. "You really want me to hate you? Not just, just you think I should, but you really want that?"

"Of course not."

He can't help it that his voice breaks, or that he can't look his brother in the eye, try though Stan does to get him to look up at him. He just can't bring himself to do it, because he knows that if he does what little remains of his composure is going to crumble to dust, and there will be no repairing it.

"It's just. I could live with myself when I thought...I was so sure, and now - and now you're here and you're telling me I've been wrong, I've been so wrong this entire time, and--"

He swallows hard, pauses his rambling to catch his breath and steady himself. Inhale, hold, exhale. Inhale, exhale, inhale...

Dammit, it's not helping as much as he hoped it would.

"...God help me, Stanley, how could I do this to someone who loves me?"

Shit, that don't sound as satisfying as he always thought it would. Not when he can still see some a' those scars, peeking up over the collar of Ford's shirt like his own failure constantly screaming up at him, not about to let him forget itself. Not when he's just sat here listening to his brother like this, all hunched over and breathing like it's the only thing he can stand to do with himself.

"Well..." Stan starts and then trails off, awkward, because he can't deny it, can he? Can't, won't, whichever. Saying his brother hasn't done wrong by someone who loves him is, well- Stan wouldn't go that far. He searches for something to say, and finds it.

"I guess we were both wrong about things we shouldn't a' been sure of." He ruffles Ford's hair, only very, very carefully, more than a little awkwardly, trying to find parts of scalp that haven't recently been sliced open and melted back together. The back of Ford's head, by the way, is still a goddamn mess. "Welcome to life as a fuckup, Sixer. I'd say you get used to it after a while, but, uh-"

Stanley laughs a little and the sound is gentle, so much as his voice can manage, and his tone is warm. "We can be fuckups together, huh? That sound like somethin' you can handle?"

Ford does not feel like laughing. In fact, he feels as far removed from "amused" as he's ever been. He hasn't felt quite this low in a long, long while, and he doubts anything will be able to improve his mood in the short term, or his opinion of himself in the long-term.

And yet despite himself, he can't help but let out a weak chuckle at Stan's words. His brother has always had a talent for that, getting him to laugh when he was feeling down - even and especially when he didn't want to. Even now, Ford still has a crystal clear memory of being thirteen and laughing through tears while calling his brother an asshole for ruining his perfectly miserable mood.

Oddly enough, he can't remember for the life of him what he had been upset about in the first place, but he remembers his brother's words and his comforting tone, and the great lengths he went through to get him to smile again.

Ford supposes there are just some things you never forget. He counts himself lucky that for Stan, one of those things is knowing how to handle his mess of a brother.

"...You and me, teaming up to make dad even less impressed with us than he already is."

He shakes his head, a wobbly smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he wipes at his eyes. He still feels a touch miserable, but it's difficult for him to stay on the verge of tears when his brother's so damn good at giving pick-me-ups.

"Just to piss him off."

He huffs out a half-laugh, and finally risks lifting his head to look at his brother and meet his eyes. He knows he probably looks like a red-faced mess, but he thinks Stan has earned a smile for all his efforts. Even if it's just a small one, a weak little sapling of a smile.

"Think Mom would get a kick out of that?"

When Stan hears his brother laugh he smiles, and the look takes a few of those extra years off his face, at least until Ford mentions dad. Then his smile fades - not all the way, but a little - because he hasn't thought of dad in years. Well, he has, but he hasn't. Not like that. Not in terms of, you know, actually interacting with the guy, letting him know Stan's even alive.

But his brother is still smiling and so his own smile stays, more tentative now but just as genuine and relieved. It even grows a little as Ford's smile meets his, because he's smiling for his brother.

"Yeah," he says weakly, agreeing more because the thought seems to make Ford happy than because he knows what to make of it. "Yeah, I guess she might. Um."

It's important, sometimes, to have gotten rid of as many obvious visual cues as possible so Stan don't make a habit of biting at the inside of his lip anymore, at least not mostly. He does now though, for a second, because in that second he's on the verge of asking about dad. How the guy is, what he's been doing. But Stan just got Ford to smile, didn't he? And it's a great smile, not huge but there, which is more than he thinks his brother mighta' had in a pretty long time. A couple months, maybe, since that Fiddle-guy up and left him, right? Longer than that, maybe? He's not gonna' do anything that might make that little sapling of a smile up and wither away sooner than it's already going to, and he's definitely not going to do it just to make Ford talk about Stan's own problems. Ford's dealing with enough as it is.

"You know what else mom would want? For her kid to get some sleep." He slips his thumb under Ford's glasses, copying mom's old gesture, the way she'd use her own thumbs to wipe their eyes after they came to her about Crampelter or dad or, whatever, kid problems, after she'd told some far-out story to cheer them up and was about to send them off to bed. It'd been a trick, probably, for her to do it with those fingernails of hers, but Stan don't have to worry about that. "The kind that don't involve passin' out and sleepin' so long you ain't eaten for a whole day. How's that sound?"

Ford can't help but wonder, absently, if Stan realizes just how many habits he picked up from their mother. Most people would immediately draw the connection between the pathological lying, but for Ford, it's the little things that are more apparent - small gestures like the one he just made that anyone else would have overlooked. He certainly picked up her accent, something Ford had to actively try to not absorb himself growing up.

Maybe that's what's prompting him to smile, the particular sort of comfort one feels when taking refuge in the familiar. Nostalgia must be the reason why he suddenly feels at home in his own house for the first time in - maybe ever, now that he thinks about it.

Or at least, nostalgia is what Ford's going to blame. He's not about to admit that maybe, just maybe, he simply feels better when his brother is around.

"Heh. Sounds like you want me to go back to sleep before one of us starts crying again, that's what I think."

His wobbly smile turns a little more stable as he pauses to remove his glasses and swipe at his eyes with the heel of his thumb, just to wipe away anything Stan might have missed.

"You bet your ass I do." It's such a relief to hear this tone come out of his mouth, this friendly, easy tone, and to be able to mean it. It's been so long since he's had that with anyone, let alone with his brother, and he's sure it ain't going to last so the words might come out a little quick, a little more desperately cheerful than they otherwise might. His laugh is brief but loud, happiness and relief and the giddiness of seeing a bad time put behind him all mixed up into it, and the hand perched carefully over Ford's head slides down to fit around his shoulders.

"I've cried more tonight than I have in, shit, I think the entire year put together, it's gotta' be this place. Whatever you've been doin' is givin' this place some seriously fucked up dustmites."

He smiles at Ford a second and holds the smile, teeth worrying over the scars on the inside of his lip because this moment can't last, this friendly, easy moment just like things used to be, but if he can get things ending on a high note then, for a little while, everything will be perfect. "Seriously though, you look, uh. You've looked better. I'll have some food waitin' for ya' when you wake up next time, an' maybe then we'll be able to make you look like a halfway productive member of society."

A quiet, raspy chuckle works its way up from Ford's chest, the sound just one promotion away from actually sounding like genuine laughter. This is more weary than a real laugh, not quite as strong or amused, but it's warm all the same.

"Well, isn't that a nice way to say I look like hell."

He runs his hand back over his head through his still-damp hair to confirm that, yes, it is still a godawful mess just like it was when he first stepped out of the shower. He almost wishes he hadn't avoided looking in the mirror - he kind of wants to know how bad he looks right now. He pictures red-rimmed, sunken-in eyes, a mop of hair that looks like it hasn't seen a brush in a month, and an overall look of haggardness that permeates his very being.

It's a pretty spot on assessment, really. The only thing missing is the 5 o' clock shadow that a lot of women would go crazy for if it weren't attached to a guy who looks like he just escaped from a mental ward.

"...I really have looked better, I'll admit."

His hand moves from his hair to the back of his neck, which he rubs sheepishly as a sudden bout of self-consciousness overcomes him. God, he must look like the world's nerdiest mess. A human disaster. He gives Stan credit for not making a bigger deal of it before now; he's sure he must have wanted to say something. What, exactly, Ford's not sure, but he's guessing something along the lines of "When's the last time you ate", or "Do you remember what sleep is", or "What the fucking fuck Stanford."

"You, ah. You mind making sure I get up in a few? I don't want to make a habit of waking up and not knowing what day it is."

"A few what?" He smiles a little but doesn't push the joke, doesn't want to give Ford time to think he ain't takin' him seriously. There was a time when he took pride in that, his ability to annoy his brother out of absolutely any mood at all, but annoying him is a risk now. It feels like a risk.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll probably get bored soon anyway, not much to do around here 'cept read your nerdy books." He could sleep now maybe, now that things are good, now that they're better. But Ford obviously expects Stan to be up making sure he wakes up okay, so that's what Stanley's gonna' do. He gives Ford's shoulders a squeeze - hallelujah, a part of the guy he don't have to worry about breakin' if he touches it - then pulls back a little and gives him a little push, encouragement to lay back. "Go on. I'll be here when you wake up, yeah?"

It's weird to say that. After all this time it feels like a dream almost, that idea of keeping watch over his brother while he sleeps, Ford wakin' up, maybe talking to Stan a little. Just being here, expecting to be here later. It's weird.

He means it.

That gentle but insistent push earns Stan a fond eye-roll and a light bap on the arm, because Ford is not going to take being coddled lying down. He's going to do it while sitting up, then he's going to lie down, because he's emotionally and physically exhausted and this has been a very, very long day. (Never mind that he's only been awake for an hour or two at the most.)

"You'll have to be if you're going to wake me up."

Lying back, Ford props himself up on his elbows and raises a brow at his brother.

"You are going to wake me up, right?"

Something tells him Stan's just going to let him wake up on his own regardless of what he promises.

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GOD that icon kills me

TOO MANY HAPPY PINES SMILES

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casually takes three hours to reply

Shush the reply is beautiful and worth the wait